“Not exactly,” I say.
“Well, give her what you’ve got. Can you stay up there tonight? Dig around tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You can expense a hotel room.”
Mike transfers me to Cathy and I give her the quotes I have from Bree and Liza and Matty, and tell her that one person was taken away in an ambulance.
“I’m headed to the hospital now,” I say. “I’ll call the night desk if I get anything.”
Saul and I arrive at the hospital a little before 7:00 P.M., with Van just behind us. The guard at the information booth directs us to the third floor, and as we get off the elevator, two state policemen in plain clothes, badges at their waists, step on.
“How is he?” asks Van.
“He’ll make it,” says the taller Statie.
Keller’s badge gets us past the nurse and we find Isaac in the bed by the window. He is attached to several machines, tubes going into his nose, his arm, beneath his gown. His entire left arm and part of his chest are wrapped in white gauze, blooming with the red and yellow seeping from the wounds beneath. His eyes are closed when we walk in.
“Isaac,” says Saul.
Isaac opens his eyes, and sees me first.
“Aviva,” he says, groggy. “What happened to your hair?”
Saul looks at me.
“I’m Rebekah,” I say.
Isaac closes his eyes again and, perhaps I am imagining it, smiles slightly. He lifts his good arm. He wants me to take his hand. I do.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispers, eyes open now. “You look just like your mother.”
“You know about me,” I say. A mix of pride and relief catch in my throat. Yes, I am that girl. Yes, I have made my way to you. To her.
“I found your articles in the newspaper,” says Isaac. He winces, and presses a button that I imagine delivers pain medication.
“She wanted to tell you about Sammy. I told her it wasn’t the right time to call, but she wasn’t going to change her mind.” He pauses, licks his cracked lips. There is a plastic cup of water with a straw in it beside the bed. I pick it up and he nods and opens his mouth slightly, drinks as I hold the cup for him. When he is done, he nods.
“Your mother… sometimes she gets hold of things in her mind and she can’t let go.”
Sounds familiar. “She called and then she disappeared,” I say.
“She turned her phone off. Sammy knows about technology and he had her worried they were tracking her.”
“They?”
“The Halls,” he says, slowly, now looking at Van.
“This is Officer Van Keller from the Roseville Police,” I say. “He’s trying to find out what happened to Pessie.”
Isaac looks skeptical. Saul says something to him in Yiddish. Isaac says something back.
“We trust him,” I say, chiming in.
Isaac nods, and continues. “They seem to be… working up to something. Last time it was a swastika on the door.”
“Are you sure that was the Halls?” I ask.
“I did not see them, if that is what you mean. Just before the New Year, someone vandalized a yeshiva in Roseville. Same thing. Broken windows, swastikas. Everyone was talking about it on Facebook and the blogs. I heard that the caretaker got the license plate number of a pickup truck, but that the police said there was no such number.”
“No such number?” asks Van.
“The caretaker had written it down wrong, I guess,” says Isaac.
Van shakes his head and takes out his notebook. “I never heard that anyone got a license plate number connected to that.”
Isaac continues. “Everyone was talking about how the fact that there was no arrest meant that the community was right to be annexing more land and taking a greater role in the city government and on the school board. That this was just more proof the goyim could not be trusted.”
Isaac’s speech is slightly slurred. He looks at the cup again, and again, I bring it to his lips. As he sips, he closes his eyes. When he is done, he lies back. After a few seconds, he speaks again, slowly, his eyes still closed.
“Since he got out of prison Sammy wasn’t coming around much. But he showed up the day after we heard Pessie had died. And he was scared. He wouldn’t say anything for days. He said he was sitting shiva but really he was hiding. He told us he did the vandalism. He said that Ryan’s father and brother had done it with him, but that it was his idea. He kept saying that. ‘It was my idea.’”
“You said Ryan’s father and brother. Not Ryan?” asks Van.
Isaac shakes his head. “Ryan is a good kid. He hated his family as much as Sammy hated his. But it wasn’t as easy for him to cut ties.”
“Why not?” I ask
“Sammy had a path out. He had Aviva and me. More and more people are going OTD. And Sammy knew they would let him go. But I got the sense Ryan was afraid that no matter how far away he ran, he’d always be looking over his shoulder for his father.”
Van raises his eyebrows and nods almost imperceptibly. I remember what he said about the kid “connected” to the Halls who died in prison.
“What about Pessie?” I ask.
“Sammy wouldn’t tell us anything specific, but it was clear he knew whatever happened was not just an accident. He begged us to believe that he had nothing to do with it. Aviva did. It was easy for her to believe that one of the Halls killed Pessie and then threatened to kill Sammy-to kill all of us-if he told. That’s what she thought the swastika was. A warning. What I didn’t understand was why they would want to kill Pessie in the first place. Sammy wouldn’t explain, except to say that it was his fault. If it hadn’t been for him, Pessie and them would have never crossed paths.”
“So Sammy said the Halls killed Pessie?” asks Van.
“He didn’t ever say. But it is what Aviva and I assumed.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police if you thought Pessie had been murdered?”
Isaac pauses for a breath. Talking is taking a lot out of him.
“Aviva thinks it is her fault Sammy turned out the way he is. She thinks she should have protected him better and she is terrified of him going back to prison. She was afraid that if she went to the police they’d suspect Sammy. I respected her wishes. And I did not have any real knowledge about what happened.”
“Do you think he could have done it?” I ask.
“If Sammy killed Pessie,” he says slowly, “it had to have been some kind of accident. He loved Pessie as much as he loved Ryan. As much as he loved anybody. And Pessie was the only one of us who had never let him down-at least that’s how he saw it. She was steady as a rock. I don’t think Sammy ever thought he would have to live in a world without Pessie Rosen.”
None of us say anything for a few seconds.
“When was the last time you saw Aviva? Or Sam?” I ask.
“I haven’t seen either of them since the night after we found the swastika. Aviva packed a bag and made Sammy come with her. When I talked to her last she said they were staying at one of the houses she cleans, but she didn’t say which one. The number she called from is in my cell. I think it was a landline. I told her she was being paranoid, but she said they weren’t finished killing people. And she was right. I was upstairs when that thing came in. If anyone had been in the living room they’d be dead.”
Saul and I check into a Super 8 just outside New Paltz a little before 10:00 P.M. The barely legal desk clerk tells us that the only room they have available has a king-sized bed.
“I don’t mind sharing,” I say.
Saul looks at the clerk, who is back to watching Family Guy on a tiny tube television behind the counter, and then at me.
“I will sleep on the floor,” he says quickly.
“Whatever you want,” I say.
We get our key and walk outside, climbing concrete stairs to the second floor room.