Land, Jon

by [Kamal

* * * *

  Chapter 15

  Y

  ou’re early,” Ben greeted Officer Tawil as he approached the car Ben had parked in the dark shadows of Jaffa Street at eleven o’clock that night.

  “So are you, sidi.”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “No sign of the boy yet, I assume,” Tawil said, as he climbed into the passenger seat of the Peugeot. He took another look at Ben. “No uniform?”

  “Didn’t see the need, so I chose comfort over function. Besides, I doubt we’ll be arresting anyone.”

  “What happened to your face? I was right, wasn’t I, Inspector? I hope you made the man who did that pay.”

  “There were too many.”

  “All of them, then,” Tawil said, and Ben could hear the hate building in his voice.

  “Who should I have made pay, Issa?” he asked knowingly.

  Tawil lowered his eyes. “My parents were executed when I was ten because they were suspected of being collaborators. Their killers made me watch.”

  “And were your parents collaborators?”

  “No more than the cabdriver those police officers killed was. They begged for medicine I needed, antibiotics, and when the United Nations administrators couldn’t help, they turned to the Israelis. That was their crime. If they had let me go without medicine, they would have lived. Since they received the antibiotics, they had to die.” Tawil looked up again. The rage had narrowed his eyes into angry slits. They looked watery. “Your father came back and tried to make a difference. He stood up to the Israelis on behalf of people like my parents.”

  “It wasn’t the Israelis who murdered them, Issa.”

  “But they murdered your father, sidi.”

  * * * *

  T

  he Palestinians had inherited the old police station in the Baladiya after the Israelis relinquished control of Jericho. The limestone building sat perpendicular to the Municipal Building on the square, easily distinguishable by the open veranda that lay before its entrance. The cells were located in the basement and the three stories above were neatly laid out with offices and conference rooms, the detective branch taking up the bulk of the first floor.

  That afternoon, Danielle had followed Ben back there and joined him in his windowless office off by itself in the rear where they reviewed the case files together until she took her leave just before six o’clock. None of the Israeli autopsy reports mentioned anything about an oily substance found within the wounds of the victims, and he had neglected to ask her if any retesting were possible to see if the results might jibe with Dr. al-Shaer’s. He was jotting down a note to himself, when a knock came on his door just before it creaked open.

  “I was hoping I would find you in,” greeted Major Nabril al-Asi, head of the Palestinian Protective Security Service. “Can you spare a few minutes?”

  Ben shifted uneasily, not sure what to make of this on top of everything else that had happened today. Since the PSS’s offices were located in the Palestinian Authority building, al-Asi must have made a special trip over here, and that alone was cause for concern. The Palestinian Protective Security Service was generally regarded as Yasir Arafat’s secret police, and had inherited many of the roles left vacant by the Israeli withdrawal. Their primary charge was to keep opposition groups in check, but to accomplish this al-Asi had expanded his mandate considerably. From often unlawful detainments and seizures to baseless arrests and extended incarcerations, al-Asi did his job at the expense of driving a rift between his service and the people it was supposed to be protecting.

  Al-Asi preferred tailored Western suits, which his official “civilian” status allowed him to don daily. Ben had heard Israeli contacts obtained the suits for him in Tel Aviv, the same contacts al-Asi often exchanged information with. Every time Israeli commandos captured or killed a wanted terrorist, rumors flew through the streets that al-Asi had done everything but pull the triggers. Still no one crossed him, because his power was broadly defined and he had to justify his actions only to Arafat. He kept a low profile, and all Palestinians avoided his Security Service personnel at all costs. Including Ben.

  “I’m busy,” he said.

  Al-Asi was already closing the door behind him. “This won’t take long.” He sat down in the single chair set before Ben’s desk and began tugging at the salt-and-pepper mustache that made him look a little like Omar Sharif. “A name has come across my desk I would like your input on.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing I can add to any of your investigations.”

  “Dalia Mikhail.”

  Ben stiffened.

  “I believe you are acquainted with her and that it is something of, well, a family tradition.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you.”

  “She writes letters to the editor—lots of them. She’s got a way with words and a good wit. Have those become parts of your domain now?”

  “When they are inciteful and inflammatory, absolutely, Inspector. I was hoping you could be more illuminating about Ms. Mikhail.”

  “You want to know how many times my father slept with her?”

  “We are more concerned about who she could be sleeping with now.”

  “I’ve never seen her bedroom.”

  “I have pictures if you’re interested,” al-Asi said sharply.

  Ben curled his fingers into half-fists. “What is this about?”

  “A routine investigation.”

  “Ruining someone’s life is never routine.”

  Al-Asi’s gaze turned suspicious. “You expect us to find something?”

  “Don’t you always?”

