Weird Detectives (3 page)

And, oh yeah—
he blew his brains out in Rock Creek Park.

Coincidence? I’m superstitious. All cops are superstitious. Too much coincidence: Halloween, the Hebrew. Rock Creek. Bad karma, that’s what.

God, I missed Adam. Damn him.

My phone sputtered as I turned left on Indiana. I thumbed it on. “Saunders.”

“Jason.” It was Kay. “We’ve started the cut.”

“That was fast, Kay.”

“It’s a kid. Anyway, we found something.”

The autopsy suite was cold and smelled of disinfectant. After I gowned and put on a blue surgical cap and paper booties, I walked over to the autopsy table where they were doing the boy. Kay was there, along with the chief ME, a guy named Strand who’s been there about a thousand years.

“Detective Saunders.” Strand held a small circular saw, and I could see that they’d done the baby’s chest and abdomen. The boy’s neck was braced with a block from a two-by-four, his scalp peeled from his skull front and back. Strand powered up the saw. The saw hissed, like the pneumatic drills they use in dentist’s offices. “You’re just in time. Tricky job on a newborn, on account of the skull being so soft.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Strand is not my favorite person.

“Over here, Jason,” Kay said. She thinks Strand’s an asshole too. She stood at a stainless steel counter along the far wall.

I walked over. Behind us, the whine of the saw dropped as it bit bone. “What do you have?”

“This.” She laid out an evidence bag. Inside the bag was a three-inch square of tan cloth. “We found it under the tongue.”

“Tongue?”

“Folded nice and neat. You took so long, I called for someone to laser it.”

“And?”

“No prints. Blood matches the baby’s. There’s something written on it. Drawn, anyway.”

“You’re kidding.” I turned the bag over, and felt my stomach bottom out.

In the center of the cloth was a Star of David. In the center of the star and at the three uppermost points were Hebrew letters. Below the star was a crude drawing of a bull’s-eye set atop a pole. Along the pole were six phalanges, curved up like scimitars: three to a side.

“First the tattoo,” said Kay. “Now this. This case is getting weird, Jason.”

I let my breath out a little at a time. “Yeah.”

There was a Behavioral Sciences guy worked a case with Adam and me a few years back. A
holy shit
case is an FBI name for something religious. You know: seven deadly sins in blood, that sort of crap. If you’re unsure, there’s probably a movie in the multiplex, bring you right up to speed.

So here’s what I had: a dead baby. A strange tattoo. A cloth with a Jewish star and Hebrew. Like I said,
Holy Shit
.

Before I left the morgue, I went into Kay’s office and called Rollins. As I suspected, he’d come up empty on the tattoo. I told him about the cloth. “So I’m going to fax a copy. I want you to run it against the gang symbols we’ve got in our database. Start with the star. That ought to be easy. I can think of a couple groups right off the bat, like Gangster Disciples, or Folk Nation. The New Breed Black Gangsters use the star along with three
L
s. And I want you to call Gold. Tell her we want a formal statement. Have her there by four.”

“But tomorrow mor—”

“Just call her.”

“Okay. And you’ll be . . . ?”

“Checking something out.” I thumbed off, folded my phone, and tucked it into an inside pocket. Then I fed the fax.

Kay caught me as I left. “Photos of the tattoo and cloth
in situ,
” she said, handing over an envelope. “I’ll call you soonest. But so far, he’s clean.”

“Thanks. Look, I want you to run something for me.” I told her what I wanted.

“Looking for?”

“Maybe nothing. How long?”

“FBI developed a standard profile. We’ve got the setup. Say, three, four hours. You want a match with the FBI?”

“No, I just want it on file.”

“Okay.” Then: “You’ve got something.”

“All I’ve got is coincidence. That’s not something.”
Yet,
I thought.

This case was worse than what I’d done with Adam. No matter what Adam said, I knew
that
case hadn’t been about religion. But
this
—I corkscrewed the car down the parking garage, turned right on 23rd, and headed for the Lincoln Memorial—this case stunk to high heaven. Turning right on Constitution, I took the ramp past the E Street Expressway, the Kennedy Center on my right, and headed for Route 50 and Fairfax, Virginia.

