The Key

by Ilsa J. Bick

Kay said he was probably a week old. Two weeks, tops: the stub of the umbilical cord was still there. Found in a shallow grave, on the far side of a hill in Rock Creek Park, off Klingle Valley Parkway, not far from the National Zoo. The jogger was hunched in the back seat of a black-and-white, the golden retriever that went nuts over something that wasn’t a chipmunk looking embarrassed, nose on its front paws, wondering what the hell it did wrong. There was a uniform with the jogger. We—my partner, Rollins, and I—passed them on our way down the hill that was high with grass and damp from last night’s rain. The retriever looked up, hopeful, its tail thumping. The jogger’s eyes slid past to stare at nothing.

The baby was a little white boy. Hair short and fuzzy, like a wool cap. Thick, sludgy purge fluid flowed from his nose and mouth. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the stuff was blood. I know better. The purge meant the boy had been dead about three, four days. Luckily, it’d been a cold October so far; Halloween coming up that week, and Kay figured this slowed the rot. Still, there was that sick-sweet smell of death, and the baby’s abdomen was huge with gangrene and greenish yellow, like a bruise changing color. Thick green-blue vessels showed beneath the skin of his chest, and his eyelids were bloated and black. Made me want to rip someone’s head off.

“Anything?” I asked Kay.

“We won’t know until we do the cut, Jason. Kid might have been delivered at home, though.”

“Why?”

She pointed. “Not circumcised. These days, all hospitals circumcise unless parents specifically ask that they not.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing obvious. My guess is exposure and dehydration. Of course, there’s the tattoo.” Her gloved finger hovered over a blue smudge above the baby’s left nipple. “I’d say gang-related, Jason.”

I didn’t buy it. “I don’t buy it. I’ve lived in DC all my life. I’ve seen little babies in dumpsters, washed up along the Potomac. I’ve seen kids splattered in drive-bys while they’re doing their homework. But a gang revenge killing? Of a baby? That’d be a first.”

“But the tattoo … what else could it be?”

She had me there. I flipped to the page in my notebook where I’d written the symbols down. We used a magnifying glass: L-M-Z-2-9, as best we could make out. The M was done in cursive. The entire tattoo was smudged, like a rush job.

“Maybe they’re Roman numerals,” said Kay. “You know, L for fifty and M for a thousand.”

“That makes sense,” Rollins said. “New Black Gangster Disciples use a Roman numeral three.”

“You see a Roman three?” I asked. “I don’t see a three. And what’s Z?”

Kay said, “Maybe it stands for twenty-six, the last letter of the alphabet.”

“A code?” It wasn’t a bad idea. I scribbled down the numbers. “Adds up to one thousand eighty-nine. No combination I know of.”

We left Kay bagging the baby’s hands and the crime scene techs crawling around for evidence. I picked my way up the slope. Burrs stuck to my black peacoat. “Listen,” I said to Rollins. “I’ll talk to the jogger, see what she says.”

“Okay. What do you want me to do?”

“Run that tattoo. I’ll sign off on the scene.”

The jogger’s name was Rachel Gold. She was twenty-seven and lived on the third floor of a townhouse off 26th, near George Washington University. “Across from the Watergate,” she said. She was still sitting in the black-and-white, and she had to crane her neck. (Some people think I look like Patrick Ewing, except I only have the mustache and I’m about eighty gazillion bucks poorer.) Gold was wearing a black sweatshirt and black jogging sweats. The sweatshirt was speckled with vomit. She’d pulled her brown hair, which was very long and thick, into a ponytail that was taut against her scalp. A loop of gold chain spilled over the neck of her sweatshirt. Attached to the chain was a tiny gold key, maybe as big as my thumbnail. “26th and H.”

“You’re a student?”

“No.” Gold’s eyes were very dark and so large she looked like one of those porcelain figurines: all eyes. “I’m assistant curator of special collections at the Holocaust Museum.”

“Special collections?”

“Yes. I just did an exhibition on Holocaust musicians, and I’m working on Eastern European folk art.”

“Okay. Let’s go through it again. What happened?”

She did. She’d left her apartment at eight to jog and, since her neighbor was away, to exercise her neighbor’s golden. Gold had planned to run to the turn-off for the National Zoo at Porter, and back. “Only I never made it,” she said, her left hand slowly pulling the dog’s ears. She flicked a couple of burrs from her fingers. “I let Rugby … the dog run free. All of a sudden, I’m running and she’s not with me anymore. I call and then I hear her barking like, you know, she’d treed a squirrel. When she wouldn’t come, I backtracked and then I saw her down there and …” She looked away, swallowed hard. “Rugby was standing over this mound. First, I think it’s a groundhog. Then I get closer, and there’s this … this little … f-foot.” Tears tracked her cheeks. Her right hand snuck up to her neck and her slim fingers stroked the pendant. “I go a little closer to make sure, and then I see the leg and part of the fa-face …”

“You didn’t touch anything?”

