The Ritual Bath

“It must have been quite a shock,” he said, offering her a tissue.

She took it and wiped her cheeks. “To say the least. All of us are stu

“Do you live on the grounds?”

“Of course.”

“How do you usually get home?”

“I walk. It takes me five minutes.”

“And no one has ever approached you?”

“Nobody, Detective. Nobody. We’re isolated out here. I guess that makes us perfect victims for some lunatic, but it never occurred to us before. The mikvah door isn’t even locked.”

“You’ve been hit by vandals-”

“Mostly kids. Both we and the police know who they are. They’re a nuisance, something we wish we didn’t have to deal with, but we’ve never thought of them as…as rapists.”

Decker thought a moment, then resumed the questioning.

“There’s no lock on the door?”

“That’s right.”

“You mean women regularly come here to dunk in holy water in an unlocked building?”

She shrugged sheepishly.

“As I said, we’ve never thought about it.”

“Do you have any security patrol on the grounds?”

Rina shook her head.

“This place is an anachronism, Mrs. Lazarus. You’re sitting ducks. It’s amazing you’ve lasted this long without an assault. Call a locksmith tomorrow, and get a dead bolt on the door. And discuss with your neighbors the possibility of getting a wired fence and gate. Anyone can break through the one you have now and escape into the forest.”

“It wouldn’t work because on the Sabbath-” She stopped herself. He wouldn’t understand.

Decker looked at her, expecting to hear more. Instead she cast a flurry of glances around the room.

A pretty one, he thought, but very jumpy. Then again, she was stressed. He wouldn’t mind talking to her again in a couple of days if the occasion presented itself.

“Is that all?” Rina asked.

“Just about, for the moment. How do you spell your name, Mrs. Lazarus?”

“R-i-n-a L-a-z-a-r-u-s.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Address?”

“Twenty-two Road C.”

Marge interrupted their interview. Decker knew from the disheartened look on her face that it hadn’t gone well.

“I got nowhere, Pete. She refuses to go in for the exam, and says she doesn’t remember anything. She spent almost the entire time praying.” She turned to Rina. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with praying, but it won’t help us find the man who raped her.”

“Maybe she thinks it will,” Rina said defensively.

Marge grimaced and turned to Decker.

“She still hasn’t bathed, but the longer she waits-”

“The woman has been traumatized,” Rina snapped. “You can’t expect her to make split-second decisions.”

Marge said nothing. Rape cases, especially ones with recalcitrant witnesses, got to her, but she was too good a cop to lose her cool. She took a deep breath and blew it out forcefully. Decker liked her control. And he knew that if Marge couldn’t bring out this woman, no one in the division could. They needed help from the inside.

“Mrs. Lazarus, you’ve been very helpful. And you seem like a very reasonable woman. You know we need Mrs. Adler’s cooperation if we want to catch this animal.” Decker paused to let his words sink in. “If you were in our shoes, how’d you go about gaining it?”

Rina looked to her left and into Chana’s scrutinizing eyes. She knew she’d spent too much time gabbing to the police.

“I can’t give you any advice,” she whispered. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t bother trying to enlist Mrs. Adler’s help directly. I’d talk to that man in the corner.”

“Is he the rabbi?” Decker asked.

Rina nodded. “He’s the head rabbi-the Rosh Yeshiva, the director of this place. There are a lot of rabbis here. The man he’s talking to is Mrs. Adler’s husband. Be patient and you might have some luck. I’ve got to go now.”

Decker flipped out a business card and handed it to her. “If you happen to think of anything else, or hear anything interesting, that’s my number.”

Rina slipped it in her skirt pocket.

“How are you going to get home?” Marge asked.

“The women will walk with me.”

“Would you like me to accompany you?” Marge asked. Part of the offer, Decker knew, was genuine concern for the women’s safety; the other was an attempt to get a little more insight into the yeshiva.

“Thank you very much, but we’ll be okay. Please be easy with Sarah. She’s a lovely person, and a wonderful wife and mother.”

“We’ll handle it as sensitively as we can,” Decker said.

Rina rejoined the women, and they left en masse.

A shame, he thought. He wouldn’t have minded looking at her face for a few more minutes.

3

“Shall we pay a visit to the man of the cloth?” asked Marge.

Decker tapped his foot. “I think the best way to go about this is a division of labor. You wait with Mrs. Adler and make sure she doesn’t wash away evidence, and I’ll have a whirl with the rabbi.”

Marge hadn’t paid all those dues to be a baby-sitter, but she didn’t protest the arrangement. She knew Pete had a better chance of getting somewhere if the two men spoke alone and reminded herself that Decker wasn’t a sexist pig like some of the others.

“How are the uniforms doing in the bushes?” she asked.

“Might be a good idea if you found out.”

Scouring the brush sounded more appealing to Marge than staring at a fanatical rape survivor. She’d pay a quick visit to the lady, then try her luck outside.

After Marge left, Decker eyed the husband and the rabbi. They hadn’t moved since the detective entered the room half an hour ago. The younger man was still rocking, and the rabbi’s mouth was still up against his ear.

He walked over to them. If they were aware of his presence, they gave no physical indication. But Decker was a patient man. He’d bide his time instead of storm-trooping it. It would take longer but was more likely to produce results. Which is what the job was all about.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he had anything to rush home to. He’d fed and groomed the horses and left Ginger some hamburger earlier in the evening. Next to his daughter, the animals and the ranch were the loves of his life. There was no place like home in the daylight: the glow of the sun-drenched living room, the air pungent with the tangy smell of citrus from the groves, exercising the horses, working up a sweat. After the time he spent dealing with human slime, it made him feel clean.

But the nights he found lonely. He knew some women, and that helped, but the relief was short-lived. More and more he found himself coming back to the station after the sun went down. Such had been the case tonight.

Decker parked himself in the overstuffed armchair, the one that the Lazarus woman had sat in while she graded papers. So she was a teacher. Made sense. She dressed like a schoolmarm-collar buttoned up to the chin, long-sleeved blouse and below-the-knee A-line skirt. Of course, so did all the other women in the place. Even primmer.

But there was something about her that was different-more secular. Maybe it was her long, loose hair. He tried to imagine her out of the yeshiva context and dressed in more contemporary fashion. Tight pants and a clingy sweater. Then he shifted gears and visualized her in a string bikini, that thick black hair hanging down a smooth, slender back, skin deeply bronzed, her ass slightly falling out of the panty bottoms as she waded in the water. He’d bet she had a nice ass under all that camouflage.

He reveled in his fantasies, then snapped himself out of it. She was religious and married. Shit. When he’d been married, it had seemed as if the whole world was single, and now that he was single, all the desirables had been snatched up.