Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel

by Michal Hartstein

  "According to my records they were tens of thousands of shekels over their credit limit… how could that be?"

  Arie sifted through his papers for a long while. "According to my records, on May 15th there was a charge on a Visa bill, which led to an overdraft. May 15th was a Friday, so on May 17th, Sunday, Meir was contacted about the overdraft.

  "The Danilowitz family was murdered the next day."

  Arie stared at me with a gloomy gaze. "You don't think the bank clerk pushed Meir to such a desperate act?"

  The couple had loans of over two million shekels altogether. It was hard to believe that an overdraft of 10,000 shekels would push a man to kill his entire family and commit suicide, but the fact that such a phone call took place less than a day before the act was curious and intriguing.

  "It's hard for me to believe," I calmed Arie down. "You said Meir had an account at Discount Bank and here as well. Why did he need two bank accounts?"

  "As I told you, he received benefits as an employee of Discount Bank, so it was worth his while to open his paycheck account at Discount."

  "Then why did he have an account at Leumi? To my understanding, this was the main account, from which credit card bills, mortgage payments and loans were taken. Wouldn't it have been more worth his while to transfer everything to the Discount Bank, where he received employee benefits?"

  Arie smiled. "First of all, the account at Leumi Bank is older." He stroked his tie again and went on to gently stroke his round belly. "Secondly, this is the branch that handles the accounts of Meir's parents, Sarah and Natan Danilowitz."

  "And what does that have to do with it?" I had no inkling where my parents ran their accounts.

  "Natan and Sarah Danilowitz are very wealthy people." I stared at him and he emphasized again, "Very, very wealthy."

  I began to understand the connection, as well as the loans which were not proportionate to the couple’s ability to repay them.

  "I understand the couple had a mortgage loan of 1,400,000 shekels overall and other short term loans of almost 600,000 shekels, in addition to a completely exhausted credit limit."

  "True."

  "As far as I know, Hanni didn't work and Meir's salary came down to about 10,000 shekels a month."

  "Right."

  "What collateral did you have to grant the couple so many loans?"

  "Against the mortgage, we have the property itself."

  "That's clear, but what about the other credit limits?"

  Arie cleared his throat. "That's exactly where the family connection comes in."

  "Meaning, if I understand you correctly, an average family with Hanni and Meir's earning ability would not have been able to receive loans of such scale."

  "Probably not. In Meir and Hanni's case, we knew Meir had solid backing so we took the risk."

  "Were his parents guarantors on the loans?"

  "On one loan, yes. On the others, no."

  "So what's going to happen about the Danilowitz family's debt now?"

  "We get the money received from the sale of the apartment and turn to the guarantors about the additional loan."

  "So the bank doesn't get hurt."

  "You say that like it's a bad thing. First of all, there's a likely chance that we won't be able to recover all of the debt. The guarantee was only given on one loan from three years ago, and most of the loan was paid off. Secondly, the more lost debts the bank has, the less stable the banking system will become. As a result of this, there would be an increase in interest rates and commissions, so this conservatism of the banks in Israel is good for the country. The proof of that is that all over the world, banks are closing down every day, but in Israel the banks are stronger than ever."

  I'm not a financial genius and I didn't want to argue with him, and some of what he was saying did make sense to me, but to my understanding the rates were already very high.

  "So, despite all of this conservatism, you gave Meir and Hanni loans without any guarantee from Meir's parents. How exactly did that happen?"

  Arie cleared his throat again. "Meir and Hanni never managed to make ends meet each month, even when his salary was twice as high. In the past, I would call Meir's mother a lot and she would just transfer money to the account. At some point, I guess Meir asked her to stop and they decided to cover their overdraft with the big loan from three years ago, that also paid for renovation of some of their home furniture.

  Then, we also received the guarantee signature from Meir's parents. After this Meir also asked for more loans to cover their overdraft and also renewed the mortgage loan to receive further financing and asked us again not to turn to his parents. I’ve known that family for twenty years and I didn't panic. I knew that if there was real hardship, they would help their son, who I sensed was embarrassed by his situation."

