Blood On The Sun

by Stuart Melvin Kaminsky

  She looked up at Tabler and then at Jacob.

  "How old were your parents when they were married?" she asked.

  The question confused Jacob. Tabler considered saying something but didn't.

  "My father was forty-one," he said. "My mother was eighteen."

  Judge Whitherspoon nodded as if this were important information.

  "Where were they married?" she asked.

  "Houston, I think," said Jacob.

  "We found your mother's parents in San Antonio," she said. "They want you to live with them. They're coming to get you. I'll be sure they're good people before I release you to them. You understand all this?"

  Jacob nodded.

  "When you get to San Antonio where they live, they're going to arrange for you to see a psychologist who specializes in children who need help."

  Jacob turned to Tabler and said, "What about Kyle?"

  "We'll do what we can for him," the old lawyer said gently.

  "It's not fair," Jacob said, voice raised, tears in his eyes.

  "Why isn't it fair?" asked the judge.

  "Because the whole thing was my idea," Jacob said. "He wasn't coming to the house because he was seeing Becky. He came because I called him and asked him to come. When he was on the way I came up with the plan, leaving the evidence in the woods, his running and leaving clues to where I was hiding."

  "You talked Mr. Shelton into taking responsibility for a murder he didn't commit?" she said. "And this is the truth?"

  Tabler gave up and put his head in his hands.

  "The truth," said Jacob.

  She didn't believe him. Sandra Whitherspoon and her husband had a twelve-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. Sandra Whitherspoon spent her days with children who lied and told the truth and mixed the two, sometimes skillfully. She could detect a child's lie, but she couldn't always prove it.

  Truth or lie, she couldn't let the sudden confession pass.

  Even if the boy testified in a trial, it wouldn't change the fact that Shelton had broken the law. The information did, however, cause her to rethink the idea of a quick placement of Jacob with his grandparents or anyone else.

  She decided to order an immediate psychiatric evaluation.

  * * *

  He sat, hands still cuffed behind him, looking across the table at Aiden and Stella. The look was calm. He could have been a man waiting for the next Amtrak train to anywhere.

  Stella nodded at Aiden, who read from a list.

  "Bloodwood from your cabinet found on Asher Glick matched. You would have had to touch him."

  "We hugged," the man said. "We were old friends."

  "The same bloodwood dust was found in the tote bag in the church," Aiden continued.

  "There are hundreds of shops in Manhattan that have bloodwood pieces and work in bloodwood flooring and paneling," he said.

  This was all a game. He'd play with them until someone appeared to take him out of here. He wouldn't have to call. They would know by now.

  "A newsstand owner has drawn a sketch of a man who went through his shop next to the Jewish Light of Christ, threatened the shop owner with death for him and his family if he told about your going through and out the back."

  She handed him a copy of the sketch. He looked at it for a few seconds and handed it back without expression. Stella's phone vibrated. She reached into her pocket and flipped it open. It was Mac, who said he was on the way.

  "I'd fill you in and let you handle it, but it would take time, and there is some information I can't give you, some information you don't want," he said.

  "No problem," she said, looking at the man, whose eyes were on the sketch.

  "I'm on the way," Mac said.

  Stella and Mac understood each other, coworkers, friends. She flipped the phone closed.

  "Looks a little like me," he said. "If, and I only say 'if,' I was in that shop, I didn't threaten the shop owner and I didn't go out of his back door and into the synagogue to kill that man."

  "You ever been to Korea?" asked Stella.

  He had been expecting this one too. He was well ahead of them.

  "No," he said.

  "And you don't speak Korean?" asked Stella.

  "No," he said.

  "The hospital footprints of Arvin Bloom just after he was born don't match yours."

  "I don't think a bare footprint match has ever been presented to an American court," he said. "Feet change. Fingerprints don't."

  "Don't you want to deny the suggestion that you're not Arvin Bloom?"

  "I deny it," he said.

