Murderer in The Mikdash

Murderer in the Mikdash
By: Gidon Rothstein
Chapter ONE
It was just dumb luck, Rachel thought, marveling at the coincidence but adding
bitterly, if, after the Arrival, we're still allowed to believe in such things. But if I hadn't
looked up from window-shopping at that exact moment, I would never have seen him full
face, and I wouldn't have recognized him from any other angle.
These thoughts came in between her gasps of breath as she tried to keep up with
him, average in height and weight but with distinctively stringy red hair and a
permanently harried expression, as if he was perpetually overloaded with obligations. It
had been a while since she had walked quickly; it was even more challenging having to
duck into stores anytime he looked like he might turn around. Knowing that she could
never describe him clearly enough to identify him to anyone else-- where were her
journalist’s instincts when she needed them? Maybe it was true, anchorpeople were just
the pretty faces-- she trailed him through the winding streets of the city with the urgency
of slim but fading possibility.
If only that policeman, the one with all the questions that night at Liat's, were here
now! Much of what had happened outside Liat’s building that night was just a haze. She
remembered the ambulance workers frantically working to save her dying friend. Even
more vividly, though, she remembered this stringy red-haired man, wearing a jacket that
identified him as part of a volunteer ambulance corps. He wasn't doing anything, which
first caught Rachel's attention, just standing over Liat’s body, his face showing a
Murderer in the Mikdash by Gidon Rothstein 2
complicated wash of emotions, in a way that told Rachel he was not really an EMT, that
he had some other connection to Liat and her death.
As she had turned to call over a policeman and point him out, she had been
distracted for a moment. By the time she turned back, he was gone; she was doubly
determined that he not get away this time. When she had mentioned him to the cop, he
had shrugged in that particularly annoying Israeli way, saying he couldn’t do anything
without a better description. Anyway, the cop had said, while it is rare for a young
woman to die of sudden respiratory distress, it does happen; her family preferred to close
the case quickly, to allow for burial without undue delay. With no compelling reason to
act otherwise, they would list the death as natural causes, and wrap their investigation.
Rachel assumed the man with the stringy red-hair and harried expression would
not know who she was, so she allowed herself to trail him fairly closely-- she wasn't good
at it as it was, and needed all the slack she could create. So intent was she on her pursuit
that she didn’t notice when they entered the Old City, or the direction in which they were
walking. As the man went through several security gates, Rachel considered her next
move. Identify him to police personnel? Why would they care? She could already see
the cops giving her the blank, pointedly polite look that said you had just offered them
information of no use. Rachel decided she had two immediate goals— get a better look
at him, so she could describe him more exactly, and trail him to where he lived or was
staying.
“Selihah, geveret, mazal tov àl ledet benekh, excuse me, miss, congratulations on
the birth of your son.” The words of the security guard startled her out of her thoughts.
Realizing that he had seen the badge on her arm, as had so many people in the last three
weeks, she automatically thanked him and began to move on.
“I’m sorry, maàm, but I won’t be able to allow you to go beyond here for another
few weeks,” the security guard persisted.
“But you don’t understand, that man…” Rachel sputtered, realizing that her target
was quickly disappearing into the crowd. “Look, it’s very urgent that I get in touch with
that man right there. It’s a matter of catching a murderer!" She hoped that last hadn’t
sounded too dramatic; she also wondered whether lying to a security guard- she had no
idea of whether there even was a murderer, she just was having trouble accepting Liat's
"sudden respiratory distress"-- carried any consequences in the New Israel.
“Ma’am, if you’d like I can take a description of the man you were looking for,
but I cannot let a woman in your condition onto the Temple Mount.”
Something in the way he spoke finally brought Rachel’s attention fully away from
the now-lost red-haired man and to the jet-black haired one standing before her. He
wasn’t a security guard in the usual sense, she realized, he was a Levi, and he was telling
her that she couldn’t enter the Temple Mount for a while longer. Why?
"I'm sorry. What did you say?"
The Levi sighed, as if this were a particular trying part of his job. "I won't be able
to let you onto the Mount until after you've completed the waiting period and offered the
appropriate sacrifices." He seemed to know that this would not fly smoothly and waited
for the onslaught to come.

At first Rachel had no clue as to what he was talking about. She had never
interested herself much in the Temple; it made her nervous to think of Israel sliding back
to an ancient set of rituals. What did the Temple have to do with childbirth? Slowly,
across the bridge of years, long-forgotten high school classes-- which had barely made an
impression at the time-- came back to her. The Bible said that women who had given
birth could not enter the Temple for a fixed period of time.
She looked down at the badge that she had been wearing, the one her doctor had
told her was a way to build a friendlier society. The New Government, the doctor had
said, wanted all Jews to feel like they were connected, to share each other's sorrow--
mourners were encouraged to wear torn clothing for an entire month after losing a close
relative-- and times of happiness. Truthfully, Rachel had enjoyed the flood of
congratulations that came her way at all times and places. It helped a little bit with the
fatigue of caring for a three-week-old without a husband.
But what a fool she had been! That wasn't why the government had instituted the
practice. It was a way of spying on her, of enforcing the new rules about entrance to the
Temple. She thought back to the day in the hospital, lying exhausted in her bed wishing
for one more day until she had to go home. She realized now that her doctor's smile
mixed good wishes for Rachel with embarrassment as she explained the law, blue badges
for boys and pink for girls. The date on the badge, she now realized, was exactly for this
Levi to know when she was eligible to go through the ritual that would allow her onto the
Temple Mount.
New Israel, new government, for Rachel it added up to new frustration, that
special migraine that came only when she faced these situations. Mostly, she could
ignore the building of this Temple in Jerusalem, focus (when she was working) on stories
that had little to do with that building. Whenever she confronted it, realized all the rules
it imposed on all segments of society, that same headache appeared. Knowing it was
futile, some stubborn part of her insisted on trying one more time.
“You mean you’re going to let a man get away, a man who is possibly a murderer,
just because I gave birth in the past month?’ She tried to challenge the Levi as
aggressively as her years of reporting had taught her, knowing that grabbing the moral
high ground was often just a matter of inflection.
Apparently, he had learned the same lessons. “Ma’am, first of all, I have no
evidence that that man was possibly a murderer; more important to me (and more directly
my job right now) is protecting the Temple Mount from improper entry. And the Bible
clearly identifies a new mother as barred from entry to the Temple Mount.”
Rachel looked up at the man, probably in his late 30's, tall, confident, even a little
arrogant, too sure of his perfect rightness. There was no chance that she would sway
him; she knew she would not even convince him to go into the Temple and find the red-
haired man, especially since she could not describe him well enough for anyone to find
him. She imagined having all red-haired men detained (could they announce "Would all
men with stringy red hair please come to the information booth?" over a loudspeaker?),
but realized that no one would agree to that.

That was it for now; the trail was cold, there were at least six other exits for him
to leave by, and she couldn't watch them all. There was no point in arguing with the
religious fanatic—or petty bureaucrat -- in front of her. Rachel briefly considered
touching him out of spite, since she knew that would mean he would have to leave the
Temple Mount for the rest of the day (was that from high school? that old rabbi had got
more into her head than even she had known). She settled for a look that she hoped fully
conveyed her disdain for the system in which he had so much confidence, turned on her
heel and stalked away.
She desperately needed something to lift her spirits, so when she saw a coffee bar,
she went right up to the counter. “Welcome to the Temple Grounds, best fresh-brewed
coffee in the city of Jerusalem. What can I get you?” Rachel was still so engrossed with
her encounter with Levi—he had been wearing a name tag, and that was actually his
name, not only his occupation; Levi the Levi, what were his parents thinking? -- that it
took her a while for the question to penetrate her thoughts.
She ordered a cappucino and took it back to a table, all the while half-noticed
incidents from the past year flooding her mind, taking on new meaning. She remembered
Avshalom, her Israeli producer, mentioning that he had had to postpone a meeting in
Jerusalem because of a skin problem. When she had expressed her concern, he laughed
(a little chagrined, she now recalled, although she hadn’t paid attention at the time) and
said that his doctor had assured him that it wasn’t a physical problem, it was a spiritual
one, and his kohen--since when did people start having personal priests? - thought this
lesion would disappear soon enough and he would get back to Jerusalem. He hadn't
seemed concerned; he just shifted the meetings to Tel Aviv, so she hadn't paid attention.
As she thought about it now, she realized that it had been diagnosed as tsaraàt, that
leprosy-like thing.
Or Renee, who had had to throw away her favorite dress because of a stubborn
red stain. Or the neighbor who Rachel had seen taking all the furniture out of her
apartment because she was having an inspection for house-leprosy. She had tried to
ignore this Temple as not affecting her lifestyle; she had thought that it would be good for
those who were interested in it, and that she could mostly continue living as she had
pleased. As she realized how wrong she was, Rachel felt anger rearing its ugly head.
“You a reject, too?’ Stung by the word, Rachel looked up, ready to bite the head
off the man who had called her that. But the smiling countenance of the friendly giant
standing over her, who introduced himself as Reuven, made it clear that he meant no
offense, indeed that the situation had not yet been created in which he would knowingly
offend somebody. Not mollified, but unwilling to be intractable, Rachel managed to
control herself enough to simply say, “Yes, I suppose so.”
“There's lots of rejects here; that's why I got this location for the coffee shop. I
figure when people get told they can't go in, they'll need a pick me up right away. See
that guy over there? He just helped at a car accident that had a fatality. He's got to wait a
week before he can go back in. And see her? She…"
Reuven was about to go on, but Rachel wasn't interested, because she had her
opening. Maybe this guy could explain it to her. “It doesn’t bother you?” she blurted
out.
“What?”
“That all of these people are being kept out of places for reasons beyond their
control? That that guy is being punished for helping treat people who were hurt, for
helping treat the dead with dignity?”
The question seemed to startle Reuven. He looked at her for long moment, and
then said, “Oh, I see, you’re one of the Old Ones, aren’t you?”
“I’m not old, I just had a baby!” Rachel had heard the term, but didn't like its
implications. It would make it especially hard to get back her job, even once she had
worked the pounds off her body and face.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way, it’s a term the newspapers use for people who
are having a hard time adjusting to the new system. Most people, it seems, have
embraced the Arrival and the Rebuilding happily and enthusiastically. For those people,
the system may seem to present a few minor inconveniences, but in the scope of
things….”
“Minor? I think the man I was chasing might have been a murderer!”
Reuven continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “But a small minority is having more
difficulty. They-- and they are usually older, hence the term-- are still attached to the
freer system of a couple of years ago. Interestingly, some of these people are actually
quite observant, but they still want to be able to follow only their individual conscience in
deciding where they walk, who they touch, and all the other details that the Mikdash-- do
you mind if I call it that? Temple sounds so, I don't know, cold-- has returned to our
lives. Sociologists think that it’ll be a longer adjustment period for such people, but they-
-sorry, you-- will eventually come to appreciate that the benefits of the Mikdash far
outweigh any inconveniences."
"In fact, I'll share a secret with you. One of the reasons I bought this coffee shop
was in the hope of meeting people like you-- people who come off the grounds of the
Mikdash and drink coffee here in the Temple Grounds often go away happier than when
they came in. I think it's the drugs I slip in the coffee."
Reuven's mischievous smile as he said that was conveniently coupled with
another customer calling for his attention. Rachel was attracted to the man's sincerity, his
obvious belief in what he said, and his open good-natured acceptance of the people
around him. But that wasn't enough to dispel the dark cloud hanging over her, and when
he worked his way back to her table, she was ready to pounce again.
"But you really didn't answer any of my questions! You just said you're happy
with the new system."
Reuven put on a horrible imitation of an Irish accent. "Ah, chickadee, did I say
we answer questions here? I just said that people go away happier." Without the accent,
he went on, "I have had too many long, deep conversations about issues that seem to be
intellectual, but are actually emotional. Like today-- were you upset by the principle of
being excluded from the Temple Mount? I bet not; I bet something happened that made
you want to get there, and your frustration over being stopped is what's bothering you."
Rachel was a little insulted by the insinuation that she was letting her emotions
rule her intellect, but of course he was right, at least in this instance. She had been upset
about Liat, who, in the months after Lije disappeared, had become her closest companion.
After Adin's birth, Liat's phone calls had gotten stranger; she had become obsessed with
safety, with her diary, with getting Rachel to promise that she would read her diary if
anything happened to her.
And then the memory of the night the police had called, having found that Liat
had dialed her number just before she died. Rachel woke up nights wondering what Liat
would have told her had she managed to complete the call, she wandered the streets while
strolling Adin, listening for some clue as to what had happened to Liat, or even her diary.
The police had never found it.
Seeing the red-haired man had made her think, just for a few minutes, that she
might find the answers. She was mostly crushed that the mystery would continue.
She told Reuven the whole story, if only to let him feel some happiness at how
right he had been, to let him have the satisfaction of unmasking her supposed righteous
anger for the personal frustration that it was, to hear his I-told-you-so, in whatever
version he gave it. She had underestimated him again; he didn't say anthing about that,
just became interested in Liat's story.
"What makes you think Liat didn't just die, like the Medical Examiners said?"
"I don't have any real reason to doubt them, I guess. It's just, she was so young,
and healthy, and I know that those aren't reasons, but along with how she had been
acting… I mean, you had to know Liat. She was such a free spirit, without a care in the
world, always concerned that everybody around her have a good time. And then, about
three weeks before she died…right about when I had Adin, actually, she started rambling
on the phone, and when I'd mention it, she'd get all defensive, and clam up."
"Rambling?"
"Yeah, I don't even remember about what, but just going off on tangents that
didn't seem related to… wait, I remember. She kept talking about her diary, about how at
least that was safe, and if that was safe, it would all come out in the end. I had no idea of
what she meant, and I still don't, but…"
Rachel's voice trailed off, as she saw a red-headed man through the coffee shop
window. For a minute, she thought it was him, but as he got closer, she realized it wasn't.
"What is it? Is something wrong?"
"No, I'm fine, thanks. I think I've just got men with stringy red hair on the brain."
Rachel was suddenly very tired. Thinking about Liat was bringing up thoughts and
memories she wasn't yet ready to confront. She stood to leave.
"Thank you for the coffee, Mr…." He had only introduced himself as Reuven.
"It's HaOzer, but please, everyone calls me Reuven."
Rachel smiled, but it was her polite social smile; she was too tired for a real one.
"All right, thank you, Reuven, what do I owe you for the coffee?
Reuven ignored her question, focusing on the change in their conversation. "Did I
do something to upset you?"
"No, why do you ask?"
"Well, you seemed to bring our conversation to a close rather abruptly, as if
something had happened."
"I think I'm just tired; seeing that red-haired man, losing him, thinking about Liat.
I feel one of those tension headaches coming on, and the coffee, good as it was, did not
stop it. Also, if I get home quickly, I can get in a 20 minute power nap before the
babysitter leaves. Without being rude, I'd like to just pay for my coffee, say how nice it
was to meet you, and be on my way." Rachel could always sense when a man was
working up to asking her out, and was hoping to avoid that particular awkwardness.
"The coffee's always on the house for someone who just came back from not
getting onto the Temple Mount-- we are the Temple Grounds after all--but I had also
wanted to mention to you that…"
"Look, I'm sorry, I think you're a very nice man, but I'm just not ready to begin
dating yet…"
"Dating?" Reuven looked thoroughly puzzled. "Aren't you a new mother? What
happened to your husband?"

CHAPTER 2
There, he had said the word, and the sting was as strong as ever. She remembered
the first night Lije had failed to come home; she had made dinner, able for the first time
since the beginning of her pregnancy to stand the smell of food for long enough to
actually cook. She had worn one of her new maternity outfits, one that the station bigs
back in the US had approved, extending her stay on the air for a few more months, giving
her more time after the birth before she had to decide when to go back to work.
When he was late, she had gotten annoyed. Lije was wonderful, but he was easily
capable of getting sidetracked, and forgetting to call. Then, as the hours wore on, and she
called the various numbers she had for him, she began to worry. What if something had
happened? She called the police the next morning, and then had to deal with the fury
their knowing looks had inspired. They had seen it all too many times before-- a young,
attractive man, particularly olim, immigrants from abroad, they said-- doesn't show up at
home, it means he's found a better field to plant. It sounded more natural in Hebrew, but
that's what they said.
She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe they had said it to her like that, but
that was a whole different story. Lije run off on her? And yet, as the search went on, and
there was no sign of him or his car, she had begun to have some doubts.
But she certainly wasn't telling any of this to this stranger, who seemed not to
have met the question he wouldn’t ask. Looking up at Reuven, she informed him, in her
most clipped tones, that she did not choose to discuss her private life with people she had
only just met in a coffee shop, of all places.

Reuven apologized. "I know, I get carried away. It's just…I meet so many
people who are so needy, so desperate for someone, for anyone, to listen to them, that I
get used to just asking any questions that come up, as a way of showing my concern. I go
too far sometimes; my fault. Forgive me?" It was a smile of such obvious sincerity and
remorse, that Rachel couldn't help but relent a little.
"Certainly I forgive you. Was there anything else?"
Reuven ignored her shortness-- which she appreciated actually, since she had
overdone it, she knew--and said that yes, he had wanted to mention to her that there was a
group of people like herself-- who were having trouble with the adjustment-- who met on
a regular basis.
"A support group?" Rachel could not hold back her distaste for the idea. "With a
sixty year old social worker telling us how wonderful we are for having feelings?"
Reuven smiled. "You've heard of them, I see. Actually, this one is dfferent; it's
more of a discussion group among the people than an attempt to get to any conclusion.
The gang just talks about infuriating events that have happened-- like your story with
Levi the Levi-- and the group shares the problem. They feel better for it. If nothing else,
I think you'd get a kick out of seeing people share some of your indignation over their
indifference to your search for A POSSIBLE MURDERER."
Reuven said the last words with a flourish so exaggerated that this time Rachel
couldn't help laughing a real laugh, remembering her melodrama about the stakes in her
trailing the red-haired man.

"Are you going to be there?" Rachel couldn't believe the question slipped out of
her mouth. She did not know this man, but she felt safe with him, and not just because of
his physical size or strength.
“I could go, sure, but I think you might gain more if it was just you. Tell you
what, I'll drop you off, introduce you around, then leave, so you can make your own way
with the group. How does that sound?"
Rachel agreed, and they arranged to meet at the Temple Grounds for coffee at 10
the next morning, to head from there to the Old Ones meeting. Rachel had no idea of
what it would bring, but no hopes or expectations to disappoint her, either.
CHAPTER 3
Of course, just when she wanted to get a good night’s rest, be fresh for the
meeting, Adin decided to be a monster. She took him from the babysitter at 6:30, he
complained the whole evening until 10, and then woke up every hour and a half until
5:30, when he fell asleep for four hours, by which time the sitter was there for the day.
Rachel barely slept, and when the baby finally went back at 5:30, she dreamt that Liat
was floating above her, frantically dialing the phone, but never getting connected. She
woke up sweaty and, if possible, less rested than when she had fallen into her bed the
night before.
To match the rest of her life, on her way to the coffee shop she saw the red-haired
man again, walking about twenty feet ahead of her on Rehov Yafo, which Rachel still
liked to think of as Jaffa Rd. Her Hebrew was perfectly fluent, but thinking of street
names in English made her feel like she was still an American visiting this country
instead of a citizen of the only democratic theocracy she had ever heard of. She was a
little surprised to see him again so soon- she had never seen him before Liat died, and
now he was popping up all over the place-- and struggled with conflicting pulls. She had
promised to meet Reuven at 10, but she didn't want to lose the red-haired man again.
Then she realized she didn't have to make a choice yet. If he was going to the Temple
Mount as he had yesterday, he would pass the coffee shop, and she could just explain to
Reuven what was going on.
It wasn't that easy. A few blocks before reaching the Old City, he turned off and
went into the Old Hilton Hotel (sure, it had some other name now, but Rachel refused to
change-- her names for hotels was stuck at whatever they had been called when she was
eighteen years old and visited Israel for the first time), leaving Rachel momentarily torn.
Well, she rationalized, Reuven is in his coffee shop anyway-- after all, it is a business as
much as a place to pick up Temple rejects--I can always catch up with him later. From
there, the rationalization segment of her brain, one of her most developed talents, was in
full swing, and by the time she arrived at the Hilton, she had almost worked it out that it
was wrong of Reuven to have asked her to come to the coffee shop at all.
When she walked into the lobby of the hotel, she paused for a moment to breathe
it in, as she always did. Rachel hadn't been poor in a long time, but the opulence of hotel
lobbies, the marble floors, the smell of money, the waterfalls of various shapes and sizes
that each hotel put in as part of the décor, were irresistible draws. One of the perks of
working that she still missed was the business travel, with accommodations at hotels like
the one whose lobby she was currently occupying.
A member of the staff walked up to her. "Excuse me,…"
Rachel had been down this road often, although less so since she had gotten so
pregnant that she had to give up her spot on the nightly news. "Yes, I'm Rachel Tucker,
thank you."
As the words left her mouth, she realized her error and flushed with
embarrassment. The bellboy had just been trying to help her find her way; he, like
everybody else in this stupid country, did not watch American news, did not know or care
that she had been an anchor on network television, was unimpressed with her celebrity.
Close your mouth, Rachel, she gritted to herself, and then said, out loud,
'I'm sorry, I thought you were asking me something else. Could you tell me, did
you notice a man with red hair come through this lobby in the last few minutes?"
The bellboy turned to the receptionist, behind the desk about thirty feet from
where they were standing.
"Hey, Limor, did you see a gingi come through here in the last five minutes?"
Limor started to shake her head no, then yelled, "Wait, was his hair really oily and
stringy?" The bellboy looked at Rachel, who nodded.
"Yes."
"Oh, sure, I saw him. He asked me where the Old Ones meeting was."
The Old Ones meeting! What was he doing there? Rachel hurried to the fifth
floor meeting room the woman directed her towards, wondering what she would find.
In the elevator with her were two couples, in their mid-forties, stylishly dressed,
although the woman of one of the couples was Israeli-stylish, wearing clothing that
emphasized each curve of her voluptuous body. The other woman, no less attractive,
wore a more understated outfit, which lured the eye in, giving just a hint of the lushness
underneath, making any man want to learn more about the body hidden by the clothes.
Rachel, a clotheshorse, wished she had an outfit just like it.
The American couple was staring at her. Finally, the woman said, "Excuse me,"
Rachel wasn't falling for that one again. "But are you Rachel Tucker, the anchorwoman?
After the embarrassment in the lobby, it was actually nice to be recognized.
Rachel acknowledged she was, signed an autograph--when she used to have to sign fifty
a day, with people approaching her everywhere, it had been annoying; now that she
signed maybe three a week, she appreciated the people who asked. Elegant clothes
informed her, "This is my husband Bob, and I'm Elaine Gordon. We've only just moved
here from Teaneck, NJ. So nice to meet you."
Realizing that they were going to become acquaintances, Rachel looked at both of
them a little more carefully. Bob Gordon looked to be nearing fifty, still able to pass for
forties, but rapidly approaching the time when he could no longer hide his age. His
waistline, probably a little thicker than in college, still looked reasonably fit, and his
hairline, flecked with gray, had held up admirably. Elaine, no more than a year younger
than Bob, had done a remarkable job of staving off any signs of aging. From her perfect
makeup to her well-toned arms, she was clearly a woman who had the time and means to
insure that middle age was in her mind, not on her person.
Rachel put out her hand, not sure that these were her kind of people. "We've lived
here, off and on, for several years, since just after the Arrival." Too late, she realized that
she had used the wrong pronoun. "I mean, I…my son came along just about three weeks
ago; I'm used to speaking of us as a unit." Not a bad recovery, she thought to herself,
they'll assume I'm divorced and had a child out of wedlock or something. Which is better
than having to tell the truth.
Thankfully, the Gordons were more interested in talking about themselves than in
noticing the misplaced plural pronoun. "It's funny, you know, the whole time we lived in
Teaneck, everyone we knew and were friendly with was Orthodox--totally observant.
When the Arrival happened, we were so excited to move here. We thought, this is it!
Living in a country like this would be just what we wanted, and then when we finally
closed up shop at home and got here, well, we're just having the hardest time! We find
these meetings really helpful, though, just to meet people like ourselves and talk about
the little frustrations, well, it just really helps."
Rachel knew it was her problem and not theirs, but she thought that she might
have to shoot herself in the head if she had to spend more than another two minutes with
the Gordons. The sugar coating on every word that came out of Elaine Gordon's mouth
was enough to rot three sets of teeth. Rachel managed to nod politely when required--
her silence did not hinder Elaine's stream of words in the least-- and then separate herself
from them as soon as they got into the room.
Which was a shock. Rachel had assumed that there would be maybe fifteen
socially retarded people gathered around a conference table moaning and groaning about
how good the old days were, before the Arrival. But the Gordons had walked her into a
small ballroom that easily held two hundred people, and was around three-quarters full.
At this point, people were milling around, many of them obviously already catching up
with friends they had not seen since the previous week's meeting. Rachel wasn't sure of
the procedure, so she checked that the red-haired man was there, and then found an
empty seat, next to a woman who looked inoffensive if uninteresting.
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"
"No, my husband's not going to make it this week, feel free to sit down. My name
is Hulda Weiner, nice to meet you."
"I see nobody strives for anonymity at these things."
"There's no need. The government has made it clear that it's giving a long
adjustment period for people like us, that as long as we attend meetings regularly and
behave reasonably well in public, we can behave fairly loosely. I've been going for a
while, but truthfully, it's mostly so I can still indulge in an occasional not-fully-kosher
meal at one of those restaurants for non-Jews. When I feel guilty enough, I'll stop
coming."
Rachel hadn't realized that there were different sets of rules for different kinds of
people. Raised in a strict law-and-order family, she had just thought she had to follow
whatever laws the government laid down. Since she was nominally observant even
before, most of the public rules hadn't been that big a deal, and the government wasn’t
yet prying into people's private lives-- although there was a recurrent debate about that in
Parliament. At least until now, Rachel had been able to ignore the new system. Others,
she now realized, hadn't been that lucky.
Her journalist instincts began to stir, and she sat down next to Hulda Weiner with
some enthusiasm; maybe there was a story here for audiences back home. The woman
herself was physically unremarkable, with short mousy-brown hair that unattractively
drew attention to the length of her neck, unnaturally thin on her body, which was
probably thirty pounds beyond pleasing. People like her, Rachel knew, were often dying
to talk to anyone who expressed an interest.
"So, I'm a first-timer. Can you explain to me what happens?"
"It's pretty simple. We sit on these red chairs, and watch other people bare their
souls; or, if the mood strikes, we do it ourselves. Anything said in here is completely
confidential and unpunishable-- the government respects it as a vehicle for helping people
like us acclimate to a new set of social rules and mores."
"Sorry, I know this stuff is so obvious to you because you've been doing it for a
while, but I lost you right at the beginning. Does the meeting come to order at some
point?"
The bang of a gavel on a front podium answered her question. A tall man with a
full head of beautiful white hair called the meeting to order, and began reading from the
Bible. That week's section spoke of setting up judges and policemen to enforce the
Bible's laws, and elicited groans from some of the people there.
When he had done, he said, "We gather here to share with each other our
problems in getting used to the New Order here in this country. Anything said here
remains completely confidential and is inadmissible in any outside proceedings. Just a
few rules: There is no talking allowed other than by those recognized by the chair." So
much for getting information out of Hulda Weiner, thought Rachel. I may have to buy
her coffee afterwards to get any news. Meanwhile, the man was finishing up, "and
remember, introduce yourself to the extent that you are comfortable, and speak for no
more than five minutes."
CHAPTER 4
In the next two hours, Rachel relearned several lessons she had learned many
times before—don’t trust an amateur to speak for five minutes, because they have a
knack for making it seem like hours; being smart and being articulate are not always the
same; and it was possible to empathize with someone's situation while wanting never to
hear about it again.
Around the one hour mark, though, one person made a comment that stuck in her
head, making the whole meeting worthwhile. A muscular guy in his late twenties, not
only well-built but clearly used to dealing with tough situations, got up, looked around
furtively, and said, "My name is Jacko. My brother got killed last night in a barroom, and
I'm going to kill the guy who did it. I never thought the system was helpful before, but
the fact that I can off the guy who caused my family this much pain--and I'm going to get
it done even before the funeral--helps out a lot. The guy's running to Hevron, I think, but
I'm going to head straight from here, and I can catch him before he gets close. And
then…" He pointed his finger and thumb and made a shooting motion.
Rachel had no idea what he meant, although it sounded like he had just announce
that he was going to kill his brother's murderer. Shocked, she turned to Hulda and asked,
"What is he talking about?"
Hulda, apparently more wrapped up in the meeting than she was, shushed her.
She'd ask Reuven later, but it seemed like nobody in the room cared that his guy had just
announced that he was going to commit murder. Rachel couldn't figure out why, and had
a hard time focusing on anything else until 5 minutes before the end-- the white-haired
man had announced that there would only be time for three more speakers. The first was
another blubberer, who spent his entire allotment talking about how thrilled he was that
the government wasn’t punishing him for whatever grave sin he had committed; Rachel
forgot him right away.
The second speaker she couldn’t forget at all, because it was the man with the
stringy red hair. He stood up hesitantly and moved to the microphone-- he had a
surprisingly high-pitched voice for any man, let alone for the one Rachel had come to
think of as Liat's murderer. "My name is…Harvey, and I am required to come here by
my Levi. I've done some pretty bad things in my time, and when I got out of prison, my
Levi said that coming here would help me absorb the lessons I've been having trouble
with over the last little while. I've been coming now for seven months, and I just wanted
to say thank you to this group for being here."

And he sat down, leaving Rachel even more confused than ever. All right, so he
was a guy with a past, but what did that have to do with his having been standing over
Liat as she died? Was he just lying to the group, and he had really killed her? He
sounded sincere, he looked sincere. And yet, she had seen him, and he had not looked
surprised or horrified at her death, as the other EMT's had.
There was more here than met the eye, but Rachel had no idea of how to proceed.
As the meeting broke up, she realized that coffee with Hulda didn’t seem all that
appealing, especially when Hulda turned her down, and said she had to get home.
She turned to her new default plan in life, following Harvey. As he headed for the
Temple Mount--did he know she was following him and use the Mount as a way to shake
her?-- she assumed she'd pass the Temple Grounds, and could explain to Reuven what
had happened. For some reason, though, Harvey went around--instead of walking
through the Jaffa Gate (Shaàr Yafo, she reminded herself, she had to get more used to
Hebrew) he went to Zion Gate, so that Rachel didn't pass the coffee shop.
Although she knew she would get stopped, Rachel decided to go to the final spot
anyway. A different Levi was here, more appealing than yesterday's. This one--his name
tag said Yedidya-- was about 5'11", in his earlier 30's, with jet- black hair cut close to his
head. His blue eyes, shocking on an otherwise dark complexion, seemed to look through
you, penetrating and welcoming at the same time.
Less flustered today, Rachel took the time to ask a few questions. "Pardon me,
but do you know that red-haired man who just went by?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't." And Yedidya turned away to help another person
trying to get onto the Mount. Rachel waited until he was free, and then asked him what it
meant to have a Levi of one's own, trying to figure out what Harvey could have meant by
"my Levi." Yedidya seemed unsure of what she meant, so she told him of Harvery's
comment, modifying the story so Yedidya would not be able to identify any of the people
or places involved, and so that she wouldn’t violate the confidentiality of the meeting.
He hesitated, and said,
"I can give you a short answer or a long one. The short answer is that many Levis
now serve as parole officers for convicts who just got out of prison, and that's probably
what he was talking about. The long answer would take too much time now, while I'm
on duty. I get off at 7 this evening, however, and if you'd like to meet me somewhere, I'd
be glad to explain further. Why don't you check with your husband, maybe he'd like to
join us?"
Rachel knew he was just trying to be proper, not to seem like he was asking a
married woman out on a date. Like everyone else, he assumed that a new mother was
married; in some sense, she supposed, she was, although the bastard hadn't had the
decency to get in touch in the last eight months. Still, she hated having to explain her
situation to people she barely knew, and she was in no mood to explain it now. She
thanked him, took a card with a phone number in case she wanted to contact him again,
and left.
With the adrenaline of the chase wearing off, Rachel finally heard her stomach's
insistent growlings. Glancing at her watch, she was surprised to see that it was 2 o'clock-
- she hadn't eaten since 7 that morning. She should have offered to take Yedidya for
lunch-- did Levis get lunch breaks on days they were working in the Temple? Lunch
gave her a chance to reflect on the day so far. Mindful that TV cameras were in her
future somewhere, she hoped, she allowed herself only a Ceasar's salad, dressing on the
side. Of course, she was so proud of her self-restraint that she had Cookies and Cream
frozen yogurt for dessert, probably wiping out any calorie savings she had managed.
As she sat there, her body told her clearly that she was pushing herself too hard.
After yesterday's chase of Harvey (she liked having a name to attach to him), she had felt
quite strained, and had determined not to overdo it today. Luckily, Harvey had been in a
relaxed mood after the meeting, so that the walk to the Temple Mount hadn't been too
taxing. Even without racing, though, all that walking had been a little much. She would
get to her next destination, whatever that was, in a cab.
What was her next destination? Now that she had a moment to think about it, she
realized how much her life had changed in the last day. Before, she had been balancing
her basking in the glow of Adin's infancy with wondering when she would be able to get
back to work. She had been saddened by Liat's death, had spent a great deal of time
helping out at the shiva, the week of mourning, and had called Liat's mother almost daily,
to try to help her through this awful time. But it was just a tragedy, like many others, and
she tried to put it away neatly in its proper place, to pull it out and remember it from time
to time. She had certainly not expected to be spending every waking moment thinking
about it, as she had been for the last--she glanced at her watch, 26 hours.
Seeing Harvey had pushed Liat to the forefront of her consciousness. She could
not put her finger on it, but a voice inside her, the voice her parents had always tried to
get her to heed, was screaming loudly that he held the key to…what? Almost the worst
of it was that she had spent much of the last day starting sentences like that, hoping to
trick herself into finishing them so she could at least know what her intuition was trying
to tell her. It hadn't worked yet, which frustrated her, because she particularly hated
following paths that led she knew not where. If she could just once follow Harvey
without losing him; what could he be doing up there on the Temple Mount?
Rachel had been thinking so hard and long about Harvey that she hadn't really
noticed when she had paid the restaurant bill, and, not yet having a goal, started strolling
through town. When she looked up, she was relieved to find herself a block away from
the Temple Grounds. She was getting tired, and a nice cup would hit the spot. Also, she
only had a few hours until she had to be home for Adin, and she owed Reuven an
apology for this morning. Even the word made the bile rise in her throat; some therapist
would get rich helping her discover her aversion to apologies, should she ever decide to
follow that trail. Meanwhile, she needed what she always used in these situations, a
bribe. But what could she get a man, without it seeming like a come-on?
A book, she thought. She had always thought of books as all-purpose items. A
book about…coffee? No; for all that he had a coffee shop, Reuven had not seemed to
care that much about the coffee itself, unlike those people she knew who could spend
hours discussing the advantages of the various flavors, types, and processes of
preparation. No, for Reuven, the coffee was a means to getting to know people. For
Rachel, coffee was just a means to stay awake.
Then what would be a good book to apologize with? She knew; a book on the
history of apologies. She'd write a cute little inscription inside it, adding hers to the
history. She went into the first Barnes and Noble she saw-- she remembered thinking the
Messiah had really come when Barnes and Noble opened its first Jerusalem branch,
although the delay in importing other of her favorite American shopping havens still
gnawed at her-- but couldn't find a history of apologies (there, now she knew a bestseller
she could write when she had the time), so she settled on a copy of Plato's Apology, and
headed for the shop.
Reuven was talking earnestly to a young man at a table when she walked in, and
was so engrossed in his conversation that he did not look up when the door opened and
closed, a bell ringing to alert the staff that a new selling opportunity had arrived. She
went to the counter, where the perky college student said, "Welcome to the Temple
Grounds, how may I serve you?" ordered her coffee, and watched Reuven talk.
Although she couldn't know from where she was standing, the scene seemed self-
explanatory. The kid had big, sad eyes, a little moist as if he were talking about a subject
that caused him pain but that he also felt compelled to return to, again and again. Reuven
would not solve this kid's obsession, Rachel knew from having interviewed similar
people over the years. And yet, she sensed no impatience in him, no desire to get up and
run screaming from the table-- the reaction she usually had to hearing people regurgitate
their problems for more than the fourth time.

She watched a little more, curious about this man who had managed to make her
feel guilty enough to buy him a book. His size jumped out at you right away, but for all
that he was tall and broad and solid, there was no threat in him. She could not imagine
his intentionally causing harm, physical or otherwise, to another, although she could
easily imagine him tearing to bits anyone who tried to hurt someone else. His hands--
Rachel had always been one to watch a man's hands at least as much as his eyes; the eyes
might be the window on the soul, but the hands were a window on the life he actually
lived-- were big and meaty, warmly enveloping whatever came into them.
As she was watching Reuven work his magic on the kid, their conversation
seemed to reach its natural end. The boy wiped his eyes on a tissue, drank the last
remnants of his coffee, embraced Reuven, and left, promising over his shoulder that he
would call and let him know "how it worked out." Finished with that case, Reuven
looked around the shop, and saw her standing at the counter. Without saying a word,
Rachel held up the gift-wrapped book, and motioned towards it, as if to say, "You can't
yell at me until you see my apology."
Reuven worked his way over towards her, passing coffee-drinkers along the way,
each one getting a greeting or introduction. Watching him work, Rachel realized this was
more of a club than a coffee shop; most of the patrons appeared to be regulars, having
established relationships of various kinds with Reuven, here because he provided them
something they could not get out there. She had no idea what it was.
He was wagging a finger at her reprovingly, though playfully. "I remember
seeing 'They're Playing Our Song' on Broadway as a kid," he started. Rachel had no idea
where this was going. "It starred Robert Klein and Luci Arnaz. I remember because it
was my first Broadway show, because I thought Luci Arnaz was pretty, and because
there's a scene in the play in which Luci Arnaz is late for a meeting with Robert Klein.
He is sitting in a studio waiting for her, and he writes in his diary-- out loud-- "she is now
24 hours and 20 minutes late. And it's not the 24 hours that bother me, it's the 20
minutes. And, of course, just then she walks in, and all is right with the world."
"And which part of that story is supposed to apply to me? I'm several hours late,
but not 24. "
"No, the all is right with the world part."
Rachel did not deal with embarrassment well, nor was she ready to respond to that
direct a compliment. She assured herself that Reuven had just learned that needy people
thirst for such touches, and assumed that he was treating her as he would any other
patron. Obviously flustered nonetheless, she gave him the book, and stammered out her
apology.
"But I did go to an Old Ones meeting, at the old Hilton."
"Did you really? How did that happen-- I thought you were too nervous to go by
yourself?"
So she told him the story, amazed by the quality of his listening. She had seen it
yesterday and just now with the college kid, but she was surprised all over again by how
comforting it was to be held in the thrall of his readiness to hear whatever she-- or anyone
else-- chose to share. She told him about seeing the red-haired man-- she didn't want to
mention his name til the right part in the story--and following him to the hotel, where, it
turned out, he was going to a meeting! She told him some of the highlights of the two
hours there, including her excitement about putting a name on the stringy red-haired man,
Harvey. She did not notice the look on his face when she said the name, because she was
too busy asking the questions that had bothered her since she left the meeting.
"Reuven, what would that guy Jacko mean about catching up with the man who
killed his brother before he got to a city of refuge and giving him what he deserved?"
Reuven looked at her with surprise. "You don't know?"
"Know what?"
"Lady, where have you been since the Arrival? Don't you follow what's going
on?"
"Truth to tell, I find so much of it upsetting--hence your having diagnosed my
need of Old Ones meetings--that I have tried to block all that stuff out. Can you tell me
now?"
But she had lost him; Reuven wasn't listening to her. Ordinarily, she wouldn't
have minded, but it was in startling contrast to the attentiveness she thought she had
sensed in him. Seeing him drift off into a reverie upset her whole sense of the man, and
brought into question, in her own mind, her abilities as a judge of character.
"Reuven?" No answer; he was looking out the window, seemingly staring off into
space.
"Reuven?"
He didn't move his eyes, but his mouth formed the words, "Did you say that you
were following a red-haired man?"

