The Inquisitor's Key: A Body Farm Novel

by Jefferson Bass

  I was heartsick. Descartes and I had gambled that Stefan’s killer would still want the bones, and we’d been right. I’d been willing to risk myself, but Reverend Jonah had outsmarted me: He’d guessed, correctly, that the highest trump card he could hold was Miranda. I opened my mouth to speak, but once more my throat had seized.

  “Do you hear me?” The voice had grown less smooth and more menacing. “I have your precious pearl. Give me the bones, or she dies.”

  “If you kill her,” I managed to force out, “you’ll have twice as many police after you.”

  He gave a short, scornful laugh. “They have no jurisdiction.”

  “Not just the French police,” I said. “Miranda’s an American citizen. If you kill her, the FBI will come after you, too.” I didn’t know if that was true, but I hoped it was true, or at least sounded true, sounded intimidating.

  “You misunderstand me,” he sneered. “This world’s authorities have no dominion over me.” The words, and the thinking behind them, sent a chill through me. “But why are you talking about her death? The girl goes free when you hand over the bones. Do you not intend to do that?”

  “Of course I do,” I hurried to assure him. “But how do I know you’ll keep your word? You’ve already killed Stefan.”

  “Only because he didn’t keep his word. He betrayed me. I hope you won’t make the same mistake.”

  “I won’t. But how do I even know you’ve got Miranda? How do I know she’s all right? Let me talk to her.”

  “I’ll call you in an hour with instructions. You can talk to her then. Don’t call the police, and don’t play games with me. Not if you want her back alive.” The phone went dead.

  NINETY-SEVEN ENDLESS, AGONIZING MINUTES LATER, he called back. The signal was weak and his voice was breaking up badly; I didn’t know if that was because he was calling from someplace with poor signal, or because I was deep inside the concrete headquarters of the Police Nationale. “…attention,” the voice crackled. “Here’s…do if…girl back alive….”

  “First I need to talk to her,” I said. “I won’t do anything until I know she’s okay.” I heard an angry breath at the other end of the line, and I feared I’d pushed him too far, but then I heard shuffling noises as the phone changed hands. “Oh, Dr. B,…sorry.” Even through all the dropouts, Miranda’s voice sounded thin and quavery; if it had been a pulse, I’d have called it “thready” and taken it as a symptom of shock. But still, the thready, shocky voice was her voice—blessedly her voice. “One of them…my hotel…paged…said you…chest pains. He had a car…hospital…with him…known better. God, I fell for the same…pulled on you…so very…”

  “Oh, Miranda, I’m the one who’s sorry. I told Descartes I didn’t want to involve you, and look what I’ve done.”

  “…not…fault…. Stefan’s.” Her voice shifted gears—got higher, faster, more urgent. Shaking my head in rage and pointing at the phone, I stood and jogged out of the inspector’s office and down the hallway to the building’s back door, inwardly cursing Descartes for bringing me into the concrete bunker. “Listen…Stefan…greedy…upted. Don’t let that…be interruptible…B, understand? Interruptible…key…get the bones. Do you hear…?…key…bones.”

  I shoved open the door and raced outside, Descartes a few steps behind me. “Miranda, you’re breaking up really bad. Can you say that—”

  “Wait, I’m not finished,” I heard her protest. Then came the sounds of scuffling and grunting, followed by the sharp smack of flesh on flesh, and the word “bastard” in Miranda’s low snarl.

  “Miranda? Miranda?” I was shouting into the phone, spinning around in the parking lot, frantic with frustration and fear. Two uniformed officers, chatting beside a patrol car, stared and started toward me, but Descartes waved them off. “Miranda?”

  “That’s all you get,” snapped the voice I assumed was Reverend Jonah’s, “until I have the bones.”

  “Bring Miranda with you,” I demanded. “You set her free first, and I watch her walk away safely, or no deal.”

  “Don’t push me. You’re playing games with her life, and her life means nothing to me.”

  “But the bones do,” I reminded him. “You want those bones just as much as I want Miranda. Her safety is your only hope of getting them.”

  “Bring them to the Templar chapel tonight,” he said. “Midnight.”

