by Julia Dahl
I hold.
“Rebekah! Great shot. Give Cathy what you have from the scene. State Police radio said something about a possible domestic terror connection. Did you hear anything about that?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
“Well, give her what you’ve got. Can you stay up there tonight? Dig around tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You can expense a hotel room.”
Mike transfers me to Cathy and I give her the quotes I have from Bree and Liza and Matty, and tell her that one person was taken away in an ambulance.
“I’m headed to the hospital now,” I say. “I’ll call the night desk if I get anything.”
Saul and I arrive at the hospital a little before 7:00 P.M., with Van just behind us. The guard at the information booth directs us to the third floor, and as we get off the elevator, two state policemen in plain clothes, badges at their waists, step on.
“How is he?” asks Van.
“He’ll make it,” says the taller Statie.
Keller’s badge gets us past the nurse and we find Isaac in the bed by the window. He is attached to several machines, tubes going into his nose, his arm, beneath his gown. His entire left arm and part of his chest are wrapped in white gauze, blooming with the red and yellow seeping from the wounds beneath. His eyes are closed when we walk in.
“Isaac,” says Saul.
Isaac opens his eyes, and sees me first.
“Aviva,” he says, groggy. “What happened to your hair?”
Saul looks at me.
“I’m Rebekah,” I say.
Isaac closes his eyes again and, perhaps I am imagining it, smiles slightly. He lifts his good arm. He wants me to take his hand. I do.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispers, eyes open now. “You look just like your mother.”
“You know about me,” I say. A mix of pride and relief catch in my throat. Yes, I am that girl. Yes, I have made my way to you. To her.
“I found your articles in the newspaper,” says Isaac. He winces, and presses a button that I imagine delivers pain medication.
“She wanted to tell you about Sammy. I told her it wasn’t the right time to call, but she wasn’t going to change her mind.” He pauses, licks his cracked lips. There is a plastic cup of water with a straw in it beside the bed. I pick it up and he nods and opens his mouth slightly, drinks as I hold the cup for him. When he is done, he nods.
“Your mother … sometimes she gets hold of things in her mind and she can’t let go.”
Sounds familiar. “She called and then she disappeared,” I say.
“She turned her phone off. Sammy knows about technology and he had her worried they were tracking her.”
“They?”
“The Halls,” he says, slowly, now looking at Van.
“This is Officer Van Keller from the Roseville Police,” I say. “He’s trying to find out what happened to Pessie.”
Isaac looks skeptical. Saul says something to him in Yiddish. Isaac says something back.
“We trust him,” I say, chiming in.
Isaac nods, and continues. “They seem to be … working up to something. Last time it was a swastika on the door.”
“Are you sure that was the Halls?” I ask.
“I did not see them, if that is what you mean. Just before the New Year, someone vandalized a yeshiva in Roseville. Same thing. Broken windows, swastikas. Everyone was talking about it on Facebook and the blogs. I heard that the caretaker got the license plate number of a pickup truck, but that the police said there was no such number.”
“No such number?” asks Van.
“The caretaker had written it down wrong, I guess,” says Isaac.
Van shakes his head and takes out his notebook. “I never heard that anyone got a license plate number connected to that.”
Isaac continues. “Everyone was talking about how the fact that there was no arrest meant that the community was right to be annexing more land and taking a greater role in the city government and on the school board. That this was just more proof the goyim could not be trusted.”
Isaac’s speech is slightly slurred. He looks at the cup again, and again, I bring it to his lips. As he sips, he closes his eyes. When he is done, he lies back. After a few seconds, he speaks again, slowly, his eyes still closed.
“Since he got out of prison Sammy wasn’t coming around much. But he showed up the day after we heard Pessie had died. And he was scared. He wouldn’t say anything for days. He said he was sitting shiva but really he was hiding. He told us he did the vandalism. He said that Ryan’s father and brother had done it with him, but that it was his idea. He kept saying that. ‘It was my idea.’”
“You said Ryan’s father and brother. Not Ryan?” asks Van.