Shuddering, she gave her head a quick jerk from side to side. “After I saw, I couldn’t …”

“And then you called 911? You got a cell?”

“No. There’s an Exxon not far back,” she gestured east, toward the Potomac and the Kennedy Center, “at Virginia, next to the Watergate. And then …” She trailed off. Toyed with her necklace.

A uniform huffed up. “Okay if they move the body?”

“Yeah.” I tucked my notebook into an inside breast pocket. I was starting to feel the cold. My toes were icy. I craned my neck to see if Kay was starting up, but the angle of the hill was too steep.

Rachel Gold stood. “Is it okay if I go now? I’m cold and …” She glanced down at her stained sweatshirt. “I’m kind of a mess.”

I made sure I had her home and office numbers and reminded her she’d get a call to come make a formal statement. As she turned to go, her pendant flickered in the sun.

“Pretty,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, glancing down. “It’s old.”

The key was modeled after those antique keys you see in old movies. At the top, I saw a single letter engraved in black. It looked like a W, but the ends were fashioned like the flames of tiny candles. “What is that?”

“Hebrew. A shin.”

All of a sudden, my chest got tight. “Unusual.”

“Oh, it’s old-country stuff. The charm’s supposed to bring you luck.” Her tears started again. “I guess it didn’t work, did it?”

· · · · ·

DC traffic’s a bitch. The station’s on Indiana, about two miles away from Rock Creek. So, I knew I could count on forty-five minutes, easy. That was okay because I needed to figure out why thinking about Adam made this knot, hard as a tennis ball, jam the back of my throat.

We did a case together last year, Adam Lennox—my first partner, my best friend—and me, right around this same time, Halloween. A bad case: nice girl murdered the day before her wedding, right behind her synagogue. Heart cut out. Swastika carved into the empty space. I thought it was the boyfriend because, as it happened, that nice Orthodox Jewish girl had a lover. A swastika’s a good way to say HATE to a Jew, and I figured Adam, who was Jewish, would see it my way. He didn’t. Instead, he dreamed up some theory about ritual Navajo shit, on account of the swastika being backward. Anyway, they buried that girl, and the case went cold.

Adam was never right afterward. Started talking to himself, and when I asked, he’d just say there was a ghost hitching a ride in his head and not to pay any attention. Then he decided, six months ago, that he liked the taste of gunmetal.

And, oh yeah—he blew his brains out in Rock Creek Park.

Coincidence? I’m superstitious. All cops are superstitious. Too much coincidence: Halloween, the Hebrew. Rock Creek. Bad karma, that’s what.

God, I missed Adam. Damn him.

My phone sputtered as I turned left on Indiana. I thumbed it on. “Saunders.”

“Jason.” It was Kay. “We’ve started the cut.”

“That was fast, Kay.”

“It’s a kid. Anyway, we found something.”

The autopsy suite was cold and smelled of disinfectant. After I gowned and put on a blue surgical cap and paper booties, I walked over to the autopsy table where they were doing the boy. Kay was there, along with the chief M.E., a guy named Strand who’s been there about a thousand years.

“Detective Saunders.” Strand held a small circular saw, and I could see that they’d done the baby’s chest and abdomen. The boy’s neck was braced with a block from a two-by-four, his scalp peeled from his skull front and back. Strand powered up the saw. The saw hissed, like the pneumatic drills they use in dentist’s offices. “You’re just in time. Tricky job on a newborn, on account of the skull being so soft.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Strand is not my favorite person.

“Over here, Jason,” Kay said. She thinks Strand’s an asshole too. She stood at a stainless steel counter along the far wall.

I walked over. Behind us, the whine of the saw dropped as it bit bone. “What do you have?”

“This.” She laid out an evidence bag. Inside the bag was a three-inch square of tan cloth. “We found it under the tongue.”

“Tongue?”

“Folded nice and neat. You took so long, I called for someone to laser it.”

“And?”

“No prints. Blood matches the baby’s. There’s something written on it. Drawn, anyway.”

“You’re kidding.” I turned the bag over, and felt my stomach bottom out.

In the center of the cloth was a Star of David. In the center of the star and at the three uppermost points were Hebrew letters. Below the star was a crude drawing of a bull’s-eye set atop a pole. Along the pole were six phalanges, curved up like scimitars: three to a side.

“First the tattoo,” said Kay. “Now this. This case is getting weird, Jason.”

I let my breath out a little at a time. “Yeah.”

