Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  “Yes. With such a wound, death is almost always instantaneous. But, make no mistake about it, he suffered plenty before then. Did I show you his hands?”

  “No.”

  “They’re all sliced up. He tried to fight back, but he lost too much blood from the initial wounds too quickly to have enough strength to make a stand.”

  “Any skin fibers under the nails?”

  “I’m afraid not. Happy now?”

  Ben nodded, surprised at the expertise of al-Shaer’s work. He knew the fat man had practiced medicine for many years in the occupied territories, but had been imprisoned by the Israelis following allegations he had performed surgery in a drunken state and lost several patients as a result. He had been released shortly before control of Jericho was turned over to the Palestinians, and had fallen conveniently into this role. Mayor Sumaya had promised to grant al-Shaer a medical license, now that they were required in Palestine, if he did a good job. No time frame had been stipulated but, as far as Ben could tell, the only alcohol in evidence today was of the antiseptic variety.

  “What else?” Ben asked him.

  “Several interesting things,” the medical examiner said. He dropped the stub of his cigarette to the floor and ground it out under his shoe. Drawing back the sheet, he revealed a portion of the torso that had escaped mutilation. He traced his finger down a white splotch of skin he had previously swabbed clean. “Can you see these small scars here?”

  Ben peered around al-Shaer. “No.”

  “Three of them; here, here, and the third through the navel,” the fat man said, jabbing at the flesh to punctuate each word. “They indicate the victim had his gallbladder removed under a process called laparoscopy.”

  “Doubtful a Palestinian would have had access to such a procedure.”

  “Not in the territories, for certain. And it’s doubtful a Palestinian would have had his gallbladder out at all. We are used to living with pain and discomfort.”

  “What is the average age of a person undergoing such a procedure?”

  “Normally thirty-five and over. If the condition is chronic, occasionally even younger. The gallbladder is one of those organs you can live without.”

  “But the odds point to the fact that our victim is at least thirty-five.”

  “Somewhere between that and forty would be my best guess. And his medical history doesn’t stop at gallbladder surgery.” Al-Shaer waddled to the head of the gurney, was about to expose the face, but then thought better of it. “I’ll spare you on this one. You wouldn’t know what you were looking at anyway.”

  “Which is?”

  “His teeth. They’re capped, almost every one of them. Brilliant job. I don’t have to tell you that Palestinians are lucky if we can get a filling.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “Just supposition from this point.”

  “Please.”

  “The victim was very well muscled, very strong, with all the indicators of someone who trained to use his body. An athlete perhaps, or a soldier.”

  “Height and weight?”

  “A little over six feet, a hundred and eighty-five pounds.”

  “And in spite of that and his conditioning he was overpowered.”

  “Tells you something about al-Diib, doesn’t it?”

  Ben gazed at the shape covered by the sheet. “Any guesses as to the victim’s real nationality?”

  “What little remained of his skin tone and texture indicates Semitic dominance but Western breeding. European, an American perhaps. I’d say Israeli, except ...”

  “Except what?”

  “He’s not circumcized. If he was, well, Israeli might have been my first choice.”

  Al-Shaer’s point was well taken, and Ben tried to consider the ramifications of his conclusions. Identification of the body—the first step in any investigation—now promised to be extremely complicated. No longer could he rely on missing-persons reports or even the supposition that the victim was a resident of Jericho. But why would a foreigner, and a non-Arab at that, be walking the town’s streets after midnight?

  “I’m presuming you’ve cataloged the victim’s personal effects.”

  “Of course.”

  “I would like to see his shoes.”

  Al-Shaer looked perplexed, and sighed in annoyance as he fished a plastic bag containing the victim’s shoes from a large metal storage closet. He thrust them forward without comment, then tried not to watch as Ben carefully removed the shoes from the bag and turned them soles up.

  Ben pulled a penknife from his pocket and scratched its blade across the sole of the victim’s right shoe, careful to collect the debris on a strip of paper towel beneath it. Almost all of this debris was common road dirt and dust. But it came away quickly, revealing the black sole beneath it.

  “I should have thought of this before,” Ben muttered.

  “Thought of what?”

  “Of course, I didn’t know he was a foreigner,” Ben continued, rambling. “It seemed an obvious assumption that he had walked to Jaffa Street from wherever.”

  “And he didn’t?”

  “Test the dirt on the underside of this shoe and you will find it to be identical with the samples I asked you to take from the area of Jaffa Street where the body was found. Only, as you can see, there isn’t much of it, which means the victim didn’t walk very far before he was killed.” Here Ben went to work on the second sole, a similarly small pile erected next to the first. “He was either dropped off or parked his car and then traveled the short distance to his meeting on foot.”

