The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Three possibilities come to mind immediately,” he said. “One, a psychopathic murder. Two, a crime of passion—in that I include blood revenge. Three, terrorism. Any other suggestions?”

  “Gang murder,” said Shmeltzer. “She was someone’s girl and got in the middle of something.”

  “The gangs use bullets and they don’t kill women,” said the Chinaman. He slid cubes of shishlik off a skewer, stared at them, ate one.

  “They never used to kill anyone,” said Shmeltzer. “There’s always a first time.”

  “They hide their corpses, Nahum,” said Lee. “The last thing they want is to make it public.” To Daoud: “You guys never found any of the ones the Number Two boys hit, did you?”

  Daoud shook his head.

  “Any gang wars brewing that you know of?” Daniel asked Lee.

  The Chinaman took a swallow of beer and shook his head. “The hashish gangs are stable—heavy supply down from Lebanon with enough to go around for everyone. Zik and the Chain Street Boys have a truce going on stolen goods. Zik’s also cornered the opium market but for now it’s too small for anyone to challenge him.”

  “What about the melon gangs?” asked Shmeltzer.

  “The crop will be small this summer so we can expect some conflict, but that’s a while off and we’ve never had a melon murder yet.”

  “All in due time,” said the older detective. “We’re growing civilized at an alarming rate.”

  “Look into the gangs, Chinaman,” said Daniel. “And investigate the possibility of a pimp-whore thing—that she was a street girl who betrayed her sarsur and he wanted to make an example of her. Show her picture to the lowlifes and see if anyone knew her.”

  “Will do,” said Lee.

  “Any other hypotheses?” asked Daniel. When no one answered he said, “Let’s go back to the first three, starting with terrorism. On the surface it doesn’t look political—there was no message attached to the body and no one’s claimed credit. But that may still be coming. We know they’ve been trying out street crime as a strategy—the one who stabbed Shlomo Mendelsohn shouted slogans, as did the punks who shot at the hikers near Solomon’s Pools. Both of those cases were semi-impulsive—opportunistic—and this one looks more premeditated, but so was the job Tutunji’s gang did on Talia Gidal, so let’s keep our minds open. Nahum, I want you to liaison with Shin Bet and find out if they’ve picked up word of a sex murder strategy from overseas or any of the territories. Elias, have you heard anything along those lines?”

  “There’s always talk,” said Daoud cautiously.

  Shmeltzer’s face tightened. “What kind of talk?” he asked.

  “Slogans. Nothing specific.”

  “That so?” said the older detective, wiping his glasses. “I saw something specific the other day. Graffiti near the Hill of Golgotha. ‘Lop off the head of the Zionist monster.’ Could be someone followed instructions.”

  Daoud said nothing.

  “When you get right down to it,” Shmeltzer continued, “there’s nothing new about Arabs mixing mutilation and politics.” He jabbed his fork into a piece of grilled kidney, put it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. “In the Hebron massacre they sliced the breasts off all the women. Castrated the men and stuffed their balls in their mouths. The Saudis still dismember thieves. It’s part of the Arabic culture, right?”

  Daoud stared straight ahead, tugging at his mustache until the skin around it reddened.

  Daniel and the Chinaman looked at Shmeltzer, who shrugged and said, “This is Jerusalem, boys. A historical context is essential.”

  He returned his attention to his food, cutting into a baby lamb chop, masticating with exaggerated enthusiasm.

  The silence that followed was ponderous and cold. Daoud broke it, speaking in a near murmur.

  “For this murder to be political, the girl would have to be Jewish—”

  “Or a member of an Arab family viewed as collaborationist,” said Shmeltzer.

  Daoud lowered his glance and pushed salad greens around his plate.

  “All possibilities will be considered,” said Daniel. “Let’s move on to the second possibility. Crime of passion—unrequited love, an affair gone sour, soiled honor, blood revenge. Any of you know of family conflicts that could get nasty?”

  “A couple of Moroccan families over in Katamon Tet have been punching each other out for the last few months,” said the Chinaman. “Something about where the laundry should hang. Last I heard it’d cooled down. I’ll check.”