When I found the place, I killed the engine and just sat. After all the junk last year, the congregation had relocated and built a new synagogue. As I watched, two men came out of a side door, their arms linked. They were arguing something, their free hands going like semaphores. They wore identical outfits: black overcoats that reached to their knees, black fedoras. One had a snowy white beard that reached his waist. The other was much younger, his beard full and black and bushy around his face, like a teddy bear.

There were security cameras mounted above the locked door, and I buzzed. They’d been vandalized, I heard. I selected a yarmulke from a wooden box mounted to the right of the door and patted it on. The rabbi’s secretary, a woman named Miriam who wore a kerchief over her hair, long-sleeved shirt, and ankle-length skirt, told me to go on up.

The rabbi was seeing someone else out. The other man was very old, his beard like gray fringe. He said something in querulous Yiddish. The rabbi responded in Yiddish, patting the old man on the back, his tone soothing.

The rabbi watched the old man totter down the stairs. “Not a happy man,” I said.

The rabbi, whose name is Dietterich, turned his brown gaze on me. “He doesn’t have a reason to be happy.” (Dietterich’s from Queens, so I think Shea Stadium every time he opens his mouth.) “Yakov’s daughter wants to marry a goy. Nice boy, I met him. He says he’ll convert, but for Yakov, it’s a calamity.”

“How so?”

“Yakov survived Birchenau. He’s the only one of his family left. For Yakov, his daughter does this, it’s like Hitler won. That’s why we Lubavitchers are so important. We keep the traditions alive, so people don’t forget.” Dietterich clapped his hands together as if to signal the subject closed. “So, Detective Saunders, come in, sit.”

Dietterich’s office was cramped, the shelves overflowing with books. He offered coffee, and I accepted: black with two sugars. He handed me a mug and then dropped into his seat with a slight groan. When we met last year, I judged him to be my age, thirty-five or so. He’d aged. Gray streaked his temples. Deep lines fanned the corners of his eyes and his face was pinched, with a furrow chiseled into either side of his nose.

“So,” he said, blowing on his coffee. “How can I help you?”

“I need your opinion.” I showed him the drawings, and he studied them in silence. I sipped coffee and waited. The coffee was worse than mine. I put the mug on the floor.

When his eyes inched up again, he was frowning. “Where did you get this?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. It’s an ongoing investigation. I can only ask the questions, not answer them.”

“All right.” Dietterich placed his mug on a side table. “Yes, I know the symbols. What this is, exactly, I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it doesn’t make sense. In essence, you have part of a formula.”

“Formula?”

“Yes, for a protective amulet.”

“Against what?”

Dietterich hesitated, then said. “Evil. You have to understand, Detective. Judaism is a religion without a pantheon. In the distant past, calamities were ascribed to evil demons and dark forces, whereas Judaism holds that these things come from Hashem, from God. But illiterate and superstitious peasants are slow to change. Superstitions persisted into the early half of the last century.”

I remembered Gold, and her key. “You’re talking mysticism.”

“Yes. Our Tanya, for instance, is based upon very ancient Kabbalah, but only certain aspects, you understand. There are many obscure areas of Kabbalah known only to very devout Jews, or to scholars. Most work is not in translation, because of the dangers.”

“Dangers.”

“Of misinterpretation. Leading Jews to pursue paths that are specifically prohibited because these practices are antithetical to our faith. How do I say it?” Dietterich put a finger to his lips. “There is a branch of theory, and a branch of practice. Devout scholars study, but that is all.”

“Tell me about the practice.”

Dietterich raised his hands, palms up. “What’s to say? There are no Jewish witches.”

“Well, someone hasn’t gotten the message.”

“You think a
Jew
did this?” He moved his head firmly from side to side. “No. The prohibition in Exodus is very clear.”

“But you said it yourself: superstitions persist. So, is this what the drawings are about?”

“These drawings are just bits and pieces.” He went to a bookshelf, tilted out a book, and brought it back, flipping pages. I read the cover:
Amulets and Superstitions.
“Here,” he said, then came to stand behind my right shoulder.

There was Hebrew text above and below a rectangle filled with crude, almost childish drawings. The rectangle was divided into two. On the left were what looked like bulbous birds with no wings, and bubble feet with no talons. On the right, there were two bizarre quadrangles, and then a drawing I recognized: the pole with the phalanges.

“What is that?”