Isaac shakes his head. “Ryan is a good kid. He hated his family as much as Sammy hated his. But it wasn’t as easy for him to cut ties.”
“Why not?” I ask
“Sammy had a path out. He had Aviva and me. More and more people are going OTD. And Sammy knew they would let him go. But I got the sense Ryan was afraid that no matter how far away he ran, he’d always be looking over his shoulder for his father.”
Van raises his eyebrows and nods almost imperceptibly. I remember what he said about the kid “connected” to the Halls who died in prison.
“What about Pessie?” I ask.
“Sammy wouldn’t tell us anything specific, but it was clear he knew whatever happened was not just an accident. He begged us to believe that he had nothing to do with it. Aviva did. It was easy for her to believe that one of the Halls killed Pessie and then threatened to kill Sammy—to kill all of us—if he told. That’s what she thought the swastika was. A warning. What I didn’t understand was why they would want to kill Pessie in the first place. Sammy wouldn’t explain, except to say that it was his fault. If it hadn’t been for him, Pessie and them would have never crossed paths.”
“So Sammy said the Halls killed Pessie?” asks Van.
“He didn’t ever say. But it is what Aviva and I assumed.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police if you thought Pessie had been murdered?”
Isaac pauses for a breath. Talking is taking a lot out of him.
“Aviva thinks it is her fault Sammy turned out the way he is. She thinks she should have protected him better and she is terrified of him going back to prison. She was afraid that if she went to the police they’d suspect Sammy. I respected her wishes. And I did not have any real knowledge about what happened.”
“Do you think he could have done it?” I ask.
“If Sammy killed Pessie,” he says slowly, “it had to have been some kind of accident. He loved Pessie as much as he loved Ryan. As much as he loved anybody. And Pessie was the only one of us who had never let him down—at least that’s how he saw it. She was steady as a rock. I don’t think Sammy ever thought he would have to live in a world without Pessie Rosen.”
None of us say anything for a few seconds.
“When was the last time you saw Aviva? Or Sam?” I ask.
“I haven’t seen either of them since the night after we found the swastika. Aviva packed a bag and made Sammy come with her. When I talked to her last she said they were staying at one of the houses she cleans, but she didn’t say which one. The number she called from is in my cell. I think it was a landline. I told her she was being paranoid, but she said they weren’t finished killing people. And she was right. I was upstairs when that thing came in. If anyone had been in the living room they’d be dead.”
* * *
Saul and I check into a Super 8 just outside New Paltz a little before 10:00 P.M. The barely legal desk clerk tells us that the only room they have available has a king-sized bed.
“I don’t mind sharing,” I say.
Saul looks at the clerk, who is back to watching Family Guy on a tiny tube television behind the counter, and then at me.
“I will sleep on the floor,” he says quickly.
“Whatever you want,” I say.
We get our key and walk outside, climbing concrete stairs to the second floor room.
While Saul is in the bathroom, I fold the shiny floral bedspread into a sleeping mat on the floor, and set a pillow at the head. When we parted ways at the hospital, Van asked me not to inform the newspaper tonight that Isaac named the Halls as probable suspects in the firebombing.
“Give me twelve hours,” he said. “I don’t want to give them a heads-up we’re onto them just yet.”
I told him I could do that, but that I planned to call Nechemaya.
“They should be on the lookout, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” he said. “They should.”
In college, we had a guest speaker from The Miami Herald come talk to our long-form class. She made a big point of telling us that it was unethical to insert ourselves, as journalists, into a story in any way. She told us about a series she wrote about a family in Naples whose McMansion had been foreclosed on. Once, she said, the mother had an interview for a job in the next county, but the father had to take the one working car with him or he’d get fired. I had a car, she told us, but I didn’t offer to drive her, because then my presence would have altered their story. I remember thinking that was some pretty lame logic. Iris and I talked about it afterward and we both agreed we would have taken the woman. Because we are human beings before we are journalists. Warning Nechemaya that a neo-Nazi may be on the hunt for a former member of his community is definitely inserting myself in the story, but if I’ve learned anything over the last couple months I’ve learned that it’s a crock of shit to pretend that once you’ve decided to write about something you aren’t a part of it—in some way.
