"Shit!"

Peter slammed the steering wheel with his fists. The resultant toot of the horn drew resentful glares from the drivers behind him and ahead. What should have been a thirty-minute drive home from the medical examiner's office had already stretched to an hour. On his phone map, the six-way intersection ahead looked like a crimson spider web.

Frustrated and exhausted, he pulled the rental car to the curb, parked, got out, and continued on foot. His apartment was only five blocks away. Besides, the walk might do him some good. He was still coughing up gunk from the night before.

The cause of the traffic jam was an articulated Metro bus that had come to rest in the middle of the intersection, blocking all lanes of traffic. Its former passengers gathered on the sidewalk, many raising their phones to record the unfolding drama. A little red sports car had sideswiped the bus. Its driver, a thin, middle-aged white woman in a skimpy red dress, had jumped onto the hood, where she stood with legs astride, stiletto heels threatening to punch through the thin metal. A pair of firefighters implored her to come down into their waiting arms, but she invited them up with a hooked finger, gyrating her hips seductively. Shouting now, she proclaimed to be the Queen of Morocco, the Queen of Sheba, the First Lady, Lady Gaga, a movie star, a porn star. Her sidewalk audience cheered, and at the suggestion of one particular clown, she bared her breasts. Up jumped the firefighters, and down she came, wrapped in a blanket.

Peter veered down a gravel side street to circumvent the commotion, but it dead-ended at the high, wrought-iron gate of a cemetery, a Jewish cemetery, the one he passed every day on his ride to work. Curious, he crossed the threshold and drifted along a path of crushed white quartz that meandered through the headstones, plain and unadorned, many inscribed with Hebrew letters.

In the corner of the lot, a modest white chapel crouched beneath stately Douglas fir trees. Just beyond it, in a shady patch by the fence, three workers in coveralls stood by a freshly dug grave, their long-handled shovels planted in a mound of dark earth. A coffin made of raw pine rested on planks laid across the open grave. Four elderly men in rumpled dark suits gathered at the foot of the grave, their black skullcaps bowed. One of them, the rabbi it appeared, held a floppy prayer book in his hand as he chanted.

Yeetgadal v'yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah

Two of the workers lifted the coffin using heavy nylon straps. The third removed the planks, and together they lowered the coffin into the grave. It touched bottom with a soft knock. The straps slithered up, and the workers retreated to their mound of dirt.

Oseh shalom beem'ro'mahv, hoo ya'aseh shalom, alynu v'al kohl yisrael

The rabbi steadied himself against his colleague, stooped for a fistful of dirt, and tossed it into the grave. When each had followed suit, they left the rabbi alone and walked the quartz path, barely nodding as they passed Peter and exited through the main gate.

Peter sat on a stone bench, catching his breath as he listened to the sounds of the workmen digging, the rhythmic slicing of steel in soft earth, the hollow thuds of dirt on the coffin's lid.

At last, the rabbi turned and shuffled up the path. He was maybe seventy, short, handsome and clean-shaven, with fair skin, lush gray hair, and bushy eyebrows. Seeing Peter sitting there, he stopped, his narrow-set blue eyes sparkling above a Roman nose. "Can I help you?" he asked in the voice belonging to a much taller man.

"No, no," Peter croaked. He cleared his throat. "Sorry, just getting over something."

The rabbi frowned. "So you didn't know the deceased?"

"No."

He shook his head. "I didn't think so. She had no family, the poor soul. She died in a nursing home." He squinted at the orange blades of late afternoon light slicing through the trees. Then with a curt nod, he turned to leave.

"Wait," said Peter. The headstones had given him an idea. "Would you have a second to translate something? It's Hebrew." He took the piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it over.

"I'm not certain this is the time or the place for translating documents."

"Please. It's just six letters. They were engraved inside my dad's wedding ring."

"I presume he can no longer tell you himself."

"That's right."

The rabbi put on a pair of bifocals, his bushy eyebrows twitching.

"What does it say?"

"Nothing. At least not in Hebrew. Are the letters in the correct order?"

"I don't know. They were in a circle, so I wasn't sure where to start or stop."

"I suppose the letters might be scrambled," said the rabbi. "Yes, there are many words here, ancient and modern. Hovah, yasha—ruin and deliverance."

"Which one is it?"

He studied Peter over the rims of his glasses. "Ruin and deliverance are fruits of the same vine. Are you Jewish?"

"No. Catholic."

"And your father?"

"He was Catholic, too, Irish Catholic."

"I see." He looked down at the scrap of paper, frowning. Then he turned it upside down. "Ah, of course. It appears that whoever engraved your father's ring got it backwards. Hebrew is written right to left. But if I read this left to right, it spells ha'yeshua. It's an ancient Hebrew phrase meaning the salvation." He handed back the paper. "There you are."

Peter stared at the six letters, foreign and strange. Ha'yeshua, the salvation. Not seh-mee-nah see-nah-pees.