  "So Meir's parents didn't know the extent of his debt?"

  "Apart from the debt they signed off on, they had no idea, at least not from the bank, but I have a feeling they knew there were serious money problems."

  "Why do you think so?"

  "In the last nine months, Meir occasionally deposited money in the account—money that, I believe, wasn't related to his salary."

  "Why do you think that?"

  "Because the money that was deposited into the Discount account, he transferred through the bank to Leumi, and in recent months he also began depositing cash in round sums."

  "Isn't that something that arouses suspicion?"

  "It depends on the sums."

  "And what sums are we talking about?"

  "A few thousand every few weeks."

  "So you assumed it was money that he got from his parents?"

  "That's what usually happened."

  "Then why wouldn't the parents transfer money or write a check?"

  "I don't involve myself in the family's business, but it's not a rarity. The reason for it is pretty common. In many cases, one of the parents wants to hide the fact that they’re continuing to support adult children from the other parent. A check, or a bank transfer, is something that could be traced. Cash isn't."

  *

  When I got to the station, Riki filled me in on the fact that, according to the Ministry of Health's records, Ariel Danilowitz was not taking Ritalin. I guessed Batya's eye wasn't quite as good as she thought.

  "Amos said you need to go see him - he has something for you," she added.

  I hurried to Amos's lab, hoping he discovered something interesting on the Danilowitz family's computer.

  Amos Bar-Nir's area was the most spacious and messy room in the station. Computers and cables were strewn in piles all over the room, but I guessed Amos had his own method of organizing inventory since he always knew how to find what he was looking for in the mess he took great care to maintain.

  Amos was sort of a domesticated flower child. He was forty years old, married and a father of five. He wasn't a police office, but a civilian who worked for the police, so the dress and appearance codes that the unit’s officers were obligated to maintain didn't apply to him. He had long, curly hair and glasses on a string. He always dressed sloppily and in the summer he always wore Jesus sandals, an item of clothing that does not exist in the police lexicon. I'm far from being a fashion icon, but even I was shocked and appalled by his outfits.

  That day, he’d opted for a relatively restrained look, though I discovered that the sandals were out of storage and Amos had returned to airing his toes.

  Amos was a doctor in computer sciences and legend says that he received his doctorate before he was twenty-five. Another legend says that when the commander of the unit called him in to explain to him that there's no way he could leave his office every day at four-thirty, Amos forwarded him three concrete job offers he’d received that month, offering him salaries three and four times higher than the salary he got from Israel Police. From that day on, no one said anything to Amos about his work hours.

  I first ran into him in the summer, a short time after I joine
d the police force, on a fun day that was organized for police officers and their families. Yinon and I brought along Ohad and Elad, my younger sister, Ayala's, two boys. We met Amos, his wife and three of their five kids. It was evident that his family is his life. That meaning was etched in my memory, since I rarely meet a couple whose relationship with their children is so harmonious and natural. Harmony of the kind that is very hard to fake.

  It was obvious to me that when people take to the street, especially with their kids, there's a considerable element of phoniness there. The Danilowitz family showed, at least to the outside world, a facade of happy family life. But in the Bar-Nir's case, it wasn't fake. They were too easygoing and not trying too hard for it to look like something artificial. All of them, from the baby to Amos and his wife were dressed like a blind stylist threw random clothes that he found in a recycling bin on them.

  Their baby son was cradled in a carrier that Amos wrapped around his wide body. Amos's wife was a thin, beautiful woman. She had kind, blue eyes, the kind you’d pour out your heart to. Two additional children, a boy of about three, completely dipped in chocolate ice cream and a girl of about five, who inherited her mother's kind eyes, held their mother's hands. The eldest daughter and the second son, thirteen and eleven, had opted to enjoy the day with kids their age rather than walk around with their parents.

