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Hanrahan stopped reading and looked at Lieberman, who showed no emotion. Lieberman stood in the center aisle of the temple looking at the damage, noting that no windows had been broken, that the vandals had taken care not to be heard. Lieberman absorbed each act of sacrilege and blasphemy.
    Hanrahan was sure he himself would be feeling enormous rage if St. Bart’s had been desecrated like this. But Hanrahan had learned that his partner’s facial expressions and feelings might be quite different.
    The other man looking at Lieberman was in his late forties, thin, dressed in a gray suit with no tie on his white shirt. A white yarmulke rested atop his head. Lieberman and Hanrahan wore similar little round black caps, which they had taken from a box that had fallen near the entrance of the chapel. The man in the gray suit was wearing no socks and his shoes were untied. His eyes through his glasses were fixed on Lieberman, watching the detective’s eyes, trying to read in them something, anything that would help him make sense of the abomination around him.
    â€œYou got the call?” Lieberman said.
    â€œAround ten,” said Rabbi Wass. “No, a few minutes before ten. Mr. Timms called. I think he was crying. Then I got dressed, came over and … this. I tried to reach you, left messages. Sat, prayed … The Torah, the blue velvet Torah, it’s missing.”
    Lieberman nodded.
    â€œMr. Timms, Albert,” said Rabbi Wass, “was here last night till after ten, cleaning up, and then came back this morning, saw all this, and called me.”
    â€œWhere’s Mr. Timms?” asked Lieberman.
    â€œIn my study,” said the young rabbi who had replaced his father, the Old Rabbi Wass, as leader of Temple Mir Shavot six years ago. “He’s not a young man. He has a bad heart.”
    â€œYour study is …?” Lieberman began.
    â€œThank God,” said Wass looking at Hanrahan. “It’s untouched. No other room but this was touched.”
    â€œThank God,” Hanrahan said not sure of what he should say. It was Hanrahan whose fists were clenched in anger as he looked around. Lieberman continued to look, as he always looked, like a sad, old man with gray hair and the face of a beagle.
    â€œYou haven’t called the police?” asked Lieberman.
    â€œYou’re the police,” said Wass, holding out his hands. “I called you.”
    â€œI’m a Chicago police officer,” said Lieberman. “The temple is in Skokie now. You call the Skokie police. Let’s go back to your study, talk to Mr. Timms, and call a friend of mine who can help. Detective Hanrahan will keep looking around.”
    Hanrahan was only a few feet away from an obscenity on the wall in dried blood. As they walked out of the large chapel that had once been the lobby of a bank, Rabbi Wass looked back at the devastation in bewilderment and fear.
    â€œHow can we get this cleaned up for services? Who did such a thing? What …?” Wass said as they stepped into the hallway near the entrance of the temple. The white prayer talliths were draped evenly over wooden rods next to the box of black yarmulkes on the floor. The rack of rods had been pushed or kicked over against the wall. On Dempster Street outside, cars sloshed through rain and pedestrians with umbrellas made their way quickly down the sidewalk.
    â€œFirst, Rabbi,” said Lieberman. “I am here in my capacity as building committee chair. Calling me was a logical thing to do.”
    â€œBut the repair of desecration doesn’t come under the building committee,” said Rabbi Wass. “At least I don’t think so. You are a policeman. I called you. There is no precedent. I mean no precedent in our congregation, not in my father’s time, not in my …”
    They entered the rabbi’s study, bookshelves along both walls, desk near the window, small conference table near the door. Seated at