up the body count or the mystery of the intact skeleton.”
“Not without a séance.”
“Hey, big spender…” Charlie was sticking with a winner.
Jake changed tack. “Let me ask you this. You’re Yadin. You’ve got these strange cave bones. What’s the first thing you do?”
“Today?”
“In the sixties.”
“I was stil losing baby teeth.”
“Work with me.”
“Carbon-fourteen testing. Establish antiquity.”
“I’ve told that back then carbon-fourteen dating wasn’t done in Israel. So tal y this into the picture. In his rants to the Knesset, Lorinez insisted that some Masada skeletons had been sent abroad.”
“Lorinez was the ultra-Orthodox MK pushing for reburial?”
“Yes. And what Lorinez was saying makes sense. Why wouldn’t Yadin request radiocarbon dating on the cave burials?”
“So you think Lorinez was right,” I said.
“I do. But according to Yadin, no Masada bones left the country.”
“Why not?”
“In onePost interview I read Yadin said it wasn’t his job to initiate such tests. In the same article an anthropologist laid it off to cost.”
“Radiocarbon dating isn’t that expensive.” Even as long ago as the early eighties, testing only ran about $150 per sample. “Surprising Yadin didn’t order it, given the importance of the site.”
“Not as surprising as Haas’s failure to write up the cave bones,” Jake said.
I let things percolate a moment in my head. Then, “You suspect the cave folks may not have been part of the main zealot group?”
“I do.”
I picked up Kessler’s photo.
“And that this is the unreported articulated skeleton.”
“I do.”
“You think this skeleton may have been shipped out of Israel, and not reinterred with the others.”
“I do.”
“Why not?”
“That is the mil ion-dol ar question.”
I picked up the print.
“Where’s this fel ow now?”
“That, Dr. Brennan, earns a mil ion more.”
7
EACH YEAR, ONE HAPLESS BURG BECOMES JAMBOREE CENTRALfor the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. For a week, engineers, psychiatrists, dentists, lawyers, pathologists, anthropologists, and myriad lab geeks converge like moths on a rol ed-up rug. New Orleans drew the short straw this year.
Monday through Wednesday are given over to board, committee, and business meetings. On Thursday and Friday, scientific sessions offer insider tips on cutting-edge theory and technique. As a grad student, then as a tenderfoot consultant, I attended these presentations with the ardent zeal of a religious fanatic. Now, I prefer informal networking with old friends.
Using either approach, the conference is exhausting.
Partly my fault. I volunteer for too much. Translate that to I do not struggle sufficiently against impressment.
I spent Sunday working with a col eague with whom I was coauthoring an article for publication in theJournal of Forensic Sciences. The next three days passed in a blur of Robert’s Rules, rémoulade, and rounds of drinks. Hurricanes for my booze-rational col eagues. Perrier for me.
Conversations centered on two topics: previous escapades and odd cases. Topping this year’s register of the bizarre and the baffling were skeletonized gal stones the size of Cocoa Puffs, a jailhouse suicide with a telephone cord, and a sleepwalking cop with his own bul et in his brain.
I floated a description of the Ferris case. Opinions differed concerning the peculiar beveling. Most agreed with the scenario I’d been considering.
My schedule did not permit sitting through the scientific papers. By the time I cabbed it to the New Orleans airport Wednesday, I was beat.
Mechanical problem. Forty-minute delay. Welcome to air travel in America. Check in a minute late and your flight has departed. Check in an hour early and your flight has been delayed. Mechanical problems, crew problems, weather problems, problem problems. I knew them al .
An hour later I’d finished entering committee
“Not without a séance.”
“Hey, big spender…” Charlie was sticking with a winner.
Jake changed tack. “Let me ask you this. You’re Yadin. You’ve got these strange cave bones. What’s the first thing you do?”
“Today?”
“In the sixties.”
“I was stil losing baby teeth.”
“Work with me.”
“Carbon-fourteen testing. Establish antiquity.”
“I’ve told that back then carbon-fourteen dating wasn’t done in Israel. So tal y this into the picture. In his rants to the Knesset, Lorinez insisted that some Masada skeletons had been sent abroad.”
“Lorinez was the ultra-Orthodox MK pushing for reburial?”
“Yes. And what Lorinez was saying makes sense. Why wouldn’t Yadin request radiocarbon dating on the cave burials?”
“So you think Lorinez was right,” I said.
“I do. But according to Yadin, no Masada bones left the country.”
“Why not?”
“In onePost interview I read Yadin said it wasn’t his job to initiate such tests. In the same article an anthropologist laid it off to cost.”
“Radiocarbon dating isn’t that expensive.” Even as long ago as the early eighties, testing only ran about $150 per sample. “Surprising Yadin didn’t order it, given the importance of the site.”
“Not as surprising as Haas’s failure to write up the cave bones,” Jake said.
I let things percolate a moment in my head. Then, “You suspect the cave folks may not have been part of the main zealot group?”
“I do.”
I picked up Kessler’s photo.
“And that this is the unreported articulated skeleton.”
“I do.”
“You think this skeleton may have been shipped out of Israel, and not reinterred with the others.”
“I do.”
“Why not?”
“That is the mil ion-dol ar question.”
I picked up the print.
“Where’s this fel ow now?”
“That, Dr. Brennan, earns a mil ion more.”
7
EACH YEAR, ONE HAPLESS BURG BECOMES JAMBOREE CENTRALfor the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. For a week, engineers, psychiatrists, dentists, lawyers, pathologists, anthropologists, and myriad lab geeks converge like moths on a rol ed-up rug. New Orleans drew the short straw this year.
Monday through Wednesday are given over to board, committee, and business meetings. On Thursday and Friday, scientific sessions offer insider tips on cutting-edge theory and technique. As a grad student, then as a tenderfoot consultant, I attended these presentations with the ardent zeal of a religious fanatic. Now, I prefer informal networking with old friends.
Using either approach, the conference is exhausting.
Partly my fault. I volunteer for too much. Translate that to I do not struggle sufficiently against impressment.
I spent Sunday working with a col eague with whom I was coauthoring an article for publication in theJournal of Forensic Sciences. The next three days passed in a blur of Robert’s Rules, rémoulade, and rounds of drinks. Hurricanes for my booze-rational col eagues. Perrier for me.
Conversations centered on two topics: previous escapades and odd cases. Topping this year’s register of the bizarre and the baffling were skeletonized gal stones the size of Cocoa Puffs, a jailhouse suicide with a telephone cord, and a sleepwalking cop with his own bul et in his brain.
I floated a description of the Ferris case. Opinions differed concerning the peculiar beveling. Most agreed with the scenario I’d been considering.
My schedule did not permit sitting through the scientific papers. By the time I cabbed it to the New Orleans airport Wednesday, I was beat.
Mechanical problem. Forty-minute delay. Welcome to air travel in America. Check in a minute late and your flight has departed. Check in an hour early and your flight has been delayed. Mechanical problems, crew problems, weather problems, problem problems. I knew them al .
An hour later I’d finished entering committee
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