Secret of the Scroll (Greg McKenzie Mysteries)

by Campbell, Chester D.

  Damn. Now I knew what kind of inquiries Detective Adamson had been making. “What did he want to know?”

  “Some background on you. Said it pertained to a missing persons investigation he was working.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “I said I wasn’t authorized to give out that sort of information, that he needed to talk to the colonel.”

  “Erikson?” He was commander of the 1st Field Investigations Region, which included all the detachments in the Air Force Materiel Command.

  “Right.”

  “There’s no telling what that bastard might say.”

  “At least he knows you aren’t a wife beater.”

  “Was it Detective Adamson?”

  “That’s the boy.”

  “Did he mention Jill?”

  “No.” There was a pause, and when he spoke he sounded anxious. “Is something wrong, Boss?”

  “I’m afraid something is badly wrong, Ted.”

  As bad as things appeared to be, they could well be worse. What if Homicide decided to haul me off to jail as a suspect in Jill’s disappearance? Sure, I could produce the scroll and tell them an anonymous caller advised me they were holding her as ransom for the ancient document. But the only person who might vouch for that story was now dead. I had not confirmed that she was missing, and I had been seen around her car. I had also not reported the scroll, probably stolen, was in my possession. It was almost enough that I would have been willing to arrest myself. And the really frightening part was this:

  I saw myself as the only hope Jill had of being released. In jail, I could do nothing to help her.

  “You still there, Boss?”

  “I’m here. I may need some assistance,” I said slowly. “Any chance you could take a day or two of leave and come up here?”

  He hesitated a moment. “When? Now?”

  “Yeah. Are you working any pressing cases?”

  “Well, I’ve got a new drug investigation underway, but it’s still in the preliminary stages. Nothing Wally, my Number Two, can’t look after until I get back. I’ll have to tell Karen where I’m going.”

  Karen was his new wife. Jill and I had been at their wedding, and Karen had been up to visit us once since their marriage. “Tell her Jill needs your help.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. I won’t be at home, though. Call my cell phone when you get to town and I’ll arrange a place to meet. We’ll be forever in your debt for this, Ted.”

  “Just take care of yourself until I can get there. It won’t take long.”

  A green rookie when he came to work for me several years ago, Ted had developed into one of the finest young investigators I knew. His dad was a poorly educated construction worker, and Ted had battled his way through adolescence in a tough South Boston neighborhood. After he had worked his way through college, his natural street smarts helped put him at the top of his class in the Special Investigations Academy. With Ted’s help, I could make it.

  Realizing I hadn’t stopped long enough to eat since breakfast, I drove straight to the nearest hamburger joint. I stopped at the drive-in window and picked up a monster burger with everything on it, large fries and coffee. Pulling around to the parking area, which had a good view of Old Hickory Boulevard, I wolfed down my meal. Afterward I felt stuffed and a little sick. I looked around. No surveillance.

  When the phone rang I caught the voice I had identified earlier as Palestinian.

  “This is Greg McKenzie,” I said.

  “I expected your answering machine.” He sounded surprised. “I was told you were not at home.”

  I grinned at that slight victory. “I’m on my cell phone.”

  “But I dialed–”

  “You haven’t heard of call forwarding?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Where are you?”

  He ignored that. “Has anyone else contacted you?”

  “Yes. The police called about my wife.”

  “What did they want to know?”

  “If I knew where she was. They found her car abandoned on Andrew Jackson Parkway. Somebody had called them, saying she was missing and hinting that I knew something about it.”

  “We did not move her car or make any call. Who would have done that?”

  “You tell me,” I said. “You people are the only ones who knew she was missing.”

  “It was not me.”

  “Well, it must have been some of your pals.” I knew there were at least three, from what Ricky Rogers had seen.

  “Do you have the scroll?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and couldn’t resist adding, “you didn’t find it at Dr. Welch’s, did you?”

  There was a pause, then he said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Forget it. Let me talk to my wife.”

  “First we must complete arrangements for you to bring the scroll. You will get your wife in return. Here is how it will be done. We will meet at a vacant building on Cowan Street, down near the river.”

  I knew the area. I had picked up a package for the church at a printer there. It was on the downtown side of the Cumberland River, a waterway that cut through the heart of Nashville and wandered snakelike across the county. It was an industrial section that would be dark and deserted at night.

  “No abandoned warehouses,” I said. “We meet somewhere in an open area with plenty of light, where I can easily see you have my wife. Some place like a shopping mall parking lot.”

  That seemed to fluster him. “I don’t know if that will . . . ” His voice trailed off as another muffled voice sounded in the background.

  “One moment,” he said, covering the mouthpiece.

  After a few moments he was back. “I will have to call you later.”

  “Wait!” I said. “You told me when I had the scroll I could talk to Jill.”

  “Later,” he repeated, sounding agitated, as the voice chattered again in the background. He hung up.

