Faye Kellerman - Stone Kiss

“Now, that’s a very good point.” Novack placed the magazine in an evidence bag. “I’ll give these jokers a call, see if Ephraim was associated with any of these chapters. If they meet tomorrow night, you want to come with me and pay them a visit?”

“That would be great,” Decker answered.

“Wanna see the X-rated stuff?” Novack called out.

“Twist my arm,” Gindi answered.

Decker’s toolshed was bigger than the bedroom. The trio could barely fit without bodily contact. There was an unmade twin bed crammed against the wall and a single nightstand on which rested a phone, an alarm clock, and one framed picture-a Chasidic man standing next to, but not touching, a young girl of about fourteen. Decker stared at the picture.

“May I?”

Novack shrugged.

Decker picked up the framed picture, studying the faces. The girl was far from beautiful. Her nose was large and drooping, her cheeks still holding some baby fat. But her eyes-dark and round-shone with a mischievous gleam. She wore a long-sleeved pink shirt and a long denim skirt. Her hair was pulled back, probably braided. Her lips were shaped in a small, mysterious smile. The man seemed to be around forty, dressed in typical black-suited Chasidic garb. He was bearded with side locks, his head covered with the ubiquitous black hat. His smile was wide, the folds at the corners of his eyes crinkling with happiness. He showed the picture to Novack. “Is that Shayndie?”

“Hard to tell from such a small image, but I think so.”

“They gave you a bigger image?”

“Yeah, a bat mitzvah photo. I had it photocopied yesterday evening, and this morning we’ve been passing it around the crime-scene area. That’s what I was doing when you called. She was wearing this pink fluffy dress. She looked like a tuft of cotton candy. She also looked way younger than thirteen.”

“She was probably twelve,” Decker said. “Orthodox girls have their bat mitzvah ceremony at twelve, not thirteen.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Novack nodded.

Decker stared at the photo. “She was older than twelve in this picture. Still fresh-faced. God, what a terrible thing! Can I keep this?”

“I’m bending rules.”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

Decker pocketed the picture. Again he scanned the room. A fourteen-inch TV sat on several cinder blocks at the foot of the bed. Novack told them that he had found the two boxes underneath the bed-one held dog-eared paperback fiction, the other held standard porno magazines.

Decker bent down and sniffed the sheets.

Novack said, “I didn’t smell any jizz, if that’s what you’re doing. But I don’t need to bag the sheets. If we find the girl and she’s”-he made circles with his hand-“if she’s got stuff in her, I got plenty of tubes of humors from the stiff to do DNA testing.”

Gindi was scanning the adult magazines. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Except that this guy was supposedly a holy roller. But even them having stuff like this isn’t out of the ordinary. You go talk to anyone in the nine-oh. Right as the Chasids cross the bridge from the city into Williamsburg, they’ve got these hookers lined up, waiting to ream out their pipes. Okay, so no one’s perfect. But if that ain’t bad enough, they have a real elitist attitude. If you’re not one of them, you don’t count. That’s why it’s okay to skirt the law, because anything but their laws don’t apply to them.”

Novack held up his hands and dropped them to his sides. “It’s hard to believe that these are my people. Grandpa sacrificed everything just to make it over here, and these yutzes are too blind to notice what real freedom is.”

“Did you find anything to suggest that the vic was molesting the girl?” Decker asked.

“Not so far,” Novack said. “No dirty pictures of the kid, if that’s what you mean.”

Decker nodded. “Any camera equipment or videos?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you have a look in her room yesterday?”

“No, I haven’t been out to the house,” Novack said. “I only talked to the parents at the precinct. Like I told you before, I’m not saying they’re hiding something. Maybe they just find it hard to relate to anyone outside their chevrah .”

Decker knew that chevrah meant their circle of friends. “Could be.”

“That’s why, you being here, it’s a good thing for me if you’re legit. You probably could get insider’s info.”

“I’m probably closer than you are, but I’m far from one of them.” Again Decker regarded the picture. Just an uncle trying to do a good deed for a niece? Or a man obsessed with a young girl? “Do you think he brought her here?”

Gindi broke in. “You gotta know where you are, Lieutenant. This is a very religious neighborhood. People talk. How long before it would get around that a religious man is bringing a girl up to his apartment-let alone a girl child. Besides statutory rape being illegal, it’s not tzneosdik .”

Tzneos meant modesty. Decker said, “Maybe it did get back to the brother.”

“Nah.” Gindi shook his head. “If he was doing something bad to her, it wouldn’t be here in home territory.”

Novack came back from a closet holding a box. “Lookie here.”

“Whaddaya got, Micky?”

“Looks like work-related stuff.” Novack plopped the box on the floor and picked up some random pages. “Lists of items, prices, and bar codes from Lieber’s Electronics.”

Decker said, “Ephraim worked in the family business.”

“That’s what they told me.” Novack shuffled through the pages. “The old man told me Ephraim did whatever they needed him to do. And when he wasn’t doing that, he worked inventory. And from the looks of it, he had a pretty good idea of what was going in and out of the stores.”

Gindi tapped his toe. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that they’d put a man with a drug problem in charge of inventory? You know in business, there’s always a certain amount of theft. It’s like dangling a carrot.”

Novack said, “Help yourself as long as you don’t take too much?”

“Exactly.”

Decker broke in. “If they thought he was really a risk, would they have trusted him in any facet of the business? Maybe the old man would, but a brother?” He shook his head. “Betcha Chaim was watching him like a hawk.”

“Well, to me, it’s still an angle,” Gindi said.

“Hey, this is what I do with my people in La-La Land. We throw out ideas and see what sticks.”

“Here too, and you made a good point.” Novack rummaged through the papers. “Just more of the same. I’m gonna bag all this and go through this at my desk, slowly and methodically. Maybe there’re other things that I’m missing.”

“Like what?” Gindi asked.

“Like a bankbook for starters. Guy musta had a checking account.”

Decker said, “It could be that if he was part of one of those twelve-step programs, he didn’t have a checkbook or credit cards. He might have dealt only with cash.”

“Yeah, that’s a point,” Gindi stated. “Lots of addicts have had credit problems and have been caught bouncing or kiting checks.”

“Then that would make our life a little harder,” Novack said. “No paper trail.”

“Maybe he had some credit cards in the past,” Decker said.

Novack folded the ends of the box and began to tape the edges. “I still think we should think about theft within the family business. Maybe Ephraim was paying off old drug debts. Maybe he didn’t pay them off fast enough.”

“And the girl?” Gindi said.

Novack sighed. “She’s a big problem.”

“Poor parents,” Gindi said.