The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Arched eyebrows created the illusion of perpetual surprise. Deep sockets housed a pair of liquid, almond eyes, the irises a strange shade of golden-brown, the lashes so long they bordered on the womanish. In another context he could have been taken for someone of Latin or Caribbean descent, or perhaps Iberian melded with a robust infusion of Aztec. On at least one occasion he had been mistaken for a light-skinned black man.

  His name was Daniel Shalom Sharavi and he was, in fact, a Jew of Yemenite origins. Time, circumstance, and protekzia—fortuitous connections—had made him a policeman. Intelligence and industriousness had raised him to the rank of pakad—chief inspector—in the National Police, Southern District. For most of his career, he’d been a detective. For the last two years he’d specialized in Major Crimes, which, in Jerusalem, rarely referred to the kind of thing that had brought him to Scopus this morning.

  He walked toward the activity. The transport attendants sat in their van. The uniformed policemen were talking to an older man in a Civil Guard uniform. Daniel gave him a second look: late sixties to early seventies, thin but powerfully built, with close-cropped white hair and a bristly white mustache. He seemed to be lecturing the policemen, pointing toward a gully off the west side of the road, gesticulating with his hands, moving his lips rapidly.

  Laufer stood several yards away, seemingly oblivious to the lecture, smoking and checking his watch. The deputy commander wore a black knit shirt and gray slacks, as if he’d lacked the time to don his uniform. In civilian clothes, bereft of ribbons, he looked pudgier, definitely less impressive. When he saw Daniel approaching, he dropped his cigarette and ground it out in the dirt, then said something to the driver, who walked away. Not waiting for Daniel to reach him, he moved forward, paunch first, in short, brisk steps.

  They met midway and shared a minimal handshake.

  “Horrible,” said Laufer. “Butchery.” When he spoke his jowls quivered like empty water bladders. His eyes, Daniel noticed, looked more tired than usual.

  Laufer’s hand fumbled in his shirt pocket and drew out a pack of cigarettes. English Ovals. Souvenirs from the latest London trip, no doubt. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out of his nose in twin drafts.

  “Butchery,” he said again.

  Daniel cocked his head toward the Hagah man.

  “He the one who found it?”

  Laufer nodded. “Schlesinger, Yaakov.”

  “This part of his regular patrol?”

  “Yes. From Old Hadassah, around the university, down past the Amelia Catherine, and back. Back and forth, five times a night, six nights a week.”

  “A lot of walking for someone his age.”

  “He’s a tough one. Former palmahi. Claims he doesn’t need much sleep.”

  “How many times had he been through when he discovered it?”

  “Four. This was the last pass. Back up the road and then he picks up his car on Sderot Churchill and drives home. To French Hill.”

  “Does he log?”

  “At the end, in the car. Unless he finds something out of the ordinary.” Laufer smiled bitterly.

  “So we may be able to pinpoint when it was dumped.”

  “Depending on how seriously you take him.”

  “Any reason not to?”

  “At his age?” said Laufer. “He says he’s certain it wasn’t there before, but who knows? He may be trying to avoid looking sloppy.”

  Daniel looked at the old man. He’d stopped lecturing and stood ruler-straight between the policemen. Wearing the M-1 as if it were part of him. Uniform pressed and creased. The old-guard type. Nothing sloppy about him.

  Turning back to Laufer, he lifted his note pad with his bad hand, flipped it open, and pulled out his pen.

  “What time does he say he found it?” he asked.

  “Five forty-five.”

  A full hour before he’d been called. He lowered the pen, looked at Laufer questioningly.

  “I wanted things quiet,” said the deputy commander matter-of-factly. Without apology. “At least until we can put this in context. No press, no statements, a minimum of personnel. And no needless chatter with any personnel not on the investigating team.”

  “I see,” said Daniel. “Dr. Levi’s been here?”

  “Been and gone. He’ll do the necropsy this afternoon and call you.”

  The deputy commander took a deep drag on his cigarette, got a shred of tobacco on his lip and spat it out.