  “Only when it’s there, Inspector, and that happens all too often, unfortunately.”

  “You’re wasting your time with Dalia Mikhail.”

  “She’s totally innocent, then?”

  “No, she’s guilty of expressing herself and speaking out on injustices in the West Bank. Worried you’re going to be the subject of a letter, Major?”

  Al-Asi stood up. “I already was, Inspector. The newspapers apparently lost the copy.”

  He took his leave, leaving Ben drained and ready to call it a day.

  Upon returning to his homeland last year, he had been assigned a modest one-bedroom apartment with a single bath. On a scale of one to five, where a villa like Dalia Mikhail’s would be a one and the Einissultan refugee camp a five, his home was a clear three. It had running water that worked except during the frequent shortages, electricity, and even ceiling fans that made the oppressive heat tolerable. Ben had purchased the fans on the thriving black market, the only available source for many expensive items. Televisions, VCRs, even prized air conditioners were available, although he was certain his apartment lacked the voltage to run all of them at once. The closest thing to air-conditioning he had was the bag of ice he had placed over his throbbing head after sprawling on the couch first thing when he got home.

  He awoke suddenly at ten p.m., lurched upward certain he had overslept. As always, his sleep had been deep, dreamless, and utterly disorienting. He never awoke refreshed and cared nothing for his lack of dreams, since there was little they had brought him for years now other than the blank face and cat’s eyes of the Sandman coming toward him as he had that last night.

  He had been working on the Sandman for six months, during which time four entire families were slaughtered in the greater Detroit area while they slept. The case left him precious little time to be with his wife and own children: Tyler, who was seven, and Ryan, who was five. He was the point man on the investigation, the detective whom both the press and the public took their frustrations and fear out on.

  Ben had returned home that night confident that they had finally accumulated a list of suitable suspects, ready to take the investigation in another direction the next day. Dead tired, he left his car in the driveway and started up the walk.

  Halfway to the steps he saw the front door was cracked open.

  That was the first time
he felt the now-familiar electricity dancing through him, in shuddering jolts that felt like shock waves sliding up his spine. He remembered how hard it had been to breathe as he drew his Glock nine-millimeter pistol and charged up the stairs, screaming his wife’s name.

  He smelled the blood when he reached the top, just before a blur whirled at him in the darkness. He recognized Jenny’s nightgown, torn and bloodied, and that made him hesitate until he saw the knife. The Sandman held it overhead as he charged, and Ben opened up on him with the Glock. Instinct fueled his shots, but rage kept them coming. It seemed to take forever, the longest four or five seconds in Ben’s life.

  His first bullet obliterated the Sandman’s chin and part of his right jaw, left sinew and bone hanging where a face used to be. Two more and then a third blew chasms in his chest, one direct to the heart which caused a spurt of blood that splattered the walls.

  The Sandman kept coming.

  The monster still had the strength to start a thrust of his knife downward before Ben’s last hollowpoint bullet blew away the top of his skull. The Glock’s slide had locked into place when the Sandman finally keeled over and fell at Ben’s feet.

  There was no sense of triumph, just an overwhelming fear that settled like bile in the pit of his stomach before he surged into one son’s room and then the other. He would never forget the sights that greeted him there; the dreams, when they came, would make sure of that, too. He entered his own bedroom last to find his wife’s naked body lying facedown, looking as though someone had sprayed it onto the sheets.

  Ben was not surprised when the Sandman turned out to be a locksmith. The fact that none of the victims’ homes had shown signs of forcible entry kept him clinging to that theory, even after a careful check of all area locksmiths turned up nothing. The Sandman had only apprenticed in a shop as a boy, and that had been years before; his name turned up among several others only the previous day after Ben expanded the search. Never forgot the trade, though; stayed sharp with lots of practice.

  The Sandman must have known the police were getting close. That accounted for his paying a visit to Ben’s family; upping the stakes in search of a new challenge. Ben could almost imagine how much he’d enjoyed it, the danger involved, the chance that a cop with fourteen hollowpoint slugs could be returning any moment. And yet only the fact that the Sandman was into his bizarre ritual of wearing his victims’ clothing shifted the odds in Ben’s favor.

  In the end, there was nothing special about the killer. No abusive childhood, no traumatic experience as an adolescent. No previous indication that he was capable of such unthinkable acts. He was, simply, a monster.

  The tragedy of Ben’s heroism took him beyond celebrity to virtually mythic stature. He slid through the press conferences and interviews in a trance, accepted condolences and congratulations in the same handshakes. When the handshakes stopped, he was left only to his own thoughts and pain. He took a leave of absence from the force and then accepted a disability pension which left him with nothing but time on his hands—too much of it, since sleep was so difficult for him—and the temptation to use his Glock one last time.

