Consulting Detective

  Bahá’í Publishing

  401 Greenleaf Ave, Wilmette, Illinois 60091

  Copyright © 2018 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States

  All rights reserved. Published 2018

  Printed in the United States of America ∞

  ISBN: 978-1-61851-122-5

  21 20 19 18 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Manifold, Alan, author.

  Title: Consulting detective / Alan Manifold.

  Description: Wilmette, Illinois : Baha’i Publishing, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017044841 | ISBN 9781618511225 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Detectives—Illinois—Fiction. | Bahai men—Fiction. | Rabbis—Violence against—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Hate crime investigation—Fiction. | Illinois—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Religious. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR9619.M267 C66 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044841

  Cover design by Jamie Hanrahan

  Book design by Patrick Falso

  For Lorraine, my endless source of encouragement and love

  Contents

  Wednesday, Day 1

  Thursday, Day 2

  Friday, Day 3

  Saturday, Day 4

  Sunday, Day 5

  Monday, Day 6

  Tuesday, Day 7

  Wednesday, Day 8

  Wednesday, Day 1

  “You were fighting?” Detective Sergeant Mihdí Montgomery asked his seven-year-old son, Enoch. “Did you start it, or did the other child?”

  “Dad, it wasn’t like that,” Enoch began to explain.

  At just that moment, however, Mrs. Javad, the office secretary said, “The principal will see you now, Mr. Montgomery.”

  Mihdí arose from his chair and entered the principal’s office, with Enoch following. “Hello, Janice. It’s good to see you, although not necessarily for this reason.”

  “Good to see you, too, Mihdí. How’s Andrea?”

  “She’s just fine. You know her, always busy with a million things.”

  “Yes, I run into her at meetings now and then, but it seems we’re both always too busy to talk.”

  There was a brief silence, as the pleasantries had run their course.

  Dr. Janice Chernievski was forty-six, the same age as Mihdí. She and Mihdí’s wife, Andrea, had known each other since Janice had moved to Pine Bluff four years ago to take the job as principal of Abbott Elementary school. That acquaintanceship had grown to friendship when Enoch began attending the school. They were both heavily involved in causes of social justice in the community, particularly the empowerment of women. Janice Chernievski had only the slightest trace of an accent, inherited from her first-generation immigrant Polish parents. Dressed in a black pantsuit and white blouse, accented by a silk scarf in the browns and yellows of fall, with a welcoming smile, a high forehead, and half-moon glasses hanging on a chain around her neck, she looked every inch an education professional.

  “Mihdí, I was surprised to hear that Enoch had been caught fighting, but as I learned more about it, I was less surprised. He will have to serve detention after school—that’s mandatory, and I probably wouldn’t release him from that if I could—but we won’t take any further disciplinary action against him. I don’t know if I can say the same for his opponent.”

  “I don’t know any details about this, Janice,” said Mihdí. “I got a message from the dispatcher and came right in.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the principal said. “Of course you wouldn’t have heard anything yet. Enoch didn’t really start the fight, and didn’t even want to fight, as far as I can tell. He just wouldn’t allow a bully to succeed in picking on someone.”

  “Well, that sounds a little better,” said Mihdí.

  The principal turned to Enoch and gave him a warm smile. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”

  “I was playing over at the edge of the playground, and I saw Carl Sapp picking on Ruth.”

  “Ruth Levy,” Dr. Chernievski added.

  “Yeah,” said Enoch. “Carl was calling her names and pushing her. She was crying.”

  “What did you do?” his father asked.

  “I ran over there and told Carl to stop. He pushed Ruth harder and made her fall down. Then I stepped between the two of them. That’s when he swung at me.”

  “Did he hit you?” asked the principal.

  “Not very hard,” the boy said. “I kinda ducked and held my arm out like this.” He stood up to demonstrate. “He just hit my arm a little bit.”

  “Did you hit him back?”

  “No, I just told him to quit, but he swung at me again. That time he hit me in the stomach. I was gonna run, but Ruth was still lying there, so I hit him back. I musta hit him in the nose, cause it started bleeding. That’s when Mrs. Ayman came and brought us both in here.”

  The principal turned to Mihdí. “Mrs. Ayman said she saw only Enoch’s punch, but she also talked to Ruth, who told her pretty much the same story that Enoch just told us.”

  “Enoch,” Dr. Chernievski said, “you know we have rules against fighting—for any reason. You’ll have to do your detention.”

  Enoch nodded with a somber face.

  “But I think it was noble what you were trying to do. I’m sure Ruth is grateful. We’ll just have to talk about other ways you might have handled the situation so that you didn’t have to resort to fighting.”

  Enoch nodded again.

  Mihdí added, “You can serve your detention proudly, Enoch. Your Mom and I can help you come up with new strategies for conflict resolution, but your first concern was for justice, and that’s worth a little detention. Bahá’u’lláh says, ‘The Best Beloved . . .’”

  Enoch finished the phrase, “‘. . . of all things in My sight is Justice.’”

  Mihdí smiled and gave Enoch a hug.

  “You can go back to class now,” the principal told the boy. “Ask Mrs. Javad for a pass.”

