Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(12)

“Well, then.”

“Are you saying that you didn’t investigate her death because she was taking a kind of medication about thirty million Americans take?”

“Now you’re putting words in my mouth.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Are you looking into her death?”

“I’m not going to comment on that.”

Well, then.

“Okay,” I say. “Thank you for your time.”

I slap down the phone and let out a groan. I suppose I should be happy that I at least got a “no comment” for the story; getting anyone on the record at the New York City Police Department is practically impossible. At least in a small town like Roseville the chief picks up the phone when you call. Even if he is a douche bag.

I put Pessie’s story aside for the time it takes to pound out the articles the city desk wants for tomorrow: a rewrite of a British tabloid story about Jude Law; a fire at a pizzeria on the Coney Island boardwalk; baby gorillas at the Bronx Zoo. At three thirty, I get a text from Levi with a photograph of him and Pessie, presumably on their wedding day. The text that follows says: pessie and levi, 2/3/10. Levi is standing and Pessie is sitting. He wears a double-breasted black coat and an enormous fur hat shaped like a cake box. Pessie is in white, lace collar to her chin, puffy shoulders. Neither is smiling, although they don’t look unhappy, exactly. Pessie has light hair, not blond, but not quite brown, either. Her eyes are gray-blue and she appears very young. A few months ago, I would have laughed at this portrait. I would have joked that it looked like it was taken in 1910—even 1810—not 2010. I would have made fun of Levi’s “ringlets,” as I derisively called sidecurls. Ringlets like Shirley Temple had. Ha! Did he sleep in curlers? Did he hold them steady with hairspray? I would have rolled my eyes and felt a mix of pity and scorn for Pessie and Levi in their stupid costumes. Now I still feel pity—for the dead woman, her grieving husband, her motherless child—but the scorn is gone. Inside those outfits, I know now, are human beings, just like me.

An hour later, the library e-mails Pessie’s backgrounder, with possible addresses for her kin in Roseville, Brooklyn, and Lakewood, New Jersey. Levi said that Pessie’s mother was named Fraidy, and there is a listing for Shmuli and Fraidy Rosen. I call the number and a woman answers.

“Hi,” I say, “my name is Rebekah Roberts. I’m a reporter for the New York Tribune.”

Silence.

“I’m trying to reach Pessie Goldin’s family.”

“What do you want?”

“I, um, I’m very sorry to hear about Pessie. I met her husband, Levi, earlier today and I am working on a story about her death…”

“I have nothing to say,” says the woman, and hangs up the phone.

Perhaps someday I will get used to being hung up on, or having a door slammed in my face, or being run off a front lawn, or shouted out of a business. But I’m not there yet. Shame creeps like fog up my cheeks and squeezes my heart. If my daughter died in a bathtub, would I want to talk to a stranger about it? Probably not. But what if that stranger wanted to help? And is that what I’m doing, helping? It’s hard to feel like it sometimes. Sometimes I just feel like a predator.

Just before the 5:00 P.M. deadline I e-mail a draft of Pessie’s story to Larry Dunn, the Trib’s lead police reporter and, since the Rivka Mendelssohn story, a kind of mentor for me at the paper. After I press send, I call him at the Shack.

“Rebekah!” he says when he picks up. “How are you?”

“Good, thanks,” I say. “How are you?”

“Oh, the same. Working on the NYU jumper.” The night before last, a sophomore fell, jumped, or was pushed off the ledge of her fourteenth-floor dorm balcony and landed on the sidewalk along Sixth Avenue. The cops found a lot of weed in her room, and a little coke, so the paper is calling it “The Dorm Drug Den Death,” though it is unclear whether she was a heavy user, a dealer, or if the stuff had been planted.

“Do you have a minute? I just e-mailed you a story.”

“Hold on. Let me check.”

“It came from a source in the ultra … Haredi world.”

“Oh God,” says Larry, “you’re not done with those people?”

It’s not a terrible question. “Not yet,” I say. “There’s a man in Roseville, up north of here. His wife is originally from Brooklyn and she died sort of mysteriously. He found her in the bathtub with the baby screaming in the other room.”

“When was this?”

“She was buried March fifth.”

“That’s almost a month ago.”

“I know,” I say.

“What do the police say?”

“The chief was a douche. He was like, did you know she was taking antidepressants?”

“One of those,” he says.

“Yeah…”

“Gimme a second,” he says. “I’m reading.”

I wait.

“Do you think this is another pressure-from-the-community thing?” he asks.

“I don’t know. The husband said her parents are worried she killed herself and are, like, ignoring it. But he definitely wants an investigation.”

“Bathtubs are tough,” says Larry.