Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(29)

CHAPTER SIX


Saul leaves me at a deli a few blocks from the funeral home. I order a green tea and sit by the window. The streets are dark. My hands have stopped shaking, but my insides are on a low vibrate. My leg is bouncing beneath the wobbly wood table. I don’t have my pills with me, and I try to focus my mind forward, to problem-solve. But it’s a problem so much bigger than any other I’ve ever tried solving that I can’t even imagine where to begin. It makes no sense to me that the police would give a body away at the crime scene, then allow it to be buried without so much as a toxicology report. What if she was poisoned? What if the killer’s blood or hair is still on her? Or in her? Malka didn’t mention rape, but maybe she’d had sex before she died. Wouldn’t that be a lead? For the first time since I got this job, I know things no one else knows. But I have no idea what to do with what I know. Can I just write what I saw? Will it even make a difference? She’ll be in the ground by midnight.

I decide to call Cathy. I dial her extension and get voice mail.

“Cathy, it’s Rebekah Roberts. I don’t know if you’re still on crane lady, but I, um, got some information and I wanted to see what you thought. I’m covering the funeral, so I’ll have my phone on me. Just give me a call when you can.” I hang up and immediately feel like an ass for referring to Rivka Mendelssohn as “crane lady.” Like porn dad, and the hot dog hooker (who sold blow jobs and wieners from a cart on Long Island), and tan mom (who got arrested for supposedly allowing her toddler to use a tanning bed), tabloids, and to some extent cable news, often create crude monikers for the people unlucky enough to catch our attention. It’s a shorthand, obviously, since we deal with so many names every day. I’ve never thought of it as anything beyond mildly amusing, but saying those words now ignites a little army of pins and needles in my stomach. I’ve seen this poor woman’s naked, brutalized body. She is a woman with stories I will never know. Crane lady doesn’t have children, or ideas; she doesn’t love or weep or fight back. Crane lady is a cartoon; Rivka Mendelssohn is woman, like me. Like Iris. Like Aviva.

I sip my tea and wait. After about a half an hour, the streets start getting crowded. Hasidic men and women and children move as one from side streets onto the main road, where the funeral home is located. I toss the rest of my tea and head outside.

Everyone is dressed in black. There must be hundreds—maybe thousands—of people, but the street is almost silent. Even the children are quiet. I stand for a few moments in the doorway of a small apartment building, looking for a sympathetic face to stop. I covered the funeral of a construction worker once. He’d been atop a beam that wasn’t properly secured and fallen to his death. He was buried on Staten Island on a beautiful fall day. I spoke with a woman whose husband had been on the job with the man and she gave me a good quote about how frightening it was to know that the safety inspections hadn’t turned up any problems. Another woman, a cousin of the deceased man’s wife, said his family was still in shock. That they’d just put a down payment on a house. After the graveside service, someone laid his hard hat, like a bouquet, atop the coffin. As everyone walked back to their cars, I watched the cemetery workers, who’d been standing off to the side smoking cigarettes during the ceremony, cover him in dirt.

I see a young woman, maybe my age, pushing a stroller, and I slide next to her, trying to keep apace.

“Excuse me,” I say. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m from the newspaper. Did you know Rivka Mendelssohn well?”

The woman does not break stride, and I can tell by the sharp shake of her head that she is not going to talk to me.

I step into the doorway and wait. Excuse me, I say, over and over to the people walking by. But no one stops. I decide to merge in and just follow the herd. I step in next to an elderly lady struggling with a heavy canvas shopping bag. Perfect, I think. The Good Samaritan gets the quote.

“Can I help you with that?” I ask.

The woman looks up at me. She squints, then smiles. The bag is heavy and her back is bent. She nods yes, and hands it to me. “Thank you,” she says.

“Did you know Mrs. Mendelssohn?” I ask.

“Of course,” she says. “My daughter went to bais yaakov with her.”

I have no idea what that means.

“It’s so sad,” I say.

“Terrible,” she says. “She was very young.”

“What was she like?” I ask.

“Like?” The old lady looks at me.

“I’m … I’m from the newspaper,” I say quietly so no one else around us can hear and tear her away. “We’d like to write a story about her … sort of … humanize her for our readers. I spoke with her sister-in-law Miriam yesterday.…” Saying you spoke with a family member or someone else in the inner circle of the person you’re trying to get information on makes it more likely others will talk. If the family is okay with me, I must be okay.

“You spoke with Miriam?”

“Yes,” I say. “She was very upset.”

The woman grabs my arm suddenly, her face now animated with unhappiness.

“It is so horrible!” she whispers, shaking her face at the sky. “I cannot understand it. So horrible. And you’re from the newspaper. They think, yes, that it was her gardener?”