By the time Peter looked up, the rabbi was disappearing into the chapel through a side door. Peter followed, hoping to thank the man, but when he peeked inside, the rabbi was already gone. On the far side of the main doors, a car was driving away, wheels crunching the gravel.

Peter stepped inside and leaned wearily against a pew. The scent of wood varnish and dust lingered in the still air. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows, painting the white plaster walls in colorful geometric shapes.

He turned to leave through the side door, but the silhouette of a woman blocked the way. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. "Are you Peter Barshman?" she said with a heavy accent.

"Yeah?"

She was maybe thirty, short, sleek, and athletic. Her skin was dark olive, black-brown eyes wide set. She wore her curly black hair short, something from the 1940s.

"I am Nechama Davila," she said, extending her hand. Her first name had that harsh back-of-the-throat sound peculiar to certain Middle Eastern languages.

Peter shook her hand. It was warm and strong.

Her dark eyes scanned the chapel's interior. "I work for the Israel Antiquities Authority, Robberies Prevention Unit." Then her gaze settled back on Peter. "May I speak with you for a moment?"

"Why?"

She handed him a business card. It was printed in both Hebrew and English and embossed with a golden candelabra. "I'd like to ask you a few questions regarding an artifact that was stolen from the State of Israel."

He looked up from the card. "Um, OK?"

She moved to a nearby pew, and Peter noticed she walked with a stiff limp, a spastic paresis of the leg perhaps. She sat and looked up at him. "Please, allow me to show you something." She took a phone from her handbag, tapped in a code, swiped twice, then held up an image for Peter to see.

It was a photograph of a box carved from smooth sand-colored stone, trapezoidal in shape, narrower at the base. According to the scale at the bottom, it was just under a meter in length, half as deep. Fine letters etched its surface. They were angular like Viking runes, but clearly different.

"Have you seen this object before?" she asked.

"No. What is it?"

"It's a first-century Jewish ossuary, a container for bones of the dead. It was discovered in the West Bank city of Ramallah. My government is willing to pay up to half a million US dollars to anyone providing information leading to its recovery."

"That's a lot of money, but I really don't see what this has to do with me."

"Actually, it has to do with your father."

Her words tingled the back of Peter's neck. "What about him?"

"We believe he has information regarding the artifact's whereabouts." She held up her free hand. "I know this might sound strange to you, but he was the one who contacted us about the artifact. I flew all the way here to find out why. Unfortunately, he's not returning my calls."

Peter studied the contours of her face, smooth and clean, like a Greek statue's. Either she really knew nothing about his father's death, or she was very good at hiding it. He took a step back. "You followed me here, didn't you?"

A pause. "Yes, I did."

He reached back blindly, fingers searching for the doorknob. "Look, I don't know who the hell you are, but I don't know anything about your artifact."

"Please," she said, her tone contrite. "Can you at least ask him to return my calls? My number is on the card."

Maybe she didn't know. Either way, Peter had no desire to find out. All he wanted was to go home and crawl into bed. He held up her business card. "OK," he agreed. "I'll let him know."

Then he opened the door and left her sitting alone in the chapel.

In the fading light, Peter trudged up the stairwell and opened his apartment door to a draft of cool air. Once he turned on the main lights, the reason for the draft was clear. In his haste to get to the medical examiner's office that afternoon, he had left the slider to the veranda wide open. Closing it again, he sat at the kitchen table and buried his face in his hands. He was exhausted. His chest ached. His head throbbed. He needed a shower. No, it was something else that stank, something musty, something mousy. A quick look under the table provided the answer.

On the floor near the baseboard lay the evil gray squirrel, dead, its fur and whiskers matted with flecks of white paper and something sticky. Deprived of its free birdseed, the greedy little thing must have come in through the open slider in search of food, knocking the candy bowl from the table. It had eaten most of the jellybeans, but there had not been many to begin with, certainly not enough to harm a squirrel, let alone kill it.

Peter got down on his knees. There on the floor was that woman's earring from the truck. He swept it up along with a scattering of tiny brown fibers. Brushing them from his hand, he retrieved the pack of Chestershire Lights and out of habit brought it to his nose for a whiff.

He froze.

There were far fewer cigarettes than Peter remembered—the fibers on the floor, the flecks of white paper sticking to the squirrel's matted fur. The little devil had gotten into the cigarettes.

And now it was dead.

He dropped the pack of Chestershire Lights and scrambled out from under the table. Dashing to the sink, he scrubbed his hands with soap and scalding water until they were raw. Something in the cigarettes killed the squirrel, the same something that made Peter ill with a single whiff—the same something that killed his father.

Peter took his phone and called the King CountyHospital operator. "I need to page Dr. Cornelia Hoffman . . . yes,the medical examiner. Now!"

_______________

Photo: Ahavai Sholom Cemetery, Portland, Oregon, USA -- a place of remembrance for the author.

Photo credit: Kelly Manning