Jake ignored that.
“James is missing because his ossuary was stolen. And Simon died decades later. Hot damn, Tempe, it’s practically the whole family.”
The same thought crossed our minds simultaneously. Jake voiced it.
“So who’s the crucified man in the shroud?”
“Maybecrucified,” I cautioned.
“Okay. The Jesus from the ossuary could be another nephew. Damn! Why couldn’t that lab sequence him?”
Abruptly, Jake strode to the ossuary cabinet. Disengaging the padlock, he peered in. Satisfied, he closed and resecured the door.
Jesus alive and with offspring? Jesus dead and remaining shrouded in a tomb? Each scenario seemed worse than the next.
“It’s all speculation,” I said.
When Jake turned, his eyes bored into mine. “Not if I can prove the James ossuary came from that tomb.”
I picked up the mitochondrial-DNA report. Marya, Mariameme, Salome, Yose, Yehuda, and the unknown male were members of a single matrilineage. Matthew had come from another lineage, and the unknown female from the tomb floor had come from yet another. The bones from the ossuary inscribedYeshua, son of Yehosef were too degraded to yield DNA.
Jesus, son of Joseph. But what Jesus? What Joseph?
Had Jake really found the tomb of the Holy Family? If so, who was the shrouded man I’d found in the hidden loculus?
“There’s something else, Jake.”
“What?”
I started to speak, but Jake’s phone stopped me.
“Miracle of miracles. Could that be the Hevrat Kadisha, actually returning my call about Max?” he said, loping to the office.
In Jake’s absence I reread the reports on Max and his tooth.
The nuclear DNA told me Max was male. No biggie. I knew that from the bones. Same for the odd molar stuck in Max’s jaw. Male.
The mitochondrial DNA told me Max was not a member of the matrilineage in the Kidron tomb. His sequencing was unique. If this really was the Jesus family, Max was an outsider. Or at least not a descendant of one of those females.
The mitochondrial DNA also told me the odd molar in Max’s jaw belonged to someone other than Max. Okay. Bergeron said that. He was certain it came from a younger individual.
It was the next statement that made no sense. I was on my third reread when Jake returned.
“Assho-”
“Hevrat Kadisha?”
Tight nod.
“What did they say?”
“Baruch Dayan ha-emet.”
I curled my fingers in a come-on gesture.
“Blessed is the one true Judge.”
“What else?”
“We are the spawn of Satan. They are following the greatestmitzvah. Now the self-righteous little wankers plan to put the screws to my Talpiot site.”
“You’ve unearthed skeletal remains at a first-century synagogue?”
“Of course not. I told him that, but he didn’t believe me. Said he and his storm troopers would be landing today in full force.”
“Did you ask if they took Max?”
“The good rabbi refused to discuss it.”
Jake hesitated. “But he also said something weird.”
I waited.
“He wanted all the harassing phone calls to stop.”
“And?”
“I’ve only contacted the Hevrat Kadisha twice.”
“So who’s doing all the phoning?”
“Apparently the rabbi doesn’t know.”
A strange silence followed. I broke it.
“You were right, Jake.” I held up the mitochondrial DNA reports on Max and his tooth. “This could be bigger than either of us imagined.”
“Lay it on me.”
I did.
Now Jake looked like the doe in the headlights.
35
I’D REPEATED IT TWICE. JAKE WAS STILL NOT GETTING IT.
“The tooth and the skeleton show different mitochondrial-DNA sequencing. That means the tooth came from a different person than the skeleton. But we already knew that. The dentist affiliated with my Montreal lab already told us that. The tooth came from someone younger than Max.
“And Max’s mitochondrial DNA is unique, different from both the tooth person and the members of the tomb matrilineage. If Max was a member of that family, his mother was an outsider.”
“A female who married in.”
“Possibly. But the real shocker is that the mitochondrial DNA in the molar is identical to the mitochondrial DNA in the Kidron tomb family.”
“DNA ties the tooth, but not the skeleton, to the Mary lineage?”
“Sequencing links the odd tooth from Max to the matrilineally linked individuals in your tomb.”
“The tooth that was reinserted into Max’s jaw?”
“Yes, Jake. It means the owner of the tooth was related to the people in your tomb. He was a member of that family, a maternal relative.”
“But the tooth didn’t belong in that jaw. How did it get there?”
“My guess is the transfer was a simple mistake. The tooth probably slipped from the jaw of one of the individuals in the commingled remains, and became erroneously incorporated with the bones of the articulated skeleton. Maybe during recovery. Maybe during transport. It couldn’t have happened at Haas’s lab. We now know Haas never saw Max.”
“So at least one person in Cave 2001 was unquestionably related to the people in the Kidron tomb. What the hell was a member of that family doing up on Masada?”
Jake walked to the window, shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked down. I waited while he wandered through thoughts of his own.
“Yadin’s reticence to discuss the cave burials. Haas’s failure to report on them.” Jake’s voice was hushed. “Of course. Those weren’t zealots. A group of Nazarenes was living in that cave.”
Though Jake wasn’t really speaking to me, his hold on my attention was complete.
“What the hell have we stumbled onto? Who was this Max? Why was that one skeleton not given to Haas? Who was hidden in the loculus in the Kidron tomb? Why weren’t those bones ever collected and placed in an ossuary?”
It came out sounding like the middle of a thought.