  “Meeting? Who said anything about a meeting?”

  “We have a foreigner walking in Jericho after midnight. You think he was out for a casual stroll? Crossed the border and didn’t know it? No, he was in Jericho for a purpose, a purpose that was interrupted by al-Diib. Either that or the Wolf was who he came here to meet.”

  Al-Shaer made sure Ben could see him snickering. “Should I be writing all this down?”

  “No, it’s my concern. Yours is finding the knife al-Diib used on his victims.”

  Al-Shaer chuckled. “You think he was considerate enough to drop it off somewhere in the area?”

  “With the wounds of two victims to compare now, he might as well have. I am going to send you as many knives as I can find, Doctor. I want you to test all of them.”

  “Test?”

  “Measure the precise specifications of the wounds they leave. See if you can come up with a match for the one al-Diib used.”

  “That lubricant might make it harder to identify.”

  “We’re only looking for a starting point here.”

  “And what exactly am I supposed to test these knives on?”

  “A side of beef would do, even a slab of fish if it’s firm enough.”

  Al-Shaer almost smiled at him. “A body would do better. You wouldn’t be available, would you, Inspector?”

  “That depends on whether or not I solve this case.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 13

  B

  en had one more stop he wanted to make before returning to the Palestinian Authority building to meet his Israeli liaison. He drove over to the eastern edge of Jericho toward the expensive villas that looked out over palm trees and banana groves, the Jordan River visible as a thin white streak amid the desert’s reach beyond. Some of the villas had been abandoned and remained derelict, lost to swarming vines and undergrowth, their owners still not having returned to rescue them. Ben had vague recollections of playing in the area as a child and remembered asking his father if they could live in one of these lovely homes.

  His father had always said someday.

  Those memories had been rekindled years later just after his mother’s death. A trip to the attic had turned up a collection of letters to his father written over the course of the nearly five years he had spent in the States before returning to Palestine. They were letters from a woman named Dalia Mikhail, love letters with
a return address that was somehow familiar.

  That address turned out to be the villa where his father had taken Ben to play, using the opportunity, no doubt, to visit a mistress whose letters Ben crunched in his fist as he read them. He felt betrayed, might have thought his father’s entire return to Jericho had been a lie too, if he hadn’t been assassinated.

  Ben kept those letters, smoothed out once again, and reread them occasionally in the years that followed. He wondered if his mother had any idea of what had gone on, if that partially explained why she had not put up a greater fight when Jafir Kamal told her he was leaving. Ben had often thought about writing Dalia Mikhail himself to learn what the letters could not tell him. But he never did. She remained a specter, a shadow to him until his own return to Jericho.

  He had had no idea what to expect or what exactly he intended to say, so he couldn’t really say he was surprised when she opened the door, took one look at him, and said, “I’ve been expecting you.”

  She had known he was back, having followed all the publicity made of his return and the role he was to play in helping to train a Palestinian detective force in the West Bank. Despite his misgivings, Ben found himself almost immediately entranced by her. In her sixties now, he judged, she was still elegant, with fine features and a slim body. A Palestinian Christian, her letters indicated she had always opposed the Fundamentalists. She was not afraid to have Israeli friends visit her and never hesitated to visit them.

  First out of wonder, then curiosity and perhaps, finally, loneliness, Ben had become friends with Dalia Mikhail. They met frequently, sharing meals and memories. While sitting on her terrace, Ben could remember playing on the lovely stretch of land beneath her villa, throwing stones and imagining they might reach the Jordan, while he waited for his father who said he had business to attend to.

  I played with Daddy, he would answer when his mother asked him what he’d done that day, and it seemed to him that he had.

  Dalia Mikhail’s two-story villa had lost none of its charm since those days, furnished with perfectly stated period pieces and art treasures of museum quality, from innumerable periods and cultures. Each piece had a story to go along with it. Ben had heard many of them, but he never tired of hearing more.

  None of the furniture in any of the villa’s rooms matched in terms of style or period. The overwhelming sense was of pale, cool colors set off by dark floors and a few dark wood chests. Contrast made for character, and the symmetry existed in the wondrous mind of the person who had done the arranging.

  Dalia Mikhail was content to live alone with her art. She kept her distance from the rest of the world, using a personal computer tied into the Internet as a buffer zone for companionship when the international phone lines worked. Beyond that, the world stopped at the windows and upon her two decks. There was nothing to beckon her. Her world was inside. Dalia Mikhail, in many ways, was Rula Middein who had accepted the fact that the family was never coming to dinner.