  “No!” The thought of walking into a trap—or of finding Miranda’s body strung up the way Stefan’s had been—terrified me. What’s more, there was no hope of finding the bones that swiftly.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor, does that venue disturb you?” He chuckled, and my blood ran cold. “I didn’t think a man in your line of work would be so squeamish. You disappoint me.”

  “The police are probably still watching the chapel,” I said. “Anyhow, I can’t get to the bones until day after tomorrow.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” His tone was sharp and suspicious. “What do you mean, you can’t get to them? Why not? Where are they?”

  “Stefan and I put them in a very secure place. A Swiss bank vault. I have to go to Geneva to get them, and the bank’s closed tomorrow. Sunday. The Sabbath, Reverend.”

  “You’re lying.” My heart nearly stopped when he said it. There was a pause; I thought I heard whispers. “Which bank?”

  “Credit Suisse.”

  “What street is it on?”

  “Give me a break, Reverend. I’m supposed to help you plan my own ambush? I might be from Tennessee, but I’m not that stupid.”

  “Stefan said the bones were here. He was supposed to bring them that night.”

  “But he didn’t bring them,” I countered. “Why wouldn’t he have brought them if they were here?”

  “I told you. Because he got greedy. We’d agreed on a million, but that night he said he’d gotten another bid, a higher bid. He said the new price was two million.”

  I was stunned by the figures, but didn’t dare show it. “That’s not the way I do business, Reverend. If Stefan agreed to a million, I’ll honor that price.”

  There was a pause, then more whispers. “I don’t think you understand the situation yet, Doctor.” His voice sliced into me, as cold and sharp as a straight-edge razor on a winter morning. “The new price I’m offering—the only price I’m offering—is the safe return of your assistant.” He paused to let that sink in. “If you don’t actually care about her, I suppose we could talk money instead. But that means I’ll have to kill her. And killing her would mean considerable inconvenience and risk for me. You yourself said the FBI would come after me. So if you’d rather have money than the girl, the new price is half a million.”

  “You know I don’t want money,” I said. “I just want her back safe.”

  “Then quit playing stupid games.”

  “I’m not playing games. I’ll be back from Geneva with the bones Monday night.”

  “If you’re not, she’ll die—and she’ll die a much worse death than Stefan did. And after she does, so will you. By God, you will.” With that, he hung up.

  “Damn it, Inspector, why’d you put me in a cell-phone-proof building for that phone call? I missed half of what she was saying.”

  “Sorry,” he shrugged. “I never have a problem using my mobile in there. It must be something about your American phone.”

  “She was trying to tell me something important,” I fumed. “Something about where the bones were hidden.” Twice she’d said something about “key” and “the bones.” Piecing together the two fragmentary versions, I suspected she’d said, “the key is to get the bones.” By key, did she mean crucial, as in “it’s crucial to get the bones”? That seemed absurdly obvious; of course it was crucial to get the bones. No, she must have been talking about an actual key. She seemed to be telling me that the bones were locked in a hiding place that the key would open. But what key, what hiding place, and where? Wherever it was, the Geneva ploy had bought us thirty-six hours to find i
t.

  Geneva hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment improvisation. Descartes and I had discussed how to stall while we looked for the bones, and the Swiss bank was the most plausible delay we could invent. We had also set other wheels in motion—a contingency plan, in case we couldn’t find the ossuary. We feared that Stefan had sent photos to the buyers, so Descartes had commissioned a local mason to create a replica of the stone ossuary; my role in the ruse was to arrange for Hugh Berryman, the anthropologist who was holding down the fort for me at UT, to overnight an old skeleton from Knoxville.

