“Forget it,” Jonathan said quietly.

“What?”

“I said, forget it!” Jonathan’s face turned hard. “Screwing Chaim isn’t going to bring either Ephraim or Shayndie back to life. The family has already been destroyed, Akiva, do you hear me! Destroyed. My wife has been destroyed! I will not be a part of this. I will not bring any more misery to my family!”

“Even if there’s evidence Chaim set up Ephraim?”

“But you don’t have that evidence, do you?”

“Well, no, not yet-”

“I don’t believe that for a minute!” Abruptly, the rabbi’s face broke, tears rolling down his cheeks, blotted up by his beard. “If you want to come after someone-if you need to come after someone-then damn it, come after me!”

“What are you talking about, Jon?” Decker studied his brother. “What’s wrong?”

Without warning, Jonathan jerked the van sideways, swinging it onto the shoulder of the expressway. He almost skidded out as the van bounced on wet dirt and gravel and small patches of ice. He killed the motor, slumped over the steering wheel, and sobbed. When he spoke, Decker could hardly understand him.

“I messed up, Akiva,” Jonathan choked out.

“What? How?” Decker touched his shoulder, then slipped his arm around him. “C’mon, buddy, it can’t be that bad. Talk to me.”

“It is that bad!”

“Talk to me anyway.”

He lifted his head, his eyes wet and red. “I messed up… with Shaynda. I lied to you. I… lied.”

Vehicles were zipping past them, narrowly missing the van’s taillights. Heart hammering in his chest, Decker waited.

“She called me-Shayndie called me.”

Decker held his breath. “When?”

“The morning she was murdered! That’s why it was such a shock! I had just spoken to her about three hours earlier.”

“Around seven in the morning, then,” Decker said. “Did she call you at home?”

The rabbi nodded. “She called me…” He strangled on a deep sigh. “She said she was okay… that she was being taken care of. But I couldn’t tell anyone-not even her parents, especially not her parents, especially not her father. She had sneaked out to call me, but it was against the rules if she wanted to stay where she was. If he found out that she broke the rules, he’d kick her out. So she had to go back really quickly… before anyone found out.”

“Who’s he?” Decker asked.

Jonathan shrugged helplessly. “We spoke for about… one, two minutes. Then she said she had to go. Just please, please don’t tell anyone that she had called.” He looked at Decker with puffy eyes. “I begged her to tell me where she was. I begged her to tell me who she was with. Of course she refused. Just that she was being taken care of by someone big and powerful. And that she was okay.”

A long silence.

“I told Chaim,” Jonathan admitted. “I couldn’t help it, Akiva. I just… he was my brother-in… if it had been my daughter…”

He turned away, beside himself with despair.

“I told him that he couldn’t tell anyone. I told him it was imperative that he kept this between the two of us. But he probably told Minda. Maybe she told the wrong person… I don’t know. I’m plagued with the thought that I inadvertently set her up.”

“It doesn’t sound like it-”

“She begged me not to tell anyone… I should have taken it as a warning. Maybe my phone was tapped. Or maybe Chaim’s phone was tapped when I called to tell him. I should have pressed her to tell me more, but it was so short…”

“If she called you at home, we could trace the call. It’s probably a phone booth, but that could give us an approximate location of where she was staying… assuming that she walked over to the phone booth.”

“I should have gone to you.” Jonathan wiped his eyes. “Asked you for advice before I acted. The way I did it… not only did I break confidentiality… but it may have cost Shayndie her life.”

Decker exhaled, then shrank in his seat. Jonathan misinterpreted his body language. “You despise me.”

The laughter from Decker’s throat was strong and sour. “Oh my my!” He turned to his brother. “You think you screwed up, guy?” He looked at the van’s ceiling. “I messed up big time! I saw her, Jonathan. I saw her and let her go-”

“What?”

“I let her go because she was being protected… or so I thought.”

“What? Who?”

“It’s better if you don’t know,” Decker said.

Jonathan grabbed Decker’s shoulders, fury in his eyes. “I just bared my soul to you. Your response is not good enough!”

Decker’s immediate reaction was to punch back figuratively, but he stopped himself. Jon was right. He clasped his hands to prevent them from hitting or shaking. His heart was beating so rapidly, he felt choked off from oxygen.

Steady, steady!

“Okay…” He caught his breath. “Okay, here’s the deal. If we’re going to sort this out, we’ve got to lay it all out in the open. But nothing-and I mean nothing-goes beyond the van!”

No one spoke. Cars continued to speed by, front bumpers perilously close to the van’s rear end. Decker grumbled, “We should get off the shoulder before we get hit.”

“In a minute.” Jonathan raked his beard with his fingernails, breathing hard. “Okay. It stays between the two of us. Who was Shayndie staying with?”

It took a few moments for Decker to get the name out. “Christopher Donatti.”

Jonathan’s expression was stunned. “Christopher Dona-”

“Ever hear of him?”

“Of course, I’ve heard of him. His father’s trial was front-page news for six months! What the hell was she doing with him? What the hell were you doing with him?”

“I’ll answer your second question first. When Ephraim’s murder scene was examined, one of the cops mentioned that the hit looked like Donatti’s work, but probably wasn’t-too low level and too sloppy. But having nothing else to go on, I went to see him.”

“You went to see Christopher Donatti?”

“Yes, I went to see him.”

“Just like that?”

“If you let me explain-”

“You went to see a hit man!” Jonathan was agitated. “Not just any hit man. You went to call on one of the most notorious criminals in mob history whose father ran the New York Family for over fifteen years? And for what reason?”

“Could you get the sarcasm out of your voice. It’s pissing me off.”

Jonathan looked away. “I’m just… speechless.”

Silence.

“I apologize for my rudeness,” Jonathan whispered.

Decker said, “S’right. I deserve it.”

“No, you don’t. I assume you were trying your best…” Jonathan blew out air, then wiped his smudged glasses with his handkerchief. “Why did you go to see Donatti if you suspected him of killing Ephraim?”

“I didn’t suspect Donatti because the cops didn’t suspect him.” Decker became morose. “I went for help, Jonathan. Donatti and I had a past history together. I thought he might be a good source of information…” Decker hit the dashboard. “It was asinine! I’m a stupid schmuck, okay?”

“You’re not a schmuck, and you certainly aren’t stupid.” Jonathan sighed. “Who knows what drives our actions? We think we do, but we don’t. God is behind everything and He may have had His reasons.”

“That’s kind of you to say.”

“I’m certainly in no position to judge, am I?”

No one spoke as cars continued to speed by.

Decker continued. “I saw Donatti a few times. He told me he had her.”

“What does that mean?”

“Donatti collects runaway kids-strays. Young girls and gay boys with nowhere else to go. He uses them… pimps them-”

“Oh my God! Did he-”

“No, no. He didn’t pimp her. She hadn’t been with him long enough. He had picked up Shayndie over the weekend… before I got to him. But he didn’t tell me right away. We had to play this little cat-and-mouse game first. That’s how it’s always been between us-head games. Later on, he told me he had her. He said he told me as a favor so I wouldn’t worry about her and I could concentrate on Ephraim’s murder. At the time, I thought he was being truthful, but you can’t tell with psychos. The man is a stone-cold killer and a pathological liar. You work with whatever you can get.”