Decker called his bluff. “Go ahead. We’ll search the place together.”

The man said nothing. He rocked back and forth on his heels. Rina broke into Hebrew. The man answered her back angrily. Decker bit his tongue, as the two of them went at it for a while. In the end, Rina seemed to have won out. The man dropped his arms at his sides and stared at Decker.

“You two are married?”

Decker nodded.

“She isn’t your partner?”

Decker didn’t answer right away. Now he was positive that someone had been here before him. Someone who told this young man that a cop and his female partner were out looking for Dov Yalom. Who? Gold? Milligan? Both knew Marge was Decker’s partner.

“No, she isn’t my partner. She’s translating for me.” Decker rolled his tongue in his cheeks. “Do you have a name, sir?”

“Moti.” He held out his hand. “Moti Bernstein.”

“Moti Bernstein from Omaha.” Decker took the hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Moti. Now who told you that I might come over here and poke around.”

“No one told me anything.”

“Then why did you think that this charming young woman who covers her hair was my partner?”

Bernstein didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Look, I’d like to help you. But there’s no Dov Yalom here. Sorry.”

“He might be using an alias.” Decker handed Bernstein a stack of Dov’s high school pictures. “Does this boy look familiar?”

The religious man flipped through the pictures, then handed them back. “I’ve never seen this boy.”

“I’d like to look around anyway.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you, Moti,” Decker said. “But sometimes I see things that no one else sees.”

“You know, parents are really nervous about letting their kids stay here. Israel gets a real bad rap because the foreign newspapers depict it as a much more dangerous place than it is. If I let you poke around, it’s going to raise a lot of dander.”

Decker didn’t speak right away. “You’re willing to risk a kid’s life to keep up an image?”

The tops of Bernstein’s cheeks took on a rosy hue. “I’m just saying I don’t recognize the boy in the picture. So what excuse do I have to let you poke around and invade people’s privacy?”

Again Decker paused before he spoke, his eyes boring into Bernstein’s. “I thought Judaism has a concept called pikuach nefesh. That the saving of a life takes precedence over everything!”

Bernstein stared at Decker. “You learn, Sergeant?”

Decker stared back. “What?”

“You know about pikuach nefesh, you must have done some learning.” Bernstein dragged his toe over the stone floor. “See, if you were learning, then maybe you’d want to go inside the bais midrash to look up something.”