  Hugh had plenty to choose from. Shelved deep beneath the university’s football stadium were roughly five thousand human skeletons: more than one thousand modern donated skeletons, plus several thousand Arikara Indian skeletons from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—bones I’d excavated from the Great Plains many years before as the Army Corps of Engineers dammed rivers, creating new reservoirs and flooding Indian burial grounds. The Arikara bones certainly weren’t two thousand years old, or even seven hundred years old—more like two hundred to three hundred—but they had a gray patina that made them look convincingly old, and they bore no dental fillings, orthopedic devices, or other traces of modernity. I’d given Hugh detailed specifications: The skeleton had to be an adult male, roughly five and a half feet tall, and free of obvious skeletal trauma—except for the gouges I instructed Hugh to inflict on the wrists, feet, and lower left ribs to simulate the wounds of Christ, or the wounds of our Jesus Doe. We were performing a bizarre sort of crucifixion—a postmortem, postdecomp crucifixion, surely the only one of its kind ever done. With this counterfeit Christ, I realized, I was joining the ranks of forgers, taking up a new trade: the trade in fake relics. With luck, the decoy skeleton would arrive in thirty-six hours, and while it might not fool a forensic anthropologist, it might fool a crazed televangelist.

  It was risky. But we needed time. We needed bones.

  And we needed a miracle.

  CHAPTER 37

  I FLIPPED THROUGH THE PILE OF PAPERS ON THE DESK for the third time, but it still wasn’t there. My panic and my blood pressure were skyrocketing. I’d been back at Lumani for only a couple of hours, and already I felt caged and crazy. Descartes had told me to sit tight while he and a search team combed the palace for the bones, but I couldn’t bear the confines of my room any longer. I desperately needed to talk to someone, but Jean and Elisabeth were nowhere to be found, and I couldn’t find the phone number I wanted.

  Finally I thought to look under the desk, and sure enough, down by the baseboard, hidden by the desk’s square leg, I found the card with the number scrawled on it. My hands shaking, I dialed it.

  “Sorry I missed you,” announced a cheerful Irish voice, “but leave me a wee message and I’ll ring you back.”

  I cursed silently; after the beep, my words poured out like water through a collapsing dike. “Father Mike. It’s Bill Brockton. The American anthropologist. We met a few days ago at the library. I don’t know if you’re still in Avignon, but if you are, I’d appreciate a call. Really appreciate a call. I…something terrible has happened, and I don’t know who else to call. I…So if you’re still around, please call me.” After I hung up, I realized I hadn’t left my number, so I called back and left that.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when my phone rang. I stared at the display. The number looked familiar, but I was having trouble placing it; on the third ring, I realized that it was the very number I’d dialed only moments before. “Father Mike, is that you?”

  “Hello, lad. Yes, it’s me. And yes, I’m still here. I’d been planning to leave this morning, but I had a drop too much last night and I missed my train. So here I am, at your disposal. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and the serendipitous hangover is one of his most mysterious.” His voice grew serious. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong, lad?”

  “I do. But not over the phone. Could we meet somewhere? Talk in person?”

  “Of course. There’s a lovely little church two blocks east of the Palace of the Popes. It’s Saint Peter’s, but the Frenchies insist on calling it Saint Pierre.”

  “I don’t know, Father Mike. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a church.”

  “You didn’t let me finish, did you? Right in front of Saint Pierre’s is a lovely outdoor restaurant with green umbrellas. L’Épicerie. It’s French for ‘grocery,’ or so I’m told. Somewhere nearby, I suppose, is a greengrocer’s called Le Restaurant. Could we meet at L’Épicerie? I’m starving, and to tell you the truth, lad, I could do with a little hair of the dog, too, if you wouldn’t mind terribly.”

  “I don’t mind. I don’t even drink, and I’m tempted to have a few. How soon can you be there?”

  A YOUNG COUPLE WAS JUST SITTING DOWN AT THE last of the umbrella-shaded outdoor tables when I arrived at L’Épicerie fifteen minutes later. In the restaurant’s doorway, I noticed Father Mike talking earnestly with the headwaiter. The maître d’ was shaking his head stubbornly, but suddenly he paused and seemed to listen more attentively. He leaned closer; he smiled; finally he nodded. Father Mike smiled, too, and shook the man’s hand, and a moment later the young couple—now the indignant young couple—was being ejected from their table, and the waiter’s profuse apologies did little to smooth their feathers. They glared at Father Mike, who shrugged, smiled sheepishly, and pointed heavenward before taking one of the vacated chairs for himself and offering the other to me.

  “That was impressive,” I said. “The power of the collar, or the gift of the gab?”

