Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(27)

Saul begins to speak. “This looks like blunt force trauma, here and here.” He points to Rivka’s head. You can see the skull wounds clearly because she has no hair. Someone has, mercifully, closed her mouth.

Malka is silent and Saul continues. “It looks like she was hit multiple times, very hard, on the back of the head.” Malka, as if on cue, lifts Rivka’s head slightly and turns it, pointing to one particularly devastating wound just above her left ear. “See the blows to the neck? Here and here. They seem to be both pre-and postmortem.”

“She did not die easily,” says Malka.

I can’t speak. What is happening inside my chest is not anxiety. It is the low rumble of a feeling I thought I might have outrun: sadness. Heavy, weeping sadness pulling at the corners of my mouth, tightening around my throat. Rivka Mendelssohn was about my height and weight, but lying on the table she seems tiny. Like a child. She has an old scar, maybe from a cesarean birth (or two), just below her belly button. I remember reading Catch-22 in high school and getting to the end where Snowden, the airman who gets shot, “spills his secret,” and his secret is literally his guts. Man is matter. Drop him out a window and he will fall. Set fire to him and he will burn. Something like that. I always remembered those lines. To me it felt like a carpe diem thing. Like, you’ve got this body, this life, and it’s all you’ve got. But looking at Rivka Mendelssohn I think maybe he meant it more literally. Rivka Mendelssohn was a woman, and then, suddenly, she was a pile of meat and bones. And it didn’t take a war to do it. If I had a bat, I could have done it myself.

“I’ve seen bodies in worse condition,” says Malka. “But usually in deaths involving motor vehicle accidents. See these?” She points to marks on her wrists. “I’m not certain, but she may have been restrained.”

My phone rings. I dig into my pocket to silence it, but my hands feel light, and as I pull it out I drop it onto the concrete floor. It bounces twice and lands beneath Rivka. I drop to my knees to retrieve it. UNKNOWN—it’s probably the desk, though I don’t know why they’re calling me. I flip the switch to silent and put the phone back in my pocket. Malka looks uncomfortable; she glares at my phone. If I were really named Rivka, I think my phone would be off for the Sabbath.

“Sorry,” I say.

“I know this would just be an opinion,” says Saul, “but might you be willing to entertain a scenario?”

Malka nods.

“Rivka, perhaps you should write this down,” says Saul. I nod and dig into my bag for my notebook. My hands are trembling. “Based on what I see, my opinion is that Rivka Mendelssohn was struck from behind and knocked down. See her hands, and knees.” He points to Malka, who obliges, gently lifting Rivka’s left hand. She turns it over to reveal broken fingernails and scratching. She sets it back down and lifts the other. The knees, I can see, are scratched and bruised, though so is the rest of her.

“The wounds to the head and neck look pre-mortem. If I had to guess at a cause of death, I would probably say cerebral hemorrhage due to repeated head trauma. But obviously I can’t be sure. Much of the rest—especially the bruising and ripping in the skin—seems to be postmortem. It is possible that much of this came from the … material in which she was found.”

He means the mountains of steel.

“What are these?” I ask, pointing to deep skids on Rivka’s bald head.

“It appears as if her hair was freshly shorn,” says Malka.

Saul nods. “I’d say those are from a straight razor or a knife with a very sharp blade.”

I start to conjure pictures of what happened to Rivka Mendelssohn in my mind. Someone ties her up. Then shaves her head. Then kills her. Then takes off her clothes and drives her to the scrap metal yard and throws her in. That is some sick shit.

We all stand silently for a few moments. If I focus on the injuries—the torn flesh, the bruised skull—I can trick myself into thinking that the body lying before me is some kind of science project: just a cadaver ready to be cut open and explored by medical students or researchers. But when I look at her feet, the second toe longer than the first and the remnants of polish on her toenails, her breasts fallen flat and crooked against her chest, I see a mother who bore four children and breast-fed them. I see a woman bent over in a bathroom, painting her toenails. Did she have to keep that secret? Are ultra-Orthodox women allowed such adornments? I have the urge to touch her, just to make sure this is all real. Three hours ago I was eating a breakfast sandwich and watching Goldie Hawn yell at Kurt Russell.

Finally, Malka speaks.

“And she was pregnant. I’d say about twelve weeks.”

“Fuck,” I say.

Saul and Malka both look at me.

“Sorry,” I say. “I just … so the police really aren’t going to see her?”

Neither Saul nor Malka answers my question.

“If that’s all…,” says Malka, “The service is at six.”

“Thank you, Malka,” says Saul. “You’ll keep this visit between us?”

Malka nods.

“Thank you,” I say.

Saul and I strip off our hats and booties in silence. In the entryway, I check my phone and see two more missed calls from the desk.

“Do you need to return that call?” he asks.