“That’s right,” she said. “The cotton will probably look darker. They used dyes and a gummy mordant to fix the dyes onto the fibers. The mordant also helps the strands stick together.”
“Then the first thing we need to do is free up some of the fibers,” Dr. Kelley said. “If I put this under the scope the way it is, light won’t pass through it, and it will be so thick you won’t be able to tell anything. Dr. Rahal, do you have an objection if I scraped the sample to release some fibers?”
“Do what you must,” Dr. Rahal said. “Just get on with it.”
“Why don’t you mosey on out of here if you’ve got things to do,” Dr. Eastman said. “I promise we won’t lose it.”
Dr. Rahal pulled up a chair and sat. “I think I’ll stay. I will enjoy seeing the look on Miss Johnston’s face when she finds nothing.”
“Suit yourself,” Dr. Kelley said. He pulled the Shroud sample out of the plastic case with a pair of tweezers. Then he took a scalpel and scraped the sample with the sharp edge of the scalpel, causing the fibers to fall onto a glass microscope slide. When enough fibers were visible to the naked eye, Dr. Kelley transferred the glass slide to the microscope stage. He reached into the drawer and pulled out a small white box of thin glass coverslips. When he had the fibers secured under the coverslip, he flipped on the stage light. The glass slide glowed as light passed from the stage and up into the microscope’s oculars. He pressed his eyes to the binocular scope and adjusted the focus. “Hmm. Interesting.”
“What do you see?” Amari asked with excitement.
“Have a look.” Dr. Kelley stood up and let her have the scope.
She pressed her eyes against the two oculars. Tiny transparent threads were randomly scattered about with brown colored fabric mixed in. She knew it! There is was, in plain sight. Dyed cotton fibers were mixed in with clear linen. She adjusted the stage to see more fibers. She gasped at the next thing she saw.
“What do you see?” Dr. Kelley asked.
Dr. Eastman moved in closer.
“Look,” she said and moved her head out of the way. “You see those fibers?”
Dr. Kelley put his face to the eyepieces. “Well, I’ll be darned. They’re twisted together. One fiber is dark brown and another is clear and transparent.”
“Yes!” she said. “Dark fibers are twisted onto colorless fibers. The dark fibers are dyed cotton. They did it that way because linen turns yellow with age. So they dyed the cotton to match the linen and then wove them together.”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Rahal said.
“See for yourself,” Dr. Kelley said. “It’s as plain as day.”
“Can I see?” Dr. Eastman asked.
Dr. Kelley moved aside and gave Dr. Eastman the scope. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Look at that. Seems to me there may be two reasons the carbon date is wrong. My theory is that bacteria formed biofilms over the years,” he said and kept adjusting the stage, looking at other sections of the slide. “These biofilms contain younger carbon. We know this because mummies can date much younger than they really are. Biofilms are invisible. It’s hard to prove my case, but your case is right there in plain view.”
“Is the camera ready?” she asked.
“The film you brought is loaded up and ready to go,” Dr. Kelley said.
“This proves nothing,” Dr. Rahal scoffed.
Dr. Eastman offered to show him the image under the scope, but Rahal only sat in his chair with his arms folded across his chest. “My specialty is particle physics. I wouldn’t know what I was looking at.”
Amari slid back under the scope and started maneuvering the stage. When viewed from a distance with thousands of linen fibers bound together, it looked yellow or tan. But under the microscope, they looked relatively colorless. She snapped her first photo of a darkly stained cotton fiber lying next to a colorless linen fiber. The camera perched on top of the microscope whined as it ejected the photo. She took the photo and set it down on the counter and waited for it to develop. An image gradually emerged from a wall of gray, framed with a white border, thicker white at the bottom for gripping the photo without damaging the image. She maneuvered the stage and snapped another shot, then another, until the 10 pack of film had been exhausted.