"Yes, why?" Rachel looked out the window now, trying to follow his gaze, but
she couldn't see anyone who looked remotely like Harvey.
"And you saw him go to the Temple Mount twice?
"Yes. Reuven, what is it?"
"And today you found out his name is Harvey?"
"Yes. Reuven, is there a reason we're replaying the last five minutes of our
conversation?"
Reuven lifted his arm and pointed a finger across the plaza, at an ice cream store.
Rachel looked over and saw Harvey walk out, licking a cone, and turning in the direction
of the Temple Mount. Reuven was out of his chair and at the door before Rachel had a
moment to react.
"I'll follow him for you; leave your phone number with Meltzer there behind the
counter, and I'll call you when I have some news."
Rachel would have wondered whether this was a ruse to get her phone number if
she hadn't seen Harvey herself. She paused to notice how often their paths had happened
to cross over the last few days, and then went home to Adin.
CHAPTER 5
Although she couldn't blame him, she had not expected to enjoy raising a baby as
little as she was enjoying Adin. Friends told her she would start getting real smiles out of
him in about three weeks, and that six weeks after that, he'd start sleeping through the
night and playing more. Without that reassurance, she didn't know what she would do.
Right now, she filled her waking hours with him by taking him for walks in the stroller,
bathing him and singing to him, feeding him, changing him, and putting him to sleep for
those blessed times of quiet.
Lije should have been here for this, she thought to herself for the 37th time since
Adin's birth, just after she got him to go down for his "nighttime" sleep, which would last
until 1 in the morning, if she was lucky. Mostly, she assumed that Lije had met some
terrible accident, and mourned his death. At times like these, though, or when people
asked her about her husband, she realized that she also had a deep well of anger and
frustration that this had happened to her. Being angry at someone who was probably
dead also made her feel guilty, so that her subconscious emotions roiled wildly inside of
her. She was not even close to ready to start thinking about them.
Putting Lije and the concomitant turmoil of thoughts and emotions away, she tried
to plan her night. She knew she should just get into bed right now, but she always needed
that unwinding time after Adin went to bed. On nights when there was a particularly
good movie on TV, she sometimes found herself having stayed up straight until he woke
up for a feeding. The days after letting that happen were blurs of fatigue.
Tonight was better. She took out her exercise video-- her producer had just
called, ostensibly to chat, but really to remind her that they were expecting her back and
fit in two months-- and worked out for half an hour, which also convinced her not to
snack all night. Charged by her workout, she meditated for fifteen minutes, which, as
always, didn't give her much enlightenment, but did send her off to a deep sleep.
Which lasted until 10:15, when the phone woke her.

"I'm sorry, I know you're a new mother and it's late, but I had to talk to you."
"Who's this?" Rachel had never been good at phone voices, which insulted some
people. No, really, you must know who this is, they would say. People like that didn't
stay her friends for very long. Groggy from sleep, there was no way she was going to
recognize a voice on the phone. She wasn't even sure whether it was male or female.
"It's Reuven. Are you awake enough to remember what I'm going to tell you?"
"Yes, why? What's wrong?" Rachel did, however, pride herself on picking up
undercurrents of other people's speech, a skill she connected to her success in journalism.
In Reuven right now, she heard urgency, with underlying streams of concern, fear, and
determination as well. She didn't know how those mixed, but assumed she would find
out.
"Can I come over? Would your husband mind?"
Why did everybody have to focus on her husband? 10:15 at night was not when
she was going to tell this perfect stranger, who managed to exasperate her as often as
inspire her admiration, her story.
"I don't think now is a good time. My son is going to wake up in the next couple
of hours and then again all night long. Can't this wait until tomorrow? I'll meet you at
the coffee shop at 10, unless I find myself forced to follow Harvey again." The last was a
weak attempt at humor, but it misfired badly.
"NO! Whatever you do, promise me you will not follow Harvey again until we've
talked."
Aside from being surprised, she was a little put off. Who was he to tell her who
to trail and who not to trail? She would trail whomever she cared to. Reuven, perhaps
sensing her reaction, continued in a calmer tone.
"Look, I know that you have no reason to trust me, but I'm asking you to anyway.
Stay home tonight-- you do have to take care of your baby, after all, and come here as
early tomorrow as you want to-- we open at 5, for the crowd going to see sunrise at the
Temple. I'll be here all morning, and after speaking to me, I think you'll understand why
I didn't want you trailing that man."
"All right. But you'd better have a really convincing story."
"Just wait. And lock all your doors and windows tonight."
At first, she thought it was just a figure of speech, but after hanging up and
thinking back over the conversation, Rachel realized he was serious. Feeling a little
foolish, she walked through the entire apartment, checked all the entrances, and finally
got back into her bed at about 10:45, but of course now could not fall asleep.
Perhaps as a survival skill, Adin seemed to sense when she desperately needed
some sleep. He didn't wake up until 4:45, leaving Rachel enough time to dream of Liat
on the phone. Only this time, she thought she heard Liat say, "I like that Reuven."
After feeding Adin, she took him out for an early-morning walk; she figured she'd
see whether the Temple Grounds really opened at 5. Sure enough, when she got there at
5:15, they were open for business, with a steady stream of people coming in, grabbing a
cup of coffee and heading towards the Mount. Curious, she stopped one young woman,
and asked what time things got started at the Temple.

"It changes with sunrise, but usually by 6am there's something going on. I like to
hit the Mikdash for about a half hour before I head to the gym and to work. It sort of
charges up my day nicely." And she headed off. Rachel, never a morning person until
Adin came along, couldn't even relate to someone voluntarily rising at 5:30 to spend a
half hour watching some priests get the Temple ready for the day, and then go to a
workout and a job. It was a new world, all right.
Which reminded her of Reuven. As she stepped into the store, she was surprised
to see people sitting at the tables, but then she realized that they were just waiting their
turn. Seeing Reuven behind the counter, she waved. Busy with customers, he waved
back, motioned that he'd be with her as soon as he could, and went back to serving.
Adin seemed to like the smell of the place, and went right to sleep. Rachel looked
around for someone to interview, to understand this crowd better. Since she was little,
she had always understood the world by asking questions of others rather than by
thinking herself; it was what appealed to her about journalism. As a child, it drove her
parents crazy; now they couldn’t stop telling people about their daughter the reporter.
She approached a man in his late twenties wearing a Levi's uniform. "Excuse me,
but aren't you a little late?" She hadn't meant it as accusingly as it came out. "Sorry, I
didn't mean it that way. I meant, I'm trying to understand more about the Temp, I mean
the Mikdash, and I thought Levis had to be there way before sunrise to set things up."
The kid smiled at her. "No offense taken. Actually, I'm just a trainee-- I don't get
my full certification until I turn thirty. Some days I have to be there for the beginning of
stuff, but my supervisor told me I could come in a little late today-- I had the middle of
the night guard-shift last night, so he had pity on me. Thanks for asking."
"Do you mind if I ask a couple of other questions, too?"
"Not at all. That's our job, to be here to answer your questions."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't know.” He was surprised, but aggressively nonjudgmental. “It’s such
a pleasure to be able to explain it to you. We Levis do some guard duty at the Mikdash,
we do some singing to make the service more beautiful, but mostly we wander around the
country, even the world, answering whatever questions people have, offering classes, and
so on. So it's a pleasure to have someone ask me questions-- we have a sort of informal
quota we're supposed to answer each month. If we don't meet it, out supervisor sends us
to remedial classes on how to be friendlier to people, help them feel more comfortable
approaching us. So, really, I should thank you for approaching me."
Something in what he said reminded her of Yedidya from yesterday. He, too, had
seemed anxious to talk to her more. She had assumed that it was because he was
attracted to her-- she was used to men's interest, whether because of her physical beauty,
her fame, or, every so often, her intelligence-- but she was thinking maybe it was
something else. His card was still in her purse, somewhere. She fished it out.
“Would that be why Levis carry business cards, to give out to potential
questioners?”
“Exactly. Only it’s not business; most of the guys I know enjoy that part of the
job as much or more than the Mikdash time. Also, a lot of us start great friendships with
people we first meet in that context.”
“And it’s a great way to pick up women, I bet.”
The young Levi flushed. “I won’t say it doesn’t happen, but it’s frowned
upon—we’re supposed to be doing this for a higher purpose, and letting that get in the
way…well, there’s no official rule about it, but it’s clearly discouraged. Anyway, that
shouldn’t matter to you, having a kid and all.”
She let it pass, yet again. “Do you know this particular Levi…” she looked at the
card in her hand, “Yedidya Gross.”
“No, sorry, there’s a lot of us, but if you’d like me to ask around, I can get back to
you with some info on him.”
Rachel realized that this conversation wasn’t going anywhere, nor did she trust
this man’s opinion of Yedidya anymore than her own instincts, but she realized that a
conversation with Yedidya might be more enlightening than she had thought it would be.
She made a mental note to call him, and then remembered that since giving birth she had
to write all her mental notes down or they disappeared. She pulled out her 5x7 spiral
notebook—she took a perverse pleasure in having avoided a PDA, but had had to
graduate from random scraps of paper—and wrote Yedidya? on it, putting the card in the
notebook as well.
Still waiting for Reuven, Rachel stared out into the street, watching the people
move towards the Temple, trying to guess their life stories in the two minutes they were
in her line of vision. There were the tourists of all types—she mostly liked seeing
Americans from less-than-observant backgrounds, obviously overwhelmed by how
different Jewish life in Israel had become as compared to their relaxed attitudes towards
observance back home. That would have been her, she thought with a wistful smile, if
not for Lije.
Lije. How he had blown her away when they first met. His looks certainly
helped; being who she was, there was no way she would have given a second thought to a
man who wasn’t physically well put together. But it was his eyes, sparkling with their
intensity, intense about… everything. Intense about pursuing her, intense about building
a life committed to ideals, intense about getting closer to God. It wasn’t, she thought to
herself for the thousandth time, that she shared his passions, it was the passion itself she
found so irresistible. And following that passion had brought them here, the land Lije
insisted was where the future was going to happen.
“Sorry it took so long, but there was a late-breaking rumor that the Kohen Gadol,
the High Priest, was performing today’s service. His mother just passed away, and he
wants to honor her memory by working this entire month himself.”
“And that’s a big deal?”
Reuven seemed nonplussed by her ignorance and indifference. “Well, yeah, I
mean, usually you only get to see him work hard in the weeks before Yom Kippur, as he
prepares for the day-long service that he has to do himself. To see him in the late winter,
that’s a real treat.”

Rachel was not in the mood to find out more about the Temple right then. Adin
was going to want to nurse soon, she wanted to get a nap in after that, and she was getting
back some of her dander at having been summoned here.
“So, Reuven, tell me what was so urgent that you had to call me after 10 last
night?” Even as she said it, she realized how ridiculous she sounded, but the truth was
that since Adin’s birth—an arrival as significant in her life as the Arrival in everyone
else’s-- 10 was a late night. It would be a while before she could take an 11pm news slot;
she hoped there were morning anchor jobs available when she decided to go back to
work.
“I saw Harvey, so I followed him. He went into the Temple Mount, but of course
I’m careful to avoid things that would prevent me from going into the Temple. It was the
end of the day, so there wasn’t a big crowd on the Mount, which made following him
without getting caught a little challenging, but I managed it. And when I saw who he was
meeting with, I managed to ask a few questions about him, and didn’t like what I heard.
So I felt I had to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
“Harvey went to see a kohen, a priest, named Pinhas Moshel. Does the name
mean anything to you?”
Pinhas Moshel! Liat’s ex-husband, who Liat had rambled on about, who she kept
saying couldn’t get his hands on her diary. She had been right, the red-haired man was
the key to Liat’s death. “Actually, it does, but why don’t you finish your story?”
“Well, I found out that Harvey meets with this Pinhas guy often, like he’s his
hired hand for various errands. And since I know what kind of stuff Pinhas does, getting
too close to his hired hand struck me as a particularly dangerous course of action.”
“What do you mean? What kind of stuff would Pinhas need a hired hand for?”
Reuven paused for a long time before he answered, so long that Rachel asked her
question again. Finally, he seemed to make a decision, and leaned in a little closer to her,
and whispered, “Pinhas is the one who cut off my pinky toe.”
CHAPTER 6
Rachel sat back so hard she almost knocked her own chair backwards. She had
always sensed Liat’s fear of her ex, but never would have guessed that she’d hear a
sentence like that out of someone else’s mouth. “He what?”
Reuven looked around to make sure no one was listening. When he spoke again,
it was so quiet that she almost missed it. “I owed him money. I was—am-- a kohen, and
I got a little too used to a high standard of living. Then, suddenly, my usual gift-givers
dried up, and I was short of money. Pinhas appeared, seemed to sense what was going
on, and offered me money, enough to tide me over. When the time came to pay, though,
he demanded interest, which of course is not allowed. So I told him that, offered to go to
a court and discuss it. Instead, he tied me down, cut off my pinky toe, and said, “there,
debt paid in full.”
He said it quietly, devoid of any obvious emotion, except that Rachel had spent a
lifetime listening for emotion. She knew that the streams of anger, the intensity of
Reuven’s certainty that he would one day settle up with Pinhas, ran deeper than she had
seen in anyone, except maybe Lije.
“I don’t understand, why didn’t you go to the police?”
“He caught me by surprise, knocked me out, tied me up, waited for me to wake
up, and cut off the toe. It was my word against his, and without witnesses or really strong
circumstantial evidence, it’s rare that the authorities do anything about it.”
“But still, there was your lost toe!”
“Sure, but how would the police know that I didn’t lose it in an accident, or slice
it off myself to be able to accuse Pinhas? He’s a man who has his share of enemies.
He’s a very powerful priest, controls much of the sacrificial economy. He supplies most
of the animals and oil used, and guards those contracts jealously. I later heard that he
was worried that I would take over some of that business, or prevent him from
monopolizing it, so he spread rumors about my personal life that led people to stop
bringing me priestly gifts—they want a priest of sterling character. He set me up, so he
could get me alone, and take away my life!”
Rachel was certainly sympathetic, but she wasn’t sure she understood the depth of
Reuven’s bitterness. “I’m sorry, did you say your life? I don’t want to minimize the loss
of a toe, but…”
Reuven had been speaking with his head facing down, the words coming out of
him in a low, controlled voice. As he looked at her now, she saw tears glistening in his
eyes.
“You don’t get it, do you? Did you stop and wonder, ever, what drew me to
Temple rejects? I’d like to think that I’m just a nice guy, but the truth is that I’m a reject,
have been for five years now, and being on the Mount, watching others do their bit for
God and country up there is usually too much for me to bear. I make sure to be away for
most holidays, just so I don’t have to go on the Mount, and see him still serving, while I
have to live out my life separated from the service that I loved so deeply.”
He saw the bewilderment on her face, and took a deep breath. “All right, let me
try this again. I heard what that Levi said to you before, that the teaching is more
important to him and to others than the service. That may be true for a lot of people, but
for me, it was the Mikdash. It was standing in the courtyard, cleaning the altar, sweeping
up, moving used animals, whatever, but being part of that center, that hub of …I used to
be in the Mikdash more than 300 days a year—I still hold the record for consecutive days
of service…it was everything to me. It was the reason I couldn’t stay married, no woman
could put up with the mistress of my work.”
“When Pinhas sliced off my toe, he made me a baàl mum, a blemished priest.
Sure, I can still get some priestly gifts, although people forget about you if they don’t see
you at the Temple on a regular basis, but I can’t serve. To serve, you have to be
physically perfect, and I have a blemish.”
“And to answer your next fifty questions. I thought about going to the cops, but
they are, shall we say, discouraging of reports about Pinhas. There have been many
complaints about him over the years, but he’s smart, really smart, and nobody’s ever
caught him doing anything other than serving loyally and righteously. So the authorities
have announced that they refuse to hear unsubstantiated reports about Pinhas, and will
punish anyone who brings one—as they see it, it is unpunishable if it’s unprovable, and
ends up maligning Pinhas, which they can’t allow.”
“But I’ll tell you this. The day will come when I see an opening to bring him
down from his perch; he’ll go too far, or make a mistake. And I just hope I’m part of that
when it happens. But, as for you, you must stay away. This is a man of no morals, no
restraint, other than getting what he wants. He could commit murder and not blink.”
Murder and not blink. Liat.
“But wouldn’t that make him unfit to serve?”
A bitter smile from Reuven. “Only if he got caught, and so far, he hasn’t gotten
caught.”
Rachel’s head was spinning. One part of her was stunned to think that one of
God’s designated priests—of course, she had never been fond of Pinhas, but she always
assumed that that was because he was Liat’s ex, and she saw him through Liat’s
jaundiced eyes—could be running such a Mob-style racket in the Temple, of all places.
Another part of her was surprised at how surprised she was; a jaded journalist, never
much interested in the Mikdash, thinking about Pinhas like this had shaken her more than
she would have ever guessed. A third part of her viewed Reuven with a little suspicion.
He had to be exaggerating. Could Pinhas cut off somebody’s toe and get away free?
Even with all that going on, most of her was thinking of Liat. If this was who
Pinhas was, she felt sure that he was behind Liat’s death. She knew he couldn’t do it
himself, because coming into contact with a corpse would bar him from entry into the
Mikdash for seven days, and Pinhas would never have allowed that. But now she had
Harvey; it had to be him. Pinhas’ fixer, he must have killed Liat, and then come back to
the scene of the crime to insure that she was really dead. The emotions on his face that
first night must have been some human sense of guilt for ending such a beautiful life so
prematurely.
An idea was nibbling at the back of Rachel’s head, but her fury at Pinhas and
Harvey was blocking almost all other thought. She knew she had to immediately
extricate herself from Reuven, who was becoming much too involved in her life for her
comfort. But there was one more thing that he could help her with.
“Listen, there is something else I didn’t understand, that day when I went to the
Old Ones meeting. That guy Jacko, who swore he was going off to get revenge on his
brother’s killer, what did he mean?”
Reuven had been lost in his own thoughts, and she suspected he wasn’t paying
much attention as he answered her. “He’s got the right to be a go’el hadam. If someone
is killed, their close relatives have the right to avenge their death by killing the
murderer.”
“Without any trial or anything?”
“Well, the murderer is supposed to run to the nearest ir miklat, city of refuge. If
he gets there, he gets to have a trial, and the court determines what should happen to him.
Until he gets there, though, or if the court decides he’s liable for the victim’s death, the
go’el hadam has the right to kill him.”

Reuven’s voice had taken on a singsong quality, which she realized meant that he
was so involved in his topic that he wasn’t wondering why she cared. The teacher in him
took over when he was asked a question, and he answered the question as well and as
fully as he could. She thought she could risk one more question without him figuring out
her plan.
“What if the murderer doesn’t run?”
“Well, that would be stupid, because then the go’el hadam could kill him at any
point.”
Which was exactly what Rachel had hoped to hear. She dropped the issue before
Reuven got suspicious, and engaged him in aimless chitchat for a while, just so as not to
leave too abruptly. Reuven tried to convince her to go to another Old Ones meeting, this
time with him—Rachel was having trouble deciding if he was trying to get personally
close, or was just concerned with her adjustment to life. She promised to think about it,
to call with her answer, and left the shop in a hurry.
Her watch said 7:25. She needed to get Adin home—the babysitter would come
at 8:30, and she needed breakfast, to nurse, and to find Lije’s old gun. Having a purpose
and a plan put a new spring in her step, and she found the walk home refreshing, as did
Adin, who woke up part of the way home and entertained the streets of Jerusalem with
his cries, as he informed his mother in no uncertain terms that he did not wish to wait a
moment longer for his breakfast.

CHAPTER 7
Two hours, including a nap and a shower, later, Rachel was back on the streets,
hailing a cab. Once she got in, with the cabbie waiting to hear where they were going,
she realized that she had no idea. So far, she had seen Harvey on a random Jerusalem
street, at an Old Ones meeting, and out the window of the Temple Grounds. She thought
of waiting there until she saw him again, but Reuven would become suspicious, or,
worse, think she was interested in him, which she assured herself she was not. How often
did that lunchtime meeting happen at the Hilton? Well, no matter, it was the only logical
place to start. She told the cabbie to take her to the David’s Citadel, the Hilton’s new
name. He said, Oh, the Hilton, and drove off.
Walking into the hotel, she was struck by how different security was since the
Arrival. No one checked her bag, although her guilt made her feel like everyone knew
she had a gun in there. Hoping she did not look too nervous, she went up to the reception
desk, where the pretty young woman behind the counter—pre-Arrival pretty, long black
hair, stark makeup emphasizing her lips and cheekbones, skintight uniform emphasizing
her lean tight body, one that Rachel knew meant many hours in a gym and many meals
turning down anything that tasted good-- behind the counter smiled and said, “May I help
you?”
“Yes, is there an Old Ones meeting here today?”
“Yes, ma’am, every day at 12 o’clock, in the ballroom on the fifth floor, and
there’s no need to be nervous, many people feel the need to attend a meeting now and
then.”
Two and a quarter hours to kill, Rachel thought, then laughed at her pun. A walk
was out of the question, since her body was already protesting the abuse of the last few
days. The next time she had a baby she would have to remember not to get caught up in
investigating a murder until at least a little longer after giving birth. There was a coffee
shop in the hotel, but after her time in the Temple Grounds, more coffee was the last
thing she wanted. They did, however, have a restaurant, so Rachel decided to get a head
start on lunch—who knew where the day was going to go?
Looking over the menu, other instincts took over, and she ordered a fruit salad,
which she toyed with while she mulled her usual list of questions and issues. Was she
going to raise Adin alone, or try to find a man to share the parenting even if she couldn’t
marry him until the situation with Lije cleared up? Would Lije come back, or would she
at least find out where he was, so she could get on with her life? When should she go
back to work? She was acutely aware of how hectic her schedule was when she was
working, and with no other parent around, she worried about the effects on Adin. On the
other hand, she knew that she needed an outlet for her energies—her interest in Liat’s
case, she had to admit to herself, was at least as much excitement over a real intellectual
and emotional challenge, one that had nothing to do with diapers or dealing patiently with
a squalling, pooping infant, as it was about a desire for justice.
Her reverie went as most of her reveries did, getting some clarity, but mostly re-
treading familiar ground, with few decisions coming any closer than they had been when
she started. It did, however, while away the time until the meeting was ready to start.
She entered the room, and was relieved to see Harvey right at the front. Unfortunately,
the Gordons were also there, and they remembered Rachel. This time, though, Rachel
had some questions that would help her steer the conversation in a productive direction.
“You come every day to these?”
“Well, no, it depends on our plans for that day. But we come as often as we can.
First, it gives us a boost in feeling comfortable in the country. Also, Thursday is Speaker
Day, and they often have interesting and motivational speakers. But most importantly,
the Government credits our tax bill for each time we come, didn’t you know that?”
Rachel didn’t much care, since she had little Israeli income to speak of; she was
living off savings until she rejoined her TV show, at which point they would pay her
maternity leave retroactively. She made a mental note of it nonetheless—it was exactly
the kind of information that you needed at some later point and had forgotten to pay
attention to when it came up. Since the meeting was about to begin, she thanked the
Gordons, and carefully found a seat far enough away from them to insure that she would
not have to speak to them again. By the time she seated herself, the meeting was coming
to order.
Speaker Day—which Rachel guessed was so that regular attendees could have a
day off from hearing other people obsess over their difficulties—turned out to be an
extended advertisement for ulpan, Hebrew speaking classes. Rachel remembered how
much Lije had pushed her to take an ulpan; she had refused, insisting she would learn
Hebrew by walking the streets and forcing herself to function in the language. It had
worked, but she now realized that ulpan would have been an easier way to accomplish
the task. She started to raise her hand to share that insight with the group and then
remembered that she did not want a lot of people to remember that she had been there.
She distracted herself by putting the pieces of the puzzle together: Liat, a healthy young
woman, suddenly dies of respiratory failure. Pinhas, her ex-husband, is a priest who
wouldn’t dare kill someone, since then he would have to stay away from the Temple for
seven days. He was known to associate, however, with Harvey, who, as it happens, was
at the scene when Liat was discovered and was being treated by EMTs. It all added up
for Rachel, and she slipped her hand in her purse, to make sure the gun was where she
had put it.
As the meeting broke up, Rachel slipped as close as she could to Harvey without
being obvious. He made conversation with other attendees, had some soda from the
refreshments table and, on the whole, played the role of a man comfortable in his
surroundings and in his own skin. He must be some kind of psychopath, Rachel thought.
Wouldn’t killing Liat weigh on his conscience at all?
When Harvey finally left the meeting—really, didn’t the bastard know she had to
make it home for the babysitter after she killed him?—Rachel followed, not quite sure of
how to proceed. He turned down one street, then another, and finally down a little
alleyway with few stores or people. Rachel walked up behind him, pulled the gun out of
her pocket and cocked it, just as Lije had shown her. The sound made Harvey turn; when
he saw Rachel behind the gun, pointed steadily at his chest, his look seemed more
puzzled than scared.
“Do I know you?’

Rachel had not prepared for a confrontation. Was there etiquette to being a blood
avenger? She had forgotten to ask Reuven about that. No matter, she was good at
improvising.
“Harvey the Red-Haired Man, I am here to avenge the death of Liat Moshel
whom you killed.” It sounded melodramatic, but she assumed she had to explain to the
man why he was about to die.
Of all the many reactions she had thought about while daydreaming, uproarious
laughter had not made her list. It made her feel a little foolish, her with her gun and he
laughing hysterically.
“If I shoot you in the kneecap, you won’t be laughing.”
He shook his head and put a hand up, as if to stop her from doing it. “No,
please,” he managed to gasp out, “I’m not laughing at you.” His laughs subsided a bit,
and he got control of himself. “Well, all right, maybe I was laughing at you, but it was
the tension of having a gun pointed at me coupled with the ridiculous reason you gave for
doing it.”
“You deny killing Liat?”
“Lady, not only don’t I know who you are, I don’t even know who this Liat is.”
“Pinhas Moshel’s ex-wife. You were there when she died, wearing a jacket that
identified you as an EMT.”
Harvey’s face had sobered at the mention of Pinhas’ name; good, she had finally
gotten to the bastard.
“Hey, I had nothing to do with that, she died of spontaneous respiratory failure.”
“You and I both know that’s not true, don’t we? Well, as Liat’s go’elet hadam, as
the avenger of her blood, I hereby put you to death.”
As she thought about the incident later, Rachel realized that there had to be
something passive aggressive about how little she had been paying attention to her
surroundings. For her, what came next was a complete shock. From all sides, out of
loudspeakers she had long ago stopped noticing, a voice rang out, saying, “Rachel
Tucker, put your weapon down and wait for the authorities to arrive. Please be aware
that if you kill Harvey Keiter, you will be arrested and put to death as a murderer. PUT
THE WEAPON DOWN!”
She wavered, unsure of what to do—maybe they didn’t know that she was acting
as Liat’s avenger. No, that couldn’t be right, if they could see her, they could probably
hear her, too. But then why would they stop her—hadn’t Reuven said that she had the
right to kill him for killing Liat? She heard the sirens now, she guessed with police
coming to disarm her and put her in jail, for what she did not know.
When the police car pulled up, a shamefaced Reuven stepped out, and came
towards her. “Rachel, kick the gun over towards me.” She did, more confused than she
had been in a while. Reuven seemed more embarrassed than anything else. He picked up
the gun and gave it to one of the police officers who had driven him to the alley. He
turned back to her, raising his arms in a two handed placating gesture.
“Rachel, I am so sorry. It only occurred to me after our conversation that I had
left out vital information about blood avenging. And then, when I thought back onto
your first story about trailing Harvey, I realized that a little knowledge might be an
extremely dangerous thing. I called the police, who found you on the cameras they have
put up all over the city, and they got me over here in a car as fast as possible. I am just so
relieved that you didn’t do something we would both regret for many years to come.”
As the moment receded, the pounding in her head that had been pushing her
forward, that she had been hearing ever since that morning when Reuven first explained
about the blood avenger, died down as well. She felt guilty that Liat still lay in her grave
unavenged, but was, she had to admit to herself, enormously relieved that she had not had
the chance to carry out her crazy plan. She had never known what bloodlust was until
she felt it herself; the urge to kill the man who had done this to Liat had been, for the few
hours that she yielded to it, almost irresistible.
With it rapidly fading, though, Rachel felt as if she was getting back to her real
self, as if she had been temporarily inhabited by some foreign mind, which lived for
blood and killing and violence. She could feel her self-control coming back, as if the real
Rachel was back in the driver’s seat, but was left with a lingering tension that she could
have contemplated doing such a thing.
She was also still confused. “I don’t understand. What information did you leave
out? I thought that if the murderer didn’t run to an…” The term escaped her.
“Ir miklat, a city of refuge.”
“Yes, an ir miklat, that the blood avenger had free rights to kill the person.”
“Yes, but Rachel, it has to be clear that the person was a murderer. With Jacko’s
brother, there were fifty witnesses to the killing—it was a barroom brawl. Here, the
police haven’t classified this as a murder at all, although I know that you think it was.
More than that, though, I didn’t realize we were having a practical discussion, I thought
you were just trying to understand what Jacko had said at that meeting. Had I known
what you were thinking, I would have told you the most important thing about the
avenger-- it has to be a blood relative. You could never be Liat’s avenger, much as you
would like to, because you are not a relative.”
While they were having the conversation, the policemen had been standing by
respectfully. Now, they approached Rachel, and asked her to place her hands behind her
back. When she did, they handcuffed her, and placed her in their police car. Reuven
looked in at the window before they pulled off.
“Don’t worry, they aren’t going to keep you long. I already explained the
situation, and they just want to give you a stern warning. I think you’ll be a few hours,
though. Is there anybody you’d like me to call?”
“The babysitter. If I’m late without calling, she throws a fit. I had told her I’d be
home by 4 today, and I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I can’t afford to lose her!”
As the car pulled away, Rachel heard Reuven promise he had it under control,
although she had no idea of what that meant. She knew the babysitter, in a pinch,
wouldn’t leave until she got there, but she hated to think of what it would cost her in
concessions to the woman. Right now, though, she had more significant problems to
concentrate on. Were they going to charge her? Jail her? Deem her an unfit mother and
put Adin up for foster care and adoption? Would the network fire her? Was this the
beginning of the end, the sudden downward turn in her fortunes that she always feared
was in her future?

That last thought saved her, because it was her tell, her reminder that she had let
her thoughts spiral out of control from the situation at hand. She closed her eyes and
willed herself not to think, until they reached the police station and a policeman was
telling her it was time to get out of the car.
As she walked into the station, she thought of all the times that she had stuck
microphones in the faces o f people taking the “perp walk” as it was called. Luckily, her
own arrest had not (yet? Or had she disappeared from the world’s radar?) brought out the
hordes of reporters an attempted murder charge normally would. She walked into the
station unnoticed, and was ushered into a large bare room, an interrogation room in the
old style. Good to know not every thing changed with the Arrival, she thought to herself
as a captain (or something; the man in charge) walked in.
“Well, Ms. Tucker, we meet again.” He smiled pleasantly.
CHAPTER 8
Ok, again. Again meant they had met before, which was usually a good sign. If
she could just remember where, she might get out of this intact, or at least soon. Think,
Rachel, think. Where would she have met a police captain? That fraud investigation she
had covered? No, that had been in the States. Here, she had mostly done fluff pieces on
how well the new peace agreement was holding up—had she spoken to him then about a
drop in crime?
“Calm down, Ms. Tucker, I was just trying to throw you off a little; it’s a failing
of mine that I enjoy doing that to people. I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry. There’s no reason
you should have remembered—I was once in the guard detail for the Messiah at an
embassy party that you covered, and he decided to introduce us all to the reporters
covering the party for the American media. My name is Shomer Kapdan.” His smile said
that he had enjoyed her discomfiture, but not maliciously; Rachel heaved an inward sigh
of too many emotions to count.
“So what brings you back to regular police work, Captain Kapdan?” She had no
idea if he was a captain, but better to guess up than guess down.
“I’m actually not; part of guarding the king and his main advisers is tracking
down threats before they occur, just like in your American Secret Service.”
A first trap for her to pass through. Ever since she had moved to Israel while
retaining her job in America, people wondered—some subtly, native-born Israelis less
so—where her primary allegiances lay. Not in a political or military sense, because the
US and Israel continued to maintain close enough ties that the need for a choice was
clearly in the remote future. No, it was more of a cultural question—people in Israel
developed deep and caring attachments, going out of their way for friends in ways that
Americans never would. Rachel remembered how one of her neighbors took in another
one’s five kids when the mother took ill and the father had to spend all of his free time at
the hospital. As a result, though, Israelis were careful to only spend those empathetic
resources on people who were in the country for the long haul.
Ordinarily, Rachel was frank about her continuing attachment to America, often
to Lije’s annoyance. Perhaps the biggest tension in their marriage was her refusal to
immerse herself in the country, the friends he had made, and the culture. She, on her
part, felt that he didn’t give her enough credit for agreeing to live in two countries,
working in the States and flying to Israel at least once a week. With all that commuting,
she thought she should have the chance to just relax and tune out when she was there. In
this case, though, she thought stressing her Israeli side would be helpful.
She put on her best Hebrew, refusing to continue in English. “Lamah hem ha-
Secret Service sheli? Ani Yisraelit kamokha!” She was protesting a bit too much in
claiming that she was just as Israeli as he was, but using the English words for Secret
Service felt just like what her Israeli friends might say in conversation.
Apparently, she had said exactly what he wanted to hear. He continued in
English, “I am glad to hear that, and I am going to speak in this language because your
stunt today brings you to a time of choice, one you might have made already, but that you
will need to make again now. We take attempted murder very seriously, and it doesn’t
matter”—he lifted a hand to cut off the protest that was about to leave her mouth—“that
you got the wrong impression of the laws. In our country, ignorance is not an excuse.
Not only that, removing your ignorance is a central concern of ours right now. For most
people, the government has decided to take a hands-off approach, to let them acclimate at
their own pace to the new government, the new system. But once something like this
happens, well….”
He let the last word sit between them for much longer than Rachel liked, but she
was determined not to give him the satisfaction of forcing her to ask. “You have choices,
but not limitless ones. You can decide to plead guilty in an administrative hearing and go
to jail; you can claim you didn’t do it, and have a trial, but then if you’re found
guilty—since you were warned—the punishment would be much more severe; as an

American citizen, we would have to offer you the option of leaving the country within 24
hours of the verdict. But that also means renouncing your Israeli citizenship and never
returning to this country again.”
He stopped, but Rachel still had the feeling that he was not finished. She knew he
wanted her to ask, and she just didn’t care enough to wait him out, so she said, “Are those
all the options?”
“No,” he replied slowly, “but I don’t know if there’s any point in even mentioning
the last one, although I was specifically sent here to present you with it.” With that, he
pulled out a fairly thick folder.
“Rachel Tucker, age 34, well-known journalist and anchorwoman for ABC News,
currently has lived in Israel for about five years. Married to Lije Zeale, whereabouts
unknown for the last eight months. Not particularly observant, although no recorded
flagrant violations. Does not attend synagogue except for parts of Rosh haShanah and
Yom Kippur, has not been involved with any study groups, and has been seen eating milk
products within an hour of a meat meal. Not terrible offenses, but enough to suggest that
religion isn’t what drew you to Israel. Is that about right?”
As the words left her mouth, she knew they weren’t productive, but she again
could not build up the desire to hold them back. “I always knew this Messiah was
turning the country into a police state. You’ve been tracking my observance? What
business is that of yours? And, on the topic of things that are none of your business, what
does my husband’s disappearance have to do with our discussion here at all?”

