“I’m working on a murder investigation, Mrs. Borracelli. Two murders, in fact. Detective Vandomir will do everything possible to help. Would you mind stepping out while I take a call?”
The witnesses who lined up in the complaint room of our office every morning, seven days a week, needed triage as badly as patients in an emergency room. This woman was about to go to the back of the pack.
I returned to my desk and picked up the phone. Mercer stayed on the line and told me it was Manny Chirico on hold.
“Hello again. Past your bedtime, isn’t it, Manny?”
“Just playing around on my computer before I knock off. Mercer said you haven’t had a minute yet to get back on the case.”
“Real life intervened. You got an ID on her?”
“No such luck. Listen, I’m playing around on CrimeDex.”
“That’ll make Commissioner Scully happy. So much for pounding the pavement.”
The social networking fad that gave birth to Facebook and Twitter led a private company to create a site that eroded many of the bureaucratic boundaries between law enforcement agencies around the country.
“You got us a perp?” Mercer asked.
CrimeDex had effectively linked everything from police reports to surveillance tapes from departments all over the country, challenging privacy protections in cases that had not yet led to arrest or convictions.
“Not yet. But this guy didn’t wake up two days ago in Gotham and start offing church ladies for no reason at all.”
“What’d you find?”
“Wayland, Kentucky. Four months ago, in early December, a pastor — lady pastor — was killed right inside her church. She was found lying behind the altar with her arms outstretched. Naked.”
“This info is all online?” I said.
“The autopsy report is right there — no arrest, no suspect, no leads.”
“What’s the cause of death?”
“Multiple incised wounds. Gaping hole across her neck that the doc believes was an attempt to decapitate her. Oh yeah, her hair was singed too. The bastard tried to set her on fire.”
TWENTY
“WHERE’S Wayland?” Mercer asked.
He was driving us up to the Jewish Theological Seminary, where Naomi had been studying, and I was looking through a road atlas I had taken from Rose Malone’s bookshelf when I stopped by to give her a message for Battaglia about the second murder.
“Eastern corner of Kentucky, not all that far from the Virginia- West Virginia border. Looks like the Appalachians. Did you find anything out while I was talking to Rose?”
“I called the local sheriff’s office. The church was the Sanctified Redeemer.”
“Baptist, by any chance?”
“No. Pentecostal.”
“Any more details about the killing?” I asked. I was tracing imaginary routes with my fingers. First from Chicago suburbs where Daniel Gersh’s family lived, through Pikeville and on up to New York, and then, for no good reason, from the Atlanta hometown of Wilbur Gaskin back to Manhattan.
“Just that the killer staged the body behind the altar. Took all the woman’s clothing with him.”
“Did he take any money? Any religious items of value?”
“Not a thing.”
“How did he get into the church?”
“The pastor always left the doors open. Still a small-town lifestyle. Sheriff says all the other religious leaders in town have been jumpy ever since.”
“What goes on in Wayland?” I asked.
“Coal. Population holding at about three hundred, so the good ol’ boys are pretty sure it’s not one of their own. He’s going to pull together all their files and fax a set up to me. No leads, no forensics of value. No money for all the bells and whistles our labs have.”
“So now?”
“Manny Chirico’s on a tear. He’s trying to find connections to this kind of kill anywhere he can. Thinks we got a transient maniac on our hands.”
There was nothing unusual about that idea. Sooner or later, most madmen with felonious intent found their way to one of the big cities. New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, D.C., Miami, Houston, Oakland — even the small-town perps wanted to make it to a bigger stage.
Mercer and I bounced ideas off each other all the way uptown, but nothing worthwhile came of the conversation.
“You have an address for the seminary?” I asked as we passed the main Columbia University campus on 116th Street.
“Northeast corner of 122nd and Broadway.”
We parked on a side street and approached the entrance of the redbrick building that sat catty-corner on Broadway, exactly at the point where the subway emerged from belowground and the tracks ran through the center concourse.
There was tight security at the entrance, and the guard who had Mercer’s name on his list called for someone to escort us to the administrative offices.
There were glass doors leading to an interior courtyard. The setting was tranquil and elegant — beautiful plantings and a small fountain, arranged in a quadrangle.
“Welcome to JTS. I’m Rabbi Levy. Zev Levy.” The handsome, bespectacled man who greeted us didn’t look any older than I am. He was dressed in a sports jacket and dark slacks, and was wearing a yarmulke.
Mercer and I introduced ourselves.
“Why don’t we go over to my office? I can see you’re admiring the view, so we should take the scenic route. Our first donor was insistent that we look ‘American’ rather than Eastern European. That’s why we copied a typical New England campus. Come, I’d rather be somewhere private. I know you have questions about Naomi Gersh.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “I didn’t realize this beautiful oasis was tucked away here.”
“We’re one of the city’s best-kept secrets. Do you know anything about us?”
Several students made their way through the quad, most doing a double take at Mercer and me, probably because we didn’t fit the traditional profile of rabbinical students. “Very little,” I said, while Mercer echoed me by answering, “Nothing.”
“We like to think we’re the central institution — the flagship, if you will — of the Conservative movement in American Judaism. We’re here to produce modern American rabbis. Do you understand the difference between Orthodox and Conservative theology?”
“I think I do, Rabbi,” I said. “I grew up in a Reform household. My mother converted to Judaism after marrying my father. His ancestors had been Orthodox when in Russia, but not once they immigrated to this country.”
“Please call me Zev,” he said. We walked through the quiet gardens, the day slightly milder and sunnier than yesterday. “The Orthodox are the most traditional Jews, of course. They believe in the strict interpretation and application of the laws and ethics that are canonized in the Torah. They believe that the Torah and its laws are divine in origin, transmitted by God to Moses. That those laws are eternal and unalterable.”
He stopped to greet a student who passed us on the walkway.
“The rumblings of Reform Judaism started in Germany, in the nineteenth century. There were still the beliefs in monotheism and morality, but Reform leaders thought most of the rituals were connected to the ancient past, no longer for Jews of the modern era to follow. In this country, the Reform movement took hold in Charleston.”
“South Carolina?” Mercer asked.
Zev Levy smiled. “Not your first idea for a hotbed of Jewish intellectual thought.”
“I never considered it.”
“It was the largest Jewish community in America in the 1820s. Charleston was one of the four biggest ports in the country and took in many Spanish and Portuguese Jews who left England to come here. The members of a synagogue there first petitioned for reforms.”