Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

“Yeah.” Wary.

“We could swing by, ask Mom to help clear this up.”

“Man.” Whiny.

“Bernie?”

“His key might be on the ring.”

Ryan turned to me.

“Do you smell gas?”

“Maybe.” I sniffed. I smelled many things. “Yes, you could be right.”

“How about you, Bernie? You smell gas?”

“That’s the ferret.”

“Smells like gas to me.” Ryan moved a few feet to his left, then to his right, nose working the air. “Yeah. Gas. Dangerous stuff.”

Ryan turned to Bernie.

“Would you like us to check it out?”

Bernie looked skeptical.

“Wouldn’t want to guess wrong with all these creatures depending on you,” Ryan said, the essence of reasonableness.

“Yeah. Sure, man.”

Bernie crossed to the counter and pulled keys from below the register.

Ryan took the keys and turned to me.

“Citizen asked us to check out a gas leak.”

I gave a shrug that would have made Bernie proud.

Ryan and I exited the glass door, hooked a left, and reentered the building through the wooden door. A narrow staircase rose steeply to a second-floor landing.

We clumped up.

Ryan knocked. There was no answer. Ryan knocked again, harder.

“Police, Mr. Kaplan.”

No answer.

“We’re coming in.”

Ryan inserted key after key. The fourth worked.

Kaplan’s apartment had a small kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, a bath with black-and-white tile and a freestanding tub. Venetian blinds covered the windows, and genuinely awful mass-market landscapes decorated the walls.

Some concessions had been made to evolving technology. The tub had been jerry-rigged with a handheld shower. A microwave had been placed on a kitchen counter. An answering machine had been connected to a bedroom phone. Otherwise, the place looked as if it had been ripped from a low-budget thirties movie.

“Elegant,” Ryan said.

“Understated,” I agreed.

“I hate it when decorators get carried away.”

“Lose all appreciation for linoleum.”

We moved to the bedroom.

A folding table held phone books, ledgers, and stacks of papers. I crossed to it and began poking around. Behind me Ryan opened and closed dresser drawers. Several minutes passed.

“Find anything?” I asked.

“A lot of bad shirts.”

Ryan shifted to the nightstand.

He made his discovery as I made mine.

IPICKED UP THE LETTER ASRYANPRESSED THE BUTTON ON THEanswering machine.

I read while listening to the sugary voice: This message is for Hershel Kaplan. Your reservation for Saturday, February twenty-sixth, has been confirmed on Air Canada flight nine-five-eight-zero, operated by El Al, departing Toronto Pearson International Airport at eleven-fiftyP. M. Please be advised that, due to heightened security, El Al requires passenger check-in at least three hours prior to departure. Have a pleasant flight.

“Kaplan’s gone to Israel,” Ryan said.

“Kaplan may have known Miriam Ferris better than we thought,” I said. “Look at this.”

Ryan crossed to me. I handed him a pale gold card.

Hersh:

You view happiness as an impossible dream. I have seen it in your eyes. Pleasure and joy have moved to a place beyond the scope of your imagination.

You are angry? Ashamed? Afraid? Don’t be. We are pushing forward, slowly, like swimmers moving through an angry sea. The waves will recede. We will triumph.

Love,

M

I pointed to initials embossed on the card. “M. F.”

“The acronym has other meanings.”

“Rarely on stationery. AndM. F. isn’t a common initial combination.”

Ryan thought a moment.

“Morgan Freeman. Marshall Field. Millard Fillmore. Morgan Fairchild.”

“I’m impressed.” I worked it. “Masahisa Fukase.”

Blank stare.

“Fukase’s a Japanese photographer. Does amazing images of crows.”

“Some of Fairchild’s images were pretty amazing.”

Eye roll. “I have a gut feeling Miriam wrote this. But when? There’s no date. And why?”

“To cheer Kaplan in prison?”

I pointed to the note’s last line. “Wewill triumph?”

“To encourage Kaplan to pump two slugs into hubby?”

Suddenly the room felt cold and dark.

“Time to call Israel,” Ryan said.

Back at Wilfrid Derome, Ryan peeled off to the crimes contre la personne squad room, and I returned to my lab. Selecting the right femur from Morissonneau’s skeleton, I descended to autopsy room four, and placed the bone on the table.

After connecting the Stryker saw, I masked, and cut two one-inch plugs from the femur’s midshaft. Then I returned to my lab and phoned Jake. Once again, I was rousing him at the midnight hour.

I told Jake what Bergeron had said about the odd molar.

“How did someone else’s tooth get into the jaw of that skeleton?”

“It happens. My guess is the molar somehow became incorporated with the skeleton during recovery of the bones in the cave. The roots fit the socket reasonably well, so someone, maybe a volunteer digger, slipped it into the jaw.”

“And Haas later glued it.”

“Maybe. Maybe someone at the Musée de l’Homme. It’s probably just an error.”

“Did you cut samples for DNA testing?”

I reiterated my skepticism about the value of DNA in a case in which no comparative samples existed.

“I want the tests done.”

“Okay. It’s your grant money.”

“And carbon fourteen.”

“Priority or standard delivery on the radiocarbon?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Days versus weeks. And several hundred dollars.”

“Priority.”

I gave Jake the names of the labs I intended to use. He agreed and provided a billing account number.

“Jake, if carbon-fourteen testing indicates this skeleton is as old as you say it is, you know I’ll have to contact the Israeli authorities.”

“Call me first.”

“I’ll call. But I’d like to kn-”

“Thanks, Tempe.” Quick intake of breath. I sensed Jake was about to tell me something. Then, “This could be explosive.”

I started to question that, decided not to press. I wanted to get the samples ready for morning pickup.

After disconnecting, I logged onto the Net, called up the websites, and downloaded two case-submission forms for the DNA testing, and one for the radiometric testing.

The odd molar had come from a different individual than the bones and teeth of the rest of the skeleton. I wanted it treated as a single case for DNA testing. I assigned the odd molar one sample number.

I assigned a second, single sample number to one of the plugs I’d cut from the skeleton’s femur and one of the molars Bergeron had extracted from its jaw.

I registered the second of the skeleton’s molars and the second bone plug for radiocarbon dating.

When I’d completed the paperwork, I asked Denis to FedEx the bone and tooth samples to the respective labs.

That was it. There was nothing else I could do.

Days passed.

Frost crept across my windows. Snow capped the slats of my side-yard fence.

My casework entered a typical late winter lull. No hikers or campers. Fewer kids in the parks. Snow on the land, ice on the river. Scavengers hunkered in, waiting out winter.

Come spring, the bodies would blossom like monarchs swarming north. For now, it was quiet.

Tuesday morning, I purchased Yadin’s popular work on Masada. Beautiful photographs, chapters and chapters on the palaces, bathhouses, synagogues, and scrolls. But Jake was right. Yadin devoted barely a page to the cave skeletons, and included only one lonely photo. Hard to believe the book triggered such a controversy when it was published in ’66.