Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

After his birthday he ordered Rokovsky to collect the mail early so Irina would not be able to intercept. It was torment waiting to hear from Sergei again, but perhaps torment was what he had in mind. How could he write just once from Vienna and then not a second time? But, of course, that was his method; he would torture his betrayer slowly by degrees. Men in camps fantasized such things, used fantasies of vengeance to keep themselves alive.

  Anna had written from New York. She was so grateful for all the contacts he'd helped her make, and too for all the loving memories. Her agent had introduced her to an Israeli pianist, they'd played together, there was instant rapport, and then they'd given a hastily prepared recital at the prestigious YMHA.

  One critic praised her "expressive clarity"; another described her tone as "dark and sensuous" and her phrasing as "limpid and full of nuance." There were some reservations: a wish for a little better balance and a little less "Russian imperative." But the reviews were excellent and now the agent was booking them into small halls all over Europe.

  There was something else in her note that saddened him, the delicate suggestion that as lovers they were finished. He accepted that, had known, even as she was leaving, that she was probably departing forever from his life. At least now he had Maureen, not so silken as Anna, nowhere near so refined, but much more exotic, an American primitive and insatiable. God only knew how much longer he would be able to keep her satisfied…

  A week before, there'd been a tremor. Outside the sea was wild. A winter storm was battering the peninsula. The coast had been gouged and now mud slides blocked the road.

  This morning he knew, even as he unlocked his studio, that his hands were ready to work. He grasped up some clay, took it to his bench, closed his eyes, began to work it between his palms. Yes, he felt something-there was something there. He tried to discover what it was.

  A subtle curve across the top. A ridge down the center with shallow recesses on either side. Like a back perhaps, bent in supplication, the spine exposed, the head bowed to the ground.

  No! Impossible! Targov's figures never bowed. They suffered but didn't plead. But still he found something moving in the curve. Forced to bend, the head twisted to one side perhaps, but the face, the features, the posture would repudiate. Yes, that was it, the suffering body would resist.

  He worked through the morning, playing with the clay, and then, in the afternoon, the work turned serious. Outside he could hear the wind. Through the big window he caught glimpses of trees thrashing in the storm. He started on a larger model, one as wide as his own chest, roughing out a wire skeleton, piling the clay on quickly, chopping out an image, then using a wide knife to carve and cut and smooth.

  By nightfall he had something. He took it to the platform, placed it on a dolly, turned it beneath the spotlights, studied it some more. Something powerful about it, which surprised and almost frightened him. To be naked like that, bent over, struggling against a merciless power-he didn't know why but he identified that posture with something important in his life.

  He slept in the studio. In the morning the storm was over. The sea was rough, not wild, and the trees swayed in a gentle breeze. He looked at his model, circled it once, and then, suddenly, he saw it clear. Hurrying to the main house to eat and bathe, he didn't give the sea a glance. He must instruct Rokovsky-he would move into the studio and from now on take all his meals there. Now, at last, he had what he'd been seeking, a work into which he could fling himself. A vision to be wrested. A shape to be released. He would sculpt a martyr.

  MAJOR PERETZ

  Her name was Yael Safir, she was nineteen years old, and she was everything Rafi had feared: pretty, smart, well-liked, a soldier girl working in the computer room at the IDF Command Center in Tel Aviv. She was, moreover, the daughter of a national hero, Captain Asher Safir, killed and posthumously decorated for bravery on the Golan in '73. She'd been last seen hitchhiking her way home to Kibbutz Hulda for the Passover holidays.

  The outrage in the country was immense. Yael Safir was a member of the Israeli elite. She left behind a mother, two sisters, two brothers, a pilot boyfriend, and a large circle of grieving and angry friends.

  As the story hit the press a great outcry was heard. The old lady who lived upstairs stopped Anna in the hall. "What kind of an Israel do we have," she asked, "that a soldier girl can be picked up like that, then mutilated, and killed?"

  Rafi walked into David's office holding a letter. "This just came into the superintendent's office. Latsky's pissing blood."

