Cross Bones

by Kathy Reichs

Had I seen Blotnik’s number elsewhere? Was that the whisper I’d felt from my id?

  I went back and checked Ferris’s warehouse record for February.

  Bingo. Ferris had called the switchboard of the Rockefeller on January eighth. One month later he’d called Blotnik’s direct line.

  Was that the signal my hindbrain had been sending? Somehow, the itch didn’t feel scratched.

  Then what?

  Think.

  It was like a mirage. The more I focused, the faster the allusion dissolved.

  The hell with it.

  I started to dial Ryan, stopped. He and Friedman were busy tailing Kaplan. A ringing phone could blow their cover. Or the phone would be off.

  I tried Jake.

  Still no answer.

  Frustrated, I slammed the receiver.

  Eleven-ten. Where the hell was he?

  I tried returning to the records. My mind wouldn’t focus.

  I got up and paced the room, eyes wandering the desk, the window, the images woven into the rug. What story did those images tell?

  What story would Max tell if he could speak?

  Blotnik and Kaplan talked. Why? Had Kaplan called the IAA to squirrel out whatever he could on the skeleton? No, that would be for Ferris. Kaplan was only the middleman. Was Blotnik a potential buyer?

  Was Jake unwell? Could he be lying unconscious on his bedroom floor?

  Was he angry? Had he resented my comments about Blotnik more than he’d let on?

  Was Jake correct in his assessment of Blotnik?

  A terrible thought.

  Was Blotnik more than ambitious? Was he dangerous?

  I tried Jake again. Got the answering machine again.

  “Bloody hell!”

  Throwing on jeans and a Windbreaker, I grabbed Friedman’s keys and hurried down the stairs.

  * * *

  Not a single window in Jake’s flat was lit. The fog had thickened, all but obliterating the surrounding homes.

  Terrific.

  Leaving the car, I hurried across the street, wondering how I would gain entrance to Jake’s property. Above the wall I could see treetops, their branches fuzzy claws against the night sky.

  I needn’t have worried. The gate was unlatched and slightly ajar.

  Lucky break? Bad sign?

  I pushed through.

  In the yard, a single bulb threw a sickly yellow cone onto the goat pen. As I passed, I heard movement. Glancing sideways, I saw murky horned cutouts.

  “Baaa,” I whispered.

  No response.

  Animal odors joined the damp city smells. Feces. Sweat. Rotting lettuce and apple cores.

  Jake’s stairway was a thin black tunnel. Shadows linked to shadows, forming a rosary of shapes. The climb took an eternity. I kept looking backward.

  At the door, I knocked softly.

  “Jake?”

  Why was I whispering?

  “Jake,” I called out, banging with the heel of my palm.

  Three tries, no answer.

  I turned the knob. The door swung in.

  A tickle of fear.

  First the gate, now the door. Would Jake have left the place unsecured?

  Never, if he’d gone out. But did he lock up when at home? I couldn’t recall.

  I hesitated.

  If Jake was home, why didn’t he answer? Why hadn’t he phoned me?

  Images began free-falling in my head. Jake lying on the floor. Jake unconscious in bed.

  Something touched my leg.

  I jumped, and a hand flew to my mouth. Heart thudding, I looked down.

  One of the toms stared up, eyes shiny globes in the dimness.

  Before I could react, the door swung inward. Hinges creaked softly, and the cat was gone.

  I peered through the gap. Across the room, I could see objects tossed beside the computer. Even in the dark, I knew what they were. Jake’s sunglasses. Jake’s wallet. Jake’s passport.

  And what they meant.

  I pushed through the door. “Jake?”

  I groped for a light switch, found none.

  “Jake, are you here?”

  Feeling my way through the darkness, I rounded the corner into the front room. I was searching the wall, when something crashed to my left.

  As adrenaline fired through me, my fingers found the switch. Trembling, I flipped it, and the room filled with light.

  The cat was on the kitchen counter, legs flexed, muscles tensed for flight. A vase lay shattered on the tile, rusty water oozing outward like blood from a corpse.

  The cat dropped and sniffed the puddle.