By the time she had finished, the first pictures had fully developed. She held one up and showed it to Dr. Rahal. “You see, there’s two different types of fibers. And this one,” she said and pulled up another photo, “clearly shows two of those fibers wound together. Congratulations, Dr. Rahal, you just carbon dated a sixteenth-century patch.”
“That proves nothing. Who’s to say they didn’t mix cotton and linen throughout the entire Shroud? We have cotton and polyester blends. Perhaps it was no different then.”
Amari was amazed at his ignorance of ancient textiles. But why should he know? “That’s not the way they did things back then.”
“Then perhaps the forger wove dyed cotton into the Shroud intentionally so it would look older when it was brand new,” Dr. Rahal said. “If linen yellows in time, they must have tried to match the color so it would appear old. Otherwise, the forgery would be obvious.”
“Or,” Dr. Eastman said, “they could have used an old piece of linen to make the forgery.”
“You see, Miss Johnston, you have proven nothing.” Dr. Rahal said. “You would need to get a sample from the middle of the Shroud for comparison. And I would like to know how you intend to do that. If you think you had trouble convincing me to hand this over, try asking the Vatican to let you cut a hole in their precious relic. Now you are wasting our time. Enough of this.”
Rahal thought he had her, but he didn’t. “You’ve heard of STURP, haven’t you? The Shroud of Turin Research Project? They took tape samples from the middle of the Shroud in 1978. I know from a very good source that Los Alamos has some of those tape samples. I can look at those and compare them.” She was careful not to mention that Kevin was that good source.
“Hah!” Dr. Rahal arrogantly laughed. “Los Alamos is one of the most secure government facilities in the country. You will never set foot in that building, I assure you.”
“Oh yeah?” Amari said and scooped up her ten photos. “Well, I never give up,” she said and made her way for the exit. The campus police held the door open for her as she left.
****
It was almost midnight. Amari sat next to the third-floor window of the university’s main library. The window reflected her image like a mirror, illuminated by fluorescent lights.
Since the Shroud of Turin was obviously not a work of art, she’d decided to change her art history report to gothic sculpture. She’d come to the library several hours earlier to work on that project. Once she’d finished the report, she shifted her focus back to the Shroud.
She flipped through the pages of an obscure book on textiles she had found after searching the card index for over an hour. Then the book wasn’t where it was supposed to be. She finally found it but now it was getting late and they were about to close.
Before she got too excited about her find in the biology lab, she had to make sure she had all her evidence substantiated. She had to find pictures of cotton fibers, preferably dyed cotton fibers, so she could prove the images on her Polaroids were indeed cotton and not some other contaminating artifact. She only assumed they were cotton, after all. If she didn’t make certain and have pictures to back up her claim, she would be discredited.
Frustrated, she flipped through the pages. She still could not find any microscopic images, only the fabric form. Keys jangled and she looked up to see Hokee approaching. Hokee, a library security guard, was a full-blooded Navajo Indian. He was also Amari’s second cousin. When she was a kid, he used to come over to the house with his mother.
“I know, you’re closing,” she said. “I’ll be out by midnight, I promise.”
“You got five minutes,” Hokee said and continued his rounds.
“Okie, dokie, Hokee,” Amari said and giggled. Just like when
they were kids.
“That never gets old, does it?” he called back to her as he moved down the hall.
“Nope.”
“Seriously, Amari, hurry it up.”
“Okie, dokie, Hokee, I won’t be pokie,” she said and snorted a laugh.
“Very funny,” Hokee called back. “Four minutes.”
Amari flipped through some more pages. A sound from behind her startled her. She turned to see. Nobody was there. Must be another student packing up.
Grid by grid, fluorescent lights went dark, leaving only the occasional emergency light.
