Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel

by Michal Hartstein

  It's true that an LCD TV is no longer a status symbol in our world, but in Meir and Hanni's apartment, everything exuded the air of petit bourgeois luxury. I'm not a big expert on home décor—I assume I could be tricked quite easily as to the true value of a couch or a chair—but I had no doubt that quite a bit of time and money was invested in Meir and Hanni's apartment. No giant chandeliers or polished marble, but precise, clean decorating, where everything matched and, no less importantly, had its place. For example, the leather couches in the living room matched the leather seat covers on the heavy chairs in the dining room. The children's rooms were designed and fully equipped. The design in Ariel's room revolved around race cars, including a bed in the shape of a giant car and Galit's room was pink and princess-themed.

  Meir and Hanni's bedroom was spacious. In its center was a huge double bed; heavy wooden armoires matched the big closet against the wall. On the wall across from the bed was another large LCD television. Even the bathrooms, which were spotlessly clean, were tastefully decorated, with light wood cabinets and embellished china. I thought to myself that if someone had to survey my bathroom, I would die of shame, if my mother hadn’t already killed me for the way I was so criminally neglecting myself. Broken and missing china, a decrepit shelf instead of a cabinet, not to mention scum and lime scale in every corner.

  I opened the closets, which were packed with clothes, all neatly folded. I once again thought of my own closet; if one shirt was folded in there, it was accidental. My closet looked full, but only because I avoided tidying it.

  In the study stood a state-of-the-art treadmill, folded up to the wall, and on the wall across from it was another LCD television. Under the window stood a desk, where once stood the computer that had been transferred to Amos's lab. In the room was a large cabinet, part of which was in a honeycomb formation and held picture albums, a few ring binders, a full Bible with interpretations and a few albums and reading books gathering dust on the top shelves.

  I pulled out one of the picture albums. On its cover was inscribed, in large letters, "Holland—August 2008". The ultimate family vacation: a pregnant Hanni with her arms around her two older children with interchanging views in the background. Occasionally, Meir was also in the picture or replaced Hanni and was photographed with his two kids.

  I put the album back in its place and selected the one that I guessed was Hanni and Meir's wedding album. I was not mistaken.

  According to the invitation stapled to the album, Meir and Hanni were married in a lavish wedding on December 28th, 2000 at one of Tel-Aviv's luxury hotels. Hanni could not have looked more regal than in the glamorous, slinky dress she was wearing. Meir was beaming with joy. He was right by her side in all of the photos, holding on to her like a child who had been given the most delicious lollipop in the candy store.

  This couple was once happy and in love. What happened here? What caused this dream to be shattered? I took the photo album and placed it near the doorway. I wanted to scan some of the pictures so I would have pictures of the people close to the couple.

  Above the album shelf was a black binder with no writing on it. I pulled the binder out and sat at the table. In it were erratically-filed pay stubs, employment agreements, insurance notices and policies, with no logical order or chronology. I knew Hanni had not worked for a number of years, so I didn't look for any contracts or pay stubs bearing her name.

  I tried to organize Meir's paperwork a bit. It became clear to me that Meir worked for Discount Bank. I found a number of pay stubs from recent months. I continued perusing the binder and discovered that he had worked for a different company before working at Discount Bank. I was amazed by the difference in pay between the two work places. Meir was a graduate of the Department of Economics and Business Management at Bar Ilan University. At Discount Bank, he was most recently employed in a managerial role as an economist in the financial department and enjoyed a handsome gross salary of about 15,000 Shekels. At Fiberlight, his pay had been more than double that. There, Meir had been employed as a financial officer and was paid 40,000 Shekels a month. I stared at the number in shock. That was my salary for three months (plus overtime).

  Was Meir finding it difficult to adjust to his new status? From a financial officer with an enormous salary, he became a lowly employee with a salary that was meager in comparison to the fat paychecks he had from the fiberglass company.

  At three-thirty, I was at the Yarkon Cemetery. There were already some friends and relatives there and, of course, many camera crews. The family didn't know me yet, so I refrained from getting any closer.

  Cemeteries always put me in a gothic mood. I have a tendency to get lost between the graves, looking for familiar surnames, calculating the deceased's age, wondering about double graves, especially those which only one person is buried in. Who says life is over at eighty? My mother's father died when he was seventy-five years old. My grandmother was seventy then and was still waiting to be buried next to him.

  Children's graves are the most terrible. I passed by a triple grave, smiling to myself that someone was probably buried there with his wife and his lover, but my smile was erased when I discovered that it was the grave of two parents and their child who all died in a car accident. A chill went down my spine, and I remembered that I had come to a funeral no less difficult. I hurried towards the gathering area. The funeral had begun.

  It was a tough burial. Even I, who was no relation to them, couldn't stop the tears when Ariel, Galit and Noa's tiny bodies were laid to rest.

