“LET ME BACK UP A MINUTE. THIS LERNER’S KIND OF A STRANGE duck. No family. Lives with a ferret. Does pickup archaeology. Israel. Egypt. Jordan. Goes in on grant money, runs a dig, writes a report, moves on. Does a lot of salvage work,” Jake said.

“Save what you can before they bulldoze for the bypass.”

“Exactly.”

“Is Lerner affiliated with any institution?”

“He’s had some temporary appointments, but says he’s never been interested in a permanent position. Finds it too confining.”

“That regular income can be a burden.”

“The guy’s definitely not into money. Lives in a seventeenth-century walk-up built as a barracks for musketeers. Whole apartment’s about the size of a Buick. Access is via a winding stone staircase. Nice view of Notre-Dame, though.”

“So you went to see him?”

“When I phoned, he said he worked nights, invited me over. We spent two hours celebrating the Sun King.”

“Meaning?”

“We did serious damage to a bottle of Martell VSOP Medaillon.”

“How old is this guy?”

“Late fifties, maybe.”

Avram Ferris was fifty-six.

“Jewish?”

“Not as fervently as in his youth.”

“What’s his story?”

“Lerner?”

“No, Jake. Louis the Fourteenth.”

I leaned back. Birdie scootched up onto my chest.

“Lerner was cool initially, but after the fourth snifter he was talking like a convert at Betty Ford. You don’t want to hear about the thing with the pianist, do you?”

“No.”

“Lerner worked at the Musée de l’Homme from seventy-one until seventy-four, while researching his dissertation.”

“Topic?”

“The Dead Sea scrolls.”

“Probably didn’t take the Essenes that long to write them.”

“Lerner takes things slowly. And seriously. Back then he was taking Judaism very seriously.”

“Miss pianist change that?”

“Who said anything about a miss?”

“Get to the Masada bones.”

“In seventy-two Lerner was asked to assist in inventorying a number of museum collections. In doing so he came across a file containing a shipping invoice and the photo of a skeleton.”

“The invoice suggested the bones came from Masada?”

“Yes.”

“Was it dated?”

“November 1963.”

Locus 2001, the cave below the casement wall on Masada’s southern summit. The jumbled bones. The isolated skeleton. According to Jake’s volunteer-informant, Cave 2001 was discovered and cleared in October of ’63, one month before the museum’s invoice date. I felt a spark of excitement.

“Was it signed?”

“Yes, but Lerner doesn’t remember by whom. He searched the museum’s collections, found the skeleton, made a notation in the file indicating the specimen’s condition and storeroom location, as per protocol, and moved on. But something bothered him. Why had that one set of bones been sent to the museum? Why had the bones remained boxed up and out of sight? Are you purring?”

“It’s the cat.”

“The following year Lerner read a book by an Australian journalist, Donovan Joyce. Joyce’s premise was that Jesus survived the cross.”

“And retired to a nice little place in the islands?”

“He lived to be eighty and died fighting the Romans at Masada.”

“Novel.”

“That’s not all. While at Masada, Jesus produced a scroll containing his last will and testament.”

“And how was Joyce privy to these little gems?”

“In December of sixty-four, Joyce was in Israel researching a book. While there, he says he was approached by a man calling himself Professor Max Grosset, a volunteer excavator on Yigael Yadin’s team. Grosset claimed to have stolen an ancient scroll from Masada, and solicited Joyce’s help in smuggling his booty out of the country. Grosset swore the scroll had fantastic importance, its authorship alone making it priceless. Joyce refused to become involved, but swears he saw and handled Grosset’s scroll.”

“And later wrote a book about it.”

“Joyce had gone to the Holy Land to view Masada, but the Israelis refused his request for a permit to visit the summit. Forced to abandon his original book idea, he regrouped and began investigating the plausibility of Grosset’s scroll. Astounded by his findings, Joyce ended up devoting eight years to the project. While he never again saw Grosset, Joyce claims to have unearthed startling new information about Jesus’ paternity, marital status, crucifixion, and resurrection.”

“Uh-huh.”

“In his book, Joyce mentions the skeletons found in Cave 2001.”

“You’re kidding.”