Kapdan inhaled and blew out a deep breath, and Rachel heard him mutter, “I told
them I wasn’t tactful enough for this, aval mah efshar laàsot , what are you going to
do?” Now he turned to her, “Look, you’re not a nobody, you’re a public figure. And
when a famous anchorwoman moves to Israel soon after the Arrival of the man that we
believe is the Messiah, well, it arouses at least a little bit of reasonable curiosity. What is
she doing here? Maybe her husband convinced her to come, but then what would happen
if he wasn’t on the scene anymore? Maybe she just developed a great love for Judaism,
but then why is her observance so lax? Or maybe she just loves the connection to the
people.”
“That’s why we looked into this stuff, but the truth is, it doesn’t really matter
anymore, because your actions this morning mean that in order to stay in Israel, you need
to make a more significant commitment to careful observance. There’s a status you may
have heard of, called haverah; it basically means that you swear publicly to observe all
the laws of Judaism to the best of your ability. That will mean many
changes—synagogue attendance, some kind of continuing education, giving charity,
keeping Shabbat and all the holidays, and so on. The question is whether you’d rather
just admit your guilt and leave the country, or go through what you should know is a
difficult change of life.”
Rachel, as she always did, had spent much of the time between entering the police
car and Kapdan’s appearance trying to anticipate what was going to happen. It was her
way of avoiding really shocking surprises, but this time had failed miserably. She had
been lulled by the government’s PR campaign into thinking that they were avoiding what
the secular Left used to refer to as kefiyah datit, religious coercion. She had assumed that
if she wasn’t too flagrant in her lifestyle, no one would bother her, and that was pretty
much what had happened (although at this point in her recurring musings she was always
reminded of the idiot bureaucrat who wouldn’t let her take Adin home from the hospital
until he called the man who would perform the circumcision, to check that she had,
indeed, hired him for the following week. And then the man showed up at the brit, the
circumcision ceremony, as if he was just happy to join the celebration!).
And now this. Sure, she had made a mistake, granted a fairly big mistake, but an
obvious and explainable one, and she had to choose to become deeply religious or leave
the country!
She knew she couldn’t think about this right now, so she entered her information
gathering mode, where nobody could shock her, because she was just recording facts, to
be thought about later. First, she asked, “If I decide to do this, to become a
haverah”—the word meant friend; she guessed it was like membership in a
group—“what do I do?”
“Good question. There’s not a strict set of guidelines, but you would have to
commit to observing all that you already know, to studying—fairly intensively—what
you don’t yet know. That would be sort of like studying for citizenship in another
country. And, you would have to enlist a sponsor, a male or female Levi or Kohen who
could oversee your progress, and who would undertake the supervision of your studies
and development.”
A sponsor—if only Liat were alive. Although, truth be told, Rachel knew that it
was only Liat’s death that had put her in this situation to begin with. “What if I don’t
know anyone to sponsor me?”
Kapdan seemed surprised by the question. “Of course, we could simply assign
you someone—you’d fill out a questionnaire, and we’d try to connect you with an
appropriate person. But I would have thought a person like yourself would have come
across many of the high-powered Kohen and Levi teachers?”
The question was more concerned and curious than prying, so Rachel decided to
answer. “When Lije was around,” she paused, as she always had to when she heard
herself using the past tense for the man she hoped was a jerk rather than a victim, “we did
a lot of that stuff, and made many acquaintances, but it was just social. Also, Lije was
more actively religious than I have been, so that there seemed little need for me to look
into it—I joined Lije when he had something religious he wanted to do, and that was
plenty for me. Even then, though, Lije was the one who made the contacts—he fit in
better to Israeli society, and I was traveling to the States for most weeks, coming to see
him on weekends, and then when he….” She found it easier to just let that thought trail
off, rather than say the word, “Well, I just sort of lost touch with people. Anyway, that
was then, and I have to face now. How soon would I have to become a haverah? Is it a
two-week course, and then I have to know everything, do everything, and get punished
when I don’t?”
Kapdan winced, pained at the picture she was painting of her choices. “Look, I
recognize this is a rough situation, but we’re not trying to punish you. From our
perspective, you need to remember, we are just encouraging you a little more strongly to
find what we consider to be Absolute Truth. I know you don’t necessarily yet share that
view, or are at least a little unsure, but try to keep in mind that that’s how we see what we
are doing.
“To answer your question, though, you’d need to make the commitment right
away,” he saw the look of panic on her face and added, “by which I mean after you’ve
had some time to weigh the options I’ve given you today. And then, should you decide
to go this route, and name a sponsor, the sponsor would attend your commitment
ceremony, and would then be required to file biannual reports certifying your continued
good progress. To the extent that progress continued, the government would have no
more reason to pursue your case.”
“So let me get this straight. I can just leave the country..”
“No, you can plead guilty and leave the country, never to return. If you just leave
the country, we would take it as a guilty plea and not allow you in on future occasions.”
“Or I can become a haverah, commit to greater religiosity than currently, and take
on a sponsor who will oversee my continued growth, maybe throughout my life?”
“Well, theoretically, your sponsor could at some point certify that you were
indistinguishable from other adult Jews in belief and observance, and that he or she had
no further need to waster time and money overseeing you, that—like most Jews—God’s
oversight was more than enough. Also, you could decide to fight this, by claiming that it
wasn’t you who was about to kill Harvey, or that you didn’t really intend to kill him.
That’s a long shot, considering the camera evidence, but you can always try it.”
Kapdan’s patience was clearly running out, so Rachel said “OK, last question,
how long do I have to make a decision?”
“There’s no real pressure, but we can’t just let you walk out of here, either. What
I can do is fit you with an ankle bracelet that broadcasts your whereabouts at all times.
You’d be restricted to the borders of this country until you decide, at which point we’d
take the bracelet off, and put you in the care of whatever sponsor you choose or we assign
you if you decide to go that way.”
“What if I start with a sponsor and don’t like her?” She knew this was just her
nerves showing, but, as so disconcertingly often in this interview and in Israel in general,
she couldn’t help herself.
“You can always switch to a new one.” Kapdan wanted to end the meeting, but
he also wanted to be sympathetic to her situation; he leaned forward and said, in what
Rachel assumed was his gentlest tone, “Look, I know this is a lot to absorb, and it’s
certainly not where we would have wanted to be right now. But we are where we are.
We weren’t looking to mess with your life, and we’re not now looking to punish you.”
“But we’re building a society here, and today you took a very public act that runs
against the fiber of our society. If you want to join us, we’re thrilled to have you, and
we’ll do everything we can to make the process as smooth as possible—if you don’t click
with a sponsor, you can find a new one; if you’re having trouble with some piece of
observance, we can probably work out ways to make it easier. And, if you decide to
leave, that’s your choice.

So take a week—and if for some reason you need a lot more, you can call me and
we can discuss it. Actually, now that I think of it, you can call me for any reason, here’s
my card, with a 24 hour number. In fact, if you have questions, you can pretty much ask
any Levi or Kohen, male or female, and any haver or haverah, if they are wearing their
patch.”
Kapdan stood, clearly having spent a great deal more time with her than he had
planned or expected. Rachel stood as well, and her interview instincts took over, thank
God. “Well, thank you, Captain. I need to digest this, but I certainly appreciate the effort
you and the government have put into this issue.”
Kapdan smiled, a mix of honest pleasure at her gratitude and world-weary
cynicism. “Don’t fool yourself too much about our altruism; getting you to join us would
also be a huge public relations coup, and I’m pretty sure that was taken into account as
well. Anyway, good luck, and I’ll await your decision.”
CHAPTER 9
Rachel stumbled out onto the street, and glanced at her watch for the first time in
hours. 3:30. She really must have been getting special treatment from the police. With
the right cab, she could pick up dinner—she was not going to cook tonight—and not even
be late for the babysitter.
In the cab—it came right away; Lije would’ve said it was Divine
Providence—she thought about where she wanted dinner. Her dieting instincts said a lot
of salad, but most of the vegetables she ate gave Adin gas (or at least the doctor claimed
that it was her diet that was doing it), and she wasn’t in the mood for meat. She settled
on bagels, and had the cab pull over at one of the many such stores on Jaffa Road. With
the increase of American immigration since the arrival, bagels and lox had gotten a much
firmer foothold in the country. Rachel, however, wasn’t interested in the lox; she took a
dozen bagels—three everything, three salt, three cinnamon raisin, and three chocolate
chip (which always disappointed her, but each time she assumed that it was only that
particular bagel that was no good; how could a chocolate chip bagel not be an excellent
idea? Soon, she knew, she would have to face the facts, but for now, she would continue
her pursuit of a well made chocolate chip bagel)—and got back in the cab, which had
miraculously agreed to wait for her.
When she walked in the apartment, and thanked the babysitter, she got caught up
in the whirl of events that always marked the end of Adin’s day. First, although she
always left bottles of mother’s milk for the babysitter to feed him with, he tended to skip
a feeding or two when she was away, was starving when he saw her, and had to be nursed
immediately. At the same time, she remembered, and her stomach confirmed, that she
had not eaten that day, although she had had a Diet Coke at the police station, so she had
a bagel with some leftover egg salad, lettuce, and tomato. After the two of them were
done eating, it was 4:45, which meant there were two and a half hours until bath and
bedtime, often for the two of them at the same time.
Once the bath and bed routines had started, she knew she would be okay, but it
was the hours until then that she always dreaded. Despite his youth, her son seemed to
have already managed to schedule his longest consecutive periods awake to the times
when his mother was around, but Rachel had still not worked out any real routine of
games that he liked—not peekaboo, not the mirror, not funny faces. As so often, she
decided that a walk was in order. Getting him ready was always good for a few minutes
busyness —and Adin liked being spoken to as Rachel got all the paraphernalia together.
She avoided thinking about what her news crew would say to see Rachel Tucker telling a
newborn, “And now we need some extra diapers—remember when you made doody in
the middle of the mall and I didn’t have any diapers?”
All packed up—or she hoped so; Adin had often proven his unerring ability to
need the lone item she had forgotten at home—Rachel walked out the door and down the
block. Then, remembering that she had left behind the milk, she walked back and
retrieved the missing bottle. Oddly, having to go back for one last necessity always made
Rachel feel better, as if she could now relax because they—she, damn that Lije-- had
remembered the one thing they had forgotten. Of course that was’t logical, but for her it
was true.
The walk was clearly to keep Adin happy; the rush of people, trees, cars, and
whatever seemed to calm him down. At the same time, it gave Rachel some time to
think. Usually to daydream, but today she was focused on actually thinking. She had
some food in her stomach, she’d be able to buy a drink along the way, and, if he kept to
his pattern, Adin would stay happy and doze off and on for much of the next hour or two.
She knew she didn’t want to leave the country. First off, as Lije had always
promised, the country’s quirks worked their way under your skin. As important, though,
leaving Israel now would leave Lije’s disappearance a mystery—she still hoped they
would find him in some town, having gotten a terrible case of amnesia—and Liat’s death
even more so. Leaving now would be a victory for Harvey the stringy-haired man, who
she couldn’t believe was as innocent as she had claimed. And what about Pinhas, who, in
Reuven’s telling, also needed to be stopped. Some deep down determined part of her
refused to give in or up so easily.
But…to become a religio? Because somebody else said so? That didn’t feel
right, either. Her rebellious side, never fully expunged with the end of adolescence, made
it clear that that would not work.
And then her cell phone rang, and it was Ed Appleby, director of her news
program, ostensibly calling to be friendly, but—she knew—trying to find out when she’d
be back to work. The station had been wonderful about her pregnancy, Lije’s absence,
and her maternity leave, but they wanted her back—and presentable—ASAP. As she
talked to him, Rachel stopped walking to check herself in a store window. The hair, thick
and blonde, framing her face in a flattering shag, was always an asset. She had some
bags now, but she hoped that as soon as she broke down and got a nighttime sitter to
supplement her daytime help that that problem would go away. Even if not, makeup
could easily take care of that. The body was still good, but she knew that she had better
stop being so lackadaisical about diet and exercise. She was proud of her journalistic
accomplishments, but she recognized how important her on-camera appearance was to
her job. And, as everyone knows, the camera adds at least ten pounds.
She conveyed her general welfare to Ed, told him she’d be back at work the
minute Adin was three months old, and was about to hang up, when it struck her. It
wasn’t perfect, but as she laid out the idea for Ed, it got better and better.
“Hey, Ed, if you’re interested in having me work sooner, I have an idea for a
series that I could tape now, but that you couldn’t use for about six months or so.”
He was immediately alert, used to her spontaneous ideas and the ratings they
brought with them. “Yeah, what is it?”
She quickly told him the story of her attempted murder, taking some guilty
pleasure in knowing that the word would get around not to mess with Rachel Tucker.
Soon, she wouldn’t have to worry about the balloting for the Emmys; people would be
too afraid not to vote for her. Ed made all the appropriate noises of shock that the
civilized woman he knew had actually pointed a gun at a total stranger with intent to kill.
“A blood avenger, Rachel Tucker? We need to have a loooooong cup of coffee
when you come back to the States. But leaving that aside, I don’t get it, what’s the
story?”
“It’s a series actually. You see, I was caught in the act, so they had a lot of ways
they could punish me. Instead, they suggested I agree to become a haverah, which is a
kind of religious status; it says that you’ve accepted the view of Judaism that they—the
government, this Messiah fellow—hold to be true, and that you have and will continue to
study to better understand your responsibilities in the religion.”
“But that’s crazy! They’re forcing you to join their religion?!”

“You know, I was freaked out, too; I think part of me still is. But the way I can
deal with it is how I’ve always dealt with tough challenges— turn it into a news story.
What do you say if I agree to become a haverah, but as I go through the process, I
videotape my reactions and particular parts of the process. I could tell them it’s for my
own memories of this important series of events, but at the same time, it would be a way
to give Americans insight into what’s happening to the country they’ve always called
their closest ally in the Middle East.”
Rachel hated the phone, because she couldn’t see the other person’s reaction to
her ideas, and she had always been viscerally visual. Worried that the silence on the
other end was skepticism, she plunged on, as if she were thinking out loud. “Truth is,
this could turn into a great feature-film length documentary; or a PBS series. You know
what, Ed, I’m sorry to have troubled you, I think I want to shop this around a bit. I’m
going to call my agent…”
As she trailed off, Ed laughed. “Now, Rachel, just give me a minute to digest it.
You have an idea, you blurt it out, and expect me to react within five seconds! I think it’s
a great idea, but I’m trying to think through some of the logistics. When would we be
able to air this? Would it be a one-week series of five two-minute segments? Two
weeks? We can’t have five-week series on the nightly news, the people who watch those
programs just don’t have the staying power to watch that kind of thing night in and night
out. Maybe we should plan it as a thirteen week series, a half hour a week. You would
tape yourself all along the way--at major events and a nightly wrapup, would be my
guess—and then we can edit it into a coherent whole. I have to run it by some of the
higher-ups, but it sounds like a good start. Only, I’m not sure that it can focus solely on
you. Are there going to be other people involved in this process? And, how do we
explain having a cameraman follow you around all the time?”
Rachel remembered that Reuven had offhandedly mentioned that he tried to
answer a series of questions in the order in which they were asked, because some text
said he should. Rachel decided to give it a whirl. “You could air it as soon as I have
completed my training, which I expect to be within six months. I don’t think that the new
Israeli society will have come to be too known to Americans by then, so we won’t be
behind any curve on that. Also, I’ll return to my regular work in six weeks, the Monday-
Thursday schedule we have before Adin arrived,” Rachel had no idea what she was going
to do with Adin at that point—“ so it’s not like I’ll be dead weight for the network.”
“I think I could probably tape both kinds of segments, two minute teasers to feed
interest in the thirteen week series; for the week before the series starts, we could have a
short segment on the nightly news, and then other short pieces could serve as
commercials while the larger show was running.”
“There aren’t other people formally in this process, but I have to have a sponsor,
so I’ll be interacting with her on a regular basis, and then she’s going to send me to
various classes and events, to give me a full taste of the kind of life they are pushing. At
each stage along the way, I’ll meet people. On the cameraman issue, I actually thought
that maybe I would just tape myself; what we would lose in camera quality we would
gain in realism, I think. What do you think?”

“I’ll tell you Rachel, it sounds great; good to know you haven’t lost your touch
over there in that backwater; nor has motherhood dulled your edge. Let me set up a few
meetings, pitch it to the relevant people and see what happens. Meanwhile, here’s what I
can do—start taping yourself –do you have a digital video camera that’s relatively small?
Carry it with you always, you never know when you’ll have a shot that has to get in—not
just when you’re interacting, but also your thoughts, etc. I’ll let you know when I have a
meeting set up, and maybe you can e-mail me some of the video you’ve made. I know
it’ll be unedited, but it’ll help people see what you mean.”
“Ok, Ed, thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
When she hung up the phone, Rachel reflexively looked at the minutes on her cell
phone, even though the station paid her bill without ever questioning her. 12:35. Not bad
for successfully pitching a reality series to Ed Appleby, notoriously conservative about
trying new ideas. Now she just had to figure out how to use a digital video.
And find a sponsor. What about that Levi who had given her his card; what was
his name, Yedidya Gross? Maybe he’d know somebody. She fished in her handbag for
the card, and dialed the number. When he answered, she summarized her situation,
leaving out the attempted murder part. She just said—she figured there’d be time for full
disclosure later—that she was interested in becoming a haverah and would he have the
time to oversee the process. Of course, she could pay (or at least the network would) him
for his time.
“It’s not the money, Ms. Tucker, it’s just that my slate is all full right now. After
I finish my week of service in the Temple, I’m scheduled to start a three-month stint as a
judge in a city of refuge down south, and after that, I need to get my home stuff in order.
Can I recommend someone else to you? I know a man who’s had tremendous success
with Americans. He’s warm, friendly, and I think you’d really like him.”
“You know what, before you tell me—and I don’t mean to be rude—as we’re
talking, I’m thinking I might prefer a woman. This mentoring feels like it’s going to
involve a lot of time and closeness, and a woman feels more… I don’t know,
appropriate.”
There was a silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry, Yedidya, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m just embarrassed that I didn’t think of it myself. But I don’t know any
women who are available. I do, however, know a man who’s familiar with all the best
teachers, and he’s a wonderful guy, he may be able to find someone for you.”
Even before Yedidya said the name, Rachel had the feeling that she knew what
was coming. It all just fit together—a coffee shop to pick up strays from the Temple, the
embarrassment on his face when he stopped her from shooting Harvey, his concern with
presenting a positive image o f his beliefs and ideals, she might have known.
“Reuven HaOzer; he runs a little coffee shop just off the Temple Mount. Do you
know it?”
Do I ever, Rachel thought. Well, at least she once again had a plan; oddly
enough, it once again involved getting to the Temple Grounds early the next morning.
Time to get Adin, and herself, to bed.

That night she dreamt that Lije and Liat were talking to each other, arguing about
whether she should have a male or female sponsor. Lije pointed out that the only person
she had ever responded to in some kind of religious way had been himself, a male, and if
she really wanted to understand and absorb the messages, she should at least give a man a
chance. Liat, for her part, argued about the immodesty of getting so close to a man and
said that a woman could do just as well. Rachel woke up with a bad taste in her mouth.
She knew what Liat was doing in her dreams, but since when did Lije get there, too?
CHAPTER 10
It took her a full hour to put herself together that morning, mostly because she
hadn’t gone in front of a camera in a while and, truth to tell, when she was pregnant she
had allowed herself to cut some corners on presentation. All prepared—and feeling
virtuous for sticking to a bowl of cereal and milk for breakfast, with great plans for
sensible eating all day—she sat down in front of the camera she had set up on the tripod
the previous evening.
“This is Rachel Tucker, bringing you the first in a series of reports on the changes
in Israel since the arrival of the man the country has hailed as the Messiah. That Arrival
has deeply affected the country politically, economically, socially, and, of course,
religiously. In setting up a theocracy in what used to be the foremost democracy in the
Middle East, the Messiah has set off alarm bells in Washington, which fears seeing Israel
join the ranks of fundamentalist religious nations, which would be expected to bring with
it an aggressively negative view of modern pluralistic countries such as the United States.
While thus far there have been few causes for concern, Washington’s attitude, in the
words of one State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, is
cautious.” Rachel had gotten that quote months ago, but the guy she had spoken to was
not one to change his opinion so fast; she’d check with him later today.
“To help our viewers understand the New Israel, ABC News is going to take you
inside the core of the country. As a dual citizen, American and Israeli, I am enrolling in a
certification course to become a haverah, which signifies, to this government and the
world, that the person involved has adopted the Jewish lifestyle, with all of its rules, as
fully as possible. That status, viewers will be interested to hear, gains its members
privileges other Israelis do not have—seats on town councils, for example, are limited to
people who have passed such a course, and testimony from such people is given more
credibility than others’. Our goal here is to discover just what makes this inner circle
tick, their goals and aspirations, their failings, their dirty hidden secrets.”
“Today, and for the next week, my mission will be to find a personal trainer,
called a sponsor. Most of this process is self-study, but the sponsor tells me what books
I need to read, religious practices to undertake, ceremonies I need to attend to learn about
Judaism in practice, and and certify when I’m ready for final exams.”
“My first lead is the coffee shop of a man named Reuven haOzer; this popular
gathering spot, called the Temple Grounds, is located just outside the rebuilt Temple in
Jerusalem. Its owner, a man who attracts and happily aids all sorts of psychologically
and economically needy people, has amassed a well-established record as a sponsor to
candidates for haverut, convicts on parole, and non-Jews wishing to join the State of
Israel. In previous encounters with haOzer, I have learned that each meeting is
completely different than the one before. Wondering what that meeting will bring, this is
Rachel Tucker, ABC News.”
It wasn’t perfect, but she could edit it later. She was already proud of her Internet
use, which had given her most of the information for the report—she had found out that
Reuven was a constant fixture in the Israeli press. Checking the archives of just the
Jerusalem Post, which had the advantage of been written in English, turned up at least 50
articles about Reuven since the shop opened five years ago.
She was also proud of the arm holster she had rigged for her camera—she could
record surreptitiously, with the remote conveniently stored in her purse. She would put
the recorder on mute, though, and do voice-overs later.
Feeling more prepared than she had in a while, Rachel made her way to the
Temple Grounds, taking a different route, as part of her attempt to learn the multiple
pathways of Jerusalem. Today, feeling like a walk, she walked around the Old City to go
through Zion Gate, just to learn how to go that way instead of always staying with the
Jaffa Gate path. As she came through Zion Gate, she forgot to take a left until she found
herself heading down toward the Temple Mount, where the old Wailing Wall stood.
She had gone down almost the entire steep hill before she realized her mistake,
leaving her to walk back up, so that by the time she arrived at the Temple Grounds she
had in fact worked up quite a thirst. Eschewing coffee, she got a large water and an iced
tea, sat down and nursed the two drinks, knowing that Reuven—whom she did not yet
see—would find his way over there.

He did not disappoint, coming up to her table with a grin. “Well, if you’re
drinking water, I guess it’s not the coffee that keeps dragging you back; are you looking
for me to get you into another sticky situation with the police?” He held up a hand to
stop her from responding and said, “Before you chew me out, let me apologize again—I
can’t tell you how personally upsetting and embarrassing the whole incident was for me.
You may not know this, but—and I don’t want to sound too highfalutin about it--as a
priest, even one with a physical disfigurement, it’s my job to provide information about
the system to anyone who asks. I tossed and turned last night because I couldn’t stop
thinking about what I had done to you. But I guess the positive way to view it is that
thank God we caught you before you did something that none of us would ever fully
recover from. So, I really hope you can forgive me. I’ll say this, too; if my error got me
a chance to spend some time with you again, that almost makes the embarrassment and
guilt feelings worth it.”
Rachel was pleased with his apology, and, to her surprise, was flattered at his
interest. She had, in truth, been upset that no one on the streets of Jerusalem had noticed
her appearance, even though she was fully coiffed and made up today—had one child
destroyed her looks? Reuven, too, hadn’t made a comment, even though she knew she
looked a lot better than the other times he had seen her. But she was focused on
something she had only just thought of as he stood there professing to feel bad about
yesterday. “You know, Reuven, if you were so worried about what you had done to me,
why is it that I spent the day in the police station, and a full night at home, and didn’t hear
from you until I happened to walk into your coffee shop?”

Reuven seemed surprised at the question. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. The
police station houses the morgue, so it’s a place of ritual impurity that I, as a priest, am
not allowed to enter. And I lost your number at home, and you’re not listed. So how was
I supposed to get into touch with you?”
For Rachel, few experiences were as annoying as being wrong, but being wrong
and having tried to put the fault on someone else was much more upsetting. Now it was
her turn to apologize, which she really hated. She took a deep breath, and tried to finesse
it.
“All right, let’s just call the whole thing even. First, here’s my card—now you
have my phone number, don’t lose it. Second, I don’t want to think about what went
wrong yesterday, just about what I have to do to make it right; really, I should say, what
you have to do to make it right.” And she told him the story of her meeting with Kapdan,
her tentative decision—she left out the TV angle—to train for being a haverah, her
asking Yedidya for help, and his suggesting that Reuven might know some appropriate
women.
Reuven listened, and Rachel was once again struck by how well he did it—he was
not looking to answer, to put his two cents into the conversation, he was absorbing what
he was told, and seemed like he could do that forever. When she was finished, he waited,
as if to be sure that she had in fact finished, and then thought for a few minutes.
“How long did Kapdan say you had to give him an answer?”
“A week.”
“Well, then, my plan would be that we spend Sunday together, for two reasons.
First, I want to take you to an actual city of refuge, to show you how it works. That way,
you could see what I meant. Also, those places are usually filled with sponsors, since the
residents—the real accidental murderers, who have to stay there for long periods of
time— need to have sponsors who help them get ready to return to regular society.
Third…”
“I thought you said two reasons.”
Reuven smiled. “So sue me. Third, I think we’d have fun.”
There it was again. Rachel had sensed, from the first time he approached her, that
Reuven wasn’t just ordinarily interested in her, he was interested in her, and she had no
clue as to how to handle that. She hadn’t even let herself think about how she felt about
Reuven because, while most of her was resigned to the reality that Lije was dead,
officially, she was a married woman; especially with the events of yesterday, how would
the government take to her being seen in public with a man who wasn’t her husband?
When in doubt, equivocate. “Is that such a good idea?” She hoped he’d
understand the issue and address it, but he wasn’t biting.
“I think it’ll be a great idea. You’ll get out of Jerusalem, it’s supposed to be a
beautiful day, we can bring a picnic lunch—there are lots of wide open fields just outside
the city where people go to hang out, tan, sleep, you know. And, you’ll be taking a step
in your education towards being a haverah!”
She’d have to address it head-on. “And it’s not a problem for us to be…” She
couldn’t find the right word, so she went with the wrong one, “consorting?”
Reuven smiled. “I don’t intend to consort with you at all. Look, I found out
about your husband’s…situation… so I know that this is in no way a date. And the
government, well, they haven’t been clear yet about how we distinguish between
problematic consorting and old friends getting together. Certainly any physical displays
of affection would be a problem, but I’ll keep my hands to myself if you will.”
“We can tell whoever asks that we’re looking into a sponsor for you, or well,
whatever—I don’t want to brag, but the government does trust me, you know, because I
don’t break their rules. I don’t intend to break any rules with you, either; I know what
you’re officially married until we help you find out what happened with your husband,
and I promise to stay firmly on the right side of the line. But you have to feel
comfortable going with me, or else you won’t enjoy it, and that’ll miss the whole point.
Would you prefer that I brought a chaperone? Male or female?”
Rachel knew he was teasing, and it made her feel like she was acting kind of
prudish, a word she had never before thought applied to her. “No, it’s all right, I’m just
so unused to this whole social thing, and especially with the new rules, and my warning
yesterday,” and then, to her mortification, she began to cry.
When Rachel cried in front of men—and she tried hard not to; she didn’t ever
want to hear that she had gotten where she had by acting the damsel in distress—she
never wanted physical comfort, even with Lije. As she was sobbing, she felt the stares of
the men, which only made it worse (the women turned, too, but they had the good sense
to turn back when they saw it was just a woman crying), and some of them even started
to get up to ask her what was wrong.

Reuven, on the other hand, handled it perfectly. He motioned the other people
away, wordlessly, got a box of tissues from somewhere, gave her the tissues, and just
waited her out. When she had finished and dried her eyes, he asked her if she wanted to
freshen up, and pointed her in the direction of the bathroom.
When she came back, he seemed pensive. She put on a joking face, and asked
“Come here often?” Which, in the context of their previous conversation, was probably
the wrong thing to say.
“Look,” Reuven said, “I don’t want to complicate your life, and certainly the last
couple of days have been stressful. I am not trying to come on to you, at least not in the
sense of expecting a relationship to develop that is anything other than friendly and
professional. I may have slipped a little by making clear how much I’d enjoy a day in
your company, but really, I do think you should visit Hevron tomorrow, if only to see
what changes have happened to the city since the Arrival. I have a feeling that you will
gain more than I know from the experience, and I know that it’s a good first step on the
way to finding a sponsor.”
God, does everything have to be so formal, so careful? Rachel thought to herself.
Why can’t he just say that he wants us to spend the day, that we won’t do anything
wrong, and be done with it? Everybody has to be so serious, so careful to follow the Law
the right way. This, this, she wanted to shout, this is what ruins the whole thing. But of
course she didn’t. A day away might be fun, and he was right; she had not seen Hebron
since the Arrival; she wondered what the government had done with the squalid Arab city
she had had to go to for interviews on occasion.

“All right, thank you, I’d love to accept. Shall we meet somewhere, or would you
like to pick me… I mean get me at my apartment?”
“Actually, I was thinking we’d take the bus; there’s a whole inspection thing
when you get to the city, so it’s easier to get it out of the way before we get on the bus,
and then we don’t wait on the traffic lines outside the city. They have fairly regular
service, so we should be ok, if that’s ok with you.”
“Ok, my babysitter comes at 8:30, I can be at the Central Bus Station at….nine-
fifteen.”
“Great, I’ll see you then.”
CHAPTER 11
Rachel left the Temple Grounds with a considerably lighter step than when she
walked in, feeling as if she was finally making some progress on at least one area of her
life. She went to a health club near her house and signed up for a membership, even
though it would still be a few weeks until the doctor cleared her for the serious kind of
exercise she needed— just taking action in that direction made her feel efficient, and the
more efficient she felt, the more she got accomplished. She spent the rest of the day on a
pleasure walk through Jerusalem.
Of course, being Rachel Tucker, reporter, she couldn’t call it that, she thought of
it as investigating her surroundings. She found a few parks to take Adin to; she even
categorized them by age at which he would be ready to enjoy each one. She found
bookstores to come back to when she needed more books, locations to film at when she
wanted different kinds of backgrounds, and still got home at 6:30, feeling refreshed for
the first time in months.
Which was probably why Adin chose to be in an awful mood when she got home.
She held him, she rubbed his back, she put him over her lap, she sang to him, she bathed
him, all of which worked for as long as she did them, but by 9:30—when he usually took
a long sleep beginning at 8:00—Rachel was getting a mite frustrated. She placed him
over her shoulder and began patting his back, trying to relieve what she thought might be
gas. At each pat, he calmed a little, as if she was on the right track, but as soon as she
stopped, he started screaming again. Finally, on one of the pats, her frustration took over,
and she gave him a reasonable whack. And he burped, loud, sighed happily, and went to
sleep on her shoulder.
A harder pat was all it took—Rachel was almost ready to cry in relief. This
squalling bundle who had ruined so many of her nights with his crying was just looking
for a firmer hand on his back to help the gas come out. Rachel put him down in his crib,
feeling a little more of a bond with him even than earlier today.
As she lay in bed, she realized she hadn’t done an evening commentary on film.
Truth was, she hadn’t filmed that much; she didn’t often remember that she had the
camera with her. Should she get out of bed, do her makeup all over again, just to film
two minutes of commentary? Nah, she’d do twice as much next time. She turned over
and slept better than she had months.
Friday and Shabbat passed quicker than usual, as Rachel repeatedly wondered
what a city of refuge would look like. Since she only had a half day of babysitting on
Friday and none on Saturday, those were always hard days, filled with Adin time. In
between the diapers, feedings, walks, and crying, Rachel stayed home, rested her
overworked body, slept a lot, and did some reading up on cities of refuge. She even took
out a Bible to read the original passages about it.
By the time she went to sleep Saturday night, embarrassingly early for someone
who used to have an 11 oclock show, she felt ready to at least do an introductory voice
over in the morning. Her alarm woke her at 6:00. Adin’s last waking had been at 5:00,
and—if he stuck to his pattern—he’d be good til 7:30. Rachel quickly showered, dried
her hair, made herself somewhat camera-ready—she hoped Reuven wouldn’t interpret
her makeup the wrong way-- and sat down to record. She’d done a little research the
night before, so she felt ready.
“The city of refuge seems to be a relic from a primitive time, a time of blood
feuds, of relatives serving the role of police in securing the safety of the members of their
clan. And yet, one of the first acts of the Messiah, the new leader of the State of Israel,
was to re-establish these cities of refuge. Aside from the population transfer
involved—the Messiah moved out most of the residents, installing Levites as the
owners/operators of these cities—the system also shifted the direction of much of the
criminal justice system.”
“Murderers now were often handing themselves in, showing up at these cities of
refuge for protection from an overzealous blood avenger. While authorities still admit
that many murderers are not yet brought to justice, they nonetheless point to their much
smaller than average file of cold cases. Today, we will be visiting one such city, the
ancient city of Hebron, to see how the system works, and gain some further insight into
the revival of the ancient blood-feud.”
Rachel tucked the camera in her arm-holster; she could videotape what happened
today and edit it later. Meanwhile, there was a baby to feed, and a bus to catch. She
hated herself for it, but she was actually looking forward to a day with a man she felt
attracted to, and whom she knew found her attractive; it had been too long, and too many
messy complications had happened, since the last time she had had a day like this.
Following the pattern of punishing her for feeling good, Adin chose that day to
cheese in her hair and all over her outfit, the babysitter showed up late, she had to re-
shower and change, and then the bus she took didn’t go to the Central Bus Station (she
thought all buses went there; isn’t that why it was called the Central Bus Station?), and
her cab got stuck in traffic. It was only 9:30—fifteen minutes late wasn’t bad by Lije’s
standards, for example—when she finally showed up, but she felt as if she had already
lived two full days. The nagging voice in the back of her head was sure that this was a
sign she should not be doing this, but the nagging voice in the back of her head rarely
changed her actions, it just made her feel guilty while she did the exact same thing.
When she got to the Bus Station, she realized that they hadn’t set a specific
location within the large building, so she found out when and where the next bus to
Hevron would be leaving, which was where Reuven found her.
“Hey.”
She turned to see him standing there smiling. He was noticeably better dressed
than at the coffee shop, in what Orthodox Jews in Israel would think of as Shabbat slacks,
pants kept for special occasions. He had not, however, worn a white shirt, which would
have signaled that this was truly a special occasion and screamed “date.” Even so,
Rachel felt underdressed in her jeans and button-down Polo shirt.
“I’m sorry, I thought this was a casual kind of thing.”
“For you, it certainly is, but the likelihood is that I’m going to meet several
former mentors and bosses, who are tracking my progress as a sponsor. We get rated on
how well we’re spreading the Word, you know” he managed to be both serious and self-
deprecating at the same time “so I need to look like I’m on the job, not just spending a
pleasant day with a beautiful woman.”
Rachel was beginning to realize that he wasn’t going to woo her directly, which
took the pressure off from her need to respond. She kind of liked it, and she had to admit
to herself—as a married woman, she could never voice this—that he looked pretty good
as well. When dressed, his bulk was more clearly muscle than it might seem in his
ordinary clothes. Tall, broad-shouldered, this was a man she could feel good about
walking down the street with. She got on the bus looking forward to the day.
The bus ride should have been an ordeal. It was a full hour to Hevron, and before
they pulled away from the station, each passenger was individually questioned and
searched for weapons or other contraband (any heavy metal items, Rachel found out,
were held back, since they could be used as the blunt metal object always identified as
cause of death in TV shows). Rachel could have told them twenty ways to run the
process more efficiently, but the truth is that she was enjoying the time with Reuven so
much that she barely noticed her surroundings. He told her about growing up in LA, a
city he despised at the time, but had come to appreciate more on his return visits to his
parents, of his moving to Israel (he referred to it by the more romantic Hebrew term,
“making aliyah” going up) at eighteen, joining the Army (at the time, before the Arrival,
priests were not yet exempted from Army service), his failed first marriage, his loss of his
toe leading to a downward spiral of alcoholism, and his recovery, and, finally, setting up
the store that had come to fill almost (he carefully stressed the word) all of the voids in
his life.
Rachel was touched and yet uncomfortable with how freely Reuven was opening
up to her. She sensed that he did not do so easily, that all of his listening to others
masked a guardedness about himself, and she suspected that this was the kind of
openness that she used to experience on first dates, back in the day. For once, though,
she shoved her concerns to the back of her mind and enjoyed the moments as they
passed. How Zen of me, she thought, amused and delighted at her ability to do so.
As they approached Hevron, Rachel noticed armed people on the side of the road.
At first she didn’t pay attention—Israel, from its founding, was a country whose private
citizens were soldiers for some part of the year; they all owned guns, and tended to wear
them as they saw fit—but then she couldn’t help notice that they trained those guns on
the bus as it went by, and seemed disappointed when it passed without incident.
“Who were all those people?”
Reuven smiled. “Those were blood avengers; they stand at the last point that
they’re still allowed to kill the murderers, hoping that one of them will be stupid enough
to leave a window open on the bus. The bus’ windows are bulletproof, but occasionally
the air conditioning will break down and some idiot will decide to risk it with a window
open. Every year, one or two people on a bus like this get killed.”
Rachel didn’t like how much of a game this seemed to have become, but she
honestly didn’t want to ruin the mood by getting into a religious conversation. Her
experiences with Lije suggested that even relatively calm men got worked up about
religious stuff, at least in Israel. She found an innocuous reply, and moved the
conversation away.
Once the bus pulled into town, people began lowering their windows, although
Rachel saw a few people who still didn’t—probably people seeking refuge, still not
confident that they had avoided the blood avengers. What was most remarkable about
the city, as the bus slowly drove through town to the courthouse, was how quiet it was.
No soldiers patrolled the streets, people walked calmly from one place to another, they
were all remarkably polite to each other, and there seemed to be no tension in the air.
She couldn’t believe it.
“These people are all accidental murderers?”
“No, no, most of them are the Levites who live here, to set a tone for the place;
they are people trained from birth for this job—they spend their entire day, pretty much,
in study, thought, meditation, you know.”
“Like Shaolin monks on Kung Fu?”
Reuven laughed. “Actually, yeah. I used to love all those martial arts shows, and
I was never sure why, but when I was recovering from my bad time, my sponsor had me
try a lot of that stuff. The calmness of mind that Buddhists cultivate bears a lot of
relationship to what these Levites strive for. You gotta remember, these are people
whose job is to relate to anybody in a loving, respectful manner.”
“But the truth is, that a lot of these murderers shape up a lot right away.
Remember, these are people who didn’t plan whatever happened, and they aren’t sure
they’re responsible. They get here, pretty much all they know is that out there” Reuven
waved vaguely towards the boundaries of the city “is somebody who wants to kill them
for something they don’t think was their fault. So, the first thing the Levites have to do is
break down their resistance, make them realize they’ve been responsible for the death of
another human being. One of the ways they do it is by scaring them—sort of like boot
camp in the army. First day, they tell these guys that if they don’t like them, they’ll just
kick ‘em out of the city.”
“Can they do that? I thought it was the murderers’ refuge?”
Reuven smiled. “Sure, but they don’t know that. And by the time they figure it
out, they’ve gotten used to the climate in town, and its so warm and so welcoming and,
we hope, they’ve gotten so comfortable with their sponsor, that they don’t want to do
anything to mess it up. Most of them quickly adapt to the peacefulness of the
environment, and settle in.”
Something had changed about Reuven once they got into Hevron; it was as if he
had put his sponsor-persona back on, and the open, friendly seatmate of a moment ago
had receded behind a veil of… Rachel couldn’t put her finger on it, but she put it away
for later. Something about this place bugged him, although he was the one who had said
they should come.

