Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

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 tentativemrrrp.

“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.

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, andisha, 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.