· · · · ·

There was a Behavioral Sciences guy worked a case with Adam and me a few years back. A holy shit case is an FBI name for something religious. You know: seven deadly sins in blood, that sort of crap. If you’re unsure, there’s probably a movie in the multiplex, bring you right up to speed.

So here’s what I had: a dead baby. A strange tattoo. A cloth with a Jewish star and Hebrew. Like I said, Holy Shit.

Before I left the morgue, I went into Kay’s office and called Rollins. As I suspected, he’d come up empty on the tattoo. I told him about the cloth. “So I’m going to fax a copy. I want you to run it against the gang symbols we’ve got in our database. Start with the star. That ought to be easy. I can think of a couple groups right off the bat, like Gangster Disciples, or Folk Nation. The New Breed Black Gangsters use the star along with three Ls. And I want you to call Gold. Tell her we want a formal statement. Have her there by four.”

“But tomorrow mor—”

“Just call her.”

“Okay. And you’ll be …?”

“Checking something out.” I thumbed off, folded my phone, and tucked it into an inside pocket. Then I fed the fax.

Kay caught me as I left. “Photos of the tattoo and cloth in situ,” she said, handing over an envelope. “I’ll call you soonest. But so far, he’s clean.”

“Thanks. Look, I want you to run something for me.” I told her what I wanted.

“Looking for?”

“Maybe nothing. How long?”

“FBI developed a standard profile. We’ve got the setup. Say, three, four hours. You want a match with the FBI?”

“No, I just want it on file.”

“Okay.” Then: “You’ve got something.”

“All I’ve got is coincidence. That’s not something.” Yet, I thought.

This case was worse than what I’d done with Adam. No matter what Adam said, I knew that case hadn’t been about religion. But this—I corkscrewed the car down the parking garage, turned right on 23rd, and headed for the Lincoln Memorial—this case stunk to high heaven. Turning right on Constitution, I took the ramp past the E Street Expressway, the Kennedy Center on my right, and headed for Route 50 and Fairfax, Virginia.

When I found the place, I killed the engine and just sat. After all the junk last year, the congregation had relocated and built a new synagogue. As I watched, two men came out of a side door, their arms linked. They were arguing something, their free hands going like semaphores. They wore identical outfits: black overcoats that reached to their knees, black fedoras. One had a snowy white beard that reached his waist. The other was much younger, his beard full and black and bushy around his face, like a teddy bear.

There were security cameras mounted above the locked door, and I buzzed. They’d been vandalized, I heard. I selected a yarmulke from a wooden box mounted to the right of the door and patted it on. The rabbi’s secretary, a woman named Miriam who wore a kerchief over her hair, long-sleeved shirt, and ankle-length skirt, told me to go on up.

The rabbi was seeing someone else out. The other man was very old, his beard like gray fringe. He said something in querulous Yiddish. The rabbi responded in Yiddish, patting the old man on the back, his tone soothing.

The rabbi watched the old man totter down the stairs. “Not a happy man,” I said.

The rabbi, whose name is Dietterich, turned his brown gaze on me. “He doesn’t have a reason to be happy.” (Dietterich’s from Queens, so I think Shea Stadium every time he opens his mouth.) “Yakov’s daughter wants to marry a goy. Nice boy, I met him. He says he’ll convert, but for Yakov, it’s a calamity.”

“How so?”

“Yakov survived Birchenau. He’s the only one of his family left. For Yakov, his daughter does this, it’s like Hitler won. That’s why we Lubavitchers are so important. We keep the traditions alive, so people don’t forget.” Dietterich clapped his hands together as if to signal the subject closed. “So, Detective Saunders, come in, sit.”

Dietterich’s office was cramped, the shelves overflowing with books. He offered coffee, and I accepted: black with two sugars. He handed me a mug and then dropped into his seat with a slight groan. When we met last year, I judged him to be my age, thirty-five or so. He’d aged. Gray streaked his temples. Deep lines fanned the corners of his eyes and his face was pinched, with a furrow chiseled into either side of his nose.

“So,” he said, blowing on his coffee. “How can I help you?”

“I need your opinion.” I showed him the drawings, and he studied them in silence. I sipped coffee and waited. The coffee was worse than mine. I put the mug on the floor.

When his eyes inched up again, he was frowning. “Where did you get this?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. It’s an ongoing investigation. I can only ask the questions, not answer them.”

“All right.” Dietterich placed his mug on a side table. “Yes, I know the symbols. What this is, exactly, I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it doesn’t make sense. In essence, you have part of a formula.”

“Formula?”

“Yes, for a protective amulet.”

“Against what?”

Dietterich hesitated, then said. “Evil. You have to understand, Detective. Judaism is a religion without a pantheon. In the distant past, calamities were ascribed to evil demons and dark forces, whereas Judaism holds that these things come from Hashem, from God. But illiterate and superstitious peasants are slow to change. Superstitions persisted into the early half of the last century.”