As people got off the bus at the courthouse—there was no Central Bus Station in
Hevron-- a greeter welcomed each person, with a checklist in her hand. Each person got
off and said something to her. She either directed some of them to an office inside the
courthouse, or pointed to different sites around the square. Rachel was going to ask
Reuven what that was about, but he was already up and headed off the bus. She followed
him, and as she got to the front, she heard the people saying one of two words to the man
at the bottom of the stairs.
“Visitor.”
“Refuge.”
When they got off the bus, Reuven told the man that he was a registered sponsor,
showed him an ID card, and took Rachel with him.
“You’ve got pull, I see. I better stick with you or I might get in trouble,” Rachel
teased.
Reuven’s dark mood lightened a little. “Actually it was sticking with me that got
you into all this trouble to begin with,” he pointed out. “What do you want to do, wander
around town, see some of the traditional tourist sites—the Cave of Machpelah, where the
Patriarchs and Matriarchs are buried—or go into court?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.” Rachel loved wandering around cities, picking up
information as she went along. She almost wanted to run down one street after another,
going anywhere and nowhere, until her feet were too tired to go any further. And then
she wanted to sit at a café, with a soda or a latte, until she was ready to conquer the city
again, inch by inch. What was it Lije had said, that it’s a commandment to just walk in
the Land of Israel? She was ready to fulfill that one, here and now.
At the thought, she remembered Lije always teasing her that she was most Jewish
when it served her own purposes. Truth is, touring had been one of her continuing fights
with him—when they went to a new place, he had always wanted to go to specific spots,
on a specific schedule. She liked to just soak up the place by wandering around, seeing
how the real people lived, hearing them talk, and fight, and flirt. She wondered what life
was like in a city like this, where murder was always the backdrop of the place.
Reuven laughed, clearly amused by her enthusiasm. “Ok, but what shall we do
first?”
The day passed in a whirlwhind of walking, eating, talking, laughing, and
learning. As she reflected on it on her way home, with her feet complaining about the
unusual workout they had gotten, one of her nagging thoughts came back to her—she
was no closer to finding a sponsor, since all the available ones in Hevron seemed to be
the social misfits of the Levi class.
She had particularly liked the men who had refused to look her in the face out of
modesty, but thought that they could handle her training. The women were somewhat
better, but she just hadn’t clicked with any of them. She felt a little nervous about it, like
there was something wrong with her if none of these Levites wanted to sponsor her.
Reuven reassured her. “There could be lots of reasons you haven’t found anyone
yet. Look, we like to assume that all the Levites are in control of their own issues, but
maybe all those women were just jealous of you. I mean, you’re Rachel Tucker, and
you’re all dressed up, maybe they were intimidated. Or, maybe they saw you were with
me, a famous priest and sponsor” Reuven puffed himself up, self-mockingly, “and
assumed they weren’t in your league. Anyway, don’t worry about it; worse comes to
worst, I’ll speak to Kapdan for you and explain the situation. Meanwhile, you’ve got
plenty of time til he needs an answer. What are you going to do tomorrow?”
She didn’t know how to take the question; was he asking to spend the day again?
“I don’t know yet, I wanted to go through my mail at home, get in touch with my boss in
NY, see how the baby is, why, what did you have in mind?” Reuven had been excellent
company, which only increased her nervousness about his question.
“Nothing. The truth is, I have to be at the store tomorrow—I do have to make a
living along with everything else. I just thought I’d keep in touch with your progress,
give you ideas as they come along. Tell you what, why don’t you come up with a plan,
and if any of it is relevant to your studies, call me, and I’ll give you my thoughts. If you
want, that is.”
“Ok, great. Um, is it appropriate to thank you for a really wonderful day—I could
not imagine that visiting a city full of murderers would have been so enjoyable.”
Reuven almost blushed. “Please don’t thank me, the pleasure was mine. And
anyway, it’s part of my job, you know. So, here’s my card, call me later. Bye.” He
walked off hurriedly, as if he was as uncomfortable with their situation as she was.
She got home at 7:00—she had had to beg the babysitter for the extra half
hour—more thoroughly fulfilled than in a long time. Her feet hurt, she hadn’t eaten too
much, she had learned a lot, and she had gotten it on tape. The time with Adin flew—he
was in a good mood, which was always nice, he spent a while just looking around from
his bouncer seat, and when he started fussing, she gave him a bath, a bottle, and put him
in a little early. She sat down to watch her film, intending to email Ed the first cut before
bed.
As she sat in front of the TV, watching the three hours worth of crap—she felt
like saying something stronger, but Lije had always made a big stink about any use of
vulgarity — that she had filmed in Hevron that day, she gained a new respect for
cameramen. In that whole time, she had gotten maybe ten minutes that she wasn’t
embarrassed to send along to Ed. One part of it was really touching, a discussion she had
had in a café with a guy at the next table, who had been living in the city pretty much
since it had been open for business. He had approached them, and she had had the good
sense to turn on the camera.
CHAPTER 12
“Hi, Reuven. Got a new recruit here?” He stuck out his hand to Rachel, a rough
hewn man, thickly built but with muscles everywhere. He had a tattoo on his left tricep,
which was unusual in Israel where law now forbade Jews from defacing their bodies with
permanent markings. It was of a heart with an arrow through it, and the word Marcia
written inside the heart. “I’m Zeke Long, pretty much the senior murderer around here.
How’d yours happen?”

Rachel was flustered, for several reasons. First, she hadn’t realized that people
seeing her in the city might assume that she was there for refuge—wouldn’t it be great if
the Enquirer or some other rag picked up that story? But also, there was something
threatening about this man, maybe not right on top, but somewhere not far below the
surface, she had the sense of violence and anger, aching to be released.
“ Oh, no, actually, I was stopped before I managed to do anything, but the police
ordered me to do some retraining, or whatever.”
“Huh, so they gave you Reuven. Wow, you must really be a tough case, they only
give him the real incorrigibles—I was one of his, too. Took me a long time to make my
peace with this place, I’ll tell you that. When I first got here, man, was I pissed, sorry, I
mean peeved. I mean, I had just gotten married, and I’m on a job, you know, in
construction, and I’m coming down the ladder from the roof, and as I’m going down, my
foot slips, and I fall, and that idiot Slim is at the bottom of the ladder, and I land on him
and he up and dies on me. Next think I know, his family’s taking potshots at me! I only
just got here before they killed me.”
“And then, when we have the trial, I don’t get a lawyer, I just get to tell my story
to the judges—23 of them—and then they examine the witnesses—they did a good job o’
that, I’ll give ‘em that, and then, get this, they say that I have to stay here, and I say “how
long” cuz you know I’m figuring with parole and time off for good behavior, maybe it’s
just a few months, like back in Rikers or wherever” that was it, Rachel knew he had the
feel of felons she had known back in the States, “And they tell me, it depends on when
the High Priest dies; well I nearly sh.. I mean had a fit.”
As she watched the film, Rachel realized that she’d have to put explanation in
here if this ever showed. First, she’d have to find out the explanation. She knew that the
Bible said something about death of the High Priest being the condition for the release of
accidental murderers from their cities of refuge, but she didn’t know any reason that
would satisfy an American audience, or the network.
“Anyway… I’m sorry, am I bothering you? My advisor tells me I’m a little too,
what’s his word? Forward with people. So, if you want me to go away, I will…”
Rachel had known, even at the time, that this was dynamite footage. She
remembered being glad about the break in Zeke’ s flow of words, just so she could get
her voice in there somewhere; she didn’t want the network thinking she was excess
baggage, that this documentary could film itself.
“No, please go ahead, you were saying that it was difficult for you to reconcile
yourself to your sentence.”
Zeke savored what was obviously a more refined form of speech than his
ordinary. “Yeah, that’s it, it was difficult to reconcile. At first, I did my reconciling by
vandalizing the town at night, but Reuven took me aside and pointed out that while they
couldn’t kick me out of town, they could ration my food pretty strictly, and that they
weren’t going to put up with…well, they meant me, but they used some fancy word with
a “d” for it.”
“A disruption?” She had guessed more out of politeness than any thought that she
knew what they had said.

“Yeah, that’s it, they weren’t going to tolerate my disrupting their town. So I
thought about it, and realized that this was definitely a lot better than prison, and what the
hay, I might as well make a go of it. I’ll tell you this, though, cost me my wife, this
whole thing did—she decided she couldn’t be bothered to move here, and I knew that that
was the beginning of the end… I didn’t get the letter, though, til yesterday, which is why
I’m walking around kinda glum, you know, not interested in talking really?”
Rachel made a mental note never to meet up with Zeke when he was in a voluble
mood. For the meanwhile, he was perfect.
“Maybe you could answer a few of my questions, and that would take your mind
off your troubles?”
Zeke brightened up. “Sure, I’d love to; also, my sponsor—the new one I got once
Reuven had settled me down-- is very happy whenever I show evidence that I play well
with others, as he puts it. So fire away. Although I gotta tell ya, I’m not sure you can
understand this place until you’ve lived here. I mean, it’s a little crazy. Like, for
instance, my sponsor thought I wasn’t showing enough regret—all right, I probably
wasn’t, I mean how much can you regret falling off a ladder? None of this was my fault,
that’s what I kept telling myself—so he decided to make me listen to a victim impact
statement. Now, back in the States, those were for the judge, but here, they make me sit
in a room while whichever relatives of the dead guy want to, can come by and let me
know how much I ruined their life by killing their father, son, brother, whatever.”
“And I’m sitting there, and as these people come in one by one—and some of
them are the same guys waiting to plug me if I ever leave town—but when they were
done, man, it was powerful.”
“What was powerful?”
“Well, I mean if you had said to me before that day, was it my fault for falling on
Slim, I’d say no. I mean I slipped coming down a ladder, what am I gonna do? But after
hearing those stories, I didn’t know if it was my fault or not, but I felt like I couldn’t ever
be part of something like that again. Which was funny, a little, cuz I’d actually killed
somebody before. I didn’t tell nobody, and nobody saw, so I walked free.”
“What happened that time?” As Rachel watched the film, his answer haunted her.
Zeke had told her of killing a woman when he was driving drunk—mid-20’s, light brown
hair, a hiker’s backpack, somewhere north of Jerusalem was all he could remember-- one
rainy night; afraid of the consequences, he’d buried her by the side of the road, and left.
Rachel thought about Lije, and she thought about the family of that poor woman,
wandering the country, maybe the world, looking for their daughter, sister, wife, mother,
friend. Sympathetic tears welled up in her eyes, as they had when Zeke had told the story
the first time, apparently oblivious to the suffering he had caused.
“So I guess, what goes around comes around, you know? No use crying over
yesterday’s news, and all that, right? Anyway, I gotta go, I got a meeting with some
people about possibilities for when I get out of here. Nice meetin ya, though, see ya
around.”
As he left, Rachel had had the irrational thought that she really wanted the High
Priest to have a long, long life. She felt safer knowing that a guy like Zeke Long was not
in general circulation. She remembered Reuven coming over after Zeke had left (he’d
quietly gone for a walk while Zeke was talking, she didn’t know where)—she hadn’t
gotten Reuven on tape the whole day, he seemed to have a sixth sense about where the
camera was pointed, and always moved just to the side of it—and saying the same thing,
that he prayed for long life for the High Priest every time he thought about Zeke.
Rachel rummaged around in her apartment and found what used to be her never-
fail companion, a notebook. She jotted down the information about the murdered girl;
Zeke had said it had been about five years; the next day she would go through the
missing persons’ files, and try to track down that poor woman’s family. If she couldn’t
get Harvey for Liat, maybe she could at least help this woman’s family find their closure.
Rachel was so excited about doing some real investigating that she went to bed
without reviewing the rest of the footage, a mistake she never would have made if she
had been at the top of her game.
CHAPTER 13
Police headquarters Monday morning gave her a completely unwanted reminder
of the old Israel, the one that treated customer service like a crime. The snooty desk
sergeant, who apparently had time for everyone but her (Rachel had watched her file and
polish her nails while talking on the phone to her boyfriend, shushing anyone, including
Rachel, who tried to ask a question; after hanging up on the boyfriend, she announced
that it was time for her break and gone to get coffee; on her way back, she had a lengthy
and apparently heartfelt discussion with another female officer, which ended with tears
and a hug; joked with friends, joined a singing of Happy Birthday, and finally came back,
acting annoyed that Rachel had actually stuck it out and was still standing there), and
then told her that they no longer kept missing persons files, as there weren’t enough of
them.
Rachel was pretty sure this was a lie, but didn’t know how to respond. She did
get her badge and name at the last second, though, because she remembered she’d be
talking to Kapdan later that week.
She also hadn’t pressed the woman on her lie because as she was standing there,
she had realized that that she just needed access to newspaper archives—when Lije had
gone missing, the papers had focused on it for a long time. Even cutting that down
because of the celebrity factor, there should be an article on this woman as well.
And, after a little old-fashioned research, she had three possibles. Shlomit Hami,
a dark-skinned Yemenite girl, 21, had disappeared while hiking the country North to
South-- she was Rachel’s favorite possibility, but she couldn’t completely rule out two
other hikers who disappeared within six months of Shlomit. Which complicated matters,
since she couldn’t just go to Shlomit’s family and tell them what she knew. She also
couldn’t really go back to Hevron and show Zeke pictures, since she assumed he would
realize that she was trying to get the word out about this death, and would clam up. How
would a court treat drunk driving, anyway?
Which brought her, as usual, to Reuven. Rachel was about to get in a cab to the
Temple Grounds when she remembered that she had his card and could just call him. It
was an odd conversation, and she had the impression that the stakes were higher than she
realized.
“Hello, the Temple Grounds, how may I serve you?”
“Reuven, please; you can tell him it’s Rachel Tucker on the phone.”
“Rachel, how are you? What are you doing today?”
When she told him, there was silence on the other end of the line, so long that she
thought maybe she’d been cut off.
“Reuven?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Listen, Rachel, I have to make a few phone calls, and then I
can get back to you. What number are you at?”
Rachel resisted the temptation to point out that she had just given him her
business card; he didn’t seem in the mood for teasing. When they hung up, she realized
that she was once again without a plan. In her lexicon that signaled a meal, and—more
out of luck than anything else—it was 12:45, so she could go for lunch.
She sat at an outdoor café, eating a bowl of French onion soup, served in a huge
hollowed out loaf of bread. As she savored the meal, she tried to reformulate her plans.
Her attempts to find the murdered girl Zeke had spoken about were temporarily halted
while she waited for Reuven’s return call. Her investigation of the New Israel had no
next step, because she still had no sponsor. She couldn’t send footage to Ed yet, because
she hadn’t gone through all of the material.
That, at least, she had some control over. She would walk home—it would help
work off lunch-- finish editing the footage and send it to Ed with a voiceover or two. At
home, she went through the rest of the footage that she had shot, dismayed at how much
of it was (she searched in her mind for the polite way to say it, so she wouldn‘t get caught
on camera using a word like crap) subpar. She was so busy being annoyed at her poor
camera positioning and poor choice of scenes to film that she almost missed it.
They had been watching a court case, because Reuven had wanted her to see how
the court decided which people were required to stay, which were allowed to stay
(because their case was murky enough that the court didn’t want to leave them at the
mercy of the blood avenger), who was removed from the city, left to defend themselves
against an avenger, and who was bound over for an official trial for capital murder.
Mostly, she had been dozing, because the trials were extremely painstaking; for
defendants, that was a good thing, but for Rachel that translated into deadly dull and
several synonyms thereof. Luckily, she had caught this one scene on tape.
The witness was trying to prove that he couldn’t have killed the victim. Rachel
couldn’t follow it all, because there was some technical issue of rabbinic decrees about
various open lots of land, but it seemed like the victim had been killed in a place where
priests couldn’t go. The accused, a priest, was arguing that that proved that he hadn’t
been involved in the crime. In response, the victim’s family brought evidence that the
victim hadn’t actually been killed there, the body had just been dumped there (Rachel
thought of Harvey the Red-Haired Man, and wondered how big a clientele he had; would
he be willing to cover evidence by moving a body from one place to the other?).
As she watched the tape, Rachel marveled once again at the disjunction in such a
conversation. It was clear to everyone, even those who thought this priest was a killer
(accidental, of course), that he would never have entered a field where there was a doubt
about the presence of ritual impurity. And nobody stood up and yelled, this is crazy!
Rachel wondered how she could make that point clear to an audience back home, and
spent forty-five minutes at her computer struggling to write the voice over that would
capture the spirit of the issue.
It would have been hard under any circumstances, but her mind kept wandering to
something Liat had said over and over again, in those last few weeks before her death.
She would often tell Rachel about her diary, in a way that Rachel had found almost
obsessive. In every conversation, her diary had come up, and Liat would always say,
“Well, at least Pinhas can’t get to it.”
At the time, Rachel had thought of it as just an idiosyncrasy, and then when Liat
died, her emotions overwhelmed her. But now, for some reason, images of Liat talking
about her diary flooded back to her, and she could almost physically hear her say, “Well,
at least Pinhas can’t get to it.” What could have been in that diary that Liat would care
about so much? Was it related to her death? Did it still exist and if so, where? Could it
be the opening to pinning this on Pinhas and whoever carried it out for him?
The place to start was Liat’s apartment, although Rachel couldn’t imagine why
that was particularly safe from Pinhas or his minions. Rachel didn’t know any other
places that Liat might have hid a diary, and she had a key to Liat’s apartment, which the
family had not yet sold, so she’d start there.
Liat’s apartment was just a few blocks from hers, and as Rachel made her way
over there, her phone rang.

“Hi, it’s me.” Rachel had, in fact, recognized his voice, but she wondered why he
was so confident that she would.
“What’s up?” He had never called her cell phone before.
“I had a friend of mine talk to Zeke, and steer the conversation towards that
incident. Before Zeke realized it, he had spilled the beans, and knew that he’d go to jail
for a while unless he cooperated as fully as possible. He couldn’t help us with who the
girl was, but he was more exact with the location; it’s on a small side road off of the main
Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. I’ve told the authorities—leaving Zeke out of it—that I got
a tip about a missing person. They’ve started a search, and you’re welcome to join it if
you want. “
Rachel was a little upset (which is how she always described it to herself when
she was hopping mad). “Reuven, who asked you to do that? I was investigating this, and
I asked for your help in confidence. I would have found the answers I needed soon
enough, and now you’ve burned my source—Zeke Long is certainly not going to talk to
me again anytime soon. I know you don’t believe this, but I can look into things just as
well as you—I’ve been doing it professionally a lot longer than you have, I might add.”
She knew she sounded snippy, and there was a perfectly good reason. She was
feeling snippy. Reuven, in the short time she knew him, always walked the line between
concern and nosiness, and this time he had gone over. Way over. And she was going to
let him know it.
As in the past, Reuven refused to take the bait. “Rachel, give me a little credit.
Zeke thinks he was too talkative with that Levi and that that’s how it got out; it’s a
problem he’s had before, so he’s not going to connect it to you. And when I told the
government people about the tip, and they wanted to know who it came from, I didn’t
answer, because I knew Zeke would hear about it. So don’t worry about it!”
Once again, Rachel found herself in a conversation with Reuven, furious, but with
no place to vent her ire. It sounded reasonable, but she knew she felt like he was
intruding on something that was hers. Now she felt childish for being so territorial about
it; after all, the point was to find the girl Zeke had killed, right? To comfort her family,
right? Rachel didn’t want to think about how much her pride had been wounded by
Reuven’s getting so much more information in just a few phone calls, so she just spoke
into the phone instead.
“Are you going? Do you want to pick me up?”
Reuven didn’t answer, and as the silence stretched, Rachel realized she had said
something wrong. Without seeing Reuven, though, she had no idea of what.
“Rachel, I’m a priest, remember? I can’t be at a search for a dead body!”
Rachel was about to say, but your toe means you’re not a priest anymore!
Thankfully, she stifled the urge. She would have to stop talking so much around Reuven
and start listening. This purity thing had nothing to do with being able to serve in the
Temple. Check. She wouldn’t forget that again.
“I’m sorry, I misunderstood, I thought this was just a general search of the area.
You know what, though, I think I’m not going to go. I’d end up just saying something
wrong or uneducated, and you wouldn’t be there to correct me, so how much fun would
that be?” She hadn’t meant to sound quite so sarcastic, but she was comfortable with the
result. She was also happy that Reuven caught it; she wouldn’t have liked it if his good
nature made him oblivious.
“All right, Rachel, I’m sorry. I’m a little sensitive about the toe; I told you that in
confidence, and I sort of felt like you were using it against me, trying to give me a little
dig about all the ways in which I can’t be a productive member of society, despite my not
working in the Temple anymore. But you know what, that’s me, that’s my issue, so I’ll
just try to leave it out of our conversations from now on.”
Rachel didn’t want that, either. She wasn’t used to having so much trouble
getting clear of personal issues in a relationship. She always thought of herself as a good
communicator, and as someone who worked hard to keep her personal crazinesses to
herself. But with Reuven, one or the other of them always seemed to be stepping on the
other one’s toes. A cell phone was not the way she wanted to try to work that out,
though, so she switched the topic.
“No, the truth is, I’m not interested in going. But could you do me this
favor—make sure that if they find anything, that they tell reporters they were acting on a
tip from Rachel Tucker; I’ll have to worry about Zeke later, but if I can get my name on a
scoop, ABC’s happiness will be worth losing Zeke as a source. Also, if they’re ever
going to go to a family, offer my help in breaking the news. I’ve seen it done a lot of
times, I might be able to give some advice, or even be there, if anybody wants that.”
“Ok, great. Listen, I had one other thing for you. I was thinking about your
situation, and the thing that I think you most don’t understand is the connection that some
people feel to God, and that’s probably the most fundamental thing you need to work on
to become a haverah. So there’s this prayer group that I thought you would particularly
enjoy…”
Rachel didn’t mean to groan out loud, but she did. “A prayer group? You mean,
like a synagogue, where I have to sit behind a curtain and watch? Reuven, don’t you
think I’ve been to synagogue before? Can’t this wait? Couldn’t I do that, like, just
before I finish the program?” Rachel assumed there were activities that were lower on
her preference list, but she couldn’t think of any right then.
“Trust me. This is not your average prayer group; I really think you’ll enjoy it,
but I also think it’s an important step on your road. It’s 9 o’clock every morning, on the
third floor of Shaare Tsedek hospital. When you get there, just ask somebody and they’ll
tell you where to go. OK?”
Not that she had much choice. “Ok.”
Reuven tried to lighten the spirit, saying “And afterwards you can call and yell at
me about sending you to such a boring place. Or thank me for changing your life.”
Rachel smiled politely, which of course he couldn’t see, thanked him for his interest, and
hung up just as she got to Liat’s building.
CHAPTE 14
As soon as she opened the door to Liat’s apartment, she could tell she had been on
the right track. She hadn’t been back to Liat’s since the night of the murder—in her
mind, there was no doubt now that it was murder—but she vividly remembered that it
had been a perfectly neat apartment. She had also called Liat’s mother before going over,
just to be sure she didn’t intrude on anything. Liat’s mother said that no, she wouldn’t be
there, she had just been there a few days ago, and she was forcing herself not to go more
than once a week, to keep from wallowing too much in her sorrow at Liat’s death
Someone had been there since then and had dumped the place. Every stitch of
clothing that Liat owned was strewn all over the place, all the pictures were off the walls,
the furniture moved aside. Someone had been looking for something. The diary? But
why now? Rachel looked around the apartment for a bit, but she knew she wouldn’t find
anything—whoever had been here before her had done a very thorough job. She went
home to Adin, frustrated that she hadn’t found the missing girl (nor had the police), she
hadn’t found the diary, and she had to go to prayers in the morning.
Luckily, Adin sensed that his mother needed an easy night, and he was a delight
to play with. He had no gas, he smiled often, and he slept well. Rachel woke the next
morning, refreshed, but still nervous about the prayer service she had to go to when the
babysitter got there. Dear God, she found herself saying, make this as quick and as
painless as possible. There, the group had gotten her more into prayer already.
She got to Shaare Tsedek at 8:45—she certainly didn’t want the attention of
walking in late to a meeting. The security guard at the front desk told her to go to the
third floor and make a left off the elevator. Actually, though, she had decided to start
taking stairs, especially if it was only up to three, with the result that when she went in
the doors at the third floor, she didn’t know which way to turn.
She stopped a vivacious young woman, maybe 23, with luxurious black hair cut
to about two inches below her shoulders, and a remarkable figure that even very modest
clothing couldn’t entirely hide. Hesitantly, she asked if she knew where there was “some
kind of a prayer group” on the floor. Flashing beautiful white teeth set in a mouth
blessed with sensuous lips, the woman introduced herself as Esther Kevudah, and said
she was going there herself.
“This is your first time at one of these?”
“How did you know?”
“Well, I haven’t seen you around here before. But also, most people call these
New Tefillah, since we take traditional prayers and re-do them in what a lot of people
find a more inspiring way. You seemed not to know that, so I just figured.”
As she was talking, Rachel realized that American audiences needed to hear
Esther Kevudah, and managed to work her camera into a comfortable filming position.
She was about to ask a question, but Esther was a step ahead of her.
“You know, we have a few minutes, why don’t I give you a run-through of what’s
going to happen?”
“That would be great, I’d appreciate it.”
“Ok. Pardon this question, but it’s just so I can know how much background to
give. What’s your experience with organized religion?”
“Well, I grew up in a somewhat observant Conservative home, and became more
Orthodox when I met my husband. But synagogue, well, that was always a High
Holidays, Passover, sometimes Shabbat kind of thing. Why?”
“Well, we do things a lot differently, but if you don’t have so much experience
with that, I don’t need to explain all of the changes. First thing is, we’re not a synagogue,
we’re a preparatory group. After spending a half hour here, some of the people go into
the hospital’s synagogue and have a more traditional service. We’re about finding the
way to really experience prayer as talking with God, that we’re in touch with Him, with
what we want to say to Him, with what we want to ask Him. Do you understand?”
“The words, sure, but I don’t really know what you mean.”
“Ok, well, it’s like this. Prayer’s supposed to about talking to God, asking Him
for help with your needs. Too often, we found,..”
“Esther, I’m sorry for interrupting, but who’s we?”
She blushed, a rosy color that only made her skin all that much more beautiful.
“Well, actually, I was one of the main instigators of the group. Me and a couple of
friends were schmoozing one day, and realized that we didn’t enjoy traditional
synagogues—they were rushed, they had too many words, and too little opportunity for
self-expression. So we tried to make something that wouldn’t get anyone upset, but
would have more flexibility, more of the flavor of actual communication with God. You
know what, though, I need to get ready, so can we talk more afterwards?” And she
turned and went into the room.
Rachel had to admit she was intrigued. She didn’t think that anyone was going to
get her to really feel connected to God—it had been way too long since she had stood
arm in arm at a candlelight vigil, singing 60’s songs about love and peace for her to think
she’d recapture some sense of that connection to a greater whole—but the effort itself
struck her as worth witnessing. After all, how bad could a half hour be?
In fact, it was better than she possibly could have imagined. They started off with
a breathing exercise that Rachel had done in various yoga, T’ai Ch’I, and whatever
classes, sitting quietly and focusing only on the breath. When they opened their eyes,
Esther had them open up to a short Psalm about the beauty of brothers living together in
peace, a sentiment Israelis had shared for a long time before achieving it.
The first reading was fine, the second was better, and by the third time—in a
row!—that Esther had them read the Psalm, Rachel felt as if she knew it well enough to
put her own meanings into it. She wasn’t quoting anymore, she was talking, with the
Psalm as the pretext. Too soon, Esther asked for those who wanted to speak, and a list
was formed. People told of current challenges, past failures, and hopes for future
successes. Almost without realizing it, Rachel found her thoughts turning to her life, to
Lije, to Adin, to Reuven (to Reuven? Rachel was so embarrassed she almost blushed), to
getting her career back up and running.
And then they sang a song, but it wasn’t like communal singing; the person who
taught the song had just recovered from brain surgery, and he claimed—Rachel got it on
video, because she knew it sounded hokey unless you saw and heard this guy saying it,
because he put you into his shoes so well that you actually felt as if you were about to go
under the knife for a surgery that could easily leave you blind or worse —that he had
heard this song in his head, over and over again, the whole time that he was under the
anesthesia.
Too quickly, it was over. Shocked at how much it had moved her, Rachel wanted
to thank Esther, who had run the whole half hour gently but purposefully, without
allowing any segment to get too long, too clinical, or too sentimental. Apparently a lot of
people felt that way, as there was a long line of people waiting to talk to her. Rachel
decided instead to follow the crowd to the synagogue, to see if she could maintain the
feelings this group had tapped into. As she turned to walk out, Esther called to her.
“Rachel, wait up a moment!”
Rachel turned, a little self-conscious at Esther’s excusing herself from all those
people to come talk to her.
“How’d we do?”
“Surprisingly well—I was actually thinking of going to the synagogue for
prayers.”
“Oh, great. As soon as I finish with these people, I’m going there, too. Maybe
we’ll get brunch after?”
She entered the synagogue expecting to once again feel buoyed by the experience,
but it was harder. The service was more traditional, meaning that it used a prayerbook
that was familiar but opaque. As she struggled with words her everyday Hebrew could
not interpret, she felt herself slipping back into her usual prayer mode, bored resentment
and impatient waiting for it to end. Just then, she caught sight of Esther, whose eyes
were closed, and who seemed just as intent on what was going on in here as she had
upstairs.
Well, if she can do it, so can I, Rachel thought, a little too grimly for what was
supposed to be a spiritual endeavor. She took a deep breath, and another, and another.
Finally, she just closed her eyes, and shut out the world around her. She tried to put
herself back into the room upstairs, to turn time back to the moment that Esther had said,
“All right, that will be all for today; remember there is a synagogue service downstairs
for those who want, and that we meet here every day at 9:00.”
And then she just started talking. To God. Later, she couldn’t remember all of it,
just that there had been more of it than she had realized. She remembered tears and
hopes, and a sense of presence. Most of all, she remembered that her thoughts kept
circling back to Liat and Lije, to being able to put them both to rest, being able to feel
like she had avenged the one and found out what had happened to the other. She talked
until she ran down, which must have been a long time, because when she opened her eyes
again, the room had emptied, and Esther was waiting for her with a smile on her face.
“Wow, we really got to you, didn’t we?”
Rachel smiled sheepishly. “I have a lot on my mind, I guess.”
“I know, Reuven actually called me about you last night. Not that he was
meddling, he was just nervous about you hating the experience, and wanted to make sure
that I provided an extra-special service today. Which did wonders for my nerves, since
he happened to mention your name, and, not to make you feel old, but I grew up
watching you on TV!”
Which, of course, did make her feel old. Brunch would have to be a salad and
nothing more. And she’d head straight from there to the gym; the time had come. And
then a facial, and a manicure/pedicure, and… but Esther was still talking.
“My family only moved here a few years ago, so I got the best of both worlds, an
upbringing in American, but a life in the Holy Land! Now if only I could find a husband
with the same qualifications…”
As Esther spoke, a girlish quality that had not been there before came out. In the
room, she had been the leader, the consummate professional, clearly qualified and on top
of what was going on. Now, as they walked to a café, ordered brunch, and talked, she
spoke with the unguarded enthusiasm of those who have not yet experienced real
disappointment, or who could assume that it was just a temporary break in the path to a
very specific future. In Esther’s case, that future was marriage, homemaking, kids, lots
of them.
Rachel desperately wanted to question those choices—this was a woman who
could easily succeed in any number of careers, not least of which would be the rabbinate,
or whatever it was called when a woman led services that brought people to a closer
connection to God—but she know it wasn’t her place. Not at this meal, anyway. She’d
make sure to keep in touch with this clearly talented young woman, to do her part in
making sure that she didn’t confine herself to the role of mother and housewife. The
country and world needed her too much. Next Wednesday at 9am for sure.
I t was probably Esther’s youthful exuberance that led her to ask why Reuven had
felt that she would need to come to a service like that one. Rachel ordinarily would have
answered minimally, letting her journalists’ instincts edit what she would and would not
say. But she liked Esther, and it had been so long since she had had a nice girl-to-girl
chat, that she found herself telling her the whole story, of Liat, her death, the man with
the stringy red hair, her meeting Reuven, and her failed attempt at being a blood avenger.
She did edit herself somewhat, though, mindful of what Reuven had told her
about the law’s distaste for talebearing. She didn’t mention Harvey’s name, or her
suspicions about Liat’s husband. Esther got pretty much all the rest, though. Afterwards,
there was a silence that extended for so long, Rachel was worried that she had offended
Esther in some other way.
“Esther? Are you ok?”
Esther looked startled at having her name called. When she looked at Rachel, her
eyes glistened with moisture. “I’m sorry, but your story of sudden respiratory distress
reminded me of Liat Moshel, a dear woman who I miss terribly.”
CHAPTER 15
Rachel’s intake of breath was painfully sharp. “You knew Liat? That’s the friend
I’ve been talking about!”
Esther nodded sadly. “I suspected. What a terrible, terrible loss. I had been sad
enough when I thought she just died, but now that you’ve told me this…I’m just
stunned.”
Rachel, too. “But, how did you know Liat?” Did Reuven know about this? Was
he manipulating her into finding information about Liat? Why wouldn’t he just tell her?
“She used to come to this group. Before we met in Shaare Tsedek, we used to
meet in the old Yeshurun synagogue, on the other side of the center of town. She would
come with her husband, who’s some muckety muck in the priesthood. When we moved
here, she came a few more times—he couldn’t come anymore, although I gave them the
names and times of a few more services like this one—and she eventually stopped
coming. Come to think of it, though, a really weird thing happened just a few weeks
before she died.”
Rachel’s head was spinning so fast, she almost couldn’t keep up with Esther’s
story. Why hadn’t Liat told her about these groups? What did Reuven know, and when
did he know it? With a distinct effort, she dragged herself back to the present and Esther.
“One day, like two months after the last time I had seen her, she showed up again.
I was thrilled to see her, but—as usual—I walked into the room two minutes before we
had to begin, so I had to wait until after the service to talk to her. She told me that she
had gotten divorced, and had spent the last two months wallowing. She had just had
some minor surgery done, she told me, and since she was in the hospital till that morning
anyway, figured she’d drop by and say hello, and thank me for all that I had done for
her.”
“She sounded like she was closing a chapter in her life, being very final, so I
pushed her a little more than I normally would, suggesting that she should come back
again to the regular group. She said no, she didn’t think there was anything that could
help her now, but that at least her story was safe, and she was at peace.”
Rachel remembered that surgery. Liat had found a mole, and her mother had died
of skin cancer, so she had rushed to take care of it. She had spent only one night in the
hospital and had forbidden Rachel to visit her there—Liat was superstitious, and in her
mind pregnant women did not visit the sick in the hospital, for fear of casting an evil eye
on the unborn baby. But when she had come out—Rachel only recognized the
connection now, was indeed when she had first seemed at peace, had first mentioned that
her diary was safe from Pinhas. Safe? Why safe? Why after the surgery?
“Esther, I don’t understand; when Liat died, did you tell anyone about the
conversation?”
Esther seemed both embarrassed and uncomfortable. “You know, I thought about
whether I should, but it just seemed so insubstantial. I mean, what would I have told the
police—I think you should know that this woman who stopped breathing one day, in an
incident you are going to rule was death by natural causes, came to me about 10 weeks
ago and told me that she was at peace and that her story was safe?”
And of course when she said it like that, it was clear that she was right. Yet some
part of Rachel couldn’t resist judging this pretty young woman for not doing what she,
herself, was doing right now, tracking down clues and doing her best to solve the
mysteries of Liat’s death. Ah, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, her superconscious chided her,
not everyone is you nor should they be. Let the lassie alone, and just learn from her the
lessons that you can.
Good advice, Rachel thought. “Esther, did Liat give any indication as to why she
felt that she was safe?”
Esther shook her head. “No. But she didn’t say that she felt safe, she said that
her story was safe. I remember noticing it at the time, because I didn’t know how one
made sure a story was safe.”

Rachel didn’t, either, at least not right away. As they chatted over coffee, though,
with Esther regaling her with some of her funniest blind date stories—apparently Esther
went out a lot, something Rachel would never have done at that age; she had met Lije in
plenty of time to build a happy life, to have a full house of children, that she never felt a
need to seek a husband so actively—Rachel suddenly realized that she didn’t understand
Esther’s earlier story about Liat and Pinhas. She interrupted before she realized what she
was doing.
“Esther, why did you say Pinhas and Liat had stopped coming to your group?”
The look on Esther’s face told her instantly that she had signaled the younger woman,
unmistakably, that her friendly and funny stories were so much fluff compared to the real
issues she was pondering. She tried to make up for it. “Oh, I’m so sorry for interrupting;
it’s not that I wasn’t listening or enjoying your stories, it’s just that I’m a little obsessed
whenever there’s more information about her. Please forgive me?”
Of course, there was no way she could refuse, but something had changed in her
tone of voice, her body language, her entire presentation. Having been twenty-three
herself, Rachel knew that she had unintentionally made Esther feel that her schoolgirl
dating stories branded her as a child, especially compared to the worldly and
sophisticated Rachel Tucker. Rachel still remembered the anchorwoman who had first
treated her that way, remembered her mental decision to take that woman’s job from her
within five years, and her delight at doing it in four. She made a mental note to find a
way to fully repair the relationship, to respect Esther in a way that would wipe away the
previous impression. Right now, though, she had to follow this train of thought. Esther
was answering her question.
“Because we moved to Shaare Tsedek and because Pinhas was-is-- a priest, he
couldn’t risk being in the same rooms or hallways as a corpse.”
“And how long had they been coming before they stopped?”
Esther thought, looking up at the ceiling for inspiration. “Maybe three, four
months. I remember when I heard that they broke up, I thought that maybe they had
come to me as a kind of last gasp effort to save their marriage; lots of couples who’ve
tried therapies of various sorts figure they might as well try God, as a last resort before
divorce.”
That sounded right, but something about all of this was niggling at Rachel’s mind,
and she couldn’t quite get to it. She had to talk to Reuven, she knew that, because if he
was trying to hint her into figuring out something he already knew, she wasn’t playing
that game. He’d tell her or else. But first, she had to mollify Esther, and something
about the pride that had crept into her voice as she mentioned people coming to her to
save their marriages told her just how she could do it.
“Esther, I don’t know how much Reuven told you about my situation, but I was
wondering, do you sponsor haverah candidates?”
She knew instantly that she had scored. The smile that came back to the woman’s
face—so talented, but so young and sensitive, mixing determination to perfect the world
with the first hints of a realization that she might not be up to the task all alone—told her
that she had wiped away the feelings of irrelevance that her thoughtless question had put
into Esther’s mind.
“Well, I do, sometimes, but I thought that you and Reuven were…”
Rachel took a deep breath, because she really wasn’t so used to sharing
confidences with people, especially not those nine or ten years younger than her. But,
what the hell. “I know. But you know what? And I don’t want to say that anyone has
behaved improperly or anything, but I just think that between me and Reuven, there’s a
little too much chemistry for it to be quite…healthy.”
“Oh.” Esther thought for a few seconds. “You mean, like you’d like to go out
with him?”
“I don’t know whether I’d like to, and I don’t know whether he’d like to, but it’s
just not so comfortable because I feel like one or both of us would like to.” And then it hit
her; Esther had assumed she was unmarried, despite her badge of motherhood. “But what
makes you think I’m not married?”
Esther blushed. “Reuven told me that you weren’t, I don’t remember in what
context.” Which was a polite way of saying that he had mentioned some kind of interest
in her. “Why don’t you just ask him out? I bet he’d say yes, and that’s what I did when
we went out.”
Oh, great, Rachel, she thought to herself, tell this kid that you’re interested in the
guy that she’s maybe still interested in. She was about to answer, when she caught
herself. Find out what you can before you put your foot down your throat again. “And
what happened?”
Luckily, Esther’s devil may care attitude, the girlish side of her, had returned.
“Oh, we went out a few times and it was nice and all, I mean look at him, and talk to him,
and you know that you’d have to be crazy not to love him, but you know, he’s at least
thirty-six—not that there’s anything wrong with that-- and we just weren’t interested in
the same things. He was focused on building a family and a home now—I mean, he
doesn’t want to be marrying his kids off as a doddering old man-- and, well, I want all of
that, but I’m still looking for a little adventure before I get tied down. But somebody like
you might be perfect for Reuven. If you want, I could suggest it to him so he wouldn’t
know it was coming from you.”
All right, enough was enough; it was already 11am, she had errands to run, a
death to investigate, she wasn’t going to start on Lije, her sob story, and why she couldn’t
date anyone, let alone Reuven. She wanted to check in with Reuven and she wanted to
wander around Shaare Tsedek—maybe Liat’s ghost would tell her where to go next. So
she just pushed Esther’s question off, not right now, she wasn’t dating right now,
innocuous enough not to arouse suspicions, and brought the meal to a graceful close. She
took Esther’s number and promised she’d be in touch; surprising herself, she realized she
actually meant it.
When she and Esther had said good-bye, Rachel reached into her handbag for her
cell phone, which, of course, wasn’t there. Thinking back, she realized that it was
gracing her kitchen counter, recharging. She went to the Medical Records office, because
she had seen a pay phone just outside. Picking up the phone she dialed Reuven, a
number she now firmly knew by heart.

