The Inquisitor's Key (Body Farm 7)

The idea was startling; stunning, even. Could she possibly be right? Could the Shroud depict a deliberately staged fourteenth-century murder? And could the bones of Avignon — our “zhondo,” as Elisabeth called him — be the bones of the victim?

I looked at the image again in this new light. Yes, it looked like our zhondo’s face. But not our zhondo’s stature. I had a tape measure in my overnight bag, but for starters, I lay down on the floor alongside the Shroud, side by side with the man’s image. “So, who’s taller?”

“He is. He’s got a couple inches on you, maybe more. How tall are you?”

“Five-ten.”

“So he’s a six-footer,” she said. “That’s pretty damn tall, whether he was first century or fourteenth. Most guys back then were, like, five feet, five five, right?”

She was right. During the twentieth century, the average stature of adult males had increased by six inches or more — in developed countries, though not in Third World countries — as a result of better diet and health care. “Yeah, little bitty guys,” I agreed. “I’ve seen suits of armor my twelve-year-old grandson couldn’t fit into.” My heart sank as I realized the implications. “Damn. It’s not our zhondo, is it, Miranda? Can’t be.”

“’Fraid not,” she said. “This guy’s half a head taller than our guy. Sorry, Dr. B; I know the facial reconstruction got you all excited about connecting the dots.”

“Oh well,” I said breezily. “It was an interesting possibility. But so’s your snuff-Shroud theory. Wouldn’t that be ironic, if somebody was killed to make a ‘holy’ relic? Anyhow, we’ve still got a medieval murder on our hands in Avignon, right?” I nodded at the Shroud. “And now maybe we’ve got two medieval murder cases. Twice the bodies, twice the fun, right?”

She didn’t find my little pep talk any more convincing than I did.

Slipping my shoes back on, I rolled up the Shroud and tucked it under my arm. “I’m pooped,” I said, heading for my room, which was at the end of the hall — right where the foot of the Shroud had been moments before. “Sorry I brought you on a wild-goose chase.” I stepped through the doorway.

“Dr. B?” I stopped and leaned my head back into the hallway, just far enough to see her smiling at me. “Just for the record? I love chasing wild geese. Good night, Dr. B. Sleep well.”

* * *

I had a dream, and in my dream, i went back to the chapel in Turin Cathedral; went back to make one final attempt to see the Shroud.

As I walked down the center aisle, I saw a man dressed as a high priest — a bishop or cardinal, perhaps even a pope — behind the chapel’s glass wall. The black curtain hiding the Shroud had been opened, and I hurried forward, eager to see the relic at last. But above the altar, behind the curtain, was nothing but a blank wall.

Astonished, I stared at the priest. Beside him, in the shadows, stood another man. This man, his face in shadow, was holding a small bundle, which I recognized as the Shroud, folded like a bedsheet. The man handed something to the priest; it was a thick bundle of money, I realized. The priest bowed, and the man disappeared through a dark doorway in the back of the chapel. Then the priest turned and saw me. He pointed a finger at me, and then reached for a golden cord hanging from the ceiling. He pulled the cord, and a heavy black drape slid shut, hiding not only the blank wall and the empty altar, but the entire chapel from my view.

CHAPTER 13

I awoke at daybreak, disturbed by the dream, and trudged back to the cathedral, where again I was confronted by the maddening curtain that shrouded the Shroud. Was it possible that my dream was actually true — that the wall behind the black drape was indeed blank? Could the Shroud be elsewhere — locked in an underground Vatican vault for safekeeping? Rented out to some devout billionaire who paid a fortune to possess it during the long intervals between public exhibitions?

Leaning forward, I studied the glass wall that separated me from the artifact I’d hoped to see. The thickness of the glass was hard to gauge, but I assumed it was at least an inch thick, maybe more — possibly bulletproof; at any rate, surely Brockton-proof. There must be a back door into that chapel, I thought. A way in, so the pope can open the magic curtain every decade or two…or the cleaning lady can dust it once a month. Could I bribe the cleaning lady? Jimmy the door with a credit card or a paper clip? Suddenly I laughed — was I really fantasizing about breaking into a heavily protected chapel in order to scrutinize what was probably a fake relic? I took one last wistful look, then headed out in search of a café.

