I spent my first hour identifying, marking, and inventorying the fragments from Avram Ferris’s head. I wasn’t yet undertaking an in-depth examination, but I was noticing details, and a picture was emerging. A baffling picture.

That morning’s staff meeting ran the usual roster of the brainless, the brutal, and the sadly banal.

A twenty-seven-year-old male electrocuted himself by urinating in the track bed at the Lucien-L’Al ier metro.

A Boisbriand carpenter bludgeoned his wife of thirty years during an argument over who would go out for logs.

A fifty-nine-year-old crackhead overdosed in a pay-by-the-night flophouse near the Chinatown gate.

Nothing for the anthropologist.

At nine-twenty, I returned to my office and phoned Jacob Drum, a col eague at UNC-Charlotte. His voice mail answered. I left a message asking that he return my cal .

I’d been with the fragments another hour when the phone rang.

“Hey, Tempe.”

In greeting, we Southerners say “hey” not “hi.” To alert, draw the attention of, or show objection to another, we also say “hey,” but air is expel ed and the ending is truncated. This was an airless, four-A “hey.”

“Hey, Jake.”

“Won’t get above fifty in Charlotte today. Cold up there?”

In winter, Southerners delight in querying Canadian weather. In summer, interest plummets.

“It’s cold.” The predicted high was in negative figures.

“Going where the weather suits my clothes.”

“Off to dig?” Jake was a biblical archaeologist who’d been excavating in the Middle East for almost three decades.

“Yes, ma’am. Doing a first-century synagogue. Been planning it for months. Crew’s set. Got my regulars in Israel, meeting up with a field supervisor in Toronto on Saturday. Just finalizing my own travel arrangements now. Pain in the gumpy. Do you have any idea how rare these things are?” Gumpies?

“There are first-century synagogues at Masada and Gamla. That’s about it.”

“Sounds like a terrific opportunity. Listen, I’m glad I caught you. Got a favor to ask.”

“Shoot.”

I described Kessler’s print, leaving out specifics as to how I’d obtained it.

“Pic was shot in Israel?”

“I’m told it came from Israel.”

“It dates to the sixties?”

“‘October ’63’ is written on the back. And some kind of notation. Maybe an address.”

“Pretty vague.”

“Yes.”

“I’l be glad to check it out.”

“I’l scan the image and send it by e-mail.”

“I’m not optimistic.”

“I appreciate your wil ingness to take a look.”

I knew what was coming. Jake reran the shtick like a bad beer ad.

“You gotta come dig with us, Tempe. Get back to your archaeological roots.”

“There’s nothing I’d like better, but I can’t take off now.”

“One of these days.”

“One of these days.”