Читать книгу Peter Decker 3-Book Thriller Collection - Faye Kellerman, Faye Kellerman - Страница 26

Even before he was fully awake, he knew he was going to be sick. His main concern was making it to the bathroom. Upon opening his eyes, he realized to his horror that he wasn’t in his bedroom. He looked around without moving his head. The room was faintly familiar, but her fragrance was pervasive. Rina’s bedroom.

He had no memory of how he got there.

He was stripped down to his underwear, tucked under smooth soft sheets that urged him to go back to sleep. But his stomach lurched, letting him know that if he didn’t find a toilet soon, he’d upchuck in the bed. The house was quiet. Hopefully, no one was home and he could make a dash for the bathroom without being seen.

Forcing his body upright, his head spinning, he stood on his feet, buckled, but didn’t fall. On the second try, his feet were able to hold his weight and he staggered to the bathroom and knelt over the toilet. His guts caved in and afterwards he felt much better. On the bathroom counter were a hand towel, an electric shaver, and a bottle of aspirin. After downing two tablets and rinsing out his mouth, he washed his face and neck and shaved. Back in the bedroom, he found a set of tefillin and a siddur resting on the dresser. His clothes had been neatly draped over the back of an easy chair. On top of them were his gun and holster, and a note from Rina.

Coffee’s on the stove. Juice is in the refrigerator. Key’s in the door. Lock up and leave it in the mailbox when you leave.

He picked up the phylacteries but put them back down. Empty words. No sense being a hypocrite.

He poured himself a cup of coffee. What the hell had happened between them last night? He remembered the feel of her skin, remembered that he’d kissed her, but beyond that it was a blank. Not even a blur—a blank.

He had wanted her so much. And now to think they might have made love and he had no memory of it.

Life wasn’t fucking fair!

He checked his watch. It was close to ten. Morrison had told him to take a day off, but he was too keyed up. Might as well proceed.

Clementine had disappeared, no one Decker talked to had ever heard of the Blade, he couldn’t find Kiki, and nobody recognized the painted dude in the red robe.

A total bust.

He slumped in his chair and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Marge approached him.

“Not going too well, Rabbi?”

“It’s going shitty, Marge.”

“Well, I’ve got some good news.”

Decker perked up.

“It has nothing to do with the case,” she said. “Marriot and Bartholomew have returned to their posts. We’re back in Juvey and Sex Crimes.”

Decker tossed her a dirty look.

“Well, at least our victims can talk,” she pointed out.

“This case is eating at me.”

“No one’s stealing it from you, Pete. No one wants it. Stop being so hard on yourself. You took two bags of bones, identified them, and solved the Bates murder—”

“I don’t know who killed the Countess.”

“You know how Lindsey Bates was killed. Who gives a damn how the Countess bit it? She deserved to die.”

“I have to find out who’s behind it all. We can’t let this happen again.”

Marge sighed. “You’re right. So what’s your next step?”

“Damned if I know.” He snapped a pencil in two.

“By the way, Pete. Dr. Hennon called. She says Armbruster and the Countess are a match, just as we thought.”

Decker bolted out of his chair. “I just had a brainstorm. I’ve got to go down to the morgue and borrow a skull.”

“Who do the teeth belong to?” Hennon asked over the phone.

“I’m betting it’s the guy in the snuff film I told you about,” Decker said.

“But you don’t know the man’s true identity?”

“No idea.”

“So how am I supposed to match him up with the teeth?”

“I’m cutting a few stills out of the movie and I’m going to bring them over to you. Remember the photographic match you did on Armbruster before you got definitive results with the teeth X rays? How you lined up the cranium with the photo—”

“I don’t like to give an opinion based on photographic matches alone. It’s too easy to make a mistake.”

“I just want to see if the bones I found in the foothills match this creep in the movie. I’d like to see if I’m on the right track. Please, Annie.”

“I don’t know when I can do it. I’m booked solid.”

“I’ve got the skull. I’ll send it by, along with the stills. We’ll pay you extra for your time.”

“That’s not the point. The living before the dead, Pete.” She paused. “I’ll work it in somehow.”

“You’re a doll. I owe you one.”

“How about dinner?” Hennon suggested. “Just between friends? Or is that against your dietary laws?”

He should have kiboshed the invitation immediately, but something held him back. Goddam it, he wanted to go out on a normal date and eat normal food with a nice-looking woman. What was wrong with that? Just between friends.

“There are exceptions,” he said calmly. “Maybe we can work something out.”

He felt guilty as soon as he hung up the phone.

“Have a seat,” Rina said. “We’re just starting dinner.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Decker. “I just came over to say thanks.”

“Please.” She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table.

Decker sat down. She handed him a yarmulke and he put it on without a word.

