Cross Bones Read Online Free PDF

UNC-Charlotte. His voice mail answered. I left a message asking that he return my cal .

    I’d been with the fragments another hour when the phone rang.

    “Hey, Tempe.”

    In greeting, we Southerners say “hey” not “hi.” To alert, draw the attention of, or show objection to another, we also say “hey,” but air is expel ed and the ending is truncated. This was an airless, four-A “hey.”

    “Hey, Jake.”

    “Won’t get above fifty in Charlotte today. Cold up there?”

    In winter, Southerners delight in querying Canadian weather. In summer, interest plummets.

    “It’s cold.” The predicted high was in negative figures.

    “Going where the weather suits my clothes.”

    “Off to dig?” Jake was a biblical archaeologist who’d been excavating in the Middle East for almost three decades.

    “Yes, ma’am. Doing a first-century synagogue. Been planning it for months. Crew’s set. Got my regulars in Israel, meeting up with a field supervisor in Toronto on Saturday. Just finalizing my own travel arrangements now. Pain in the gumpy. Do you have any idea how rare these things are?”

    Gumpies?

    “There are first-century synagogues at Masada and Gamla. That’s about it.”

    “Sounds like a terrific opportunity. Listen, I’m glad I caught you. Got a favor to ask.”

    “Shoot.”

    I described Kessler’s print, leaving out specifics as to how I’d obtained it.

    “Pic was shot in Israel?”

    “I’m told it came from Israel.”

    “It dates to the sixties?”

    “‘October ’63’ is written on the back. And some kind of notation. Maybe an address.”

    “Pretty vague.”

    “Yes.”

    “I’l be glad to check it out.”

    “I’l scan the image and send it by e-mail.”

    “I’m not optimistic.”

    “I appreciate your wil ingness to take a look.”

    I knew what was coming. Jake reran the shtick like a bad beer ad.

    “You gotta come dig with us, Tempe. Get back to your archaeological roots.”

    “There’s nothing I’d like better, but I can’t take off now.”

    “One of these days.”

    “One of these days.”

    After our cal , I hurried to the imaging section, scanned Kessler’s photo, and transferred the .jpg file to the computer in my lab. Then I hurried back, logged on, and transmitted the image to Jake’s in-box at UNCC.

    Back to Ferris’s shattered head.

    Cranial fractures show tremendous variability in patterning. The successful interpretation of any given pattern rests on an understanding of the biomechanical properties of bone, combined with a knowledge of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors involved in fracture production.

    Simple, right? Like quantum physics.

    Though bone seems rigid, it actual y has a certain amount of elasticity. When subjected to stress, a bone yields and changes shape. When its limits of elastic deformation are exceeded, the bone fails, or fractures.

    That’s the biomechanical bit.

    In the head, fractures travel the paths of least resistance. These paths are determined by things such as vault curvature, bony buttressing, and sutures, the squiggly junctures between individual bones.

    Those are the intrinsic factors.

    Extrinsic factors include the size, speed, and angle of the impacting object.

    Think of it this way. The skul is a sphere with bumps and curves and gaps. There are predictable ways in which that sphere fails when wal oped by an impacting object. Both a .22-caliber bul et and a two-inch pipe are impacting objects. The bul et’s just moving a whole lot faster and striking a smal er area.

    You get the idea.

    Despite the massive damage, I knew I was seeing an atypical pattern in Ferris’s head. The more I looked, the more uneasy I grew.

    I was placing an occipital fragment under the microscope when the phone rang. It was Jake Drum. This time there was no leisurely “hey.”

    “Where did you say you got this photo?”

    “I didn’t. It—”

    “Who gave it to you?”

    “A man named Kessler. But—”

    “Do