  “Jake!”

  The cat’s head jerked up, then it froze, one paw raised and curled. Eyeing me, it gave one tentative mrrrp.

  “Where the hell’s Jake?” I asked.

  The cat clammed up like a cheat at a tax audit.

  “Jake!”

  Alarmed, the cat shot past me and exited the way it had entered.

  Jake wasn’t in his bedroom. Nor was he in the workroom.

  My mind logged details as I flew through the flat.

  Mug in the sink. Aspirin on the counter. Photos and reports cleared from the table. Otherwise, the place looked as it had when I left.

  Had Jake taken the bones to Ruth Anne Bloom?

  Hurrying to the back porch, I fumbled for a wall switch. When I found one and flipped it, nothing happened.

  Frustrated, I returned to the kitchen and dug through drawers until I located a flashlight. Clicking it on, I returned to the porch.

  The cabinet was at the far end. Where its doors met, I could see a black strip shooting from top to bottom. My heart clenched in my chest.

  Gripping the flash over one shoulder, I crept forward. I smelled glue, and dust, and the mud of millennia. Outside my beam, shadows overlapped and forged odd shapes.

  Six feet from the cabinet, I froze.

  The padlock was gone, and one door hung askew. Bones or no bones, Jake would have secured the lock.

  And the front gate.

  I whipped around.

  Blackness.

  I could hear my own breath rising and falling in my mouth.

  In two strides I closed the gap and illuminated the cabinet’s interior. Shelf by shelf, I checked, dust twirling and revolving in the hard, white shaft.

  The reconstructed ossuaries were there.

  The fragments were there.

  The shroud bones were gone.

  37

  HAD JAKE TAKEN THE BONES TO BLOOM?

  Not a chance. He’d never have left the cabinet open, and he wouldn’t have gone out with his passport and wallet still here, and the door unlocked.

  Had the bones been stolen?

  Over Jake’s dead body.

  Oh God. Had Jake been abducted? Worse?

  Fear gives rise to a powerful rush of emotions. A stream of names tore through my head. The Hevrat Kadisha. Hershel Kaplan. Hossam al-Ahmed.

  Tovya Blotnik!

  A soft crunching sound penetrated my dread.

  Footsteps on gravel?

  Killing the light, I held my breath and listened.

  Sleeve brushing jacket. Branch scraping stucco. Goat bleat drifting up from the yard.

  Only benign sounds, nothing hostile.

  Dropping to my knees, I searched for the padlock. It was nowhere to be seen.

  I returned to the kitchen and replaced the flashlight. Closing the drawer, I noticed Jake’s answering machine on the counter above. The flasher was blinking in clusters of ten.

  I tallied my own calls to Jake. Eight, the first around five, the last just before leaving the hotel.

  One of the other messages might hold a clue to his whereabouts.

  Invade Jake’s privacy?

  Damn right. This looked to be a bad situation.

  I hit “replay.”

  The first caller was, indeed, me.

  The second message was left by a man speaking Hebrew. I caught the words Hevrat Kadisha, and isha, woman. Nothing
else. Fortunately, the guy was brief. Hitting “replay,” again and again, I transcribed phonetically.

  The next caller was Ruth Anne Bloom. She left only her name and the fact that she was working late.

  The last seven messages were again mine.

  The machine clicked off.

  What had I learned? Zilch.

  Was Jake already gone when I first called? Had he ignored or not heard my message? Was he monitoring? Had he left after listening to the male caller? To Ruth Anne Bloom? Had he left of his own will?

  I looked at the gibberish in my hand.

  I looked at my watch. It was now past midnight. Whom to call?

  Ryan answered on the first ring.

  I told him where I was and what I’d learned.

  Ryan’s breathing revealed his annoyance at my having ventured out alone. I knew what was coming, and wasn’t in the mood for a Q and A.

  “Jake could be in trouble,” I said.

  “Hold on.”

  The next voice was Friedman’s.

  I explained what I wanted, and, one by one, pronounced the phonemes I’d written down. It took several tries, but Friedman’s Hebrew finally mimicked the message on the tape.

