I am not a morning person. He is an audio junkie, however, and kept an unbroken succession of cassettes playing.

Classics, pop, even C&W, al converted to easy listening Perhaps it was meant to calm, like the numbing music piped to elevators and waiting rooms. It made me jittery.

"How far is St-Jovite?" I picked a double-chocolate honey-glazed.

"It wil take us about two hours. St-Jovite is about twenty-five kilometers this side of Mont Tremblant. Have you skied there?" He wore a knee-length parka, army green with a fur-lined hood. From the side, al I could see was the tip of his nose.

"Urn. Beautiful."

I nearly got frostbite on Mont Tremblant. It was the first time I'd skied in Quebec, and I was dressed for the Blue Ridge Mountains. The wind at the summit was cold enough to freeze liquid hydrogen.

"How did things go at Lac Memphremagog?"

"The grave wasn't where we expected, but, what's new? Apparently she was exhumed and reburied in 1911. Odd that there was no record of it."

Very odd, I thought, taking a sip of tepid coffee. Instrumental Springsteen. "Born in the U.S.A." I tried to block it. "Anyway, we found her. The remains wil be delivered to the lab today."

"It is too bad about this fire. I know you were counting on a free week to concentrate on that analysis."

In Quebec, winters can be slow for the forensic anthropologist. The temperature rarely rises above freezing. The rivers and lakes ice over, the ground turns rock hard, and snow buries everything. Bugs disappear, and many scavengers go underground. The result: Corpses do not putrefy in the great outdoors. Floaters are not pul ed from the St. Lawrence. People, too, burrow in. Hunters, hikers, and picnickers quit roaming the woods and fields, and some of last season's dead are not found until the spring melt. The cases that are assigned to me, the faceless in need of a name, decline in number between November and April.

The exception is house fires. During the cold months, these increase.

Most burned bodies go to the odontolo-gist and are identified by dental records. The address and its occupant are general y known, so antemortem files can be pul ed for comparison. It is when charred strangers turn up that my help may be requested.

Or in difficult recovery situations. LaManche was right. I'd been counting on an open agenda, and did not appreciate having to go to St-Jovite.

"Maybe I won't be involved in the analysis." A mil ion and one strings began "I'm Sitting on Top of the World." "They'l probably have records on the family."

"Probably."

We arrived in St-Jovite in less than two hours. The sun had risen and was painting the town and countryside in icy, dawn tones. We turned west onto a winding two-lane. Almost immediately two flatbeds passed us, heading in the opposite direction. One carried a battered gray Honda, the other a red Plymouth Voyager.