  Then peace, at least a form of it, had come to the Middle East. The Palestinians were to be granted their shot at autonomy, the whole load of civil services about to be thrust into their eager but ill-prepared hands. A ten-thousand-member national police force, recruited from former guerrilla fighters out of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and other Arab countries, was hastily trained and equipped. But that number had proven barely enough to handle the Gaza Strip, never mind the considerably more populated and infinitely more urban West Bank. Add to this the fact that little thought had been given to the requisites of an actual functioning investigatory detective force. Crimes during the occupation had seldom been followed up except for the obvious, so there was no precedent to draw upon. Accordingly, the last-minute formation of a detective bureau had opened the door for Ben Kamal to return home.

  He plunged into the effort and left his other self far enough behind to be able to sleep again, though he still rarely dreamed. The transition had been surprisingly easy for him at first. After all, he spoke the language, understood the customs, and, most importantly, felt he had a reason to live again.

  While Palestinian Authority officials had welcomed him with open arms for the services he was providing, however, the people had treated him with suspicion and trepidation from the start. Ben tried not to let this bother him. Give it time, he told himself. After all, Palestinians had every reason to be suspicious by nature. But ten months had seen little change as he busied himself with providing on-the-job training in such areas as crime-scene preservation and investigation by the numbers.

  The case of the murdered cabdriver affected him on a personal level and became one of those he elected to pursue himself. He thought that by catching the poor man’s killers he could change the way the people of his homeland perceived him. But when the trail indisputably led to the arrest of three fellow police officers, the uneasiness about him turned into ostracism and even danger.

  What am I doing here?

  Ben had asked himself the same question so many times of late, most recently as he stepped from the shower following his nap that night, the grime and stink of the refugee camp scrubbed away. Toweling himself dry, he peered into the small wall mirror. Everything about him looked worn and weary. His eyes were drawn and bloodshot. The lines beside his mouth had deepened. Moving to Jericho meant a barber instead of a hair stylist and he kept his hair too short as a result, further exaggerating the furrows in his forehead.

  What am I doing here?

  Standing there, looking at himself-while the mist cleared, he found he had no answer and probably would have left if he had somewhere else to go. But he was fresh out of homelands. The Sandman had chased him from one and now al-Diib threatened to chase him from another. Logic might have indicated that pursuit of this second monster was exactly what he needed most to banish the ghosts left by the first. But logic was nothing compared to fear, and Ben found the mere possibility of a second confrontation terrifying. Catch this man and he’d have to run the risk of facing him. The best strategy to pursue was to simply go through the motions.

  But first Shaath and then al-Shaer had aggravated Ben and forced him to look for clues when he had no interest in finding them, needing to prove something. Then Danielle Barnea had appeared on the scene to challenge him further. Ben found himself wanting to outdo her, to make a stand for his people. Zaid Jabral from the Al-Quds newspaper had said he had only been selected because the Israelis had insisted. The Israelis had chosen him. An American must have made them feel safer, any other Palestinian was not good enough for them. Solve the case himself and see what they thought of that, because he was just as Palestinian as anyone in the department.

  Ben broke off his thoughts and turned toward Tawil in the front seat, then fixed his gaze back out through the windshield. It had begun to rain; the intensity of the sudden downpour made it hard for Ben to see out through the glass.

  Outside, a shape was approaching the car.

  Ben turned to Tawil, who seemed not to notice it. The windows were misting up and he swiped a sleeve against the inside of the glass to clear his view.

  The shape was still coming, but the rain prevented him from seeing it clearly, so Ben leaned his head out the driver’s side window, feeling the torrents drench him as he peered ahead.

  The shape was that of a naked woman, coming through the downpour, not wet at all. Ben drew a sleeve across his eyes to wipe the dripping water from them.

  He froze, felt something cold and sharp grab his insides.

  The shape was his wife, Jenny, naked as she’d been after the Sandman had finished with her, the rain washing the blood from her knife wounds only to have more run out after it.

  Ben couldn’t move, cried out for Tawil, but the young officer did not acknowledge him from the passenger seat. He just sat there dumbly, as Ben’s naked wife came close
enough to the car for him to see the neat slice across her throat, her eyes refusing to close. Groping out with a single hand, maybe for the nightgown the Sandman had stripped off her.

  “Jenny,” Ben muttered, feeling a scream starting to build behind his lips. “Jenny!”

  But it wasn’t Jenny anymore; it was Danielle Barnea, just as dead and reaching for him through the open window, her hand grasping his shoulder when the scream finally emerged.

  * * * *

  Chapter 16

  I

  didn’t mean to startle you, Inspector,” Tawil apologized, pulling his hand away as Ben came awake.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Ben felt totally disoriented, the street a maze of opaque nothingness through the windshield before him.