  “Do you think he’s back?” he asked. “Our gray friend?”

  It was a premature question, thought Daniel. Even for one who had made his mark in administration.

  “Does the evidence fit?” he asked.

  Laufer’s expression made light of the question. “The site fits, doesn’t it? Weren’t the others found right around here?”

  “One of them—Marcovici. Farther down. In the woodlands.”

  “And the others?”

  “Two in Sheikh Jarrah, the fourth—”

  “Exactly.” Laufer cut him off. “All within a half-kilometer radius. Perhaps the bastard has a thing for this area. Something psychological.”

  “Perhaps,” said Daniel. “What about the wounds?”

  “Go down there and look for yourself,” said the deputy commander.

  He turned away, smoking and coughing. Daniel left him and climbed nimbly down into the gully. Two technicians, one male, one female, were working near the body, which was covered by a white sheet.

  “Good morning, Pakad Sharavi,” the man said with mock deference. He held a test tube up to the sunlight, shook it gently, and placed it in an open evidence case.

  “Steinfeld,” acknowledged Daniel. He ran his eyes over the site. Searching for revelations, seeing only the gray of stone, the dun of soil. Torsos of olive trees twisting through the dust, their tops shimmering silver-green. A kilometer of sloping rocky field; beyond it the deep, narrow valley of Wadi el Joz. Sheikh Jarrah, with its jumble of alleys and vanilla-colored houses. Flashes of turquoise: wrought-iron grills painted in the hue the Arabs believed would repel evil spirits. The towers and steeples of the American colony meshing with tangles of television antennas.

  No blood spatter, no trail of crushed foliage, no bits of clothing adhering conveniently to jutting tree limbs. No geographical confession. Just a white form lying under a tree. Isolated, ovoid, out of place. Like an egg dropped out of the sky by some giant, careless bird.

  “Did Dr. Levi have anything to say after his examination?” he asked.

  “Clucked his tongue a lot.” Steinfeld picked up another test tube, examined it, put it down.

  Daniel noticed several plaster casts in the case and asked, “Any clear footprints?”

  “Just those of the Hagah man,” the technician said disgustedly. “If there were others, he obliterated them. He also threw up. Over there.” He pointed to a dry, whitening patch a meter to the left of the sheet. “Missed the body. Good aim, eh?”

  The woman was a new hire named Avital. She knelt in the dirt, taking samples of leaves, twigs, and dung, scooping them into plastic bags, working quickly and silently with an intent expression on her face. When she’d sealed the bags she looked up and grimaced. “You don’t want to look at this one, adoni.”

  “How true,” said Daniel. He got down on his knees and lifted up the sheet.

  The face had been left intact. It lay tilted in an unnatural position, staring up at him with half-closed, clouded eyes. Horribly pretty, like a doll’s head fastened to the carnage below. A young face, dusky, roundish, lightly sprinkled with pimples on forehead and chin, wavy black hair, long and shining.

  How old could she have been? he thought. Fifteen, maybe sixteen? A hot anger kindled in his abdomen. Avital was staring at him and he realized he was clenching his fists. Quickly he relaxed them, felt the fingertips tingle.

  “Was the hair like this when you found it?” he asked.

  “Like what?” asked Steinfeld.

  “Clean. Combed.”

&nbs
p; The technicians looked at each other.

  “Yes,” said Avital.

  Steinfeld nodded and paused expectantly, as if waiting for another question. When none came he shrugged and went back to work.

  Daniel leaned in closer and sniffed. The stench of death had begun to issue from the corpse but through it he made out the clean, sweet scent of soap. Someone had washed her.

  He raised his head and continued examining the face. The mouth hung slightly agape, revealing a hint of white but widely spaced teeth. The lower ones were crowded and chipped. An upper canine was missing. Not a rich girl. Pierced ears but no earrings. No tribal tattoos, scars, birthmarks, or blemishes.

  “Any identification?”

  “Life should be so easy,” said Steinfeld.

