“Just let go of my arm, okay?”

He complied, and again she tried to run off. He latched onto her other arm.

“What the hell are you trying to do?” he said softly.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Know anything about what?”

“Know anything about anything. Leave me alone.”

“Let’s just talk about the phone calls.”

“What phone calls?”

“The phone calls you made to me.”

“I didn’t call you up.”

“I’ve got some voice prints that say you did.”

“Bully for you.”

“Come on,” Decker said, leading her to a plastic chair. He sat her down and pulled up another chair. “Rayana, you called me because you were concerned about something. You know something, and you’re too scared to tell anyone. Come down to the station with me. I’ll get you a lawyer, and we’ll make a deal. I guarantee we’ll deal with you. You turn state’s evidence, and you’ll not only walk out a free bird, you’ll be looked upon as a hero, Rayana.”

She thought about it for a moment.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally.

“Rayana, we’re very close to catching this guy. If we do and you’re implicated in any way, you’re going to be in deep shit, honey.”

“I honestly don’t know anything.”

“C’mon. I’ve got your voice prints. Let’s cut the crap.”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed. “I called you a couple times, okay? Maybe I was curious about something, okay? That doesn’t prove I did anything wrong. Or prove I know something.”

“How’d you know about the shoes, Rayana?”

“Maybe I knew this guy once who liked shoes.”

“What’s his name?”

“I forgot.”

“Come on!”

“I don’t know anything about any rapes. I don’t know anything! Wanna arrest me? Arrest me. I don’t know anything. I called you and asked you about shoes, and that’s all I did, and so far as I know, that ain’t a crime.”

“Harboring felons is a crime. Withholding material evidence is a crime.”

“I’m not withholding or harboring anybody.”

“Who’s the guy you know that likes the shoes?”

“What guy?”

He was losing her, damn it!

“Take a look at these, Rayana.” He pulled out some snapshots. “Take a good look.”

She gave a tentative glance to the first one, then pulled her head away.

“No, come on. Stare at these for a while. I want you to see what you’re protecting.”

She flipped through the photographs, and a look of nausea passed over her face.

“One woman was raped and sodomized so harshly that the membrane between her vagina and anus ruptured. She came down with a massive cross-infection and had to have a hysterectomy. The woman was twenty-one, Rayana.”

“That’s too bad.” She handed the photos back to Decker. “But I don’t know anything.”

“I’m going to have to pull you in for questioning.”

“Go ahead.”

Tenacious little bitch.

“Let’s go.”

“Is it gonna take a long time?”

“Probably.”

“I’d better phone the owner and tell her.”

“Go ahead.”

She made a quick call.

“She should be here in a few minutes.” Rayana sighed dejectedly. “Man, she was pissed. I think I woke her from her nap.”

Decker flipped his wrist and checked the time. “She’d better be speedy.”

“Let’s just go.”

“You don’t want to wait for her?”

“Hell no! You think I want her to see me being led outta here by a cop. Let’s just get it over with.”

Decker escorted her out to the unmarked. He forgot his laundry.

“They let her go?” Fordebrand asked.

“Yeah. Nothing to hold her on. Not a goddam thing. Usually someone who’d bother to call would be aching to confess, but she closed up.” Decker thought for a moment. “Maybe she was afraid of implicating herself and didn’t believe it when we offered her immunity. Hell, maybe she’s involved.”

“You have reason to suspect her?”

“Nothing concrete, damn it. She was a loss.”

“She’ll be back,” Fordebrand said. “She’ll just have to get pissed or worried enough. Then, like a homing pigeon, she’ll be back.”

“Yeah. But in the meantime the asshole rapes someone else. Hollander is tailing her, trying to find out who her companions are. Maybe she’ll be stupid and lead us to someone.”

“You want to grab a steak somewhere, buddy?”

“Sure, just let me check for messages.”

He walked over to his desk and found a manila envelope sitting atop a pile of mail. The name and address were typed on a separate piece of paper and taped to the front side of the parcel. “Detective” was misspelled.

“When did this come in?” Decker said out loud to no one in particular.

“I don’t know,” Fordebrand said.

“Around noon,” MacPherson answered. He was a black robbery detective-a ladies’ man who quoted Shakespeare and Bacon. “While you were playing Eliot Ness with the cleaning maiden. It’s already gone through bomb squad. You’re safe.”

“What the fuck…? There’s no postage on it. Did it come through the mail?”

“Why don’t you open it up, Peter?” MacPherson said.

Decker gingerly broke the seal and gently dumped the contents onto his desktop. Out fell a plastic sandwich bag with something wrapped inside and a typed note. It read:

Check this out in the killing of the fat black bitch at Jewtown.

Decker didn’t even bother to unwrap the contents. He picked up the phone and called the crime lab.

He had a steak, fries, salad, and a beer with Fordebrand, then went home and slept for a couple of hours with Ginger curled at his feet. When he woke up it was nearly six P.M. He’d made an appointment earlier to speak with Stein and Mendelsohn. It was getting late, and he’d have to move it. Before he left the ranch he fed the animals and phoned the station.

The bag had contained a bloody, unwashed buck knife. The handle was bone with a metal ID tag insert. The name on the tag was Cory Schmidt. Preliminary blood typing and fiber analysis showed Marley’s blood on the knife and beige threads from her uniform. Marge had already requested a search warrant for Schmidt’s house and an arrest warrant for Schmidt, but so far they’d been unable to locate Cory or his friends. They were still looking. Decker left a message that he was going to do his interviews and to beep him if he was needed.

Well, golly! How convenient! Who the hell would want to set up Cory? His friends? The real murderer? But how would the real murderer know about Cory as a suspect? Unless he was an insider in the yeshiva and knew that Cory had pulled a knife on Rina. The interviews suddenly seemed more pressing.

Shlomo Stein sat hunched over a volume of Talmud. He’d been sitting that way since Decker started the interview a half hour before. His eyes remained fixed on the text in front of him, but the fidgeting of his hands and the shaking of his leg were giveaways; his mind was decidedly elsewhere. His beard was black and heavy and trimmed to a Van Dyke point a couple of inches below his chin. He wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a pair of black slacks, and a large black velvet yarmulke.

Why the hell was he being so uncooperative, Decker wondered? What did he have to gain by being so outwardly contemptuous? Decker looked over the notes he’d taken, then said:

“I want to go over this again with you.”

“What’s the point?”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

“You’re not a judge. You’re a cop. I have only one judge, and He’s the one I’ll ultimately answer to.”

“Well, right now why don’t you bear with me and answer my questions?”

Stein said nothing.

“You were studying the entire time with your partner when Florence Marley was killed?”

“Yes.”

“The entire night?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t leave the classroom?”

“No.”

“To get a breath of fresh air?”