Six John Jordan Mysteries

by Michael Lister

  “Just one.”

  “Have you seen pictures of the shroud?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you notice the two blood flows near the visible wrist?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Those trickles could only have been made by the arms being stretched out sideways at a sixty-five-degree angle.”

  “In other words,” I said. “A crucifixion position.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “And, it depicts the nails having been driven through the wrists, not the hands, which is the way most artists have erroneously painted them for thousands of years. And did you notice you can’t see his thumbs on the shroud?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s because the nails were driven through the wrists, which means they severed the median nerve, which triggered a motor reaction—the thumbs snapped into the palms. That’s just one way the shroud’s images and injuries are anatomically and forensically correct.”

  I thought about what he was saying. There was far more to this mystery than I realized.

  “And get this,” he said. “Whatever made the image, whatever precipitated this rapid aging, affected only the very top fibrils—the images are a surface phenomenon, but the blood stains seeped down into the fabric. And, the blood stains were on the shroud before the image was formed, and there is no image in the area of bloodstains. The blood somehow impeded the image from forming.”

  “Which means?”

  “That if a forger had painted or created the image and then added human blood to make it realistic, wouldn’t he have had to make the image first and then added the blood afterward?”

  The sun seemed to be trying to make up for what it had missed during the rainy, overcast morning, steam rising from the sizzling wet asphalt, the remaining raindrops on the hood of my S-10 baking off. Inside, in the absence of air-conditioning, Mom and I cooked.

  “I’m about ready to be flipped,” she said. “And in another few minutes, I’ll be ready to serve.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  A drive to the coast to get her out of her death room had sounded like a good idea when it was still cloudy and overcast.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just happy to be here with you. The sun will be down soon.”

  The descending sun set the tops of the slash pines to the west ablaze in front of an artist’s bold splash of pink and orange that cast elongated shadows across the road like backlit window blinds.

  “Why don’t you buy a new car?” she asked. “You can afford it, can’t you?”

  “I had a lot of debt after the divorce,” I said. “I’m still chipping away at it.”

  We rode for a while in silence, the monotonous uniformity of the seemingly endless rows of pines on either side of us only occasionally giving way to an open field or pasture where cattle nuzzled their way through the damp grass. The sound of running water from the flowing ditches mixed with the wind whispering through the pines created a lonely, empty sound in the absence of our conversation.

  “I’m sorry, John,” Mom said, turning away from her window to look at me. “For the kind of mother I was. For what I put you through, for what you inherited from me.”

  No matter how many times she apologized, it never sounded real. Not that I doubted her sincerity. I didn’t. Maybe it was the way her confession lent credibility to everything I felt—the verbalization of my nightmares in the waking world. Hearing her speak aloud our secrets prevented me from maintaining my normal distance and defense when I could almost imagine I was thinking of someone else—my doppelgänger, perhaps, and his mom. Her words confirmed my fears, her acts of contrition confronted my denial, and I never knew quite what to say.

  I glanced over at her.

  Mom’s dark brown hair was quickly becoming gray, her deep brown eyes, though finally clear, were sad and longing. Her face held no visible sign of emotion, just the too-early deep lines of a life lived hard. She was still pretty, and occasionally when she smiled, you could see just how beautiful she had once been.

  When I was a child, we were very close. Far more alike than anyone else in the family, we shared an understanding nearly conspiratorial in its intimacy. I never doubted her love or adoration—until it was withdrawn from me to be lavished on her existential melancholy and the elixirs she used to mute it all too briefly.

  “I don’t want to die,” she said. “I’m not ready.”

  My eyes began to sting as I nodded my understanding, glancing over at her, realizing just how unprepared for her departure I, too, was.

  “Too much left to do,” she continued. “I’ve just started living again.”

  “But some people never do,” I said. “You’ve used the gift of death to—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head violently. “It’s not a gift. It’s an enemy. It’s not right. It’s not supposed to be this way. This isn’t natural. This isn’t what God planned.”

  I didn’t say anything. Her opinions on this subject were far more relevant than mine.

  “Am I a fool?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “To believe I could actually be healed,” she continued. “To believe that the shroud might be a conduit of God’s special grace for me? Is it just desperation? Just a last foolish act?”

  I slowed down as the road ended at the Gulf of Mexico. When we came to a stop, I checked my rearview mirror and discovering that there was no one behind us, sat for a moment, and stared at the calm, key lime–colored waters as they gently caressed the brilliant white sands of the shore. The setting sun shimmered across the surface, its soft glow refracting off it like a rain of fireworks sparks.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I do know that all acts of faith involve a certain degree of foolishness. They’re illogical, unreasonable, so of course they seem foolish.”

  She nodded, seeming to think about it, to attempt to knead some reassurance out of it.