  Daniel stared a bit longer, then ceased his inspection of individual features. Shifting his perspective, he regarded the face as an entity and searched for ethnic characteristics. She appeared Oriental, but that meant little. It was a rare Jerusalem face that told a definite ethnic story—Arab, Ashkenazi, Druze, Bukharan, Armenian. Each had its prototype, but the overlap was substantial. He’d seen too many blond, blue-eyed Arabs, too many swarthy Germans to be confident about racial guesses. Still, it would have been nice to find something, somewhere to start . . .

  A shiny green fly settled on the lower lip and began exploring. He shooed it away. Forced his eyes downward.

  The throat had been cut deeply from ear to ear, severing gullet and trachea, separating the ivory knobs of the spinal cord, millimeters from complete decapitation. Each small breast was circled by stab wounds. The abdomen had been sliced open under the ribs on the right side, swooping down to the pelvis and back up to the left. Glossy bits of tissue peeked out from under the flap of the wound. The pubic region was an unrecognizable mass of gore.

  The fire in his belly intensified. He covered the body from the neck down.

  “She wasn’t killed here,” he said.

  Steinfeld shook his head in agreement. “Not enough blood for that. Almost no blood at all, in fact. Looks as if she’s been drained.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Steinfeld pointed to the wound flap. “No blood on the body. What’s visible under the wound looks pale—like a lab specimen. Drained.”

  “What about semen?”

  “Nothing conspicuous—we took scrapings. Levi’s internal will tell you more.”

  Daniel thought of the destruction that had been visited upon the genitals. “Do you think Dr. Levi will be able to get anything from the vaginal vault?”

  “You’ll have to ask Dr. Levi.” Steinfeld snapped the evidence case shut.

  “Someone cleaned her up thoroughly,” said Daniel, more to himself than to the techs.

  “I suppose.”

  There was a camera next to the case.

  “You’ve taken your pictures?”

  “All the usual ones.”

  “Take some extra ones. Just in case.”

  “We’ve already shot three rolls,” said Steinfeld.

  “Shoot more,” said Daniel. “Let’s not have a repeat of the Aboutboul disaster.”

  “I had nothing to do with Aboutboul,” said Steinfeld, defensively. But the look on his face bespoke more than defensiveness.

  He’s horrified, thought Daniel, and fighting to hide it. He softened his tone.

  “I know that, Meir.”

  “Some defective from Northern District on loan to the National Staff,” the technician continued to complain. “Takes the camera and opens it in a lighted room—bye-bye evidence.”

  Daniel’s mind longed to be somewhere else, but he shook his head knowingly, forced himself to commiserate.

  “Protekzia?”

  “What else? Someone’s nephew.”

  “Figures.”

  Steinfeld inspected the contents of his case, closed it, and wiped his hands on his pants. He glanced toward the camera, picked it up.

  “How many extra rolls do you want?”

  “Take two more, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Daniel wrote in his note pad, rose, brushed off his trousers, and looked again at the dead girl. The static beauty of the face, the defilement . . . Young one, what were your final thoughts, your agonies . . . ?

  “Any sand on the body?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Avital, “not even between the toes.”

  “What about the hair?”

  “No,” she said. “I combed through it. Before that, it looked perfect—shampooed and set.” Pause. “Why would that be?”

  “A hair fetishist,” said Steinfeld. “A freak. When you deal with freaks, anything’s possible. Isn’t that right, Pakad?”

  “Absolutely.” Daniel said good-bye and climbed back up. Laufer was back in his Volvo, talking on the radio. His driver stood behind the barrier, chatting with Afif. The old Hagah man was still sandwiched between the two officers. Daniel caught his eye and he nodded formally, as if in salute. Daniel began walking toward him but was stopped by the deputy commander’s voice.

  “Sharavi.”

  He turned around. Laufer had gotten out of the car and was waving him over.

  “So?” the deputy commander demanded when they were face to face.

  “As you said, butchery.”

  “Does it look like the bastard’s work?”

  “Not on the surface.”