  The only exception was the relentless campaign she waged against the current Palestinian administration through weekly letters to the editor in the various Palestinian dailies. They were seldom published anymore and her requests to pay for advertising space to print them were summarily denied. Still she kept writing, and Ben found himself turning to the editorial page first now on the chance that her efforts had proven successful.

  Today Ben followed her into the living room, which reminded him in some ways of the home he had left in the States. Her television had been tucked into a tall armoire that rested against the near wall. The wires from the roof-mounted satellite dish had been fished invisibly through walls and floor, so as not to disturb the room’s mood. Directly opposite the armoire on the far wall, just to the side of the sliding glass doors that opened onto the villa’s first floor deck, was her computer. The villa’s many windows were covered with light-colored blinds made of natural fibers especially woven to keep the fierce sunlight from destroying Dalia’s treasures during the hottest and brightest times of the day.

  Ben took his customary chair. Dalia sat down opposite him on the couch.

  “You see Al-Quds this morning?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t bother. Another of my letters gone to waste. They refuse to print anything relating to the troubles in the refugee camps.”

  Ben rubbed one of the wounds he suffered at the camp late that morning. “I learned of them first-hand just a few hours ago.”

  “Is that what you came to me about?” Dalia asked.

  “Why must there always be something I come to you about? Can’t I come just to visit?”

  “You could, but you don’t. You always come when there’s something on your mind.”

  He conceded the point, head tilting guiltily. “Just a case I’m working on.”

  “Al-Diib?”

  “How did you know?” Ben managed, taken aback.

  “It was only a matter of time before they asked you for help.”

  “There’s more: I’m to be working with an Israeli counterpart.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. “Becoming part of history like your father?”

  “Reluctantly.”

  “You think it was any different for him?”

  “I thought it came easier, more naturally.”

  “He was just a better actor than you are, Ben: he even fooled himself.” She bounced up enthusiastically from the couch. “I almost forgot. I want to show you something, my latest amanah ...”

  She moved to the armoire and opened its doors gently, removing a miniature ebony chest that looked Chinese to Ben’s untrained eye.

  “Ming Dynasty,” she explained, cradling it lovingly. “Very rare.”

  “And exquisite.”

  “Take it,” Dalia said, and Ben lifted it from her hands like he was holding a baby.

  “It’s called a Buddha chest. The legend is that if you store your secrets inside, Buddha himself will make sure they end up in the right place.”

  “Interesting.”

  “And practical. The Orientals are always practical. We Palestinians could learn something from them.” Ben was ready to give the chest back, but she liked it where it was. “You might learn something from them too, Ben. Any secrets you want to store away inside?”

  “I’m scared,” he confessed, saying what he should have said in the mayor’s office that morning.

  “Of failing? Of losing this opportunity to regain your good standing?”

  “No, of succeeding. Of being the one to catch this monster, just like the last one.”

  Dalia’s expression sank, saddened. “I’m sorry. I was being trivial.”

  Ben rose and handed the chest back to her. “It’s all right. The problem’s mine, and I’ve got to get past it. You’d think I would be glad for a chance to go after another of these monsters.”

  “Not after what the first one did.”

  “Because of what the first one did.” His voice fell after that. “But it’s the last thing I want, going through that again. They scare me, Dalia, because they’re not people as we know them. They operate on a whole different plane. I looked into the Sandman’s eyes after ...”

  He sharpened his voice. “I don’t know what was in them, but it wasn’t human. I don’t know if I can stand to see that sight again, face another monster. I went through the motions this morning, did my job, but the truth is, a big part of me wants to fail. I don’t want to be the one to catch al-Diib, because I can’t pay the price for succeeding again.” Ben tried for a smile, didn’t even come close. “I’ve got nothing left to pay with.”

  Dalia moved to the armoire and returned the Buddha chest to its place.

  “Tell me about the Israeli you’ll be working with,” she said, closing the doors.

  “I’m meeting him at three. That’s all I know.”

  “Let’s see if I can find out a little more,” she offered, seating herself before her computer.

  Dalia used E-mail to contact a friend who wo
rked as a records clerk at Israel’s National Headquarters. When he came on line, she stated her request and then sat back to wait for his response.

  Outside, a mild breeze was blowing in from Jordan, providing the villa all the air-conditioning it needed. In the late afternoon hours that view, encompassing the mountains, valley, and outer reaches of the oasis on which Jericho lies amid an otherwise barren valley, is as magnificent as any on earth.

  “Ah,” Dalia said finally, a reply appearing on her screen, “he’s in a talkative mood today and—Wait a minute . . . Most interesting.”