I remembered Gold, and her key. “You’re talking mysticism.”

“Yes. Our Tanya, for instance, is based upon very ancient Kabbalah, but only certain aspects, you understand. There are many obscure areas of Kabbalah known only to very devout Jews, or to scholars. Most work is not in translation, because of the dangers.”

“Dangers.”

“Of misinterpretation. Leading Jews to pursue paths that are specifically prohibited because these practices are antithetical to our faith. How do I say it?” Dietterich put a finger to his lips. “There is a branch of theory, and a branch of practice. Devout scholars study, but that is all.”

“Tell me about the practice.”

Dietterich raised his hands, palms up. “What’s to say? There are no Jewish witches.”

“Well, someone hasn’t gotten the message.”

“You think a Jew did this?” He moved his head firmly from side to side. “No. The prohibition in Exodus is very clear.”

“But you said it yourself: superstitions persist. So, is this what the drawings are about?”

“These drawings are just bits and pieces.” He went to a bookshelf, tilted out a book, and brought it back, flipping pages. I read the cover: Amulets and Superstitions. “Here,” he said, then came to stand behind my right shoulder.

There was Hebrew text above and below a rectangle filled with crude, almost childish drawings. The rectangle was divided into two. On the left were what looked like bulbous birds with no wings, and bubble feet with no talons. On the right, there were two bizarre quadrangles, and then a drawing I recognized: the pole with the phalanges.

“What is that?”

“Part of a formula. This is a copy of a design for an amulet from a book that’s in the British Museum, the Book of Râzîêl.” He pronounced it RAY-zay-el. “The formula’s very precise. On the left are representations of three angels: Sanvi, Sanasanvi, and Samnaglof.”

“And on the right?”

“Adam, Eve,” and then he came to the pole, “and Lilith.”

“Lilith?”

Dietterich sighed. “A myth. In Genesis, there is a curious section concerning creation. At the end of the first chapter, Hashem creates male and female. But, if you look at the second chapter, verse eighteen, Adam is alone again, and Eve is not created until verse twenty-two.”

“So who is that first woman?”

“Lilith. The Mystics called her the First Eve. You find her in Midrash, in legends. According to Midrash, Lilith refused Hashem’s injunction to submit to Adam. So she fled, using Hashem’s Ineffable Name: Y–H–W–H. Hashem sent these three angels—Sanvi, Sanasanvi, and Samnaglof—to bring her back, but Lilith refused. In the end they let her go, but only if she agreed to leave whenever their names or images were invoked.”

“Which is why they’re on the amulet. You draw the angels, and Lilith has to obey and go away.”

“Exactly. Anyway, Adam was lonely, and so Eve was created, and here is where things become very murky. According to some Midrash, Adam blamed Eve for the expulsion from Eden, and he reunited with Lilith. Some say he had relations with one of Lilith’s daughters, Piznai, and produced many demon-children called lutins. Others say Lilith was Adam’s consort, but then when Adam reconciled with Eve, Lilith vowed to take revenge by killing human children, primarily infant boys before their bris milah, their circumcision, on the eighth day after birth. The legends say that Hashem punishes Lilith by killing a hundred of her demon-children every day.”

“Sounds like a soap.”

“Yes,” said Dietterich, tugging at his beard. “Demons, demon-children. All nonsense.”

“But it’s in your rabbinic tradition.”

“No, it’s Midrash. They’re stories, not canonical.”

I decided not to press. “So how does this figure in?”

“The amulet is protective. The Hebrew text at the top names the Seventy Great Angels who would protect in a general way. Sanvi, Sanasanvi, and Samnaglof protect the mother and her child. The text below is an incantation designed to ward off Lilith.”

“How widespread was this practice?”

“Of the amulet? It varied. Eastern Europe, Germany. Jewish peasants had a custom called Watch Night, where women would stand guard over the baby the evening before his bris.”

“And the drawing I showed you? It’s protective?”

“No,” he said, his tone almost fierce. He held up my notepad, shook it. “No, you see that’s why I’m telling you: no Jew did this.”

“But I thought you said—”

“It’s wrong,” he said, thrusting the notepad toward me. “They got it wrong. The Mogen Dovid? The Hebrew? Usually, the Hebrew stands for angels. But here, the Hebrew stands for demons: Ashmedi, Samael, and Azazel.”

“Why would they be on the same amulet with Lilith?”

“Because whoever made this didn’t want to keep Lilith away,” said Dietterich, his eyes drilling me in place. “He summoned her.”

· · · · ·

My phone buzzed as I crossed the Roosevelt Bridge into DC. It was Kay. “Done,” she said.

