The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Daniel answered his questions with vague generalities and asked, “You attended the seminar with Dr. Darousha?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Did you see patients afterward?”

  “No,” said Carter. “Wally went back by himself. I was off-shift, so I took a cab into East Jerusalem and had dinner. At the Dallas Restaurant.” He chuckled and added: “Filet steak, chips, three bottles of Heineken.” Another chuckle.

  “Something amusing, Dr. Carter?”

  Carter shook his head, ran his fingers through his beard, and smiled.

  “Not really. Just that this sounds like one of those cop shows back home—where were you on the night and all that.”

  “I suppose it does,” said Daniel, writing. “What time did you arrive back at the hospital?”

  “Must have been close to ten-thirty.”

  “What did you do when you arrived?”

  “Went to my room, read medical journals until they put me to sleep, and popped off.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you. This was fairly boring stuff so it could have been as early as eleven. When was this crime committed?”

  “That hasn’t been established yet. Did you hear or see anything at all that was out of the ordinary?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  Daniel dismissed him and he shambled back to his table. A former hippie, Daniel guessed. The kind who might blunt life’s edges with a hit of hashish now and then. A dreamer.

  Dr. Hassan Al Biyadi, by contrast, was all points and angles, formal, dapper, and delicate—almost willowy—with skin as dark as Daniel’s, short black hair, well-oiled, and a pencil-line mustache that had been trimmed to architectural precision. He looked too young to be a doctor, and his white coat and elegant clothes only served to enhance the image of a child playing dress-up.

  “By any chance,” Daniel asked him, “are you related to Mohammed Al Biyadi, the grocer?”

  “He is my father,” said Al Biyadi, suspiciously.

  “Many years ago, when I was a uniformed officer, thieves broke into your father’s warehouse and stole a new shipment of melons and squash. I was assigned to the case.” One of his first triumphs, the criminals quickly apprehended, the merchandise returned. He’d swelled with pride for days.

  As an attempt to gain rapport, it failed.

  “I know nothing of melons,” said the young physician coldly. “Ten years ago I lived in America.”

  “Where in America?”

  “Detroit, Michigan.”

  “The automobile city.”

  Al Biyadi folded his arms across his chest. “What do you want of me?”

  “Did you study medicine in Detroit, Michigan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Wayne State University.”

  “When did you return to Israel?”

  “I returned to Palestine two years ago.”

  “Have you worked at the Amelia Catherine all that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your specialty?”

  “Family medicine.”

  “Did you attend the seminar at Hadassah?”

  Al Biyadi’s face contracted, almost shriveling with anger. “You know the answer to that, policeman. Why play games?”

  Daniel looked at him calmly and said nothing.

  “The same thing over and over,” said Al Biyadi. “Something happens and you harass us.”

  “Have you been harassed by the police before, Dr. Al Biyadi?”

  “You know what I mean,” snapped the young Arab. He looked at his watch, drummed his fingers on the table. “I have things to do, patients to see.”

  “Speaking of seeing, did you see anything unusual last night?”

  “No, nothing, and that’s likely to be my answer to all of your questions.”

  “What about during the early morning hours?”

  “No.”

  “No shouts or cries?”

  “No.”

  “Do you own a car?” asked Daniel, knowing he was prolonging the interview in response to Al Biyadi’s hostility. But it was more than a petty reaction: The young doctor’s response was out of proportion. Was his anger politically rooted or something more—the edginess of the guilty? He wanted a bit more time to study Hassan Al Biyadi.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “A Mercedes.”

  “What color?”

  “Green.”

  “Diesel or petrol?”

  “Diesel.” From between clenched jaws.

  “Where do you park it?”

  “In the back. With everyone else’s.”

  “Did you drive it last night?”

  “I didn’t go out last night.”

  “You were here all night.”

  “Correct.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Studying, going about my business.”

  “Studying for what?”

  Al Biyadi tossed him a patronizing look. “Unlike the less educated occupations, the field of medicine is complex, always changing. One needs constantly to study.”

  A woman in her late twenties came into the dining room. She saw Al Biyadi, walked over to him, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Good morning, Hassan,” she said brightly, in heavily accented Arabic.

  Al Biyadi mumbled a reply.

  “Any more questions?” he asked Daniel.

  The woman looked puzzled. She was plain, with a flat, pleasant face, snub-featured and freckled, devoid of makeup. She wore a sleeveless white stretch top over blue jeans, and low-heeled sandals. Her hair was thin, straight, medium-brown. It hung to her shoulders and was pulled back behind her ears with white barrettes. Her eyes were large and round and matched her hair in hue. They glided inquisitively over Daniel’s face, then clouded in confusion at the sight of his kipah.

  “Police,” said Al Biyadi. “There’s been some sort of crime and I’m being interrogated like a common criminal.”

  The woman absorbed his hostility, as if by osmosis. Imitated his crossed-arms posture and glared at Daniel as if to say Now you’ve upset him. I hope you’re happy.

  “Miss Cassidy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Chief Inspector Sharavi. Please sit down. You, Doctor, are free to go.”

  Being dismissed so quickly seemed to anger Al Biyadi as much as had being detained. He bounded out of his chair and stamped out of the room.