  “Be specific,” ordered Laufer.

  “This one’s a child. The Gray Man’s victims were older—mid- to late thirties.”

  The deputy commander dismissed the point with a wave.

  “Perhaps he’s changed his taste,” he said. “Acquired a lust for young whores.”

  “We don’t know this one’s a whore,” said Daniel, surprised at the edge in his voice.

  Laufer grunted, looked away.

  “The wounds differ as well,” said Daniel. “The Gray Man made his incision laterally, on the left side of the throat. He severed the major blood vessels but didn’t cut nearly as deeply as this one—which makes sense, because the Gadish woman, the one who’d survived long enough to talk, described his knife as a small one. This poor girl was just about decapitated, which suggests a larger, heavier weapon.”

  “Which would be the case if he’s gotten angrier and better-armed,” said Laufer. “Progressively more violent. It’s a pattern with sex fiends, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes,” said Daniel. “But the discrepancies go beyond intensity. The Gray Man concentrated on the upper trunk. Struck at the breasts, but never below the waist. And he killed his victims on the spot, after they began to fellate him. This one was murdered elsewhere. Someone washed her hair and combed it out. Scrubbed her clean.”

  Laufer perked up. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The deputy commander grabbed another Oval, jammed it in his mouth, lit it, and puffed furiously.

  “Another one,” he said. “Another mad bastard prowling our streets.”

  “There are other possibilities,” said Daniel.

  “What, another Tutunji?”

  “It needs to be considered.”

  “Shit.”

  Faiz Tutunji. Daniel uttered the name to himself and conjured the face that went with it: long, sunken-cheeked, snaggle-toothed, the same lazy eyes in every arrest photo. A petty thief from Hebron, with a talent for getting caught. Definitely small-time until a trip to Amman had turned him into a revolutionary. He’d come back spouting slogans, assembled six cohorts, and kidnapped a female soldier off a side street not far from the Haifa harbor. Gang-raped her in the Carmel mountains, then strangled her and cut her up to make it look like a sex murder. A Northern District patrol had caught up with them just outside of Acre, trying to force another hayelet into their van at gunpoint. The ensuing shootout had eliminated six out of seven gang members, including Tutunji, and the survivor had produced written orders from Fatah Central Command. Blessings from Chairman Arafat for an honorable new strategy agai
nst the Zionist interloper.

  “Liberation through mutilation,” spat Laufer. “Just what we need.” He grimaced in contemplation, then said, “Okay. I’ll make the appropriate inquiries, find out if any new rumblings have been picked up. If it turns into a security case you’ll liaison with Latam, Shin Bet, and Mossad.” He began walking up the road, toward the still-quiet southern border of the old Hebrew University campus. Daniel stayed by his side.

  “What else?” said the deputy commander. “You said possibilities.”

  “Blood revenge. Love gone wrong.”

  Laufer digested that.

  “A little brutal for that, don’t you think?”

  “When passion plays a role, things can get out of hand,” said Daniel, “but yes, I think it’s only a remote possibility.”

  “Blood revenge,” Laufer reflected. “She look like an Arab to you?”

  “No way to tell.”

  Laufer looked displeased, as if Daniel possessed some special insight into what Arabs looked like and had chosen to withhold it.

  “Our first priority,” said Daniel, “should be to identify her, then work backward from there. The sooner we assemble the team, the better.”

  “Fine, fine. Ben-Ari’s available, as is Zussman. Which do you want?”

  “Neither. I’ll take Nahum Shmeltzer.”

  “I thought he retired.”

  “Not yet—next spring.”

  “None too soon. He’s a dray horse, burned out. Lacks creativity.”

  “He’s creative in his own way,” said Daniel. “Bright and tenacious—well suited for records work. There’ll be plenty of that on this case.”

  Laufer blew smoke at the sky, cleared his throat, said finally, “Very well, take him. In terms of your subinspector—”

  “I want Yosef Lee.”

  “Free egg rolls, eh?”

  “He’s a good team worker. Knows the streets, indefatigable.”