“Good. And the cut?”

“A big zero.” She sounded tired. “Jason, that little boy … he just … died.”

Rollins met me as I came off the elevator. “You’re late. Gold’s here. I put her in Room Three.”

“Okay.” I walked to my desk and retrieved a tape recorder from the bottom drawer.

Rollins watched. “I ran the drawings. Nothing matches.”

I checked the batteries then tore the cellophane off two fresh ninety-minute cassettes. “Nothing’s going to.”

“You think Gold …?”

I popped in a cassette. “I don’t know.”

“On the basis of?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.”

“Yeah.” Rollins eyed the recorder. “Should we advise her of her rights?”

“No. We don’t have anything. For now, she’s a wit, and I just want to talk with her, get a formal statement drafted. Very low key. We talk about rights, and she’ll clam up.”

We went in together. Gold was waiting, a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand. She was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved peasant blouse. I saw the key in the hollow of her throat. She didn’t smile.

“You’re looking better,” I said, scraping a chair back from the table. Rollins dropped into a chair on my left.

“A hot shower does wonders,” she said. “I had a heck of a time combing burrs out of Rugby’s fur, though.”

“Yeah, I’m still picking that stuff off my coat.” I watched her face as I squared the recorder on the table.

Her eyes flicked to the recorder and back. “You don’t use a court reporter?”

“No, that’s for depositions, legal stuff. This is just a statement. I’ll type it up later, and then you can sign it, okay? You want more coffee?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No. It’s pretty bad, actually.”

“It’s cop coffee.” I told her how we’d proceed then turned on the recorder. I recited my name, the date, our location, her name, and the purpose of the interview. Then I led her through her story again. She recited the same information, her voice a soft monotone. When she was done, I said, “I want to back up. You said you got ahead of the dog?”

“Yes. You know dogs.”

“Okay. Then you turned back.”

“Right. And that’s when I heard her barking, to the left, and then I saw her down the hill.”

“So you were on the path?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” I said, doing my best Columbo. I looked at Rollins. “You see the problem?”

Rollins shrugged. “There’s a problem?”

“Yeah, don’t you remember that hill? I couldn’t see a thing from the path. Hill’s too steep.”

“Really,” said Rollins, and I could tell he saw where I was going. He played it just right. “You couldn’t?”

“No,” I said, and looked back at Gold, whose face was stony. “I couldn’t, and I’m pretty tall. So how could you see the dog?”

A blotch of crimson stained Gold’s throat. “Maybe I left the path. I don’t remember.”

“That would explain it,” said Rollins.

“Yeah, maybe that’s it,” I said. “Because there’s no way to see down that hill. But then …”

“Yes, Detective?” Gold’s tone was neutral.

“Your clothes. You didn’t have any burrs. I had burrs on my coat. The dog had burrs.”

“I had burrs,” said Rollins.

“You didn’t have any burrs,” I said to Gold. “But you should have. Your shoes weren’t even wet.”

Gold looked from me to Rollins and back again. “Are you accusing me of something, Detective? If you are, I should have a lawyer.”

“I’m just trying to clear up a discrepancy, Miss Gold.”

“No, you’re not.” She leaned forward, getting into my space, not intimidated in the slightest. “Listen to me. I did not kill that child. Now, I’m sorry if you and Detective Rollins can’t find anyone to blame …”

“Hey,” said Rollins.

Her gaze didn’t waver, and I felt her take control. “But just because I may have made a mistake on where I was standing, or didn’t have garbage on my clothes, doesn’t mean I did anything wrong. Someone killed that little boy, and it wasn’t me.”

I tried to recoup. “You know who kills little babies, Miss Gold? It’s not only their daddy, or their mommy’s coked-up boyfriend, or some sick sex predator-creep. I’ll tell who kills little babies: mothers. Sometimes that mother is depressed and suicidal and wants to take her child to a better place. Sometimes that mother wants attention. So she makes her child sick, and then there are all those doctors, and she feels important. And then there are mothers who are simply evil.”

“Evil,” said Gold. For the first time, I saw not defiance but astonishment cross Gold’s features. “Is that what you think? You think that’s my baby?”

Actually, until that moment, that’s exactly what I’d thought. All I’d seen her in were baggy clothes, for one. And pieces of her story didn’t fit. But Gold’s reaction was genuine. You can’t do a hundred million hours of interrogations and not know when someone’s honestly amazed.

Gold gave a mirthless laugh. “I can’t believe this. There are tests, right? To prove maternity?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing already what we’d find. “DNA that we—”

“Fine.” Gold held out her arms. “Which one?”

· · · · ·

She wasn’t the mother.

