Murder At The Mikvah (6 page)

“Get up!”

John yanked the man to his feet with such force that even Robert was startled. The man was short, about 5’7”, and barely reached John’s shoulders. His dark hair was damp and disheveled and he had some acne scarring on his right cheek. Judging from the look of agony on his face, it was likely John had dislocated his arm. But John continued to manhandle him, shoving him face first against the wall. It was then that he noticed the brown feces oozing from the bottom of the man's jeans. John gagged and nearly vomited at the sight—the man had relieved himself in his pants.

Robert took a step back from the commotion and his pulse quickened as something in the water caught his eye. It was a white shape sprawled out at the bottom of the pool.
Oh God
.

“It's a robe,” Robert said, hand to chest, settling himself. “Just a white bathrobe.”

John must have loosened his grip while watching Robert, because within an instant, the man had pushed himself off the wall, and with a quick jerk of his head, leaned down, opened his mouth and bit John squarely on the arm.

“Son of a bitch!” John barked. He slammed the man back against the wall and pulled his wrists together behind him. The man howled in pain as John handcuffed him. But within seconds he stopped struggling and his screams turned to sobs. Drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. He said nothing as John read him his rights and handed him off with a shove to one
of the officers.

Still shaking his head in disbelief, John peeled back his sleeve to assess the damage. In all his years on the force, he had never seen a guy shit his pants. In an alley? Yes. In a dumpster? Sure. But never in his own pants! And it was true that John had sustained plenty of dog bites all right, but this was his first human bite.

Guy’s an animal
he thought.
A God damn animal.

John kneeled down and studied the woman as the paramedics attended to her. She was in her late thirties, he estimated, young enough to be his daughter. Her hair was wet and tangled, and he felt the paternal urge to tuck it behind her ear. She wore nothing—no clothes, no jewelry, not even a hint of makeup. Her body was beautiful he thought. She was a mommy; that he was certain of. She wasn't overweight, but had that lovely softness in the middle that came only from bearing children. It was only when one of the other cops returned with a white bath towel and placed it gently over her torso, that it occurred to John that he should avert his eyes.

“She has a slight pulse,” the paramedic announced without looking up. “That’s better than the other one.”

Detective Ron Smith Jr. arrived with a team of crime scene techs. They cordoned off the area and got down to work. The district attorney arrived on the scene in record time. Given the nature of the crime, he wanted to keep things quiet.

The two women were taken away on stretchers. It would later be known throughout the community that although they had worked tirelessly on Estelle Ginsberg en route to Senecca Hospital, the eighty-two year old woman was pronounced dead on arrival.

 Seven

Yehuda grabbed his keys before heading outside to wait for Saul. It wouldn’t be long since the Katz's lived only a few miles away, not far from the kids' school. Yehuda paced nervously on the front porch. The quicker Saul got here, the sooner he could go and find Hannah.

As a result of the storm that had blown through Arden Station, Willow Lane was littered with fallen branches and several rubber lids, flipped from their respective garbage pails. It was still cold, but now startlingly quiet, a respite from Yehuda’s own racing thoughts. He sat on a weathered teak bench—a gift left behind by the former owners—and gazed up at the sky. The full moon appeared larger and closer than it had four hours ago when he walked home from the center. Hannah always noticed and appreciated simple pleasures like this. “Thank you God, for this beautiful full moon,” she would say, as if God had painted a special nighttime scene exclusively for her.

Yehuda smiled as he recalled the first years of their marriage when they had lived in Jerusalem. The leisurely strolls through the ancient stone walkways of the Old City. The daily prayers at the Western Wall—Yehuda on the men’s side, Hannah on the women’s. He and Hannah would often sit on one of the nearby benches, mesmerized by the grandeur of what remained of the Holy Temple. Sometimes they would remain there for hours quietly witnessing the awe on tourists’ faces, especially those who were visiting the holy site for the first time. People from all walks of life came—religious and secular, rabbis and taxi drivers, mothers and soldiers—some with tears in their eyes, all with yearnings and secrets. Many brought messages—prayers scribbled on tiny scraps of paper—to be tucked into the stone cracks of the wall. The sun would set and they would marvel at the uniqueness of the night sky. Residents and tourists experienced it the same way—in Israel, God felt closer somehow. But it was Hannah who described it so poetically:
up in the heavens, the almighty watches over his children, hidden just out of view, behind a thin veil of star flecked indigo.

When was the last time they took a walk together, just he and Hannah? When had they last eaten a meal alone? Yehuda couldn’t remember. Sure, they were the busy parents of five young children, but that was no excuse. Had he neglected his wife? How could he have taken her for granted, his beloved Hannah? What a hypocrite he was! Teaching his students how to have more fulfilling marriages, how to be better husbands and wives. Counseling couples on the importance of being attentive to one another. His heart ached with remorse. If God was speaking to him, he was doing it through a megaphone.

Yehuda took a deep breath, collecting himself. As soon as all this drama was over, things would be different! He would make some serious changes, starting with a reduction in his class load at the center. He would get home earlier each evening. The family would eat dinner together more often. He and Hannah would have date nights again. Maybe they would go away for a couple of days—just the two of them. His mother could stay with the kids. Yes, everything would be fine. There was a logical explanation to all this. He and Hannah would be laughing about it tomorrow.

Crackling sounds of gravel under tires jolted Yehuda from his private thoughts, and he looked up to see the headlights of a car turn onto his street. He raced down to the curb, expecting to greet Saul’s black Lincoln Town Car. But it was a police vehicle that was approaching. Yehuda’s heart skipped a beat as it pulled into the driveway and two officers stepped out. The driver stood solemnly at the side of the vehicle, holding his hat in his hands, as his partner swaggered, hands on his hips, toward Yehuda.