  “Two betrothed families from Surif are feuding over a dowry,” said Daoud. “It’s been all words so far but the words are growing stronger and it may very well boil over into violence. But I know all the family members on both sides and she’s not one of them. The only other thing I can think of is that Druze sheikh who was murdered last year.”

  “Hakim al Atrash,” said Daniel.

  “Yes. Common belief is that it was a land dispute and the Janbulat clan was behind it. It’s an open situation—vengeance has yet to be accomplished. But when they kill someone it will be another man, not a young girl.”

  “Another remote possibility,” said Daniel, “is Bedouins. They’d be quick to execute a lapsed virgin or an adulteress and a Bedouin girl this age could very well have been married or engaged. But the pathologist is certain that this one wore shoes and he made another good point: Bedouins bury their dead in the desert, away from prying eyes. There’d be no reason to bring her up into the city.”

  He took a drink of soda water, ate salad without tasting it, drank again, and said, “My intuition tells me this was no honor killing—all the ones I’ve seen or heard about have been done with a single throat-cut or a bullet to the head. Swift and clean. No body wounds or hacking of the genitals. No washing the corpse. I saw what had been done to her—the pictures don’t capture it.” He paused, chose his words. “It was butchery, ritualistic. Lots of rage, but calculated.”

  “A sex murder,” said the Chinaman.

  “It’s our best working hypothesis.”

  “If it’s a sex murder, we’re out of our element,” said Shmeltzer. “Working from textbooks again. Like goddamned rookies.”

  The remark angered Daniel, partly because it was true. A junior grade detective in any American city saw more in one year than he’d encounter in a lifetime. Serial killings, demonic rituals, child murders, back alley mutilations. A dark, ugly world that he’d read about but had never encountered. Until eight months ago, when Gray Man had come along. A welcome-back from vacation. Four slashings in two months. A one-man crime wave in a city that hosted nine or ten killings in a bad year, most of them the bloody offspring of family squabbles. Four dead women, victimized for selling phony love . . .

  “Things are changing, boys.” Shmeltzer was lecturing the Chinaman and Daoud. “And we’re not equipped for it. Drug fiends, psychopaths—nut-case foreigners in rags. You never used to see them. Now they’re all over the city. On the way here I saw one meshuggener lurching across Herzl, muttering to himself, frothing at the mouth, nearly got himself run over. Go into Independence Park and they’re lying under the trees like mounds of dog shit.”

  “That’s not the type we’re looking for, Nahum,” said Daniel. “Too disorganized, unable to plan. Dr. Ben David’s profile of the Gray Man was a social misfit, withdrawn but outwardly normal.”

  “Terrific,” said Shmeltzer. “Very scholarly guy, Dr. Ben David. Did us a hell of a lot of good.”

  What, Daniel wondered, was eating at him? Shmeltzer had always played the part of devil’s advocate; Daniel didn’t mind it—it kept him thinking. But today it seemed different, less constructive, as if the older man no longer had any interest in work. Perhaps Laufer had been right: The dray horse had outlived his usefulness. On a case like this he needed a rock-solid number two man—the type of detective Shmeltzer had always been before. Not the nay-saying cynic across the table. He looked at Shmeltzer drinking cola, face half-hidden by the glass; cons
idered dealing with it right then and there, decided against it.

  “Nahum,” he said, “get the computer guys to update the list of sex offenders we pulled on Gray Man, subclassify again in terms of tendencies toward violence and use of a knife. Fondness for young girls and drug use are other variables to look for. Most of them are going to be guys we’ve already talked to, but they deserve going over again. A new samal named Avi Cohen will help you with the preliminary screening and I can get you a clerk for tabulation if you need one. Once we’ve established a good sublist, we’ll start pulling them in for interviews. While you’re waiting for the data, check the Scopus campus, see if anyone was working late, if any of the locks on the gates were tampered with.