  “You people,” said Peggy Cassidy. “You think you can push everyone around.”

  “By people, you mean . . . ?”

  The young woman smiled enigmatically.

  “Please sit,” Daniel repeated.

  She stared at him, then lowered herself into the chair.

  “Would you like some coffee, Miss Cassidy?”

  “No, and can we get on with whatever it is you want?”

  “What I want,” said Daniel, “is to know if you heard or saw anything unusual last night, or during the early hours of the morning.”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “A crime was committed just up the road. I’m searching for witnesses.”

  “Or scapegoats.”

  “Oh?”

  “We know how you feel about us, about those who want to help the Palestinian people.”

  “This isn’t a political matter,” said Daniel.

  Peggy Cassidy laughed. “Everything’s political.”

  Daniel took a few moments to write in his pad.

  “Where in the States are you from, Miss Cassidy?”

  “Huntington Beach, California.”

  “How long have you lived in Israel?”

  “A year.”

  “And how long in Detroit?”

  The question surprised her, but only for a moment. The look she gave Daniel bore the scorn reserved for a magician whose illusions have failed. “Three years. And yes, that’s where I met Hassan.”

  “At Wayne S
tate University?”

  “At Harper Hospital, which is affiliated with Wayne State University. If you must know.”

  “When did the two of you meet?”

  “Four years ago.”

  “Have you been . . . have you had a relationship since that time?”

  “I don’t see that that’s any of your business.”

  “If I presumed too much, I apologize,” said Daniel.

  She studied him, searching for sarcasm.

  “Hassan’s a wonderful man,” she said. “He didn’t deserve what you did to him.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Daniel sighed, rested his chin on one hand, and looked at her.

  “Miss Cassidy, as I told you, a crime was committed in the vicinity of this hospital. A serious crime. My interest in you or Dr. Al Biyadi is limited to what either of you can tell me about that crime.”

  “Fine,” she said, rising. “Then you have no interest in us at all. Can I go now?”

  He left the Amelia Catherine at nine. Several blue-and-whites were parked near the eastern slope—the grid search of the hillside had begun—and he drove the Escort near the cliff and asked one of the uniforms if anything had turned up in Schlesinger’s trunk.

  “Just a spare tire, Pakad.”

  “What about on the slope?”

  “A Coke bottle with no fingerprints—nothing else yet.”

  Daniel spun the car around, descended Shmuel Ben Adayah and, when he reached the northeast tip of the Old City, turned left on Derekh Yericho, driving along the walls until he came to the parking lot just outside the Dung Gate. Swinging the Escort into a free space, he turned off the engine, got out, and opened the trunk. Inside were two black velvet bags that he removed and tucked under his left arm, next to his heart. The larger, about a foot square, was embroidered with gold and silver almond blossoms encircling a gold filigree Magen David. Half its size, the smaller bag was encrusted with a busy motif of gold curlicues and teardrops and studded with sequins.

  Locking the trunk, he began walking toward the guard post just inside the Dung Gate, to his back the peaceful southern valley that had served as ancient Jerusalem’s refuse dump. He passed the guards, walked under the graceful, scalloped arch, and stepped into the flow of people headed toward HaKotel Hama’aravi—the Western Wall.

  The skies were a canopy of spring blue, cloudless and pure as only Jerusalem skies could be, so free from blemish that staring up at them could cause one to lose perspective. A cool, serene blue that belied the blanket of heat that had descended upon the city. By the time he reached the Wall, he was sticky with sweat.

  The prayer plaza fronting the Kotel was uncrowded, the women’s section occupied only by a few hunched figures in dark clothing—righteous grandmothers praying on behalf of barren women, scrawling messages to the Almighty on scraps of paper and slipping them in the cracks between the stones. It was late, nearing the end of the shaharit period and the last of the Yemenite minyanim had ended, though he did see Mori Zadok reciting psalms as he stood face to the Wall, a tiny, white-bearded, ear-locked wisp, rocking back and forth in a slow cadence, one hand over his eyes, the other touching the golden stone. Other elders—Yemenite, Ashkenazi, Sephardi—had taken their customary places of meditation in the shadow of the Wall; their solitary devotions merged in a low moan of entreaty that reverberated through the plaza.

  Daniel joined the only minyan still forming, a mixed quorum of Lubavitcher Hassidim and American Jewish tourists whom the Lubavitchers had corralled into praying. The tourists carried expensive cameras and wore brightly colored polo shirts, Bermuda shorts, and paper kipot that rested upon their heads with the awkwardness of foreign headdress. Affixed to some of their shirts were tour group identification labels (HI! I’M BARRY SIEGEL), and most seemed baffled as the Hassidim wound phylactery straps around their arms.

  Daniel’s own phylacteries lay in the smaller of the velvet bags, his tallit in the larger. On a typical morning he’d recite the benediction over the tallit and wrap himself in the woolen prayer shawl, then draw out the phylacteries and unwrap them. Following a second benediction, the black cube of the arm phylactery would be placed on his bicep, its straps wound seven times around his forearm, over the scar tissue that sheathed his left hand, and laced around his fingers. After uttering yet another braha, he would center the head phylactery over his brow, just above the hairline. The placement of the cubes symbolized commitment of both mind and body to God, and thus consecrated, he would be ready to worship.

