Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(63)

“Oh yeah?” he says. “Your friend is already here.”

“My friend?”

“From the school paper. The Oracle?”

“I’m from the New York Tribune,” I say. “From the city.”

“Wow,” he says. “You got here fast.”

“We sort of know them,” says one of the girls behind the cop. Her hands are plunged deep into the front pocket of her SUNY hoodie. Her bottom lip is pierced. “Aviva cleans our house. She’s really nice, right, Bree?”

The girl next to her—Bree, presumably—nods. “The cops said Isaac was the only one home.”

“Isaac?” Saul pulls out his phone. “Excuse me,” he says, and steps away.

“They said he was going to be okay,” says the first girl.

“What happened?” I ask.

“We heard a crash, like everybody else,” says Bree. “And then the fire.”

“Did you see a car or anything?”

Bree and lip-pierce shake their heads. “I was in the back of the house,” says Bree. “Somebody broke their kitchen window and spraypainted a swastika on the front door a week or two ago.”

“Aviva and Isaac are Jewish,” says a young man wearing a Mets cap.

“So’s half the school,” says lip-pierce.

“They’re different kind of Jews,” says Mets-cap. “They’re the black hat kind.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

Mets shrugs. “I’m from Marine Park. We have lots of them in my old neighborhood.”

“But they didn’t, like, dress funny,” says Bree.

“Not anymore,” he says. “Isaac was gay, too. I mean, so’s everybody, but he’s older. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

“Since when are you best friends with them, Matty?” asks lip-pierce, not pleased.

“We talked,” he says. “She’s nice. But somebody was definitely messing with them.”

“Did they say anything about who might have done the vandalism?” I ask.

“No. Isaac asked me to watch out. Let him know if I saw anything suspicious, but I didn’t.”

“So he was worried?”

“Definitely,” he says. “He got a motion-sensor light right afterward.”

“Did they call the cops?”

“I’m not sure,” says Matty.

“They’ve been rolling by a little more often,” says Bree.

“Do you mind if I get your names?” I ask. Look at Rebekah, acting like a professional.

Without hesitation, Bree, Matty and lip-pierce (Liza) provide first and last names, ages, and phone numbers for possible follow-up.

“Will this be in the Trib?” asks Matty. “My mom’ll love that.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“I wonder where Aviva is,” says Bree. “She’s been gone a while.”

“Yeah?” I say.

“I haven’t seen her car for at least a week, now that I think about it. Since right after the swastika thing.”

Saul returns and ushers me away from the students and the university cop.

“The hospital is very close,” he says. “I think we should go see Isaac.”

“Those kids said Aviva’s car hasn’t been here for a week.”

“Rebekah!” Saul and I turn and see Van Keller jogging toward us.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I have a buddy at the State Police barracks nearby. I came up to talk to him about Pessie and heard this on the radio.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like somebody threw some kind of incendiary device—like a Molotov cocktail—in through the front window. There was some nasty shit in it. Acid, I think.”

“Acid?”

“Ate right through the firefighters’ boots.”

“Jesus.”

“Middle of the f*cking day,” says Van. “Crazy brazen.”

“Did anybody see anything?”

“Staties are doing a canvass,” says Van.

“The woman who lives here is related to Pessie Goldin’s ex-fiancé,” says Saul.

“What? How do you know that?”

“Because she’s my mom,” I say.

Both Saul and Van look surprised.

“Your mom?”

“I never met her. She abandoned us. Then she reached out a couple months ago but she’s, like, disappeared. And so has her brother. Sam. The one I told you about—the one that’s dating Connie Hall’s son. I just talked to these neighbors and they said someone painted a swastika on the door a couple weeks ago and they haven’t seen her since. And Pessie, and now this…”

“Rebekah,” says Saul, putting his hand on my shoulder. I am talking too fast.

“I didn’t realize this case was … personal for you,” says Keller. He is unnerved.

“I should have told you,” I say. “I just … I didn’t know for sure. At first.”

“I looked up Sam Kagan last night,” says Van. “He has a criminal record. A violent criminal record. And you’re telling me he is your uncle?”