DEATH (The Justice Cycle Book 1) by J Kiefer (best classic books to read TXT) 📗

are with him in the picture are his. They might help us identify him.”

Johansson returned the locket to Jared. His hand trembled slightly as he reached for the locket. It took all of his internal fortitude not to swipe the locket from the older man’s hand.

“Okay. Why don’t you two take that thing down to the lab and have the CSI geeks see what they can get off it? Also, make a copy of the picture and send it to me so I can give it to my people to see what they can dredge up on the two kids. I want to warn you both, though—this is still most likely another dead end.”

“Copy that,” replied Jared as Johansson turned to walk away.

“You’re not coming with us?” Dana asked.

“Nah, I need to make a few phone calls and check in with the big wigs back in NYC. I trust you two can handle this without daddy watching over your shoulder. Just make sure it gets there this time, okay?”

Johansson pulled out his phone and left the two detectives to their task.

Jared turned to Dana who still appeared a bit shaken. “Well, that went better than I thought it would.”

“Yeah,” was all she said as she watched the FBI agent walk away. Her face was still pale, and her eyes were sunken in from lack of sleep, and she looked as if she’d just lost her best friend. The truth was, however, that she felt like there was something off about Agent Johansson. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she was sure he was hiding something from them.

Jared smiled and gently nudged her on the arm, and his heart skipped a beat as he touched her. He stared at her out of the corner of his eye and for the first in his life, he allowed himself to notice just how beautiful she truly was. “Come on, let’s take this down to Brad and see what he can find.”

Nineteen

It took a few hours for Brad Henderson to get back to the two detectives on what his CSI team had been able to discover from their inspection of the locket. Thankfully, he did not ask any questions about why he was just now getting the item, or why the chain of custody forms had not been filled out properly.

Dana and Jared caught up on paperwork while they waited. They called Johansson as soon as Brad had notified them he was done with his preliminary examination of the locket. All three investigators headed down to the CSI lab.

Brad, a blond man with a paunch and two-day-old scruff, was hunched over examining something when they walked through the lab door. He did not look up to greet them but simply waved them over.

“What have you got?” Jared asked curiously.

Looking up, Brad blinked to give his eyes time to adjust. In front of him on the table was the locket perched under a large lighted magnifying glass.

“Well, in all honesty, not much at all.”

Jared grunted. “Really?”

“I can see it’s very old. The writing on it, from what I can gather, is some form of pre-cuneiform script.”

“Pre-cuneiform?” Dana asked. “From what I remember from my Humanities class in college, cuneiform is the oldest form of writing we know of. How could this be pre-cuneiform?”

“Well, because it looks like cuneiform, works similar to cuneiform, but is not cuneiform. And just to be clear, there are other forms of ancient writing that are considered possibly to be older in other regions of the world, such as from South and Central America.”

Dana rolled her eyes and grimaced. “Okay, so this locket is over five thousand years old?”

“Well, as far as scholars can tell, cuneiform came into prominence somewhere around 3500-3000 BCE and this is most likely older, so from the writing alone, we can assume that the locket is somewhere around five thousand five hundred to six thousand years old.”

Johansson whistled in amazement. “Holy crap.”

“Holy crap indeed. There is just one problem with that assumption.”

“And what is that?”

“Either this locket was kept in a vacuum chamber for the last six thousand years, or it is not really that old. In fact, it is in such pristine condition that I would’ve assumed it was made yesterday.”

“What did the carbon dating turn up?” asked Dana.

“That’s another problem with this locket’s enigma. We couldn’t get any readings from carbon dating.”

“How is that possible?” she asked.

“Well for starters, it takes at least a day to determine how old an object is through carbon dating, and moreover, it requires a piece of the material to use in order to determine how old the object is.”

Dana groaned. “Okay, so when will you get the results back from the lab?”

“As far as I can tell, never,” he said flatly.

“Never?” asked Jared incredulously.

“Yup.” Brad replied matter-of-factly. “One other bizarre feature of this mysterious little piece of jewelry is that the material strength of the metal is so strong that we have not been able to cut it with any tool we have here in this lab. So, that rules out it being gold, which of course is what it appears to be made of. Moreover, the jewel—which looks like a ruby—is harder than a diamond. This little trinket really is a conundrum.”

“Okay,” Johansson said. “I guess I can take it to the lab in NYC to see if they can have any luck with it there.”

“Unless they have a plasma laser, I am betting that they won’t.”

“You’re probably right about the laser, but the tech geeks there do have a whole lot of toys to work with,” Johansson said with a smile.

“What about the picture?” Dana asked Johansson. “Has the Bureau gotten back to you on that?”

“Not yet, but it usually takes a while and I just sent the image to them a few hours ago, so I am not expecting anything for at least a few more hours.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Brad said apologetically.

“It’s okay.