My condo’s off Lee Highway, in Arlington. I grew up in DC and now I work it. I can’t live there. On the way home, I bought Thai takeout and then picked up a six-pack of icy-cold Bangkok beer. I ate my pad Thai out of the carton, had a beer. Then I popped a second beer, put on Mingus, and settled into my favorite—my only—recliner. I sleep there a lot. I don’t know any single guy sleeps in his bed. We sleep on couches, chairs. Never the bed. And in our clothes, usually.

Rabbi Dietterich had given me a book on Kabbalah. Then, as we had shaken hands, he said, “I have often thought about Detective Lennox. His death, such a tragedy. You and I both know there are demons and monsters everywhere. Nazis, murderers. But what are not so easy are the monsters that are hidden.” Dietterich bunched his fists and brought them to his chest. “The ones in here, in the dark chambers of the heart. Detective Lennox was a Jew, but he had no faith, and he found his monsters. Or they found him. Hashem can help, but a man must have faith, and he must work. We Jews are not like you Christians. We don’t believe that Hashem makes everything better. Hashem can be harsh. Life is sometimes unfair. But we believe that Hashem gives us a fighting chance.”

He clapped a hand to my right shoulder. “You’re a good man, Detective Saunders. An honest man. Please take care not to let your monsters destroy you.”

Now, thumbing to the index, I found a section on demons and paged there. The Kabbalists were big believers in an unseen spirit world, with some rabbis claiming that demons are consigned to a dark netherworld, and others stating that demons are born from sex between humans and demonic spirits. The rabbis agreed on six demonic attributes. In common with angels, demons have wings, can fly from one end of the earth to another, and tell the future. Like humans, however, they need food and water. They have sex. And, unlike the angels, they’re mortal.

I flipped to a section on regional beliefs. I found North Africa, the Near East. But this leapt off the page:

“One of the most comprehensive works is the Zefunei Ziyyoni. Written in the late 14th century by Menachem Zion of Cologne, this book has the most extensive list of important demons and how they functioned. This German-born Kabbalist was influential in disseminating Arabic thought amongst the practical Kabbalists concentrated in Eastern Europe and Germany.”

There it was: the practical Kabbalists. Translation: the witches. And Germany.

Something sparked in my brain. Quickly, I went to my coat and pulled out the packet of autopsy photos Kay had given me, flipping until I found the one of the tattoo.

To this day, I don’t know how I got there. There was no logic. The sensation truly was a flash: like a bare bulb flaring to life in a dark basement. And then I knew.

I checked the index. But what I was looking for wasn’t under R. It was under G: for “gilgul.”

· · · · ·

I spent the rest of the night reading, thinking. I went online and did a search. It took time, but I found what I was looking for. Compared the information to what I had. As soon as the museums opened, I made a couple calls. The employment stuff was easy, even the call to Sydney, though it was evening there and the director a little grumpy until I went over what I wanted and why.

Then I called the Holocaust Museum. The information clerk funneled me to an archivist. When I explained, there was a moment’s silence. Then the archivist said, “Not many people know about that. Unfortunately, those early records are lost. I’m sorry.”

Then I made one last call. She picked up on the third ring. “Hello, Detective. No magic: caller ID. What do you want?”

I told her where to meet me. “Should I bring my lawyer?” she asked.

“No. I just want to talk.”

“I’ll be there,” she said, and hung up.

My office away from the office: the bar’s across the street from the Shakespeare Theatre on 7th and diagonal to Jaleo’s, a Spanish tapas place where the beautiful people eat before going to the theatre. So I never go there.

I saw her come in, look around, start toward me. Her coat was open, and she wore a beige skirt that came to her knees, a cream linen blouse, and linen pumps. She had the pendant. When she’d slid onto the cushioned bench opposite mine and shrugged out of her coat, we did the waitress thing—bourbon for me, white wine for her.

Then she asked, “What did you want to see me about, Detective?”

“I want to tell you a story.”

“Story?”

“Yeah, bear with me. See, there was once a terrible war. The people who suffered the most were the Jews.”

The corners of her mouth quirked. “That could be all of Jewish history.”

“But in this war, there was a demon. I believe devout Jews think of Hitler as Amalek, right?”

“That’s right. Amalek was the great-great-grandson of Abraham, and there are specific injunctions to beware of Amalekites. Amalek has come to symbolize all evil.”

“Okay. So Evil attacks the Jews. The Jews are expelled from their homes. Whole villages are destroyed; the Jews are killed, or sent to concentration camps. Some survive and they remember. But they’re worried others will forget. And some can’t let that past go. They wonder why they were spared. And they’re lonely.”

“This is,” she began, then stopped when the waitress came with our drinks. The waitress tacked a napkin to the table with Gold’s wine, slid one under my bourbon. When she’d gone, Gold said, “Do you have a point?”