  "The fingerprints on Arvin Bloom's identification do match yours," Aiden said. "What did you do for more than forty years?"

  "Beachcomber," he said.

  Stella and Aiden said nothing.

  "In Tahiti," he went on.

  "We found her," said Stella.

  Bloom understood, but he showed nothing.

  "Your wife," said Stella. "Shot in the head twice and stuffed in a zipped-up black body bag under the floor of your bedroom. You're a good woodworker."

  "I'd like to make a phone call now," he said calmly.

  Stella put her cell phone on the table in front of him, got up and took off the handcuffs. He rubbed his wrists and reached for the phone. Yes, they would later check the phone log and find the number he had called, but it would make no difference. He could have insisted on using a public phone, but that too would be traced. He could have insisted on privacy, but he didn't need it.

  Stella remained behind him as he punched in the number. The phone rang and a recorded voice message said, "I'm sorry but the number you have dialed is no longer in service. If you think you have dialed incorrectly, please hang up and try again."

  He closed the phone and placed it on the table.

  This was wrong. Why had they cut him off? They knew he could make another call and copies of the documents would resound on the front page of the Times, lead off the evening news, cost a lot of people their government jobs.

  "Hands," said Stella behind him.

  This wasn't a perfect time, but he might not get another. And what did he have to lose? Neither woman was armed. Outside the door, to the left, down a short corridor, was an emergency exit door.

  He struck out at the woman behind him, the woman who had shot him with a Taser. At the same time he pushed the table over on the other one.

  He made the short dash to the door. Once on the street, he would know how to hide. He might have to do more killing, but he knew how to hide and how to survive.

  He opened the door and Mac Taylor punched him hard. The blow broke his nose. The man who had been calling himself Arvin Bloom stepped back, didn't raise a hand to his nose. He charged Mac, who faked a punch to the head.

  The man instinctively reached up to protect his broken nose. Mac's punch was to the man's solar plexus. The man went down hard, dazed, to a sitting position on the floor.

  "You both okay?" Mac asked.

  Stella was standing a few feet away, her Taser in hand.

  "Sore shoulder," she said.

  Aiden was picking up the table.

  "I'm fine," she said.

  Stella snapped the cuffs on behind the back of the man, whose nose was now gushing blood. He stood up.

  "He doesn't give up," she said, leading the man back to the chair behind the table.

  Aiden turned, reached into her kit and came up with large gauze pads. When the man was seated, she pressed the pads against his bloody nose.

  "He can't afford to. His name is Peter Moser," said Mac, who leaned over, his face inches away from the man, and said, "I have another name you might be interested in: Harry Eberhardt."

  They knew who he was and he knew who had told them. They had found Eberhardt, which meant that his ace in the hole, the documents, had been found and probably destroyed. No more leverage.

  "How did you find him?" Moser said.

  "You said that you'd sold the bloodwood cabinet yesterday," said Mac. "You
didn't know who you sold it to. It was a heavy piece."

  "It took at least two people to move it," said Aiden.

  Moser looked up. He would find a way to get out of this. He had been in worse situations.

  "We checked for fingerprints on the pieces near where the bloodwood cabinet had been. Lots of prints. One set in particular, fingers and palm, as if someone had put his hand against the wall to get some leverage to move the cabinet away from the wall. The print wasn't good enough to run through the system. The fingers and palm that made it were worn by acid and chemicals."

  Moser was breathing heavily through his mouth.

  "The print had traces of chemicals we don't usually find on fingerprints," Mac went on. "Monomethyl-p-aminophenol sulfate, acid, sodium hydroxide, potassium bromide. Know who uses those chemicals?"

  Moser knew but said nothing.

  "Photographers," Mac said. "They use it for developing and printing. Photographs are almost all digital now. Drugstores, photo supply stores do develop film, but the processing is all done by computerized machines. The only ones who still process their own film are professional photographers, the ones who do portraits, landscapes, homes, some weddings, fashion, upscale catalogues."