She placed a steaming bowl of creamy fish chowder in front of him. The soup was thick with chunks of white halibut, bits of diced potatoes, and lots of onions. In the middle of the table were slices of thick-crusted garlic bread, buttery and full of cheese. Rina poured him a bottle of chilled Dos Equis.

“I’m really not hungry,” he repeated.

“Don’t eat,” she said, quietly.

He stared at the soup, smelling its rich aroma. He was hungry. He was starved. But he refused to eat. He was acting like an asshole and didn’t know why. He was the one who’d shown up drunk as a skunk, acting like a lunatic. Why was he mad at Rina? And why the hell hadn’t he told Annie no?

Times like this reminded him that his divorce was a two-way street. He could hear Jan’s voice. You’re self-destructive, Peter. Her favorite word—self-destructive. She’d used it the day he’d quit the law practice; she’d used it the day she’d kicked him out of the house.

The boys slurped the last of their chowder and gave him sidelong glances. Quiet. He was making everyone uncomfortable. He stood up.

“I’ve really got to go, Rina.”

“Boys, I want to talk to Peter alone for a minute,” Rina said. “Please go to your room.”

“We didn’t bentch yet, Eema,” Sammy said.

“The avayrah’s on me,” Rina answered.

The boys left quickly.

Decker said nothing. Any remark would come out trite or stupid.

“Peter, what upset you so last night?”

He rubbed his chin and realized what a lousy job her electric shaver had done on him this morning. For some odd reason, it embarrassed him to be scruffy in front of her.

“Sometimes my work gets to me,” he answered.

“Are you still working on the bones?” she asked.

“Yes. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“At least you will sit down while I’m talking to you?” He sat back down.

“I’m acting like a jerk, Rina. I do that when I’m under pressure. I’m sorry.”

She patted his hand. “It’s okay. I’m sorry you had a bad day … day night. I wish I could help you. If you’d tell me about it, maybe—”

“Just drop it, Rina.”

He was hurting her. He saw it in her eyes. She said nothing.

“I won’t barge in on you like that again,” he said. “It was an exception.”

“It’s all right.”

“Thanks for taking in a stray dog.”

“You’re not a stray dog, Peter. You’re the man I love.”

Tell her you love her, damn it.

He smiled weakly and was silent.

Withholding son of a bitch. Why are you doing this to her? He ran his fingers through his hair.

“What happened between us last night, Rina?”

She stared at him for clarification.

“I had a blackout,” he said. “Did we make love?”

She shook her head.

“You groped around a little, then passed out on the living room floor. I was scared to death. At first I thought you had a heart attack, but, baruch Hashem, you started snoring.”

He rolled his eyes.

“How’d I get into the bedroom?”

“I’m not as weak as you think I am,” she said, quietly.

“You carried me?”

“Dragged you.”

“You should have left me on the floor to sleep it off,” he reprimanded her. “Why risk straining your back?”

Her patience suddenly snapped.

“Peter, for goodness sake, what if the boys would have seen you like that?”

He looked down.

“You slept on the couch?”

She nodded. “It’s comfortable. I’ve slept on it many times when I’ve had company.”

“Okay. I’ll go now.”

“Wait, I almost forgot.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a pocket siddur, not unlike the one he had burned. But this one was covered with silverplate and studded with blue stones. She handed it to him and he thumbed through the pages.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you very much. I’ll try to take better care of this one.”

“Don’t put it in a glass case and treat it like an object of art. Use it, Peter. Use it until it falls apart. It will help you—”

“I don’t need any help, Rina.”

“That’s ridiculous. Everyone needs help.”

You’re going to start an argument unless you shut your mouth, he warned himself.

He stood up and placed the siddur in his pocket.

“Thanks,” he repeated.

Walking out to his car, he stopped a few feet away from the unmarked. The guilt trip wasn’t over yet. The Rosh Yeshiva was standing against the car, holding a volume of Talmud and reading in the dark with the aid of a penlight.

Shit!

“H’lo, Rabbi,” Decker said. “I assume you’d like to talk to me?”

“Take me for a ride, Peter,” the old man answered, turning off the light.

Decker opened the door for him, then went around and settled in the driver’s seat. He drove out of the grounds and onto the mountain road, the Rosh Yeshiva sitting impassively beside him. The silence was suffocating. The rabbi took out a silver case and pulled out two handmade cigarettes. He lit the first one, gave it to Decker, and lit the second one for himself. The man’s profile was as chiseled and intense as a Rodin sculpture.

They rode on, smoking wordlessly until the old man finally spoke:

“You slept at Rina Miriam’s house,” he said, quietly.

The old guy had eyes behind his head.

“She slept on the couch,” answered Decker.

The Rosh Yeshiva’s voice hardened. “Do you think for one moment I had assumed that you had slept with her?”