  Mihdí prepared to go as well.

  “Could you stay a minute, Mihdí?” Dr. Chernievski asked.

  He sat back down.

  “I think you might be interested in a few more details about this,” the principal said, “particularly with the trouble over at the synagogue last night.”

  “You certainly know how to get my attention, Janice,” he replied.

  “Ruth Levy is Jewish, and the names Carl called her were racial slurs— ‘kike,’ ‘yid,’ and ‘Jew-girl.’ I can hardly imagine where he even learned those terms. That’s usually something kids learn from their parents, but I’ve never had anything but good feelings for Mr. Sapp. He’s a single father, and he’s been very involved with Carl’s education here. I wouldn’t have guessed that he harbored any of those kinds of feelings.”

  “Well, perhaps I’ll learn more about it tonight. I’m going to take Enoch over to apologize to Carl and try to get them both over this.”

  “Wow,” Janice exclaimed. “I’m impressed. Most parents wouldn’t do that. But I suppose with Andrea in the family, this is second nature to you folks.”

  “I guess that’s it. Andrea has shown me that it’s total realism. If kids don’t learn to take responsibility for their actions and clear things up while conflicts are still small, the conflicts just grow and grow, and pretty soon we have gangs and wars.”

  “Well, I don’t think this is going to lead to war, but it sounds like a good philosophy, anyway. Good luck!”

  “Thanks.”

  They shook hands, and Mihdí returned to work.

  That there had been some �
��trouble” at Beth Shalom Synagogue, as Dr. Chernievski had mentioned, was a serious understatement: it was a murder and a hate crime rolled into one. Rabbi Jacob Klemme had been killed by a blow to the head, apparently when he surprised someone spraying anti-Semitic slogans on the walls inside the synagogue.

  Detective Mihdí Montgomery was in charge of the investigation. Montgomery’s skin was light brown in color, and most people considered him African American. His father was black, but his mother was Persian. He was almost six foot four in height and reasonably trim, although the signs of a bit of belly were starting to become unmistakable over the last few years. He sported a short, neatly trimmed moustache, but no beard. His thick, curly hair was cut to an even, short length. Today, as on most work days, he was wearing a dark suit with a white, long-sleeved shirt and a conservative tie. His goal was to look presentable in virtually any venue, without standing out.

  Mihdí had risen through the ranks in his fourteen years with the Pine Bluff Police Department. He had been a detective now for three years. This particular investigation had only just begun, so Mihdí had not yet turned up any witnesses, nor did he have any suspects.

  He had been called over to the synagogue about 7:00 p.m. the previous evening when the rabbi’s body had been discovered by a member of Beth Shalom’s congregation. When he entered the sanctuary, the most striking thing was the graffiti. Slogans were spray-painted across three walls in large letters. “Death to Jews,” said the one on the right side of the pews. “Christ-killers,” read the one along the back wall. “Free Palestine,” read the third, blazoned across the left sanctuary wall. In addition to the writing, there were large swastikas crudely painted on the two side walls. The rabbi’s body was lying next to one of the walls where a slogan was painted. An ornate brass candleholder was lying near the body, with traces of what looked like hair and blood on it. A police photographer was taking pictures of the entire crime scene. Shortly after Mihdí arrived, Officer Beth Carr arrived to process the crime scene more thoroughly. The city was too small to have a separate forensics squad or evidence lab, but Beth had been trained in evidence gathering and handled most of the serious crime scenes.

  Someone from the coroner’s office came and did a quick evaluation before confirming that the cause of death appeared to be homicide. He had the rabbi’s body sent to a local hospital for an autopsy to be performed the next day.

  Mihdí had interviewed Scott Craig, the man who had discovered the rabbi’s body. Craig, who was a member of the congregation, said that he had come for a meeting with Rabbi Klemme at Klemme’s invitation. When he arrived at the synagogue at 6:00 p.m., he saw the graffiti painted on the sanctuary wall as he walked past it toward the doorway leading to the synagogue’s administrative area. It was dark enough that he had not seen the rabbi’s body right away. He had then run to the office to check on the rabbi. He found no disruption of the office area, but neither did he find Rabbi Klemme. He returned to the sanctuary, thinking that Klemme might be already working to get the graffiti removed. It was then that he discovered the rabbi’s body near the wall, past the door into the office area, further toward the front of the sanctuary. He called the police from his cell phone and waited outside until they arrived a short time later.

  The detective had done a quick check of the office area himself and found that the rabbi’s computer was still on and was opened to his e-mail and calendar program. Montgomery checked and found that there was, indeed, a meeting scheduled for 6:00 p.m. with Scott Craig. Thinking there was little more to be learned, he let Craig go home about 9:00 p.m. and went home himself as well.

  First thing Wednesday morning, several hours before his meeting with Janice Chernievski at Enoch’s school, Mihdí had arranged for police officers to canvass the neighborhood to try to track down any witnesses to the crime. He also received and reviewed preliminary news about the autopsy, consulted with Beth Carr about the evidence, and wrote up the main facts of the case to identify the primary directions for his investigation. He had other cases he was working on, but his captain had told him to set aside those that could wait and to pass on to other detectives any that couldn’t so that Mihdí would be able to devote full time to this investigation. Murders were not common in Pine Bluff, so each one was treated as a very serious matter.