  “Neither, lad,” he grinned. “The allure of the euro. I slipped the bloke a twenty.”

  “You’re very worldly, for a priest.”

  “I wasn’t always a priest, remember. Besides, I’m just doing what the Lord told us to do.”

  “Jesus said something about bribing maître d’s?”

  “In a manner of speaking, lad. He said to be as crafty as serpents and as innocent as doves.”

  “I’d say you’ve got the first part down cold, Father Mike.”

  He laughed, but then his face turned solemn. “But we’ve got more serious things to talk about, haven’t we, now? You’ve gotten more bad news, I’m thinking. Something more about that undercover fellow?”

  It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking about me. “No, no, it’s not Rocky. Not at all. It’s Miranda.”

  “Forgive me for being thick, but who’s this Miranda?”

  “She’s my assistant. My graduate assistant. She’s here for the same reason I am—the old bones I mentioned to you. But she’s in terrible danger, Father Mike.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  “She’s been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped, is it? Are you sure? I’ll bet she’s just off on a lark with some French lad she’s taken a fancy to.”

  “The kidnapper called me, Father Mike. And he let me talk to her. She sounded scared, and he’s threatening to kill her.”

  “Dear Lord in Heaven. Have you gone to the police?”

  “Yes, of course, but if this guy finds out, he’ll kill her for sure.”

  “Well, let’s pray he doesn’t find out, then. How much ransom money is it he’s wanting? Is it a huge lot? Can you get your hands on it?”

  “It’s not money. He doesn’t want money.”

  There was a silence before he asked the obvious next question. “Then what does he want, Bill Brockton? You don’t have to tell me if it’s too personal. But I’m thinking you want to.”

  I considered keeping the secret, but the idea made me angry, I realized: It had been Stefan’s secrecy—his damnable secrecy and lying—that had caused all this trouble in the first place. “The bones.”

  “Excuse me? I’m not quite following you, lad.”

  “He wants the bones. The goddamned, stupid, sonofabitch bones.”

  If he was shocked or offended, he didn’t show it; all he said was, “These must be some mighty important bones, then.”

 
“Yes. And no. People think they’re important—one guy’s already been killed over these bones—but they’re not as important as Miranda is.”

  “Well, then, it’s simple, isn’t it? Just give him the bloody bones.”

  “I wish I could. It’s not that simple, Father Mike.”

  “Ah, well, then. It usually isn’t, is it? If it were, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me, would you, now? So how can I help you, lad?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know. Just by listening, I guess. You do a lot of that, right?” He nodded and leaned forward, so I talked. I talked while the waiter brought beer for Father Mike and water for me; I talked while plates heaped with food appeared before us, and empty plates got cleared away. Starting with Miranda’s unexpected invitation and sudden departure to Avignon, I told him almost everything that followed: my own hasty trip; Stefan’s secrecy and paranoia; the facial reconstruction and its uncanny similarity to the Shroud of Turin; the carbon-14 results and the way Stefan had rigged those; finally, the murder of Stefan.

  When I described the death scene, the priest gave a soft whistle. “Crucified? You’re not feeding me shite here, are you, lad?”

  “No shite. Honest truth. It was terrible.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I’m gobsmacked I didn’t hear about it through the vine. Priests are terrible gossips—much worse than old women. Just shows how out of touch I’ve been while on me holliers.” He took a long pull on his beer—his second beer, or maybe his third; he had a quick elbow, and I wasn’t keeping track. “And you say this Stefan had three different folks on the string, all of ’em wanting to buy the bones? How do you know that?”

  “Because the homicide detective found a fax that Stefan sent them. We don’t know if all three were serious bidders. But we do know that one was. Deadly serious.”

  “Sounds like a bad business, Bill Brockton. Are the police making any headway tracking these folks down?”

  I shook my head in frustration. “Not enough. They think we can rule out two of them. One’s a shady art dealer, a woman who caters to rich buyers who want precious antiquities and don’t care how they’re obtained. The detective thinks she’s a slimeball, but not a killer. And she has a solid alibi for the time of the murder. One is a distant colleague of yours, Father Mike—a curator or something, we don’t know who—at the Vatican Museum.”