“Part of a formula. This is a copy of a design for an amulet from a book that’s in the British Museum, the
Book of Râzîêl.
” He pronounced it
RAY-zay-el.
“The formula’s very precise. On the left are representations of three angels: Sanvi, Sanasanvi, and Samnaglof.”

“And on the right?”

“Adam, Eve,” and then he came to the pole, “and Lilith.”

“Lilith?”

Dietterich sighed. “A myth. In Genesis, there is a curious section concerning creation. At the end of the first chapter, Hashem creates male and female. But, if you look at the second chapter, verse eighteen, Adam is alone again, and Eve is not created until verse twenty-two.”

“So who is that first woman?”

“Lilith. The Mystics called her the First Eve. You find her in Midrash, in legends. According to Midrash, Lilith refused Hashem’s injunction to submit to Adam. So she fled, using Hashem’s Ineffable Name: Y–H–W–H. Hashem sent these three angels—Sanvi, Sanasanvi, and Samnaglof—to bring her back, but Lilith refused. In the end they let her go, but only if she agreed to leave whenever their names or images were invoked.”

“Which is why they’re on the amulet. You draw the angels, and Lilith has to obey and go away.”

“Exactly. Anyway, Adam was lonely, and so Eve was created, and here is where things become very murky. According to some Midrash, Adam blamed Eve for the expulsion from Eden, and he reunited with Lilith. Some say he had relations with one of Lilith’s daughters, Piznai, and produced many demon-children called
lutins.
Others say Lilith was Adam’s consort, but then when Adam reconciled with Eve, Lilith vowed to take revenge by killing human children, primarily infant boys before their
bris milah,
their circumcision, on the eighth day after birth. The legends say that Hashem punishes Lilith by killing a hundred of
her
demon-children every day.”

“Sounds like a soap.”

“Yes,” said Dietterich, tugging at his beard. “Demons, demon-children. All nonsense.”

“But it’s in your rabbinic tradition.”

“No, it’s Midrash. They’re stories, not canonical.”

I decided not to press. “So how does this figure in?”

“The amulet is protective. The Hebrew text at the top names the Seventy Great Angels who would protect in a general way. Sanvi, Sanasanvi, and Samnaglof protect the mother and her child. The text below is an incantation designed to ward off Lilith.”

“How widespread was this practice?”

“Of the amulet? It varied. Eastern Europe, Germany. Jewish peasants had a custom called Watch Night, where women would stand guard over the baby the evening before his
bris.
”

“And the drawing I showed you? It’s protective?”

“No,” he said, his tone almost fierce. He held up my notepad, shook it. “No, you see that’s why I’m telling you: no Jew did this.”

“But I thought you said—“

“It’s
wrong,
” he said, thrusting the notepad toward me. “They got it wrong. The Magen David? The Hebrew? Usually, the Hebrew stands for angels. But here, the Hebrew stands for demons: Ashmedi, Samael, and Azazel.”

“Why would they be on the same amulet with Lilith?”

“Because whoever made this didn’t want to keep Lilith
away,
” said Dietterich, his eyes drilling me in place. “He
summoned
her.”

My phone buzzed as I crossed the Roosevelt Bridge into DC. It was Kay. “Done,” she said.

“Good. And the cut?”

“A big zero.” She sounded tired. “Jason, that little boy . . . he just . . . died.”

Rollins met me as I came off the elevator. “You’re late. Gold’s here. I put her in Room Three.”

“Okay.” I walked to my desk and retrieved a tape recorder from the bottom drawer.

Rollins watched. “I ran the drawings. Nothing matches.”

I checked the batteries then tore the cellophane off two fresh ninety-minute cassettes. “Nothing’s going to.”

“You think Gold . . . ?”

I popped in a cassette. “I don’t know.”

“On the basis of?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.”

“Yeah.” Rollins eyed the recorder. “Should we advise her of her rights?”

“No. We don’t have anything. For now, she’s a wit, and I just want to talk with her, get a formal statement drafted. Very low key. We talk about rights, and she’ll clam up.”

We went in together. Gold was waiting, a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand. She was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved peasant blouse. I saw the key in the hollow of her throat. She didn’t smile.

“You’re looking better,” I said, scraping a chair back from the table. Rollins dropped into a chair on my left.