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“It’s me, Dr. B.”
“Miranda? Are you okay?”
“Yes. Sort of. Not really.”
Switching on the bedside lamp, I scrambled out from under the covers, fumbled with the lock, and opened the door in my T-shirt and surgical scrub pants. Even by the low light spilling from my room, I could see how ravaged her face looked. “You look like hell.”
Normally, this would have prompted a smart-ass response, but she simply nodded and crumpled against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and patted her back. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you want to talk about it?” She shook her head. “Do you want to go get some coffee or something to eat? If we can find someplace that’s open?” She shook her head again.
“I just don’t think I can be by myself. Can I come in?”
“Of course.” The room wasn’t designed for company; the only places to sit were the bed and a narrow wooden chair in the corner. I nodded toward the chair. “Do you want to sit down?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but what I’d really like is to just sleep. I’ve been tossing and turning for hours, but I got really creeped out in that hotel room. I could still smell Stefan’s cigarettes and cologne in there; still feel his presence.” She drew a deep breath, then blew it out through pursed lips. “I just so desperately want to sleep. Would you mind if I slept here with you?”
“Miranda, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Maybe not, and I’m sorry to ask, but I really don’t want to be alone.” Her eyes looked sad and weary. “Just sleep. I promise. Please? I need a friend right now, not a boss.”
Five minutes later I was sharing my bed with Miranda, and I knew there’d be no sleep for me. I was lying on the far side of the bed, on the edge of the mattress, my thoughts and emotions swirling. I focused on my breathing, making it as regular as possible. Three seconds a breath. In-in-in. Out-out-out. In-in-in. Out-out-out.
The covers rustled, the mattress shifted slightly, and I felt Miranda press against me. She spooned up behind me, her knees tucked into the bends of my legs, her chest and belly against my back. She wrapped one arm around my shoulder and laid a hand on my chest. She patted my heart—tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump—and I swear, it beat in time with her touch. Gradually her body went slack and her breath grew deep. With each breath in, her belly swelled against me; with each exhalation, the hair on the back of my neck stirred.
Her body twitched slightly — a dream, or some neural synapse firing at random — and she took a deeper breath, then settled more closely against my back. Despite the bizarre and bloody events of the past twenty-four hours, the feeling of her body snugged against mine gave me a profound sense of well-being and comfort. A line from Meister Eckhart popped into my head: “If the only prayer you ever say is ‘Thank you,’ it will be enough.” Lying there with Miranda spooned up behind me — alive, unhurt, and important to me in ways that I didn’t understand fully, or perhaps was afraid to face — I prayed again: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
CHAPTER 24
When i woke, she was gone. On the nightstand, I found a note in Miranda’s small, neat script. It said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Underneath the thanks, these words: “A souvenir. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but maybe it’s important.” I tucked the note — an odd souvenir, I thought, or at least an odd inscription — in the drawer of the desk.
A few minutes later, as I was brushing windblown leaves off a chair in the garden, Jean appeared, a cordless phone in his hand. “A call for you.”
Inspector Descartes was on the line. “I have something interesting to show you,” he said. “Can you come to my office?”
“Yes, of course. I was just about to have breakfast. Tea, toast, and strawberries in the garden. Can I eat first, or do I need to come right away?”
“You can eat first,” he said, then, “or…I could come there. We could talk over breakfast.”
“I’ll ask Jean—”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, and the phone went dead in my hand.
* * *
Descartes took his coffee black and concentrated: a small shot of espresso so dense he could almost have eaten it with a fork. Turning one of the lounge chairs by the fountain to face the sun, he set his espresso and a plate full of strawberries on a small table, then settled into the cushions, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and slipped on a pair of wraparound sunglasses. “Ahhh,” he grunted happily. If not for the threadbare dress clothes, he might have been settling in for a day of Riviera sunbathing.
I sat in an adjoining chair with my cup of tea, now cold, along with two pieces of crusty toast slathered with cherry preserves. I sat without eating, waiting to see what he wanted to show me. He was in no hurry. His breathing grew slow and deep, and I wondered if he was going to sleep. “Inspector, you wanted to show me something?”
“Mmm? Ah, oui, of course.” I was glad I’d asked. “Yes, it’s right here.” He patted his shirt pocket, then pulled out a folded sheet of paper. With almost maddening slowness he unfolded it and peered at it, then handed it over. “Yes, I thought you might find it interesting.”
It took a moment for the name on the letterhead to sink in, but once it did, my adrenaline surged, and my eyes raced down the page.
“We found it in the office of his apartment,” he said. “We almost missed it. It was in his fax machine. It’s the report—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupted. “Good God.” I reread it, just to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood. “Or maybe I should say ‘Jesus Christ’ instead.” What I held in my shaking hands was the report from Beta Analytic, the Miami lab where we’d sent the teeth for C-14 dating. The figures practically leaped from the page: “1,950 +/- 30.” According to the lab, the teeth — the teeth I’d pulled from the skull in the ossuary — dated back to the year A.D. 62, plus or minus thirty years: the century in which Jesus had lived and died. “So they might be the bones of Christ after all.” My mind was racing as fast as my pulse. “You
said you found this in his fax machine. Had it been faxed to him, or had he faxed it to someone else?”
He smiled. “You would make a good detective, Docteur. The answer, I believe, is both. We looked at the machine’s archive, the log, I think you call it. He got a fax from Miami around eight P.M. on Saturday. Right after that, between nine and nine thirty, he sent three faxes.”
“Three? Did the first two fail?”
“No. All three went through. They were to three different places. Rome, London, and the United States.”
“Damnation,” I said. “I think Miranda was right — I think Stefan was up to no good. He made such a big deal about keeping the bones secret, but the minute he got the lab results, he ran to the fax machine. Have you tracked the numbers yet?”
“We’re working on it.” He frowned. “There’s some bureaucracy we have to go through to get the records.”
“Do you know where in the United States?”
“Ah, oui. The city is Charlotte.”
“Charlotte?” I was stunned. “My God. Some guy in Charlotte got in touch with me a week ago. Asked if I would examine some bones and artifacts from the first century.”
Descartes sat up straight, no longer sunbathing. “Who is this guy? Where do we find him?”
“His name”—I rummaged through my mental trash bin—“is Newman. Dr. Adam Newman. Director of the Institute for Something-or-other. Ah: the Institute for Biblical Science.”
He took out his notepad and wrote down the name. “You know this place, this institute? It’s a serious scientific institution?”
I shook my head. “I’d never heard of them.” Suddenly I made a connection. “But Stefan had heard of them. I showed him the letter they sent me. He warned me to stay away from them — said they were religious nuts, and if they disagreed with my work, they’d try to damage my reputation.”
