minutes into my laptop, and my five-forty flight was posted for eight.
So much for the Chicago connection.
Frustrated, I dragged myself to customer services, stood in line, and obtained new routing. The good news: I would get to Montreal tonight. The bad news: I would land shortly before midnight. The additional bad news: I would visit Detroit on the way.
Frothing accomplishes little in these situations, other than raising one’s blood pressure.
At the airport bookstore, only a few mil ion copies of the year’s blockbuster bestsel er barred my way. I plucked one from the pyramid. The flap blurbed a mystery that would shatter an “explosive ancient truth.”
Like Masada?
Why not? The rest of the universe was reading the thing.
By wheels-down, I’d gotten through forty chapters. Okay. They were short. But the story was intriguing.
I wondered if Jake and his col eagues were reading the book, and if so, how they were rating the premise.
Thursday’s alarm was as welcome as a case of pinkeye. And almost as painful.
Arriving on the twelfth floor of L’édifice Wilfrid Derome, the building that serves as mother ship for the provincial police and forensics labs, I hurried straight to the staff meeting.
Only two autopsies. One went to Pel etier, the other to Emily Santangelo.
LaManche informed me that, fol owing the request I’d made in my note, he’d asked Lisa to revisit Avram Ferris’s head. She’d retrieved additional fragments and sent them upstairs from the morgue. He asked when I anticipated finishing my analysis. I estimated early afternoon.
Sure enough, seven shards lay beside the sink in my lab. Their LSJML number matched that assigned to Ferris’s corpse.
After grabbing a lab coat, I played my phone messages, and returned two cal s. Then I settled at my sand bowls and began jockeying the newcomer fragments into my reconstructed segments.
Two cal ed the parietal home. One locked into the right occipital. One was a loner.
Three fil ed in the edge of the oval defect.
It was sufficient. I had my answer.
I was washing up when my cel warbled. It was Jake Drum with a miserable connection.
“Sounds like you’re cal ing from Pluto.”
“No service…” the line crackled and spit “…ince Pluto’s been demoted from planet to…”
Demoted to what? Moon?
“You’re in Israel?”
“Paris…nd changed plans…the Musée de l’Homme.”
I listened to a long stretch of transatlantic popping and sputtering.
“Are you phoning on a cel ular?”
“…ocated an accession number…missing since the…eventies.”
“Jake. Cal me back on a land line. I can hardly hear you.”
Apparently Jake couldn’t hear me either.
“…eep looking…al you back on a land line.”
My phone beeped and went dead.
I clicked off.
Jake had gone to Paris. Why?
To visit the Musée de l’Homme. Why?
Mental head slap.
I took Kessler’s photo to the scope, flipped it, and viewed the notation under magnification.
October, 1963. M de l’H.
What I’d taken to be the digit 1 was a lowercaseL. And Ryan had been right. The firstH was actual y a smearedM. M de l’H. Musée de l’Homme. Jake must have recognized the abbreviation, flown to Paris, visited the museum, and dug up an accession number for the Masada skeleton.
LaManche wears soft-soled shoes and keeps his pockets empty of coins and keys. No scuffs. No jingles. For his bulk, the man moves extraordinarily quietly.
My mind was shaping the next “why?” when my nose sent it the scent of Flying Dutchman.
I swiveled. LaManche had entered through the histo lab and was standing behind me.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
LaManche and I took seats, and I placed my reconstructions between us.
“I’l skip the basics.”
LaManche smiled forgivingly. I bit my tongue.
Picking up the segment that had comprised the right posterior of Ferris’s skul , I pointed my pen.
“Oval defect with radiating fractures.”
I
So much for the Chicago connection.
Frustrated, I dragged myself to customer services, stood in line, and obtained new routing. The good news: I would get to Montreal tonight. The bad news: I would land shortly before midnight. The additional bad news: I would visit Detroit on the way.
Frothing accomplishes little in these situations, other than raising one’s blood pressure.
At the airport bookstore, only a few mil ion copies of the year’s blockbuster bestsel er barred my way. I plucked one from the pyramid. The flap blurbed a mystery that would shatter an “explosive ancient truth.”
Like Masada?
Why not? The rest of the universe was reading the thing.
By wheels-down, I’d gotten through forty chapters. Okay. They were short. But the story was intriguing.
I wondered if Jake and his col eagues were reading the book, and if so, how they were rating the premise.
Thursday’s alarm was as welcome as a case of pinkeye. And almost as painful.
Arriving on the twelfth floor of L’édifice Wilfrid Derome, the building that serves as mother ship for the provincial police and forensics labs, I hurried straight to the staff meeting.
Only two autopsies. One went to Pel etier, the other to Emily Santangelo.
LaManche informed me that, fol owing the request I’d made in my note, he’d asked Lisa to revisit Avram Ferris’s head. She’d retrieved additional fragments and sent them upstairs from the morgue. He asked when I anticipated finishing my analysis. I estimated early afternoon.
Sure enough, seven shards lay beside the sink in my lab. Their LSJML number matched that assigned to Ferris’s corpse.
After grabbing a lab coat, I played my phone messages, and returned two cal s. Then I settled at my sand bowls and began jockeying the newcomer fragments into my reconstructed segments.
Two cal ed the parietal home. One locked into the right occipital. One was a loner.
Three fil ed in the edge of the oval defect.
It was sufficient. I had my answer.
I was washing up when my cel warbled. It was Jake Drum with a miserable connection.
“Sounds like you’re cal ing from Pluto.”
“No service…” the line crackled and spit “…ince Pluto’s been demoted from planet to…”
Demoted to what? Moon?
“You’re in Israel?”
“Paris…nd changed plans…the Musée de l’Homme.”
I listened to a long stretch of transatlantic popping and sputtering.
“Are you phoning on a cel ular?”
“…ocated an accession number…missing since the…eventies.”
“Jake. Cal me back on a land line. I can hardly hear you.”
Apparently Jake couldn’t hear me either.
“…eep looking…al you back on a land line.”
My phone beeped and went dead.
I clicked off.
Jake had gone to Paris. Why?
To visit the Musée de l’Homme. Why?
Mental head slap.
I took Kessler’s photo to the scope, flipped it, and viewed the notation under magnification.
October, 1963. M de l’H.
What I’d taken to be the digit 1 was a lowercaseL. And Ryan had been right. The firstH was actual y a smearedM. M de l’H. Musée de l’Homme. Jake must have recognized the abbreviation, flown to Paris, visited the museum, and dug up an accession number for the Masada skeleton.
LaManche wears soft-soled shoes and keeps his pockets empty of coins and keys. No scuffs. No jingles. For his bulk, the man moves extraordinarily quietly.
My mind was shaping the next “why?” when my nose sent it the scent of Flying Dutchman.
I swiveled. LaManche had entered through the histo lab and was standing behind me.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
LaManche and I took seats, and I placed my reconstructions between us.
“I’l skip the basics.”
LaManche smiled forgivingly. I bit my tongue.
Picking up the segment that had comprised the right posterior of Ferris’s skul , I pointed my pen.
“Oval defect with radiating fractures.”
I
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