Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

“Shalom,”I replied.

“Geveret, HaKol beseder?”Madam, is everything all right?

“My friend needs medical attention,” I said in English.

Crew Cut approached. His partner remained behind the open door of their vehicle, right hand cocked at his hip.

Clawing free of the bushes I stepped away from the truck, non-threatening.

“And you would be?”

“Temperance Brennan. I’m a forensic anthropologist. American.”

“Uh. Huh.”

“The driver is Dr. Jacob Drum. He’s an American archaeologist working here in Israel.”

Jake made an odd gurgling sound in his throat. Crew Cut’s gaze cut to him, and then to the remains of Jake’s driver’s side window.

Jake chose that moment to rejoin the conscious. Or perhaps he’d been awake and listening to the exchange. Bending forward, he retrieved his sunglasses from among the pedals, slipped them on, and straightened.

Glancing from the cop to me and back, Jake slid to the passenger side to facilitate conversation.

The cop circled to him.

Moreshalom s were exchanged.

“Are you injured, sir?”

“Just a bump.” Jake’s laugh was convincing. The blue point on his forehead was not.

“Shall I radio for an ambulance?”

“No need.”

Crew Cut’s face looked dubious. Perhaps it was the incongruity between the injury to Jake and the injury to Jake’s window. Perhaps it was always that way. It had looked dubious upon its exit from the Corolla.

“Really,” Jake said. “I’m fine.”

I should have objected. I didn’t.

“I must have hit a pothole, or dropped a wheel or something.” Jake gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Dumb-ass move.”

Crew Cut glanced at the blacktop, then back at Jake.

“I’m excavating a site near Talpiot. Working with a crew from the Rockefeller Museum.”

So Jake had heard me.

“Just showing the little lady around.”

Little lady?

Crew Cut’s mouth moved to say something, reconsidered, merely requested the usual papers.

Jake produced a U.S. passport, an Israeli driver’s license, and the truck’s registration. I forked over my passport.

Crew Cut studied each document. Then, “I’ll be a moment.” To Jake, “Please stay in your vehicle.”

“Mind if I see if this piece of junk will start?”

“Don’t move the vehicle.”

While Crew Cut ran our names, Jake tried the ignition, again and again, with no luck. The wounded piece of junk had gone as far as it was going that day.

A semi rumbled by. A bus. An army Jeep. I watched each recede, its taillights growing smaller and closer together.

Jake slumped against the seat back and swallowed several times. I suspected he was feeling queasy.

Crew Cut returned and handed back our documents. I checked the side mirror. The plainclothes cop was now slouched behind the wheel.

“Can I offer you a ride, Dr. Drum?”

“Yeah.” Jake’s bravado had evaporated. “Thanks.”

We got out. Pointlessly, Jake locked the truck, then we followed Crew Cut and climbed into the Corolla’s backseat.

The plainclothes cop eyed us, nodded. He wore silver-rimmed glasses on a tired face. Crew Cut introduced him as Sergeant Schenck.

“Where to?” Schenck asked.

Jake started to give directions to his apartment in Beit Hanina. I cut him off.

“A hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Jake protested. Weakly.

“Take us to an ER.” My tone suggested not an inch of wiggle room.

“You’re staying at the American Colony, Dr. Brennan?” Schenck.

The boys had been thorough.

“Yes.”

Schenck made a U-turn onto the blacktop.

During the ride, Jake stayed awake, but grew passive. At my request, Schenck radioed ahead to the ER.

When Schenck pulled up, two orderlies swept Jake from the car, strapped him to a gurney, and whisked him away for CTs or MRIs or whatever techno-wizardry is brought to bear in cases of head trauma.

Schenck and Crew Cut handed me a form. I signed. They sped off.

A nurse pumped me for information on Jake. I supplied what I could. I signed other forms. I learned I was at Hadassah Hospital, on the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University, just a few minutes north of the Israel National Police Headquarters.

Paperwork completed, I took a seat in the waiting area, prepared for a long stay. I’d been there ten minutes when a tall man in aviator shades pushed through the double doors.

I felt, what? Relief? Gratitude? Embarrassment?

Drawing close, Ryan slid the aviators onto his head.

“You good, soldier?” The electric blues were filled with concern.

“Dandy.”

“Offense run scrimmages on your face?”

“I slipped in a tomb.”

“I hate it when that happens.” Ryan’s mouth did that twitchy thing it does when I’m looking like hell.

“Don’t say it,” I warned.

My hair was sweaty from climbing in and out of the Kidron. My face was scraped and swollen from my tunnel dive. My jacket was smeared with paw prints. I was dirt-speckled, bramble-scratched, and my jeans and fingernails were caked with enough crypt mud to plaster a hut.

Ryan dropped into the chair beside me.

“What went down out there?”

I told him about the tomb and the jackal, and about the incoming rounds from the Hevrat Kadisha.

“Jake lost consciousness?”

“Briefly.” I left out details of the runaway truck.

“Probably a mild concussion.”

“Probably.”

“Where’s Max?”

I told him.

“Better hope these guys follow their own dictates and let the dead lie.”

I explained Jake’s theory that the James ossuary had been looted from this tomb, making the place the Jesus family crypt.

“This hypothesis is based on carvings on old boxes?”

“Jake claims to have more proof at his lab. Says it’s dynamite.”

A woman arrived with an infant. The infant was crying. The woman eyed me, kept walking, and took a seat in the farthest bank of chairs.

“I saw something, Ryan.” With one thumbnail, I dug mud from under the other. “When I was in the lower chamber.”

“Something?”

I described what I’d spotted through the hole created when the rock fell out.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded.

Across the room the baby was picking up steam. The mother rose and began pacing the floor.

I thought of Katy. I remembered the night she spiked a temperature of 105, and the emergency-room run with Pete. Suddenly, I missed my daughter very much.

“How did you know we were here?” I asked, dragging my thoughts back to the present.

“Schenck’s major crimes. He knew Friedman was working Kaplan, and that I’d come to Israel with some female American anthropologist. Schenck put two and two together and dimed Friedman.”

“Any news on that front?”

“Kaplan’s denying he copped the necklace.”

“That’s it?”

“Not quite.”

“TURNS OUT THE ACCUSED, THAT WOULD BEKAPLAN, AND THEwronged, that would be Litvak, go way back.”

“Kaplan is a friend of the shopkeeper he robbed?”

“Distant cousin and sometime supplier. Kaplan provides Litvak with the occasional, how did Litvak phrase it? Item of curiosity.”

“Litvak deals in antiquities?”

Ryan nodded.

“Illegal?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not.”

“Litvak and Kaplan had had words just prior to the disappearance of the necklace.”

“Words over what?”

“Kaplan promised something and failed to deliver. Litvak was pissed. Things got heated. Kaplan stormed out.”

“Palming the necklace on his way.”

Ryan nodded. “Litvak was so peeved he called the cops.”

“You’re kidding.”