Storm Front (4 page)

He was in time to see a champagne-colored Camry pull away from the curb a hundred yards farther on, and accelerate down the block and then around the corner. The car was too far away to get the tag, but it was from Minnesota, and he noted a basketball-sized dent in the left rear bumper.

“Shoot.” He felt for his phone, and remembered it was on the charger in the car.

He jogged back around the block, got the cell phone, and called 911 and identified himself and asked the Mankato dispatcher to have her patrolmen take the tag numbers on any champagne-colored Camrys they saw in the area. “The driver is tall, with long dark hair. He looked sort of like an Apache. Or, because of what I’m doing, he could have been Middle Eastern.”

The dispatcher said she would do that, but, “There are probably two hundred champagne-colored Camrys in town. That’s probably the most common car in the world.”

“Yeah, but . . . do it anyway,” Virgil said. “The car had a dent in the left rear bumper. And you might send a car around to a probable burglary.”

—

H
E
’
D BEEN TALKING
to the 911 operator from Jones’s front lawn. When he got off the phone, he went back inside the house, where he found Yael innocently standing in Jones’s living room, examining a wall of photographs.

“Did you look around?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said. “That would be illegal. I don’t have a search warrant.”

“Good. If I were to get a search warrant and look around, do you think
I’d
find a body? Or a stele?”

“No, I don’t think you would,” she said.

“Then there’s no reason to hurry,” Virgil said.

“Well, when I came to look at these photos, I noticed a smear of some kind on the floor in the hallway, there.” She pointed at a hallway that probably went back to a bathroom and some bedrooms. “Perhaps you should check it.”

Virgil went that way. The smear was three feet from the point where the hallway entered the front room and was about the size of Virgil’s index finger.

“Looks like dried blood,” Virgil said.

“I couldn’t really tell from this far away,” Yael said.

“Right,” Virgil said.

“The police are here,” she said.

Virgil walked back through the living room and saw two city cops coming up the walk. He stepped out on the porch and said, “Hey, Jimmy. Paula.”

“Hey, Virg,” Jimmy said. “You got a burglary?”

“Well, I got a runner, anyway,” Virgil said.

He told them about chasing the Camry man out of the house, and introduced Yael, and she told them about the search for Elijah Jones. Neither of the cops knew Jones, and Virgil said, “I’m going to walk around for a while, see what the neighbors say.”

“We’ll take a look around,” said Jimmy. “Paula, get the basement.”

Yael said, “I should stay here with Paula and Jimmy. I would recognize the stele.”

Virgil went first to the house on the right, but nobody was home. Then he went back to the old lady’s house. She answered the door and said, “I think he was back last night. He didn’t come over, but I saw lights in the house, late.”

“You didn’t see him this morning?”

“No, and I get up early. I went and knocked on his door, but nobody answered, and your note was gone.”

“But you’re not sure it was Jones himself.”

“No, I guess not. Could have been Ellen, I suppose.”

—

V
IRGIL THANKED HER
,
and walked back to his truck and called Davenport. “This may be a little more complicated than you thought,” he said.

After a moment of silence, Davenport asked, “Why can’t anything you do be simple? Get the steelee and send Yale home.”

“Well, I went over to talk to Jones this morning, but he wasn’t there, but a burglar was, and I think there’s blood on the floor.”

“Ahhhh . . . shit.”

“Yeah. But it might not be from violence. He’s got cancer, and he’s apparently been leaking a lot of blood.” Virgil told him about the runner, and about the smear, and about how Yael was lying about something, and then he asked, “Do you have any hint what this stele might involve? I mean, it looks like Yael’s not the only one who wants it. And wants it bad enough to break into a house.”

“No idea,” Davenport said. “But if there’s blood, and a burglary, then put the screws to this chick. We need to know.”

“I don’t think she’ll tell me,” Virgil said.

“How about the other people on this dig? They must know something. Couldn’t you call one of them?”

“I was just about to do that,” Virgil lied. “I’m tracking down some names now. But I wanted to update you on the blood thing.”

