LITMIR.BIZ

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in computer science. She’s smart … sexy … not to me, but to the boys. She’s full of ideas … more like full of shit!” Wet eyes. “I’ve seen her car at Ernesto’s house a couple of times.”

      “Maybe it’s Doug’s car and he’s visiting Ernesto.”

      “It’s not him, it’s her.”

      “I guess parents aren’t the only people who snoop?”

      She wilted, her voice soft and plaintive. “Please, Lieutenant.”

      “So you’ve seen Ruby Ranger go into Ernesto’s house? Yes or no?”

      “Yes.” Totally defeated now. “Several times.”

      “What’s she like?”

      A long sigh. “Politicized.”

      “What kind of ideas does she have?”

      “Libertarian stuff. Government should stop being everyone’s baby-sitter. And it certainly doesn’t have any right to be a censor when it’s so corrupt itself. She’s really big on a free Internet. That’s her raison d’être at the moment—to maintain an uncensored Internet. You’re twelve years old and wanna talk about porn in the chat room with convicted sex offenders, that’s your perogative. Fine with her. You wanna talk about incest or NAMBLA, fine. You wanna talk about scoring drugs, fine. You wanna talk about neo-Nazis and Hitler as heroes or buy Nazi stuff over the Internet, that’s fine, too. She said that … those exact words.”

      Decker nodded.

      “She also said—right to my face while people were listening in—she also said that I would have been perfect concentration-camp fodder because I have typical Jewish looks.”

      Decker winced. “That’s awful. Not that you look Jewish, but the Nazi fodder part. That’s absolutely disgusting.”

      “It creeped me out.”

      “I can certainly understand that.” Immediately, Decker was thinking about how this woman might be stoking Ernesto’s sadistic sexual fantasies. Her prodding would be especially potent if Ernesto felt that he was from Nazi heritage. “What’d you say to her?”

      “Nothing. I was too shocked to respond. And, of course, that’s exactly what she wanted. To get attention by being outrageous.” Her eyes were focused somewhere on her bare toes. “Jake wasn’t there. I told him about it afterward. He told me his grandparents were in concentration camps.”

      Decker nodded.

      “But they’re not your parents?”

      “My parents are American,” Decker said.

      “So are mine. And my father isn’t even Jewish. I was very offended by her statement. Then there’s this side of me … I was embarrassed by looking so Jewish, because Jewish girls don’t have a reputation for being hotties. That’s why I got the nose pierce. You probably think that’s awful, right?”

      He did think it was awful. Awful and an awful shame. But he tried to keep his face neutral. “Feelings aren’t awful.”

      She wasn’t buying. “Not true. Self-destructive feelings are very awful.”

      Decker softened his tone. “Do you know where Ruby Ranger lives?”

      Lisa nodded. “With her parents. Are you going to go talk to her?”

      “Definitely,” Decker said. “But it didn’t come from you, all right?”

      “She’ll think it came from Jake. He hated her. Every time she walked in the room, he’d leave. She once confronted him … something about him living an outdated life. That was a mistake! Wow, he got real scar—”

      She suddenly shut down.

      Jake got real scary, she had wanted to say. Decker would bring it up with him, a task he dreaded. The father part of him just didn’t have the energy to deal with another crisis. But the cop part kept pushing him on. He folded his notebook. “Thank you. You’ve been helpful.”

      “Maybe I’ve been helpful to you,” she said. “But I certainly have not been helpful to Jake or to Ruby.”

      He was minutes away from the shul. But his head was still spinning from what Lisa Halloway had just told him. He decided to make a quick pit stop at home. Be a concerned father and check up on his children. Besides, the longer car ride to his house would give him a few more minutes of thinking time.

      How to approach Ruby Ranger. At twenty-two, she was not a minor, but he imagined that her parents still exercised monetary control over her. If he could get them on his side, maybe that would give him an in with Ruby. Still, if the young woman were so strongly opinionated with such outrageous ideas, it indicated that she wasn’t dominated by her parents. The age, early to mid twenties, was unpredictable.

      It was getting late. The best thing was to wait until tomorrow. Maybe he’d have some other clever idea as to how to approach her. Maybe if she enjoyed baiting people, baiting a cop would be a big kick for her. He’d play dumb. If she hated Jacob, it would be even more of a kick to mess up his cop father.

      Which brought him back to his stepson. After fifteen years of having a no-fuss, no-hassle kid, he was getting paid back in spades. Jacob was moody, sullen, and sarcastic. But scary? The kid never failed to surprise him.

      He opened his front door, then went into the kitchen. Jacob looked up from the kitchen table. He was in his pajama bottoms, eating a sandwich, and reading Beowulf, yellow highlight marker in his hand. “Hi. What are you doing home? I thought you were going to the shul to help out?”

      “I decided to come home first … see if you need anything.”

      “I’m fine. Hannah’s asleep.”

      “Any problems?”

      “Nah, she’s a great kid.”

      “Yes, she is.”

      “You look tired,” Jacob said. “Like you just had a very bad conversation with a hysterical seventeen-year-old girl.”

      Decker sat down at the table. “I’m loath to get you involved. But I need help. As a cop, the more information the better.” He stared at Jacob’s food. “What are you eating?”

      “Tuna. There’s more in the fridge. I’ll make you dinner.”

      “I’ll do it.”

      “Sit.” Jacob got up. “Kibud Av. Honoring your dad gives you brownie points upstairs. I could use extra.” He fixed Decker a tuna on rye, complete with lettuce and tomato. Decker ritually washed his hands, then said the blessing over the breaking of bread. With two bites, half the sandwich was gone.

      “You are hungry.”

      “I’m always hungry.” Decker patted his stomach. Still firm but a bit wider. “Can we talk about Lisa?”

      “If you want.”

      “Actually, I’m more interested in a woman named Ruby Ranger. Lisa told me you knew her, also that you disliked her.”

      “That is a gross understatement. Ruby Ranger is psycho!”

      “Lisa said that Ruby tried to bait you once. You took offense and got pretty aggressive.”

      “What really happened was I told her if she ever got in my face again, I’d blast her face to smithereens.”

      Decker didn’t answer, too stunned to talk.

      Jacob said, “I not only threatened to kill her, I told her how I’d do it. Then I told her how I’d cover it up. Then I told her I knew all about homicide investigations and how to trip them up because I was your son, and I’d seen you conduct enough of them to know the pitfalls.” He looked at his lap. “Actually, I think she believed me.”

      Decker

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