  David read the letter aloud: "'What's wrong with you people? While a madmen kills our children, you're writing out tickets on Bezalel Street.' "

  "Anonymous, of course. One of half a dozen or so that came in today. There were more yesterday and there'll be more tomorrow."

  "What are you telling me, Rafi?"

  "That the pressure's on."

  "You don't think I feel that?"

  "Of course you do." Rafi sat down. "Watch TV last night?"

  "Katzer?" Rafi nodded. "I feel ashamed a man like that is even listened to. Anna was astonished; she couldn't take her eyes off the screen."

  "Sure. Katzer's magnetic, and this is just the kind of situation he knows how to exploit. The worst of it is that he only repeats what ordinary people say: 'It's got to be an Arab. No Jew would do such a thing!'" Rafi shook his head. "An Arab transvestite prostitute and a Moroccan Jewish whore-no one gave much of a shit. An American nun-that was trouble, but we were coping with it. Schneiderman was bad, but this Yael Safir is something else. To quote Latsky: 'Now we got ourselves a capital-M Murder Case.'

  "If it does turn out to be an Arab, Rafi, you know what a field day the reprisal groups will have. Can't you just see them barging into some pathetic Arab village bristling with self-righteous anger and freshly sharpened kitchen knives?"

  Rafi gazed at him. "Yeah, and I can hear them too. 'You cut our girls, we cut yours.'" He shook his head and left.

  Shoshana retraced Yael's movements. She had left the Command Center at 4 P.M., then waited with other soldiers at the hitching shelter just beyond the gate. She and a girl friend had gotten a lift to Ben-Gurion Airport where a couple hundred more soldiers were also waiting for rides. The scene was chaotic with drivers stopping every few seconds, picking the young people up, then speeding off into the hills. Yael's friend left first-she was heading for Jerusalem. The cars were coming fast, she said, and she doubted Yael waited ten minutes more. Later a male soldier thought he saw Yael get into a dark blue American-type van with Jerusalem plates. Kibbutz Hulda was about a twenty-minute ride from Ben-Gurion. Yael never arrived and was reported missing. She was found twenty-two hours later in the dumpster in Bloomfield Park.

  "Passover eve," Shoshana explained. "Kids desperate to get home and the drivers desperate too. Everyone wants to get to his Seder. Yael's friend's family was a little religious, so Yael pushed her to take the first ride. 'My people don't care all that much,' she said. They kissed and then her friend took off. Yael just waited her turn."

  "Can't anyone remember the driver?" David asked.

  "Van had those kind of windows you can't see in. Even under hypnosis my witness can't recall the digits on the plates."

  "Didn't anyone else get a fix on the car?"

  "David, you've forgotten what it's like. When you go on leave all you think about is getting home. You're so wrapped up in that you don't pay attention to anything else. The man who picked her up probably knew that too. He chose the perfect time when those hitching stops are wild."

  And now Shoshana has a favorite victim too, David thought.

  The tan Renault that had carried Ora Goshen was stolen, so there was reason to believe the blue van with the one-way windows had been stolen too. David put out an all-Israel alert. No reports came in. Then he had Rebecca Marcus forward a request to the police computer unit. He wanted a printout on every dark-colored van in the country, broken down first by city, then by make. If necessary, he would have every owner checked.r />
  Peretz: Dov had him thoroughly covered now. Five teams were on him, watching him day and night, and Dov didn't think Peretz was aware of them-he'd made no visible alterations in his routine.

  "He's a strange guy, David. Doesn't go out much. Stays home most of the day. Doesn't seem to have a job. But then he takes a long walk around five, six in the afternoon. No particular direction or destination, but there's a manner he has that bothers me. Couldn't put my finger on it at first. Then I realized what it was. The way he moves -like a certain kind of dog. A hunter. A tracker. He moves around

  Jerusalem like a guy maneuvering in the woods."

  Although there was risk, since he was publically identified with the case, David knew he had to see this for himself.

  The apartment was on Zevi Graetz, heavily perfumed this time of year by flowering jasmine. A street of fine houses and lush gardens and a sweet smell that reminded him of his boyhood. Walking here to meet Dov he remembered spring evenings playing with Gideon on Disraeli Street, kicking around a soccer ball, then bicycling through the thick aromatic air that settled with the dusk.

