A Hole In One, Paul Weininger [top novels to read txt] 📗

awake during my sermons and sometimes even enjoy them,” the Rabbi responded with a hint of sarcasm.

Todd replied in kind. “That’s fine, Neil, I take my naps when you get up to swing at the ball on the greens.”

Neil chuckled at Todd’s comment and returned inside the synagogue not seeing Todd getting into Pratt’s car.

“What do you think is going on here?” Pratt asked as he dropped Todd off at home.

“I don’t know, Detective, I don’t want to bring undue suspicion on one of my best friends. He looks and acts pretty much the same, and maybe I just didn’t notice what was on his neck before, but something just doesn’t add up.”

After hearing all of that from Stern, Johnny drove to Carol Jacobson’s home again.

“Detective Pratt, what can I do for you today?”

“I have a few more questions for you, Mrs. Jacobson.”

“Well then, go ahead and ask,” she replied.

“I know you don’t often attend the Rabbi’s services, but have you ever noticed a birthmark on his neck?”

She thought about all the times they lay naked in bed together, then decided it was best to equivocate. “I can’t say for sure, but I don't recall a mark on him before. Then again I wasn’t trying to find one. Why is that important, if I may ask?”

“You may ask, but I can’t answer that, since the investigation is still ongoing,” Pratt said. “All right then, Mrs. Jacobson, thank you very much,” and then he left and returned to the police station.

Twenty-Three

District Attorney Helen Stanford was in her late fifties, brunette, and looked somewhat like actress Helen Mirren; smooth complexion, slight of build, yet ferocious as a pit bull when she genuinely believed a suspect to be guilty of homicide.

Helen received her degree from Stanford University as a Criminal Justice major and then attended Harvard Law School, thereafter becoming an Assistant D.A.

She was the middle child of five with four brothers who were also lawyers. The oldest majored in Corporate Law, the second oldest became degreed in Contractual Law, her younger brother entered Real Estate Law, and the youngest of the family graduated with a degree in Labor Relations Law. Helen found Criminal Law most engrossing and challenging. She realized this was the only kind of law by which people’s lives are on the line.

Her father was proud of all his children, yet he felt a special pride for his daughter, knowing how difficult it had been for a woman to get to any high-status position. Her father often said about his daughter, “My sons, Helen’s brothers, had important law careers too, but no one would live or die by their mistakes in court.”

Her parents were simple unassuming people. Her father a successful veterinarian and her mother a cardiology physician’s assistant. They weren’t wealthy people but were able to assist each of their five children in paying half of their tuitions, provided they paid the other half or received a student loan. Helen had married a U.S. State Representative and had two children. The kids were twenty-one and sixteen, with the daughter being the older one, the son the younger. At these ages, Helen no longer worried about getting home early enough to feed her kids as she once did, so her work hours were now dictated by her own ambitions, which were considerable. Pratt couldn’t have asked for a better prosecutor. Especially, since she had never lost a case.

As printed in gold lettering on her glass door, “District Attorney Helen Stanford, Esq.” noticed Pratt walking past her office, called out his name and waved him inside.

Pratt told her everything about the peculiarities Todd noticed about the Rabbi: his major error in the prayer by not saying the Hebrew word for Lord our God; the birthmark on his neck that Todd never noticed in all the years he knew him; and the testimony he received from Bloom’s neighbors.

She very carefully asked the next question of Pratt, “I heard you told the marshal that you think the Rabbi was having an affair and murdered the woman’s husband. Where did you get that idea, since the husband hasn’t been reported missing?”

“Not yet, anyway! Excuse my language, but I will admit that my answer to the marshal came out of my ass. I needed to tell him something. Knowing his reluctance to involve himself in hard investigations such as homicide cases, I told him what I thought would satisfy him at that moment. I first heard that theory from a witness, but it was just conjecture.”

“Detective Sommerville from Flagstaff also interrogated the Rabbi’s neighbors and they told him about seeing the Rabbi straining to bring out a large bundle into his backyard and placing it onto a bed of leaves and then cover the bundle with more leaves and pine needles and setting it ablaze. This is where we found a man’s skull. According to the coroner, the rest of the body had been completely burnt to ashes, but he was able to identify a human skull. The skull had a bullet hole in the forehead and four teeth left in the lower jaw.”

“So, Detective,” the D.A. asked, “what new factual evidence can you bring me? You arrested the Rabbi for murder-one, didn’t you?”

“When I said ‘not yet,’ was referring to additional information we received since that time. I learned that the person I assumed he killed is according to his wife, on one of his frequent skiing trips to some cabin up in the Colorado mountains, possibly with a friend. According to his wife, he isn’t expected back for a few weeks. Jules told his wife, Carol, that there would be no TV or cell phones in the cabin. That to me was somewhat suspicious because his wife had already confessed to me that she and the Rabbi were having an affair and he may have wanted the husband out of the way. He wasn’t reported missing, so until he turns up it’s still a possibility.”

“Is that it, Detective?” asked the D.A.

“No