  I punched the end button. I still didn’t know if Jill was all right. And I had no clue as to what was happening with her captors. But something had clearly stirred them up. Was it my demand to meet in the open? No, it couldn’t have been that. Only the man on the phone heard what I said. But someone nearby had become excited about something. I stared at the hamburger wrapper and stale cup. Just maybe I was getting an edge.

  Chapter 15

  I studied the number on the caller ID screen, then checked my watch. Almost ten. Flipping open the little black book I had carried around since my military days, I ran my finger down the pages until I found “Chili Hankins.” I punched in the number.

  “Hankins,” he said, a voice like gravel.

  “Sorry to bother you so late,” I said. “But I have another pay phone I need to locate. I owe you for this, Chili. I promise I’ll dance at your wedding.”

  “More likely my funeral. What are you working on, threatening calls?”

  “No. No threats. I won’t bore you with the details.”

  “Yeah. You wouldn’t. What’s the number?”

  I gave it to him along with my cellular number. I was staring about, watching the traffic on Old Hickory and checking the cars around the fast food restaurant, when Chili called back with word that this telephone was located beside a Piggly Wiggly store on Riverside Drive at Rosebank.

  Switching on the interior light, I pulled a map from the glove compartment and located the street. The first pay phone was at the Porter Road intersection. It looked like Rosebank was about half a mile to the north. Did that bracket the area where they were holding Jill? Perhaps. When Ted got here, we would check it out.

  My phone rang again. A breathless David Wolfson asked, “Have you been watching the ten o’clock news?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m in my Jeep at a hamburger joint.” I knew what had prompted his call, however.

  “Did you talk to J. Q. Welch?”

  “Yes. And I s
aw on an earlier news show what happened. It must’ve been minutes after I left his house.” I hadn’t thought about it until now, but the people who bugged my phone had heard my conversation with David as well. But I couldn’t remember saying anything that would connect David to the scroll.

  “It’s terrible,” he said. “Probably crack heads. Looks like nobody’s safe anymore.”

  “It wasn’t crack heads,” I said. “They knew what they were looking for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For your own safety, I think I had better come over and explain some things.”

  Fear crept into his voice. “What’s going on? I don’t–”

  “Should I come by your house, or do you want to meet me somewhere?”

  Silence.

  “I have an apartment in Antioch,” he said.

  He gave me the address, and I told him I would be right over. Antioch was not far from the airport, a southeastern suburb that backed up to Percy Priest Lake. It wouldn’t take me fifteen minutes to get there.

  I had just reached Bell Road when the phone rang again. I glanced at the dashboard clock. It was too early for Ted to be getting anywhere near Nashville. I pressed the talk button.

  “Mr. McKenzie?” said a strange voice.

  “Yes?”

  “You must be on a cell phone,” he said. “We rang your doorbell but got no answer.”

  That put me on guard. The anonymous Palestinian said he was told that I was not at home. Was this the guy who told him? “Correct,” I said.

  “I wondered when you might be available for a little chat. We could come back to your house, or meet you somewhere else.”

  “What did you want to chat about?”

  “Apparently without your knowledge, someone used you as a courier to send an old document to the United States from Israel. Were you aware of that?”

  I needed to keep my guard up. “Yes,” I said. “I am well aware of that.”

  “Do you still have the document?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Excellent. We are prepared to compensate you well for your trouble. Where and when can we get together?”

  If you are allied with the guys around Riverside Drive, I thought, it won’t be until they are ready to meet my terms. “I’m pretty busy right now,” I said. “Give me your name and phone number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I have the time.”

  That should get him, I thought. If he was up to no good, he would not likely give out a name and certainly not a place I could call back.

  “My name is Eli Zalman. I can’t give you a phone number as we haven’t checked into a motel yet. We just flew into town, rented a car and drove to your house.”

  It made a good story, but I wasn’t ready to buy it. “What is your interest in the…document?” I asked.

  “We’re from the Temple Alliance in Jerusalem. I’ll explain when we get together. I hope it will be soon.”

  “Call me when you get a phone,” I said.

  The road was dark and traffic was sparse and I had an uneasy feeling about it. If they had the contacts and the expertise, they could probably pinpoint my location through the cellular phone transmission. I remembered one of the phone’s advertised features–it was GPS ready. Could that have been the reason for the call? I pressed my foot a little harder on the accelerator pedal.

  Chapter 16

  David Wolfson’s apartment was in a large complex of multi-story buildings fashioned of wood and brick, with a swimming pool, tennis courts and a fancy gate. David was on the ground floor. I lucked out on a parking spot not far from his unit. Lugging the bulky package under my arm, I stood at his door and rang the bell. Above me fluttered a blue banner on a staff. Emblazoned on it was a white dove and one word–PEACE.

  The door opened, and a man of about my height with dark, shaggy hair peered out through thick-lensed glasses. He was barefoot, dressed in a brown knit shirt and khaki pants. He had a broad brow, permanently rumpled.

  “McKenzie?”

  I nodded and held out my hand.

  “Come on in. Does that cardboard contain what I suspect it does?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Actually, the last thing Dr. Welch told me was that I needed to bring the scroll to you.”