“Fine, Hokee, I’m going,” she uttered and scooped up the book. She grabbed her backpack and went to the isle between bookshelves, carefully navigating in low light, heading for the shelf the book was supposed to be on. Another light grid went dark and she knew Hokee was messing with her. She strained to see, waiting as her eyes adjusted. She would have to drop the book in the return bin and the librarian could return the book to its proper place. She found the return bin sitting on a table next to a Xerox machine, directly across from the elevator. She set the book in the box. A door slammed shut, startling her.
“Hokee? Is that you?”
No answer.
“Okay, you got me.”
No answer.
“You jerk, I’m telling your mother!”
No answer.
She stepped to the elevator. A crude handwritten sign made of copy paper hung on the sliding doors. Out of Order. She had just taken that elevator up a few hours before. Now it was broken? Or was it Hokee playing a prank on her, just like when they were kids? It didn’t look like Hokee’s writing. It was way too messy. Maybe they closed it for maintenance at night since nobody needed to use it. “Oh, well,” she said to herself and headed down the darkened hall for the stairs. She was only three floors up, no big deal.
She swung open the stairway door and light flooded out, making her squint against her dark-adjusted pupils. “See you later, Hokee!” she called out and entered the stairwell. The door slammed closed, the clap echoing down the stairwell.
A large shadow fell over her. A crushing grip took her from behind.
Chapter 24
She opened her mouth to scream, adrenaline surging. A massive hand clamped over her lips, muffling her cries. Training kicked in. She dropped her backpack, gripped the hand over her mouth, and forced his middle finger between her teeth. She bit hard as she could.
“Ahhh,” the man howled and let go.
She spun around, balled her fist, and punched at his throat. He deflected her blow and caught her by the wrists. She fought to free herself, yanking, pulling against massive hands. An angry giant’s teeth gnashed through the mouth opening of a black ski cap.
“Let me go!” she cried and kicked his knee, square in the kneecap.
“Oouuww,” he shrieked and released her. He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and shoved her into the stair rail. He pushed down on her head. Her neck strained against him. Her eyes widened to a three-story drop, the gap between stairs. One hand gripped her neck and the other grabbed her ankle and started to lift.
She reached over her head and clawed at the man’s eyes. He howled and let go, falling back against the cinder blocks, his ski mask caught on her fingers. She pelted him in the head with the mask. His eyes were clenched tight, his hands rubbing them furiously.
She broke for the door and flung it open. “Hokee!” she screamed and stumbled out of the stairwell.
He grabbed her arm and worked to pull her back in. She came around with her knee and caught him in the groin. He hunched over from the pain and fell back. The fire extinguisher hung on the wall. She snatched it from its cradle, yanked the pin loose, and shot white powder in his face. He jerked his head away, flung the door open, and escaped into the stair landing.
Amari pursued him. She gripped the extinguisher like a bat and swung hard, connecting to his head with a loud CLONG. He stumbled backward and tumbled with thuds and clumps down a flight of stairs. The fire extinguisher clanged when she dropped it, echoing in the concrete stairwell. She broke through the door and sprinted down the hall. She plowed right into Hokee and knocked him to the ground.
“Sorry!” She grabbed his hand and helped him back up. “There’s a guy in the stairway,” she said frantically, catching her breath. “He attacked me. I got him, though. Hit him in the head with the fire extinguisher. He fell down the stairs. He’s got to be hurt.”
Hokee drew his revolver and crept for the stairwell. “Amari, stay back here.”
She ignored him and followed close behind. Hokee flung the door open and lunged forward with his gun drawn. She stepped in with him. They both stared down at the foot of the stairs. He was gone. They heard another door slam, then silence.
****
The doorbell rang. Amari startled awake and came up from the bed so fast she felt dizzy. The doorbell rang again, then rapping on the door. It rang again, rap-rap-rap-rap! She snapped open the nightstand drawer and grabbed her gun, a compact 9mm Beretta registered to her dad. Who could it be? Her attacker from the library?
A muffled voice came from the door. “Amari, it’s me. Kevin.”
She sighed in relief and put the gun back where she found it. She hated guns, but her dad had insisted she keep it.