Nechemaya does not answer his phone, so I leave a message with as much detail as I can. Hopefully, he’ll listen to his voice mail.
Saul comes out of the bathroom, takes off his shoes, and lays down. He’s wearing a white undershirt beneath his long-sleeved blue button-up, but is apparently going to sleep fully clothed. He doesn’t even remove his belt. I brush my teeth and change into my t-shirt and sleep pants. It occurs to me that because we met in the dead of winter, Saul has never seen me in anything but long pants and sleeves—and a hospital gown.
“I’m sorry this makes you uncomfortable,” I say. “Are you thinking I’m, like, shaming God by sleeping in the same room as you?”
“Not at all,” he says. “I am marveling at how easy it is for you to interact with people. All kinds of people. It took me many years to look at people who were different from me as people at all, really. And more years still to see them as unthreatening. In some ways, working for the police department helped with that. In some ways it probably hurt. Seeing people at their lowest times, on their worst behavior.”
“That’s sort of how I see people as a reporter,” I say. “At the worst times.”
“Yes,” he says. “But you are so young. And it seems to come naturally to you.”
“Bugging people?”
“No,” he says. “Flexibility. Empathy. You encounter people who are different from you and you are able to connect to them instantly. You see similarities, not differences. You look for a way through what divides you.”
I’ve never been great at accepting compliments; I don’t like the way it tilts the balance of power, even if for just a moment. But if I could let myself believe what Saul has just said about me, I could be pretty happy.
“Thanks,” I say.
“No need to thank me,” he says.
“Just say, ‘you’re welcome,’ Saul.”
Saul chuckles and lays his head on his pillow on the floor. “You’re welcome.”
I am about to turn out the lamp beside the bed when my phone rings with a blocked number. The city desk, I assume.
“This is Rebekah,” I say.
“Rebekah? This is Ryan Hall.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
REBEKAH
Ryan insists I meet him alone, I insist we meet in a public place, and Saul insists I call Van to tell him where I am going before I leave the motel. So, at just before midnight, I pull up to the same diner where Van and I met last night, knowing he and Saul will be parked with sights on the building. Just in case.
I see Mellie as soon as I walk in. She is standing beside the booth against the far wall, bouncing Eva on her belly, looking like she hasn’t slept since I was in her living room yesterday. When she sees me, she scowls.
“Ryan,” she says, “that’s her.”
Ryan, who is sitting in the booth, bent over with his hand on his forehead, looks up. He squints at me, then pops up, nervous.
“Thanks for coming out,” he says, gripping my hand. Ryan looks weary, but wired. He is tall and thin, with brown hair grown a little shaggy over his ears and half a week of stubble on his face. His blue scrubs have the words HUDSON ANIMAL HOSPITAL embroidered on the chest.
“You didn’t say were a reporter before,” says Mellie.
“Shut up, Mellie,” says Ryan. “Tell her.”
“You tell her first.”
“Maybe we should sit down,” I say. There are people in a booth at the other end of the restaurant who appear to be in a study group. The lone waitress is behind the counter, filling ketchup bottles. Nothing screams ambush, but I’m going to sit facing the door anyway.
I pull out my notebook as Mellie slides in across from me toward a child’s car seat. Eva, dressed in footie pajamas with bunnies on them, is whining, twisting backward and trying to hurl herself out of Mellie’s arms. Mellie presses her into the car seat and struggles to strap the child’s limbs down beneath the various belts and buckles required to make her stay. She produces a teddy bear from the diaper bag on the table and drops it in Eva’s lap, but the stuffed animal does nothing to quiet her crying. She pulls a baby bottle, a water bottle, and some sort of tin from the bag. Ryan watches, standing, chewing on his fingers. I can hear his teeth tick tick tick as he pulls away cuticle flesh.