“Rabbi Orenstein…?”

Oh God.

Yehuda instinctively backed away. He felt weak, like the blood had suddenly been drained out of him.

“I’m Officer Clark…” the officer began, but was interrupted by the light honk of Saul’s horn as he pulled in front of the house.

“Yehuda? What’s going on?” Saul shouted through the lowered car window.

“Rabbi, could I have a word with you privately?” the officer continued, ignoring Saul. Yehuda’s head spun.

Oh God.

Saul ran up the lawn. “Yehuda?”

The officer turned to Saul. “Excuse me sir, but I need to speak privately to…”

Yehuda waved his hands. He didn’t know if he could muster the strength to speak, and was a bit surprised to hear his own words. “It’s all right… Saul… is my friend. He can stay.”

The officer nodded. “Rabbi Orenstein,” he said, “there's been an accident. Your wife has been taken to Senecca Hospital.”

Saul put his arm around Yehuda’s shoulders steadying him.

 Eight

It was less than a ten-minute drive to Senecca hospital, yet felt like hours to Yehuda who sat like a caged animal behind the metal bars separating the front and back seats of the police car. He was desperate for information, but the two officers remained relatively quiet throughout the trip. Occasionally one would respond to a radio transmission, or mutter something in passing to his partner, but neither spoke a word to him, not once turning a head toward the bearded rabbi in the back seat. It was as though they had forgotten he was there altogether. In all fairness, Yehuda reminded himself, how many times had these guys had a rabbi in their car? Maybe they were intimidated by him, like others were intimidated by
them
. Gun or no gun, uniforms created lines of separation.

Back at the house, Officer Clark had been vague. The confirmed facts, he said, were that Hannah had been discovered unconscious in the renovated section of the old high school—she was breathing, but unconscious. She had either taken a nasty fall or been pushed, they said. Neither he nor his partner had spoken to the responding officers, Clark said, so they had no further details at this time. With this last statement, Yehuda thought the officer sounded like he was reciting a well-rehearsed script. Saul had been the one to ask about Estelle. Yehuda, thinking only of Hannah, had completely forgotten that someone else had been at mikvah. They could only release information to the immediate family
was what Officer Clark had told them. Yehuda couldn’t help but notice that he looked down at the ground when he said it.

The police car continued to move swiftly through the streets of Arden Station. Few vehicles were on the road, making lights and sirens necessary only when they plowed, nonstop through the few intersections along the way. The steady movement was almost meditative and Yehuda’s thoughts drifted to a lecture he attended recently.
Secular law vs. Jewish law
. In his mind's eye he saw the white bearded rabbi from Monsey take the stage. Nearly ninety years old, the man was still sharp as a tack. The discussion turned to traffic lights:
Secular governments were permitted to have systems in place to maintain order. Traffic lights ensured that there would be no gridlock, no question of who proceeded when. But at night, when there was virtually no traffic on the road, the question was, would a civilian vehicle need to wait at a red light? The Halacha, Jewish law, seemed to indicate that they would not; rather, treating traffic lights like stop signs would suffice. The catch being that if a cop was waiting behind the bushes somewhere, Jewish law would be of no help since secular fines in a secular country still had to be paid…

It was a coping skill Yehuda had developed as a child. Easing his mind away from troubling personal thoughts and onto intellectual subjects was like turning to a channel that required his complete attention, and for him, as simple as pushing a button on a TV remote.

The car made a sharp left onto Edgeton, passing the field where Eli played soccer last year. A crew was repairing fallen power lines that lay draped across one of the bleacher stands. He thought of Eli, David and Yitzi sleeping soundly in their beds. Yehuda was relieved that he didn’t have to worry about his children right now; they were in good hands. “Don’t worry about a thing,” Saul had assured him, “I can stay as long as you need me to.”

Rachel would tend to Nehama, and the boys would probably sleep through the night. By the time they woke up in the morning, Yehuda thought, he and Hannah would be home. Everything would be back to normal.

Please God let everything go back to normal
.

Yehuda felt a lump in his throat as he recalled the fear in Rachel’s eyes when he hugged her goodbye. Who was he kidding trying to appear calm? She probably recognized the same demeanor in him that he had had just a few months ago when they almost lost Nehama. Chances were she would be up all night waiting for him, worrying. What did he think, that she hadn't noticed the police car with its silent spinning lights? The serious mannered officers? Right now his precious daughter was suffering just as much as he was.

The car made another left and the lights of Senecca hospital came into view. Yehuda remembered the last time he had driven up this road. Unlike today, the occasion had been a happy one: it was the morning of September 5th, just two weeks before the high holidays, and he had come to retrieve his wife and new baby daughter. Rachel was ecstatic the day Nehama was born. She was beginning to believe she would never have a sister, not after David, Eli, and Yitzi had burst, one after the other, into her life. Every one of his children was a miracle from God, Yehuda thought, smiling to himself, each with their own unique temperament. He loved watching them grow and become more of who they were meant to be. Rachel, the little mommy, was a natural caregiver, intuitive, loving and patient. Eli was their builder, always wanting to put objects together and understand the mechanics of how things worked. David, the quiet one, was happy tagging along with his big brother, or equally content sitting and reading for hours and hours. Lovable, huggable Yitzi was always smiling, and was, as Lauren called him, the Orenstein family
Gund
.
Who would Nehama become
? he wondered. God willing they would have many years to find out, many more years of family togetherness. It was a blessing that his children were close and got along well with one another, much better than
he
and his own sister had. Admittedly, things with Sunny
had
improved after his parents divorce. That’s when the two of them understood on some unspoken level that they needed to stick together. Sink or swim. Things were different in the home Yehuda made with Hannah. His children had stability and two parents who would
always
be together.