Blood on the Sun (CSI: NY) Read Free Page A

that Mac and Danny had to be quick, be thorough and get the three bodies to the lab as quickly as possible.
    Mac looked down at the body of Howard Vorhees, who hugged himself, either to hold in his rapidly flowing blood or to protect himself from another attack.
    “Cleaning lady, Maybelle Rose, found them when she came in a few hours ago,” said Sylvester. “She’s next door at a neighbor’s. We tried to question her, but she just kept crying.”
    “We’ll talk to her,” said Mac.
    “Weapon?” asked Danny.
    “We’re looking for it,” Defenzo said. “But that’s not all we’re looking for. There’s one more member of the family, a twelve-year-old son, Jacob. We can’t find him.”
     
    Stella Bonasera and Aiden Burn stood in a small synagogue library on Flatbush Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and looked down at the body of a man who lay in the bright beam of morning sun that filtered through the only window in the room.
    The black-bearded dead man wore a dark suit and blue tie. He lay on his back, eyes closed, head turned to the right. The man was laid out on a chalked cross, his hands—palms up—and bare feet pinned to the wooden floor by thick nails. Crucified. Printed in chalk on the floor were words in Hebrew: “Ein tov she-ein bo ra.”
    Against one wall was a loose pile of thick, long, almost black nails. There was also a hammer next to the nails.
    On this wall, in what looked to Stella like the writing of a different hand than the one that had written the Hebrew words, scrawled in white paint were the words C HRIST IS K ING OF THE J EWS . Were there two of them, two killers?
    In the immaculately clean sanctuary just outside the door to the library, Detective Don Flack spoke to the bearded man in black. Flack had written the man’s name in his notebook, Rabbi Benzion Mesmur. Rabbi Mesmur wore a wide-brimmed black hat. His wrinkled, arthritic hands were folded in front of him.
    “Who is he?” asked Flack, who longed for a cup of coffee.
    He had slept later than usual and hadn’t had time to heat a cup of yesterday’s coffee in the coffee-maker, nor had he had time to pick up a carry-out cup of coffee from the Korean deli on the corner near his apartment. Flack was not happy about this turn of events.
    “Asher Glick,” said the rabbi, looking at the closed door behind which Stella and Aiden were going over the crime scene.
    Flack wrote down the name. “You have an address for him?”
    The rabbi nodded and said, “I’ll get it, but it’s not necessary. His wife is outside with the others. Her name is Yosele. His children are Zachary and Menachem.”
    The rabbi closed his eyes.
    “What was he doing here?” asked Flack.
    The rabbi shrugged.
    “I don’t know. Morning minyan was over. The men all left for work, home.”
    Flack wrote that down.
    “You know what a minyan is?” asked the rabbi.
    “At least ten men who’ve been bar mitzvahed gather every morning for prayers,” said Flack.
    “You’re not Jewish,” said the rabbi.
    “No, but my best friend, Noland Weiss, was.”
    “We had a Noland Weiss in our congregation years ago,” said the rabbi. “He left us to join the conservatives.”
    “And the police. We were partners.”
    The rabbi waited for more.
    “He’s dead,” said Flack. “Shooting during a routine drug bust. He saved my life.”
    The rabbi closed his eyes, leaned forward and said something in Hebrew.
    “You know anyone who might do a thing like this?” asked Flack.
    “Perhaps.”
    “Who?”
    “ ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness,’ ” said the rabbi. “If he is innocent, as he well may be, I will have borne false witness.”
    “Rabbi…”
    “Ask Yosele, his widow,” the rabbi said. “She is outside with the others. She is the pregnant woman with two small children certainly clinging to her. I should let them in.”
    “It’s a crime scene. Do you know why there’s a pile of nails and a hammer next to the wall near the deceased?” asked