Read Blood on the Sun (CSI: NY) for Free Online

Glick moved to a round table. There was no question about using a booth. Glick was too large. They sat and the overhead lights tinkled on.
    The younger of the two boys standing next to the seated Yosele was sobbing. She comforted him with a hand on his head.
    “Zachary,” said Glick, “can you take your brother to the back room? Mr. Schwartz will bring you some cookies.”
    Behind the counter where he where brewing some tea, old Schwartz nodded. The two boys reluctantly left their mother’s side. When they were gone, Stella asked, “Who is Joshua?”
    “A zealot with a false and mad cause,” said Glick.
    “Joshua is a messianic Jew,” Yosele said softly as the old man set out tea and rugalach. “A test brought on us by the Lord.”
    “He is not a Jew,” Glick corrected.
    “He claims to be a Jew who believes Jesus was the Messiah,” said Yosele. “He and his followers, the Jewish Light of Christ, believe it is their mission to convince the most orthodox of Jews to accept Jesus.”
    “He is so mad that other messianics and Jews for Christ have renounced him,” said Glick. “He opened a storefront temple two blocks down on Flatbush less than a year ago. He has no more than two dozen followers, but they come here, right here to the front of our synagogue, to hand out offensive flyers and try to engage our congregants in discussion. Since they come only a few at a time, the police can do nothing.”
    “And,” said Stella, “your brother had conflicts with them?”
    “Asher confronted them, argued with them, out-shouted them,” said Glick. “Persuaded, reasoned. He even got a few of them to renounce the idiocy of Joshua and move away.”
    “So Joshua was particularly upset with your brother?”
    Glick stopped chewing a dark poppy-seed rugalach and said, “Less than a week ago, right across that street, Asher tried for perhaps the one hundredth time to reason with the lunatic. It ended with Joshua saying that my brother would be crucified like the ancient Hebrews for his unwillingness to accept the truth of the second coming.”
    “Can you give us the names of the men who were part of this morning’s minyan?” asked Stella.
    Glick hesitated, shrugged and said, “Ten of us. Me, Asher, Rabbi Mesmur, Simon Aaronson, Saul Mendel, Justin Tuchman, Herman Siegman, Sanford Tabachnik, Yale Black, and Arvin Bloom.”
    “All regulars?” asked Aiden.
    “All except Mendel and Bloom,” said Glick. “I don’t know Bloom. He came with one of the members, spent some time talking to my brother. Mendel still works. Can’t always make it. The others are retired. The minyan and the shul are their life.”
    “Is there some reason your brother would have stayed after the minyan?” asked Stella.
    “No,” said Glick, sipping his cup of coffee. “He had to get to work.”
    “He did say something about having to do something at the synagogue after the minyan,” Yosele remembered. “He said it would take only a few minutes.”
    “It took more than a few minutes,” said Glick, looking down. “It took his entire life.”
    “Did your husband say anything about what it was he had to do?” asked Stella.
    “No,” the widow said, “but I could tell that he wasn’t looking forward to it.”
    Hyam Glick began to rock in his chair, eyes closed. He spoke softly in Hebrew.
    Yosele translated, “ ’Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is as strong as death, passion fierce as the grave…Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.’ ”
    “Song of Songs,” said Stella.
    Yosele nodded and looked at her now weeping brother-in-law.
     
    Detective Trent Sylvester drove slowly down the road, letting traffic pass him. He concentrated on the right side, pausing whenever he saw anything that might be suspicious, finding nothing for thirty-five minutes. Then he came to the slight break in the bushes. He slowed down, parked and passed carefully through the opening.
    In the