Fairstein, Linda - Silent Mercy

Doesn’t wish to see him? So she calls their tryst a rape? I had a new training case for the office rookies who came fresh from law school, anxious to grow the skills to reach the pinnacle of prosecutorial ranking: homicide assistants. They would have to work their way through drug deals and petty thefts, learning how to dissect cases and discern truths from every witness who walked through the courthouse doors.

“Gina’s probably embarrassed at this point,” Mercer said. He knew me well enough to recognize that despite the early hour, my temper was ready to snap. “That’s a pretty harsh sanction for what the two of them embarked on together, don’t you think, ma’am?”

The woman didn’t respond.

“Javier’s on a college track, just like your daughter,” I said. “There was no force here, Mrs. Borracelli. There isn’t a crime I can charge. I don’t see any reason to eject him from school, just to make things right between Gina and her boyfriend. And one more thing, may I?”

“I’ll never be able to explain this to my husband. She’s still his baby.” Mrs. Borracelli was wringing the handkerchief now. “Yes? What else is it?”

“Ask Gina to tell you what she did with the condom.”

“You mean, you fault her because she didn’t save it as evidence?” The anger rose in her again.

In more than a dozen years on the job, I had rarely known a witness to be as cavalier as Gina, or do something as revolting. I understood throwing condoms in the toilet or garbage — ugly reminders of the forced sexual act — at a time when the police lab wasn’t foremost in one’s mind.

“No, I don’t fault her for anything she did. Except lying.” I wanted that point to be clear. “Gina tossed the condom out the window of your apartment, Mrs. Borracelli.”

“I don’t believe you.” Her words were sharp and meant to be stinging.

“The police recovered it from a flowerpot on the terrace of a neighbor, three floors below you. You don’t have to believe me. The detective has photographs. And Mr. Delson, in 6B, was rather disgusted. He’s not likely to forget it.”

“What happens now?” Mrs. Borracelli asked.

My phone rang and Mercer walked over to Laura’s desk to answer it.

“I’d like Gina to make a statement — she can do it in writing, or she can sit down with Detective Vandomir. I think she gets along with him.” She liked anyone better than she liked me. I had played the eight-hundred-pound gorilla often enough to feel as though I had gained the weight necessary to look the part. “I want her to tell the story — the truth — from beginning to end. If it doesn’t spell out a crime, the entire matter will be dropped.”

“And my Gina? What will happen to her?”

Mercer stood in the doorway, one hand cupped over the receiver of the phone. With the other, he pointed his thumb over his shoulder, signaling me to get rid of Mrs. Borracelli.

“She’ll have learned a very hard lesson in the worst way.”

“But for lying, you won’t arrest Gina, will you?”

I stood up to escort the woman out of my office. I had mounted many prosecutions for filing false police reports. The fabrications wasted time and energy for dedicated cops, but mostly made it more difficult for the next rape victim to be credited by people to whom Gina had disclosed the bogus crime.

“No. Fortunately, we caught this before Gina testified under oath. I think she needs counseling, Mrs. Borracelli.” I put my arm behind her back, trying to move her along more quickly. “I think she needs attention to her drinking and drug issues.”

“Ms. Cooper,” she said, stopping in her tracks when I most needed to get clear of her, “will you help me tell my husband these facts? He’s a very difficult man. I doubt Gina will be able to talk to him about this.”

“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.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“They wanted English-language sermons. They wanted Hebrew prayers to be repeated in English. German immigrants joined them later in the century, setting up magnificent houses of worship like Temple Emanu-El here on Fifth Avenue.” Levy held back the door to let us through. “The boiling point came to a head over kosher dietary laws.”

“With all the other principles at stake, that’s hard for me to imagine.”

“It represented so many of the cultural changes in the new world. There was a banquet organized for the first graduating class from Hebrew Union College in 1883. The more radical element planned a provocative menu that included shrimp. Trefa, if you know what I mean. It just highlighted the conflict over whether kosher law — and therefore rabbinical law — would be binding in Reform Judaism.”

We reached his office and Levy’s secretary rose to usher us into his room. While she took orders for coffee, he went on.

“Our Conservative movement arose as a reaction to the more liberal positions taken by Reform Jews. It has nothing to do with political conservatism, you understand. The name signifies that we believe Jews should attempt to conserve Jewish tradition, rather than jettison it as the Reformers did.”

I wondered where Naomi Gersh would fit into all of this.

“So who wrote the Torah?” Mercer asked, smiling at the good-natured rabbi.

“Most Conservatives believe it was written by humans, but divinely inspired. Here at the seminary, I’d say our feet are firmly planted in two places — tradition and modernity. We maintain the tradition of prayer, but we’ve been known to reinterpret it.”

The secretary closed the door.

“So on to Naomi Gersh. That’s what you want to talk about.”

“Thanks, Zev. Yes, yes it is,” I said. “Was she enrolled here?”

“No, she wasn’t. Although we are rather small,” Levy said, “we offer a diverse number of programs. We have three professional schools for students with college degrees. One is for rabbinical training, another is for cantors, and the third is a more generally Jewish education. We offer an undergraduate degree as well. Naomi hadn’t made up her mind to apply to that, to devote herself to a course of study. But she sought us out to explore the idea of coming to school here. She liked our mission, I think.”

“And what is that?” Mercer asked.

“A learned and passionate study of Judaism. I’d say our vision joins faith with inquiry. We strive to service Jewish communities and strengthen traditions.”

“What about Israel?” I asked. “Did Naomi talk about her time there?”

Levy bowed his head. “Most definitely. Our movement has intense involvement with the society and state of Israel. That’s probably why Naomi came here to begin with.”

“How long ago was that?” I tried to keep eye contact with Levy while Mercer took notes.

“Maybe four months ago. Sometime in December, I believe. The first course she signed up for started in January, in the new semester. That’s how I got to know her. I taught the class. Jewish Philosophical Thought.”

“Tell us about Naomi, please. Anything you can remember, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you.”

Zev Levy stroked his chin with his hand. “My first impression of her was about how much a loner she seemed to be. The graduate students here are an exceptional group. Brilliant, many of them, and scholars all. Some are more vigorously and intellectually engaged with the others, while some are more intense and reflective. Naomi wasn’t in either league. While she remained remote, it wasn’t because of an inward spirituality.”