The Ritual Bath

Description for THE RITUAL BATH by Faye Kellerman:

Someone declares unholy war on the holiest of places when the quiet, ordered world of a yeshiva in the California hills is shattered by an unspeakable crime: a woman is brutally raped as she returns from the mikvah, the bathhouse where women perform their cleansing ritual.

Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD has never heard anything like it, and he's relieved to find Rina Lazarus there as a witness. Calm and intelligent, Rina is the only one in the community willing to cooperate with Decker as she tries to steer him through the Maze of religious laws that thwart his investigation at every turn. But as the trail grows cold. Decker and Rina grow closer until a sudden horrific revelation about the case threatens to tear them apart ...

This is #1 in A Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Novel.