Decker said nothing.

“And because you didn’t, do you expect praise?”

The detective remained silent.

“If you were just a gentile converting to please the woman he loved, I would have never started with you, Peter. Never! But that’s not the case. You’re a biological Jew who has had his heritage ripped away from him by a quirk of fate. I checked into your adoption, Peter. Your birth mother had arranged for you to go to a Jewish family, but there was a bureaucratic snafu and you were placed in the wrong agency.”

“It was the right agency,” Decker said harshly. “I have terrific parents.”

“I’m sure you do,” Schulman answered. “And they did a wonderful job raising you. But that’s not the point.”

Decker waited for the old man to continue.

“Four months ago you came to me, saying you were interested in finding out about Judaism. Yes, Rina was the catalyst, but you told me it went deeper than that, and I believed you. Now I wonder about your sincerity, if maybe you weren’t snowing me just to get to Rina.”

“That’s not true.”

“Perhaps. But even if that were the case, I wouldn’t have acted any differently. I was anxious for you to discover your roots, even if it meant hardening my ears to gossip. After all, to the world, you have not officially converted and you are still a gentile. I say nothing as you openly court a religious woman on the yeshiva’s premises. But your actions of last night! You’ve gone too far!”

“Look, Rabbi. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you by sleeping over at Rina’s house. It won’t happen again. I told her that, too. Sometimes my work affects me and makes me do impulsive things.”

Schulman’s face remained stony.

“You’re not the only person with enormous responsibilities, Peter. You’re not the only person who has come into contact with the worst elements of human nature. And you’re not the only person to have suffered pain. The dilemma you face is how best to cope with adversity, and you need help, my friend. You need guidance and you need comfort.”

The old man’s eyes turned to fire. He took out a pocket siddur and slapped it on Decker’s chest.

“This is where you find comfort! This is where you find guidance! You open your heart; you beseech Hashem to give you the strength and understanding to make it through another day, for He alone can give you peace. Hakadosh Baruch Hu! Hashem. Not a woman who will pat you on the hand and say ‘there, there,’ comforting you as she would a child who’s skinned a knee.”

“I tried praying—”

“You didn’t try hard enough!”

“Sometimes you need more!”

“And you expect to find relief for your soul in the arms of a woman? Or worse, from a bottle?”

The words tore through Decker. Rina had betrayed him. He had come to her for solace and she had turned his pain into a matter for public scrutiny.

“She told you,” he said bitterly.

“She’s conscious of the reputation of our institution.”

“Well, now I know where her loyalties lie.”

“Loyalties!” The old man blew smoke out the window. “You have no faith in Hashem. You can’t possibly have faith in human beings—even those you love. Do you honestly think that Rina Miriam called me up and told me you arrived at her house drunk? She phoned and told me that you had come to her, agitated and sick, and she was going to put you up for the night. I told her it was inappropriate for her to do so and I’d come get you. And do you know what she said?”

Decker didn’t speak.

“She said, ‘Absolutely not. He’s going to stay here. If my decision has shamed you, I’ll move from the premises, but he’s sick, he’s sleeping, and I don’t want him moved!’ Do you know what she was really saying?” Schulman said fiercely. “‘I’d rather shame myself than shame him before your eyes, Rav Schulman.’

“At that instant …” Schulman held up his index finger. “At that instant I knew you were drunk, for it’s no shame to see a sick person, is it? In fact, it’s a good deed to care for the sick, and she of all people wouldn’t deny me any opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah.”

The rabbi crushed his cigarette with his bare hand and threw it in the ashtray.

“Rina erred by getting involved with you in the first place. No matter how nice and understanding you were during that horrible time, the bottom line is you were a gentile. That’s it! Until you became a Torah Jew, she should have refused to see you. But she chose differently, and now she pays for her decision. I hear and see things, Peter. She puts up with daily ridicule, constant pressure from her parents and friends. She does it because she loves you and because she believed you when you told her you wanted to convert. Last night you placed her in a compromising situation. Her ethics were bound to be scrutinized by prying eyes. She chose your honor over hers. She’s an eishes chayil—a woman of valor. She’s too good for you.”

Decker swallowed back a dry lump in his throat.

“I never said she wasn’t.”

His answer didn’t seem to please the rabbi. He asked to be taken back. Decker turned the car around and headed toward the yeshiva in silence. He pulled the Plymouth into the parking area and shut the motor. They sat in the dark for a moment, listening to the nighttime sounds. The sky was clear, moonbeams peeking through the branches of oak and eucalyptus.

The rabbi turned to face him.

“You can either wallow in self-pity or you can do better.” His voice had softened. He placed a firm hand on Decker’s shoulder and said, “The choice is yours, my friend.”