"I'm not known for my warmth toward the press."

"So I've heard."

I must have looked surprised.

"I placed a call."

So Morissonneau's life wasn't all that cloistered.

"I'll contact the Israeli authorities," I said. "It's likely the bones will return to them, and it's doubtful they'll be calling a press conference, either."

"What happens now is in G.o.d's hands."

I lifted the box. The contents shifted with a soft clunking sound.

"Please keep me informed," Morissonneau said.

"I will."

"Thank you."

"I'll attempt to keep your name out of this, Father. But I can't guarantee that will be possible."

Morissonneau started to speak. Then his mouth closed and he quit trying to explain or excuse.

12.

I DIDN'T COME CLOSE TO KEEPING WITHIN TEN MILES OF THE DIDN'T COME CLOSE TO KEEPING WITHIN TEN MILES OF THE limit, but luck was with me. Johnny Law was pointing his radar at some other road. limit, but luck was with me. Johnny Law was pointing his radar at some other road.

Arriving at Wilfrid Derome, I parked in the lot reserved for cops. Screw it. It was Sat.u.r.day and I might have G.o.d in my Mazda.

The temperature had surged upward into the low forties, and the predicted snowfall had begun as drizzle. Dirty mounds were melting into cracks and puddling pavements and curbs.

Opening the trunk, I retrieved Morissonneau's crate and hurried inside. Except for guards, the lobby was deserted.

So was the twelfth floor.

Setting the crate on my worktable, I stripped off my jacket and called Ryan.

No answer.

Call Jake?

Bones first.

My heart was thumping as I slipped on a lab coat.

Why? Did I really believe I had the skeleton of Jesus?

Of course not.

So who was in the box?

Someone had wanted these bones out of Israel. Lerner had stolen them. Ferris had transported and hidden them. Morissonneau had lied about them, against his conscience.

Had Ferris died because of them?

Religious fervor breeds obsessive actions. Whether these actions are rational or irrational depends on your perspective. I knew that. But why all the intrigue? Why the obsession to hide them but not destroy them?

Was Morissonneau right? Would jihadists kill to obtain these bones? Or was the good father lashing out against religious and political philosophies he viewed as threatening to his own?

No clue. But I intended to pursue answers to these questions as vigorously as I knew how.

I got a hammer from the storage closet.

The wood was dry. The nails were old. Splinters flew as each popped free.

Eventually, sixteen nails rested by the crate. Laying aside my hammer, I lifted the lid.

Dust. Dry bone. Smells as old as the first fossil vertebrate.

The long bones lay on the bottom, parallel, with kneecaps and hand and foot bones jumbled among them. The rest formed a middle layer. The skull was on top, jaw detached, empty orbits staring skyward. The skeleton looked like hundreds of others I'd seen, spoils of a farmer's field, a shallow grave, a dozer cut at a demolition site.

Transferring the skull to a cork stabilizer ring, I positioned the jaw and stared at the fleshless face.

What had it looked like in life? Whose had it been?

Nope. No speculation.

One by one, I articulated every element.

Forty minutes later, an anatomically correct skeleton lay on my table. Nothing was missing save a tiny throat bone called the hyoid and a few finger and toe phalanges.

I was sliding a case form onto a clipboard when my phone rang. It was Ryan.

I told him about my morning.

"Holy s.h.i.t."

"Maybe," I said.

"Ferris and Lerner were believers."

"Morissonneau wasn't so sure."

"What do you think?" Ryan asked.

"I'm just starting my a.n.a.lysis."

"And?"

"I'm just starting my a.n.a.lysis."

"My a.s.s ain't mine until this stakeout's done. But I got a call this morning. I may have caught a break on the Ferris homicide."

"No kidding," I said.

"When I'm cut loose here I'll follow up," Ryan said.

"What's the lead?"

"When I'm cut loose here I'll follow up."

"Touche."

"d.a.m.n, we're professional," Ryan said.

"No reckless speculation for us," I agreed.

"Not a hasty conclusion in sight."

When we'd disconnected I dashed to the first-floor cafeteria, devoured a tuna sandwich and Diet c.o.ke, and raced back to the lab.

I wanted to torpedo straight to the key questions. I forced myself to stick to protocol.

Gloves.

Light.

Case form.

Deep breath.

I started with gender.

Pelvis: narrow sciatic notch, narrow pelvic inlet, chunky pubic bones bridging an inverted V in front.

Skull: bulging brow ridges, blunt orbital borders, large crests, muscle attachments, and mastoid processes.

There was no wiggle room. This skeleton was all boy.

I turned to age.

Angling my light, I observed the left pelvic half where it would have joined hands with the right pelvic half in life. The surface was pitted and slightly depressed relative to the height of an oval rim circling its perimeter. Spiny growths protruded from the rim's upper and lower edges.

The right pubic symphysis looked the same.

I got up and walked to the watercooler.

I took a drink.

I took a breath.

Calmer, I returned to the skeleton and selected ribs three through five from both sides of the chest. Only two retained undamaged sternal ends. Laying the other ribs aside, I observed this pair closely.

Both ribs ended in deep, U-shaped indentations surrounded by thin walls terminating in sharp-edged rims. Bony spicules projected from the superior and inferior borders of each rim.

I leaned back and laid down my pencil.

Feeling what? Relief? Disappointment? I wasn't sure.

The pubic symphyses scored as phase six on the Suchey-Brooks age-determination system, a set of standards derived from the a.n.a.lysis of the pelves of hundreds of adults of doc.u.mented age at death. For males, phase six suggests a mean age of sixty-one.

The ribs scored as phase six on the Iscan-Loth age-determination system, a set of standards based on the quantification of morphological changes in ribs collected from adults at autopsy. For males, this suggests an age range of forty-three to fifty-five.

Granted, Y-chromosomers are tremendously variable. Granted, I'd yet to observe the long bones and the molar roots radiologically. Nevertheless, I was certain my preliminary conclusion would hold. I jotted it on the case form.

Age at death: forty to sixty years.

There was no way this guy died in his thirties.

Like Jesus of Nazareth.

If Jesus of Nazareth died in his thirties. Joyce's theory had him living until eighty. Jesus of Nazareth died in his thirties. Joyce's theory had him living until eighty.

This guy fit neither profile.

There was also no way this man had lived into his seventies.

So he also failed to fit the profile of the old male from Cave 2001. But had the isolated skeleton described by Jake's volunteer-informant actually been the old male? Maybe not. Maybe Yadin's septuagenarian was jumbled with the commingled bones, and the isolated skeleton was another individual altogether. An individual of forty to sixty.

Like this guy.

I flipped to the next page.

Ancestry.

Right.

Most systems for racial a.s.sessment rely on variations in skull shape, facial architecture, dental form, and cranial metrics. Though I often rely on the latter, there was a problem.

If I took measurements and ran them through Fordisc 2.0, the program would compare my unknown to whites, blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, j.a.panese, Chinese, and Vietnamese.