  This scene of a humble and happy couple was etched in my memory, and Amos's habit of leaving work early was clear to me; the priorities in his life were clear. He had an interesting and challenging work place. But he didn't allow his work to engulf him.

  Because of this, I was not surprised that almost a week had passed since the day the Danilowitz family's computer was given to him.

  Amos apologized for the delay. It turned out that, in addition to all of this, he was away last Thursday because of his younger brother's wedding. He stood by one of the lab tables in his room, leaning one hand on the Danilowitz family computer.

  "There weren't too many interesting things here," he said while gently stroking the computer's disk drive. "The computer was used mainly for web surfing. A lot of children’s and adult's web games, recipe searches, quite a bit of online shopping sites and also a bit of porn." Amos smiled.

  "Anything unusual?" I tried to make my question sound serious, but I struggled against Amos's mischievous smile.

  "Not at all, the usual stuff, young models and quite a few lesbian movies. If I had to guess, and assuming the late Mrs. Danilowitz was not otherwise inclined, most, if not all, of the porn searches were by Mr. Danilowitz."

  "But nothing out of the ordinary."

  "No."

  "Then what do you have?"

  "First of all, there was one interesting search the week prior to the murder. I assume Meir ran this search. He was looking for improvised methods to create silencers for a gun."

  "You don't say?" I opened my eyes. This fact definitely reinforced the assumption that Meir was the killer, not someone outside the family. It also reinforced the assumption that this was a premeditated murder.

  "I also searched their files."

  "Did you find anything?"

  "Yes, it wasn't particularly difficult seeing as there weren't too many. Most of the files were family pictures and movies. I didn't go through all of them, but I made several CDs for you and for the families. I assume they'll want these mementos." Amos's heart was always in the right place. "There was also one family slide show on PowerPoint and a few Word documents." Amos stopped his flow of words, turned to his desk, poked among the piles of papers for a few seconds and pulled out one page. "Among the Word files, I also found this one." He put on his glasses, perused the page and passed it on to me.

  Across the page, one sentence was printed in a giant font: "I'm tired of waiting so long, if you don't give me what I asked for, I'm going to the police."

  "Wow," I spat out. "Can you tell if it's a file that he received or created?"

  "Not for sure, because he could have received this by email and saved it on the computer. I have a log of file creation times, I don't know if they were actually written on the computer or only received."

  "And what do you think?"

  "I'm almost certain that this file was created on the computer and not received. First, I went through all of the emails that were received with attached files over the three month period surrounding the date this file was created, and there's no such email. Secondly, the file was not actively saved on the computer, but written and then erased. Meaning the writer, and I presume we're talking about Meir, wrote the sentence, probably printed it and then erased it, or more precisely, didn't save the file."

  "If he didn't save the file, how does it exist?"

  "Nothing is ever really erased from a computer." Amos smiled knowingly.

  "And this is all you found?" I asked as if Amos hadn’t just handed me the main puzzle piece in this story.

  "As I told you, there wasn’t too much in the computer. Whoever erased the files and the history didn't do a very professional job. There's a chance that there were more files that I wasn't able to restore, but I get the feeling that this family was used by the entire family, so Meir was careful not to use the computer for secret personal uses."

  "You mean he used the computer at work?"

  "Maybe. Although, in work places, there's usually more monitoring goes on. Where did he work?"

  "At Discount Bank."

  "Then I doubt there's anything on his computer. In large companies like banks, for instance, there's very careful monitoring of the workers' computers, for safety reasons like viruses, fear of industrial espionage, that kind of stuff. I assume Meir was aware of the fact that there's a risk that suspicious emails or files would be tracked down and he avoided using his work computer."

  "So where else can we look?"

  "I would look for a flash drive—it's the best and easiest way to save information outside of a computer."

  Chapter 13

  "This changes the whole picture." Alon waved the letter that Amos had found on the Danilowitz family computer. Our assumption was that Meir was blackmailing someone.