  Hanni's parents refused to leave the young graves, which allowed the news photographers to get a good gallery of pictures to illustrate the horror. The presence of the media was so maddening to me. Why must they push themselves into such an intimate and difficult moment? Did the public have to see the three little bodies laid to rest? You don't need too much imagination to be appalled by this, much less a photo. The funeral ended at six-thirty, an hour and a half before Meir was to be buried.

  I went to my car and waited there for an hour. I made lists of who I wanted to talk to and left a voicemail for Riki, the admin assistant at the station house, to summon some of the neighbors that the patrol officers questioned to the station. Hanni's parents went to their house to sit Shiva [mourn] along with Hanni's three brothers. I decided it would be inappropriate to question them during the Shiva. In spite of my secret hopes to find an external killer and clear Meir of guilt, I knew that the chances were slim. The investigation focused on the question why?—not who?

  Chapter 4

  From the cemetery, I drove to the station house. Most of the offices were already empty. I turned on the light. My current office bore no resemblance to the parquet floor, rich wood furniture and the lithographs of Nachum Guttman and Chagall that I had left behind in the office at Lipkin, Danieli and Co. Mine, like most offices in the station, had a sort of unionized look which included crooked floors with tiles that were no longer in use, plaster peeling off the walls and old fashioned metal furniture. The wall was decorated with two giant maps, one of Gush Dan and one of the State of Israel. The room was small but was meant to house two investigators. The second investigator who was sharing the room with me, Roei, was almost always on undercover activity, so really, the space was almost entirely mine.

  I set the photo albums and binders that I had taken from Hanni and Meir's apartment on Roei's desk. He wasn't meant to be coming to the office during the next two weeks anyway, and my desk couldn't hold another pin without it getting lost.

  Alon was just on his way out and explained that since the basic assumption was that Meir was the killer, he saw no reason to allot more investigators to the case. There was a great deal of excitement and public frenzy, but it would pass, he predicted. There was no public urgency to solve this case, and he didn't think that a killer was walking among us. The objective was to understand why Meir committed the murder and close the case as soon as possible. Riki reported that she managed to contact three neighbors and woul
d try to track a few more down. She told them all to come to the station Thursday afternoon.

  I had missed watching the news that day, so I went online to the news websites, which were flooded with the story of the case and background stories of a beautiful, perfect family, of shock. The news sites had more resources than the police, and they had already managed to research and publish stories about the Danilowitz family, Galit's friends from kindergarten and Ariel's classmates, and to speak to Meir's co-workers and, of course, to the neighbors.

  No one anticipated this.

  No one knew anything.

  No one heard anything.

  That is why this came as such a shock.

  I tried to take these stories on television and on the internet with a pinch of salt. They were pressed for time and they had to deliver the goods.

  It was impossible that no one knew anything.

  Wednesday, 5.20.2009

  The next morning, I contacted Discount Bank and reached Danit Yaacobi-Live, Meir's direct manager. We agreed to meet at her office. She was eager to talk to me and assist.

  When I entered her office about an hour after we spoke on the phone, the turmoil was evident on her face. She was around forty years old, she was quite good-looking and very well kept. Her hair was in a carefully blow-dried bob and her face was very finely made up. She was dressed in a feminine, restrained business suit. She tried to assume a cool, strictly business facade, but failed to hide the quaver in her voice when we began talking.

  I sat down across from her and refused her offer of a glass of water. I wanted to get started.

  She began working at Discount Bank about nine years earlier. She was an accountant, and after finishing her residency, she decided to work in the convenient environment of a bank. A year after she started working at the bank, Meir, who had just finished his studies in university, joined her team.

  "What did he study?" I interrupted her.

  "Economics and business management."

  "Where?"

  "As I recall, he graduated from Bar-Ilan."

  "And you were his manager?"

  "At that time, we were more or less at the same rank," she continued the story, "although, I was a certified accountant and had already worked here close to a year, but I also had small children and worked part-time. You probably know how it is."

  "How what is?"

  "Being a mom in a big institution."

  "Not really."

  "Oh, sorry. I assumed you have kids."

  "I don't."

  "Then, when you do have them…"

  I didn't want to go there. I had more important things to clear up with her, so I didn't tell her that I wouldn’t be having any. What good would it do right now? I simply nodded and she went on.

  "Anyway, we worked together for about two years. When I was on maternity leave with my little girl, Meir moved to a startup company."

  "Fiberlight?"

  "I think so."

  "Do you remember when that was?"

  "It was early 2004. I remember that I came back to work at the beginning of March 2004 and he was already gone."

  "What do you remember about him at that time? Were you surprised that he left for Fiberlight?"

  "Actually, I was," she stopped herself for a minute, getting her thoughts together and realizing that this was not the time or place to keep anything inside. "Meir was not the most talented economist on the team. If I had to choose someone to be a financial officer for a startup company, I’d have chosen someone else."

  "Like yourself, for instance?" I teased her, wanting to see her reaction.