  We took a left on Highway 98 and drove slowly through the growing town of Mexico Beach. The beaches were empty, the tourists conspicuously missing from the hotels and shops with CLOSED signs hanging in their windows.

  “Do you believe in divine healing?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “What do you believe?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have beliefs as much as openness to possibilities,” I said.

  “What about the shroud?” she asked. “Can God use it to heal me? Is it real?”

  I shrugged. “She can use anything,” I said. “Her grace is in all things and all things can be conduits of that grace. I think it comes down to where or in what or whom we can most readily find that grace. If that’s the shroud for you—”

  “It could be,” she said, “but only if it’s real. Is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve just started looking into it. It’s going to take a while. I’m trying to be thorough.”

  “Just don’t take too long,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  “What have you found out so far?”

  I told her.

  “So you think there really is blood on it?”

  “It appears to be,” I said. “An ancient DNA specialist confirmed the presence of male DNA on the shroud. And every one of the wounds is consistent with a victim of crucifixion. And many forensic pathologists have confirmed that the wounds and blood flows are anatomically correct.”

  I could see hope beginning to expand inside her, and though I feared it was premature, it improved her countenance so much I continued.

  “There’s no explanation for how the image got there either,” I said. “It’s like a faint burn mark, almost like a picture. In fact, it shows up better as a photo negative than it does as a positive. And there doesn’t seem to be any way an ancient forger could’ve done it. So far, no one has been able to duplicate it—even using modern technology.”

  “So it could be ...?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  I shrugged. “I’m
still skeptical,” I said. “You probably shouldn’t get your hopes up just yet.”

  “But how can I not?” she asked. “It seems that all the evidence is pointing to it being authentic.”

  “Not all of it,” I said. “I’ve just glanced over it. I’m going to try to study it some more soon, but it looks as if the presence of blood on the shroud contradicts Jewish burial customs.”

  “How?”

  “From what I’ve found, the Jewish custom was and still is to wash all the blood off a body before it’s buried. And I haven’t even gotten to the carbon-dating tests yet.”

  “I just feel like I’m giving her false hope,” I said.

  “Are you?” he asked.

  I was sitting in Milton Warner’s office on Grace Avenue in downtown Panama City. A former Episcopal Priest, he was now a licensed counselor with a private practice in a small converted house. A fellow recovering alcoholic and sometime skeptic, Milton and I had a lot in common, and I always felt better for having talked to him—which made me wonder why I didn’t do it more often.

  “In one sense, I’m not sure,” I said. “In another, almost certainly.”

  “Explain.”

  Clear, empathic blue eyes beneath thick gray hair, Milton was kind and soft-spoken, but often very direct. The spiderweb of lines on his face spoke to his experience and explained the wisdom that issued forth from his mouth.

  “Part of me thinks I shouldn’t be doing this at all,” I said. “That it’s ridiculous to even consider.”

  “That would be the skeptical side,” he said with a smile.

  I nodded, flashing a smile of my own.

  “The other side of me says anything’s possible, and at this stage in her life, false hope is better than no hope at all.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Obviously I’m conflicted,” I said. “It’s why I’m here.”

  He smiled. “Conflicted, huh?”

  “I think her time could be spent much better than looking for a miracle,” I said.

  “How?”

  “Preparing,” I said.

  “To die?”

  His question hit me harder than I would have thought, and all I could do was nod.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “What?” I asked, stalling, my voice sounding trapped inside my constricting throat.

  “Your mom dying,” he said.

  “We haven’t been very close,” I said. “Since I was in my early teens—but the closer we get to her death, the more I feel, the more it bothers me.”

  “Have you talked to her about how you feel?”

  “Some,” I said. “Not much.”

  “Is it possible it’s not just her time that could be better spent?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It’s why I’m here,” I said.

  “So where’s the conflict?”

  “I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” I said, “but there’s something so compelling about the shroud.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “You becoming a believer?”

  I shook my head. “At this point, all I can say is that I’m still open,” I said, “and that really surprises me.”

  “Could it be that you’re looking for a little hope, too?”

  “False hope?”

  “Any kind,” he said. “You still questioning what you’re doing at the prison?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you planning on leaving?”

  “Got no plans at the moment,” I said. “Just trying to figure things out.”

  “Good luck with that,” he said, smiling.

  “Okay, not things,” I said. “Me. I’m trying to figure out why I’m feeling the way I do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Empty,” I said. “Lonely—in an existential way.”

  “Like there’s no God?”

  “Like there might not be,” I said. “I sure don’t feel her like I once did.”

  “Yet you’re open to the possibility that the Shroud of Turin could be genuine?”

  I thought about it, then nodded slowly.

  “Then you’re not too far gone, are you?”