  "Right," I said, "but I don't think whoever Meir was blackmailing is the killer."

  "Why not?"

  "First of all, the gun was Meir's registered gun. All the evidence at the scene, the placement of the gun, the gunpowder marks, all strengthen the assumption that Meir killed himself."

  "That doesn't mean anything—we both know that a professional killer knows how to fake a scene and use the victim's gun."

  "Right, but Amos discovered a search made on the family's computer a number of days prior to the murder - for improvised silencers for guns."

  "What do you mean?" Alon realized the murder was premeditated and not an act of temporary insanity.

  He sat behind his desk full of paperwork and stared at the page imprinted with the threatening sentence. Alon was the complete opposite of Amos from the computer department. He was an esteemed, veteran police officer. Since he hasn't been part of on-site investigations in years, he makes sure to wear a uniform that fits his wide, muscular physique immaculately. To my surprise, I discovered that he was forty-eight years old this last Chanukah, because he looked much younger. Short, full hair, light brown eyes that charmed quite a few women and a constant tan, a reminder of the times when he spent full days in the blistering sun.

  I looked at Alon bent over Meir's letter. His table was covered with paperwork related to the Georgian Mafia case. In recent weeks, there had been a serious breakthrough in the investigation, following the consent of the Mafia leader's right-hand man, Igor Michaelshvilli, to cross the lines and turn state's evidence against his boss and his uncle on his mother's side, Yitzchak Mirialshvilli.

  From that aspect, Meir Danilowitz found the least convenient time, as far as Alon was concerned, to kill his entire family and himself. Alon thought this was a case which was difficult in terms of the scene and simple in terms of deciphering. All of the evidence f
ound at the scene was unequivocal about Meir's guilt, and the objective of the investigation was mainly to confirm this assumption and give a reasonable explanation to Meir's motives. The letter complicated everything.

  "Do you need help?" he asked desperately, but we both knew there was no available manpower.

  "Not right now. I still believe Meir is the killer so I'm not pressed for time."

  "There's immense media pressure on this story. Sometime, we have to answer all the questions. There's also a matter of the unit's prestige here."

  I nodded, remembering that the police has its politics as well.

  *

  I realized I need to return to Meir and Hanni’s house to conduct a more thorough search. Meir had something to hide and I hoped to find it in the house.

  I assumed that if Meir wanted to hide something he’d hide it among his things and not somewhere where Hanni might find it. This ruled out the kitchen and the two children’s rooms. The living room was pretty clean of objects and I moved on to the bedroom. The bedroom closet was full of Hanni’s clothes. Meir’s clothes were allotted a quarter of the closet’s space, neatly folded, just like all of the rest of the clothes in the closets.

  I imagined Hanni was the one who took care of the folding and tidying up, so the chances of finding something were minute. I decided not to be lazy and looked through every shirt and trousers, every pair of socks were opened and after about forty five minutes I had to admit that my presumption was correct. Meir didn’t hide anything in the closet.

  I moved on to the study. I looked around, not needing another barren search. Still waiting in my office were a few photo albums and a folder of pay stubs. Maybe I’d find something there, but I doubted it. The binder and albums were too available. The closets were very tidy, meaning Hanni’s reach extended everywhere. So where the hell could Meir hide anything in this house if he really wanted to? I looked at the cupboard in the study and tried to think where I would hide my secrets.

  Where no one would look, my inner voice told me. On the top two shelves of the study’s storage unit were lined up, in order of height, holy books, dictionaries, atlases and books of pictures of the views of the Land of Israel. I pulled the chair up to the book shelf and pulled down the holy books. Maybe Meir trusted God with his secret. I was wrong. I climbed up again and pulled down the atlases and dictionaries, and was disappointed again. Among the travel books and Israel’s views was an album Horizon, of aerial photographs of the country’s views. On the cover of the album, a greeting card was attached. Meir received the book when he finished his officer training. I opened the large book and a medium-sized large envelope fell out of it.