  “Our first priority,” he said, picking up a photo, “will be identifying her. It’s twenty-four-hour shift time. The earrings are a possible link—the killer may have taken them, but until we know what they look like, a jewelry store canvass isn’t worthwhile. In addition, Dr. Levi said they weren’t gold, so it’s doubtful a professional jeweler would buy them. Still, if you come across someone who buys trinkets, ask them if anyone’s tried to palm some earrings off on them.”

  He turned to Daoud. “Elias, take the villages—you can follow your hunch and start with Abu Tor and Silwan. If they don’t pan out, do the others as well. Isawiya, in particular, is of interest, because you can walk across the desert and up to Scopus without traversing the rest of the city. The Border Patrol says everything’s been quiet, but they’re not infallible. If you learn nothing in any of the villages, start scouring the Old City up to the Damascus Gate, Sultan Suleiman, the area around the Arab bus station and the train station. Visit the orphanages. Talk to drivers, ticket clerks, porters, anyone who might have seen a young girl come in. I’ll hit the main bus station this afternoon and do the same. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Chinaman,” Daniel continued, “cover the neighborhoods to the south of the crime scene—Sheikh Jarrah, the American Colony, Wadi el Joz, then Musrara and along the Green Line. I assume you’ll be visiting the Watermelon Tents to do your gang check.”

  “Tonight, after midnight,” said the Chinaman. “When the fun’s in full bloom.”

  “If you don’t get any leads there, go to the Green Line and talk to the whores. Find out if any strange customers have been hanging around. Don’t hassle anyone but take note of weird ones. Warn the girls too, while you’re at it—talk in general terms, no details.”

  “How general?” asked the Chinaman.

  “Tell them they’re in danger. Say nothing specific about the murder—that goes for all of us. Laufer wants this thing kept quiet—the tourist situation. So talk in terms of a missing girl, nothing more. The same thing applies to communications with other police personnel, which is why we’re meeting away from Headquarters.”

  The Chinaman picked up an empty skewer, used it like a classroom pointer. “I’m supposed to tell the whores they’re in danger. Then I show them the picture of the missing girl. You don’t have to be the Chief Rabbi to put it together.”

  “There’s no way to keep it under wraps for any significant length of time,” agreed Daniel. “What the brass is hoping is that we jam up the grapevine for a while, get lucky, and wrap up the case quickly enough to feed the papers a three-line closed-file piece.”

  “Hope springs eternal,” mumbled Shmeltzer.

  “I’ll be on beeper all through Shabbat,” continued Daniel. “If any of you get anything of substance, call me immediately. Tomorrow I’ll be walking down to the lower Katamonim and knocking on doors—if she’s poor and Jewish it seems the best place to start. I’ve got Records doing research into some people at the Amelia Catherine and the Civil Guardsman who discovered the body. Where I go from there depends on what they find. Anyone beep me if you get something good. If there’s something worth sharing we’ll call a meeting at my place, Sunday afternoon. Now, let’s pay and get going.”

  After the bill had been settled, he instructed Daoud to remain at the table and walked Lee and Shmeltzer out of The Star. The Chinaman got onto a Vespa scooter he’d parked in front of the restaurant, thick thighs flaring, looking like a kid on a toy bicycle. He revved up, sputtered to King George, turned left, and sped away. Next to The Star was a three-story building whose ground floor housed an El Al agency and a children’s clothing store. On the upper floors were lawyers’ offices, all closed for the midday lunch break; to the right of the storefronts, a dark, tiled entrance leading to the stairs.

  Daniel took Shmeltzer by the elbow, propelled him through the doorway, and said, “What’s going on, Nahum?”

  Shmeltzer’s expression was innocent.

  “Going on about what?”

  “Your attitude. That little speech about Hebron, the side comments.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Shmeltzer, “I’ll do my job.”

  “That’s no answer,” snapped Daniel. “If something’s eating at you I want to know it.”

  Shmeltzer smiled placidly.

  “What should be eating at me? I’m just a guy who likes to tell it straight.”

  “An irrelevant lecture on Arabic culture is telling it straight?”

  A tremor of anger floated across the older man’s face. He compressed his mouth and a ring of white encircled his lips.

