Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

Chapter Fifty-One

He’s lying. I just don’t buy the idea of him going out to Hillson House to get in out of the rain and then sitting around in the living room doing nothing except peer out into the street every now and then to see if the car has gone, entirely content with having scored on Moose because he’s pinched his cigarette case. If that’s all he was planning to do, why all this business of latching the door—?”

“The police might—”

“All right. I’ll let that go, but why pull down the shades and then draw the drapes? No. Rabbi. I’ve got a different idea of how he spent those twenty minutes. It’s my feeling that he came in there the way he says, all right, but he took all these elaborate precautions with the drapes and all because he was planning to be there for some time. He went into the room where Moose was, pinched his cigarette case, and then put that plastic sheet over his head—as he’d been thinking all along—and then came back to the living room to wait.”

“For whom?”

“Not for whom, Rabbi, for what. He came back to wait until Moose stopped breathing. Motive, opportunity, method—he had them all. And what’s more, that remark he made to Jacobs about covering his head when they swaddled him up in the first place—that’s going to prove premeditation. I put it to you, isn’t it damn funny that this Jenkins, who wouldn’t have anything to do with helping Moose get home, was ready to help put him to bed there at Hillson House? Why didn’t he say then, ‘To hell with him. Let him lie on the floor’? We didn’t inquire into it, but I’ll bet when we start preparing this case, we’ll find it was Jenkins who suggested swaddling him up in the first place.”

“Yes, I suppose you will,” said the rabbi sadly. “I’m sure that, without meaning to be unfair and with no thought that you’re in fact being unfair, you’ll suggest it to Jacobs, and he’ll come to believe that it’s true.”

“You’re saying that it’s easy to believe what you’d like to believe. All right,” said Lanigan. “I’ll admit it’s possible. It’s a normal human failing. But it cuts both ways. It’s just as wrong to refuse to see evidence because it points to someone you feel sorry for. In any case, it’s a minor point. You haven’t shown me what’s wrong with my reasoning.”

“What’s wrong? The boys, Gorfinkle and Jacobs, found the door unlatched and ajar. Jenkins said he set the latch so it would lock. He wouldn’t lie about something like that. It would be pointless.”

“Sometimes the lock doesn’t catch. The wind could have blown it open.”

“All right. The boys said they found the body with the head covered. That’s how they knew it was murder. If Jenkins did it and waited to make sure Moose was dead, why didn’t he then remove that part of the sheet once the boy had smothered? That would be the obvious thing to do. Then it would have looked like an accidental death. To leave it over his head was to leave proof that it was murder. He’s a bright lad; he’d realize he would be likely to get involved.”

Lanigan shrugged his shoulders. “He might have panicked.”

“After he calmly sat around for twenty minutes or so?”

“How do you know it was calmly? He may have been in a panic all along. How do we know he did stay there for twenty minutes? Moose would have used up the available oxygen in that plastic sheet in a lot less time than that. And this car that he said he saw parked in front of the house—I don’t believe it. What would anyone be doing there at that time of night and on such a night? If it were a couple who stopped to do a little necking, they wouldn’t have parked underneath the streetlamp. I think he put that in to suggest to us that someone entered Hillson House after he left.”

Lanigan shook his head. “No. Rabbi, stick to the essentials. He was sore because Moose—what’s the term the kids use? Dumped, that’s it—dumped on him. The idea of covering his head was in his mind, because he made the remark. Remember, he didn’t deny making it. He wanted to get even with Moose. He admits that. He even admits going into the room where Moose was lying. And while he was looking down on him, he thought of the things Moose had said, and he picked up that last fold of the sheet and pulled it over his head and tucked it in. And if you don’t think it happened that way, you’ve got to come up with some mysterious stranger who somehow knows that Moose is there, who can get into the house, who knows that Moose is conveniently tied up and then covers his head.” He paused an impressive moment. “The only ones who fit that set of particulars, Rabbi, are your two young friends. Gorfinkle and Jacobs.”