Sacred and Profane (novel)

[citation needed] Timeline: About six months after The Ritual Bath, it starts Christmas Eve, when Decker is 39, in Los Angeles at Yeshiva Ohavei Torah, Foothill Division, and the LAPD.

Decker embarks on the long process of tracking down who were the two young women, where they might have been, and with whom they may have been involved - following slender clues and descending into the most seamy dives behind Hollywood's glittering façade.

As it turns out, one of the victims was Lindsey Bates - a happy, middle-class teenager, who was abducted and horribly tortured, mutilated, killed, and burned, with the whole process taken down on a "snuff film" made to the specifications of a depraved group of very wealthy men.

Seeing the film depicting the systematic torture and mutilation of the innocent girl causes Decker a crisis of faith, making him for a time reject Rav Shulman's God, who allows such evil in His world.

Then, they separate so they can both concentrate on preparing themselves for the future - she to take a job in a relative's company to stop feeling like a charity case, he to continue his Talmudic studies and decide if he really can lead a Jewish religious life for himself and not just for the purpose of being able to marry her.

The kind of notched incisors known as Hutchinson's teeth are characteristic of congenital syphilis : One of the skeletons found in the hills having such teeth provides Peter Decker with a vital clue helping unravel the mystery in Sacred and Profane .