The Third Day

bereaved.

Lavon unfolded a map of Israel and turned it so that Markowitz and I could read it easily. He had drawn an X where they had located the body — just off the freeway bisecting Jerusalem’s outer western suburbs.

“We found him at this site, about three weeks ago,” he said.

“What on earth was he doing there?” asked Markowitz.

I could think of a number of reasons. Veterans of the Israeli army had turned the country into one of the world’s burgeoning tech centers. Perhaps someone had offered him a better deal.

I glanced again toward Juliet, but she didn’t volunteer an answer.

“Have the police released their initial report?” I asked. “If not, one of their investigators owes me a favor. I’d be happy to make a few calls to speed things along.”

“Thank you,” she replied, “but I doubt that would help.”

“Why not?” I asked.

In my dealings with them, the Israeli police had exhibited the highest levels of competence and professionalism.

“Because, um.”

She gave Lavon a fleeting look. Go ahead.

“The police wouldn’t be interested because the tests we ran on his skeleton indicated that Dr. Bryson died approximately two thousand years ago,” he said.

Markowitz nodded, just as he had when Juliet explained the source of their great wealth. A few seconds later, though, Lavon’s words registered.

“Two thousand what?” he blurted. “Did you say two thousand years?”

Lavon handed him a computer printout. The younger man quickly scanned it before tossing it back.

“Radiometric Labs, Tel Aviv. What are you people trying to pull? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”

“My Ph.D is in archaeology — University of Michigan, with honors. Go check if you’d like.”

I made a note to do that, but he didn’t seem like the type of person who would lie about something so easily verified.

He held up another printout.

“We found the initial results to be as incongruous as you do now, so we headed back home to retest our findings with two independent labs here in the States. None of the three facilities had access to the work of the others.”

“I assume they reached the same conclusion?” I asked.

“They did,” said the woman. “We also found some fragments of cloth near the bones. These dated to the same period as the skeleton.”

She spoke with that soft Texas twang that drove my Army buddies crazy.

Markowitz paid no attention to that. He stared at them, making no effort to conceal his skepticism.

“That would be expected, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replied, “except the fabric was sewn by a machine, the thread had a polyester core, and fiber analysis revealed that the cotton surrounding the core — fiber dating to the first century — was itself spun from a genetically modified strain, originally native to the Americas.”

They passed the reports to me — all on official looking letterhead that either could be authentic or the creation of a halfway decent graphic designer with a laser printer. It was so hard to tell these days.

“Tell me, Doctor,” I said, “how did you determine that the bones belonged to Henry Bryson? I don’t think they wore dog tags or carried driver’s licenses two thousand years ago.”

Lavon reached into a gym bag and pulled out a clear plastic cylinder, resembling the ones used by banks at their drive-in windows. He tossed it over to me. Inside, fixed in place with bubble wrap, were the distinct bones of a human finger, held together by a metal pin.

“We traced the serial number on the pin to the hospital, which connected us to a surgeon’s office, which ultimately linked us with Juliet here.”

“He enjoyed woodworking and accidentally sliced his finger off with a band saw several years before you first met him,” she said. “Some fine surgeons over at Mass General sewed it back on and eventually he made a full recovery. He didn’t even notice it after a while. It was almost as if the accident never happened.”

I reached into my jacket pocket and took out my reading glasses, better to focus on the pin. As a veteran of the Army special forces, I was all too familiar with bone fractures and this particular medical technology.

“You dated the specific bone, around the pin?”

“You have the printouts right there,” said Lavon. “We’ll make a copy for you, if you wish, for later study. Take all the time you need.”

“DNA?”

“None recoverable from this specimen.”

I rolled it around a couple of times. “This pin wasn’t simply drilled in later?”

“That was our first thought, too,” he replied: “somebody was playing a trick on us. It happens all the time in our line of work. That’s why we confirmed the results with completely independent labs. I hand carried each of the specimens as well, to ensure the integrity of the chain of custody.”

I glanced back down at the cylinder.

Now I’ve heard some whoppers in my day, and in my business, I had to deal all too often with people who were, as Twain famously put it, “economical with the truth.”

On the other hand, Juliet Bryson had not tossed them out straightaway, which is what I would have done to anyone spinning such a tale, unless …

“Dr. Lavon, you mentioned bones, plural. I presume you recovered the rest of the skeleton.”

He nodded. “This fragment and our small test samples were the only portions the Israeli authorities would allow us to take out of the country.”

“Where are the other bones now?”

“At the lab, in Tel Aviv. I can show you, if you’d like to see them.”

***

I assessed both visitors closely once more. Truly pathological liars often have the innate ability to inspire confidence, which is why certain types of investment swindles remain so consistent over time.

But if the Brysons’ work, and fortune, had in fact remained unpublicized, I couldn’t figure out what these two could have hoped to gain from their story.

“Yes,” I replied, “I would like to see the bones. Actually, I’d like to go through the entire sequence of events that led you here, starting from the very top.”

“Certainly,” he said.

I held up the tube. “I can’t exactly go back to my client and present this as definitive proof of Dr. Bryson’s whereabouts.”

Chapter 6

That was how I found myself on the next El Al flight out of New York. Markowitz couldn’t go; he had a social commitment he couldn’t avoid without the gossip columnists taking note, but he did agree to give his father only a basic outline of our findings until we had a chance to make further inquiry.

Sharon, too, chose to stay behind, for reasons she didn’t elaborate.

While we waited for our flight to board, Lavon explained that her father, a Dallas real estate developer, had provided the lion’s share of their excavation’s funding for the past several years.

He wasn’t just any developer, either. According to the Wall Street Journal, Edward Bergfeld, Jr. owned the second largest collection of Class A office buildings in the United States, and it came as no surprise to hear that he also ranked among the top contributors to conservative religious and political causes.

“Do you have a sense of Sharon’s own views?” I asked.

Lavon paused to consider the question.