Rap-rap-rap-rap!
“Hold on, Kevin, I’m coming,” she yelled.
She slid her feet into her slippers, then went to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. She was still stunned about what had happened, not even sure what had happened. It was like a dream—or nightmare. She hadn’t had time to sort her emotions. She just talked to the police for a while, came home with her dad, and finally fell asleep with him still there. She vaguely remembered him kissing her on the forehead and leaving just before dawn.
And then Kevin woke her. She splashed more water on her face. She dried it with a towel and noticed her reflection in the mirror. She looked like crap, no makeup, her hair was a mess—and fear showed in her eyes. She wet a wash cloth and held the cool wetness against her eyes, hoping it would somehow ease the tension in her facial muscles. She couldn’t let him see her fear. She had to put on a brave face.
The doorbell rang, rap, rap, rap!
“Hold on, I said I’m coming!” she yelled and put on her robe. She tied the belt around her waist as she made her way into the den. “Here goes,” she muttered to herself. “I hope he buys it.”
She looked through the peephole. She had visual confirmation. It was Kevin. She slid the dead bolt open, unhooked the chain, and opened the door.
“Kevin?” she said, squinting from the sunlight flooding in. “What time is it?”
“It’s 10 o’clock.”
“Oh,” she said and stepped aside. She closed the door behind him.
“I heard what happened,” he said breathlessly. “It’s all over campus. That Shroud protest girl was attacked at the library. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Kevin, I’m fine. This wasn’t my first go around,” she assured him—and herself. “I can take care of myself. You want coffee?”
“You almost got killed and you ask if I want coffee?”
“Uh, excuse me, but I beat the crap out of that guy. I’m surprised he’s still alive. They found a blood trail so I know he’s hurt. I need to ask my dad if they checked all the hospitals.”
She rubbed at her eyes and yawned for effect, to show how relaxed she was. “I can’t believe you saw me like this. Why didn’t you call?”
“I did, all I got was a busy signal.”
“Phone must be off the hook. Sorry.”
“You’ve got a bruise on your chin. And look at your wrists!”
She held up her wrists and noticed it for the first time. Dark ringed bruises encircled both of them. It must have happened during the struggle. They didn’t hurt but sure looked bad. “It’s a little bruising, Kevin. Calm down.”
He sat on the couch and rubbed his temples. “They have got to get a handl
e on crime at this university. The other day someone busted out Rahal’s windshield.”
“The university is perfectly safe. He probably just pissed somebody else off too.”
“I wonder if you touched a nerve over the Shroud. You made quite a scene at the library the other day. Maybe someone’s trying to send you a message. You better lay low for a while until this blows over. If you gotta be at the university at night, I’m coming with you. Understand?”
“Kevin, relax. I’ve never seen you this way before. You’re always so laid back.”
“There’s a lot of sides to me you’ve never seen. Now, I’m serious. You call me if you’re going over there at night.”
That was so sweet. He really cared about her. She sat next to him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Fine, Kevin, I promise, I’ll call you first. At least until this all blows over. But we don’t know if this had anything to do with the Shroud. It could have just been a pervert.”
“Did he say anything? What did he look like?”
“He was big. At least six foot, maybe more. He was Middle Eastern looking. Black hair, dark eyes. Bulky. Not muscular, but stout. He could stand to lose a few pounds. Maybe thirty years old.”
“So what did the police say?”
“They don’t know. I gave them the description.”
“And your dad?”
“My dad’s having a cow. He was here until daylight. Then he left to try to find this guy. I was up until five. I was going to call you as soon as I woke up. I promise.”
“As long as you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. I don’t think that guy was trying to kill me. Although there for a minute I thought he was going to throw me down the stair shaft. I honestly don’t know what he was trying to do. But he hesitated, and that’s all I needed to get the upper hand.”
Carbon-14: The Shroud of Turin (An Amari Johnston Novel) Page 14