Part 9 (1/2)

Monday through Wednesday are given over to board, committee, and business meetings. On Thursday and Friday, scientific sessions offer insider tips on cutting-edge theory and technique. As a grad student, then as a tenderfoot consultant, I attended these presentations with the ardent zeal of a religious fanatic. Now, I prefer informal networking with old friends.

Using either approach, the conference is exhausting.

Partly my fault. I volunteer for too much. Translate that to I do not struggle sufficiently against impressment.

I spent Sunday working with a colleague with whom I was coauthoring an article for publication in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Journal of Forensic Sciences. The next three days pa.s.sed in a blur of Robert's Rules, remoulade, and rounds of drinks. Hurricanes for my booze-rational colleagues. Perrier for me. The next three days pa.s.sed in a blur of Robert's Rules, remoulade, and rounds of drinks. Hurricanes for my booze-rational colleagues. Perrier for me.

Conversations centered on two topics: previous escapades and odd cases. Topping this year's register of the bizarre and the baffling were skeletonized gallstones the size of Cocoa Puffs, a jailhouse suicide with a telephone cord, and a sleepwalking cop with his own bullet in his brain.

I floated a description of the Ferris case. Opinions differed concerning the peculiar beveling. Most agreed with the scenario I'd been considering.

My schedule did not permit sitting through the scientific papers. By the time I cabbed it to the New Orleans airport Wednesday, I was beat.

Mechanical problem. Forty-minute delay. Welcome to air travel in America. Check in a minute late and your flight has departed. Check in an hour early and your flight has been delayed. Mechanical problems, crew problems, weather problems, problem problems. I knew them all.

An hour later I'd finished entering committee 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 million copies of the year's blockbuster bestseller 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 colleagues 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'edifice Wilfrid Derome, the building that serves as mother s.h.i.+p for the provincial police and forensics labs, I hurried straight to the staff meeting.

Only two autopsies. One went to Pelletier, the other to Emily Santangelo.

LaManche informed me that, following 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 antic.i.p.ated finis.h.i.+ng my a.n.a.lysis. I estimated early afternoon.

Sure enough, seven shards lay beside the sink in my lab. Their LSJML number matched that a.s.signed to Ferris's corpse.

After grabbing a lab coat, I played my phone messages, and returned two calls. Then I settled at my sand bowls and began jockeying the newcomer fragments into my reconstructed segments.

Two called the parietal home. One locked into the right occipital. One was a loner.

Three filled in the edge of the oval defect.

It was sufficient. I had my answer.

I was was.h.i.+ng up when my cell warbled. It was Jake Drum with a miserable connection.

”Sounds like you're calling 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 Musee de l'Homme.”

I listened to a long stretch of transatlantic popping and sputtering.

”Are you phoning on a cellular?”

”...ocated an accession number...missing since the...eventies.”

”Jake. Call me back on a land line. I can hardly hear you.”

Apparently Jake couldn't hear me either.

”...eep looking...all you back on a land line.”

My phone beeped and went dead.

I clicked off.

Jake had gone to Paris. Why?

To visit the Musee 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 lowercase L. L. And Ryan had been right. The first And Ryan had been right. The first H H was actually a smeared was actually a smeared M. M de l'H. Musee de l'Homme. M. M de l'H. Musee 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. 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?”