“Okay. Don’t bother to call me unless you’ve got something serious. If this is gonna be another fuckin’ Flowers circus, I don’t want the details.”

—

D
AVENPORT
occasionally had some good ideas, Virgil thought, as he rang off. Like calling people from the dig. It should be late afternoon in Israel, so if he could call soon . . .

He dug his iPad out of the pocket of the passenger-side seat-back. He signed on, went to the Gustavus Adolphus website, got the names of the other faculty in Jones’s department, and the main number for the school. After hassling a bit with a functionary in the school’s office, he got home phone numbers for four other faculty members. He struck out on the first one—no answer—but the second one, Patricia Carlson, picked up on the first ring. Virgil identified himself, and asked her what she knew about the dig, or anyone else on it.

“Hang on a minute,” she said. “I need to go online here.”

A minute later, she said, “There are seven Gustavus students at the dig, and one parent. I have the emergency cell phone number for the parent, in Israel. Her name is Annabelle Johnson.”

The miracles of modern communication, Virgil thought. He’d gone online from a computer in his truck, which coughed up phone numbers for a college faculty in a different town, and from there, had gotten a phone number for a woman half a world away.

Earlier that year, he’d been fishing at a fly-in camp in northwest Ontario, fifty miles from the nearest road, and another guy, whose wife was pregnant, and whose father was seriously ill, had a sat phone, and had daily conversations with them both, routed through his personal satellite link.

—

A
NNABELLE
J
OHNSON
was in a dormitory at an Israeli kibbutz. She’d been taking her afternoon nap when Virgil called. He explained the problem, and she said, in a hushed voice, “We’re not supposed to talk about it. We’re shocked, here. Shocked when Elijah ran away.”

“I’m working with an investigator from Israel,” Virgil said. “I’m not sure she’s being entirely up front with me. I could really use some help.”

He told Johnson about the encounter at Jones’s house and about the smear on the floor. “I can’t find Reverend Jones, and that worries me—especially if that smear turns out to be blood. Can you tell me if Jones was behaving differently on this trip? I know he’s sick . . .”

“He’s dying,” Johnson said.

“That’s what I’ve been told,” Virgil said. “Even given that, how was he behaving? Was there anything unusual about him, in the days before he found the stele?”

“Listen, this dig is really rough work. It’s like excavating a basement using nothing but trowels, in a hundred-and-four-degree heat. People feel bad all the time. There’s always somebody who’s dehydrated, who can’t make it out in the morning. So it’s hard to tell when something unusual is going on,” Johnson said. “Elijah was sick, and sometimes he didn’t make it out. But he tried, every day. I was so happy when the stele came up—I was right in the next square, and when he found that first edge, it was like, ‘Okay, this could be amazing.’ But we’ll find something that could be amazing several times every dig, and they usually turn out to be disappointments. But this—this was even more amazing than anything we’d ever expected.”

“Why would he run away with it?” Virgil asked. “He’d have to know that everybody would be on his trail. What could he accomplish?”

Johnson said, “I think he saw what was on the stele and he freaked out. Something just broke. All the stress from the dig, from the heat, from the cancer, from worrying about his wife . . . and then this. I think he snapped.”

Virgil: “The Israeli investigator here said it’d be quite a while before they knew
what
was on the stele. You mean . . . he already knew?”

“Oh, God,” Johnson said. “We’re
really
not supposed to talk about that. Too many people already know. There are all kinds of photographs. Even some of the kids have photographs, although they’re supposed to have turned them over to the Israelis. It’s bound to get out.”

“What is it?” Virgil said. “Is it really a big deal?”

“Oh, yeah. About as big as it could get,” Johnson said.

“What is it?”

Johnson told him about it.

W
hen Yael walked out of the house, Virgil was in his truck, talking to Davenport.

“. . . up my ass,” he said. “This thing is gonna turn into a screaming nightmare.”

“I didn’t know. Nobody knew,” Davenport said.

“I’ll tell you what, Lucas. We gotta find Jones in the next ten minutes, get that stone back, and get Yael out of here,” Virgil said. “If that’s blood in there . . . And with that runner this morning, there’s gotta be somebody else involved. Yael says she has no idea who it might be.”

