Run You Down (31 page)
Authors: Julia Dahl
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths
“Okay, so he spent all day, like ten hours, on the couch watching the news and getting high. It was my dad’s birthday and there was a party that night. I wasn’t planning on going, but I felt like I had to get him out of the apartment. I’d never seen him so down. When we got there, we both started drinking. Sam went straight to the whiskey. The party broke up around two, I think. We’d gone inside my dad’s place and that’s when Nan started talking about the Jews. She said she’d seen some of them—the ones with the hats—at Home Depot. She was, like, I heard they’re trying to take over the school board down in Rockland County…”
“And I just, like, went off,” interrupts Sam, talking fast now, like he wants to get to the end. “I was so drunk. I was, like, they’re all on welfare and they make the women shave their heads and all the kids get molested because they’re so fucked up about sex.”
“And they loved it,” says Ryan. “They ate it up. My family hates everybody who’s not like them, but they don’t really know anything about anybody else. So when he started talking they found, like, real
reasons
to hate them. To my dad, Jews were just money-grubbing rats who killed Jesus. Suddenly he’s getting all this
detail
. Sam kept calling them a cult. He was, like, somebody should wipe them all out. He was drunk. But my dad and his friends
loved
it. Everybody was, like,
yeah.
And they just kept talking about it, egging each other on to come up with the most fucked up thing they could think of to strike the first blow, start their stupid race war. Nan was, like, you gotta do something people will remember. She was, like, you can’t just shoot up a school because that’s been done before. And my dad was, like, same thing with a church.”
They both stop talking for a minute. And then Sam speaks: “So I said, a playground. Nobody’s done a playground.”
I open my mouth but manage not to gasp. Sam is shivering. After a moment, he looks at Aviva. She is speechless. We all are.
Sam begins to cry, and beneath his tears, he whispers, “And
Pessie
. If I had just left her alone. If I had cut her off … She should have gone her whole long life without ever meeting people like Connie and Hank. But because of me—because she loved me…” He can’t finish.
Aviva wraps her arms around Sam and he wraps his arms around her. He cries and cries and she rocks him. He pulls away and bends over himself, sobbing. Aviva gets on the floor, kneeling before her baby brother, grasping his hands.
“Look at me, Sammy,” she says. “You did not kill Pessie. And you did not kill all those people at the yeshiva. None of us believe this was your fault. You have had more pain in your life than anyone I know, and you will never outrun what you have seen, and what was done to you. But that is not your fault. Our family was happy until I left, Sammy. I broke our family, not you. Not Eli. Not the cook.
My
selfishness created the world you grew up in. I killed Mommy, not you. Do you understand?” Sam is still crying, but he nods. “But we have been given a second chance.
You
have been given a second chance. You can stay with me, or Isaac, wherever we go. Or you can move far away. Whatever you do, I will love you. I will know who you are inside.”
“So will I,” says Ryan quietly. He puts his hand on Sam’s back.
Sam wipes his face and nods. “We were thinking we’d like to get out of New York, at least for a while. Go somewhere warm where nobody knows us.” For the first time since he started talking, he looks at me. “We were thinking, maybe, Florida.”
Among the best parts of being a published author is the privilege of having very smart people weigh in on and improve your work. I am grateful every day that I can count on my agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan, and Minotaur’s Kelley Ragland to tell me the truth and cheer me on.
Thank you, once again, to
48 Hours
executive producer Susan Zirinsky. I simply could not have finished this book on time had you not supported me the entire way.
Thank you to my friends and colleagues at
CBSNews.com
, especially the
Crimesider
team—Erin Donoghue, Branden Cobb, Barry Leibowitz, and Stephanie Slifer—for putting up with my extended absences and creating a newsroom that feels like home.
Thank you to Chuck Lewis, Wendell Cochran, Lynne Perri, and the rest of the faculty at the American University School of Communications. If I could send Rebekah to get a journalism degree from you, I would.
Thank you to Stephen Handelman, Ted Gest, and Cara Tabachnick at the Center on Media, Crime and Justice. Working for you at
The Crime Report
was the greatest professional learning experience of my life.
Thank you to Hindy Sabel, Zelda Deutsch, Saul Friedman, and, once again, Pearl Reich, for sharing your stories and your time with me.
In the year since
Invisible City
was published, I have spent a lot of time talking and writing about my Jewish-Lutheran heritage, and sharing fairly intimate details about my upbringing and extended family. Thank you to my parents, Bill and Barbara Dahl, and my sister, Susan Sharer, for encouraging me to tell these stories. I’ve heard from lots of people how “special” our family must have been to sustain a happy, healthy two-religion home; I tell them, you have no idea.
Thank you to Lori, Libby, and Jerry Bukiewicz. You have loved and supported me from the moment we were introduced. I am lucky to be a part of your family. This book is dedicated to my husband, Joel Bukiewicz—the bravest man I know.
JULIA DAHL
is a journalist specializing in crime and criminal justice. Her first novel,
Invisible City
, was named one of the
Boston Globe
’s Best Books of 2014 and was a finalist for an Edgar Award and a Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and writes for
CBSNews.com
. You can sign up for email updates
here
.
Also by
Julia Dahl
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CONTENTS
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
RUN YOU DOWN.
Copyright © 2015 by Julia Dahl. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover photographs: country road © Claire Dorn/ plainpicture; walking girl © Elizabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Dahl, Julia, 1977–
Run you down / Julia Dahl. — First edition.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-04340-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-4192-5 (ebook)
1. Jewish women—Fiction. 2. Women journalists—Fiction. 3. Hasidim—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 4. Jewish families—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 5. Murder—Investigation—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.A339R86 2015
813'.6—dc23
20105011402
eISBN 9781466841925
First Edition: June 2015