  When I couldn’t sleep, which was most nights, I found various ways to occupy my time—most often reading in a booth at Rudy’s Diner.

  I was seated in the last booth in the back corner next to the humidity-covered plate glass window that looked out onto the dark night. The night sky was filled with clouds, their thick gray masses shrouding the moon and stars. Beneath them, the empty rural highway and the oyster shell parking lot were damp from a shower earlier in the evening.

  On the table in front of me, I had arranged all the books and articles I had found on the Shroud of Turin, a pad on which I made notes, and a large glass of Cherry Coke.

  “You want another Coke?” Carla asked.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Carla was Rudy’s teenage daughter, and while he sat in front of the television drinking and watching reruns of old sitcoms, she worked all night in the diner. In the mornings, while he slept it off, she served breakfast and rushed off to school and made mostly A’s.

  Rudy’s wasn’t busy late at night, and after she had done her homework, Carla would lay her head down on the counter and steal brief snatches of restless sleep.

  She set the Cherry Coke on the table in front of me, and I looked up at her. She was strikingly beautiful, the way her mother was before she ran off and left them. Even with a soiled apron and strands of blond hair falling down around her face she was stunning—the fact that at seventeen she wore a soiled apron and a tired face beneath falling hair made her all the more so.

  She slid into the seat across from me.

  “Whatta you studying?” she asked.

  “The Shroud of Turin.”

  “How can you stand the excitement?” she asked with a cute, slightly mischievous smile.

  “I’m a trained professional,” I said.

  Carla’s beauty wasn’t model beauty, and it certainly wasn’t Miss Teen USA beauty. It was a wise and tough beauty that had been forged on her face in the cauldron of hardship and pain.

  “Don’t grow up and marry an alcoholic,” I said.

  “Wait, wait, I know this one,” she said. “Because being the child of one and all, I’m far more likely to?”

  I smiled. “I’ve mentioned this before?”

  “A few times,” she said.

  “Has it sunk in yet?”

  “A couple more thousand times should do it.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I appreciate the concern.”

  We grew silent a moment. She looked out the window into the night. I watched her, then followed her gaze.

  As usual, the diner was cold. I could feel the frigid laminate seat beneath me through my jeans and the moisture on the glass resembled a glacier beginning to thaw.

  “My mom married an alcoholic,” she said, still staring out into the darkness. “But she remedied it.”

  “But at what cost?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, turning toward me. “Not much to her.” Suddenly, her demeanor turned as icy as the diner. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that to my kids.”

  “Have you thought anymore about that ACOA group?”

  “And when exactly would I go to it?” she asked, glancing around at the diner.

  “I can line somebody up to watch the diner,” I said. “You can ride with me. I’ll take care of everything.”

  She smiled.

  “What?”

  “You try,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “To take care of everything—of everyone. But you can’t, you know. Hasn’t your sponsor told you that?”

  I laughed at how obvious I was, even to a seventeen-year-old with far more important things on her mind. “A time or two,” I said.

  The heavy pungent scent of old grease and stale cigarette smoke—even though people only smoked in
the bathrooms since the law changed—still hung in the air, its presence like a dingy olfactory film on everything. In the corner, a drooping potted plant was turning brown, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the arctic climate or the thick smog. It wasn’t just the customers Rudy was killing.

  “They call that caretaking, don’t they?” she asked with another smile. “Or is it just a messiah complex?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “There a cure?”

  “Getting a life,” I said. “Or just getting laid.”

  She smiled.

  We were quiet another moment, and I watched as her gaze followed a passing car, its headlights shimmering on the wet pavement of the empty highway out front.

  “Wonder where they’re going,” she said.

  Within a moment, the night had swallowed up the tiny lights of the car into its black void again, but she continued to stare down the dark highway.

  Eventually, she turned back toward me.

  “So, is that thing for real?” she asked, nodding toward a picture of the shroud on the cover of one of the books.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why does it matter?”

  I shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t,” I said. “At least not to me, but it’s real important to my mom.”

  “Taking care of her, too?”

  “Yes, Dr. Fraud, I guess I’m trying to,” I said.

  She scratched her nose slowly, a subtle way of giving me the finger.

  “You considering becoming a shrink?” I asked.

  “I’ve been leaning toward exotic dancer,” she said. “But I’m keeping all my options open.”

  She slid out of the seat and walked back behind the counter. “I’ll let you get back to saving the world,” she said. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  I returned to my books while she straightened up, the loud clatter of plates and glasses directed toward Rudy in the back, though I was sure he had already passed out.

  Previously, it had been believed that the Jewish burial custom was to wash a body prior to its burial. And this had been confirmed for me by several sources, both ancient and modern. That being the case, the body of Jesus wouldn’t have had blood on it to deposit onto the Shroud.