  "Not me, actually." She smiled and gave me an amused look. She was much more intelligent than I had wanted to admit. "I wasn't looking for jobs of that sort because they don't leave you too much time for family."

  "So who would you have offered the job to?"

  "I don't remember names and it's not important, but Meir wasn't at the top of my list."

  "Was he that ill equipped for it?"

  "He was actually very diligent and hardworking; that's probably why he impressed the guys from Fiberlight."

  "They knew him before he started working there?"

  "Yes." She smiled again. "The Fiberlight guys were clients of the bank."

  "And it's acceptable to move to a client like that?"

  "It happens."

  "Can you tell me a little bit about Fiberlight?"

  "I don't remember too much." She typed something on the computer. "Fiberlight was a startup company that dealt with amplifiers for optical communications."

  "Do you have an idea of what that means?"

  "Not really." She smiled. "I know finance, not technology."

  "And Meir knew technology?"

  "More than me, that's for sure. That company raised about fifteen million dollars by the end of 2002."

  "So, Meir worked on the case for a year and then transferred to the company?"

  "More or less."

  "To your astonishment."

  "I can't say I was astonished—Meir sucked up to them endlessly."

  "Do you know what his pay was at Fiberlight?"

  "Yes." She smiled. "Three times what he made at the bank at that time."

  "How do you know?"

  "All of the company's financial data was open to us."

  "Were you all jealous?"

  "I'd be lying if I said we weren't."

  "But you said you didn't want the job."

  "The job, no, but I wouldn't object to making almost 40,000 shekels a month."

  "What did you think of that salary?"

  "That it was outrageous."

  "Because Meir didn't have the experience and knowledge?"

  "Not only that."

  "Then why?"

  "Because it was a startup company that hadn't sold a screw."

  "Then how did they make the decision to pay such sums to the

  management?"

  "I have no idea; they probably assumed that you have to pay for good management."

  "But Meir wasn't such good management, as you said."

  "Not especially, seeing as he and the rest of the management couldn’t save the company from collapsing."

  "Did they run out of money?"

  "Not as far as I remember."

  "Then why was it closed?"

  "The shareholders realized there was no point in watching all of their money get guzzled up, so they went for voluntary liquidation."

  "When was this?"

  "About three years ago?"

  "How long did Meir work there?"

  "Around two and a half years."

  "And then what happened? How did he resume his job at Discount Bank?"

  "After the company was shut down, Meir tried his luck for a few months, unsuccessfully, until he saw my manager at the wedding of a shared relative, and a vacancy had just arisen here."

  "And, just like that, he agreed to return to a junior position for a third of the salary?"

  "I guess he didn't have too many options. He had a wife and two little kids to provide for."

  "Then he probably felt humiliated?"

  "He didn't say anything to me, but I can imagine that was the situation. He returned to more or less the same position, while all of the others were promoted or left."

  "And you became his manager."

  "That's right."

  "How did he accept having a woman for a manager?"

  "He didn't even hint that it bothered him." She said with an amused gaze.

  "But…?"

  "But my intuition told me that it bothered him immensely."

  "How did you sense that?"

  "He was too eager to please me, tried too hard to be good, there was something fake about his behavior."

  "So you weren't surprised that he got up one morning and shot his entire family."

  "I didn't say that."

  "So what do you think of what he did?"

  "Did he really do it? In the news, they keep saying th
at the police aren’t confirming Meir is the killer, but he's the main suspect."

  "I'm sure you understand I can't tell you more than you know."

  She smiled and I continued.

  "What do you think? Was he capable of killing his entire family and committing suicide?"

  "I'm not an expert in psychology, but he seemed like a completely normal person."

  "What kind of father did he seem like?"

  "Completely standard."

  "And as a husband?"

  "I didn't know his wife too well, but there was a sense that she was managing him."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He was a little scared of her."

  "Can you give me an example?"

  "There were all sorts of examples, but I particularly remember that about six months ago, his wife was near the end of her pregnancy. It was December and there was a lot of pressure here because it was the end of the year, but it didn't stop her from harassing him left and right."

  "Still… a very pregnant woman…"

  "As far as I know, she didn't work, not during the pregnancy and not before it, and she wasn't on bed rest. I think she could have been a bit more sensitive."

  "Why? Was he facing termination?"

  "No, but he was still the sole provider in the house."

  "So his absences hurt his job?"

  "No, he would come in at crazy hours and on Fridays to make up hours and work."

  "A real dedicated employee."

  "And a bit of a slow one," she added sweetly.

  *

  After the meeting at the bank, I decided to go see my sister, Shira, who lived in Givaat Shmuel. My sister lived not far from the Danilowitz's house. Shira was not a friend of the family, but she knew them from temple and from the playground. My sister was an occupational therapist, working with children in her house. She told me to come over at two o’ clock, after she finished with her patients, and promised me a meal and a talk.