I was finding this very confusing. Why would Yadin have opposed reburial of the cave bones on the Mount of Olives? Why suggest reburial of the palace skeletons on Masada, but return of the cave bones to the cave? Was it a question of keeping the cave folks off holy ground? Or was he uncomfortable with the idea of the cave folks and the palace folks sharing the same grave?

Charlie broke my chain of thought with a line from “Hey, Big Spender.”

“Did anything else turn up with the cave bones?” I asked.

“A lot of domestic utensils. Cooking pots, lamps, basketry.”

“Suggesting the caves had been lived in.”

Jake nodded.

“By whom?”

“It was wartime. Jerusalem was toast. All sorts of refugees might have fled to high ground. Some might have lived apart from the zealot community.”

Ah-hah. “So those in the cave could have been non-Jews?”

Solemn nod.

“Not what Israel wanted to publicize.”

“Not at all. Masada had become its sacred emblem. Jews making their last stand, choosing suicide over surrender. The site was a metaphor for the new state. Until recently, the Israeli military held special ceremonies inducting troops into their elite units on top of Masada.”

“Ouch.”

“According to Tsafrir, the cave bones were in disarray, with clothing fragments intermingled among them, as though the bodies had been dumped,” Jake said. “That’s not a typical pattern for Jewish burial.”

Birdie chose that moment to hop onto my lap.

I made introductions. Jake scratched the cat’s ear, then picked up his thread.

“To date, the Israel Exploration Society has published five volumes on the Masada excavation. Volume three notes that the caves were surveyed and excavated, but, aside from that, and a map with an outline drawing of Cave 2001, there’s no mention anywhere of anything found at that locus, human or material.”

Jake leaned back and picked up his mug. Lowered it.

“Wait. Change that. There is an addendum at the back of volume four. A carbon-fourteen report on textiles found in the cave. That testing was done years later. But that’s it.”

Displacing Birdie to the floor, I slid Kessler’s photo from below Jake’s Masada diagram.

“So where does this guy fit in?”

“That’s where things get really weird. Cave 2001 contained the remains of one fully intact skeleton completely separate from the intermingled bones. The individual was supine, with hands crossed, head turned to the side.” Jake impaled me with a look. “Not a single report mentions that articulated skeleton.”

“I assume you learned about the skeleton from this same volunteer who worked the cave back in the sixties.”

Jake nodded.

“This is the part where you tell me that the articulated skeleton wasn’t reburied with the others,” I guessed.

“This is the part.” Jake drained his mug. “Press coverage of the reinterment consistently refers to twenty-seven individuals, three from the northern palace, and twenty-four from the cave.”

“Not twenty-five or twenty-six. Maybe they left out the fetus.”

“I’m convinced they left out the fetusand the articulated skeleton.”

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying a volunteer excavator, an eyewitness, told you personally that he and Tsafrir recovered a fully articulated skeleton from Cave 2001. But no such skeleton was ever mentioned in press coverage, or in Yadin’s official report or popular book.”

Jake nodded.

“And you think that skeleton was not reburied with the rest of the cave and palace bones?”

Jake nodded again.

I tapped the Kessler photo. “Did this volunteer remember if photos were taken?”

“He snapped them himself.”

“Who had possession of the remains during their five years above-ground?” I asked.

“Haas.”

“Did he publish?”

“Nothing. And Haas typically wrote exhaustive reports, including drawings, tables, measurements, even facial reconstructions. His analysis of the burials at Giv’at ha-Mivtar is incredibly detailed.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Haas took a bad fall in seventy-five. Put him in a coma. He died in eighty-seven without regaining consciousness. Or writing a report.”

“So Haas won’t be clearing up the body count or the mystery of the intact skeleton.”

“Not without a séance.”

“Hey, big spender…” Charlie was sticking with a winner.

Jake changed tack. “Let me ask you this. You’re Yadin. You’ve got these strange cave bones. What’s the first thing you do?”

“Today?”

“In the sixties.”

“I was still losing baby teeth.”

“Work with me.”

“Carbon-fourteen testing. Establish antiquity.”

“I’ve told that back then carbon-fourteen dating wasn’t done in Israel. So tally this into the picture. In his rants to the Knesset, Lorinez insisted that some Masada skeletons had been sent abroad.”

“Lorinez was the ultra-Orthodox MK pushing for reburial?”

“Yes. And what Lorinez was saying makes sense. Why wouldn’t Yadin request radiocarbon dating on the cave burials?”

“So you think Lorinez was right,” I said.

“I do. But according to Yadin, no Masada bones left the country.”

“Why not?”

“In onePost interview I read Yadin said it wasn’t his job to initiate such tests. In the same article an anthropologist laid it off to cost.”

“Radiocarbon dating isn’t that expensive.” Even as long ago as the early eighties, testing only ran about $150 per sample. “Surprising Yadin didn’t order it, given the importance of the site.”

“Not as surprising as Haas’s failure to write up the cave bones,” Jake said.

I let things percolate a moment in my head. Then, “You suspect the cave folks may not have been part of the main zealot group?”

“I do.”

I picked up Kessler’s photo.

“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 million-dollar question.”

I picked up the print.

“Where’s this fellow now?”

“That, Dr. Brennan, earns a million more.”

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 rolled-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 colleague 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 colleagues. 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 gallstones the size of Cocoa Puffs, a jailhouse suicide with a telephone cord, and a sleepwalking cop with his own bullet 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.