  The caller had been a member of the Hevrat Kadisha, phoning in answer to Jake’s query.

  Okay. I’d guessed that. The next part of Friedman’s translation surprised me.

  A number of the “harassing” calls had been made by a woman.

  “That’s it?”

  “The caller wished your friend’s hands to wither and fall off should he desecrate another grave.”

  A woman had been calling the Hevrat Kadisha?

  I heard rustling as Friedman passed the phone back to Ryan.

  “You know what I want you to do.” Brusque.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You’ll go back to the American Colony?”

  “Yes.” Eventually.

  Ryan didn’t buy it.

  “But first?”

  “Poke around here, see if I can scare up contact information for Jake’s crew. I might find a list of those working this Talpiot site.”

  “And then?”

  “Call them.”

  “And then?”

  Adrenaline had my mind in overdrive. Ryan’s paternalism wasn’t gearing it down.

  “Shoot out to Arafat’s old compound, flash some leg, maybe score a date for Saturday night.”

  Ryan ignored that.

  “If you go anywhere but the hotel, please call me.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I’ll call.”

  Silence. I broke it.

  “What’s Kaplan doing?”

  “Working on Eagle Scout.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Early to bed.”

  “You’re sitting on him?”

  “Yes. Look, Tempe. It’s just possible Kaplan’s not our shooter. If that’s the case, someone else is.”

  “Okay. I won’t go to Ramallah.”

  Ryan followed that with his standard.

  “You can be a real pain in the ass, Brennan.”

  I followed with mine.

  “I work on it.”

  When we’d disconnected, I hurried to Jake’s office. My eyes were drawn to the objects beside the computer. My anxiety skyrocketed.

  Jake’s site was in the desert. He wouldn’t go there without sunglasses. He wouldn’t go anywhere without ID.

  Car keys?

  I began shuffling papers, poking through trays, opening and closing drawers.

  No keys.

  I checked the bedroom, the kitchen, the workroom.

  No keys.

  And no info on the crew. No list of names. No task rotation sheet. No ledger with check stubs. Zip.

  Returning to the computer, I noticed a yellow Post-it poking from below the keyboard. I snatched it up.

  Jake’s scrawl. The name Esther Getz, and a phone number four digits off Blotnik’s at the Rockefeller.

  Sudden thought. Could the Getzster be the woman phoning the Hevrat Kadisha?

  I hadn’t a molecule of evidence to suggest that. Nothing. Unless you count gender. And what did calls to the Hevrat Kadisha have to do with anything anyway?

  Okay. Jake had intended to see Getz or Bloom or both. Had he?

  I stared at the number. Calling at this hour would be futile. Rude.

  “Screw rude.” I wanted Bloom to know I was looking for Jake.

  Four rings. Voice mail. Message.

  I stood a moment, fingers locked on the receiver.

  Getz?

  Why not?

  Voice mail. Message.

  Now what? Who else to ring?

  I knew the calls were pointless, but I was frustrated and had no better ideas.

  Again, the flashing cursor from my id. There. Gone. There. Gone.

  Indicating what? When nothing is making sense, I often repeat known facts over and over in the hope that a pattern may emerge.

  Think.

  Masada skeleton. Stolen.

  Shroud bones. Missing.

  Jake. Missing.

  Courtney Purviance. Missing.

  Avram Ferris. Dead.

  Sylvain Morissonneau. Dead.

  Hershel Kaplan. Solicited for a hit. By a woman. Maybe. Now in Israel. Was trying to sell bones?

  My hotel room trashed.

  My car followed.

  Ferris-Kaplan-Blotnik telephone calls.

  Ruth Anne Bloom. I don’t trust her. Why? Jake’s early-on admonitions not to contact the IAA?

  Tovya Blotnik. Jake doesn’t trust him.

  Cave 2001 bones linked to Kidron tomb bones.

  Was there a pattern?

  Yeah. Everything led back to Max.

  Why the itchy id? Was there a piece that didn’t fit?

  If so, I wasn’t seeing it.

  My gaze wandered to a snapshot above the monitor. Jake, smiling, holding a stone vessel in one hand.

