cracked. A nose peeked out. The door closed. A chain disengaged. The door reopened.
Ryan introduced me as a colleague. Purviance nodded and led us to a tiny living room filled with way too much furniture. Filled with way too much, period. Every shelf, tabletop, and horizontal surface was crammed with memorabilia.
Purviance had been watching aLaw amp; Order rerun. Briscoe was telling a suspect he didn’t know jack.
Clicking off the TV, Purviance took a seat opposite Ryan. She was short, blonde, and twenty pounds overweight. I guessed her age at just north of forty.
As the two talked, I checked out the apartment.
The living room gave onto a dining room, which gave onto a kitchen, shotgun style. I assumed the bedroom and bath were reached by a short hallway branching off to the right. With the exception of the room in which we were seated, I guessed the place received natural light a total of one hour a day.
I refocused on Ryan and Purviance. The woman looked drawn and weary, but now and then sunlight caught her face. When that happened Courtney Purviance was startlingly beautiful.
Ryan was asking about Harold Klingman. Purviance was explaining that Klingman owned a shop in Halifax. Her fingers adjusted and readjusted the fringe on a throw pillow.
“Would Klingman’s visit to Ferris have been unusual?”
“Mr. Klingman often dropped by the warehouse when he was in Montreal.”
“You were out sick that Friday.”
“I have sinus problems.”
I believed it. Purviance’s speech was punctuated with frequent sniffing. She cleared her throat repeatedly. Every few seconds, a hand darted from the pillow and swiped her nose. I found myself fighting the urge to hand her a tissue.
“You said earlier that Ferris was acting moody just before his death. Can you elaborate on that?”
Purviance shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. He seemed quieter.”
“Quieter?”
“He didn’t joke around as much.” The fringe-straightening intensified. “Kept to himself more.”
“Got any theories why that might have been?”
Purviance snorted, then abandoned the pillow for a go at her nose. “Talked much with Miriam?”
“You think there was trouble on the home front?”
Purviance raised her brows and palms in a “beats me” gesture.
“Did Ferris ever mention marital difficulties?”
“Not directly.”
Ryan asked a few more questions about Purviance’s relationship with Miriam, then moved on to other topics. Another fifteen minutes, and he wrapped up.
After leaving, we grabbed an early dinner on Saint-Laurent. Ryan asked my impression of Purviance. I told him the lady clearly had no love for Miriam Ferris. And she needed a good nasal spray.
Thursday, the Donovan Joyce book arrived. The Jesus Scroll. I opened it around noon, intending a quick scan.
At some point it began to snow. When I looked up, the sky had dimmed, and my side-yard fence caps had grown into tall, furry hats.
Joyce’s theory was more bizarre than that in my airport novel. It went something like this.
Jesus was Mary’s illegitimate son. He survived the cross. He married Mary Magdalene. He lived to a ripe old age, wrote his last will and testament, and was killed during the final siege at Masada.
Jake’s summary of Joyce’s involvement with Max Grosset had been accurate. According to Joyce, Grosset was an American professor with a British accent who’d worked as a volunteer archaeologist at Masada. Grosset told Joyce, during a chance encounter at Ben-Gurion airport in December of 1964, that he’d unearthed the Jesus scroll the previous field season, hidden it, then returned to Masada to retrieve it.
Joyce got a peek at Grosset’s scroll in the airport men’s room. To Joyce, the writing looked Hebrew. Grosset said it was Aramaic, and translated the first line. Yeshua ben Ya’akob Gennesareth. “Jesus of Gennesareth, son of Jacob/James.” The writer had added the astonishing information that he was the last in the line of the Maccabean kings of Israel.
Though offered $5,000, Joyce refused to assist Grosset in smuggling the scroll out of Israel. Grosset succeeded on his own, and the scroll ended up in Russia.
Later, unable to pursue his original book topic because he’d been denied permission to visit Masada, and intrigued by what he’d seen in the men’s room at Ben-Gurion, Joyce had researched the name on the scroll. The appellation “Son of James” was used, Joyce concluded, because Joseph had died childless, and, according to Jewish law, his brother James would have raised Mary’s illegitimate child. “Gennesareth” was one of history’s several names for the Sea of Galilee.
Joyce was so convinced of the scroll’s authenticity that he spent the next eight years researching Jesus’ life.
I was still reading when Ryan arrived with enough food to feed Guadalajara.
I popped a Diet Coke. Ryan popped a Moosehead. As we ate enchiladas, I hit the main points.
“Jesus viewed himself as a descendant in the Hasmonean line.”
Ryan looked at me.
“The Maccabean kings. His movement wasn’t simply religious. It was a grab for political power.”
“Oh good. Another conspiracy theory.” Ryan dipped a finger in the guacamole. I handed him a tortilla.
“According to Joyce, Jesus wanted to be king of Israel. That pissed Rome off, and the penalty was death. But Jesus wasn’t betrayed, he surrendered to authorities following negotiation by an intermediary.”
“Let me guess. Judas?”
“Yep. The deal was that Pilate would release Barabas, and Jesus would turn himself in.”
“And why would he do that?”
“Barabas was his son.”
“I see.” Ryan wasn’t buying any of it.
“This prisoner exchange involved an escape mechanism, and the whole plan depended on controlling the clock.”
“Life is timing.”
“Do you want to hear this?”
“Is there any possibility of sex right now?”
I narrowed my eyes.
“I want to hear this.”
“There were two forms of crucifixion-slow and fast. Slow, a prisoner could last up to seven days. Fast, you were dead in twenty-four hours. According to Joyce, Jesus and his followers had to time his execution so that fast was the only option.”
“Fast would be my choice.”
“Sabbath was approaching. And Passover. According to Jewish law, no corpse could remain on a cross.”
“But crucifixion was a Roman show.” Ryan went for another enchilada. “Historians agree Pilate was a tyrant and a bully. Would he have given a rat’s ass about Jewish law?”
“It was in Pilate’s interest to keep the locals happy. Anyway, the plot involved the use of a death-mimicking drug. Papaver somniferum orClaviceps purpurea. ”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
“The opium poppy and ergot, a lysergic-acid producing fungus. In modern lingo, heroin and LSD. Both were known in Judea. The drug would have been administered via the sponge on the reed. According to the Gospels, Jesus first refused the sponge, later accepted it, drank, and immediately died.”
“Only you’re saying he lived.”
“I’m not saying it. Joyce is.”
“How do you get a live body down from a cross in front of witnesses and guards?”
“Keep the witnesses at a distance. Bribe the guards. It’s not like there was a coroner standing by.”
“Let me get this straight. Jesus is out cold. He’s whisked to the tomb, later spirited away, nursed back to health, and somehow ends up at Masada.”