“I’m hearing you. When will we know if it’s blood?”

“Pretty quick. The Mankato crime-scene guy will be over in a few minutes. I mean, I could probably get a paper towel and put a little spit on it . . .”

“Maybe you ought to wait for the crime-scene guy,” Davenport said.

“Yeah, yeah. Ah, poop. Here she comes. I’m gonna jump down her throat.”

“Go ahead. Do it in a nice way. Remember, they’re our allies.”

—

H
E HUNG UP THE PHONE
as Yael popped the passenger-side door and asked, “Am I invited in?”

Virgil said, “Yeah, climb in.”

“I was talking to the police officers,” she said, as she got into the passenger seat and closed the door. “They think it’s blood. They’re almost sure it is.” Virgil eyed her for a moment, and she finally asked, “What is it?”

“Yael, you’ve been lying like a mm . . .” He suppressed the “motherfucker.” “You’ve been lying, and you forgot that everybody has cell phones. I talked to some people at the dig, and they all know what the stele said. I can guarantee it’ll be in the
New York Times
in the next few days.”

“That’d be terrible.”

“Whatever. Now, what I think is, you’re going to tell me everything you know or I’m gonna kick your ass out of the truck and you can do your investigation from a taxicab,” Virgil said.

“That’s not fair.”

“Not fair? Gimme a break,” Virgil said. “You think it’s fair that I should go looking for somebody and not know who else is around, when there’s blood on the floor? Am I gonna get shot investigating this thing? Is somebody else going to get shot? Has somebody already been shot? Is this thing worth killing for?”

She didn’t answer.

He said, “Answer! Is it worth killing for?”

She mumbled, “Who knows? Maybe. To some crazies.”

“Israeli crazies? American crazies?”

She shrugged. “Palestinian crazies, Syrian crazies, Egyptian crazies, maybe a couple of Israeli crazies. Turks. Some Americans, too, I suppose. Maybe the Pope.”

“The Pope?”

“Okay, maybe not the Pope.” She hesitated, and said, “Then again . . . maybe.”

“Maybe? Why didn’t you tell me that last night, or this morning?” Virgil asked. “You walked me right into a place where there was probably a crime under way, and you gave me no warning.”

“All right, all right.” She waved a hand at him, as if to dismiss unwarranted whining. “I’ll tell you. There may be some propaganda value in this stele, if it’s real. That’s a big
if
. I didn’t know anybody else would be here, or I would have warned you. Now that I do, it’s obvious what happened.”

“Oh, really? It’s not obvious to me,” Virgil said.

“Okay, so let me tell you. Jones is trying to sell it. Being in Israel as much as he is, he knows about the antiquities market, and he knows who the big buyers are. He also knows what this thing is worth . . . if it’s real.”

“Well, is it real?”

She seemed to be thinking for a moment, then sighed and said, “It’s got a very good provenance. It was uncovered at a major dig site, by people of the highest reputation and the greatest experience, with thirty witnesses. They actually photographed it coming out of the ground. Highly detailed photographs taken with a Nikon D800. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this camera . . .”

“I own one. Keep talking.”

“So, I looked at the photos and the earth around the stone did not appear to be disturbed at all . . . and usually you can tell. Or, at least, the diggers can. Old compacted dirt is different than new compacted dirt. So it appears to be very real.”

“The people I talked to at the dig . . . What’s a
tel
? She said she was at a
tel
.”

“It’s a hill, a mound, that covers the site of an ancient city.”

“Okay. The people working on this
tel
said that there are several people there who can read Egyptian hieroglyphics, and they had a hieroglyphics dictionary, too, and that they’re pretty sure it’s about some guy called Semen and about Solomon—”

“It’s not semen. Semen is—”

“I know what semen is. Just tell me.”

—

S
O
,
SHE TOLD HIM
.

“There was a pharaoh named Siamun. Not semen. He became pharaoh around 986
BCE,
which was about the middle of the reign of King David,” Yael said. “That’s according to the traditional dates. He overlapped with King Solomon, who was David’s sole surviving heir . . . after he finished killing off David’s other sons, anyway. If you believe the Bible.”