  “Look, Dani, you want to use him, that’s your prerogative. You think he’s hot, fine, maybe he is. But the hell if I’m going to change his diapers.” Shmeltzer’s glasses had slipped down a nose slippery with sweat, and he pushed them up. “That’s the thing that pisses me off the most about them. They talk around things, using pretty words, sir this, sir that, welcome to my tent. Turn your back and there’s a fucking knife in it. I tell it straight, the rest of us tell it straight, and he’s going to damn well have to live with that or go back to selling rosaries.”

  “I have no interest in protecting him,” said Daniel. “He does his job or he’s out. It’s your frame of mind I want to be sure of. So we can get the job done.”

  “Have you ever known me to fuck up?”

  “No. I brought you on because I thought you were the best.”

  For a moment Shmeltzer’s face seemed to soften. Then his eyes grew strangely fierce before fading to neutrality.

  “I’ll give you no reason to change your mind.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  “You heard it,” said Shmeltzer. “Now, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get to work.” He put his hands in his pockets and slouched against the wall. A rubber ball bounced into the entry hall, followed by a child—a boy, six or seven—who scooped it up, stared at them, and ran back out to the mall.

  “Go,” said Daniel. “Shabbat shalom.”

  Shmeltzer straightened his windbreaker, adjusted his holster, and walked out of the entry. Daniel followed him and watched his thin form recede in the distance. Within moments he’d disappeared into the throng that streamed down Ben Yehuda.

  When he got back to the banquet room, Emil the Waiter was clearing the table, working around Daoud, who sat staring at the picture of the girl, a demitasse of Turkish coffee in one hand. Daniel pulled out the chair next to him, sat, and waited until they were alone.

  “I have one goal,” he said. “Find the monster who killed her, prevent him from doing it again. I have no time for internal politics or bickering.”

  “I understand, Pakad.”

  “You took some garbage today. You’ll probably take more in the future. You’re a professional and I assume it won’t disturb your sleep.”

  Daoud smiled faintly. “I’m a heavy sleeper.”

  “Good. If something gets in the way of your doing your job, tell me. Anything else, I don’t want to hear about.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They left the restaurant. Daoud walked to a tiny old gray Citroën that appeared to be held together with rope and baling wire. A blue Occupied Territories plate dangled crookedly from the battered front fender, embossed with
the letter bet for Bethlehem, and an iron crucifix hung from the rearview mirror. Despite the police ID on top of the dash it looked like a perfect bomb crib, and Daniel wasn’t surprised to see Wiesel, the undercover man, observing the car from a table at an adjacent café. When he saw Daniel he called for his check.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Friday, four P.M., Daniel exited the central bus station having learned nothing. No one had seen the girl. No one had looked at her photograph with even a hint of recognition.

  A blind beggar was huddled on the sidewalk just outside the entrance to the depot, begrimed and toothless, his dry, sunken eyeholes raised to the sun. When Daniel passed, he held out a quaking clawlike hand and started to chant, a rhythmic keen not unlike prayer. Kind sir, kind sir, the good deed of charity takes on special value as the Sabbath approaches, a good deed, kind sir, kind sir, amen, amen . . .

  Daniel reached into his pocket, drew out a handful of coins, and dropped them into the filthy palm without counting. The beggar began blessing him in a high-pitched wail. The bony hand continued to shake, sifting the money as if it were grain, probing, hefting, decoding its value. A mental total was reached; the beggar’s mouth twisted into a gaping, black-gummed smile. The blessings increased in volume and vigor: Daniel and his offspring for ten generations would be graced with good health and riches for time immemorial . . .

  Suddenly a group of six other paupers appeared from nowhere. Hunched, lame, snaggletoothed, and twisted, they shuffled and limped toward the detective, proclaiming individual litanies of despair that merged to a toneless, mournful dirge. Before he could get to the Escort, they’d reached him. Forming a circle around him, they began chanting louder, beseeching the kind sir. Emptying his pockets, he gave something to each of them, compressing his nostrils to avoid their stench.