The café’s barista was a pretty brunette with immense brown eyes and a microscopic English vocabulary. After several fruitless, awkward attempts to request hot tea, I stammered out the words “caffè crema,” which I guessed to be Italian for “coffee with cream.” She smiled and nodded, and I congratulated myself on my suave Italian.

I uncongratulated myself two minutes later, when she handed me a thimble-size vessel containing what looked — and tasted—like soft-serve mocha ice cream. It was 8 A.M., far too early for ice cream. The barista looked my way, saw my confusion, and hurried over, cocking her head to punctuate the question in her eyes. I took another taste, and she beamed when I shrugged and smiled and trotted out the only other Italian word I knew: “Magnifico!”

Suddenly a dusty file drawer in my memory flew open. Magnifico: One of my all-time favorite graduate students used to say that a lot — and her name sprang to the tip of my chilled tongue and from there into the café, right out loud: “Emily Craig!” Years before, Emily had written an article that had something to do with the Shroud of Turin, though I couldn’t quite dredge up the details from that file drawer in my mind. Emily was now the forensic anthropologist for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and we kept in touch across the mountains between Knoxville and Frankfort. Did I have Emily’s number in my phone? I did! I hit “send” to place the call.

She answered on the sixth ring, just as I’d expected the call to roll to voice mail. “Hello?”

“Emily? Hi, it’s Bill Brockton.”

“Who?”

Perhaps we’d not kept in touch quite as well as I’d imagined. “Bill Brockton.”

“Bill who? Oh…Dr. B? Uh…okay. Yeah. Hi. Give me, uh, give me just a second here.”

Her speech was slow and thick. Was it possible that she’d been drinking? At 8 A.M.? “Am I catching you at a bad time, Emily?”

“Well, since you ask, yeah. I don’t know what time it is where you are, but where I am, it’s two in the morning.”

“Oh, crap, Emily, I’m so sorry. It’s eight here — I’m in Italy — and I was so interested in what I’m calling about, I didn’t even think about the time difference. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you again at a reasonable hour.”

“Hell, I’m awake now,” she said, “and you’ve got me all intrigued. If you hang up now, I’ll just lie awake all night wondering why you called. So spill it.”

“Okay. If I’m remembering right, a few years ago you wrote a journal article that had something to do with the Shroud of Turin.”

“A few years ago?” She gave a groggy laugh. “Try fifteen years ago. Maybe more. I was still in the Ph.D. program at the time, so let’s see, that would have been 1994 or ’95. It was in the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology. Probably not on your regular reading list.”

“Can you give me the skinny on that article? Like, an abstract of the abstract?”

“Sure, more or less.” There was a pause. “Wait. Did you say you’re in Italy?”

“I did.”

“Where in Italy?”

“Three guesses.”

“You’re in Turin? My God, are you looking at the Shroud?”

“Ha. I wish. I’m definitely, damnably not looking at the Shroud. Everybody’s not looking at the Shroud; it’s under wraps until 2025, they say. But I am looking, or at least have been looking, and will be looking again, at a full-size, high-resolution photo of it.”

“No offense, but wouldn’t it have been e

asier and cheaper and smarter to just have that sent to Knoxville?”

“Long story,” I said. “Yeah, it would’ve. But I was in France, so Italy was right next door. Sort of. Anyhow, that article you wrote — didn’t it have something to do with your prior career as a medical illustrator? Or am I imagining that?”

“No, that’s right. Very good. Okay, here’s the story. One afternoon at UT, I was sitting in a lecture by Randy Bresee—”

“Randy Bresee — textile scientist?”

“Exactly. I was taking his course on textile forensics. And that particular day, he showed slides of the Shroud of Turin. He called it ‘the greatest unsolved textile mystery of all time.’”

“What did he mean?”

“He meant the mystery of how the image was put on the cloth. Part of the mystique of the Shroud is that supposedly there’s no way to reproduce that image with any technique known to man. ‘Not made with hands’ is how the church puts it, I think.”