  Moser didn't answer. Aiden, now wearing latex gloves, took the blood-soaked pad from Moser's nose, dropping it into a bag. The bleeding had slowed. She pressed a fresh pad on his nose. When it began to slip, she taped it to his face.

  "We could have checked them all out," Mac went on, "but we didn't have to. We looked for those close enough to your shop so two men could carry that cabinet."

  "Block and a half down from his shop," said Stella, remembering.

  "Harry Eberhardt, photographer," said Mac. "We found the bloodwood cabinet in the room behind Eberhardt's studio. There's also a darkroom. Detective Flack told him you were facing three charges of murder and that one of the victims was the woman you had shot a few hours ago. Eberhardt gave me the sealed envelope. A representative of the federal government has it now."

  Moser looked straight ahead.

  Mac turned to Stella to take over.

  "We were wrong," she said. "You didn't kill Asher Glick because you owed him money. You killed him because he had come into your shop. You gave him your name, told him you were Bloom, told him where you were supposedly from. He probably asked more questions about your youth. You would have done your homework, given all the right answers, but Glick knew you weren't Bloom. Your bad luck was running into someone who knew the real Arvin Bloom when he was a boy, knew you weren't him, knew he was dead."

  "You probably made up a story," said Mac. "A good one, but not good enough. He had told you about the morning minyan. You promised to be there and bring evidence that you were telling the truth about your story."

  "You got him alone," said Stella. "Improvised, killed him and tried to make it look like a ritual killing. And then when we came to you as a suspect you were afraid we'd dig and find out you were a fraud. So you decided to kill again, another Jew, in the same ritual way, a victim with whom you had no connection. The Hebrew words in chalk had no meaning. You probably got them off the Internet. Then you found…"

  "… a good person to take the fall," said Mac. "Joshua."

  None of the three investigators said a word for a full minute. Stella sat unblinking, looking at Moser. Aiden's arms were crossed as she eyed Moser with disgust. Mac laid his palms flat on the table.

  There was a knock at the door and Jane Parsons entered. She was wearing her white lab coat and carrying a single sheet of paper, which she handed to Mac, who read it and then handed it to Stella, who, in turn, handed it to Aiden. Jane looked at the bleeding man, but seemed to have no reaction.

  Moser showed no interest in what was going on. If he went to trial he would be convicted. The evidence was overwhelming. He would go to prison. That was a certainty. He might even get the death penalty. If he made a deal and confessed to avoid the death penalty, he doubted if they would let him survive more than a few weeks or months in prison, but he had a good deal to make. Even without the evidence Eberhardt had turned over to the police, Moser knew enough- names, dates, events- to cause havoc. They couldn't let that happen, couldn't let him go public. He would either have to escape within the next few days or be killed.

  Mac looked at Jane. She looked tired. They were all tired and hot and sweaty.

  "Thanks," he said.

  Jane smiled. She had been doing that more often recently. Then she left the room.

  "Good news," Stella said, looking at Moser, who couldn't keep from looking up.

  They've decided to come through for me, Moser thought. He would be back on the street before the day was over and then he would have to hide before someone put two bullets in his head.

  "We're removing the charge of murdering your wife from the list of charges," Stella said.

  Moser's mouth tightened slightly under the bloody pad.

  "Want to know why?" asked Mac.

  Silence.

  "Because," said Aiden, "the woman you killed in your bedroom wasn't your wife. She was your sister."

  Moser probably wouldn't even be safe in an isolated, guarded, secured location, the kind where they put mob hit men who talk to save their lives, have someone ghostwrite their largely invented memoirs, watch television and stay alive. It was worth a try.

  "I want to make a deal," Moser said.

  "We don't have the authority to make deals," said Mac.

  "Find me someone who does," said Moser.

  "What do you have to deal with?" asked Aiden.

  Moser looked at them individually with a tilt of his head and a ghastly smile and said, "Thirty-seven assassinations for a government agency, assassinations in nine countries, most of them in Korea, North and South."