  Dov was waiting in an old Volkswagen squareback, parked a few doors down and across the street from Peretz's home.

  "He's got the whole top floor. Looks like it was added on. There's a terrace. Uri can see it from the other side. Sometimes Peretz goes out there and stands by the railing. View's probably terrific. Place must have cost a bundle."

  David knew Peretz had money. Micha Benyamani and Moshe Liederman had pulled together a fairly decent file. He'd inherited from an aunt who lived in the States. The money came through just about the time he left the army and since then, as far as anyone knew, he hadn't bothered to find a job.

  Some crackling over the field radio. Then Uri's voice: "Lights going out." David looked up at the apartment, saw the windows suddenly go dark.

  "Going from room to room turning them off," said Dov. "Coming down now for the evening stroll."

  David focused on the building door. This would be his first look at a living breathing Peretz. He had read through the dossier and studied the tapes, but so far had no clear impression of the man.

  "Okay, now watch the way he sniffs the air."

  And, indeed, when Peretz appeared, he paused, looked both ways, gave the air a sniff, then took off for Wingate Square with an aggressive swagger.

  "Seems to like the posh parts of town." Dov started up the car. "Jerusalem Theater area, that sort of thing. Three out of four times he goes this way. Still, he always looks both directions before he starts."

  Dov turned the car around, zigzagged through a couple of streets, came out by the Mayer Institute of Islamic Art. "Okay, he should pass by in a minute or so. He can work himself up to quite a pace."

  Uri's voice on the radio: "He's on Chopin Street." Then: "Hey! Wait! There's a taxi-load of torchers heading your way."

  Just then an old Mercedes taxi came reeling around the corner with half a dozen bearded youths packed into the back. David caught a glimpse of fanatical eyes peering out of windows. He recognized a gang of ultra-orthodox who drove the city at night. Offended by the semi-nudity of models in advertisements affixed to the sides of bus shelters, they were no longer content to paint the posters out; now they burned the shelters down.

  "What I'd give to arrest a couple of those creeps," Dov said. The taxi passed. "There! See him? There he is."

  David slid down in his seat as he watched Peretz pass in profile. He was striding swiftly now, head thrust forward, hands locked tightly behind his back.

  "From here he usually heads for Zarefat. We had some trouble the first two nights, but now that we know him it's getting easier. There're always two of us out there on foot. Every couple of minutes we change off." Dov started the car again. "I'm going to do a pass."

  David sank down again but kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror. "Now!" For an instant he caught Peretz's face and was surprised to find it troubled and grim. On the tapes he'd seemed so calm and self-assured. So, he thought, Major Peretz wears a mask.

  As they took up various other positions to observe other segments of the walk, David asked himself how much he really knew about his quarry. Only son of secular South African-born parents. A loner with no close male friends. A lifetime bachelor apparently without any woman in his life-which seemed to fit with the lack of sexual assault upon the victims. Still not much to go on. Ali Saad had not been able to identify him, and neither had the two prostitute friends of Ora Goshen. But his appearance at the symposium and his former use of the double slash signature made him a plausible suspect, so far the only one they had.

  "Oh oh, he's turning into the park." Dov grabbed his microphone. "Careful, Uri. It's a maze."

  They were parked across from the Supersol, where Anna did most of her shopping. Peretz had just strode by them, and then, opposite the American Consulate, had turned suddenly into the labyrinthine lower portion of Independence Park.

  "You know, David, it's Queersville in there this time of night."

  Dov was right, this was the place and time for homosexual trysts. There were other such places, in the Old City and in East Jerusalem, but the southern base of Independence Park was notorious, and in the summer months there were always incidents, gay foreigners mugged by addicts, assignations made in expectation of pleasure but ending in beatings or fights.

  "Three's not enough."

  "I know." Dov ordered two more men in, then got out of the car himself.

  "I'm coming too."

  "He knows you."

