Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

“Confiscating bones in the name of the Lord?” I threw out.

No response.

“Question is, which Lord?”

“Oh, please.”

Wet sniffing. The woman’s free hand darted to her face.

I wasn’t sure how to probe.

“I know about the Masada skeleton.”

“You don’t know jack.” Sniff. “On your feet.”

I rose.

“Reach and grab your skull.”

I rose and laced my fingers on top of my head. Senses buzzing, I tried a new line of questioning.

“Why kill Blotnik?”

“Collateral damage.”

Ferris? Why not?

“Why shoot Ferris?”

The woman stiffened. “I don’t have time for this.”

Sensing I’d struck a chord, I dug deeper.

“Two bullets to the brain. That’s cold.”

“Shut up!” The woman sniffed, cleared her throat.

“You should have seen what the cats did to him.”

“Stinking little bastards.”

When things fall into place, they often do so rapidly.

I can’t say what my senses took in. The cadence of her speech. The nasal drip. The blonde hair. The trilingualism. The fact that this woman knew me. Knew the cats.

Suddenly, disparate facts toggled.

The bad police dialogue.

ALaw amp; Orderrerun. Briscoe telling a suspect he didn’t know jack.

A woman hired Hersh Kaplan to kill Avram Ferris.

Kaplan said she sounded like a cokehead.

The sniffing. The throat-clearing.

“I have sinus problems.”

Kaplan was phoned from the Mirabel warehouse the week the boss was vacationing with Miriam.

“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?”

Ferris was shot with a Jericho nine-millimeter semiautomatic. That gun was reported stolen by a man named Ozols. In Saint-Léonard.

“That’s ‘oak’ in Latvian. We’ve got an international arborist convention, right here in Saint-Léonard.”

Ozols. Oak. The Latvian name I’d seen in a lobby in Saint-Léonard.

The lobby of Courtney Purviance’s building.

“And here’s another interesting development. Courtney Purviance is in the wind.”

My subconscious blossomed into a full-color map.

Courtney Purviance had killed Avram Ferris. She hadn’t been abducted. She was standing in the doorway, pointing a gun at my chest.

Of course. Purviance knew the warehouse and its contents. Probably knew about Max. Travel to Israel was a regular part of her job. Flying here was routine.

But why kill Ferris? Blotnik?

Religious conviction? Greed? Some deranged personal vendetta?

Would she kill me with equal callousness?

I felt a rush of fear, then anger, then an almost trancelike calm. I would have to talk my way out. There was no getting past the gun.

“What happened, Courtney? Ferris didn’t cut you in for a big enough piece of the pie?”

The gun dipped, then the muzzle straightened.

“Or did you just want more?”

“Zip it.”

“Did you have to steal another gun?”

Again, Purviance tensed.

“Or is it easier to score a piece in Israel?”

“I’m warning you.”

“Poor old Mr. Ozols. That wasn’t a nice thing to do to a neighbor.”

“Why are you here? Why did you have to get involved in this?”

I could see Purviance’s finger stroking the trigger. She was nervous. I decided to bluff.

“I’m with the SQ.”

“Move.” The gun waggled me forward. “Easy.”

I took two steps. As I approached, Purviance backed off.

We sized each other up in the dim green glow.

“Yeah. You came to my house with that crime dick.”

“The cops are liking you for the Ferris hit.” I went with Purviance’s Hollywood cop talk.

“And you’re one of them.” Sarcastic.

“You’re a collar.”

“Really?” Sniff. “And there’s a whole squad waiting for your call or they’ll storm this museum.”

She’d read my bluff. Okay. I stayed with the station-house lingo, but tried a new tack.

“Ask me? You’re getting a bum rap. Ferris was hawking merchandise he shouldn’t have been. God be damned. History be damned. Bring on the bucks.”

Purviance wet her lips, but didn’t speak.

“You got wise, right? Told him not to wholesale those bones. At least not without cutting you in. He blew you off.”

The conflict inside her played out in her features. Purviance was angry and hurt. And jumpy as hell. A bad combination.

“Who are we to lip the boss? We’re just the secretary. The maid. The chick who irons his shorts. Prick probably treated you like a field hand.”

“That’s not how it was.”

I pushed.

“That Ferris was one stone-cold bastard.”

“Avram was a good man.”

“Yeah. And Hitler liked dogs.”

“Avram loved me.” Blurted.

Something else clicked for me.

Purviance lived alone. All those calls from the Mirabel warehouse to her home. Ferris and Purviance weren’t just coworkers. They were lovers.

“He had it coming. Bastard was running a game on you. Probably fed you the old saw about leaving his old lady.”

“Avram loved me.” Repeated. “He knew I was ten times smarter than that cow of a wife.”

“That why he snuck south with ole Miriam? You’re not dumb. You figured out he was never leaving her.”

“She didn’t love him.” Bitter. “He was just too weak to deal with it.”

“Strike one. Miriam’s doing Coppertone while you’re stuck in your cold-weather flat. You’re his favorite squeeze, but who’s left behind to answer the phones? And the cheap son of a bitch won’t even cut you in on the skeleton.”

Purviance wiped her nose on the back of the gun hand.

“Then, strike two. Kaplan screwed you over. First your lover, then your hit man. You were having a bad run.”

Purviance jerked the gun so the muzzle was now on my face. Easy. Don’t antagonize her.

“Ferris owed you. Kaplan owed you. You knew that skeleton would put you bucks up. Why not take it?”

“Why not.” Defiant.

“Then the bones disappeared. Strike three. Screwed again.”

“Shut up.”

“You come all the way to Israel to steal them back. No bones found. Strike four. Screwed again.”

“Screwed? I think this will do.”

Purviance tapped her bag. I heard the hollow thunk of a plastic container.

“Gutsy. You already capped the boss. Why not Blotnik?”

“Blotnik was a thief.”

“Saved you all that nuisance of breaking and entering.”

A smile crawled Purviance’s face. “I hadn’t a clue about these bones until Blotnik blabbed. Old fool hadn’t had them two hours.”

“How did he know about them?”

“Some old bat found fragments while scoping the shroud they’d been in. What the hell.” Purviance again tapped the bag. “This could be crap. Or it could be the Holy Grail. This time I’m taking no chances.”

“What did you offer Blotnik? Did he think you had the Masada skeleton?”

Again the cold smile. “Just conning the con man.”

She’d killed Blotnik, snatched the shroud bones, and gotten away. What was she doing back here?

“You were moving under the radar. Why double back?”

“We both know a relic’s worth zip without paper.”

We heard it at the same instant. The soft squeak of a rubber sole.

Purviance’s trigger finger twitched. She hesitated, undecided.

“Move!” she hissed.

I stepped back into the closet, eyes focused on Purviance’s gun.

The closet door slammed. A bolt clicked.