“According to Joyce, the twenty-five individuals in the cave represented a very special group, separate from the Jewish zealots. He concludes that, following Masada’s conquest, out of respect for these individuals, General Silva would have ordered his soldiers to leave the cave burials undisturbed.”

“Because the remains were those of Jesus and his followers.”

“That’s the implication.”

“Lerner believed this crackpot theory?”

“The book’s out of print now, but I managed to lay my hands on a copy. I’ve got to admit, if you’re open to such thinking, Joyce’s arguments are persuasive.”

“Jesus.”

“Exactly. Back to Lerner. After reading Joyce’s book, our pious young scholar decided there was a good possibility the bones he’d uncovered at the museum were those of Jesus.”

“Christ and his followers at Judaism’s most sacred site.”

“You’ve got it. The possibility rocked Lerner’s world.”

“Would have rocked Israel, too, not to mention all of Christendom. What did Lerner do?”

“Major angst. What if it was Jesus? What if it wasn’t Jesus, but someone else of importance in the fledgling Christian movement? What if the bones fell into the wrong hands? What if the press got wind of the story? The sanctity of Masada would be disturbed. The Christian world would be enraged over what was sure to be labeled a Jewish hoax. Night after night he agonized.

“After weeks of mental torment, Lerner decided the skeleton had to go. He spent days planning ways to snatch and destroy it. He considered burning the bones. Smashing them with hammers. Weighting them and dropping them into the sea.

“Then his conscience would flip. Theft is theft. If the skeleton was Jesus he was still a Jew and a holy man. Lerner hardly slept. In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the skeleton, but he couldn’t live with the thought someone else might find it. To preserve religious culture and tradition, he resolved the skeleton had to disappear.”

“Lerner trashed the file and stole the bones.”

“Smuggled them out of the museum in an athletic bag.”

“And?” I sat up.

Birdie jumped to the floor, turned, and fixed me with round yellow eyes.

“That’s the throat-grabber. What’s the name of your gunshot victim?”

“Avram Ferris.”

“That’s what I thought.” Jake’s next words jolted me like a bottle rocket. “Lerner gave the bones and the photo to Avram Ferris.”

“His boyhood buddy,” I breathed.

“Ferris had spent two years kibbutzing in Israel, and was passing through Paris on his way back to Montreal.”

“Sonovabitch.”

“Sonovabitch.”

When we disconnected I tried Ryan. No answer. The heart-thumping surveillance had probably begun.

Too agitated to eat, I headed for the gym. Questions looped through my head as I pounded out flight after flight on the StairMaster. I tried arranging them into a logical progression.

Did Kessler’s photo really show the missing Masada skeleton?

If so, did Ferris have the Masada skeleton when he was killed?

Who else knew he had it?

Was Ferris planning to sell the skeleton on the black market? To whom? Why now?

Or was he perhaps offering to destroy it for a price? To be paid by whom? Jews? Christians?

If not, why was Ferris shot?

Where was the skeleton now?

Where was Kessler?

Who was Kessler?

Why would Ferris accept a stolen skeleton?

I could conjure some possibilities for that one. Loyalty to a friend? Shared concern about the disturbance of the sanctity of the Masada legend or fear over a colossal Jewish-Christian theological confrontation at a time when Western Christian support was essential to the preservation of Israel? Dora said her son was quite pious back then. Jesus living after the crucifixion and dying during the siege of Masada? It would have been a nightmare for Christians and Jews alike.

Or would it? Jesus was a Jew. Why shouldn’t he or his followers have been at Masada?

No. Jesus was a heretic Jew. He outraged the high priests.

Back to questions.

What would Ferris have done with the bones?

The logical repository would have been his warehouse.

SIJ had found no bones.

Might he have concealed them in such a way that a search would never turn them up?

I made mental notes. Ask Ryan. Ask Courtney Purviance.

Wiping sweat from my face, I pumped on.

Something was wrong with the warehouse idea.

The Torah forbids leaving a body unburied overnight. Deuteronomy or someone. Wouldn’t Ferris have felt polluted having human remains in his work area? At least uncomfortable? I moved from the StairMaster to the bench press machine.

Maybe Ferris was only a transporter. Maybe he gave the bones to someone else.

To who?

Whom?

Someone who shared his and Lerner’s concern?

But any Jew would be bound by the Torah prohibition.

