The Second Messiah

“That’s where it gets murky. He claims not. He says that at about twenty minutes before six A.M. he left Green alive and went to climb that rise over there to the east of the camp to see the sunrise. Green’s own niece, Yasmin, says that she joined Cane on the slope, at about six. She says that she saw her uncle still alive just over twenty minutes earlier, still studying the scroll Cane found.”

“At five-forty A.M.? I didn’t know archaeologists worked a night shift.”

“Like I said, Green was excited about the find. The team had been up late celebrating.”

“Is the professor’s niece an alibi for Cane’s movements?”

“Not quite. I figure Cane had about fifteen minutes unaccounted for before Yasmin Green spotted him up on the hill. Cane says that he wandered around the camp, thinking about his find before he decided to climb the summit. All of which sounds a bit convenient, if you ask me.”

“Do we have a motive?”

“Not yet. But the consensus is that Green was brash and didn’t always see eye to eye with the crew. Catch him in the wrong mood and he could treat you like dirt. Arrogant was a word used. Abrasive was another. There’s a whole bunch of other words I heard but I’m in a lady’s company so I’ll skip them.”

“Abrasive enough to warrant being stabbed to death?”

Mosberg shrugged.

Lela said, “Was there professional rivalry between the professor and Cane?”

Mosberg scratched his head. “I’ve been told that the two sometimes argued like cat and dog about archaeological matters. But not over the scroll, apparently. Green was thrilled about the find.”

“Told by whom?”

“A few of the other dig members.”

Lela counted more than two dozen civilians over by the johns. “Who are all the crew?”

“It’s an international dig hosted by the Israeli Department of Antiquities. Forty crew in total, thirty men, ten women. Eight are Israelis, the rest Americans, German, British, Italians, and French. There’s even a Palestinian and a Lebanese and about a dozen local Bedu are helping with the donkey work. Everyone’s in shock.”

“What about the Bedu?”

Mosberg shrugged. “I know of many Israelis who say our government has got a lot to answer for because of the way we treat some of the Bedu and Palestinians, confiscating their lands and building settlements on them.”

“You can say that again. Go on.”

“But all that being said, the tribes in this area are usually a well-behaved, decent lot who keep to themselves. No arguments or disagreements with the crew. No motive to go sticking a blade in someone, from what I hear.”

They arrived at the tent. Two officers on guard stood to attention.

Lela saw a couple of plastic sheets pegged over several patches of sand, as if to preserve evidence. “Okay, let’s see if we can find out what the professor did to earn a knife in the chest.”

12

“I couldn’t have done a better job of it myself. A single stab wound. The blade went straight into the heart.” The forensic pathologist stood in the center of the tent. Yad Hershel was a small man with a goatee beard and a permanent grin that seemed to suggest he found death amusing.

In front of him, Green’s body lay on the ground, partly covered with a bloodied white sheet, one end of which was held up by Hershel. “Of course death would have been quick, but very painful.”

Lela studied Green’s corpse. Big and fleshy, the American professor was tall, about 250 pounds, with a mane of gray hair. His eyes bulged, a shocked look on his face as if his own death had come as a complete surprise.

Lela examined the Gerber folding knife planted to the hilt in his upper chest. Channels of dried blood radiated out from the wound. Lela looked away, taking in the expansive walk-in tent.

A camp bed lay in one corner, a storage trunk in another, a tier of bookshelves stacked with books and ledgers by the bed. Nearby was an old desk, and on top of it what looked like a rolled clump of rotting material. An ancient-looking clay urn sat on the ground.

Lela nodded. “I’ve seen enough. What else can you can tell me, Yad?”

Hershel replaced the sheet. “Death happened sometime between five and six A.M. The knife hilt had been wiped clean of any prints. We found four sets of footprints leading to the door, but from the wipe marks I found on either side of them I reckon they came after the killer left. The floor had been scrubbed, probably just after the killing. I wish my wife was as clean.”

“What else?”

“A couple of partial bootprints to the right outside the tent—we’ll try and match those. As for fingerprints, we’d be busy for another year just trying to document them all. On the bookcases, the storage trunk, even part of the ground sheet. This was the professor’s office, after all. All of the crew came in here at some stage. We took at least twenty sets of prints off the center tent poles alone.”

Lela noticed a dried crimson spatter on the dirt floor, knelt, touched it with her fingertip, and placed the tip to her nostrils. Hershel grinned. “It’s a coffee stain. I checked.”