“Sit down, Ryan,” she says. “You’re making Eva nervous.”
“Tell her,” says Ryan, still standing.
“I have to make this fucking bottle!”
“Shhhh,” hisses Ryan, looking around.
“Sit down or I’m leaving,” she says.
“You’re the one that called me!”
“Shhh,” she hisses back. These two really don’t like each other.
“Ryan,” I say, “why don’t you sit down? I’m glad you called.”
Ryan points to the duffel bag on the seat next to me.
“Open that.”
I bring the bag to my lap. It feels empty. “What’s this?” I open it. Inside the bag is hair.
“It’s Pessie’s,” says Ryan.
“Pessie’s?”
“She wore a wig.”
Of course she did. Pessie’s wig is in this bag.
“Where did you get this?” I ask. My head feels light. Keep it together, Rebekah.
“I’m sure there’s DNA on it; they’ll be able to get him with that.”
“Get him?”
“My dad,” he says. “My dad killed Pessie.”
“Ryan!” says Mellie, her teeth clenched. “Sit the fuck down.”
Ryan sits. Falls, more like. The burden now out of his chest and into mine. My head begins to sweat and I pull off my knit cap. I have the feeling that I am standing above the table watching myself, giving myself orders. Maintain eye contact. Zip close the duffel bag. Set it aside; it is evidence. Breathe. Breathe again.
“How do you know?” I ask, my voice tighter and higher than when I last spoke.
“I was there. Okay? But I’m not going down with him. No fucking way. He’s already ruined my life. He’s like the plague. He just spreads.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Ryan looks at the ceiling. He’s calmer since he sat down. More focused. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about with you being a faggot?” says Me
llie, shaking the powdered milk mix for Eva.
“Hey,” I say quietly. But she doesn’t even look at me.
“There you go,” says Ryan. “My dad and Hank didn’t know I’m … gay.” It’s hard for him to say the word. “I’ve known since junior high, but Sam was the first, like, relationship I’ve ever had.”
Mellie makes a kind of snort. Ryan ignores her. “When we met I was still working for my dad and the Brotherhood. I mean, what did I care? I was like, twenty-one, and it was good money, easy work. I was living with my friend Kaitlyn, and Sam started crashing with us there. My dad and Hank saw him, maybe, three times that whole first year. We made up this story that he was a German exchange student Kaitlyn met at work. My dad got a kick out of that. When he saw him he’d be like, Heil Hitler. I thought it was fucked up, but Sam thought it was funny. He really hated where he came from.
“And after he got out of prison, he hated it even more. He blamed everything on the way he grew up. On how, like, they didn’t protect him. I mean, I get it. But you gotta move on eventually. Anyway, I thought he was back working with Kaitlyn, but it turns out he was also delivering for my dad again. Behind my back.”
“Why do you think he did that?”
“When he was inside he stabbed somebody who’d been hassling him and it turned out that the guy was somebody the Brotherhood wanted out of the picture. The guy was dealing inside and, I don’t know, it was some sort of turf thing. Anyway, word got back to my dad and he sort of got Sam protection for the rest of the time he was in there. Obviously, he didn’t know Sam was gay, either. And then when he got out, Sam felt like he owed him. Plus,” Ryan sighs, “he liked my dad. I can’t spend ten minutes in a room with him. Nigger this and spic and faggot. That’s all normal to them.” Ryan lowers his voice. “But especially after prison, Sam was a lot angrier. And honestly, he’s kind of racist. It’s the one thing I really didn’t like about him. He’s not as bad as my family, but sometimes he’ll talk about how black people are dirty and descended from, like, some Biblical character who was cursed. I don’t know. I tried to ignore it. Anyway, so him and my dad just … got along. Sam used to say that everyone where he grew up was weak. That they didn’t teach kids how to defend themselves. He dug how my dad was the opposite of that. He’d be like, nobody messes with your dad. After prison, Sam was kind of obsessed with being all macho. Lifting weights and shooting and—”
