87th Precinct 24 - Jigsaw, page 7
part #24 of 87th Precinct Series
“Did you kill Arthur Finch?” Meyer asked.
The sexton nodded.
“Did you kill Rabbi Solomon?”
“He… you see ... he was working. It was the second day of Passover, and he was working. I was inside when I heard the noise. I went to look and ... he was carrying paints, paint cans in one hand, and…a ladder in the other. He was working. I ... took the knife from the ark, the knife I used to trim the wick. I had told him before this. I had told him he was not a real Jew, that his new… his new ways would be the end of the Jewish people. And this, this! To work on the second day of Passover!”
“What happened, Mr. Cohen?” Meyer asked gently.
“I — the knife was in my hand. I went at him with the knife. He — he tried to stop me. He threw paint at me. I — I —” The sexton’s right hand came up as if clasped around a knife. The hand trembled as it unconsciously re-enacted the events that night. “I cut him. I cut him. ... I killed him.”
Yirmiyahu stood in the alley with the sun intimidating the peaks of the buildings now. He stood with his head bent, staring down at the mound of earth which covered the buried knife. His face was thin and gaunt, a face tormented by the centuries. The tears still spilled from his eyes and coursed down his cheeks. His shoulders shook with the sobs that came from somewhere deep in his guts. Carella turned away because it seemed to him in that moment that he was watching the disintegration of a man, and he did not want to see it.
Meyer put his arm around the sexton’s shoulder.
“Come, tsadik? he said. “Come. You must come with me now.”
The old man said nothing. His hands hung loosely at his sides.
They began walking slowly out of the alley. As they passed the painted J on the synagogue wall, the sexton said, “Olov ha-shalom.”
“What did he say?” Carella asked.
“He said, ‘Peace be upon him.’ “
“Amen,” Carella said.
They walked silently out of the alley together.
* * * *
McBain, Ed, 87th Precinct 24 - Jigsaw