“Hi, it’s me!” she said when he picked up the phone.
“Hi, you. So, do you hate me? Do I owe you a big dinner to make up for having
sent you to the most boring prayer service ever?”
“Actually, no. I had a very nice time and learned a lot—“
“Too bad, I was hoping I’d have to buy you a nice fancy dinner.”
Rachel had been thinking that, too, that a dinner with Reuven would be
really—well, pleasant was as far as she’d let herself go—but she knew they’d have to talk
that out face to face, so she just went on as if she hadn’t heard
“and I especially liked Esther. I asked her if she would sponsor my haverah
training.”
“There you go! I was hoping you two would hit it off; that’s why I sent you
there.”
“Are you sure that’s all? Cuz I have to tell you, I was feeling a little manipulated
when Esther told me that Pinhas and Liat used to come to Esther’s group.”
“They did? I swear, bli neder, I didn’t know that! Wait, how could they, it’s in a
hospital?”
“It only switched there a few months ago, which is when they stopped coming.
You mean you weren’t steering me here, like it would help me pick up the trail of what
happened to Liat?”
“No, not at all, what made you think that?”
“I don’t know, it just all felt a little too neat, you send me to a prayer group and it
turns out Liat went there, stopping only a few months before she died.”
“You’re right, that is freaky, but I give you my word it wasn’t me.” There was a
silence after that, but not one that Rachel felt any need to interrupt; they just didn’t have
anything to say to each other right then, but she assumed they would in a moment, and
until then she was just happy to wait with him on the phone. As her money ran down,
though, she was saying goodbye, when Reuven suddenly said “Oh, I almost forgot to tell
you…” and the line went dead as Rachel frantically tried to find another phone card to
put in to the phone.
Rachel had neither a phone card nor the time to get one and call Reuven back,
because she had just remembered why Liat and Shaarei Tsedek were linked in her mind:
it was here that she had first met her, seven months ago! Lije had disappeared two weeks
before, and Rachel was going out of her mind just sitting in the apartment waiting for
news. She had taken a leave from the network, and was about to tear her hair out, when
she remembered something her father had told her. If you want to feel better, he said,
help those who are even less fortunate than you. You’ll have done a good deed, and will
appreciate all the good in your life all that much more.
So she had found a local society for visiting the sick, a traditional Jewish form of
kindness that had been big back home in America, and Liat had been one of her first
visits. When Rachel walked in the room, she instantly recognized the attractive brunette
who lived nearby; in the days just before this one, they had bumped into each other
several times on the street, with Liat always initiating a friendly, if superficial,
conversation. Perhaps because of that connection, her nervousness about visiting hospital
patients, and the stress of Lije’s disappearance, Rachel ended up telling Liat
everything—about being pregnant, Lije, her not knowing what she should be doing now.
Liat had just listened, but Rachel could feel how deeply her story had moved the
Israeli woman. When she left, Liat made Rachel swear several times that she’d call
again.
And that’s how it had begun, she supposed. She hadn’t thought, even after Liat
died, to look back to the beginning of their friendship because by the time of Liat’s death,
it had become so much more than just a kindness from one to the other. Liat was the only
person who seemed to imagine herself in Rachel’s position, whose questions and ideas
for how to spend time consistently matched what Rachel herself was thinking.
There were some chairs outside the Medical Records office, which made sense
considering the lines that Rachel was used to encountering at any administrative office in
Israel. She sat down in one to think about Liat. Liat was in Shaarei Tsedek six and a half
months ago—for what? Rachel didn’t remember. Liat was in Shaarei Tsedek two
months ago to remove a mole but also for a last try at Esther’s prayer service before she
broke up with her husband. Why did she feel like there was something else here?
C’mon, Liat, what is it about this place?
She would never say—ever—that Liat had answered her. But she did, at that
moment, have a flashback to her conversations with Liat soon before she died, where she
rambled on about her story being safe. Liat, at that point, had started taking various
drugs, so she wasn’t as coherent or sharp as she had been just a few months earlier.
Rachel could hear the sleepy, disjointed voice, saying “Well, at least I know the diary is
safe, my story is safe. Rachel, promise me you’ll take care of my story? Please?”
“Liat, what do you mean, safe? Safe from whom? Liat, are you ok?” And, like so
many other nights, she had taken Adin in his bassinet, and gone over to Liat’s, to sit up
with her and make sure she didn’t die of the doses she was taking of whatever she was
taking.
Safe, safe, safe. As she ran the word over in her mind, Rachel was just trying to
understand her own mind, which had decided to connect the first time she had met Liat to
her obsession with safety. Safety from what?
Or whom. And then she had it, or thought she did. But where would Liat put it?
Not in a room, because those get cleaned thoroughly after each patient leaves. In a
common room—the library maybe?—but how would she guarantee that someone
wouldn’t just walk off without it. Was there a safe in the hospital, a central one for
patients who didn’t want to leave stuff in their rooms? But could other people leave stuff
there?
And then she had it. Running now, she found the way to the visitors’ coat check
room, and asked whether they also took items for long term storage. Not generally, they
told her, only for returning patients who had to come back repeatedly for follow-up
checkups; they could just leave items in the back of the coat check, and pick them up
whenever they came in. But, of course, they couldn’t let Rachel in there, because she
wasn’t a returning patient.

Rachel almost smiled at their thinking they could keep her out of a room she felt
the need to get into, especially a coat check. She had gotten scoops at CIA headquarters
in Langley, did they honestly think their coat check was going to keep her out? Within
fifteen minutes of watching the coat check operation, she had a Plan A and B. Plan A
depended on both attendants getting too caught up in something to notice her going in,
and it wasn’t long in coming. One went to the bathroom, and the other saw a friend down
the hall, with whom she got into a loud and excited conversation.
Rachel waited until her back was turned, and slipped into the coat check room.
Through the racks of hangers, there was a door at the back, which led into a small room
lined with shelves and personal possessions. And there, on one of the shelves, was a little
red diary. Rachel opened it, just to check that it was Liat’s; she recognized the
handwriting right away. She also was happy to see that there was another door to the
room, so she wouldn’t have to risk facing the coat check women on her way out.
Slipping the diary in her handbag, she left the room and walked confidently away,
knowing that exuding confidence in her right to be doing what she was doing would
almost always be enough to spare her the scrutiny of those around her.
CHAPTER 16
She wanted to go somewhere and read the diary, but she knew she had to call
Reuven back. That was it, she’d go to the coffee shop, get a biscotti and a coffee, and
read the diary. Her day was taking shape already—she glanced at her watch, only four
hours till she had to be home for the baby, so she’d better hurry.
They already knew her at the Temple Grounds; as soon as she walked in, the
young woman behind the counter said, “Oh, hi, I’ll go get Reuven,” before she even got a
chance to order her coffee. Reuven came out, looking worried.
“Are you ok? We got cut off, and then you didn’t call back, I wasn’t sure what
was going on.”
Rachel was touched; it had been too long since a man had cared about whether
she was ok. “That’s sweet, Reuven, and I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, but I had no
change, and I was working on an idea…and then I wanted to share my news with you in
person, so here I am.” Rachel knew that most people didn’t get as caught up in what they
were doing as she did, but she had long ago given up on changing herself. She wished
she had called just to say that she couldn’t talk, and she hoped Reuven wouldn’t get
insulted or annoyed, but it was something people who knew her just had to live with.
Reuven didn’t disappoint her. “No, it’s fine, it’s just that I had some exciting
news that I wanted to share.”
“Me, too! But you go first.”
“What kind of gentleman would I be if I went first? More important, what kind of
coffeeshop owner would I be if I didn’t ask you what you were having?”
They took Rachel’s coffee and biscotti to a table, although Reuven insisted on
bringing over some mini- chocolate chip muffins as well, which were heavenly,
unfortunately; she considered eating only two a real triumph. Dinner would have to be
low-carb, low-cal, low everything. She told him about the diary, which he seemed almost
as excited about as she was. At the same time, a shadow passed through his face as she
told him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, it’s just that I wonder why Pinhas didn’t get to it.”
“What do you mean, it was in a hospital, like I told you!”
“Have you forgotten Harvey?”
Rachel was surprised by the question; she had forgotten Harvey. Now that
Reuven mentioned it, she realized that it was weird that the diary was still there. “Maybe
Liat never mentioned it to Pinhas?”
“Then why was she so obsessed with keeping it safe?”
“Maybe she didn’t really believe that he’d look for the diary, and that even if he
did, he couldn’t just send Harvey to check the whole building, and since he didn’t know
about the coat check, he couldn’t direct Harvey there? Whatever, I’ve got the diary and
Pinhas doesn’t, so let’s just drop it.”
She had said the last louder than she anticipated, and a look of anxiety, almost
fear, settled into Reuven’s face. “Shhhh! Don’t talk about Pinhas so loud—you never
know who’s listening!”
It was weird, how every so often Reuven would do something that was
completely out of the character of him that she’d built up in her head. Like now. The
Reuven she thought she knew, and Rachel Tucker had made a very good living based a
great deal on her ability to sense people’s characters and turn that into compelling news
stories, was fundamentally fearless. Yet Pinhas Moshel worried him greatly. Why?
Now that Reuven had mentioned it, she was also bothered that Pinhas hadn’t
gotten to the diary. Why wouldn’t he have had Harvey search the hospital? Her mental
file of questions to come back to was beginning to fill up uncomfortably. With an effort,
she dragged herself back to Reuven, who was telling her some story as a lead-in to his
news.
“…and that’s how they found her!”
“I’m sorry, Reuven, my mind wandered. Who did they find?”
“The body that Zeke told you about. It was indeed that of Shlomit Hami, the
Yemenite girl. Her family’s so excited!”
The look on Rachel’s face said it all; what family would be excited to find out that
their missing daughter was in fact dead? Reuven realized his mistake and tried again.
“Sorry, maybe relieved is a better word, or, or, well…what’s the word for having
something you have dreaded for months actually turn out to be true, which is terrible, but
at least means that you won’t have to dread it anymore? I guess I should have said that
they have the comfort of knowing, which means they can grieve. And, they can watch
the eglah arufah ceremony, which most families find enormously helpful.”
Rachel was beginning to be annoyed by how much Reuven assumed she knew
(and, truth to tell, annoyed at herself by how much she didn’t know). He was getting
better at picking up on her shifts in mood, though, so he just started explaining what
would happen, and why. Then, he sprang the real surprise on her “and, as your current
sponsor, I think you should come. I’ve been chosen to be one of the representative
priests, so we can go together.”
“I don’t understand. Why would it be valuable for me to see a bunch of
politicians gather together to declare that they had nothing to do with the death of this
poor woman and then break a calf’s neck? And why would the family care?”
Reuven smiled, like he knew his comeback would close the door on the
conversation. He stood up, and as he walked away, said over his shoulder, “That’s why I
want you to come. It’s next Sunday; I can pick you up at nine, so mark your calendar.”
The man certainly has the infuriating thing down pat, Rachel fumed to herself.
She did not like being told what she had to do, she certainly could do without a know-it-
all, and she most emphatically hated being left in the dark as to what she was going to
spend her next day doing. To get him back, she left without drinking her coffee.
At home, after Adin went to bed, she collapsed on the couch for twenty minutes.
She desperately wanted to just go to sleep, but she had a real fear, which she knew to be
irrational, that unless she read Liat’s diary tonight, something dreadful would happen.
The last time she had had that feeling, she had nightmares the whole night.
Most of the diary, truth be told, was pretty boring. Liat’s marriage to Pinhas had
never been good, but fifteen years ago, while interning, Rachel had been stuck on the
celebrity-watch circuit for too long, as she made her way to doing real news, to be
surprised by much of what she saw. After dozing off five times while trying to read it
cover to cover, she flipped to the end and started scanning backwards.
Her first time through, she was just sort of skimming the diary, when she saw her
name. Checking the date, she saw it was March 7, a week after Lije disappeared. They
had met in a fruit store, according to Liat’s diary, which also claimed—Rachel didn’t
recall this—that they had discussed the difficulty of finding avocadoes of just the right
consistency to satisfy their spouses. Rachel smiled, always surprised at how impressed
some people are by meeting a celebrity. As she continued reading from there, though,
seeing Liat’s comments about how well the friendship was working out, Rachel had the
distinct feeling that Liat was doing this with a specific goal in mind.
Flipping back to before the fruitstore encounter, Rachel saw her name on each of
the preceding seven days as well. She was about to pick one of the passages and read it
in depth, when she heard the sound. She couldn’t say what it was exactly, but the image
that flashed in her mind was that of a movie, a thriller where the victim inside the house
hears a noise and ignores it, when it was the minimal sound the murderer had to make to
get into the house. She didn’t want to be melodramatic, but she also didn’t want to die
because she was too stupid to check out a noise. She looked at her clock—realizing,
somewhat sheepishly, that she wanted to be able to tell the police the exact time later.
11:30.
But what to do? In the movies, you always pick up a blunt object, but Rachel had
never understood that—was she going to overpower whoever had broken into her
apartment (if anybody had)? Her next thought was to run to Adin’s room, but who would
want to kidnap the kid? Calling out also wasn’t an option, because that just told the guy
she had heard him (or her; no need to be sexist about the phantom intruder).
So instead Rachel did all three. She put the diary under her bed, picked up her
bedside lamp with the marble base, called out loudly, and ran down the hall to Adin’s
room. She knew the odds against his being here for Adin, and they didn’t matter, she had
to know her baby was safe.
He apparently knew what she would do, because as she ran to Adin’s crib, he was
right behind her, with an arm around her neck, and a long knife pressed into her jugular.
At least she assumed that he knew enough to put the knife at her jugular, although even if
he didn’t, a slice through any part of her neck would be pretty bad.
It was cliché, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “What do you want?”
(At least she avoided saying please don’t hurt my baby, the single thought that kept
running through her head).
“I’m just supposed to give you a message. If you stay calm and quiet, we can do
this quickly and nobody has to suffer at all.” The voice, coming through a handkerchief,
was familiar, but not in a way that Rachel could place. “The rightful owner of that book
you’ve got wants it back. He’s very pleased that you figured out where it was, and would
be happy to compensate you for returning it to him.”
Pinhas! She might have known. But why wasn’t this guy just asking for the diary
itself? She instinctively tried to turn towards the person she was talking to, but his grip
tightened and the knife moved a fraction of an inch deeper into her neck.
“Uh, uh, uh. Calm, lady, I really don’t want this to end in blood.”
“It’s all right, I wasn’t trying to fight you, I’m just not used to talking to someone
I can’t see.”
“I could let you see me, but then I’d have to kill you, and I’ve sworn off that
stuff.”
“So how do I get this book back to its owner? Do I give it to you?
“Nope, I’m not a lost and found, or a delivery boy. The truth is, I’m not even a
messenger boy anymore, but this is just a quick favor for an old friend. You take the
book tomorrow and you put it back where you found it; then you bring a receipt to the
David’s Citadel Hotel and leave it at the front desk under your name. My old friend’ll
pick it up when he decides. And, lady, please don’t mess around with this; nobody wants
to see anybody else get hurt, you get what I’m saying?”
Anybody else? How many had there been? Whatever it was, Rachel wasn’t
going to go up directly against Pinhas Moshel, or against this man in her apartment. But
how to get him out? “Ok, I’ll do it. Just don’t hurt me or my baby.” Desperate mother
wasn’t her best role, but she didn’t think that he was going to be critiquing her acting.
When she woke up later, the bump on the back of her head reminded her of how
the intruder had chosen to make his clean getaway. Awareness washed over her slowly,
with Reuven’s face one of her first sights, as he wiped her face with a wet washcloth,
which, in fact, felt refreshing. She was in her bed. Elsewhere in the room, she could
sense conversations and people, but turning towards them felt like it would hurt. A lot.
“Reuven? What are you doing here?”
“I heard the call go out on the radio, recognized your address, and came right
over.”
“The radio?”
“I have a police radio in the shop, my car, my house. When I’m close to an
emergency, I head over to see what I can do to help.”
“Well, I’m glad I woke up to see you…I mean, a friendly face.”
“Me, too. But Rachel, what happened?”
Hearing their conversation, a police officer and doctor came over to them.
Reuven introduced them. “Rachel, this is Officer Regel; he was the first to respond to the
call, and he got the doctor over here to look after you.” She nodded her head to them,
and then winced at her mistake.
“Ms. Tucker, I’m relieved to say that he didn’t hit you that hard. You’ll have a
bruise on your head, and you should take it easy for the next few days, but I don’t think
there’s any serious injury. If your headache is still there in 48 hours, call me, but other
than that, I think you’ll be fine.”
She took his card, and then remembered her mother’s stories about concussions
turning into comas. “Can I go to sleep now? Or do I have to wake up every hour or
something?”
“It’s sort of a judgment call. I think you’re fine, and I’ve seen lots of
concussions. But certainly the safest thing would be to have someone here to wake you
every hour.”
The police officer interrupted. “Actually, we’re going to post someone here for
the rest of the night anyway, as a precautionary measure, in case the guy comes back. He
doesn’t seem to have gotten anything, so we think that he was interrupted in the middle
and ran away. Those guys are the ones who are most likely to come back. I could have
him knock on the door every hour.”
That wasn’t Rachel’s idea of a good time. Luckily, Reuven popped in. “Well, if
there’s going to be another man here, anyway, I’d be glad to stay and wake you up more
gently than that.”
Rachel smiled her thanks, and almost went back to sleep. But Officer Regel
wasn’t done. “I’m sorry to bother you Ms. Tucker, but the sooner I get the information
you have, the more likely we’ll catch your intruder and be able to restore your peace of
mind.”
Rachel told him the story, but found herself leaving out the diary and the message.
She realized, as she was doing it, that if she told him about it, he’d take it in for evidence
or something, and she wasn’t willing to risk her baby just to catch Pinhas Moshel.
When the two had left the room, Reuven said, as he moved the washcloth slowly
and gently around her face, “What did you leave out?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, you edited the story. That wasn’t just some intruder; he wanted
something. What?”
“The diary.”
“Really? What did he say?”
So Rachel told him the full story, pleased that he knew her well enough to spot
her having left out part of the story, relieved to share the truth with someone, and hopeful
that he would have some advice about what to do next. The thing that puzzled her most,
as she told the story, was the intruder’s refusal to take the diary with him. She once again
heard his voice in her head, and had that tantalizing feeling that she knew it from
somewhere. The more she focused on it, though, the more it slipped away. Sighing, she
let it go, hoping it would come back when it was ready.
Reuven was clearly upset. “What was in the diary that would make Moshel take
such a chance?”
“What chance did he take? He sent some lackey, and we don’t even know who.”
But as the words left her mouth, she thought of Harvey the Fixer. Was it his voice? She
couldn’t remember.
Reuven was adamant. “There has to be something really important—no, really
damaging—to him if he was willing to risk such a blatant attack. When did he say you
had to put it back?”
“Tomorrow, why?”
“I’m thinking of options. We could stake out the check room at the hospital; we
could photocopy the diary, so that we have it even after we give it back; or we could read
it all tonight.” He was pacing back and forth as he was thinking, which left her without
the washcloth on her face. She tried to pick it up herself, but moving made the ache in
her head, mostly a dull throb, get worse, so she just groaned and put her arms down.
Reuven came back to her side, immediately apologetic. “I’m sorry, here.” And he
patted the cloth around her face, but too energetically.
“No, no, smooth gentle strokes, not patting all around.” She didn’t want to
complain, but he was making it worse, not better. “And I don’t care what you do, but not
reading a whole diary tonight. And I’ll bet he’ll have us, or me, followed, so I don’t
think we’re going to get a chance to photocopy the thing. And he wouldn’t have told me
to put the diary back in the coat room unless he was sure he had some way to get it.”
Reuven thought about what she had said. “You’re right, but we have to do
something. All right, here’s what I think. I’ll read the diary tonight. In the morning, if
I’ve noticed anything, I’ll run it by you and you can just tell me I’m right. If I don’t
notice anything, we’ll try copying it, and go from there.”
Rachel wasn’t going to copy it—if he was willing to invade her apartment,
whatever was in that diary was much more important to him than Adin’s life, and she
wasn’t going to risk getting him angry, at least not until she knew what it was the diary
would tell her. Reuven could read all he wanted, she was just tired and wanted to go to
sleep.
“Wait, what about Adin? I can’t get up with him tonight.”
Reuven paused. “Well, how many times is he going to be up?”
“What time is it?”
“12:30.”
“You mean it’s only been an hour since this started?”
“Yeah, you were lucky. When he bopped you on the head, he let you drop on the
floor. Your downstairs neighbor heard the bang and was furious with you for making
such a racket when he was trying to fall asleep, so he called the police. When they came
to the door, they heard Adin crying, saw the jimmied door, and came in.”
“Wait, so who put Adin back to bed?”

“Actually, he did it himself. The cops weren’t going to deal with a baby, and by
the time I got here, he had fallen back to sleep by himself. I just got everyone to stay
quiet, but he behaved beautifully.”
Rachel thought about it. She had nursed at 8, and he usually only went 5 or 6
hours; but if he had been forced to fall back asleep on his own, who knew? “I think he’ll
need to feed in about two hours, and then again three hours after that.”
“No problem. Do you have formula?”
“No, but I have breast milk in the freezer. Just take out two bottles, and start
defrosting them. When he wakes up, you can heat them up the rest of the way, but be
careful it’s not too hot.” She barely waited to hear him agree before falling into the fog
of sleep that had been becoming ever more insistent as she talked.
CHAPTER 17
When she woke up, bright sunlight was streaming through her window, Reuven
was asleep at the nighttable, with the diary under his face, and Adin was crying. She
instinctively sat up to go feed him, which was a huge mistake. As she fell back on the
pillow, her head quickly brought her up to date on the events of the previous evening.
Still, she felt too much in Reuven’s debt already to ask him to get Adin another time.
Moving more slowly, she sat up, put her feet on the floor—the damn housekeeper
insisted on putting her slippers under the bed; today was not a day she was going to get
on all fours to try to find them—and inched her way off the bed to a standing position.
There, that wasn’t so bad. Now just put one foot in front of the other, and go feed your
baby.
He was frantic by the time she got there. It took her at least a minute to calm him
down, which involved bouncing him lightly in her arms, a move her head was not at all
happy about. Somehow, she managed to down two of the pain relievers the doctor had
left, calm the baby, and get him to nurse quietly so could sit without moving her head
while he ate. This being his morning feeding, he didn’t go back to sleep when he was
done, but nestled in her arms, ready for a little face to face contact time.
Rachel made a few googly faces, but didn’t have the energy for their usual
playtime. Feeling guilty and wanting to take her mind off of it, she stood up and walked
back to her room, carrying the baby as motionlessly as possible, both because it would
keep him calm and help her not move her head.
When she got back to her room, she arranged her pillows she could sort of lean
back, which Adin would tolerate, without fully lying down, which he would not. As she
slowly tried to arrange her body so that he still felt her presence but she didn’t have to be
sitting up, Reuven heard one of his whimpers and woke up. Rubbing his eyes and nose,
he looked at her, bleary-eyed and disoriented.
She started to say good morning, but he held up a hand, walked out of the room
and went into the bathroom down the hall. She heard the toilet, the shower, the sink, and
five minutes after that, he was back in her room, looking refreshed, although still in the
same clothing.
She smiled. “Good morning. I have to admit that I occasionally wondered what
sleeping together might be like. This wasn’t it.”
He smiled back, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Um, Rachel, I read the diary, and I
know exactly what’s in it that’s the problem. And it has to do with you.”
“Me? What about me?”
“You have to read it for yourself, but let’s wait a few minutes. I’m here for you if
you need me, but I also called Esther to come over, in case you need, you know, moral
support, and she should be here soon.”
She looked at her watch, and saw that it was only 7:30; Reuven had called Esther
over at this time of the morning? Now Rachel was getting really nervous, but Reuven
refused to tell her anymore, and refused to give her the diary until Esther got there.
Which, thankfully, she did five minutes later. Reuven gave her the diary, with a
block of three pages marked off, and said that had to go to morning services, but that he’d
be back in about forty five minutes. Esther sat down next to the bed, and asked how she
was feeling. Rachel wasn’t in the mood for small talk and realized, with a twinge, that
these two people, whom she had known for a combined total of about a month, were her
closest friends in this country. She longed to be back in New York, with her mother
close by, her work friends, the people she had grown up with.
Even before she read the diary, she had to call some of them. Who stayed up late
that she knew? Ed for sure; he’d probably still be editing tape at the office til 2, 3 in the
morning. The others? She wasn’t sure. It would have to be Ed. She explained herself to
Esther, who acted as if she understood completely, excused herself from the room, and
told Rachel to call when she wanted her to come back.
“Ed Appleby.” Just hearing him say his name, just feeling some connection back
to what was normal, what didn’t have diaries and mystery men and calf ceremonies,
brought tears to Rachel’s eyes. She had been so busy trying to find out what happened to
Liat, avoiding worrying about Lije and her future, and taking care of Adin, that her
emotional bank was way overdrawn. Ed certainly wasn’t her best friend in the world, but
he’d have to do.
“Oh, Ed, it’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Rachel, is that you? What time is it?”
“7;42 my time, Ed. I just woke up, but I think I’m onto something here, because
someone broke into my apartment last night, warned me to return that diary that I showed
in the footage I sent you last night, and then knocked me out.”
Ed sounded shocked. “Are you ok? Should I come over there? What could be so
important about a diary?”
But Rachel was already not listening, because she realized she knew exactly how
to keep the diary while returning it—she could film each page, and then read it off the
film! She felt like shouting hallelujah, but didn’t want to wake the baby. She quickly
hung up on Ed—in the end, it was a good thing she hadn’t been able to call a close friend,
Ed was used to reporters hanging up on him in mid-conversation—and called Esther in
the room.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”

“Got what?”
“We can film each page of the diary, and then read it later.”
Esther was hesitant. “I don’t know. Reuven seemed to think that you should read
the part he marked off as soon as possible.”
But Rachel was not to be deterred. It took her a few minutes to set up, but then
she just flipped slowly through the diary, panning her camera up close over each page.
She was a genius!
Reuven came home when she was halfway through; she excitedly told him her
idea, but he, too, seemed underimpressed. “Did you read the part I said to?”
Rachel shrugged. “I figured I could get to it later.”
Reuven came over to the table where she was filming, took the camera from her
gently but firmly, and said, “I think you should read it now. It starts here”-- he pointed--
“Liat’s in the middle of telling about a drive that she insisted they go on together to try to
save the marriage.”
We drove up north, where we used to go when we were dating. I

thought remembering other trips might put us in more of a mood to
talk out our feelings. Really, I should say, would put him in more
of a mood to talk out his feelings, since I was always ready to. Of
course I was wrong; he was busy insisting that everything was fine,
that his position in the Bet haMikdash just meant that he had to be
away from home a lot. And that when he got home he was just
tired, and didn’t have the energy for any looong conversations (his
words and inflection, the bastard!).
I was fuming, because all I was trying to do was make sure that we
didn’t grow apart (obviously, I’m already too late), and here he
was pretending that there was nothing wrong in his working 10-12
hour days, in addition to all sorts of errands for his brother priests
after the Mikdash closes for the night, and then having no energy
for me when he gets home. I asked him when he thought we’d
start a family, which you’d think an important priest would care

about, and he had no answer! He’s just focused on himself and his
position; he can always imply that the reason we don’t have kids is
some fertility issue on my part, and I’ll bet that’s what he does
when people ask him about it.
But that’s not the worst part—the marriage will end soon, I can see
that now, so it’s no use being frustrated by him anymore, it’s time
to start moving on. But while we were busy arguing, we had
stopped watching the road, because the highway was deserted, just
after the sign that says Katsrin, 25 KM. There’s a new turnoff
there, built since the Arrival, that takes you on a much shorter path
straight to the Kinneret, but few people know about it, so the road
is really deserted —it can be an hour between cars. There was
nobody around, so we could really focus on the fight, on pressing
just the right button to infuriate the other person.
Well, certainly the last thing I was paying attention to was the
road. As we were arguing, I remember something catching the
edge of my vision, and I turned to look out the window just in time
to see us hit a man head on! It happened so fast that we not only
hit him, we ran right over him and went on another 30 meters
before we could stop.
Of course we jumped out of the car and ran back to see if we could
help him. As soon as we got there, though, it was clear he was
dying; there was blood everywhere, several bones were obviously
broken, but I think there must have been internal injuries as well.
I was so upset, I said the first thing I could think of: “What are you
crazy, stepping out in the road like that?”
Every breath was an effort, but he said: “Car broke down, got tired
of waiting for someone to stop for me. Mistake.” And then he sort
of laughed. “Always wondered how it would end. Not what I
would have asked for myself, but I hope it is a kapparah for all my
sins.” And then his lips started to move, and I knew that he was
saying vidui, his final confession of sins before death, so that his
moment of death would provide absolution for all the sins he
regretted. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just held his
hand—Pinhas, of course, was nowhere to be found so that he
wouldn’t become impurified by contact with the corpse—and
waited for him to finish. Every minute or so, he’d fight for air, and
have to cough up some blood to clear his airways.
Suddenly, he interrupted himself and turned to me. “Listen, my
wife, she needs to know what happened to me. My name is Lije
Zeale, and her name is Rachel Tucker; we live at 24 haPalmach in
Jerusalem, phone number 555-9234. Tell me you’ll get her the

message, please!”
So I promised, never realizing what a hell that would put me in.
The whole thing took maybe four minutes, and then he was gone.
I had never seen a man die, and never want to again, but I tried to
record every detail in my memory. The harsh rasp of his breath,
the way his eyes looked out, as if they could suddenly see hidden
aspects of this world, and, of course, the desperation in those eyes
when he got me to promise to inform his wife.
When I got back to the car, Pinhas’ reaction managed to lower my
impression of him yet further. He asked whether the guy had died
(just like that, none of the delicate talk he puts on when serving in
the Temple). I said yes, and he simply pulled a shovel, a bag, and
a body parts recovery kit—like from after a terrorist attack, but
why did he have them?-- out of the trunk, and said, “Ok, you go
clean up the scene while I dig the hole.”
At first, I didn’t even understand what meant. “What are you
talking about, the police will handle all that stuff.” And then he
flipped out. I knew he had to restrain himself from grabbing me,
because I had just held a dead man, so I would make him tamei,
and of course the holy priest couldn’t become tamei, it would force
him out of his beloved Temple for a day.
So he just walked up to me real close—touching him would have
provided a momentary victory, but that he would take it out on me
a thousandfold—and said, “Listen carefully, Liat, I’ve always
shielded you from parts of my business that you had no need to
know about. But you need to know this—I am a very bad person
to mess with. We are not reporting this to the police, and we are
not letting the world know that Pinhas Moshel had anything to do
with a fatal accident! We are burying the slob right here and right
now, and quickly too!”
I tried to protest that I had promised to contact his wife, but he
wouldn’t hear of it. So then I suggested leaving the body there in
the middle of the road, so that at least it would be found and his
wife could know what had happened, but he was too paranoid
about modern police techniques catching up to us.
Disobeying would be a mistake, I knew. So I put a bag over the
body and picked up as much of the blood and other stuff as I could.
By the time I was done, you couldn’t tell that a corpse had been
there unless you were really looking for it, and who would be
looking for it?
So I buried him there, in the hole that Pinhas dug. I found six large
and odd looking stones, red, blue, and orange, and arranged them
in a circle over the grave, hoping that someone would notice it and
wonder. Pinhas called somebody and had them move the car, I
don’t know where.
Rachel couldn’t read anymore, because the tears were making it impossible to see.
Poor Lije, who she had loved for his dreams of great ideas, great deeds, and changing the
world, ending up dead in a car accident, buried without mourners or eulogies. In her
head, Rachel promised, that won’t be the end of it, Lije, you will do greater deeds in your
death than you were given time for in your life. You and me, buddy, we’ll bring down
Moshel together.
She looked up at Reuven, who had sat down next to her and buried his head in his
hands, and managed to get out the first of too many questions. “How could she—she
pretended to be my friend!—how could she not have told me, found a way to let me
know?”
Reuven sighed. “I don’t know; maybe when we read the rest of the diary more
carefully, we’ll figure it out. But if I had to guess, I’d say that she was afraid of Pinhas. I
know that I’m afraid of him, and I haven’t done anything to bother him since he… since I
lost my toe. I’m glad that you haven’t felt that kind of fear, but it’s more powerful than
you imagine—you get paranoid, you get to thinking that he knows everything, that he
knows where you eat, where you sleep, who you talk to, what you say. It’s not an
excuse, but it can be paralyzing if you let it.”
“I’ll bet she befriended you as part of her rebellion against him, and was trying to
build up the courage to tell you, or maybe only drop a hint. It wasn’t enough, I know, but
I’d go easy on Liat; after all, she did pay for it with her life.”
“Not enough? It’s not even close to enough! She should have… I can’t begin
listing the things she should have done! At least the diary gives me a new reason to want
to get Moshel, since I could care less about whether he killed Liat or not. Can I qualify
as a blood avenger now and kill him myself?”
Reuven thought about it. “I’m not sure; the diary’s clear that Moshel was there,
but it doesn’t ever say who was driving. We should bring it to the police, and let them
sort it out. They can get an opinion from a court about whether you qualify as a goelet,
without tipping off Moshel. But let’s make a copy first—I never know where Moshel has
spies and thieves. Also, then we can go find the body, and give it a proper burial. Get
dressed, and we can get going.”
Rachel was relieved that he didn’t mention that finding Lije would make her
available for a romantic relationship; it would have been weird for him to be the one to
point out that she would be free to remarry as soon as the body was found and id’d.
Mixed with that relief, though, was nervousness about how they’d handle that issue.
Luckily, she didn’t need to think about that yet. Focus on one task at a time, she told
herself, as she headed to the shower.
Fifteen minutes later, she was ready, but felt hollow in a way she didn’t remember
having felt before. Ordinarily, setting a bunch of tasks and moving to get them done
provided a deep sense of satisfaction, of using her time wisely and well. Now, instead,
she kept seeing Lije and his footprints everywhere—in the bedroom they had shared, in
the shower he had always messed up, in the toilet seat he had always left up, in the
breakfast nook where he ate his sugar cereals—just as she had in the first awful days after
he disappeared. Let the mourning begin, she thought.
CHAPTER 18
They left the house and headed to a Kinko’s to photocopy the diary. Rachel had
thought to take a cab, have it wait, and then take it to the police station, but Reuven
insisted that a walk would do them both good. Which turned out to be a mistake, because
they picked up a tail three minutes from the house.
Reuven was the first to notice him, and he started walking faster, urging her to do
the same. Unfortunately for them, the tail wasn’t trying to hide what he was doing; when
they picked up their pace, so did he. Reuven started to run. Rachel tried to keep up with
him, but she had never been a big runner, and the months of pregnancy and recovery had
not improved her stamina, nor had the previous night’s attack. Too soon, she found
herself gasping for air, head throbbing, and knew she just couldn’t run much longer.
Irrationally, her mind brought up the various action movies Lije had forced her to see,
and wondered why none of them ever ran out of breath in the middle of life-threatening
chases.
“I can’t….here, take the diary!”
Reuven hesitated, but said, “All right, if I have the diary, he’ll go after me, and
you should be ok.” He ostentatiously took the diary from Rachel, put it in his backpack,
and took off.

