The Silent Bride by Leslie Glass Page A

reduced from yesterday. His expression clearly said it was happening again: His people were being embroiled in a brand-new holocaust in the year 2002, right there in Riverdale, New York.
Without looking at the two detectives, he gestured for them to enter the office. "We had almost a thousand people at the funeral. They came from all over. A sizable demonstration of respect."
    "Yes, and thank God there was no trouble," April murmured.
    There had been no anti-Israel demonstrations and none of the anti-Semitic sentiment from the African-American and Middle Eastern factions in the city that the rabbi had predicted. April's instincts appeared to be on target. This killing was a personal thing. And the news media thought so, too. The media bulldozers were already moving the earth around the wealthy Schoenfeld family, searching for their underpinnings. The news vans were out in droves. Dozens of reporters from agencies all over the world had been at the funeral, plus the dozens of still cameras, clicking away. Tovah's murder was topping the worldwide charts as America's freak-of-the-week crime horror. The mayor was going nuts, the police commissioner, too.
    A lot of people were asking again: What kind of city was this where somebody could shoot down an eighteen-year-old bride in front of hundreds of people? Several vans were outside the temple even now. Mike and April had been videoed going in. The press couldn't be stopped.
    The rabbi bristled at April's remark that the funeral had gone without a hitch. "There's lots of trouble, maybe not the kind you mean. The girl, bless her soul, is in the ground now. No one else can hurt her. But that can't be said of rest of us." His anger escalated as he spoke. He was a man used to lecturing. "Do you know who did this terrible thing to us?"
    To Tovah, April wanted to correct him. The victim was a person with a name. Others could have been killed very easily, but no one else had been killed. It had been a careful hit. The murder was not a message for the universal them. April wished she could lecture right back and tell this mourning rabbi that Tovah was the one they had to think of now. They had to focus on what had made her a target in her happiest moment on her happiest day—not the day before, not the day after. She refrained from saying this. She wanted his help, not his ire.
"Your people left a mess. It's a disgrace," the rabbi went on, changing the subject so quickly April wasn't sure for a second what he meant.
"In the synagogue?" she asked, glancing at Mike, who'd asked her to conduct the interview.
"Everywhere. Those yellow tapes. Bloody floors."
Ah. Sometimes people went on the offensive when they were hurt. They threatened to hire lawyers, to sue anyone and everyone they could think of. The rabbi was a complainer. April nodded sympathetically. She knew that the Crime Scene Unit had taken all the refuse from their own materials with them, but he didn't mean that. He'd wanted the place cleaned up last night after they'd finished. Literally the floors and pews washed so they could have their services in the sanctuary today.
April had already checked out the situation. There were several other synagogues in the area where people could pray today and tomorrow. That was as far as she could go. In the movies, you might see bad guys cleaning up their murder scenes, but the police were the good guys. They provided other services.
"I know you talked with Inspector Bellaqua about anti-Semitism in the community," she murmured.
    The rabbi leaned forward and looked hard at Mike for the first time. "Good, hardworking people live here. I told the inspector we had a small incident last year—a swastika in shaving cream on one of the windows. Not even spray paint. A prank. Since then, a broken window. A few things..." He seemed of two minds about pursuing it. If he let that angle go, where would the police look next?
    "That's what Sergeant Hollis told us," April said.
    "He's a good policeman. We