"For his purposes, Heller did exactly what he should have done, but his procedures would have missed the kind of evidence that I was looking for. That's why I decided to have a second look. I was interested in what might ordinarily have been missed among all the microscopic clutter.
"I believe that what I found will explain the whole Shroud mystery." Goodman paused. "But there's more."
9 ibid., pp. 126 and 163.
Decker waited but Goodman was silent. "Well, what is it?" Decker asked.
"Where's your sense of drama, Hawthorne?" asked Goodman. "You'll see, soon enough."
At the University, Goodman drove to the William G. Young Science building on the east side of the U.C.L.A. campus and parked in the tenured faculty parking lot. Goodman's office was on the fourth floor and looked out over a courtyard westward to the Engineering building. It was arranged very much the same as the office he had at U.T., including the ragged but now framed 'I think, therefore, I'am. I think' poster and a laser-printed version of Goodman's first law of achievement. "Before we go any further," Goodman began, as they settled into his office, "I must confess that I have brought you here under slightly false pretenses." Decker didn't like the sound of that but he let Goodman continue. "What I am going to show you – you may not reveal to anyone. At least not yet."
"Then why was it so important that I come out here right away?" Decker asked, both puzzled and a little perturbed at having been misled.
"Because," Goodman answered, "I need a witness. And the way I figure it, you owe me. You could have gotten me in a lot of trouble with my colleagues when you ran your story on the Turin project. The only reporter that was supposed to be there was Weaver from National Geographic. We weren't even supposed to talk-to anyone from the press. And then a week after we got back, the whole world reads wire reports of a copyrighted story in a Knoxville paper by some damned reporter who managed to pass himself off as a member of the team. And that damned reporter just happened to decide to pass himself off as my damned assistant!
"I went through no end of scrutiny over that, but it could have been much worse. You could have cost me the trust of a lot of my professional colleagues. Fortunately you did make yourself useful while you were there and you made a good impression on the rest of the team members. But still, it might not have worked out so well. If anyone had thought that I knowingly helped a reporter get onto the team, I'd have been blackballed as a security risk on all kinds of future projects. So the way I figure it, you owe me, and you owe me big."
"Hey, I was just following Goodman's first law of achievement: 'The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules,'" Decker responded. But Goodman was right and Decker knew it. His conscience had always bothered him a little about the way he got on the Shroud team. "Okay," he said at last, "it was a lousy thing to do. I do owe you. So what is it you want to show me that I can't tell anyone about?"
"You can tell anyone you like, but only when I say so. In fact, at the right time I'll want you to report it; just not right away. Right now I need a witness and you know I can't stand most reporters. Truth is, you're just barely tolerable," Goodman added with a grin, trying to lighten the mood. "I need someone I can trust to keep the story quiet until I'm ready to go public. You've covered the Shroud story from the beginning. People will believe you when you report what I'm going to show you, but if the story comes out too soon it could doom the whole project."
"But, Professor, if this is about some research you've done, why don't you just publish it yourself in a scholarly journal?"
"I will, of course, publish my work in detail later. But, well… I'm afraid I'll need to break the ice with the public before I reveal the exact nature of my research to my peers."
Decker frowned in confusion.
"It's just, I'm afraid I've applied a little of Goodman's first law of achievement myself. There are those in the scientific community, who, because of their narrow-mindedness, might condemn my methods. My hope is that once the benefits of my work are well known, public opinion will be too strong in my favor for my peers to condemn my methods. So, in exchange for confidentiality now, you get exclusivity later. As the story evolves you'll be the only reporter to have it. Certainly after you publish each part of the story, I'll have to talk to other press people, but I'll make sure you have the story a week or two before anyone else."
"What do you mean, 'as the story evolves'?" asked Decker.
"What I'm going to show you today is just the beginning. There will be several installments along the way before you report the overall story." Decker still had no idea what Goodman had discovered, but he couldn't help but be interested.
"So it all comes down to five things," Goodman concluded. "First, I need a witness I can trust. Second, you owe me for Turin. Third, you've covered the Shroud story since the beginning. Fourth, if you provide me with confidentiality, I'll provide you with exclusivity."
"And fifth?" Decker asked.
"Fifth," Goodman answered, "is that if you report the story before I say to, I'll deny every word of it and you'll make a total ass of yourself. You'll never prove a thing."
"I thought you just said you thought that people would believe me."
"Yes, if I back you up and you back me up. But by yourself, and with my denial, they'll think you're crazy. Decker, I'm offering you the biggest exclusive of all time on the greatest discovery – scientific or otherwise – in the last 500 years. But in some ways it's also the most bizarre."
"Okay," Decker said. "So let's hear it."
"Do we have a deal?" Goodman asked, extending his hand to seal the agreement.
"Sure," Decker said, leaning over the desk to shake Goodman's hand. "So what's this big scoop about the Shroud?"
Goodman leaned back in his chair, placed his fingertips together, his elbows on the arm rests, and gazed off into space, apparently considering his words. "Consider the following hypothesis," Goodman began. "The image of the man on the Shroud of Turin is the result of a sudden burst of heat and light energy from the body of a crucified man as his body went through an instantaneous regeneration or 'resurrection,' if you will."
Decker's mouth dropped open. There was silence for a long moment and then he began to laugh. "You're kidding me, right? This is all payback for Turin, isn't it?"
"I assure you, I am entirely serious," Goodman responded as Decker's laughter continued.
"But this is ridiculous," Decker said as he stopped laughing and tried to read Goodman's face for any hint that despite his denial, he was, in fact, playing a practical joke. Finding none, he continued. "Professor, that's not a scientific hypothesis; that's a statement of faith. And since the Shroud isn't old enough to be the burial cloth of Christ, it's not even blind faith, it's ignorant faith."
"It is not a statement of faith at all! It's based on sound scientific fact and reasoning. There is a way to test my hypothesis and to prove it."
Decker's eyes squinted, revealing the puzzlement behind them. "Okay, I'll bite," he said reluctantly, "how can you prove it?"
"By way of explanation," Goodman answered, "let me ask you what you know about Francis Crick."
Decker was a little resistant to Goodman's unexplained change of subject but decided to allow his old professor some flexibility and not argue the point. "I know he won the Nobel Prize in medicine back in the early '60s… "
"62," Goodman interrupted.
"… for his co-discovery with James Watson of the double helix structure of DNA. And I know he published a book a few years back… " Decker struggled to remember the name of the book.