The tail started to run faster after him, but as he reached Rachel, he changed his
mind. He put his arm around Rachel’s waist, in a way that would seem cozy to the casual
observer, but let her know that a wrong move would end very badly.
“Hey!” His voice and face were unfamiliar, but there was no mistaking his type.
He had done this or something like it many times before, and Reuven wasn’t going to
outthink him on this one.
Reuven heard him, and immediately understood his blunder. He turned around.
“It’s a simple thing; you have what I want and I have what you want. Come over
here and we’ll handle this quietly.”
This was one scene that Rachel had never figured out. How was Reuven going to
trust him? How was he going to give the diary back without risking that the guy would
take her with him as insurance? How could the guy trust that Reuven didn’t have a
second notebook in his backpack and would slip him the wrong one? And besides, they
were on the street. It might have been a quiet street, but it was a street nonetheless.
But she needn’t have worried; he was a professional, he knew what to do. As
Reuven got within fifteen steps, the guy said, in a tone that would have sounded like a
friendly greeting to any eavesdroppers, “No need to come closer, I don’t want to bother
you. Why don’t you just throw me the book, and when I see that it’s what I want, I’ll go
home.”
Reuven didn’t trust him, but he realized that he couldn’t make a scene without
risking Rachel’s safety. He answered, keeping his voice casual as well. “Do you have to
go? Maybe we should go to a café and have a drink, and that way we’ll all have what we
want.”
Waist-holder wasn’t going to be deterred, and his voice slipped a shade towards
threatening. “I’m kind of busy today, and really can’t spend a lot of time on this.
There’s not a lot of room here, so why don’t we just do this nicely, and let me be on my
way?”
Reuven hesitated, but then he pulled out the diary, and tossed it to the guy holding
on to Rachel.
Thinking he would be distracted by catching the book, Rachel poised to run, but
he one-handed it without letting go of her, flipped through the pages, and satisfied
himself that he had what he wanted. Without another word, he pushed Rachel towards
Reuven, so hard that she staggered, but managed to keep from falling. Reuven ran
towards her, and helped her steady herself.
Rachel’s near fall had attracted some attention on the street, and a few people
came over to ask if she was ok. By the time she had gotten rid of them and looked up to
see where the robber was, he’d disappeared. Rachel started to go after him, hoping to
catch sight of him again, get a better description for the police. Once again, Reuven had
a different idea. He grabbed her hand, and pulled her in the other direction.
“Come on!”
Rachel pulled back, as shocked by his initiating physical contact as anything else.
“Where are you going? Let’s go to the police!”

She had spoken a little too loudly, and people were turning once again in her
direction. Reuven let go of her hand, and moved in close, dropping his voice so that no
one else would hear what they were saying, and shifting his body language to make it
look like it was a romantic moment. Sure enough, most of the people smiled and turned
away. For the benefit of the few remaining, Reuven leaned in close and whispered in her
ear.
“The police, as I keep trying to convince you, are riddled with Moshel’s spies. If
we go there, we won’t come back. If we get into my car, pretending that we are out for a
drive together, we can go to where the diary said that Lije was buried, and uncover the
body. Once we do that, we’ll have a lot better chance of finding evidence that connects
Moshel to the killing. As soon as Moshel gets the diary, and realizes what we know, you
can bet he’s going to send someone to exhume and move the body, and then we’ll really
have nothing, so why don’t we go? Oh, and by the way, you might want to act like you
like me, so that these nice people don’t lynch me while I’m trying to help you!”
Sure enough, one of the people in the crowd who was still watching, a tall, large
man, easily Reuven’s size, came over and asked Rachel if she was ok, if he could help
her. Rachel, still reeling from the events of the past five minutes, managed to nod, thank
him, and say that yes, she was fine, this was her boyfriend, and they had just been having
an argument, but everything was ok. He didn’t seem convinced, but there was little he
could do about it. As Rachel and Reuven walked off, though, she noticed him following
them for a few blocks, to make sure that she was really fine. To help the charade, she
managed to act animated and happy, at least for as long as he was watching.
As soon as he left, she turned to Reuven, “You and your brilliant ideas! No time
to film the diary, you said. Copy the diary, you said. Keep it safe in case the police steal
it, you said. Go to Kinko’s, you said. Now what have we got? Maybe it’s time to listen
to my idea, and go to the police. You know, every time I’ve been to one of those stupid
action thrillers that Lije liked to watch, I always wondered, why doesn’t he just go for
help? And now I know; it’s because the hero is always some stupid macho idiot like you
and thinks he can do it on his own, and he ends up getting himself—no, no, never
himself, it’s always his friend, right? Is that supposed to be me?—killed. Is that the way
this is supposed to go?”
Reuven clearly wasn’t in the mood. “Oh, get off your high horse. You and your
police! What I haven’t convinced you of yet is that we’re dealing with a powerful, smart,
and well-thought out guy. If we run off to the police, we’ll end up like Lije and Liat, and
it will be our fault, because we’ll have stupidly done just what he wanted. Now, you can
go to the police and get killed, but I’ve got a car, and I’ve got a location for a body, and
I’ve got a grave-marker telling me where the grave is. That’s what I’ve got; what have
you got?”
Rachel swallowed her first answer—a biting response that would have felt good,
but was beside the point-- realized that he was right, and said, “I’ve got a good friend
who’s helping me find what I need to. So let’s just go. Ok?”
Reuven smiled at her, “Knows when to back down. I like that in a woman. Now
if only I could learn to do it myself.”

CHAPTER 19
They walked silently to his car, and drove north, still in silence. Rachel knew
she’d be home late, so she called the babysitter to see what kind of plans she’d have to
arrange. Luckily, the woman could stay late that night (for extra, of course, but money
was the last thing on Rachel’s mind), so most of the ride, Rachel just focused on Lije,
imagining him being hit by a car, again, and again, and again.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t see anything about the car that hit
them until they had been knocked off the road. As she looked up, more startled than
scared at that point, several facts came into her consciousness at once. First, she caught a
glimpse of a blue license plate on a Mercedes-Benz taxicab speeding off. Second, she
saw the edge of a cliff hurtling towards them; they had been driving, she realized, on one
of those twisting roads through the hills of the Shomron, where there wasn’t much room
between the road and the abyss. Third, she saw that Reuven wasn’t reacting at all and his
hands had dropped off the steering wheel.
Luckily, Rachel didn’t think, which was, in fact, out of character for her. Years
ago, she had given up martial arts when she realized that she would always try to think
her way through a situation, and that real fighters simply reacted. Now, though, her mind
focused on the two tasks she had to do first, control the steering wheel and the brake.
Shoving her left leg over Reuven and as far as it would go, she managed to reach the
brake, but only just. As she reached farther and farther, she felt herself squeezing the
brake slowly, as her driving instructors had always told her to do, instead of jamming it,
as instinct would have made her do had she only had the reach.
At the same time, she turned the wheel back toward the road, hoping the car
wouldn’t spin or flip, or whatever. The brake worked, but slowly, so that when they went
over the side of the cliff, she later figured they were probably only going five miles an
hour. Even so, as they went over the side, she screamed, expecting the next thing she felt
to be the drop that would be the last experience she had before death.
Instead of shooting out into an abyss, though, the car slid down about fifteen feet,
and landed on a platform of some sort. Rachel sat there for a few minutes, too relieved to
be alive to think clearly. Finally, she realized that this was one of those hills that didn’t
end in a cliff, but was graduated, with platforms for growing olives or whatever.
By the time she had collected her thoughts, her head had started throbbing,
bringing her back to her current situation, and reminding her that she hadn’t fallen off a
cliff, she’d been pushed. Getting out of the car carefully but quickly, she looked up to
see whether their assailant had stopped to make sure he’d done the job right. Sure
enough, she saw a car with blue license plates—it was a Mercedes Benz stretch taxicab,
light blue with a luggage rack on the top—had stopped and was pulling back towards
where they had gone over.
Rachel looked over at Reuven, who was unconscious but moaning. Good that he
was alive, but Rachel had no idea of how she was going to keep him that way if this man
was coming back for them. She got back in the car, thinking that at least he’d have to
come down the mountain before he could know whether they had survived. She closed
her eyes and played dead, hoping that Reuven wouldn’t move while the man was looking,
and trying to come up with a plan for what she would do if he came down the hill.
She had held her breath for maybe thirty seconds, when she heard shouts and
several voices scrambling down the hill towards the car. Had he had a whole crew with
him? Her heart sinking, she tried desperately to come up with a plan for survival. It was
especially difficult to think of how she could escape herself and not leave Reuven to his
death.
Well, first things first. She opened her door as quietly as she could, hoping that
since her side of the car faced towards the mountainside, it might go unnoticed. Looking
in through the window, she desperately scanned the car for some sort of weapon, but
didn’t find any.
A car starting up and driving away caught her attention; she looked up, and her
taxicab was driving off. Looking up the hillside now, she saw that several passing cars
had noticed them and stopped to help. The growing crowd had been enough to send
whoever had attacked them on their way. Relieved, Rachel sank to the ground and
waited for the rescue to happen.
An hour and a half later, Rachel had been examined by a doctor, given several
great painkillers (would they let her take some home?), and was waiting for word on
Reuven. As she sat there, her mind finally had a free moment to think about who had
done this to them. A blue license plate meant an Arab car, but what Arab would care
about her – or Reuven—enough to try to kill them? In any case, if it was an Arab thing,
she could feel free to tell the police, because Reuven would have no problem with that.
“Ms. Tucker?”
Startled out of her reverie, Rachel looked up to see a middle-aged man smiling
down at her. Probably in his mid-50’s, he had the remains of what would once have been
called thinning gray hair. Now, of course, he had spots where there was gray hair, with
other spots of his head completely bald. Not fat, he was just overweight enough that you
wouldn’t think of him as being in good physical condition. His face itself was pleasant,
although generally unremarkable in the size or shape of the features.
When he pointed questioningly at the seat next to her, silently asking if he could
sit down, Rachel said, “You seem to know me and I don’t know you.” And then, of
course, she kicked herself because she had always wanted to be in that situation, and say,
like in the old movies, I’m sorry, but you seem to have me at a disadvantage.
The man laughed. “Yes, of course, I apologize; when one is a minor celebrity, one
assumes that everyone knows who one is.”
Rachel was not a fan of speaking of “oneself” in the third person, and was
becoming less and less of a fan of this man she did not know but who refused to identify
himself so that she could know what was going on. Instead of expressing her frustration,
though (what the pre-Adin Rachel would have done, a mark of the patience a colicky
baby teaches), she merely smiled at him, and waited. He seemed to have expected that at
any moment she would figure out who he was, making the next segment of the
conversation equally annoying.
“Well, I’m Gaavan Yoshor.”
Smile from Rachel.

“Chief of Police here in Nitzots haYeshuah; we’re the town nearest to where your
car crashed.”
Waiting him out was perfectly fine with Rachel; before she told him he could sit,
he would have to actually explain what he wanted from her. He got the point, and shifted
demeanors remarkably. Whereas before he had oozed bonhomie and camaraderie, he
now reverted to bored bureaucrat.
“I need to ask you several questions about today’s crash. Would you like to do it
here or down at the police station?”
Rachel waved him into the chair next to her, and composed her thoughts for the
fiftieth time in the last two hours. She had told the story to the people who first arrived,
to the medics who took Reuven out of the car and put them both into an ambulance, to
the admitting nurse who apparently needed to know exactly how they got here before she
could allow them to be treated, to the doctor who examined her, and to any number of
casually interested people in the waiting room.
She didn’t mind telling the story, but was finding it a bit numbing after so many
times. The trauma of the telling was, for now, gone; she had only the post-traumatic
effects to look forward to. “Look, I can’t tell you very much, except that an Arab ran us
off the road, and meant to get us, because I saw him back the car up and get out. It was
only when other people drove up that he got back in the car and got out of there.”
“And how do you know it was an Arab, Ms. Tucker?”
“His car had one of those blue license plates that signify Arab cars.”
The policeman laughed. “Ah, Ms. Tucker, I see you were not cut out for
investigations. All you know is that the car had a blue license plate. That might mean it
was an Arab who did this to you, but it might equally mean that the owner was an Arab,
but not the driver or even that someone stole a blue license plate and put it on the car he
was using to try to kill you, to camouflage himself. Anyway, we’re having that checked
out right now with our contact in the nearby Arab village.”
Rachel didn’t like being mocked and would usually have just tuned the man out
until she could leave the conversation physically, but his last comment got the better of
her curiosity. “What do you mean, your contact in the local Arab village?”
“Well, Ms. Tucker, you didn’t really think we would give self-rule to all the Arab
villages and cities within the Land of Israel without working out some extensive
communication between the governments of the two, did you?”
Once again, Rachel was struck by how avidly she had managed to avoid paying
attention to the new country that Lije had loved so much. She had been so busy resenting
having to come here to see him when her life and their livelihood was back in the States
that she had managed to block this country almost completely out of her mind, despite
regularly delivering news about Israel to a national audience back in the U.S. For the two
years Lije had lived here, she realized, she might as well have been visiting Russia,
China, or the Congo for all she had absorbed of the structure of the new society these
people were building. She knew she was about to sound like a complete idiot, but could
not think of a way around it.
“Self-rule?”
Gaavan Yoshor looked nonplussed for a moment, but the patronizing smile came
back quickly enough, happy to have had its assumptions about her confirmed. “Why,
yes, of course. When the Arrival happened—you know about the Arrival, I assume?”
Rachel winced, but knew she sort of deserved the jibe.
“Well, anyway, the new king pointed out that he was building a country for Jews
to express their relationship with God; non-Jews who would recognize the truth of the
Jewish God were welcome to stay as law abiding members of society, but would live in
separate cities, with self-rule and equal access to the social welfare system. Many left, a
few fought and were defeated, but a large plurality stayed.”
“So now, we meet regularly with our Arab counterparts, coordinate police
activity, see to it that their various needs are taken care of—plumbing, electricity,
unemployment, health. So far, we’ve been lucky or, as we like to say, God has been
good to us. The booming economy has given us the money to bring the Arab towns’ and
villages’ services in line with the Jewish ones. Being able to slash our military budget in
half hasn’t hurt, either.”
“But in any case, when I was talking to the people who found you, it turned out
one of them had gotten a license plate number, and we tracked it down and called the
Arab police. Their representative is on his way here to tell us what he found.”
Some part of Rachel knew she should care, but she was having trouble freeing
any of her mind from Reuven and his condition. She hadn’t let herself feel anything for
him while there was a chance that Lije was still alive, but since reading Liat’s diary,
feelings she hadn’t felt since those first heady days with Lije had started popping up. To
lose Reuven so soon after she had had Lije’s death confirmed… she could not think about
that now. She could think about getting rid of the annoying little man who seemed intent
on engaging her in a conversation about the wonders of the New Israel’s handling of its
resident aliens. Not gonna happen, she thought grimly.
“Listen, Officer…”
“It’s Captain Yoshor.”
Good, insult the man, Rachel, that’s always a good way to ingratiate yourself with
the authorities. “I apologize, Captain Yoshor. You seem like a straight shooter, so let me
just be blunt. I’d like to help you with your investigation; in fact, I think my life probably
depends on it. But right now, until I hear what happened to…my friend who was driving,
I’m just really not going to be able to focus.”
Yoshor wasn’t happy, but there was little he could do about it without seeming
completely insensitive. He seemed to hold himself in with some effort, and simply said,
“Of course. You know what, I’m going to go get a cup of coffee, and maybe by the time
I get back, or finish drinking it, you’ll have had some good news, my colleague from the
local village will have set your mind at rest about the ethnicity of your attacker, and we’ll
be able to talk some more. I apologize for intruding on your time of tension; it must be
very difficult to have a…” Rachel realized he was trying to get a sense of their
relationship, but she was not going to help him. “…friend hurt so badly. May I bring
you a cup of coffee as well?”
At the mention of coffee, the exhaustion from the adrenaline rush at the moment
of impact and the tension of the last hours hit Rachel all at once. She absolutely had to
have a cup of coffee, even if the hospital probably only served mud mixed with coffee
beans. Maybe accepting a favor from him would put him in a better mood. She tried her
best smile and said, “That would be terrific, thanks very much.”
CHAPTER 20
Yoshor came back a few minutes later, gave her her coffee and, to her surprise,
moved a few feet away to let her drink it by herself, alone with her thoughts, and her
prayers. She didn’t have a book of Psalms, certainly what Lije or Reuven would’ve been
saying at this kind of time. Well, she’d just have to go it alone.
Closing her eyes, she tried to loosen all the tension she felt, squeezing it out of
some of the muscles that didn’t respond to her mental command to loosen up. At first,
she felt a little foolish—what must it look like to stand in a hospital waiting room,
moving her lips but not saying anything? At the thought, she flashed her eyes open, but
realized that nobody else had noticed what she was doing, nor would they care if they
had. In fact, several other people in the corners of the large room were doing the exact
same thing.
Rachel closed her eyes again, and said, “Dear God,” no, that didn’t sound right,
she wasn’t close enough to Him to start with that. Maybe it was just a formality, like
opening every letter with Dear So-and-So, but she didn’t feel like starting a plea for
someone’s life with a meaningless phrase. What to say? God was a little abrupt, Hey
was certainly too abrupt. What about another Name? Or what about another
adjective—Good God, or Great and Holy God? No, she wanted to be more factual, she
wasn’t ready to examine her emotions towards God.
Rachel started again, “Master of the Universe,” Good, but still too unadorned.
Maybe one or two more of those, “Master of the Universe, God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, He Who Granted the Torah to the Jews, you have taken one wonderful man from
me and sent me another one…” Ok, the beginning was good, but then she had gotten
caught up in herself.
Once more, with feeling. “Master of the Universe, God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, Granter of the Torah, please spare the life and restore the health of Reuven
haOzer.” Needs something else; why would God listen to that? Reasons, Rachel, give
some reasons.
Try again. “Master of the Universe, please spare the life and restore to full health
the wonderful man, Reuven haOzer, who, despite suffering greatly when he lost the right
to serve in your Temple, has built a life in which he helps others in a zillion ways. He
helps administer the reeducation of murderers in the cities of refuge, oversees the
education of those who are coming closer to Your service, and, provides a warm and
pleasant haven for those who need it. In my own case, he has helped ease the pain of my
being abandoned, has helped me see some of the greatness of Your ways, and has
provided kindnesses small and large.”
Ok, that was at least an argument, but how to close? Well, she wasn’t saying the
prayer over again. “Thank you for listening and caring about my prayer, as you have
listened to and cared about people’s prayers throughout history, and I hope You will see
fit to grant this request, a request that will help smooth the path to others recognizing
Your greatness.” And then, feeling a little overdramatic, “Amen.”
Rachel opened her eyes, half-expecting to see Reuven walk out towards her, fully
cured. Of course that didn’t happen, but she herself felt better and realized that she
hadn’t eaten in many hours. She walked over to Yoshor, and said, “I need to go to the
cafeteria for a sandwich; if you’d like to walk with me, I can answer some of your
questions along the way.”
Yoshor, apparently surprised by her change of attitude, happily acceded to her
request. Rachel told him everything she knew, which wasn’t much, but seemed to satisfy
him. He, in turn, told her about his conversation with the Arab chief of police. It turned
out—Yoshor only narrowly avoided actually saying I told you so as he said this, but the
expression on his face was clear—that the car had been reported stolen two months
previously, and the report filed at the time.
“I can’t believe that! I mean, wasn’t the Arrival supposed to cure all this?”
Yoshor smiled. “You know, Ms. Tucker, we in Israel have a deep mistrust of
anything overnight. It’s kind of miraculous that the Temple was rebuilt, that a king who
could prove that he was descended from David has retaken the throne, that Jews all over
the world are finding their way back to the worship of God. To expect that they would
immediately stop stealing and killing, well, that’s a little much, I’m afraid. Still, our
crime rates are half what they were before the Arrival. With time, Ms. Tucker, with
time.”
“Actually, the theft doesn’t surprise me. There are several crime groups operating
in this country, trying to get maximum advantage out of the new economy—trying to
monopolize the animal trade, for instance, so that they can make money off of all those
who have to buy sacrifices. When they need to commit a crime, an infrequent but not
rare occurrence, they almost always do it in a stolen car. Most of the cars stolen in Israel
now, actually, later turn up at some other, bigger crime, such as this one.”
Rachel was fascinated; she only wished she had her video camera. It took a
conscious effort of will to not pull out her notebook and start jotting down notes. “Do
you know anything about these crime organizations? Who heads them? How are you
planning on catching them?”
“Ms. Tucker, you must remember, I am not in charge of the national police effort,
I am just a small town cop. But I believe the national authorities have a few specific
targets in mind, and I’m sure they’ll solve the problem soon. I’ll tell you a really
interesting rumor I heard, though. I can only tell you because I don’t know of any
evidence that supports it, so its really just idle chatter, but I heard that one group at
Central Police HQ suspects some really high placed priest is the power behind this whole
thing!”
Rachel was so surprised she almost dropped her sandwich, and she did choke on
the piece she was eating. By the time she had cleared it, with Yoshor pounding on her
back despite her assurances that she was ok, they had returned to the waiting room to find
a doctor just coming out to talk to Rachel.
“Ms. Tucker?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Dr. Besorot; I wanted to update you on Reuven’s condition. First, I should
tell you that he’s awake, and asked me to tell you this, so I’m not violating any patient
confidentiality. Reuven lost a lot of blood from his bullet wounds, but with a great deal
of rest, he should be fine.”
Rachel was stunned. “Bullet wounds?”
The doctor seemed surprised, “Well, yes, didn’t you know?” Seeing Rachel’s
mute shake of the head, he continued, “I thought…what with the police here…I’m sorry,
let me start again. Reuven was shot twice, once in the side of the arm and once in the
head.”
Even though she had just heard that he would be fine, Rachel gasped in shock.
The doctor hurried to reassure her. “The bullet in the head did not penetrate far and we
were able to remove it without too much difficulty.”
“Will there be any… damage?”
“It’s always hard to predict with a brain injury, but we think he should be fine,
perhaps with a few recent memories lost. The second bullet lodged deeper in his arm,
and we felt it best to leave it in there. Other than always setting off metal detectors and
having a bit of pain when the weather is humid, he should have no significant lasting
effects from either bullet. He’ll need to stay in the hospital two days for observation, and
then spend at least a week recovering at home, but six months from now, I’d say you’ll
hardly be able to tell it happened.”

Rachel heard herself say, “Thank God,” and realized she meant it, that something
inside of her had changed, to the point that she actually believed that God had had
something to do with Reuven’s not being more seriously hurt and his coming through the
surgery as well as he did. “Can I go see him?”
The doctor looked at his watch, and said, “He’s up now, but will need to go to
sleep really soon. I’ll tell you what; give me a minute to make sure he’s awake enough
and strong enough, and then you can go in for a short hello. Just wait here a minute.”
As soon as he walked away, Rachel turned on Yoshor. “You! What are you doing
not telling me that he’s been shot? Don’t you think I had a right to know that?”
Yoshor was unfazed by her outburst. “Ms. Tucker, my job is to get as much
information as possible so that I can catch criminals and make the public safer. The
possibility existed that you would tell me more information when you were ignorant of
the facts than if you knew what had happened. For example, let me ask you why you
were driving up this way, when both of you live in Jerusalem?”
Rachel was about to tell him the whole story, when Reuven’s warnings about
Moshel having infiltrated the police came back to her. “We just wanted a drive, I guess.”
Yoshor nodded sadly. “You see what I mean? Had I managed to get that question
into our conversation ten minutes ago, I’ll bet you would have answered much
differently. This makes it harder for me to do my job, harder to catch the perpetrators’
and harder to protect you from another attack. Ah, well, such is the lot of the police.”
Rachel looked at him and felt like he was being sincere, but wasn’t comfortable
following her own instincts when her decision affected Reuven, too. She was about to
say something to that effect, when Dr. Besorot waved to her from the double doors that
led to Reuven.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go see Reuven. Could you please wait for me, though—the
doctor said I’d only have five minutes, and maybe I’ll want to talk more when I come
back.”
“I’d be happy to wait.”
CHAPTER 21
Rachel walked down the hall toward where Reuven was lying, wondering what he
would look like. She’d seen wounded people before, so she wasn’t worried about her
reaction, unless it was really bad. But it probably wasn’t really bad, because the doctor
said he’d be ok. But sometimes they looked really bad for a while even if at the end they
were fine.
And then she turned a corner and, the door to his room being open, there he was.
There was a huge bandage on the side of his head, and his shoulder was thoroughly taped,
but other than that, he looked just like Reuven and Rachel’s spirits lifted more than a
little. She was about to run over and hug him but realized that wouldn’t go over too well,
with Reuven or the hospital staff, although for different reasons. She couldn’t resist
taking one of his hands, though, and saying “Oh, Reuven, I’m so relieved you’re alright.”
Reuven smiled, pale and exhausted. “Me, too.” The two words seemed to take a
lot out of him, because he leaned his head back on his pillow, closed his eyes, and his
next words were inaudible.

Rachel leaned forward so that her ears were right near his mouth. “What? I’m
sorry, Reuven, what did you say?”
She heard him whisper, “But seeing you makes a lot of it better.”
She felt herself blush, and then, embarrassed at her reaction, blushed even deeper.
Feeling the ticking of the clock, she realized she had to talk to him quickly about Yoshor.
“Listen, Reuven, I know you’re exhausted, but I need your permission for
something. There’s a police captain here, investigating the shooting, and he wants to
know why we were heading north from Jerusalem. My instincts—and I’ve spoken to a
lot of police—is to trust him, but I know that you were worried about Moshel’s influence,
so I didn’t want to do anything until I got your ok.”
Reuven opened his eyes, and forced his voice to a more normal volume. “What
do you know about this guy?”
“Well, nothing, except that he has a uniform and a badge, and the doctor seemed
to know him.” As she said it, Rachel could hear how it sounded; but she had to face him
when she left this room, and didn’t know what to do. Reuven came to her rescue.
“Shomer Kapdan’s number is 02- 555 2345. Call him and see what he says. If he
knows Yoshor, his word’s good enough for me.”
Rachel immediately picked up the phone and dialed. It took seven minutes—she
was staring straight at a clock at the nurse’s station—and four people, but then Kapdan
came on the line.
“Hello?”
“Capt. Kapdan, it’s Rachel Tucker.”

Kapdan was surprised to hear from her. “Yes?”
Rachel had no time to waste on pleasantries, so she tried to be as brief as possible.
“Captain, my car was run off the road by an unknown person, and I’m in a hospital just
outside of Karnei Shomron. There’s a police officer named Gaavan Yoshor here who is
investigating the accident, and I wondered if you know him.”
“I do, we were at the academy together. May I ask why you are asking?”
Rachel hesitated, and was about to ask Reuven what she should tell him, but
Reuven had slipped off into sleep. She took a deep breath. “Well, we were up here
looking into something fairly sensitive and he’s asking questions that I would prefer to
answer completely, but I am somewhat nervous about trusting strangers, particularly after
having been run off the road by someone who also shot Reuven haOzer.”
“Reuven? Is he ok?”
“The doctors say he should be fine, but it was a very close call. Anyway, Reuven
and I agree that if you vouch for Captain Yoshor, we’re comfortable with that.”
“Ms. Tucker, does this looking into something that you were doing have anything
to do with the original incident that first had our paths cross with each other?”
He certainly didn’t miss many tricks. “Yes, yes, it does.”
“All right, I can be there in an hour. What hospital are you in exactly?”
“Wait, why are you coming? Is Yoshor a problem?”
“No, no, Yoshor is a fine man; in fact, he and I have several times combined
efforts on exactly the matter that underlies what you are looking into. I suspect the
information you have is particularly valuable. Just stay there with Yoshor, and tell him I
am on my way. In fact, can you call him to the phone?”
Rachel didn’t like the feeling that the whole thing was slipping away from her,
but she didn’t have much choice, either. “Yes, hold on.”
She stepped out into the hallway, where Yoshor was across the lobby, facing her.
He was speaking to two men who, from his body language, were his superiors. As soon
as he saw her, he paused in whatever he was saying, reached his right hand around one of
the men as if to remove a particle from his back, and frantically waved his hand at Rachel
to send her back into her room. Startled, she stepped back in and closed the door quietly.
Picking up the phone, she told Shomer Kapdan what had happened, by way of
explaining why Gaavan Yoshor wouldn’t be coming to the phone. Kapdan’s reaction
was immediate, but not too reassuring.
“Well, that can’t be good.”
“What?”
“From your description, it sounds like some higher ups have arrived and want to
speak with you. Yoshor’s trying to fend them off, but who knows how long that will
last? Just stay in the room with Reuven; the doctors won’t tell them where you
are—patient confidentiality. Give me your phone number; when I get to the hospital, I’ll
call you and you can tell me your room number.”
Rachel did.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can; don’t talk to anybody except Yoshor, and him only if
he’s alone.”
Waiting in a room with a closed door and a sleeping patient is harder than it
sounds. She had no book, couldn’t watch television. Meditate; focus on breath in,
breath out. No use, she was too busy wondering what the two men were talking to
Yoshor about, wondering when they would come into the room, and then wondering
what it was that she was afraid of. Why was Kapdan so immediately alert? What did he
know that she didn’t?
She played with the questions again and again, in all their permutations and then
some, working herself into an ever more frenzied tizzy, even though she didn’t yet know
what she was supposed to be afraid of. It had only been a half an hour, but seemed like
more, when a knock on the door snapped her out of her reverie.
The adrenaline rush and fear were almost painful. She looked at the door,
startled, as her mind rushed with a flood of possibilities as to who stood behind it. Her
palms instantly clammy, she forced herself out of the chair and walked to the door.
Absurdly, she reached for a chair, some feral part of her thinking that she could fight off
whoever was behind the door if necessary.
“Who…” Her voice came out as a squeak, and she stopped herself.
And then she got mad. Between Reuven and Kapdan, her mind was now full of
conspiracy theories, and one thing she hated more than almost anything was living in
fear. Anger was good, it cleared her head. What could be behind the door that would be
so fearsome? What, would they kill her here in a hospital with a thousand witnesses?
Maybe, but she wouldn’t live her life in fear. She cleared her throat, and tried again, just
as there was another knock at the door.

“Who is it?”
Gaavan Yoshor whispered, “Ms. Tucker, it is I, please open up, I only have a
moment before my superiors return.”
Rachel opened the door a crack, saw that it was, indeed, only Yoshor standing out
there, and let him in. The man who came in the door was almost completely different
than the one she had met in the public area; his unctuousness had disappeared, and he
now seemed more focused on his tasks.
“Ms. Tucker, you must listen carefully. I know you do not know me, but we must
leave this hospital, with Mr. haOzer, as quickly as possible. I cannot explain right now,
but the longer we stay here, the greater the danger to you both.”
“But Shomer Kapdan is on his way here, and he told me not to leave this room
until he got here. In fact, he told me not to let anyone into the room except you.”
“Kapdan? When did you speak to him? Why is he coming?”
It took Rachel five minutes to explain her relationship with Kapdan; she decided
to tell him the complete version of the story, Moshel and the fixer included. Yoshor
listened carefully, and when she was done, he said,
“Well, at least now my suspicions are confirmed. My superiors, the regional
commanders of the police, are men whose loyalties to Moshel are unbreakable. Yes, yes,
I know all about Moshel; I was just testing the waters by mentioning that rumor earlier.
Their appearance here, to look into what I had reported as a fairly routine traffic accident,
already alerted me that something was out of place here. I assumed that you have some
significant information that has driven Moshel to some very desperate acts. I don’t need
to know what it is now, but you should make sure, at some point, to tell somebody else.
Should something happen to you, whatever information you have must not be allowed to
die with you.”
Yoshor wasn’t really making her feel any better, but she knew he was just trying
to be realistic. Without any answer—she wasn’t going to tell him about the diary without
getting Reuven’s opinion—she had nothing to say, so she said nothing. Yoshor seemed
to understand, and they sat in silence for another ten minutes. At that point, looking at
his watch, he said, “Well, they are going to be back from their coffee; I told them that
you had gone to sleep and had left orders not to be disturbed. When Kapdan comes,
we’ll find some way to get in touch with you. Until then.” He touched his hand to the
front of his cap, and slipped out the door.
CHAPTER 22
Alone again, but slightly reassured knowing there was at least one other person in
the building intent on helping her, Rachel watched Reuven sleep. His chest rose
smoothly up and down, except for when he moved in his sleep, and pain from his injuries
made him catch his breath, wake partially and go back to sleep.
With nothing else to do, and trying to keep her mind off of what might be going
on outside her door, Rachel watched Reuven until she could predict his breathing pattern
perfectly. Five minutes of calm sleep, then four extraordinarily deep breaths, two short
ones, four more deep breaths, on the last of which he turned on to the other side, pain,
partial wakening, back to sleep, and the whole thing would start over again. Satisfied that
she had whiled away as much time as possible on that exercise, Rachel was just about to
start counting the tiles in the floor when she thought of Ed and the video camera that she
had not been using nearly often enough. It was in the car, which was now probably at
some garage where they would charge Reuven an arm and a leg to get it fixed.
Never one to take being cheated well, Rachel felt anger at the unknown garage
rising in her. She was already deep into the scene, with the mechanic claiming he had
had to do some esoteric repair, her and Reuven having no choice but to pay what he said,
and leaving knowing they had just been taken for fools. The best would be if the car was
totaled, then they could just take the insurance money and be done with it.
The thing about guys in garages that particularly set Rachel off was their knowing
look, as if they knew and saw everything about you. If something was in your car, those
guys would see it, would know it, and would hold it to use against you later. Rachel
remembered one time…and then it hit her. A garage! After Moshel and Liat had had
their accident, the car would have been damaged and needed repairs. Moshel would have
to have taken it into a garage! The diary didn’t mention it, but Rachel bet that’s what had
happened. If she could find the garage, maybe she could tie Moshel to Lije’s death even
without the diary!
But how to figure out what garage they had taken it to? Moshel wouldn’t have
brought the car back to Jerusalem, would he? Then it would be too obvious that he was
trying to cover something up—did he trust his underlings enough to have them know that
he had killed somebody? After all, that disqualified him from the Temple service
forever, which was, she assumed the base of his power. No, Moshel would have gone
somewhere where they wouldn’t know him, but where?
She didn’t get any further than that with the question, but it did take up the time
until she heard a knock at the door, and the voice of Shomer Kapdan saying, “Ms.
Tucker, I’m here with Gaavan Yoshor. Will you let the two of us in?”
Rachel opened the door slowly, and saw that it was just the two standing at the
door. They came in talkatively, reintroducing themselves, asking how she was
feeling—a question that made her notice the beginnings of a headache coming
back—asking about Reuven, but all the while wandering the room, looking under the
telephone, in the air vent, under the bed, searching, Rachel realized, for some kind of
listening device.
Not finding one, Kapdan pulled a CD player out of his bag and was about to turn
it on, but Rachel pointed at Reuven, and said, in a normal voice, “Perhaps we should
whisper; I don’t want to wake Reuven.” At the same time, she pulled a pad of paper out
of a drawer, and three pens, and started to write a question. Kapdan quickly shook his
head and pulled his PDA out of his pocket, turned it on, and gave it to Rachel.
Whispering the version of the story that she had already told a dozen police
officers, so that the listening devices could pick up that conversation, with Kapdan and
Yoshor interrupting to ask questions to which they already knew the answer, they also
took turns typing questions and answers in the PDA. Kapdan and Yoshor told Rachel
that they were members of an informal group of police officers who had realized that the
Arrival had brought with it a new kind of organized crime, which profited off of the
heightened animal trade for the Temple sacrifices. Kapdan told her that he had managed
to get on her case after she tried to kill Harvey because he suspected she was getting
herself in deeper than she realized, and thought that putting her with Reuven would take
her out of harm’s way.
Reuven, it turned out, was an important figure in the Jerusalem branch of the
organization, but didn’t know Yoshor. From his vantage point on the edge of the Temple
Mount, he met all the people coming back from the Temple, and often got first wind of
scams being perpetrated. One of the most common, they told her, was selling an animal
that had a carefully hidden, but nonetheless significant, blemish to a person headed to the
Temple. The victim would bring his animal to the Temple only to be sent away to get an
animal that was as perfect as sacrifices needed to be, while the seller would disappear.
The problem was, Kapdan and Yoshor told her, that they caught up with a lot of
the small-time crooks, the dealers in blemished animals, the goons who threatened to put
blemishes in livestock unless their owners paid protection money, and so on, but they
couldn’t get back to the higher-ups. Harvey had been one excellent lead, except that as
soon as Rachel confronted him, he had left town, presumably on Moshel’s orders, and all
of his evidence dried up.
They were quickly running out of false conversation for any eavesdroppers, so
Kapdan interrupted to write, “Can you tell us where you and Reuven were going?”
Rachel hesitated, her mind cluttered with bits of thought, few of them rational.
Reuven had said to trust Kapdan, so that should mean she should, right? But why should
she? How did she know he, or Yoshor, wasn’t a plant by Moshel to sabotage the group
on his tail? How did she know that they wouldn’t cut her out of the picture as soon as
they found out the information she had?
She wished Reuven were awake. For all that she had now found out that he had
withheld important information from her, her trust in him was unshaken (and, she hoped,
justified). But he wasn’t, so here she was. Taking a deep breath, literally and
figuratively, Rachel typed to Kapdan and Yoshor, “We had a diary written by Liat
Moshel, whose death Shomer caught me trying to avenge. She named a location where I
think Moshel ran over my husband, and buried him there. We were on our way there
when we got knocked off the road.”
Kapdan and Yoshor were so shocked by what she had written that it took them a
few minutes to reply, during which time they didn’t even remember to keep whispering a
fake conversation. Rachel picked up the slack by pretending, out loud, to tend to Reuven,
who was—damn him!—still sleeping.
Finally, Yoshor typed, “Do you still have the diary?”
“No, we were assaulted in Jerusalem by a man who wanted only the diary. We
were on our way to copy it when it was taken from us.” Kapdan ground his teeth in
frustration when he read Rachel’s message.
He tried again. “Can you prove that Moshel was driving the car?”
“No. We were going to find the body, thinking, first of all” Rachel hoped they
caught the sarcasm, “that finding my husband’s body would be a good thing regardless of
whether we can tie it to Moshel,” good, they were properly chagrined at their focus only
on Moshel, “and, second, we thought that having a body might give us some way to
gather more evidence about it.”
Kapdan stood up and said in a normal voice, “Ms. Tucker, thank you for your
time. Capt. Yoshor and I need to speak privately for a few moments about how best to
pursue this investigation; would you mind waiting for us here? We’ll be back in a few
moments.”
Left alone, Rachel digested what she had just learned. Reveling in the scoops that
had just been handed her—corruption in the Third Temple, extortion, racketeering, this
was unbelievable—Rachel knew her next step was finding people who would speak on
the record. But who? Kapdan and Yoshor obviously wouldn’t, since it would
compromise their investigation. Same for Reuven.
By the time Kapdan and Yoshor came back in the room, Rachel had a plan, but
she had to get back to Jerusalem to implement it. First, though, she had to find Lije.
Kapdan said, in his normal voice, “Well, Ms. Tucker, you’ve been very helpful,
but I think that’s all we’re going to need to ask you for the moment. Are you heading
back to Jerusalem? I can give you a lift.” Meanwhile, he typed on the PDA, “Can you
take me to the location named in the diary?”
Rachel hesitated; in her normal voice, she said, “Actually, I had thought about
staying with Reuven, just to make sure everything was ok, at least until I had to go home
to pick up the baby from the sitter.” Which wasn’t so much later anyway, as it happened.
On the PDA, though, she wrote, “I’ll take you there, but I want a guarantee that I get an
exclusive on this story when it comes out.”

