“He was a big threat, Doctor. Or a big problem, at least. Just as you and mademoiselle are.”
“I don’t understand, Inspector.”
“Do you know how much a French police inspector earns, Doctor?”
“No. Not enough, probably.”
“Enough for a one-bedroom apartment and a ten-year-old car and one week at the beach every August,” he said. “Do you know how much I can sell these bones for? Three million U.S. dollars.”
“How? Who’s left to sell them to, Inspector? The crazy Protestant and the commando Catholic are both dead now. The religious market would seem to have dried up rather suddenly.”
“Ah, but you forget the art market,” he said. He smiled ironically. “It seems the art dealer, Madame Kensington, has a very eager and very rich client, one who is happy to have another chance at the bones. It’s a shame that you threw away one of them, but I think the blood on the box — along with the story of the crazy preacher and the soldier priest — will make up for the missing bone. A collector who will pay three million dollars for the bones of Christ is surely the kind of person who appreciates a good story. Imagine that you are a billionaire. Imagine that you have these bones, the most special bones in the world, and that you can take them out and show them off to your most trusted friends. Imagine how attentively they will listen as you tell how much money and how much blood it cost to get them. The story itself is worth a million, yes? Maybe I should raise the price, Doctor; what do you think?”
“I think you’ve forgotten something. A week ago you called Felicia Kensington a piece of shit.”
“Ah, oui, she is a piece of shit. But she’s a gold-plated piece of shit, filled with diamonds.”
“So you’re a faker, a forger, too,” I said. “A counterfeit cop. You just pretend to care about truth and justice.”
He shrugged, then wedged the toe of a boot under Father Mike’s body and tipped him off the top of the ossuary. “Okay, let’s go. My colleagues are slow, but even they will be arriving soon, after this many gunshots. Doctor, will you be so kind as to carry the bones?”
I squatted, then hoisted the box. “Father Mike was letting us go. Are you?”
“Ah, sorry, non, Doctor. The false priest gave you false hope. I give you the sad truth. La triste vérité. If you live, things will be very difficult for me. I wish I didn’t have to kill you, but I do. Don’t take it personally.”
“I take it very personally, Inspector.”
“Quel dommage. Too bad. But do as you wish.”
Just ahead, something bright and orange caught my eye: the safety mesh spanning the gap in the railing. We were almost to the gap, and a desperate idea formed in my mind.
“Inspector, I need to shift my grip; I’m about to drop this, and I doubt that your client will be happy if it gets broken. Let me just set it on the railing for a second.”
“Non. Not on the railing,” he said. “I saw how you balanced it on the railing to trick the preacher.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll set it on the ground,” I said, “but I need to do it now. It’s slipping.” Without waiting for him to give permission — or deny it — I squatted and set down the ossuary, with the thunk of stone on stone. “Whew,” I said, straightening up and bending backward to stretch. I interlaced my fingers, stretched my arms, and pushed my palms outward to crack my knuckles.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Come on.”
“Okay. I’m ready. That helped.” I squatted again and worked my fingers under the ends of the ossuary. “Miranda, can you give me a hand? Just till it’s up?”
“Why don’t you let me carry it awhile?” Miranda squatted on the other side of the box and wedged her fingers under as well. I felt her fingers graze mine on the underside of the box.
“No, I’ll be fine,” I said. “Just help me lift — that’s the hardest part. Remember, lift with your legs, not your back.” I tapped one of her fingers, a gesture I desperately hoped she’d interpret as a signal. Her eyes met mine, and when they did, I rolled mine upward as far as I could, raising my eyebrows at the same time. “Okay, on three,” I said. “One. Two. Three!”
With all the strength I had, I straightened my legs and flung myself backward, shouting “Push!” as I did. Miranda shoved hard on the box, accelerating my backward fall. With my momentum, Miranda’s push, and the ossuary’s weight, I slammed into Descartes with the force of a linebacker. He grunted heavily and tumbled backward, my weight driving us both toward the gap in the railing. I felt momentary resistance as the orange safety mesh snagged us and stretched; we hung like that, suspended over the water, for an agonizing instant — the detective’s arms windmilling for balance, grasping for anything solid — and then, with a crack as sharp as a gunshot, the plastic snapped and we fell: Descartes underneath, my body against his, and the stone box clutched to my chest. We did a backward flip in the air, and the centrifugal force of our spin sent pale bones cartwheeling into the black sky. We fell surrounded by them, as if we were inside some macabre snow globe of mortality.