  My mind looped.

  Jake. Missing.

  I dialed another number. I was stunned when a voice answered.

  “I’m here.” Muffled, as though spoken into a hand-cupped mouthpiece.

  I identified myself.

  “The American?” Surprised.

  “I’m sorry to call at this hour, Dr. Blotnik.”

  “I—I’m working late.” Off-balance. Mine was not the voice Blotnik expected to hear. “It’s my habit.”

  I remembered my first call to the IAA. Blotnik sure wasn’t working late that night.

  I skipped the niceties.

  “Have you seen Jake Drum today?”

  “No.”

  “Ruth Anne Bloom?”

  “Ruth Anne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ruth Anne has gone up north to Galilee.”

  Bloom had left Jake a message saying she was working late. Working late where? At home? At the Rockefeller? At a lab elsewhere? Had she changed her plans? Was she lying? Was Blotnik lying? Had Blotnik merely misunderstood?

  I made a quick decision.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Now.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m—” Blotnik was clearly rattled.

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Wait for me.”

  I didn’t listen to Blotnik’s reply.

  In the car, I thought of Ryan. I should have called and given my destination, but I hadn’t thought to do it before leaving, and I had no cell phone. Maybe I could call from Blotnik’s.

  * * *

  It was a night of open gates.

  I should have seen that as an omen. Instead, I assumed Blotnik had anticipated my arrival.

  Driving into the compound, I circled to the front courtyard and hurried down the driveway on foot. The fog was giving way to mist. The air smelled of turned earth and flowers and dead leaves.

  The Rockefeller loomed like a giant black fortress, its edges merging with the velvety night. Roundi
ng one corner, I glanced out the gate I’d just entered.

  Across the way, the Old City slumbered, a place of dark and quiet stones. Gone were the delivery boys and housewives and schoolgirls and shoppers shouldering one another on the narrow streets. As I watched, a car turned from Sultan Suleiman onto Derech Jericho, its headlights white cones sweeping the haze.

  I cut to the side door, an entrance used only by museum personnel. Like the gate, it was unlocked. Putting a shoulder to the wood, I pushed, and entered.

  An ancient overhead fixture bathed the small vestibule in ocher. Ahead, a short corridor ended at doors giving onto exhibit halls. To the right, an iron-scrolled staircase curved upward, a backstage portal to the staff offices Jake and I had entered from the museum’s interior.

  I spotted a phone on a wooden shelf beside the exhibit hall doors. Crossing to it, I lifted the receiver. The dial tone sounded like a French horn in the night-empty building.

  I dialed Ryan. No answer. Was Kaplan on the move? I left a message.

  Deep breath, then I climbed, hand on the rail, weight on the balls of my feet. At the top, I turned and headed down the long corridor, footsteps clicking off walls and floor.

  A single wall sconce saved the hall from total darkness. To my right, handrailed balconies overlooking first-floor halls. To my left, arch-shaped recesses, all but one disappearing into inky darkness. Ahead, the access Jake and I had used on our visit to Getz.

  The fourth alcove appeared softly luminous. On entering, I saw why. Pale yellow light seeped from cracks framing Blotnik’s door.

  So did voices, barely audible, but sounding serene enough.

  It was 1 A.M. Who in God’s name could be here with Blotnik? Jake? Bloom? Getz?

  I crossed the alcove and knocked softly.

  The voices didn’t falter.

  I knocked again, harder.

  Not a hitch in the conversation.

  “Dr. Blotnik?”

  The men kept talking. Were they men?

  Leaning in, I put my ear to the door.

  “Dr. Blotnik?” Louder. “Are you there?”

  Funny how your mind takes snapshots. I can still see the knob, old and going green. I can still feel the coolness of the brass on my palm.

  The id’s lightning-quick, conjuring maps while the senses are still GPS’ing landmarks.

  The hinges creaked as the door swung in.

  The voices. The smell.

  Some part of my brain charted.

  Without knowing, I knew.

  38

  REALITY INTAKE. DATA BYTES RACING INTO MY ears, nose, eyes.