I angled my glass toward a candle burning in a squat glass holder, liking the way the light shone gold through the liquor. “I’m getting to the best part. Isn’t it true that the reason Chassids dress the way they do is to preserve a piece of their past?”

“That’s one interpretation.”

“So what keeps someone from preserving other customs, rituals?”

“Such as?”

“Magic.”

She gave a very small half smile. She raised her glass, tipped wine into her mouth. “Jews don’t believe in magic.”

“Yes, they do.” I flicked a finger at her pendant. “That thing, that’s magic, right?”

“It’s just a necklace.”

“No. It’s very specific. I know, because I looked it up.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my notepad and flipped. “Yeah, here it is. That shin is a really interesting letter. It means the Eternal Flame, and it reflects the fact that God is changeless, forever. There are some other things about shin I don’t get.”

“The mystical meanings.”

“Right. And I have to admit I couldn’t figure the key until I read about this very important angel named Râzîêl. Râzîêl sits at God’s throne and takes notes, and he’s written a book in which he recorded all celestial and earthly secrets. I’ve seen a picture from the book. To the Kabbalists, the book is a key. In fact, Râzîêl’s book is supposed to hold the fifteen hundred keys to the secrets of the universe.” I closed my notebook. “And Râzîêl’s color is gold.”

Her eyes were hooded. “And?”

“And Râzîêl, Rachel … the names are very close, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” She sipped wine. “Quite a coincidence.”

“Know something else?”

“What?”

“You told the truth. You didn’t kill that baby.” I paused. “But you let evil destroy itself.”

“And why would I do that?”

I slid out the photograph of the baby’s chest. “The tattoo. We got it wrong, because of the numbers. And the location threw us: over the left breast, not the left forearm. The Germans didn’t start putting tattoos on forearms until after 1942. So, that L—well, it’s not an L. It’s a triangle. And that letter we thought was a cursive M. It’s two ones. And the Z is a seven. See, we don’t put a horizontal line through our sevens and we don’t have that long tail on our ones, but Europeans do. Germans do, except the German lady—and it was the ladies who did them—the one who did this tattoo was sloppy. Not all Germans cared, because these were Jews, after all. But this is a number, Miss Gold: a triangle, then 1-1-7-2-9. Auschwitz Prisoner 1-1-7-2-9.”

I leaned forward. “Tell me about gilguls, Miss Gold.”

Her face was unreadable. “What would you like to know?”

“Whatever you can tell me about reincarnation.”

“Why don’t you tell me, Detective? You’re the one with the story.”

I nodded. “Fair enough. Here’s how I think it goes: The Kabbalists believed in reincarnation because they thought all souls came from one great big soul. An Oversoul, I guess you’d call it. Reincarnation isn’t supposed to happen until a person dies. But the Kabbalists said there was ibur, meaning pregnant. That is, a person who already had a soul could house another: two for the price of one. But that was very rare and only happened when the person was very, very good.”

“A tzaddik. A righteous person.”

“But I also found a very obscure reference to an old ritual where a Kabbalist could conjure a soul to share, or take over another body. Here’s the kicker: it’s got to be a kid. Boys are best. The infant is to be left alone, outside, near water and within a week after birth, or if it’s a boy, before his circumcision.” I looked into her eyes. “I’ll bet some of those Holocaust survivors would do just about anything to bring their families back. Even witchcraft.”

“Yes, they would,” she said, her voice calm. “But it’s not their place. Only God can decide.”

I nodded. “So, tell me, Rachel … your name is Rachel?”

Her lips curled slightly. “It’ll do.”

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me who Prisoner 11792 was, would you? The records from 1941 aren’t too good.”

“I can’t do that. That’s for God now.”

“I figured. But when they conjured the gilgul of their lost relative, it was your job to stop them. That’s why you summoned Lilith to take the child.”

She inclined her head. The key glittered in candlelight. “The child was an abomination.”

“From where I’m sitting, it’s murder even if you didn’t do it. You could have saved that child. You could have taken it to a hospital.” And yet, I had an involuntary thought: how many times had God killed in the name of justice? The great paradox of the Bible: a book that preaches against killing venerates one of the greatest mass murderers in history.

As if reading my mind—and maybe she could—Gold said, “There are choices, Detective. God can’t rescue you every time you make the wrong one. There are consequences, and sometimes the consequences are unpleasant. Sometimes the consequences include death.”

We were silent a moment. Then she asked, “How did you know?”

“Honestly? A leap of faith. Your employment record, for example. You’ve shown up in a lot of different places, but there’s one thing those places all have in common. They have huge Orthodox populations, mostly German and Eastern European. I’ll bet if I looked, there’d be a string of dead kids before you moved on. And there was that pendant, of course. But the clincher?” I took a sip of my bourbon, savoring the burn. “Your shoes. Like I said—no burrs. But they weren’t muddy either, or wet. And then it hit me.”