Kapdan and Yoshor exchanged looks, and Yoshor, smiling, gave 5 shekels to
Kapdan. Yoshor said, “Ms. Tucker, while you’re welcome to stay, I am placing two of
my top men here to make sure Mr. HaOzer rests comfortably in your absence.” And he
typed, “Shomer really knows you; he and I bet about whether you’d be with it enough to
realize that this will make a great story some time soon. Yes, we agree that whenever the
story can come out, you get it first, as long as you cooperate fully with us from here on.”
Having agreed, they quickly closed their conversations, oral and typed, and
headed out of the room. Outside the door were, as Yoshor had promised, two police
officers who certainly looked tough, although Rachel wondered how Yoshor could be
sure they were not working for Moshel or some similar organization. She’d have to ask
Kapdan in the car.
At the door, Rachel paused, and turned back to Reuven’s bed. Leaning over his
sleeping body, she whispered in his ear, “Rest well, Reuven, and get out of here quickly.
Stuff’s moving, and I think we’re on the road to getting Moshel. It…well, it won’t be the
same unless you’re there with me when we finally get him.” She leaned forward, about
to give him a quick peck on the cheek, but felt weird not knowing what he would think
about it, so she stopped herself and went with Kapdan to his car.
CHAPTER 23
As they headed toward Katsrin, Rachel called the babysitter to tell her that, once
again, she’d be late getting home. She was blessed that the woman could use the
overtime, that Adin was still young enough that Rachel didn’t have to feel like she was
neglecting him or that their mother-son bond would fray from her involvement in this.
After all, she was up with him all night, what did the kid want from her?
On the drive, after Kapdan explained to her that the two officers were part of his
personal group who he vetted and checked repeatedly, they argued about the Arrival.
Rachel had become even less enamored of the New Israel since she had started
experiencing it; finding out that there was a blossoming Mafia, led by a highly placed
priest who had sent someone to kill her that morning, hadn’t put her in any more of a
positive mood.
“I think, Ms. Tucker, that you are making an error that many of us made as well.
We thought the Arrival would be the end, but it’s really just a beginning. We have a
Temple back, we have real sovereignty with less worries about world pressure, now that
the King can so obviously defeat any enemies, and we are on the road to building a
religious country that fosters the kind of growth that each of its citizens needs at various
stages of life.”
“And Moshel?”
“Ms. Tucker…”
It seemed a little incongruous to still be so formal with a man who was in charge
of keeping her safe from Moshel’s men, or Moshel himself. “Please, call me Rachel.”
Kapdan smiled his appreciation at the gesture. “Rachel, free will means that some
percentage of people will make bad choices; we can reduce that number, and we have in
the years since the Arrival, but murder, theft, extortion—these are part of human nature.
It will be years and decades before even the Messiah could wipe those out.”
Rachel wasn’t convinced, and lapsed into a moody silence. Growing up in a not-
so-religious family, she hadn’t thought a lot about the Messiah, but whatever thoughts
she had had, this wasn’t it. Wryly, she realized that the Messiah she hadn’t believed in
had been a more miraculous one than the one they got.
Come to think of it, her marriage hadn’t been what she had dreamed of, either.
She had loved Lije, sure, but they saw the world so differently that the good times were
all too often mixed with tension, or anger, or resentment. She had spent five years
resenting this country because it had dragged Lije from her, and had made her commute
here on weekends.
Then he disappeared, and she spent months hating him for abandoning her, hating
the system that couldn’t rule him dead without some solid evidence, hating (and loving)
the fetus and then baby he’d left fatherless; now, in the last two days, she had found out
that it all came from one man, a man most of the country looked up to as one of the
holiest members of the priesthood, a model priest by all appearances.
Her headache—was it the one from the Arrival, the mugger in her apartment, or
from the car going off the cliff?—was back. She only had two of the painkillers left,
having forgotten them back in Reuven’s room. She’d have to stop here on the way back,
which didn’t bother her. Meanwhile, she popped the two, told Kapdan she needed to
close her eyes until they worked, and leaned her head back for a moment.
CHAPTER 24
Lije was telling her something, something important, but she couldn’t quite catch
what it was. “What?” she said. He opened his mouth to say it again, when she heard
someone say “Rachel? Rachel?” As Lije reached for her, she felt herself sucked
backwards as if in a vortex, and popped awake.
It was getting dark already. Rachel looked at her watch; 5:00, they’d been driving
for two hours, and she had slept for one and a half of them.
“We’re at the new turnoff that you told me the diary mentioned. Where do I go
from here?”
Rachel thought about what Liat had said. “She said after the sign for Katsrin, 25
km,” Rachel looked back at it, “there was a new turnoff, built since the arrival.”
Kapdan was driving slowly so he could follow her directions. “Yes, I just turned
off of it.”
“Well, that’s it, then. Soon after that, they hit him, and she buried him
somewhere near where he died, putting six strange colored stones near each other. I
guess we just get out and look around.”
Kapdan called Yoshor, and gave him exact directions as to where he was. Yoshor
said he’d call one of their contacts in Katsrin, to have them send a few cars out to assist
them. Kapdan hung up, parked the car as far over to the side as he could, turned his
flashers and brights on, and took several roadside flares—the kind to put up at accident
scenes—and lit them behind his car. He smiled at Rachel, “If my car gets hit, I want it to
be clear that it was on purpose.”

Rachel had never looked for a grave before, so she started just wandering up and
down the road, looking for stones. Kapdan called her back. First, he pulled out two
large flashlights, which made almost as much light as a streetlamp, from his car.
“Here, let me explain how we do this.”
Rachel laughed. “There’s a way to do this? How often do you guys look for
unmarked graves?”
“Actually, more often than you think. Priests are really careful about that kind of
thing, so we get requests to check out a certain area fairly frequently. So let’s first block
off a piece of road and side road—say, five meters at a time—and check that. Then we’ll
move on to the next piece. For each piece, I’ll walk along lengthwise and you do the
same widthwise; try not to bump into me too much.”
By the time they got to their fifth piece of land an hour later, Rachel was getting
frustrated. Only the thought of finding Lije kept her going. She looked over at Kapdan,
who seemed completely unperturbed by their failure to find anything. He felt her look at
him, and smiled. “Welcome to my world. I’ve been doing this for so long, I can do it for
hours without noticing the tedium. But we’ll take a break in a minute; you can clear your
head before we keep going.”
Rachel had continued walking while he spoke, so she almost missed it. As she
looked down, reassured by his words, she saw a bright blue stone which stood out from
all the other stones around it. Excited, she called Kapdan over. “But I don’t understand;
the diary said there were six oddly colored stones? Why is this one all alone?”
“Rachel, it’s been several months since the incident—you don’t think stones just
stay in one place, do you?”
“They don’t?”
“Well, some do. But a stone like this, any of a number of things could have
happened. Maybe some kids came for a walk, or a young couple went for a picnic, or
who knows what, but the stone got moved. At least it lets us know we’re on the right
track. The question is whether this was the original place and the other stones got moved,
or this one did. Hmmm.” Kapdan thought for a while, at least a minute, and then said,
“Perhaps we ought to search separately rather than together. I’d like to try
checking the road; I’ll bet Liat didn’t get all the blood from the accident, its notoriously
persistent, especially on asphalt.”
So they started again, Rachel on the side of the road looking for stones, Kapdan
looking for blood. Every once in a while, a car would pass, stop to find out if they were
all right, and then continue on. The police officers from Katsrin arrived, and joined the
search. One of them found a startlingly red stone almost right away, but it, too was all
alone.
Kapdan was perhaps ten meters further on when he let out a shout and called them
over. When they got to him, he was pointing to a patch of black asphalt, to Rachel’s eyes
the same color as the rest of the dusty highway. “There! Do you see it?”
Rachel looked where he was pointing, but couldn’t see anything. She bent closer,
and, as she bent, caught a glimpse of red on the roadway. “Now I do. So what now?”
Kapdan looked around. “I’d bet anything that its here. What’s on the side of the
road?”
Fifteen minutes later, they found three stones near each other, meaning one more
had been kicked away over the months. The two police officers from Katsrin started to
dig where they found the stones, and, as Rachel watched, uncovered a decomposed body.
Rachel looked down into the hole, expecting to be horrified, but all she saw was a
skeleton in clothes, like in the movies. That it had once been Lije was still only an
intellectual fact to her; it hadn’t penetrated her emotional consciousness yet, and she
wondered when it would.
Kapdan was still a police officer. “Well, Rachel, we have a body; the task now is
identification. The pockets are empty. We’ll have to take a plaster cast of the teeth and
send it to dental records. I’ll get the process rolling.”
Dental records? Plaster cast? Couldn’t they just leave him alone? The man was
hit by a car and buried without eulogy or mourning, did they have to defile him further?
Now, Rachel felt herself reacting the way she had expected to when she looked down the
hole. Think, Rachel, think! Could she get them to stop touching him, to just let him be?
Her thoughts went back to her dream in the car, where Lije had been calling her.
As she thought back, she realized he hadn’t only been trying to tell her something, he’d
been trying to show her something. What? She closed her eyes, tried to reconstitute the
image in her mind, and then let it play again. Lije was standing in front of her, reaching
out towards her, saying something.

Wait, he wasn’t reaching out to her, he was showing her his hands. His hands!
There was no jewelry on his hands! Lije hadn’t worn a lot, but he’d had a watch, and a
wedding band. Rachel called down to Kapdan, who was still in the hole, “Is Lije… I
mean, the body, wearing a watch?”
Kapdan looked. “No,”
It wasn’t Lije. The tears came unbidden, and she heard herself bawling, only then
realizing how much she had hoped it would be Lije, so that he could find peace and she
could find a new start. Kapdan jumped out of the hole and came over to comfort her.
“Rachel? What’s the matter?”
“Lije was wearing a watch; he always wore a watch, he was fanatic about
knowing the time. If there’s no watch, it’s not Lije. And I’m back to where I started.”
Kapdan shook his head. “You mean, you think it was a coincidence that we
found five odd colored stones, three of them together, and a body buried underneath?
No, I’m pretty sure it’s Lije; somebody took the watch and the contents of his pockets to
make him harder to identify, to make it take longer and put more distance between them
and the killing.”
Rachel was already back to thinking about Lije reaching out to her, and this time,
she thought she saw him wiggle his ring finger. His ring finger? Of course, his wedding
ring! Rachel’s relief was palpable, as she ran over to Kapdan, shouting “I can identify
him! I can identify him!”
Kapdan blinked at her exuberance. “How can you be so sure?”
“His wedding ring!”

“Rachel, I already told you, there was no jewelry on his hands, and nothing in his
pockets.”
Rachel smiled. “I know, but you see Lije didn’t wear his wedding ring when he
wasn’t around me; he only put it on in my presence to make me happy.”
Kapdan was puzzled. “But then how are we going to find it?”
“Well, he lost the first ring I got him within three weeks of our wedding, so I got
him to promise that whenever he wasn’t wearing it, he’d put it in his shoe. That way, he
wouldn’t lose it, a mugger wouldn’t steal it, and with every step, he’d remember me. So,
if you take off his boot—which they would do for the real burial anyway, right?” A part
of Rachel standing outside herself looked on in wonder at how concerned she was that
Lije’s body not be disturbed any more than absolutely necessary. Kapdan nodded.
“Anyway, if you take off his right boot,” those stupid hiking boots she had always
made fun of, but that Lije had said were his favorite footwear, “I think you’ll find the
ring.”
Skeptical, Kapdan did as she said, and, to her relief and (almost) joy, a gold band
fell to the ground. Kapdan picked it up.
“Very impressive, Rachel, but I confess I don’t know whether that will count as a
full identification. We’ll have to ask the rabbinic authorities in Jerusalem.”
Rachel wasn’t worried. “It gets better. If you look inside the ring, it’s inscribed
to Elijah b. David Zeale from Rachel bat Shoshana Tucker. It cost me a fortune to get
them to write that small, but it was a joke, my way of making fun of the names on our
marriage document. Which I still have at home, in case…” She had been about to say in
case Lije comes back, but choked on the words as it began to hit her that she was proving
that he was never coming back.
She blinked away the largest of the tears and managed to get out, “well, anyway,
that should do it, shouldn’t it?”
Kapdan wasn’t going to argue with her. “We’ll still have to ask, but I suspect so.
Meanwhile, this has been a very rough day, so let’s pack it in. I’ve called the Traffic
Victims Unit at Katsrin HQ, and they’ll take care of bringing the body in and getting it to
Jerusalem for burial. It will take a couple of more days, certainly they won’t bring it to
Jerusalem before the weekend—so we have plenty of time to check that your
identification is sufficient. And you can plan the funeral at greater leisure than ordinarily,
since most people in Jerusalem have to have the funeral on the day of death. For now,
let’s just get you home and to rest. May I drive you?”
In the car, a kind of dense fog settled over Rachel. She had known, really she had
been sure, that Lije wasn’t alive, but staring the fact in the face brought out levels of
trauma she hadn’t realized existed inside her. She spent most of the ride in that fog, a
wash of memories, disconnected, disorienting, but all focused on Lije and their time
together, the things she had hated about him, the things she had loved about him, the
things that she had both hated and loved. Ah, Lije, she thought, we were going to grow
old together, remember?
It wasn’t until Kapdan drove up in front of her house that all the questions she
should be asking came to her.
“What happens now?”

Kapdan thought a minute before answering. “Well, once the body gets to
Jerusalem, it has to be buried that day; I’ll make sure someone from Traffic Victims calls
and gives you an exact day so you can make funeral arrangements, but I assume it’ll be
Monday or Tuesday of next week. After the funeral, you and whatever other family there
is—did your late husband (a sharp dagger of realization still stabbed at Rachel each time
the fact was stated again) have family?—will have to sit a symbolic shiva, for just an
hour or two. Given the delay in the funeral, we should be able to have the eglah arufah
ceremony the day after that; do you know what that is?”
Rachel nodded her comprehension, and Kapdan continued. “It can’t be sooner
than that, because we have to publicize the ceremony, so that anyone who has any
information about the killing has a chance to come forward. The heifer is only killed if
we do not have eyewitness testimony about the killer, so we have to be sure to put the
word out far and wide; if someone shows up with information after the ceremony, it turns
out to have been a waste of a sacrifice, which we make every effort to avoid. After that,
assuming we get no real evidence, you just try to get on with your life, to the extent that
you can. You’re making progress on becoming a haverah, I’ve heard, I would hope
you’d continue working on that; you’ve still got your maternity leave from the network,
so I guess you could take time to heal, physically and psychologically. You’ve taken
quite a beating, Ms. Tucker. If I were you, I’d be nice to myself for a while. Get a
massage regularly, find a soothing activity, and just let yourself get better.”
Although it was better advice than she cared to admit, Rachel’s first reaction to
Kapdan’s words was a touch of panic. The network! She hadn’t been getting any footage
for Ed, and he’d be furious. She would call him first thing when she got into the house.
Finding Lije’s body meant that he couldn’t be angry with her, and in the coming days, the
process of shiva and heifer neck-breaking would provide more than he needed.
As her thoughts about Ed trailed off, Rachel had a vivid flashback to when her
mother had been sitting shiva for her grandfather, a man she knew her mother had
revered and adored. Her grandfather had lived a long life, but the end had come suddenly
and shockingly—he’d been knifed to death on a subway, and other passengers had
thought he was sleeping for ten hours before they realized he was dead—and her mother
was heartbroken. Even so, Rachel remembered, her mother had managed to give
instructions on all the kinds of details she ordinarily involved herself with—how the
house should look, who should wear what, whose table manners weren’t up to snuff.
At the time, Rachel had been annoyed at her mother’s ability to transcend
something as hard as mourning for something as trivial as where the soup spoons should
go. Yet here she was, worrying about the network! Mom would get a kick out of that
when she came to Israel, her daughter—whose entire career was insurance against
becoming the housewife her mother was—ending up so similar to dear old mom.
“Rachel?” Kapdan was looking at her with some concern.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I just said we’re here, but you didn’t hear me. Are you ok? Do you want me to
come in? Do you want me to send over someone—I know excellent crisis counselors, or
I could just call one of your friends.” From his concern, Rachel realized she must have
sunk even deeper into her musings than ordinarily.

“No, really, I’m ok. I’m going to call my mom when I get in the house, and I
suspect she’ll get on a plane immediately.” Rachel felt awkward; she didn’t know this
man all that well, nor did she feel any great warmth for him. And yet, he was the one
who had helped her find Lije’s body, and that was a debt that would never go away, and
that she couldn’t properly articulate. “I appreciate your help; I’ll never forget that it was
you who got me to be able to move on to the next stage of my life.” There was probably
more to say, but she didn’t know what it was.
Kapdan seemed to understand. “It’s really my privilege. But don’t talk as if this
is good-bye; Moshel will certainly find out at some point that we’ve found Lije, which
heightens the danger to him considerably. I suspect, though, that he knows that we don’t
have any evidence tying him to that, what with Liat dead, so I don’t think he’ll do
anything rash just yet. Take my card though, just in case-- day or night.” He offered her
another copy of his card.
Rachel put the card in her purse, nodded to him, and went up the stairs to her
building. Thank God she had thought to call the babysitter and ask her to stay overnight.
She didn’t know if she’d sleep much tonight, but with her various bruises, physical and
psychological, she desperately needed the option of somebody else taking him during the
night. She took a deep breath, opened her door, and walked into her future as a widow.
CHAPTER 25
The next twenty four hours was one shock after another. That first night, Adin
behaved nicely for about two hours—smiling, sitting happily, looking at his mobile with
only occasionally input from his mommy—and slept for the next ten. Her mother, who
Rachel avoided out of fear of the fights she knew they would get into, among them about
how silly she was to have “settled” for Lije, immediately offered to come to Israel for
two weeks. And, lest Rachel fear that she planned on intruding on Rachel’s space, she
made it clear that she intended to stay in a hotel when she wasn’t needed to care for Adin
during the night. Who was this generous, sensitive, and nonjudgmental woman?
Ed Appleby, also not a person whose empathy Rachel would have bet on, ignored
the lack of footage, and also offered to make it to Israel for the funeral. When Rachel
protested, he said that he’d send a reporter to cover the whole thing, either for the public
or for the staff in the newsroom who had known Lije from when she had been dating him.
He suggested that he send an actual cameraperson to take care of the filming—after all,
the funeral and heifer ceremonies would be public events happening to a well-known
personality in the States. Rachel could do voice-overs for the whole thing afterwards, Ed
said. Rachel realized she could do one better; she’d do a voice diary over the coming
days, which could become the narration for the film.
By the time she got off the phone with Ed, it was 11:30. She had to call Lije’s
parents, but they were certainly already asleep, and there was no need to wake them up to
get final notice of bad news they half-expected, especially at a time when there was
nothing productive to be done til at least the morning, when they could start making
phone calls about the funeral.
Rachel knew she should get to bed herself, but she couldn’t get rid of the gnawing
feeling—false, she knew from past experience-- that she should be doing something more
than she had. She thought about calling Reuven, but suspected that the hospital would
close his phone for the night earlier than this. She tried anyway, and to her surprise was
connected to him. He sounded so sleepy that she was instantly apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Reuven, I just wanted to say good night, but I’ll talk to you
tomorrow.”
He mumbled a bit, but was obviously trying to keep her on the phone. “No, it’s
alright, it’s just that they gave me something to sleep. I heard that you found Lije.”
Rachel was a little surprised by how raw the nerve still was; some part of her had
expected that when he was finally found, she’d just grieve a little and move on. But as
Reuven said it—and some part of her knew he had raised it as a way of expressing his
sorrow for her loss—a flood of grief overcame her. She had looked forward to speaking
to him again one more time before sleep, and now she wished she hadn’t called at all.
Her reply was extremely careful, not so much from anger, although there was some of
that, but out of an attempt to avoid hurting him.
“Yes, they did. I haven’t heard details yet, but I think burial and the eglah arufah
will happen early next week. Are you going to be around?”
Reuven had woken up enough to choose his words a little more carefully than he
had been. “They tell me they’ll let me out tomorrow, and from then on, I am hoping to
be wherever you need to be, whenever you need it, and however you need it. I’m just
sorry I wasn’t there with you at the moment; I know how hard losing someone is.”
And then the tears came, tears that Rachel both dreaded and hoped for. She hung
up quickly on Reuven, and threw herself on her bed where great, racking sobs took
control of her for what seemed like hours but turned out to be thirty-seven minutes.
Rachel had never cried that long before, but she cried now, cried for Lije, for her life
without him, for Adin never having the chance to know him, for the Messiah’s Arrival
not having prevented Lije’s death, for a hundred irrelevancies that seemed to only deepen
her tragedy.
And then, thankfully, it subsided. Rachel rose from her bed, a little shakily, and
went to the bathroom to wash away the tears. Weak from her spent emotions, she lay
back down in her clothes, and closed her eyes, planning on going to sleep.
Except, of course, that now the rush of planning was on her, and she found her
mind repeating the various people she had to call about the funeral. Friends of hers,
friends of Lije’s, relatives, co-workers (Ed had promised to spread the word at the
network, but there were Lije’s coworkers, and other friends and acquaintances who
would feel left out if she didn’t inform them). Sleep no longer an immediate possibility,
Rachel got a pad of paper and started to write.
CHAPTER 26
When she woke up in her bed, she had no immediate memory of how she had got
there. Her mind didn’t give her a chance to ponder that, though, as she automatically
shifted into planning her day, with a first priority being to try to make up for the lack of
time she had given the baby the last few days. She’d make a few of the central phone
calls and then she’d take him to the park and for a walk. After assuaging some of her
mother-guilt, she’d be ready to continue the phone calls and planning. And she’d better
remember to do the voice diary.

With her mind now back in its usual race to both stay calm and keep track of the
several tasks that would come her way in the next twelve hours, she went out to greet
Adin; it didn’t go so well. Seeing him reminded her that he’d grow up an orphan, a fact
she had always known but had managed to avoid thinking about. Not for the last time,
she imagined, she heard a little voice in her head say, ‘This grieving thing really sucks.”
Rachel had been blessed, she now realized, by a nearly total absence of death in
her close circle. Lije’s was working its way into her system, but too slowly for her taste.
Taking a deep breath, Rachel tried to get her emotions to catch up with her intellect,
which knew that grieving for a husband can easily take years. Even if she counted the
pregnancy, when she had vented a lot of anger and grief in any moment she wasn’t out in
public, she still had easily another year before she’d be back to herself.
After feeding him breakfast, making goo-goo faces at him, taking him to the park,
and putting him down for a nap, Rachel felt somewhat better, and sat down to make her
various phone calls. Her first one had to be to Shomer Kapdan, to get the phone number
for Traffic Victims, so she could find out when she could plan a funeral. He wasn’t
there—where was a police captain in the middle of the day?-- but the secretary gave her
the number. Traffic Victims took not one phone call, but six, although she finally found
out that Lije’s body would be released the following Monday, and that the red heifer
ceremony would be scheduled for Tuesday.
Rachel spent Adin’s nap making her various phone calls, and when he woke up,
she took him and her tape recorder to the park. After Adin went in the swing for a bit,
and was settled down watching other kids play—Rachel felt like he was remarkably
attuned to the people around him, but she didn’t want to become one of those parents
alert to every nuance of precociousness in her child—Rachel took out her recorder and
began to talk. She figured she’d go stream of consciousness, and edit it later.
“The first feeling is one of knowing that your world will never be the same.
Although I suppose it might be true of losing any relative, when a husband goes, even if
he’s already been out of your life for several months, as mine was because he had
disappeared for seven months before we found his body, even if the marriage has
tensions in it that have yet to be resolved, a part of yourself is gone forever. Lije Zeale
was a good man, one who didn’t deserve to be buried in a poorly marked grave by the
side of a rarely traveled road in the north of Israel. I say this not as his wife, although I
would, or as a reporter, but as a human being. While police have yet to announce any
suspects or leads,” Rachel wondered how they were going to handle this, actually,
wouldn’t Moshel have to hear about it at some point? “capturing the man, men, woman,
or women who did this will not change the crime, will not wipe it away, will not make it
better. I hope they are caught, I hope they get the punishment they deserve, whatever that
is, but it won’t make what happened to Lije Zeale any less horrible.”
“Or to Shlomit Hami, either. Viewers will know about Lije Zeale because he was
married to a public figure, an anchorperson on the nightly news. Shlomit Hami was just a
young Yemenite Jew who had the misfortune of being accidentally killed by a man who
couldn’t stand the thought of being sent to a city of refuge. Her family, too, suffered for
months before a casual comment led authorities to the right place to find the body.”
“The New Israeli society has adopted a practice to deal with this kind of
circumstance. Sunday, this reporter will be attending an odd ceremony that expresses
this society’s determination to avoid the Shlomit Hami’s and the Lije Zeale’s of this
world. As far as I understand it, the major communal leaders will gather in an unused
riverbed with a heifer that has never worked before. In front of a large public gathering,
they will declare that they know nothing about the circumstances of Shlomit’s death, and
were not negligent in protecting her in her life, and will call on God to atone for whatever
crime of omission they may have committed by not sufficiently protecting Shlomit as she
passed through their town. I’ll have more on that from the scene; until then, this is
Rachel Tucker, ABC News.”
As she turned off the recorder, Rachel once again found herself giving more
credence to a religious ceremony than she would have expected. She was actually
hoping, and some part of her believed, that something would happen that would make her
feel like these deaths hadn’t been avoidable, and that something
positive—anything—would come of them. She went to sleep that night knowing that the
first three days of the following week would be emotionally draining to an extent she had
not experienced before.
CHAPTER 27
The day of Shlomit’s ceremony dawned cloudy and gray, matching Rachel’s
mood. Adin had slept all right, but not well enough that Rachel felt really rested, Reuven
wasn’t sure he’d get out of the hospital in time to make it to the ceremony, her mom had
decided she was too freaked out (her words) to join her, and Rachel didn’t relish the
thought of attending with Shomer Kapdan. As she stirred the coffee she wasn’t really
drinking, the phone rang.
“Hi, Rachel?”
“Who is this, please?”
“It’s Brian Fortnought, the cameraman that Ed sent to hang out with you the next
couple of weeks. Anyway, I just made it through customs, and wanted to know where
you wanted me to go now.”
The cameraman, great! She’d have an American, a real-live ordinary person,
standing next to her. The excitement bubbled over, so that when she answered him, she
had to restrain herself to avoid having him think that she was on some kind of drugs.
“Hey, Brian, great to hear from you! Listen, there’s this thing this morning
between Jerusalem and the airport; I was going to leave for it in 15 minutes. Are you too
wiped out from the flight, or could you meet me there? After that, you’ll have plenty of
time to get to the hotel, unpack, unwind, you know.”
“No problem; I flew business class, so I slept really well, and I’m good to go.
Just tell me how to get there.”
“Well, actually, it’s going to be just off the main highway at mile marker 27, but
if you have the cabdriver listen to the radio, they’re broadcasting it like crazy; it’s kind of
a due diligence thing, where the mayor of that town has to make sure that as many people
as possible hear about it.”

“Ok, I’ll go straight there and get some background footage. Oh, and wait, here’s
the number for the cellphone I rented.” He read it off as Rachel wrote it down, a little
bemused at his thinking she’d need to call him to find him, since she was she was sure
they’d be two of maybe fifty people attending the event.
A mile before she got there, when she saw the authorities were turning cars off the
highway into makeshift parking lots, with shuttle buses running to the ceremony site,
Rachel realized she could not have been more wrong. When she finally got to where
Shlomit’s family were up on a dais, waiting for the ceremony to begin, Rachel saw at
least 15000 people milling around. She picked up the phone, and called Brian’s cell
number.
“Brian Fortnought.”
“Hi, Brian, it’s Rachel Tucker. I’m standing 20 feet in front of the big dais now;
where are you?”
“I’m further back in the crowd; I found out that they’re going to start with
speeches, first family, then politicians, and then the ceremony. I’ll start working my way
towards you, and I should have plenty of time to get an intro from you before the thing
starts.”
Soon after Rachel finished filming—mostly the same as what she had said the
previous night, making her feel a little redundant—a man approached the microphone.
By this time, the dais had filled, with two groups, one apparently Shlomit’s family and
the other local and national politicians. Rachel recognized a few by face and was sure
she’d recognize the names of others. Her attention was drawn to the man at the
microphone.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I am Kavul Hami, Shlomit’s father. We are
honored by the presence of so many important officials, both political and priestly; after
the ceremony, we will introduce the dais. For now, we welcome Zekharyah Shakhor,
mayor of the nearest city, Zikhron Yaakov (?), who will be conducting the ceremony that
the Torah commanded. The ceremony is important, but our family felt that before we
perform the ritual, whose importance we recognize, that the people assembled should
know a little bit about the young woman we are mourning today.”
Rachel had a special section of her brain into which she could retreat when the
surrounding milieu held nothing of interest for her. She had been to many funerals, and
knew, through hard and long experience, that constructing a moving remembrance of any
person was not an easy task. Emotion, as honest and deeply felt as it might be, did not
automatically express itself in a way that others could tap into. As each member of the
Hami family spoke, clearly deeply affected by the loss of a daughter, sister, and aunt,
Rachel found herself really engaged only by the father, who gave the bibliographical
details that turned Shlomit into a real person, and by one of Shlomit’s nieces, who spoke
of the activities they used to engage in together.
It was so moving that Rachel jotted it down right afterwards.
Dear Aunt Shlomit,
I’ll miss you when it’s raining and I have no one to stand outside with my mouth
open wide.
I’ll miss you when I’m bored and I can’t just call you and talk about
–whatever—until I’m not bored anymore.
I’ll miss you when I have a nightmare and no one to give me good thoughts to
focus on instead.
I’ll miss you when I have a big project for school and can’t call to get you to help
me pick it apart into manageable pieces.
I’ll miss going to your wedding, whenever it would have been; I’ll miss having
you at my wedding, my children’s births and celebrations.
I’ll miss you, Aunt Shlomit, every time I think of our family, because we’ll never
be whole again.”
The gaping hole in this little girl’s life forced Rachel’s mind to Lije, whom she
had intended to leave on the back burner of her consciousness for the duration of the
ceremony. She had barely finished wiping those tears away, when Shlomit’s boyfriend
got up to speak.
“Shlomit, what is there to say? We were robbed of the chance to get to know
each other, the chance to find out where our future lay, the chance to walk together in the
park, to stare into each other’s eyes, to bask in the knowledge that someone else in the
world thinks we’re the best. I have not had you with me for a long time already, Shlomit,
but I always have, and always will have, the endless possibilities of what might have
been, and for that, Shlomit, I thank you.”
It was only as he was speaking—perfectly, in Rachel’s mind; simple, heartfelt,
direct—that she realized that people might expect her to speak at Lije’s ceremony, which
produced a kind of dread that felt unusual for someone so accustomed to public speaking
and appearances. Lije’s death was different; it was personal, and she didn’t particularly
want to share it with 15,000 people or more.
Her attitude changed after the mayor spoke, though. In the kind of delivery that
suggested a polished and veteran politician, he spoke of the town’s efforts to insure the
security of residents and visitors— guardrails on all of the highways had been installed,
so that even cars that veered off the road wouldn’t hit anybody or fall off a cliff, a
travelers bureau to insure that anyone passing through could find a place for the night,
accompaniment for those who had to travel while it was dark, and a significant public
relations program emphasizing citizens’ responsibility to watch for, and report, any
inappropriate activity. Although not as emotional as the other speeches, it was moving in
its own way, since it appeared that the town was actively upset about Shlomit’s death and
determined that it never happen that way in their town again.
Rachel’s mind wandered every now and then since the mayor was not a
briefspoken fellow, but she came back just in time to hear him close by saying,
“The society we build depends on each and every one of us. We today are hear to
tell the Hami family that we recognize that this should never have happened, that we
accept, as individuals and as a community, the responsibility to insure that such a thing
never happens again. We can never bring Shlomit back---although, with God’s help—the
time of the Resurrection should come soon, but we can tell you that because of the
terrible tragedy we are hear to mourn and mark today, Zikhron Yaakov and its
surroundings will become safer, for its residents, for its visitors, and for its passers-
through. And every time that someone avoids a danger or finds a helping hand here in
Zikhron, they will know that Shlomit is the reason they are being so well taken care of.
The eglah that we will kill here in just a moment is not just a sacrifice, but a permanent
commemoration of Shlomit’s sacrifice, a sacrifice we intend to insure will not have been
in vain.”
And then it was the priests’ turn. Since the circumstances of Shlomit’s death
were pretty well known—Zeke was telling and selling his story to everyone who would
listen and buy it—the priests skipped their usual call for information and went straight to
the ritual. The mental notes Rachel had been taking on the ceremony, so that she could
approach Lije’s with some greater sense that she knew what was happening, moved into
high gear.
The priests brought forward a young calf, and had the assembled dignitaries step
forward and place their hands on the calf’s head. They then led them in a recitation of
verses from Scripture, declaring that they had had no knowledge of this woman’s
situation, and no complicity in her death. Afterwards, the priests took the calf down from
the dais, to the designated spot in the riverbed, and… honestly, Rachel had thought, when
she heard about this part, that watching them break a calf’s neck would itself be so
horrible as to overwhelm all the other parts of the ceremony.
At the crack of the calf’s neck, the entire crowd gasped; some people fainted,
vomited, or retched. Most just hung their heads. Listening to the calf low pathetically as
the life slipped away from it, brought home the horror of death to Rachel in a way that
her previous experiences had not. She had stood outside burning buildings as firefighters
carried out small dead children, she had sat with terminal cancer patients a few hours
before they departed, but watching a healthy large animal slowly die, all because of a
lack of care by a thoughtless human being, powerfully reminded Rachel and, she
assumed, everybody else there, of the gift that life is, and the need to protect it.
Switching back to professional mode, which a psychiatrist would have said was a
defense against the depth of emotions she was feeling, Rachel heard her internal voice
beginning to compose her voice over for Brian’s footage. It was already off and running,
emphasizing the power of drastic actions as an aid to memory and trying to find a way to
evoke for the viewers back home what it was like to have to listen to an animal die, the
sense of determination it fostered to do everything in one’s power to avoid having this
happen again.
As the crowd dispersed after the ceremony, largely subdued, with a few hushed
conversations about safety improvements other locales could introduce, Rachel was
reluctant to leave. From here, she’d go with Brian to Jerusalem, get him settled, look at
the pre-edited footage, come up with the voice over, go home to Adin, go to sleep, and
wake up to go to Lije’s funeral, burial, and then, the next day—since there was no
shiva—his egalah arufah ceremony. Moving as it was, Rachel realized, it had not yet
had the deterrent effect that was hoped for, since people were still being killed outside
towns with no visible explanation for what occurred.
Pushing all those thoughts aside—she had to return to thinking like a journalist--
Rachel headed for the office to meet Brian, and begin what she assumed would be among
the worst 48 hours of her life.

CHAPTER 28
Reuven’s showing up at her doorstep soon after she put Adin to bed did wonders
for Rachel’s mood, although the cumulative effect of the day’s ceremony and anticipation
of the next day’s funeral made her almost too exhausted for human interaction. Reuven
himself looked every ounce of the fatigue that his pushing himself to be out of the
hospital in time for the funeral had caused. They mostly sat on Rachel’s couch, an
amiable silence strengthening the bond between them, fortified by snippets of
conversation.
The most important one for Rachel was Reuven’s advice about the eulogy.
“I have to figure out what to say tomorrow, and I feel like it’s going to take me
the whole night to come up with anything.”
“Why not go to sleep now, and wake up in six hours, and do it then?”
“I’m afraid I won’t wake up.”
“Why not just not speak at all? You’ve got Lije’s parents and good friends
already speaking, so it’s not like he’ll go uneulogized; many people recommend against
husbands and wives speaking at funerals anyway. After all, marriage is so complicated,
even the best of marriages, that it’s difficult to step back and give the purely positive
picture that a eulogy is supposed to be. Besides, you’ve gone through a lot, so people
wouldn’t expect you to speak.”
“I know, and ordinarily I’d do just that, but—and I don’t mean this the wrong
way—I’m Rachel Tucker. I speak publicly, very publicly, for a very nice living. It was
my money that helped us be able to move to Israel, but also my money that kept us in
America for longer than Lije wanted. I just feel that I have to use these talents to honor
his memory; it’s the least I can do.”
“Sure, but as a news anchor, you have other people write the news for you. I
know, I know,” Rachel had been about to protest that she did a lot of her own reporting,
“you do a lot of your own reporting, and wrote your live copy. But you’re day to day
newscasts have a team of writers putting them together.”
As Reuven’s words sunk in, Rachel jumped up and, impulsively, kissed him on
the lips. “Reuven, you’re a genius! I’ll call my copywriter back in the States, give her a
detailed picture of the things I want to say, and she can write it for me, fax it here, I can
review and edit it, and it’ll be great! Thank you sooooo much, what a weight that is off
my shoulders.”
Twenty minutes later, flushed with the excitement of having hurdled what had
seemed an insurmountable barrier, Rachel came back in the room, saying, “Well, in an
hour from now, I should have a fax of my eulogy to review and revise. I’m just going to
lie down in my room til then—the fax’ll wake me when it comes in. Reuven?” As she
had been rambling, she had finally looked at him and realized that he had fallen asleep.
Rachel looked at the gentle giant in repose, a wounded, tired man whose face softened in
sleep, with much of the worry erased. Not a handsome man, Rachel thought, but one
who exuded qualities she had always admired.