  Pine Bluff, Illinois was not a large town, but as a suburb of Chicago, it reflected many of the trends, both good and bad, of much larger cities. The crime rate in Pine Bluff was lower than that of Chicago but higher than that of comparably sized cities in rural settings. Recently, the city had been combating a steep increase in apparent gang activity, as well as significant drug-related crime. To date, there had been no hate crimes related to an increasing population of immigrants, but the police were monitoring interethnic tensions to make sure no such problems arose.

  After his other cases were referred to other detectives, Mihdí reviewed photographs of the crime scene. Mihdí looked at the pictures of the graffiti and found something very odd about them. While the two anti-Semitic slogans fit together, the third one, “Free Palestine,” struck him as out of place. The first two suggested racial or religious hatred, while the third was more of a political statement. He made a note to himself to ponder this strange juxtaposition later.

  He found close-ups of the candleholder that was presumed to be the murder weapon. The first reports from Beth Carr and the coroner indicated that the blood found on it was the same type as the rabbi’s, although more tests would be needed to prove it was definitely his. The candleholder was quite ornate, and had spaces for eight small candles and one slightly larger one in the center. “A hanukkia,” Mihdí mused. “A bit early for that, I’d think.”

  The initial autopsy report indicated that the cause of death was head trauma caused by a blow from behind with a heavy object. This all seemed to confirm that Jacob Klemme had been struck with the hanukkia. The weight of the heavy brass hanukkia made it impossible to determine how large a person had wielded the object to strike the blow; even the smallest and weakest person could have hit very hard. Time of death was set between about 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, the day the body was discovered.

  Beth Carr reported that no fingerprints or other identifying evidence had been found. Some hairs, stained with red, had been recovered from the wall just above where the body was found. The hairs were the same color as Rabbi Klemme’s hair, and it appeared that he had hit the wall on the way to the floor. She had sent them to a forensics lab to be processed, just in case. No spray paint cans or other evidence associated with the crime had been found at or near the synagogue.

  Detective Kurt Childs, one of the newest members of the Pine Bluff police force, had been assigned to check with people from each of the businesses on the block around the synagogue. When he returned to the police station a bit after noon, he reported that nobody had noticed anything suspicious. Business had gone on as usual. Nobody seemed to have acted oddly, nobody who had a routine seemed to have varied it, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened until the police arrived at about 6:30 p.m.

  Mihdí made a call to Sam Schliebaum, the President of Congregation Beth Shalom, and made arrangements to meet him at the synagogue. The building had been sealed after the rabbi’s body had been removed, but there was no current police activity. Mihdí went out the back door of the police department and got into his blue Mini Cooper S, the model with a Union Jack painted on the roof. He arrived first at the synagogue and used the key the police had borrowed to let himself in. He had another opportunity to see the spray-painted graffiti before the congregation president arrived.

  After just a few minutes, an elderly gentleman entered the building. Sam Schliebaum looked good for eighty-seven, but he walked slowly and deliberately. He removed his coat and held it over his arm. He did not remove his hat. He wore a brown pinstriped suit that looked a few years out of date but in good shape. The ensemble included a maroon tie with a full Windsor knot that made the tie hang a little short. Schliebaum�
�s face was heavily wrinkled, and his hair was white.

  “Ah, Mr. Schliebaum.” Mihdí offered his hand to the man.

  “I’m afraid your name has slipped my mind, young man,” said Samuel Schliebaum. “The memory is none too good these days, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Mihdí Montgomery,” the detective said.

  “Oh, of course. You’re with the local Bahá’í community, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right. We met at an interfaith service five or six years ago down at the park.”

  “I remember. That was a lovely service. Weren’t you the organizer?”

  “I was one of them,” Mihdí replied, modestly. “There was a whole committee, of course. It’s more than one person could do. I’d say your memory is working just fine, Mr. Schliebaum.”

  The older man grinned. “Well, I haven’t lost it all yet, I guess.”

  “I appreciate your agreeing to meet me here,” Mihdí said.

  “I have been wanting to have a chance to talk to whomever was running the investigation,” Schliebaum replied. “I’m glad to find that it’s you. Would you like to go to the office and sit and talk?”

  “That would be great, Mr. Schliebaum. Please lead the way.”

  Mihdí reviewed some of the facts of the case with the congregation president, then asked him to talk about the rabbi. “He was fairly new here, wasn’t he?” Mihdí asked.

  “Been here just six months or so, I think,” Schliebaum replied. “Before that he was at a synagogue in Ohio—I’m afraid I can’t dredge up the name of the place right now. He was a very likable young man, and hard-working, too. He took his job very seriously.”

  “Did he seem to be getting along well here? Fitting in and connecting with the congregation?”

  “Why do you ask? It’s a pretty cut and dried case from the sound of it. Is there more to this that you haven’t told me?”

  “Nothing particular, no. It’s just that I can’t just stop at the front door of a case,” Mihdí replied. “I have to go in and look around to make sure I’m not missing anything.”