“What?”

“You didn’t have to walk, and do you know why?” I grinned then, not quite believing I was going to say it until I did. “Because you flew.”

· · · · ·

When a body isn’t claimed, the city buries it. Or volunteers: churches, synagogues, charities. So I wasn’t surprised when Jews buried that baby the night before Halloween.

It’s a year later now. October, again. Halloween. A lot of fall color left. The sky is gunmetal gray and the weatherman said rain, so it’ll probably snow.

The cemetery’s quiet. King David, it’s called. There are stones, flowers. I don’t know why I’m here. I stare down at a child’s grave. The stone is new: ben Judah, son of Israel. A date. A tiny Jewish star.

I think about Rachel Gold. And I come back to the two questions I faced now that I faced then: How the hell do you prosecute an angel? How do you know you should even arrest her?

When we walked out of the darkness of that bar a year ago and into the late afternoon sun, Rachel had said, “What will you write in your report?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. No one would believe it anyway, and I haven’t got a shred of real evidence.”

The sun glinted off her key. “But you believe.”

“Yes.” I stared down at her a few moments. “You’re leaving.” Not a question.

“Yes. It’s a big world, Detective Saunders. A lot of monsters to hunt.”

I nodded. “Mind if I ask you a question? Why did you stay? You had to know about Adam and Rabbi Dietterich. And the way you’ve left your tracks out there for anyone to see … you had to know that, eventually, I’d figure this out.”

For the rest of my life, I will remember how she looked at me then: with great compassion and something very close to love.

“Detective, how do you know that you are not the one for whom I remained?” Then, before I could speak, she stepped forward and spread the fingers of her right hand over my heart, and a surge of emotion flooded my chest so that I had to fight for breath. It was like something had come alive in there and was being pushed, no, forced out—and I knew that when I was alone, I would cry in a way that I hadn’t since I was a small child.

“Wounds of the heart are the most difficult to heal,” she said gently. “There are many monsters, Detective. But there are the angels. We are here. All you need to do is know how to look.”

And then I’d watched her move west, into the light of the setting sun. The light was so brilliant my eyes watered and I had to blink. When I’d opened them again, she was gone.

Since then, well, it’s been a long year. One thing, though: I don’t think about Adam as much, and when I do, I’m not as angry. I’m just sad, and even that’s getting less over time, as if the past is bleaching out of my mind like an old photograph, the kind where people fade into ghosts and then penumbras—and then they’re just gone, with only the suggestion of an outline to show that they’d been there at all. So that’s probably good.

I hear the crunch of gravel. Then, a voice I recognize: “Detective Saunders.”

“Rabbi.” We shake hands. “What brings you here?”

Dietterich’s in his standard uniform: long black coat, the hat. A quizzical look creases his features. “I don’t really know. I visit cemeteries, though. I pay respect. There are so many,” he gestures toward the markers, the flowers, “and never enough time to remember them all. And you?”

“Just thinking. Actually, I was getting ready to leave.”

“Ah.” He nods. We stare at the grave. Then, without looking up, he says, “Whatever happened with that case?”

“We didn’t catch anyone.” That’s about as close to the truth as I can go, even with him—because he was right. There are some things people just aren’t meant to handle.

He looks over, and his eyes are keen. “But you found an answer. You found some measure of peace.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Dietterich nods. “Did you know that Detective Lennox came to see me a few months before he died?”

I’m genuinely taken aback. “No. Why?”

“I think he wanted to unburden himself, but he couldn’t, or maybe he wouldn’t. He came a few times. We had coffee. Then he just stopped coming, and I didn’t call. Perhaps I should have.”

“Adam had a choice.” It’s taken me a while, but now I can say it. “Adam may have had his monsters, but people have to want the help. They have to want to work at being free.”

Dietterich sighs. “Yes. I see so many people in pain, Detective, more than you can know. Sometimes I think God asks the impossible.”

“A leap of faith?”

“Nothing makes sense otherwise, does it?”

“I guess not.” I stick out my hand. “I should go.”

“Let’s go together.” Dietterich smiles. “We’ll have coffee.”

“I’d like that,” I say, and mean it. “Cop coffee stinks.”

Dietterich laughs. He loops his arm through mine, just like I’ve seen all those Chassids do. “I’ll let you in on a secret. So does Miriam’s.”

We walk toward the entrance. As we step onto the sidewalk, into the world of the living, a sudden bolt of light knifes the clouds. Sun splashes gold upon the walk and touches the leaves with fire.

We walk, together, into the light.

The End

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