  "Can't worry about that now." They jogged along the street together, Dov trying to attach his field radio to his belt. "We'll split up and try to flank him. Shouldn't be too tough if he's just passing through. But if he's hunting…" They turned onto a footpath, then into a stand of trees.

  That cloying odor again, of flowering jasmine, hanging in the still night air, thicker this time, almost like a syrup. It was a humid evening, and now, away from the street lamps, cut off from the city, wandering alone amid these silent woods, David asked himself why that particular aroma conjured up such sharp memories of his past. Gideon, he thought-something to do with him, and he realized at once that the association was stronger now than it had been earlier when he'd made his way down Zevi Graetz.

  He took the right fork, skirted the edges of the Mamillah Pool where a dozen young men in tight-fitting clothing lingered against the thick trunks of eucalyptus trees.

  No sign of Peretz. David was about to cross to his left when he remembered that the Renault into which Ora Goshen had stepped that night by the Damascus Gate had been stolen from the public parking lot just four hundred feet up the slope. Suppose he's not here for prey? Suppose he's after another car? He began to run toward the lot. As he charged through some bushes he nearly tripped over two men lying together on a patch of grass.

  "David!" It was Dov, standing on one foot in the middle of the parking lot picking thorns out of his socks. "He's up by the Arp statue on King George. Shoshana'll be around in a minute to pick us up." He pushed in the antenna of his radio and grinned. "Almost forgot about that car."

  "Garbage detail." Shoshana dumped the bag onto the desk. "Or should I say the gleanings, since I kindly removed all the soggy old teabags, raunchy old yogurt cups, and yukky orange rinds downstairs?"

  Eleven A.M. The Pattern Crimes Unit room was nearly empty. Micha was on the telephone, and Rebecca Marcus, cherubic as always, straight-backed and neatly scarfed, was typing up surveillance reports. Liederman was out doing legwork for Micha, and the rest of the expanded unit was either home asleep or on Zevi Graetz waiting for Peretz who, according to Dov, had been acting increasingly nervous and thus might finally be getting ready to make his move.

  David spread out the gleanings. Shoshana's delivery of extracts from Peretz's garbage sack had become a mid-morning ritual. Micha came over and together they went through the stuff, pulling out papers, uncrumpling then discussing them, while Shoshana watched, hands on her
hips, in order, as she put it, "to learn detective work."

  "Still scissoring," Micha said, examining various discarded newspapers from which items on the case had been cut. David scowled.

  He'd once read in an American criminology textbook that psychotic murderers often assembled scrapbooks on their crimes. It had rung true to him then, but now it didn't: To clip out articles on the murders was consistent with showing up at the symposium, and thus proved nothing but an interest in the case.

  "Angry. Look how he ripped this one in half." Micha passed David a fund-raising letter from the West Bank settlers' party, Gush Emunim.

  "Politically he's sympathetic. 'A Greater Israel for Greater Security.' But we know he hates the mystical religious crap. Never mind the prophets' graves."

  "Wonder if he's considering a political career. Look at this stuff. On every mailing list of everything right of center."

  "He's an ex-officer."

  "Now here's something, David."

  Micha was examining a sheet of paper apparently torn from a pocket-size flip-over spiral notebook. He handed it to David. The name "Bar-Lev" had been scrawled across the top.

  "You or your father?"

  "If he's our killer he'd have reason to hate us both."

  Micha scratched his cheek. "Funny, he puts this in his garbage. I wonder if maybe he knows…"

  "What?"

  "No, that's impossible." Micha shook his head. "He couldn't." Just then Rebecca called to him. "Man named Raskov downstairs. Some kind of contractor from Haifa."

  Raskov! Shit! "Find out what he wants."

  Rebecca listened, then covered her receiver. "He's asking to see you, David. Says it won't take long."

  He didn't normally receive unofficial visitors in his office-the unit area was for police only, its exhibits and bulletin boards off limits to the press. But Raskov was special, he was in some awful way "almost family," and David was extremely curious. He had never met Judith's new husband, now stepfather to Hagith.

  The moment Rebecca brought him in, David's first thought was: He looks just the way I knew he would. But then, after a minute in his company, David decided his imagined Raskov had been a lot better than the real thing.