Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

I thought of Hossam al-Ahmed. Who was he? Had he really ransacked my room? Why?

The men in the alcove were drinking juice, not speaking. A yellow candle lit their table. Shadows slid upward, morphing their features into Halloween masks.

Were the men watching me? Was my imagination in overdrive?

I snuck a peek.

The beluga removed shades from a pocket, slipped them on, and gave me an oily smile.

My eyes snapped back to my plate.

Signing for my meal, I hurried to my room and again called Jake.

No answer.

Maybe the headache had intensified, so he’d pulled the plug on his phone and crashed.

For lack of a better plan, I took a bath. My usual remedy for agitation. No go.

Who were the guys in the bar?

Who was Hossam al-Ahmed?

What had happened to Courtney Purviance?

Where was Jake?

How was Jake? Was he having a relapse? Had he thrown an embolism? Developed a subdural hematoma?

Mother Mary! I was going completely schizoid.

While toweling off, my eyes fell on Ryan’s phone records, dry now, but browned and rippled from their encounter with the Coke.

Why not? It would keep my mind from worrying about Jake.

Propping myself in bed, I turned on the lamp and stared out the window. Thin wisps of fog blurred the minaret’s top.

While not the full, majestic sweep of Jerusalem, my view was reassuring. Night sky. Lots of it. The same sky that had hung in this place forever.

My focus moved inward.

Arrows of light played on my dimmed ceiling. The day’s heat had waned, and the room was pleasantly cool. A perfumed dampness permeated the air.

I closed my eyes and listened, the printouts lying on my upraised knees.

Traffic. The tinkle of a shopkeeper’s bell. Cats meeting cats in the courtyard.

A car alarm cut the night with staccato beeps.

Opening my eyes, I took up Ryan’s printouts.

I was faster than I’d been on my first go-round. I could see patterns now, and recognized more numbers.

But the bath had been more calming than I’d thought. My lids grew heavy. More than once, I lost my place.

I was about to kill the light when a number caught my attention. Was it drowsiness, or was something wrong there?

I ran the sequence again and again.

I felt blood making the rounds in my brain.

Grabbing the phone, I dialed Ryan.

“RYAN HERE.”

“It’s Tempe.”

“How was dinner?” Subdued.

“Jake never showed.”

Slight hitch. Surprise.

“I’ll have the cad flogged.”

“Turned out for the better. I may have found something in the phone records.”

“I’m listening.”

“When did Ferris take Miriam to Boca?” I asked.

“Mid-January.” Ryan was keeping his answers short. I pictured him and Friedman folded like pretzels in a darkened car.

“Okay. Here’s the sequence as I’ve been able to piece it together. On December twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, calls were made from the Mirabel warehouse to the Renaissance Boca Raton Hotel. That was Ferris making arrangements.”

“Okay.”

“On January fourth a call was placed to l’Abbaye Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges. That was Ferris giving Morissonneau a heads-up on his plan to collect Max.”

“Go on.”

“On January seventh a call was made to Kaplan’s home. That was Ferris contacting his middleman. Kaplan was called again on January tenth. Then, from the sixteenth through the twenty-third, there’s a marked drop-off in outgoing calls from Mirabel.”

“Ferris was down south with Miriam.”

“Right. Two calls were made to the Boca resort. Probably Purviance with questions for the boss. But get this. On January nineteenth, Kaplan’s home number was again dialed from the warehouse.”

Ryan got it right away. “Ferris was in Florida. It couldn’t have been him. So who’s calling Kaplan?”

“Purviance?” I suggested.

“She ran the business when Ferris was gone. But why would Purviance call Kaplan? He’s not a customer or a supplier. And Ferris’s dealings with Kaplan weren’t exactly kosher. Purviance wouldn’t have been tuned into those transactions.” Pause. “Could Purviance have been responding to a message?”

“I thought of that. The warehouse records show no incoming calls from Kaplan’s home or shop.”

“So someone phoned Kaplan’s home from Ferris’s warehouse while Ferris was in Florida. But Kaplan hadn’t phoned the warehouse, either from his home or his shop, making it unlikely that Purviance was calling Kaplan in response to a message he’d left for Ferris. So who the hell made the call? And why?”

“Someone else with access? A family member?”

“Again, why?”

“Astute questions, Detective.”

“Sonovabitch.”

“Sonovabitch. Any word from Birch?”

I heard rustling, imagined Ryan seeking a more comfortable position.

“Purviance is still missing.”

“That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“If the lady overheard or saw something, the perp might have clipped her to keep her from talking.”

“Jesus.”

“But ballistics caught a break on the Jericho nine-mil that killed Ferris. Piece was reported stolen by a seventy-four-year-old plumber named Ozols. Car break-in in Saint-Léonard.”

“When?”

“January twenty-second, less than three weeks before Ferris was shot. Birch is thinking street thugs. Score a gun, hit a warehouse, things go south, Ferris gets popped.”

Something stirred in my unconscious.

“According to Purviance, nothing of value was taken,” I said, distracted by the heads-up from my hindbrain.

“Mopes may have panicked and split.”

“The gun theft could also suggest pre-planning. Someone wanted a hit and needed a firearm. Also, Ferris took two bullets to the back of the head. That suggests a professional job, not a panic shooting.”

“Miriam was in Florida.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “She was.”

I heard a voice in the background.

“Kaplan’s on the move,” Ryan said, then disconnected.

No longer sleepy, I went back to the call records. This time, I began with the dump on Kaplan’s home phone. The January and February lists were short.

Almost immediately, I got another shocker.

February first. Nine seventy-two. The international exchange for Israel. Zero-two. The area code for Jerusalem and Hebron. I knew the number.

The Rockefeller. And not the main switchboard this time.

Kaplan had dialed the office of Tovya Blotnik. The call had lasted twenty-three minutes.

Blotnik had been in the loop for at least ten days when Ferris died.

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?