Faye Kellerman - The Ritual Bath

Well, golly! How convenient! Who the hell would want to set up Cory? His friends? The real murderer? But how would the real murderer know about Cory as a suspect? Unless he was an insider in the yeshiva and knew that Cory had pulled a knife on Rina. The interviews suddenly seemed more pressing.

Shlomo Stein sat hunched over a volume of Talmud. He’d been sitting that way since Decker started the interview a half hour before. His eyes remained fixed on the text in front of him, but the fidgeting of his hands and the shaking of his leg were giveaways; his mind was decidedly elsewhere. His beard was black and heavy and trimmed to a Van Dyke point a couple of inches below his chin. He wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a pair of black slacks, and a large black velvet yarmulke.

Why the hell was he being so uncooperative, Decker wondered? What did he have to gain by being so outwardly contemptuous? Decker looked over the notes he’d taken, then said:

“I want to go over this again with you.”

“What’s the point?”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

“You’re not a judge. You’re a cop. I have only one judge, and He’s the one I’ll ultimately answer to.”

“Well, right now why don’t you bear with me and answer my questions?”

Stein said nothing.

“You were studying the entire time with your partner when Florence Marley was killed?”

“Yes.”

“The entire night?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t leave the classroom?”

“No.”

“To get a breath of fresh air?”

“No.”

“To get something to eat? To go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

“You put all your body functions on hold for twelve hours, Mr. Stein?”

“The learning of Torah liberates one to the point that one forgets such banalities as body functions. The words of Hashem envelop and whisk one out of the corporeal and into the spiritual. I was trying to soar above my meager earthly existence and grow close to Hakodosh Boruch Hu . Of course, you couldn’t understand that.”

“What I do understand, Mr. Stein, is that while you were spreading your heavenly wings in holy ascent, Florence Marley was hacked up by some psycho. It caused quite a commotion out there-all the people and noise. You didn’t hear a thing?”

“I was learning.”

That was supposed to explain it all.

Decker tapped his pencil against his note pad. He ached to break through the man’s holier-than-thou attitude. The hell with it.

“How’d you go from pimping to praying, Scotty Stevens?”

Stein burned with a rage that glowed on his face.

“Why don’t you crawl back into your anti-Semitic sewer, Detective, instead of raking innocent Jews over the coals? I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to be a big sheygets hero to impress a woman who is unattainable to you. You’re a goy, Decker. She’d rather be raped by a scum-of-the-earth Jew than let you touch her. Ask her. Ask her what’s halachically correct.”

“Why? Are you the scum-of-the-earth Jew who tried to rape her?”

“Crawl back into your gutter,” Stein mumbled, then returned his eyes to his book.

“So no one can attest to your whereabouts except Shraga Mendelsohn-your partner.”

“Yes.”

“Did Mr. Mendelsohn ever leave you alone to attend to his bodily needs, or was he also imbued with the holy spirit?”

“I don’t remember. Why don’t you ask him?”

“I will, Mr. Stein. And if there are any inconsistencies, you’ll hear from me again.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Stein growled. “Amalek always has a way of rearing its ugly head.”

Decker scribbled down “Amalek” in his note pad, then stuffed it in his breast pocket. He’d ask Rina what the word meant. He hated insults he didn’t understand.

“I don’t know what I can tell you that Shlomi hasn’t already said. We were together the entire night.”

“Just a few questions, Mr. Mendelsohn.”

“Well, let’s get going. It’s almost time for mincha .”

Mendelsohn rocked back and forth, avoiding Decker’s eyes, and bit into an already chewed-up left thumbnail. Behind a full blond beard was a youthful, handsome face. Smooth complexion, light blue eyes, straight thin features that were almost too delicate. His black hat covered most of his hair, but a few blond strands managed to peek out from under the rim.

“Did you ever leave Mr. Stein alone?”

“Alone? No.”

“Not to get something to eat or to go to the bathroom?”

“I might have gone to the bathroom. Oh, I called my wife to tell her I wasn’t coming home.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember the exact time: Early, around eight I guess.”

Mendelsohn chomped on the cuticle of his thumb. A tiny red rivulet began to ooze out. He sucked up the blood and moved onto his index finger.

“How long did it take you to make the phone call?”

“I used the pay phone in the main lobby. Maybe I was gone five minutes. Not long enough for Shlomi to disappear, murder, and return. And I wasn’t gone long enough to murder and return. I don’t know why you’re bothering us like this.”

He screwed up his face and clenched his hands.

“I do know. It’s because of Shlomi’s record. Well, he can’t make his past go away. But I’ll be damned if you’re going to use it against him in the future. I don’t care what Rina told you about him, he’s changed. She had no right to say anything to you. To talk to a…an outsider .”

Decker ignored him.

“You were studying with him the entire time?”

“Yes.”

“Do you two ever do anything else together besides study?”

Mendelsohn looked blank.

“Like what?”

“Hobbies. Fish, for instance. Do you two ever talk to each other about secular things?”

“There is nothing else besides Torah. All other things are nahrishkeit .”

“Well, what about your family, your wives?”

Mendelsohn’s face registered confusion.

“What about them?”

“Are they nahrishkeit? ”

“Of course not! They’re part of Torah!”

“Do you talk to your wife about Torah?”

“No. Well, yes. As it pertains to the household, to the raising of the children. But we don’t learn together.”

“Why not?”

Mendelsohn giggled to himself.

“You don’t learn Gemara with your wife, Detective.” He shook his head. “ Ayzeh goyishe kop .”

“So your wife knew you were learning all night.”

“Yes.”

“And it didn’t bother her to be left alone?”

“Of course not! She supports it. Why else would I be in kollel if she didn’t approve? My Torah learning is her salvation also.”

“And you called her around eight?”

“What are you trying to prove? That I murdered a black woman that I’ve never met and used the phone call to my wife as an alibi? Detective, Jews don’t murder, Jews don’t rape. Your people murder and rape, not mine.”

“Do you believe in the Ten Commandments?” Decker asked.

“Of course.”

“That they are God-given laws?”

“Yes.”

“And God gave them to the Jews?”

“Yes.”

“And the Jews He gave them to were considered righteous men and women?”

“What are you getting at?” Mendelsohn asked, gnawing at his right thumbnail.

“Simply this. If God was so sure that righteous Jewish men and women wouldn’t murder, why did He bother with the sixth commandment?”

The thumb began to bleed.

Decker’s ranch was four acres of scrub oak and fruit trees set into parched terrain. It was located midway between Deep Canyon and the police station, in a pocket of land that once had been used for commercial grazing. Developers had harbored lofty plans for the acreage during the real estate boom of the late seventies, but when interest rates shot up suddenly, the ground went fallow. Decker bought the parcel cheap and went about sinking roots. He’d needed something tangible-something to call his own-after his divorce.