“Do you believe in it? The Bible?”

She shrugged. “Some parts of the histories, yes. Most of it is foundation myths, tall tales, and literature. Do you believe in Moby Dick?”

“
Moby Dick
is a novel, not a history,” Virgil said.

“Do you believe in the details about whaling ships and whaling boats and all that? All the detail in the novel?”

“Some of it, I guess. Yeah, most of it.”

“That’s the Bible,” Yael said. “I believe some of it.”

“So . . . what does the stele have to do with this?” Virgil asked.

“It’s a triumphal stele, that may have been in secondary use—”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it might have been brought from somewhere else, thousands of years ago. It was originally a pillar, then got thrown down and broken up, and finally might have been used as a foundation stone or a cutting block or something, by people who didn’t know what it was,” she said. “This
tel
is only about five klicks east of Beth Shean, which was an Egyptian administrative city, off and on, over the centuries. Anyway, there is an inscription on it. . . .”

The inscription, Yael said, was in two languages: an extremely primitive form of Hebrew, and in hieroglyphics.

“The problem is, mmm, Hebrew is a more or less phonetic language, but in the very earliest versions, there are some unfamiliar letters that are not yet fully evolved, and perhaps the phonics, the
sounds
made by the individual letters, had not yet completely solidified.”

“Okay . . .”

“Okay . . . so the stele seems to describe a routine victory by Siamun, over a not-very-big city. We don’t know which one. That part of the stone is missing.”

“So what?”

“So . . . the Hebrew version, on the other side of the stele, seems to describe exactly the same victory, in very much the same words, but this time, the victory is ascribed to Solomon.”

Virgil thought about that for a moment, then said, “I don’t know what that means, either.”

“Well, there are a lot of odd things about Solomon,” Yael said. Then: “That police officer wants you.”

Virgil looked up at Jones’s house, where one of the cops beckoned to him. He leaned past Yael and called, “Give me two minutes.”

The cop waved and went back inside.

—

V
IRGIL SAID
to Yael, “Keep going.”

“If you read the Bible closely, and if the Bible is correct, you realize that David was not a rich and powerful king. He ran a small kingdom—in the beginning, you could walk from one end of it to the other in a single day, and it was mostly rural and poor. It got much larger during his reign, but never particularly rich. It was almost like David was the leader of a motorcycle gang, instead of a real king.”

Virgil nodded: “I remember that much, from Bible class. But Solomon . . .”

“Solomon suddenly has enormous riches, and a huge treasury, and seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and the Queen of Sheba comes all the way from Sheba, which is way at the far end of the Arabian Peninsula, in Yemen, to sleep with him,” Yael said. “That doesn’t make a huge amount of sense for a ruler of an insignificant kingdom that had always been under the thumb of the Egyptians.”

“I still don’t know what it means,” Virgil said.

She slapped him sharply on the thigh with an open hand: “Think, idiot. If this stele is real, it suggests that Siamun might have been the model for Solomon. Might have been the
real
Solomon. That there
was no
Jewish Solomon—that David’s kingdom was taken over by an Egyptian pharaoh named Siamun, who became the Jewish Solomon in the early tales, probably through transcription errors and changes in early Hebrew phonetics. The Bible wasn’t put together until three or four hundred years after Solomon, or Siamun, died, so the Bible writers were relying on oral histories and maybe a few inscriptions. Things get
warped
.”

“So, uh, the biggest king of the Jews . . .”

“Yes. Was an Egyptian. If the stele is real. In Israel, that’s a development we’d call ‘unfortunate.’ David’s important both to Christians and Muslims, too—in fact, the Messiah is supposed to be descended from David. Well, Solomon killed all of David’s surviving sons, according to the Bible. He was the last one left. So if you trace the lineage back . . . Jesus is descended not from the Jewish David, but the Egyptian pharaoh Siamun.”

“That’s not something you hear every day,” Virgil admitted.