  Fear flickered in his eyes. “Why? I’m still in shock over his murder.”

  “He said it contained Bible codes and that you could decipher it.”

  “That’s surprising. We’ve had some pretty healthy disagreements over the codes.”

  He waved me toward a sofa covered by a large afghan. I leaned the scroll bundle against a small coffee table and sat down. The first thing I noticed was the smell of tobacco smoke and a pack of cigarettes on the table.

  David glanced at the table, then at me. “Cigarette?”

  I felt the pack of gum in my pocket. I looked at the scroll package and I thought about Jill and what she faced. The pressure finally got me. I nodded. “Yeah.”

  He took the pack, shook one part way out and reached it toward me. I stuck the cigarette in my mouth and looked up. “Thanks. Got a light?”

  He pulled out a lighter and flicked it. I took a long drag and sat back, the familiar smoke coursing through me. God, I needed it. For a second my hand trembled, then steadied.

  “Dr. Welch translated the scroll,” I said. “It tells quite a tale. One that could bring somebody a lot of money.”

  David looked at me through dark, troubled eyes. “You’re sure J. Q.’s murder had something to do with this?”

  “I’m sure. There are some people who would do anything to get their hands on that scroll.”

  “Have you told the police about this?”

  I took a deep drag on my cigarette, fighting my turmoil. “I want to, but right now I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?” The way it came out I was sure he wanted to add “you blooming idiot.”

  My cell phone began to ring in the pocket of my jacket. It was Ted Kennerly.

  “I’m just about to Smyrna,” he said. “I should be at the county line in a few minutes. Where are you now?”

  “Not far off I-24. Hold a second.” I turned to Wolfson. “It’s a friend of mine just getting to town. Is it okay if he comes here? I can save a lot of time by giving both of you the story in one telling.”

  Wolfson walked to a window and peered around the curtain. “Tell him to come on.”

  I gave Ted directions to the apartment. He was only about ten minutes away. Then I got out my pocket knife and went to work on Dr. Welch’s tape job. “While we’re waiting, I might as well show you what I brought back from Israel. Quite unaware of it, I might add. Your friend J. Q. fixed it up for me so it wouldn’t suffer any more damage from handling.”

  “With this amount of care he must have felt it was authentic.”

  “Yes,” I said. “From the first century A.D.”

  As David began to study the old Hebrew characters on the scroll, some of his tension left him, his curiosity about the scroll taking over. I told him what the professor had said regarding his translation.

  “I can read the words,” he said, staring in awe at the document, “but J. Q. could better understand the real meaning of it. Menorahs from Solomon’s Temple . . . that’s almost unbelievable, isn’t it.”

  “Some extremist people believe it.”

  “Yeah. And no doubt they want to discover where the golden lampstands are located. The scroll says the secret is hidden within, correct? If this guy was a kabbalist, I’m sure that means he coded it in something like Atbash. I can put this into my computer and decipher it with the click of a mouse.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Piece of cake.” But his anxiety had returned.

  “I wonder if that’s why they sent it over here, because they had somebody with a computer who could do the same.”

  David fingered a corner of the parchment. “I’d say that’s a good bet. Can you figure this thing being two thousand years old?”

 
“Give or take half a century,” I said. “By the way, you mentioned being a statistician. What kind of business are you in?”

  “I’m co-owner of a market research firm. We do a lot of public opinion polling.”

  “How does that tie in with the Bible codes?”

  “It doesn’t. No, in a way it does. We do statistical analysis, in which we deal with the probability that certain things are true, or that certain things will happen. We calculate the probability of something happening by random chance, so we can establish the validity of what occurs. Through this process, some high-powered mathematicians and physicists figured out a way to determine the probability of the Bible codes being for real, rather than occurring by mere chance.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me in plain language what’s in the codes.”

  “Ancient Jewish tradition holds that the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, were dictated to Moses by God, letter by letter. This was passed down by word of mouth for many hundreds of years until it was finally put into writing. Then the Hebrew words were meticulously copied and recopied by scribes as the parchments deteriorated over the years. The result is that today’s Torah is believed to be almost identical to that which God dictated to Moses.”

  “So God authored the Torah,” I said. Keeping David talking held his fear back.

  He nodded. “Jewish mystics held that there were many different ways of interpreting the Torah’s text. One was called ‘skipping letters.’ They found that by taking, say, the third letter of each word in a passage of Genesis, it would spell out a hidden message they believed was placed there by God. They claimed, for example, that it would give some historically important person’s name and several facts about his life. Early this century, a prominent Slovakian rabbi discovered some thirteenth century mentions of the codes. He did a lot of research and became convinced they were genuine.” He tapped ash from his cigarette, lost in thought. “By the second half of the century, others had taken up the process and expanded on it. A system was developed called Equidistant Letter Sequence, or ELS, in which letters occurring at a certain interval through a biblical passage were extracted and found to refer to specific people and events. Some Israeli researchers, for instance, turned up details in Genesis concerning the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on October 6, 1981.”