  But this morning was different. Laying the bags down on a chair, he pulled the drawstring of the larger and drew out not the tallit but a siddur bound in silver. Taking up the prayer book, he turned to the Modeh Ani, the Prayer of Thanks Upon Rising, which Laufer’s call had prevented him from reciting at bedside. Facing the Kotel, he chanted:

  Modeh ani lefaneha, melekh hai v’kayam,

  “I offer thanks to Thee, O Everlasting King,”

  Sheh hehezarta bi nishmati b’hemla.

  “Who hast mercifully restored my soul within me.”

  To the Hassidim and tourists standing near him, the prayers of the small dark man seemed impassioned; his rhythmic cantillation, timeless and true. But he knew otherwise. For his devotion was encumbered by faulty concentration, his words baffled by an unwelcome hailstorm of memories. Of other souls. Those that hadn’t been restored.

  CHAPTER

  5

  At ten he drove up El Muqaddas to French Hill, past the cluster of towers where Yaakov Schlesinger lived, and down to National Headquarters. The building was half a kilometer southeast of Ammunition Hill, a crisp, six-story cube of beige limestone, banded by windows and bisected by a flag tower. To the front sprawled an expansive apron of parking lot, half-filled; the entire property was hemmed by an iron fence. At the center of the fence was an electric gate controlled by a uniform inside a guard station. Daniel pulled up next to the observation window.

  “Morning, Tzvika.”

  “Morning, Dani.”

  The gate opened like a yawn.

  A steel revolving door provided access to the lobby. Inside, all was cool and quiet, the white marble floors spotless. A solitary woman in jeans and T-shirt sat on a bench kneading her fingers and waiting. Three uniforms stood behind the shiny black reception counter, joking and laughing, nodding at him without interrupting their conversation. He walked past them quickly, past the bomb display and the burglary prevention exhibit, ignored the elevators, swung open the door to the stairs, and bounded up to the third floor.

  He stepped out into a long hallway and turned right, stopping at a plain wooden door. Only a strip of tape with his name on it distinguished it from the dozens of others that checkered the corridor. Ringing telephones and the white noise of conversation filtered through the hall in tidelike waves, but at a discreet level. Businesslike. He might have been in a law firm.

  So different from the old Russian Compound, with its green copper domes and cold, dingy walls, the ancient plaster crackled like eggshell. The constant press of bodies, the eternal human parade. His cubicle had been noisy, cramped, bereft of privacy. Suspects rubbing elbows with policemen. Vine-laced leaded windows offering views of manacled suspects escorted across the courtyard, bound over for hearing at the Magistrates Hall, some shuffling, others fairly dancing to judgment. The bitter smell of sweat and fear, voices raised in the same old cantata of accusation and denial. The working space of a detective.

  His Major Crimes assignment had meant a move to National Headquarters. But National Headquarters had been built with administrators in mind. Paper blizzards and the high technology of contemporary police work. Basement labs and banks of computers. Well-lit conference rooms and lecture halls. Clean, respectable. Sterile.

  He turned the key. His office was spanking-white and tiny—ten by ten with a view of the parking lot. His desk, files, and shelves filled it, so that there was barely space for a single guest chair; more than o
ne visitor meant a move to one of the interrogation rooms. On the wall was a framed batik Laura had done last summer. A pair of old Yemenite men, brown figures on a cream-colored background, dancing in ecstasy under a flaming orange swirl of sun. Next to it, a pictorial calendar from the Conservation League, this month’s illustration a pair of young almond trees in full snowy blossom against a backdrop of gray rolling hills.

  He squeezed behind the desk. The surface was clear except for a snapshot cube of Laura and the children and a stack of mail. At the top of the stack was a message to call Laufer if he had anything to report, some Research and Development questionnaires to be filled out as soon as possible, a memo explaining new regulations for submitting expense vouchers, and a final death report from Abu Kabir on the Dutch tourist who’d been found dead three days ago in the woodlands just below the Dormition Abbey. He picked up the report and put the rest aside. Scanning the stiff, cruel poetry of the necropsy protocol (“This is the body of a well-developed, well-nourished white male . . .”), he dropped his eyes to the last paragraph: Extensive atherosclerotic disease including blockage of several main blood vessels, no sign of toxins or foul play. Conclusion: The man had been a heart attack waiting to happen. The steep climb to the abbey had done him in.

  He put the report aside, picked up the phone, dialed the main switchboard, and got put on hold. After waiting for several moments, he hung up, dialed again, and was answered by an operator with a cheerful voice. Identifying himself, he gave her three names and left messages for them to contact him as soon as possible.

  She read the names back to him and he said, “Perfect. There’s one more, a Samal Avi Cohen. New hire. Try Personnel and if they don’t know where he can be reached, Tat Nitzav Laufer’s office will. Give him the same message.”

  “Okay. Shalom.”

  “Shalom.”

  The next number he tried was busy. Rather than wait, he left and climbed to the fourth floor.