Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(20)

Iris and I look at each other. Kagan. That’s Aviva’s last name.

“Sam Kagan?” I ask.

“They were engaged at one point. We all grew up together in Borough Park and our families moved to Roseville around the same time. His family and Pessie’s lived a couple streets away from each other. There was a lot of turmoil in his family; his mom died in childbirth and his father never remarried. One of the sisters was OTD, too. Boys and girls aren’t supposed to hang out, especially if they’re not related, but no one noticed they’d become best friends. By the time they were sixteen, the families were discussing marriage. They got engaged, but there were big problems: he had been abused.” Dov shakes his head. “Monsters like that are very good at finding the boys who are different.”

“It’s really hard to be gay and frum,” says Frannie. She has been slumped low in her seat picking at a Greek salad while Dov has been talking. “The number one thing we are supposed to do is to make a big family. When you are gay you are shamed because you are gay. But also you are shamed because you betray Hashem by not marrying and making more Jews.”

Dov nods. “Sam loved her, I think. But not the way she loved him. She would have married him even knowing he was gay. She probably thought she could fix him. It was a while before she agreed to consider another match. And Sam’s been in a lot of trouble since he left. We haven’t spoken in years. His family sent him to New Hope, too. I found him on Facebook when the lawsuit was first getting started and asked if he wanted to talk about joining. He was, like, f*ck lawsuits, I’ve got a gun.”

Dov purses his lips for effect, then sighs.

“I’m glad you’re looking into this, Rebekah,” he says. “I think what you did writing about Rivka Mendelssohn was very brave. And very important. A lot of people don’t agree. I’m sure you’ve read the blogs. People can be such *s online when they know they’re anonymous. Believe me, I know. I’ve been getting death threats for, like, years. But maybe it takes someone outside the community to really investigate the bad things that are happening. I don’t know how Pessie died, but I don’t think she killed herself. And if all she was taking was Prozac, it doesn’t make sense she OD’d. But if that’s what her family is saying I doubt anyone in the community is going to do anything about it. They just want everyone to go back to normal and pretend no one has problems that can’t be solved by prayer.

“But prayer doesn’t make you straight,” he continues. “That’s why I’m in this lawsuit. And prayer doesn’t do police work. Her sister says she had a reaction to her pills, but how could anybody know? There was no autopsy.”

Dov wipes his mouth with his napkin and sets it on top of his plate.

“Do you know if Sam has a sister named Aviva?” I ask, feeling my face flush.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think that was the one who went OTD. She was a lot older than us, though. I never met her.”

“Do you know where she lives now?” asks Iris.

Dov shakes his head. “No idea.”

It’s after three when we leave the diner. Dov and I exchange phone numbers and he promises to call or text if he hears anything about Pessie or Sam.

In the livery cab home, Iris asks about the blogs Dov mentioned.

“Have you read any of them?”

“No,” I say. And I don’t want to, I think. Dov said he’d received death threats. And he said it with a kind of conciliatory tone—like I might have, too.

“Are you gonna look Sam up on Facebook?”

“I guess,” I say. My lips feel swollen, buzzing with the anxiety shooting up from my stomach. “If he’s OTD and she is, too, maybe they’re close.”

“Maybe he knows where she is.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe she bailed on him, too.”

We get out in front of our building on Third Avenue. The F train rumbles above us. Across the street, a sanitation truck idles. One of the men who collect steel in grocery carts and push it to the scrapyard on Smith Street rolls by, his cart empty.

As soon as we get upstairs, I open my laptop and Google myself. The first page of results is all stories from the Trib, but halfway through the second page there is a post on a Web site called FarFrum.com with the headline “Who Is Rebekah Roberts?” The author—whose name is simply “Administrator”—links to my articles about Rivka Mendelssohn and writes: You’ve by now read all about the murder of Rivka Mendelssohn. We at FarFrum applaud the reporter who apparently risked her own life to get justice for Rivka—but WHO IS REBEKAH ROBERTS? A quick Google search reveals she is from Orlando and is a graduate of the University of Florida’s school of journalism. Is she a Jew? And what do you think of her reporting on the charedi? We suspect there are some unhappy heebs out there.…

There are thirty-three comments. The first is from username “davenDan”:

this woman has blood on her hands. the goyim will use this to hurt us. she should be stopped before she brings death to us all.

Username “Ruthie718” posted beneath davenDan:

she is not jewish. no jew would do this.

Below that is “Heblow”:

Slut. I heard she f*cked a cop to get her story.

Further down, username “Bodymore666” posted: