Yom Kippur Murder by Lee Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

after.”
    “What my mother had to live through,” he went on. “That bastard. That damned bastard. He treated her like dirt when she was alive, and he threw her memory away when she was dead.”
    “Do you want to look for pictures of your mother? They might be put away in a closet.”
    “Not now. I don’t think I can take any more of my father right now. I’ll have to come back anyway when they open up the apartment. I don’t think Nina wants to set foot in here. My wife and I’ll have to take care of it. Let’s go.”
    Office Schuyler was standing just outside the doorway to the kitchen. “Had enough?” he asked.
    “I think we’re ready to go,” I said. “Tell me, Officer, this Ramirez, how would he have gotten in?”
    “Not too hard. He could’ve hid in one of the apartments on the floor and waited for the victim to come home.”
    “But the door is locked downstairs.”
    Schuyler smiled at my naïveté. “You wanna get in, you get in. Jesus coulda got the key from the landlord. You can be sure he didn’t do this on his own.”
    We walked back to the door and waited while Schuyler locked it and, after filling in all the lines and captions, re-taped it with fresh tape. As we went down the hall to thestairs, Mitchell shivered, although it wasn’t particularly cold. At the stairwell I told him I would meet him downstairs in a little while, and I went up to tell Mrs. Paterno where the funeral was. Then I went down and did the same for Gallagher.
    When I reached the ground floor, I saw Mitchell Herskovitz through the window in the door. He was looking down the street toward Riverside Park as though wondering how all of this had come to pass.

6
    Mitchell and I arrived at the funeral home at one-thirty, half an hour before the funeral was due to start.
    “You’d better wear one of these,” he said, taking a black lacy circle from the top of a pile and handing it to me. “To cover your head,” he explained.
    I found a dish of hat pins and fastened the veil to my hair.
    “And please sign the book. I want the family to know you were here.”
    Someone named Hillel Greenspan with an address on Riverside Drive had signed the first line. After I filled in my name and address, I joined Mitchell in a comfortable lounge room with sofas and chairs. An old man was sitting on one of the sofas, his cane held upright between his legs, talking to Mitchell. During lunch, Mitchell had recovered sufficiently that he felt able to put aside what he had learned that morning about his father and converse with the mourners. He told me that he still felt numb and he didn’t look forward to enlightening his sister later that day, but he would get through this.
    “I’d like you to meet Mr. Greenspan,” he said as I walked into the room. “Mr. Greenspan helped my parents find the apartment when we first came to New York.”
    We shook hands, and I listened as Mr. Greenspan told us both what a wonderful person Nathan Herskovitz had been. Mitchell had just finished agreeing with one particular point when he looked toward the door and excused himself. A rather handsome couple had just come in, and Mitchell kissed the woman and shook hands heartily with the man. I assumedthey were Nina and Gordon Passman. I told Mr. Greenspan I would be back soon, and I stood and took a few steps in their direction. Mitchell brought the couple over and introduced us.
    “I apologize for my behavior on the phone the other day,” Nina said as the men moved away to talk. “Mitchell said he explained.”
    “He did, and it’s all right.”
    “I understand you’ve been very helpful to my father. I’m grateful to you for that. I wasn’t able to help him myself. What I’ve learned as my father’s daughter is that time doesn’t heal all wounds. In some cases, it makes them worse.”
    “It’s possible your father was sorry for what happened between you. He was very anxious to attend Yom Kippur services. I was going to take him there.”
    “My