Someone with other reasons for wanting the skeleton to disappear?

Christian reasons?

If Jesus didn’t die on the cross, if Jesus lived, and his bones ended up in the Musée de l’Homme, such a finding would rock the Vatican and all of Protestant Christianity as well. The suggestion would have to be absolutely refuted, or it would blow the most basic tenet of the Christian faith right out of the water. No empty tomb. No angels. No resurrection. No Easter. The investigation and the controversy would be headline news around the globe for months. Years. The debate would be unprecedented. The passion and acrimony would be devastating.

I stopped in midpump.

The third friend! The priest from the Beauce!

Dora said the two men were very close.

Priests have no hang-ups with human bones. They wear them as relics. Embed them in altars. Display them in churches all over Europe.

Suddenly, I was in a froth to locate that priest.

I looked at my watch. Six-thirty. Grabbing my towel, I headed for the locker room.

My cell phone was barely registering a pulse. Throwing on sweats and my jacket, I hurried outside.

Jake answered after four rings, voice thick with sleep.

As I walked along Ste-Catherine, I explained about Ferris, Lerner, and the priest.

“I need a name, Jake.”

“It’s after midnight here.”

“Doesn’t Lerner work at night?”

“Okay.”

I heard a yawn.

“And anything else you can find out about this priest. Was he involved in the theft of the skeleton? Where was he living back in seventy-three? Where is he living now?”

“Boxers or briefs?”

“That kind of thing.”

“Calling this late might tick Lerner off.”

“I have confidence in your persuasive abilities.”

“And my boyish charm.”

“And that.”

I was stepping out of my shower when the phone rang.

Wrapping myself in a towel, I did a slip-’n’-slide across the tile, bolted to my bedroom, and grabbed the handset.

“Sylvain Morissonneau.”

“You’re a rock star,” I said, jotting the name on the back of a bank statement.

“You have me confused with Sting,” Jake said.

“Was Morissonneau involved in the skeleton heist?”

“No.”

“Where is he now?”

“Lerner never knew Morissonneau all that well. Says he left for Paris shortly after the other two met at Yeshiva. Hasn’t seen or heard from Morissonneau since seventy-one.”

“Oh.”

“I did learn one thing.”

I waited.

“Morissonneau’s a Cistercian.”

“A Trappist monk?”

“If you say so.”

After a defrosted dinner of Thai chicken and rice, I booted my computer and began a Web search.

Charlie kept squawking “Get Off of My Cloud.” Birdie purred on the desk to my right.

In the course of my research, I learned several things.

In 1098 C.E., a renewal movement began within Benedictine monasticism, at the monastery of Cîteaux, in central France. The idea was to restore, as far as possible, the literal observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict. I never learned what that meant.

The Latin word for Cîteaux is Cistercium, and those who signed on to the reform movement came to be known as Cistercians.

Today there are several orders within the Cistercians, one of which is the OCSO, Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance. Trappist, the nickname for the OCSO, came from another reform movement at another French monastery, La Trappe, in the seventeenth century.

Lots of reform movements. Makes sense, I guess. Monks have a lot of time to reflect and decide to do better.

I found three Cistercian monasteries in Quebec. One in Oka, near Lac des Deux-Montagnes, One at Mistassini, near Lac Saint-Jean. One in the Montérégie region, near Saint-Hyacinthe. Each had a website.

I spent two hours working through endless cyberloops explaining the monastic day, the spiritual journey, the meaning of vocation, the history of the order. Search as I might, I found no membership listing for any of the monasteries.

I was about to give up when I stumbled on a brief announcement.

On July 17, 2004, the monks of l’Abbaye Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges, with Fr. Charles Turgeon, OCSO presiding, chose their eighth abbot, Fr. Sylvain Morissonneau, 59. Born in Beauce County, Quebec, Fr. Morissonneau attended university at Laval. He was ordained a priest in 1968, then pursued academic studies in the United States. Fr. Morissonneau entered the abbey in 1971. For eight years prior to his election, he served as the monastery’s business manager. He brings to the office skills both practical and academic.

So Morissonneau had stuck with the contemplative life, I thought, clicking from the monastery’s website to MapQuest Canada.

Sorry, Father. Your solitude’s about to be busted.