“No kidding. The crazies all over the Middle East already deny that Israel is a legitimate Jewish homeland. If it turns out that Solomon was an Egyptian, well, it’s another stick on the fire. A pretty big stick, too.”

“And if you had some kind of proof of that, like a stele, you could probably sell it for the big bucks.”

“That’s what we think.”

—

“A
H
,
BOY
,”
V
IRGIL SAID
.
“Yesterday, I was investigating a redneck woman who was selling fake antique barn lumber. Today, I’m up to my crotch in Solomon.”

“Who’d want
real
antique barn lumber?” Yael asked.

“Rich people,” Virgil said. “Mostly on the East Coast.”

“Ah,” she said, as though she understood completely.

A city van pulled up, and a man hopped out. “That’s the crime-scene guy,” Virgil said. “Let’s go see if it’s blood.”

She opened the truck door but before she got out, Virgil said, “One more question.”

“Yeah?”

“Does this stele have any special powers?” Virgil asked.

“What?”

“I mean, if you mess with it, could you be struck by lightning or be carried up in a whirlwind, or something?”

“Maybe you could be struck by lightning, if you carried it out on a golf course during a thunderstorm,” she said. “Or, you could drop it on your foot. It’s heavier than a concrete block, because it’s not hollow. It’s got a really sharp edge. That would hurt a lot.”

“Still, that’d be better than taking a hundred million volts in the back of the neck because you pissed off Yahweh,” Virgil said.

“Virgil . . .”

“Just pulling your weenie,” he said. “Let’s go see what the cops want.”

—

I
NSIDE
,
THE CRIME-SCENE GUY
,
whose name was Simon Hamm, and who was often called Simple, even to his face, was kneeling in the hallway with his eye about a quarter inch above the smear on the floor.

Virgil said, “Hey, Simon. Is it blood?”

Hamm looked up and said, “Hand me one of those paper towels from the kitchen.”

Virgil walked across the living room to the kitchen, got a paper towel, and brought it back. Hamm said, “We got the main smear, but we’ve also got a couple little drops that are otherwise useless.” He spit on the paper towel and scrubbed one of the spots, then looked at the towel.

“Yep, it’s blood,” he said. He held up the towel so Virgil could see the crimson smear.

“That makes my day,” Virgil said. “Though it’s not much blood.”

“Not much, but it’s more than you’d get from nicking your finger with a bread knife,” Hamm said. “The other thing is, it’s all in one spot. It’s not like he was dripping a little blood—it’s like he was bleeding and not moving.”

“This doesn’t seem good,” Yael said.

“See, recognizing that—that’s why you’re a highly paid investigator,” Virgil said.

“So what do we do next?”

Virgil looked at his watch. “First, we’ll go through the house, in detail, to see if he hid the stone here. Then, we’ll run up to the Twin Cities and see if we can surprise his daughter. Maybe Jones is hiding out with her.”

—

H
AMM ESCORTED THEM
through the house. He didn’t want them in it at all, because of the possibility that a violent crime had been committed, but Virgil insisted on looking for places that the stele might be hidden.

“The problem with that is, the guy who was here when you came in—he might have left prints, but we don’t know where,” Hamm said. “If you go digging around, you’ll ruin them.”

“So
you
open the doors,” Virgil said. “We’ll just look.”

And that’s what they did. They went through two bedrooms, a third bedroom that had been converted to a study, two bathrooms, a small home office niche, the living room, and the basement, and then out to the garage. They found no sign of a stele, no body, and no further evidence of violence. The Nissan Xterra was still in the garage, still covered with garage dust. Although Jones had apparently been home, he hadn’t moved the truck. Virgil looked inside, to see if he might have stashed the stone there, but the truck was empty.

In the house, one living room wall was devoted to photographs, mostly small, and mostly taken at a variety of digs in Israel, featuring Jones and a cheerful, slightly overweight woman Virgil thought was probably Jones’s wife. Yael pointed out various well-known Israelis, posing with Jones. “This is Jones with Yigael Yadin, probably the most famous archaeologist in Israel, after the War of Independence,” Yael said. “They look very friendly together. I confess, I am impressed.”