Descartes hit the water flat on his back, and the double impact — first from hitting the water, then from being slammed by me — forced the air from his lungs like a punch in his gut. I’d braced myself as best I could, taking a deep breath and tensing my stomach muscles against the ossuary’s weight.
The water closed swiftly over us, the momentum of our fall and the weight of the stone box driving us downward. Plunging through the cold blackness, the light fading fast above us, I felt Descartes struggling and clutching and scrabbling at me, as if I were a tree or a ladder he would climb to safety. I also felt the edges of the plastic webbing clawing at my hands and face as the loose ends fluttered and swirled around us.
I had no more than a few seconds of air in my lungs, and I was plunging toward the river bottom, entwined with a drowning man and thirty pounds of stone. In desperation, I slammed my head backward, making solid contact with the inspector’s face. His grip slackened long enough for me to twist free. I still had hold of the ossuary, clutching the edge of one end in my left hand. Let it go, a voice in my head screamed. Let it go. Pull him to the surface.
I ignored that voice. I redoubled my grip on the ossuary, and with my other hand I grabbed a fluttering end of plastic mesh and wrapped it around the box. Then, fumbling for the other end of the mesh, I cinched it around Descartes’s foot. Only then, having trussed him to a stone anchor, did I push myself away and begin a desperate, breathless ascent. I felt his fingers clutch at my legs and then slip away as I kicked upward and he descended.
Only the faintest glimmer of light showed overhead, and as I flailed toward it, running out of air, the light began to dim. My last thought, as my mouth opened and my lungs filled with water, was for Miranda. Keep her safe, I thought — no, I prayed. Then: It is finished. Now.
And then there was blackness.
CHAPTER 43
Sirens wail and tires scream to a stop on the pavement at the base of the bridge. Eight men leap from the caravan of police cars, running toward the stairs, weapons in hand.
One of the officers cries out and points upward, and the others look just in time to see a figure — a young woman — climbing onto the railing of t
he bridge and scanning the water below for ripples, bubbles, anything. She balances there briefly, arms stretched wide, as if Jesus and Mary, Savior and Virgin, manifested at one and the same time. Then she sees something; she does not hesitate, but hurls herself headfirst, as heedless as a seabird that spies a flash of silver scales in the water. She cleaves the surface with scarcely a splash, and the policemen stand transfixed, staring at the widening circles that are the only evidence of what they have just witnessed. Long moments pass; one man clutches his partner’s arm; another crosses himself.
At last the waters stir. The woman breaches, gasping and coughing and retching in the river. With one arm she pulls for the bank; with the other, she encircles the lifeless body she has harrowed from the depths.
She drags him onto the bank and presses water from his lungs, then — holding the shattered silver medallion he wears around his neck — she covers his mouth with hers and exhales, breathing into him the breath and prayer of life.
The man — Brockton — stirs, and groans, and lives again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: ON FACT AND FICTION
Spoiler alert: This explanatory note refers to key details of the book’s plot. If you haven’t finished the book and don’t want to risk spoiling the suspense, stop reading now … if you’re strong enough to resist temptation.
Avignon — the city of the popes — is both faithfully and lovingly portrayed in this book. First settled by Celts several centuries before Christ, Avignon was forever changed in 1309 when Clement V, the first French pope, settled there with his court to avoid the perils of Rome, which was in the grip of a deadly feud between two powerful clans. Over the next seven decades, the Avignon papacy — called “the Babylonian captivity” by critics who believed that Rome was the only legitimate location for the papal palace — transformed Avignon from a small, sleepy town of some 5,000 to a booming, wealthy, and cosmopolitan city of 50,000. Avignon became the crossroads of money and power in medieval Europe. Kings, emperors, and other movers and shakers came to Avignon to seek papal favors, to apply political pressure, and to revel in luxuries that far surpassed those at the Parisian court of King Philip of France.