“And that this is the unreported articulated skeleton.”

“I do.”

“You think this skeleton may have been shipped out of Israel, and not reinterred with the others.”

“I do.”

“Why not?”

“That is the mil ion-dol ar question.”

I picked up the print.

“Where’s this fel ow now?”

“That, Dr. Brennan, earns a mil ion more.”

7

EACH YEAR, ONE HAPLESS BURG BECOMES JAMBOREE CENTRALfor the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. For a week, engineers, psychiatrists, dentists, lawyers, pathologists, anthropologists, and myriad lab geeks converge like moths on a rol ed-up rug. New Orleans drew the short straw this year.

Monday through Wednesday are given over to board, committee, and business meetings. On Thursday and Friday, scientific sessions offer insider tips on cutting-edge theory and technique. As a grad student, then as a tenderfoot consultant, I attended these presentations with the ardent zeal of a religious fanatic. Now, I prefer informal networking with old friends.

Using either approach, the conference is exhausting.

Partly my fault. I volunteer for too much. Translate that to I do not struggle sufficiently against impressment.

I spent Sunday working with a col eague with whom I was coauthoring an article for publication in theJournal of Forensic Sciences. The next three days passed in a blur of Robert’s Rules, rémoulade, and rounds of drinks. Hurricanes for my booze-rational col eagues. Perrier for me.

Conversations centered on two topics: previous escapades and odd cases. Topping this year’s register of the bizarre and the baffling were skeletonized gal stones the size of Cocoa Puffs, a jailhouse suicide with a telephone cord, and a sleepwalking cop with his own bul et in his brain.

I floated a description of the Ferris case. Opinions differed concerning the peculiar beveling. Most agreed with the scenario I’d been considering.

My schedule did not permit sitting through the scientific papers. By the time I cabbed it to the New Orleans airport Wednesday, I was beat.

Mechanical problem. Forty-minute delay. Welcome to air travel in America. Check in a minute late and your flight has departed. Check in an hour early and your flight has been delayed. Mechanical problems, crew problems, weather problems, problem problems. I knew them al .

An hour later I’d finished entering committee minutes into my laptop, and my five-forty flight was posted for eight.

So much for the Chicago connection.

Frustrated, I dragged myself to customer services, stood in line, and obtained new routing. The good news: I would get to Montreal tonight. The bad news: I would land shortly before midnight. The additional bad news: I would visit Detroit on the way.

Frothing accomplishes little in these situations, other than raising one’s blood pressure.

At the airport bookstore, only a few mil ion copies of the year’s blockbuster bestsel er barred my way. I plucked one from the pyramid. The flap blurbed a mystery that would shatter an “explosive ancient truth.”

Like Masada?

Why not? The rest of the universe was reading the thing.