  "One question," said Aiden. "Why cabinetmaking?"

  "It's a perfect meditation," said Moser. "Creating objects of utility and beauty with your hands touches the soul and confirms the wonder of the universe."

  "We ran your sister's fingerprints and came up with a match for a Lily Drew from Cleveland," said Stella. "The Cleveland police found your aunt and uncle. We're going to have them identify you. You used your sister as a front and when you decided to run, you killed her. Anything you want to say, Evan Drew?"

  Mac and Danny had peeled away the identities of the man, enough to find the core.

  Evan Drew, a.k.a. Peter Moser, a.k.a. Arvin Bloom sat silently staring at the pale wall, where he made out a face in the plaster, the face of an almost skeletal man, mouth open, crying out. He had seen such things all over the world, mostly in bathroom floors. He did not ask but he was sure others did not see the haunting images.

  "I need a doctor," said Drew.

  The interrogation was over. Less than an hour later word came that the district attorney's office was not interested in making a deal with Evan Drew.

  Sitting in a holding cell, Drew began to rethink his options. There were few. There may not have been any.

  14

  IN THE MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS he had lived in the neighborhood, it was the first time Rabbi Benzion Mesmur had been in St. Martine's Church, which was no more than a five or ten minute walk from his synagogue and less than that from his home. Father Wosak had invited him for coffee and cookies, which, the priest assured him, had both been purchased at Kauffman's Kosher Bakery.

  "If you'd prefer that I come to you…" the young priest had begun when they spoke on the phone.

  The rabbi knew from the tone that he was deferring to the older man's age and his position in the community.

  Wosak had made the request in Hebrew. He had also given Rabbi Mesmur a choice of times that would not interfere with his duties.

  The old rabbi, in a black suit on the hottest day of the year, had walked to the church with two members of his congregation, both of whom were over seventy, both of whom had asked him to allow himself to be driven. The rabbi had said, "No, thank you."

  The two men who had acco
mpanied the rabbi remained outside when their rabbi entered St. Martine's.

  After they had finished their coffee and cookies, the priest said, in English, "I have a request."

  The old man waited.

  "I'd like our congregation to pray for Asher Glick at this Sunday's service," Father Wosak said.

  "You don't need my permission," said Rabbi Mesmur.

  "I do," said the priest.

  "Then you have it," said the rabbi.

  "My sermon on Saturday will be on Jesus the Jew," said Wosak.

  Both men thought about Joshua in the hospital, Joshua who outwardly said he could bridge the massive canyon of belief between the two religions, but inwardly knew he was a false prophet.

  "And the other one?" asked the rabbi.

  "We'll pray for Joel Besser too," said Wosak.

  Rabbi Mesmur stroked his beard once and nodded.

  For the next twenty minutes the two men discussed the meaning of God's destruction of the sons of Aaron, who had come too close to the altar. Their interpretations were remarkably close.

  A sound beyond the priest's sanctuary door made him rise and say, "Excuse me."

  Rabbi Mesmur also rose and followed the priest to the door.

  Stella had volunteered to tell the two men about catching the murderer and about the motive for the crime.

  When the two clergymen stood in the open door looking into the church, they saw Stella alone, kneeling before the altar, hands clasped, head down in prayer.

  Father Wosak closed the door and the two men left Stella to her prayer.

  * * *

  At five p.m. Danny Messer handed the paperback book through the bars to Kyle Shelton. Kyle had asked if it were possible for the book to be brought to him from his apartment.

  "Thanks," said Kyle.

  He was freshly shaved, hair combed back, orange prisoner uniform unwrinkled. Kyle stood straight. Stoic. Military. Kyle Shelton, former PFC, who had served in an infantry unit in Iraq, had found a comfort zone, Danny thought. Danny's comfort zone was his work. Danny found it ironic. The very thing he loved the most had taken him to the edge of a breakdown.