Rachel quietly covered Reuven with a blanket, airkissed his forehead—when not
in the heat of the moment she remembered herself, and his views of propriety in
nonmarital relationships—went into her room, closed the door, and went to sleep.
When she woke up in the morning, she didn’t feel fully rested—three drafts of a
eulogy took a lot out of a person even when being aided by a professional writer—but the
burning fires of her internal energy had been replenished a great deal. She woke to find
her mind reviewing all of the events of the day. There would be an hour of receiving
visitors before the funeral. While ordinarily frowned upon—in Jewish tradition, Rachel
learned, mourning didn’t start until after burial—the extended absence of the deceased
before the body was discovered led the rabbi in charge (with a lot of help from Reuven,
who was clearly more comfortable with legal creativity than the rabbi, who appeared to
be a bureaucratic functionary left over from before the Arrival) to allow a real receiving
line.
After that ordeal—Rachel never knew what to say when there were only two
minutes to have a conversation, especially not when people were in all sincerity but also
in their usual inarticulateness trying to convey their deep sorrow at her loss—there would
be the funeral itself. Rachel had asked both of Lije’s parents to speak, but, in character
for them, only his mother would. Each of his siblings wanted a chance, as did his oldest
nephew, whom Lije had practically raised, since he was still single when the boy was
young.
And then it would be her turn, but she wasn’t nearly as nervous as yesterday.
Almost unconsciously, Rachel patted the speech in her pocket, to give herself the
confidence that it was still there. Her mind, however, had gone on to the funeral, to
watching the bodybearers carry the stretcher to the grave, to imagining what it would be
like to see him lowered into the ground, to start shoveling the dirt on him and watch
others complete the job. Certainly she needn’t worry that she wouldn’t recognize the
finality of the moment.
Having reached a reasonable breakpoint in her reverie, Rachel put her feet on the
floor, went into the bathroom, and showered. From there, events moved in a blur until,
almost in an instant, she found herself at the podium, the pages of her speech on the
lectern in front of her. The hundreds of people who had given her condolences in the last
hour had only emphasized for her how important it was to do right by Lije, a man who
had touched many more people than she had ever realized.
Taking a deep breath, she looked around at the mourners, most of whom had
stopped in at the receiving line. Numerous people from ABC News, both the local staff
and many more of her coworkers than she would have expected who had flown in from
the States, and especially from Europe bureaus. Her parents, her mom weeping copiously
for a man she had barely tolerated in life. But, in massive numbers, the funeral was
populated by Lije’s family, Lije’s Israel friends, whom she had met at numerous Shabbat
meals but, embarrassingly, had stubbornly refused to remember beyond their names and
very basic information, and other people she had never met at all.
Her responsibility to do well by her dead husband, to capture his wonderful
qualities and overlook his failings, to give the people assembled some sense of the Lije
she knew and loved, overwhelmed her once again, and she almost turned around and fled.
Then she looked at Reuven, cradling Adin in his massive arms and looking up at her
expectantly, encouragingly, and endearingly, and she was ready to go on.
“I mourn you, Lije Zeale, for the man you were and would have been, the
husband you were and would have been, and the father we will never know.” The
beginning, so powerful in her mind when she went over it with Ann Zish in the NY
office, was even more so, at least for her, as she said it, so that she recited most of the
eulogy from memory, her eyes too filled with tears to read the pages in front of her, too
freely flowing to be wiped away.
“I mourn you for the idealism that led you to bring me here to this remarkable
country, to cast our lots, as a couple, with the future of history, with the center of a new
era of peace and prosperity for all human beings. I mourn you for the gentle way you
interacted with all the people you met, giving them the sense that you respected each of
them for who they were, and yet hoped to join them in becoming more then they could
have ever imagined becoming. The mourners here today, representative of the various
areas of your life, testify to how much you did in how little time.”
“I mourn the husband who was the hand of God in my life in so many ways.”
Rachel had hesitated greatly before writing these words, as this had been a bone of
contention between them. Lije had always been trying to interpret events as signs from
God, and Rachel had absolutely hated when he did that. Over time, but mostly in
retrospect, she had come to see some of what he meant. Promotions that she could have
taken but for his lifestyle and needs, promotions she got because he happened to make a
clever comment at a cocktail party, their having been living in Israel when he
disappeared, forcing her to keep returning there, every so often she, too, had felt that
there was a guiding hand, and it always appeared in the form of Lije’s needs guiding their
lives in a certain direction that later turned out to be where they should have been.
“I mourn the husband who challenged me, loved me, fought with me” Rachel had
found that couldn’t let even a eulogy pass with the impression that anything was perfect.
For too long, eulogies about wonderful marriages had given her the false impression that
some marriages were just perfect, a misimpression that led her to break up with perfectly
acceptable partners, and to worry each time she had an argument with Lije. She hoped
that nobody walked away from this funeral thinking that she hadn’t enjoyed being
married to Lije, but she intended to be absolutely certain that all here would know that
they fought and that she loved him in spite of, or maybe even all the more because of, the
fights that they had, “as an equal, who respected my independence, my thoughts, my right
to differ from his views. I mourn the husband who made me feel whole, made me feel
like I didn’t need any other companion than him. I mourn the years we will never have
together. You know, on our anniversaries, Lije would each year give me a plaque—once
in wood, once in pottery, once in silver—that read “Come grow old with me, the best is
yet to come.” I mourn the plaques I will never get, and the years that would have brought
the plaques with them.”
“Most of all, I mourn Lije on behalf of his son, Adin. I mourn the father he will
never have the chance to be, the silly faces and games he will never have the chance to
make at and play with his son, the walks they will never take where he can pass his
knowledge and perspective of the world on to his little boy. I mourn not having him by
my side as I grow into motherhood, not having the opportunity to be married to the
wonderful father I know he would have been.”
“I mourn the mode of your passing, Lije, almost as much as the passing itself.
Would that you would have had the blessing of a bedridden death, your loved ones at
your side, a stream of visitors reminding you daily and hourly of how much you had
contributed to the world. Would that you not have to had died on the side of a road,
struck by an unknown car, buried by unknown hands in a barely marked grave, with none
to stop and say, here lies a man who lived his life seeking to make the world a better
place.
Now at least you can rest Lije, you can rest with the words we have all heard
today accompanying you in that next world you always spoke of. You can wear our love
and admiration as a garland around your neck, as a crown upon your head, as a badge of
the honor your life earned you.”
“I mourn you, Lije Zeale, in private and in public; I will mourn you in sickness
and in health, in happy times and in sad; and I will mourn you as I build the rest of my
life with our son, until death reunites us. May your soul be bound up in the bond of life,
may your repose be peace, and let us look forward to the day that the Prophet speaks of,
the conclusion to history you repeated to me endlessly, “Death will be swallowed up
forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces. Amen”
Rachel had been so focused on saying the words clearly and audibly, had been so
busy crying her way through her speech, that she had not noticed how others were
reacting. When she left the podium to go back to her seat, she bowed her head, too
emotionally spent to engage in eye contact with anyone else. When nothing happened for
a few long minutes, she looked up wondering what had gone wrong, and realized that
everyone in the room was silently absorbing the tragedy, joining her in mourning Lije.
Many were crying, and the empathy of their tears went far to lifting a weight from
Rachel’s shoulders and from her heart.
When she stood for the rabbi’s memorial prayer, his referring to Eliyahu b.
Yehoshua haLevi, Lije’s Hebrew name, she felt a chapter closing. Later, at the cemetery,
when the stretcher bearing him had been placed in a makeshift cement grave in the
ground and covered over with earth, she again felt the finality of the farewell. She recited
the kaddish prayer with the rabbi, and turned away to walk through a line of those who
had come to offer condolences. From there, she went home, where she sat on the floor
for a ceremonial few minutes and accepted condolences, after which she rose,
symbolically and physically, to rejoin the living, to put death behind her and to embrace
life.
But people stayed long into the night, telling her stories she had never known,
introducing her to aspects of Lije’s life she had never been aware of, deepening even
further her appreciation of the man he had been. She went to bed that night spent but
enriched, almost ready to face the next day. It was only as she was falling asleep, and too
late to reawaken herself and think about it, that she noticed that Reuven hadn’t come back
to the house after the burial.
CHAPTER 29
Rachel woke to light streaming through her window, the remnants of a dream in
her head. Lije was in it and so was Reuven. They were fighting, except that Lije kept
shouting, “This isn’t my fight, just let me go and I’ll walk away!” For some reason,
Reuven wouldn’t, even though he was getting clobbered. Despite being shorter and
smaller, Lije kept landing punishing blows, although never forceful enough to push
Reuven off of him and let him run away. A few times, Lije managed to get a few steps
away, but Reuven would pull him back to get beat up by him some more.
Rachel thought about the dream during her shower, breakfast, and brief prayers.
The prayers were a chore, but she knew that when all of this cleared up, she still needed
to be making progress towards becoming a haverah, or the authorities would expel her.
She still had no idea whether she wanted to stay in this country, but she did want to have
the option of staying. After a full hour of thinking about the dream, she was no closer to
figuring it out than when she had started, but it did remind her of Reuven’s absence the
previous night.
She called the Temple Grounds, only to find that Reuven had taken the day off.
When she called his apartment, he answered the phone groggily, as if he had been
sleeping. Rachel looked at her watch; 9:45. “Reuven, are you still asleep?”
“No, again. I woke up at 5:30 to go to sunrise prayers, but then I crashed around
9. I guess all this activity has been wearing me down. What can I do for you, Rachel?”
Rachel didn’t like his tone; it was more professional than personal, more the
saintly public Reuven than the complex individual she had been getting to know over the
past few days.

“I just called to find out if everything’s ok. I was surprised that I didn’t see you at
my apartment last night, although you obviously had no responsibility to come, and then
when I heard you had taken the day off, I wondered if something happened. And, of
course, I wanted to be sure that you were going to be at the eglah arufah ceremony later.”
“I’m fine, Rachel, and I’ll be at the ceremony later, but in a professional capacity;
I’ll be one of the priests reciting the call for God to atone for this blood among us. But
I’m sure I’ll see you around even afterwards.”
Something odd was going on with Reuven, but Rachel couldn’t figure out what it
was. “See me around? Reuven, aren’t you my sponsor for studying to be a haverah?
And aren’t we…I don’t know, I thought something was happening between us.”
Reuven paused. “I think we should have this conversation in person, and I don’t
think today or right now is a good time to do it. How about if, after the ceremony, we go
somewhere and talk?”
“Fine, but promise me you’ll sit next to me for the beginning part of the
ceremony, so you can explain what’s going on. I got some idea from Shlomit’s
ceremony, but I want to get a better understanding- so I can be a better haverah.” She
added that last part just to annoy him, since she knew that he had sensed her basic
cynicism about the process and about the religion.
But he wasn’t rising to the bait, at least not today. “Fine, we’ll sit next to each
other on the dais, and I’ll tell you what’s going on.”
“I thought you said that you’d only tell me what’s going on with usafter the
ceremony,” Rachel teased.

He was so not in the mood, he just said, “I mean, with the ceremony,” and hung
up.
Wondering what was bothering him successfully insulated Rachel from facing up
to how hard today’s ceremony would be. It had been hard enough to watch when it was
just a garden variety tragedy, where they knew whose car had struck and killed her
(although they had not had any eyewitness testimony or solid circumstantial evidence,
which would have stopped them from doing the ceremony), but this was Lije, first of all,
and this was where she knew, but couldn’t prove, who had killed him, second of all.
In the end, though, the event went nothing like she had expected. It started
smoothly at noon, as it was called for, and everything went as it had at Shlomit’s, with
one exception; here, the emcee of the event, just before killing the calf, asked one last
time—there had been a pretty big media blitz—whether anyone had direct knowledge of
the killing; whoever did should step forward and make themselves known.
After pausing to allow people to come forward, the priest lifted the meat cleaver
to break the animal’s neck, and just as his hand started coming down, a man came
running up to the dais, shouting, “Wait, I know the killer!” throwing the whole
proceeding into an uproar. The man, wearing a dirty workman’s uniform and with grease
stains all over his hands, was about to continue, when police officers surrounded him and
escorted him away from the podium.
The priest addressed the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, with all due
apologies, we need to hold off on this ceremony until we check out this man’s story. We
cannot do it in public, however, since he might simply be slandering an innocent person.
Please excuse us while we have a conversation with him.”
Rachel turned to Reuven. “Let’s go.”
He looked puzzled. “Go where?”
“To hear what the man has to say.”
“We can’t go; didn’t you just hear? They do this in private, so as not to slander
an innocent man. If there’s any validity to his story, they’ll come out and tell us, and
then we’ll find out what’s going on. Meanwhile, I guess this is as good a time as any for
me to tell you what was on my mind since yesterday.”
Rachel had managed not to think about that, but immediately felt the anxiety of
what he was about to say in all the usual places, her toes, under her arms, across her back.
She took a few deep breaths and consciously sat up straighter, which made her feel more
in control, even though she really wasn’t. “Yes?” She didn’t mean to be cool as she said
it, but she tried too hard not to seem nervous, and it came out that way.
“Listening to you speak about Lije yesterday, I realized how selfish I have been in
getting as… friendly with you as I have allowed myself. You are obviously in an
emotionally difficult place in your life, and any man who extends you the sympathy,
empathy, and caring you deserve would undoubtedly bring out emotions in you that have
nothing to do with whether or not you were romantically interested in that person. I
breached my professional responsibilities by letting us go any further than just the
business side of our relationship, and I wanted to apologize to you for that, and to tell you
that I think we should back off from this, at least until you’ve really had time to grieve
for Lije properly.”
Rachel was stunned. Did he really not know her at all? Did he not know how
much she had come to enjoy his company, just for ordinary things like walking with
Adin, like having a cup of coffee, like laughing at some conceited politician’s windy
speech? Did he really think of her as a vulnerable female who couldn’t control herself
from falling in love with the first man who cared for her after her husband’s
disappearance and death? And, for that matter, did he really think that she had lacked for
men trying to step into Lije’s void in the past several months?
She didn’t get the chance to tell him any of that, though, because just then, a
younger priest went to the podium and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the
inconvenience, but it seems that we have a preliminary identification of the killer,
absolving the local township of the responsibility for this death. Thank you for coming
and congratulations to Katsrin on no longer having to feel like it should have acted better
in avoiding this horrible tragedy.”
Before Rachel could ask Reuven what was going on, the priest motioned for the
two of them to join him, turned and walked off the platform to one of the tents where
organizers had been coordinating the logistics of a large gathering of people. Hurrying to
catch up with him, Reuven asked, “What’s going on?”
The priest answered, “I don’t know anything; I was told to make that
announcement and to bring you back to my superiors. Sorry.” With that, they walked
the fifty meters to the tent in silence. Once under the roof of the tent, it was easy to see
where they were heading, as all eyes were focused on a closed-off area that had originally
been the command center for the event. At the entranceway, the priest opened the door
for them, gave a little bow, and walked away.
Rachel and Reuven entered, not knowing what to expect, but certainly not
expecting what they found, which was Shomer Kapdan and Gaavan Yoshor sitting with
the scruffy man who had interrupted the proceedings earlier. Kapdan rose when they
entered.
“Ah, Priest haOzer and Ms. Tucker, how nice to see you. Joseph Metaken here
has a most interesting story for us, which we have taken the trouble of insuring would
only be heard by people whose discretion we can trust. It seems that around the date that
your husband disappeared, Ms. Tucker, Pinhas Moshel—Mr. Metaken recognized him
from his pilgrimages to the Temple, and from various news reports—and a woman, who
he has since identified as Mr. Moshel’s late wife, Liat, came into Mr. Metaken’s garage
here in Katsrin to get their fender fixed. It had been bent all out of shape and needed to
be replaced. Mr. Metaken fixed the fender and didn’t think anything of it.
Now here’s the interesting thing. Mr. Metaken is a great junk collector, so when
he fixes a car, he keeps the parts he removes, hoping that someday he will need that part
for another repair, and will be able to charge less than other used parts vendors. So when
the news went out about the finding of your husband’s body, he got to thinking, and went
into his pile of used fenders, and found the one in question. Looking at it more carefully,
he found that there was in fact some dried material on the bottom. We’re going to head
over there in a few minutes to see if we can get a blood sample, to connect Moshel
directly to Lije’s death.”
Rachel had to consciously remind herself to breathe. Getting Moshel for Lije’s
death was almost too good to be true; and then, a thought made her worry that in fact it
was too good to be true. “But even if Lije’s blood is on it, couldn’t Moshel claim that
Liat had been driving the car? What would be the consequences if he were only an
accessory to covering up an accidental killing?”
Kapdan smiled. “An interesting and perceptive question, Ms. Tucker, but not one
we need worry about now, because…”
Reuven interrupted. “Because Liat had a broken ankle at the time, so she couldn’t
have been driving!”
Rachel wheeled on Reuven. “How the hell did you know that?”
Reuven smiled, pleased with his knowing something she did not. “Because I read
the whole diary instead of just the important parts. Liat had broken her right ankle three
weeks before this accident, and then had gotten the cast off two or three weeks later.
Only after that did she seek you out—she wanted to wait until you had gotten over the
initial shock before she eased into a friendship, where she hoped to help you and to find a
way to steer you towards finding the body.”
Rachel turned to Kapdan. “So, if Liat couldn’t drive, then this testimony puts him
in the driver’s seat of a car that has Lije’s blood on its fender, and that was bent out of
shape by some impact. Is that enough to put Moshel in a city of refuge for accidental
murder?”
Gaavan Yoshor stepped in. “If I may, Ms. Tucker, as this is sort of my
jurisdiction. We are in the process of asking that question to the relevant authorities;
what is clear, though, is that it is good enough to suspend him from Temple service, at
least until the whole thing gets sorted out. I suspect, in fact, that it will be enough to keep
him out of Temple service permanently, and possibly even land him in a city of refuge.”
Reuven jumped up, struck by a thought. “Temple service! I’ll bet that…” He
controlled the next words out of his mouth with no little effort, “murderer is there now,
offering sacrifices with all the other priests, as if nothing had happened. We’ve got to
stop him, now! Kapdan, can we take a police car?”
Kapdan stood up as well. “It would be my pleasure to drive you; I assure you you
will not find a faster ride back to Jerusalem.”
Reuven looked to Rachel. “Rachel, you coming?”
CHAPTER 30
They got in the car at 1:00, and sunset that day was at 6:00. That meant, Reuven
told her, that the daily sacrifice, the last of the day, would be slaughtered and processed
begin at 2:30, and offered at 3:30. Depending on how fast Kapdan could drive, they
could drag Moshel out of the Temple before he had any part in that sacrifice at all.
Rachel once again felt like she was missing an important piece of the puzzle, but
needed to clear up something else before she pursued this one. She looked towards the
front of the car, but was pretty sure that Kapdan couldn’t hear them over the noise fo the
siren and while focusing on driving at over 140—kilometers per hour, she realized.
“Reuven, about what you said on the phone this morning, I think you misunderstood me
yesterday. I will always miss Lije, perhaps more now than over time, but always in some
way. But I didn’t become interested in you because I was some lonely woman desperate
for a relationship. I was and am attracted to your caring, your strength and how you
cloak it in gentleness, your idealism—many of the same qualities that first interested me
in Lije. I’m a big girl, Reuven, and if this was just a rebound relationship, I’d know it.
So please don’t back off just when I feel most comfortable-- now that I know I’m not a
married woman—seeing how far this can go.”
Reuven smiled wordlessly, nodded, and turned away, Rachel thought because he
was blinking away tears. She had to move on to the other issue, though. “But, Reuven,
explain to me why we’re taking our lives in our hands to capture Moshel before he offers
this sacrifice. What would happen if we got to him an hour later, and drove there safely?
He’s not a flight risk, is he?”
Reuven turned back, and his face showed his struggle to try to articulate what he
felt so deeply. “Rachel, we’ve never really discussed the Temple that much, and I know
that you don’t yet have a lot of faith in what goes on there. But for me, who sees that
worship as cementing the Jewish people’s relationship with God, who thinks that all the
great things that happen in our lives could be traced back to God and our relationship
with Him, well, knowing that an unqualified person—any unqualified person, really, but
a murderer especially—is standing there representing me and all Jews, well, that’s
intolerable. I can’t change the past, but if I can stop him from defiling the present or the
future, I’m going to do my best to do so.”

Rachel smiled wistfully, sure that Lije would have said almost the same thing in
the same situation, and that she found both of theirs idealism almost unbearable
attractive. Since she couldn’t express that physically—certainly not with Kapdan in the
front seat—she just stared directly in Reuven’s eyes and mouthed, “You are
so…irresistible,” which got him to blush, the reaction she had hoped for.
When they stopped staring at each other a few minutes later, Rachel’s thoughts
turned to the content of what Reuven had said. Why did she have so much trouble
believing that worldly events traced back to God? Certainly, when Reuven had been in
the hospital, some primitive part of her had honestly believed that God could step in and
heal him; why couldn’t that be true on a more regular basis as well? At the very least,
wasn’t it possible that that was true in the Temple, the House of God?
Rachel couldn’t do better than a maybe, which would have to be good enough. At
a dead end with that thought process, she turned back to Reuven, “So what happens once
we catch him?”
Reuven thought. “Well, we can take him into custody for covering up an
accident, but that would just get him a slap on the wrist—he’d have to attend some
citizen responsibility classes, pay a fine, and check in with a supervisor for a year to
prove that he had rehabilitated himself. It would annoy him, sure, but it wouldn’t strike
at his power.”
“Assuming that we can convince a court that he was driving, though, I believe
that we could keep him out of Temple service forever. We might not get him to have to
go to a city of refuge—those courts require a higher standard of proof than just

circumstantial evidence—but Temple service is really the source of his power. So even
just with that, he’ll be through as a power broker.”
Rachel was surprised and angry. “And that’s it? He kills and hides my husband,
leaves me an agunah throughout a pregnancy and childbirth, and then kills his own wife,
and all we can do is stop him from serving in the Temple?”
Reuven put up his hands placatingly. “Rachel, Rachel, you’re missing two
important points. First, you’re not thinking of who Pinhas Moshel is. Losing the Temple
service, and the perks of his position, is just about a death sentence for him.”
“He’ll adapt. I know his type. He’ll hit rock bottom, and then carve out some
kind of life for himself, and people will end up admiring him for having made something
of himself after such a dramatic and public downfall. Twenty years from now, the next
version of myself—or the version after that—will do a prime time interview with him,
celebrating his new life. And my husband and his wife will still be dead.”
“Which brings me to the other part of this whole mess you’re not paying attention
to—God. We don’t pretend that we catch all the criminals, right all the wrongs, protect
all the innocents, but we do our best. The evidence we have now lets us get Moshel out
of the Temple, lets us embarrass him publicly and destroy his reputation and his
powerbase. If more evidence comes up in the future, we’ll get him for other
stuff—maybe this will lead other people to come forward and report other deeds, who
knows? But the important thing is that we recognize that we do what we can and leave
the rest to God to handle.”

“And, by the way, if God decides to give Moshel a chance to sincerely change,
well, wouldn’t you want a chance like that to? We don’t get to pick whether to be born,
we’re not allowed to choose when we die, we only control everything between. Moshel
can never bring back Lije or Liat—we’ll have to wait for the Resurrection for that—but
there’s a lot of good he could do if he set his mind to it. Are you willing to slam the door
on the possibility of his rehabilitation?”
Rachel opened her mouth, hot with anger at the possibility that Moshel would get
a chance that Lije wouldn’t. The only words that would come, though, were, “Some
Utopia you’ve built here!”
Reuven shook his head. “No, Rachel, that’s what outsider misunderstand. The
Arrival wasn’t the creation of Utopia, it was the first step in working towards it. We
know we have a long way to go, but think of it this way—65% of this country feels more
engaged with God and religion than before the Arrival. We know that leaves 35% the
same or less, but change takes time. One guy like Moshel, with a few hundred
helpers—less than .01% of the population—can create a lot of misery. The question isn’t
whether we have created a Utopia, it’s whether and how fast we’ll be able to. I think
we’re making good progress, and Liat’s and Lije’s deaths—if they lead us to
Moshel—and your insistence on sticking with investigating him, are all going to bring us
even closer.”
That Reuven was right did nothing for Rachel’s mood. She turned her face to the
window and watched the road whiz past the rest of the way to Jerusalem.
CHAPTER 31
For most of the ride, Kapdan drove miraculously, and they were approaching
Jerusalem by 2:15, with plenty of time to catch Moshel before he participated at all in the
afternoon sacrifice. As they got the city outskirts, though, traffic became an
insurmountable problem. Siren blaring, Kapdan weaved expertly in and out of lanes as
cars tried to make room for him. Even so, Rachel was thankful the emergency wasn’t in
the car or life threatening. They pulled up at the last place that vehicles were allowed at
2:45, and the three of them piled out of the car, racing to the nearest entry gate to the
Temple.
As they ran, Kapdan said, “Rachel, remember that you and I touched Lije’s body
yesterday, so we cannot go into the Temple for at least seven days.”
Rachel flashed her maternity badge. “I can’t even go onto the Mount for another
couple of days, so don’t worry about me.” Sure enough as they came to checkpoint to get
onto the Mount, Rachel was stopped by, of all people, Levi the Levi.
He smiled. “Nice to see you again, Ms. Tucker, but you know I can’t let you onto
the Mount yet.” Rachel nodded and was about to step back and let Reuven and Kapdan
continue on, when it struck her that it was a remarkable coincidence—were there such
things as coincidences?—that it was the same Levi here, at a different entrance to the
Mount on the day she happened to come here once again.
And then she felt it. She didn’t know what made her think this, but Rachel
suddenly knew that she was supposed to be part of taking Moshel down, that he needed
to know that it was her friendship with Liat, her insistence on tracking Liat’s death, that
had brought about his downfall, whatever might happen in the future. As Reuven and
Shomer Kapdan started to go through the gate, Rachel stopped them and turned to Levi.
“Levi, do you have a kind of intercom system here for the Mount? You know, for
emergencies?”
“We do, but it has to really be an emergency, or I’ll be severely disciplined.”
“Well, pull it out, because we’ve got a murderer serving in the Temple right
now.”
Levi was suspicious. “Another murderer, Ms. Tucker?”
Rachel smiled, remembering her last hysterical interaction with Levi. “It’s the
same one, actually, but this time I have better proof; may I introduce Shomer Kapdan,
Captain of the Jerusalem police? He is here to arrest Pinhas Moshel for the accidental
murder of my husband, Elijah Tucker.” Levi looked over at Kapdan, who nodded, and
then at Reuven, who smiled encouragingly.
Hesitantly, still not sure he was doing the right thing, Levi flipped a switch,
setting off an alarm that sounded a great deal like a siren. Turning on his microphone, he
said, “Attention, attention! Please stop the service right now; we have a murderer in the
Mikdash. Repeat, please halt the service, we have a murderer in the Mikdash; please
capture and hold Pinhas Moshel for the proper authorities, who are on their way up now.”
Even before Levi turned off the mike, they could hear the uproar outside,; what
they did not find out until later was that many people had cheered the news. Moshel had
struck fear in many hearts, but not love, and people were more than happy to help hold
him and bring him off the Temple grounds to where Kapdan handcuffed him and took
him away.
Rachel didn’t see any of that, since she couldn’t get onto the Temple Mount. But
she knew that this would make the nightly news, the papers, the Internet. Spent by the
emotions of seeing her obsession fulfilled, she sank into a chair, thrilled to have caught
him and distraught at how little he would suffer. I did the best I could, Liat, she
whispered, I just hope it’s enough.
CHAPTER 32
Rachel assumed a night would come soon where she didn’t drag herself into bed,
completely spent from the day’s happening, but this night wasn’t it. She needed to pay
some bills, to do some voice diary for the footage she was sure that Brian had been
collecting that day. She had seen him at the funeral, at today’s ceremony, and she
assumed he’d borrow footage from this afternoon’s hubbub at the Temple.
But all that would have to wait until tomorrow; right now, bed was the only place
she intended to be. She had hired a babysitter for the night to take care of Adin, and she
intended to rest and recuperate. She dropped off into a deep and restful sleep, so deep
that when Moshel woke her three hours later, it took her a few minutes to even realize
what was going on.
“Pinhas! What are you doing here?” Even as she put a name to the face standing
over her, terror invaded every part of her body, and, wildly, her thoughts, turned not only
to herself, but to the baby. And the sitter. Had he hurt them?
“Oh, I think you know what I’m doing here, Rachel. If I can’t live the life that I
want to, there’s no way that you’re going to live the life you want to. Nor, I might add,
am I going to let your offspring survive, either. As I will be cut off from my life source,
my service in the Temple, so will you and your husband—that idiot standing in the
middle of the road who started this whole thing; five years, I’m doing fine with my
business, not bothering anybody, and then he has to step in front of my car—so will you
and your husband lose your continuity, your mark on this world. Say goodbye Rachel.”
Moshel stood up, and pulled an impressively long and scary samurai sword out of a
scabbard.
Think, Rachel, think, what would delay him, what would make him not kill her?
“Pinhas, if you kill me in cold blood, you can never serve in the Temple again, you know
that, don’t you?”
He snorted. “Fool! I’m already not going to be able to serve there ever.”
“No, Pinhas, you might still be able to fight it. The case is circumstantial—you
can beat it with the right lawyer, I bet.”
He appeared to consider. “Maybe you’re right.” But then the gleam returned to
his eye. “But no one has to know I killed you either.”
“Sure they do. If you kill me now, you’ll have to get purified from death-
impurity. You’ll have to get sprinkled on the third and seventh days, and people’ll want
to know where you came into contact with a corpse.”
Moshel mock bowed to her. “Very impressive, and of course you’re right.
Which is why I’m not going to kill you, I’m just going to force you to swallow two pills.
The first is an ordinary sleeping pill that will make sure you don’t go anywhere while the
second does its job. The second is time-release pill containing shellfish toxin, known as
saxotoxin. Once it works it way through the buffering material, this’ll kill you in
seconds. The time-release—it’ll take about an hour before it lets the poison into your
system—will give me enough time to get away without being in the same room with a
corpse. So, you see, it all works out. I have a pill for each of the three of you. Now be a
good girl and you’re your medicine.”
Of course Rachel slammed her mouth shut, but she had seen enough movies, and
assumed that he had as well, to know that he would be able to force the pills down her
throat. The longer she struggled, though, the more chance she gave for someone to save
her. Moshel didn’t fight her at all, he simply plugged her nose, and held the rest of her
pinned to the mattress. He was much stronger than her, and had effectively cut off her
oxygen. Soon enough, she realized, she’d pass out and he’d get the pills down her throat.
It didn’t take even that long. As she saw spots in front of her eyes from lack of
oxygen, her mouth gasped open involuntarily, and Moshel, with quick reflexes, sent two
pills down her throat. He then taped her mouth shut, so she couldn’t scream and held her
while she struggled wildly, but increasingly weakly, as the sleeping pill took effect.
When they did the autopsy, she found herself thinking, they would assume that she had
had a headache, taken some kind of buffered painreliever, and then a sleeping pill to help
her sleep.
Lije’s last words came back to her as she felt herself losing strength, slipping
towards unconsciousness “I never thought it would end this way.” I’m sorry, Lije, I
didn’t do any better. I’m sorry, Adini, that I didn’t protect you more. I’m sorry, God,
that I didn’t find you better.
And then Moshel lay down on top of her. Was the bastard going to rape her? He
had to get out fast to avoid being there when she died, would he assaulting her first?
Some part of her realized, though, that he wasn’t moving. Then he was being pulled off
of her, and she was being lifted by strong arms..who? Reuven! With all due respect to
Lije, Rachel could honestly not remember being happier to see anyone than at that
moment. But she had to tell him something… what? Through the fuzziness in her brain,
the word saxotoxin made its way to her lips, which wouldn’t move without the greatest,
most painful effort.
“S..a…x…o…”
“Shh, Rachel, I’m getting you to a doctor now.”
Rachel managed to shake her head and say, “No…listen…time release…
saxotoxin… in me. Pump…stomach.” And then the clouds of blackness took her, before
she knew whether Reuven had heard her, before she knew whether she’d ever know
anything again.
CHAPTER 33
She was in a desert, mouth dryer than anything she could imagine. But it was ok,
because Lije was next to her, and they were walking together. Lije, for some reason,
didn’t want to talk, but that was ok with Rachel, because they could hold hands and walk
and just enjoy each other’s presence. The dryness in her mouth was getting so
bothersome, though, that she had to say something.
“Lije, I’ve got to get a drink.”
Something about what she said upset him, and his eyes, smiling a moment ago,
took on a sad and wistful look. Leaning over, he kissed her on the cheek, and it felt like a
good-bye. As he leaned back, he pointed behind her, and she turned and saw a lake of
the most beautiful clear water she could ever remember seeing. She immediately ran, and
was at the water’s edge before she realized that Lije wasn’t there with her. She turned to
see him staring after her, but not moving in her direction. If anything, he seemed to be a
lot farther than the distance she had just covered.
“Aren’t you coming? Don’t you want any?”
Lije shook his head firmly, sadly, and then he spoke, “Have a good life, Rachel;
live it to its fullest, and know that you and Adin have my love always.” And he turned
and walked in the other direction, rapidly disappearing over a hill, going in the direction
of the sun streaming down over the desert.
Rachel wanted to chase after him, but the water was too tempting. One quick
drink and then she’d find him; how fast could he walk anyway? Her mouth and throat
burning, she reached down…and awoke in a hospital room, to hear her mother and
Reuven arguing about something. Her mouth still dry, she managed to croak, “Water,”
drawing both of theirs’ attentive concern.

The first sip was heaven, the second delightful, and it took several long minutes
before she had fully quenched the thirst inside of her. Reuven and her mother just waited
anxiously, to see how she was doing.
“So, where am I?”
“Hadassah Hospital. You were right that it was saxotoxin; had we not pumped
your stomach before it broke through the buffered pill, we would have lost you. And that
would have made me…sad.”
Rachel smiled. “You know, Reuven, when I get out of here, we’d better go on a
real actual date, so we can stop talking in euphemisms about our feelings. But, tell me
about that night. No, wait, tell me what day is it? How long have I been unconscious?
Rachel’s mother couldn’t hold herself back from stepping in. “It’s just the next
day, dear. You were out for a couple of hours, is all. The doctors said it was a close call,
but in the end it was just a sleeping pill and having your stomach pumped.”
“But, Reuven, how’d you know to come to my apartment just then? Without you,
not only would I be dead, but the babysitter and baby, too. Wait, are they all right?”
Reuven laughed at how her mind was working. “I didn’t come to your apartment
right then, I never left. After we dropped you off that night, I couldn’t stop thinking that
if I were Moshel, I might decide to bet that I’d be cleared of the charges and stay on my
best behavior. But I might also decide that the jig was up, and I might as well take my
revenge fully on those who had brought me down. So I thought one night sitting in the
car across the street from your place would be tolerable; when Moshel showed up I knew
I was right.”
“But then why’d you let him go so far? Why’d you let him have me swallow the
pills?”
Reuven looked away, embarrassed. “I didn’t realize that he was going to try to
kill you, because I couldn’t think of how he would do it without becoming ritually
impure, and I couldn’t imagine him not holding out some hope of reinstatement. So I
thought I’d just listen in on the conversation for a bit, to get his admissions of guilt on
tape. I had left a bug in your room earlier, so I was just listening in, congratulating
myself, and figuring that I could stop him from hurting you. Then, when I heard his plan,
it took me too long to get up there; you had already swallowed the pills. I’m terribly
sorry.”
Rachel laughed at his seriousness. “Reuven, please don’t apologize. Without you
I’d be dead, physically and otherwise, and I never would have found Lije’s body, and I
never would have felt peace about Liat’s death. So, on balance, I owe you a lot more
than I could blame you for.” She felt like patting Reuven’s hand as he blushed and bowed
his head, but with Mom standing there, she had to limit herself to the warmest smile she
knew how to give. “But what happens to Moshel now?”
“Now that’s an interesting question. His taped admission to you about Lije means
that he needs to go to a city of refuge, but his attempted murder of you and intent to
murder the sitter and Adin—proven by the tape and his having been caught with two
more sets of sleeping/saxotoxin pills—mean that he has to be dealt with by the civilian
authorities as well.”
“What do you mean, the civilian authorities?”

“Well, at the Arrival, the Messiah pointed out that official Torah law cannot, on
its own create a really working society. The death penalty, for example, is so stringently
administerd that it is rarely if ever given in the Torah’s setup. But there are times when
punishments are needed that don’t fit into that system. So he set up a parallel system,
whose job is enforcement, deterrence, and some rehabilitation, and gave it wide powers.
Now that Moshel’s been handed over to that system, they’ll investigate thoroughly; since
they can give immunity to witnesses, I’d expect a bunch more convictions heading
Moshel’s way in the near future. So, I suspect he’ll spend a while in jail in the city of
refuge, and then a while in another jail once he’s released from there. Pretty much, his
life as an active priest is over. I’d say his life was over, but there’s still the outside
chance —way outside—that he’ll realize the error of his ways, rehabilitate himself, and
then get into the motivational speaking field, you know addressing groups of young
priests or teens at risk, helping them avoid his mistakes.”
Rachel shook her head. “And that’s it? He gets away with it all?”
“No, Rachel, he doesn’t get away with it. If he changes, he gets the right to have
God figure it all out; if he doesn’t he rots in jail until he dies. You just have to accept that
we can’t dictate all the outcomes in life, we can do our jobs and leave the rest up to forces
outside of ourselves.”
Rachel flopped her head back on the bed, feeling her exhausted body drifting back
into sleep. “Some Utopia.”
Reuven leaned in to make sure she heard him before she left consciousness. “Not
yet. But you, me, Shomer Kapdan, Levi, the Messiah, and a whole bunch of others;
we’re on the road to getting there. Just join me in the adventure, and it’ll be here quicker
than you know.”
THE BEGINNING

Murderer in The Mikdash

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Murderer in The Mikdash

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Murderer in the Mikdash

By: Gidon Rothstein

permanently harried expression, as if he was perpetually overloaded with obligations. It

of slim but fading possibility.

he had some other connection to Liat and her death.

weeks, she automatically thanked him and began to move on.

few weeks,” the security guard persisted.

"sudden respiratory distress"-- carried any consequences in the New Israel.

"I'm sorry. What did you say?"

for the onslaught to come.

fatigue of caring for a three-week-old without a husband.

high ground was often just a matter of inflection.

but realized that no one would agree to that.

religious fanatic—or petty bureaucrat -- in front of her. Rachel briefly considered

heel and stalked away.

took her a while for the question to penetrate her thoughts.

offend somebody. Not mollified, but unwilling to be intractable, Rachel managed to

control herself enough to simply say, “Yes, I suppose so.”

week before he can go back in. And see her? She…"

helping treat the dead with dignity?”

worked the pounds off her body and face.

outweigh any inconveniences."

Reuven's mischievous smile as he said that was conveniently coupled with

with the new system."

anything happened to her.

The police had never found it.

just became interested in Liat's story.

what she meant, and I still don't, but…"

"What is it? Is something wrong?"

memories she wasn't yet ready to confront. She stood to leave.

"It's HaOzer, but please, everyone calls me Reuven."

do something to upset you?"

"No, why do you ask?"

"Well, you seemed to bring our conversation to a close rather abruptly, as if

something had happened."

wanted to mention to you that…"

happened to your husband?"

that's what they said.

only just met in a coffee shop, of all places.

remorse, that Rachel couldn't help but relent a little.

"Certainly I forgive you. Was there anything else?"

indifference to your search for A POSSIBLE MURDERER."

trailing the red-haired man.

his physical size or strength.

with the group. How does that sound?"

what it would bring, but no hopes or expectations to disappoint her, either.

Reuven what was going on.

the one whose lobby she was currently occupying.

A member of the staff walked up to her. "Excuse me,…"

where they were standing.

stringy?" The bellboy looked at Rachel, who nodded.

Rachel, a clotheshorse, wished she had an outfit just like it.

After the embarrassment in the lobby, it was actually nice to be recognized.

here from Teaneck, NJ. So nice to meet you."

than having to tell the truth.

the little frustrations, well, it just really helps."

from them as soon as they got into the room.

empty seat, next to a woman who looked inoffensive if uninteresting.

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

is Hulda Weiner, nice to meet you."

"I see nobody strives for anonymity at these things."

she now realized, hadn't been that lucky.

to talk to anyone who expressed an interest.