by Liad Shoham
“Come with me a minute. I have something to show you,” her father said, leading her into the living room. He was flushed, excited, almost cheerful.
She sat down opposite him in silence, listening distractedly as the words spilled out of his mouth in a torrent, his hands gesturing wildly, his voice thundering. He started by repeating once again how much he and her mother loved her, how much she meant to them. She’d heard it umpteen times since then. It was starting to wear. She waited for him to finish so she could go back to her game. She’d tried before to set boundaries, once even angrily lashing out at her mother, but nothing deterred them. They wouldn’t leave her in peace.
She realized that he’d stopped talking. She smiled at him, waiting for him to get up and leave. But he stayed where he was and then suddenly handed her a camera.
Puzzled, she looked at the camera in her hand. The LCD screen showed a man crossing the street.
“That’s him,” her father said, looking into her eyes.
Her head ached. Who was he talking about?
“That’s the man I saw hanging around here last night. He’s the one . . . ,” he began, and then fell silent.
“What do you mean ‘last night’?” she asked. The picture she was looking at had been taken in broad daylight.
“I just told you. I went back there this morning. I waited until he left his house and then I took pictures of him. Just look at it, Adinka, look at it and tell me it’s him and I’ll take it to the police right now.”
Now she understood. It wasn’t just any picture. The man in the photograph was the rapist. They’d found him.
She threw the camera on the table and backed away from it. She didn’t want to look at him, she didn’t want to remember. All she wanted was to be able to forget.
Yaron leaned over, picked up the camera, and held it out to her again.
“I know it’s hard, it’s scary. One quick look, that’s all I need, and then I can take it to the police . . . I’m sure it’s him. I just need you to say so.”
She shook her head. She never wanted to see that monster again.
Yaron came to sit next to her.
“One look and it’s over, Adinka. I swear to you, it’ll all be over,” he said, gently placing his hand over hers.
She looked down at his thick fingers shielding her own shaking hand. She wanted desperately for it to be over, to be able to sleep again, to go back to being who she used to be, before. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. One quick look. That’s all. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
Her father switched to the next picture. It was a clear shot of his face. Was he the man who raped her? It had been dark and he’d been wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. In the picture it was daylight and she could see his face, his eyes.
“He was hanging around the building last night,” she heard her father say. “He was going to rape another girl, I know it.”
She brought her eyes into focus. Everything was too bright in the picture. Not like that night.
“I’ll take it to the police and make sure they lock him up for life. The bastard will never see the light of day again.”
She kept silent, staring at the next photograph her father showed her. The man in the picture had the same shape face and the same build as the rapist, the same as the Identi-Kit sketch they’d drawn from her description of him.
“He was here?” The meaning of what he’d just said suddenly dawned on her.
“Right here, outside your building. Who knows what he was planning, what might’ve happened . . .”
She returned the camera to the living room table. The idea that the rapist was hanging around her building terrified her. What if he’d seen her again?
“He’s a monster, a beast with no fear. If I hadn’t happened to be here, if I hadn’t interfered with his plans . . . I don’t even want to think about what he might’ve done,” Yaron said feverishly, determined to persuade her.
The terrible thoughts kept spinning around in her head: Was he waiting for her? Like he was that night? She’d done what he asked. She couldn’t stop thinking about how things might’ve turned out differently if she’d only run away when she still had the chance, if she’d fought harder, if she’d refused to beg. She’d let him have his way, let him play with her as if she were a puppet on a string. Maybe he wanted more. That’s what he’d whispered in her ear that night—more!
“You can do it, sweetheart. Just say the words and you put the nightmare behind you. You’ll feel better.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. She was so confused, so tired. Mainly tired. It might be him. But it might not.
“I’m not sure . . . I’m not sure,” she mumbled.
“It’s him. Just like you described him to the police. Take a good look. Try another picture. I’ve got plenty here for you to look at.” He kept at her, showing her one photo after another. Her eyes were drawn to the rapist’s hands, the hands that had strangled her, that had held a knife to her throat.
“Just say the words, Adinka, just say the words.”
She burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to say what her father was asking of her, but she wasn’t sure.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. I’m here for you.”
She raised her eyes to him. “You’re right, it’s him. He’s the man who raped me.”
Chapter 7
IT was 1:03 in the morning when the phone rang. Despite the late hour, Ziv Nevo was lying awake on the mattress, waiting. In twenty-seven minutes he’d go out and finish what he’d started last night.
The sound of the phone made him sit up with a start. Calls at this time of night never brought good news.
“Hello, who is this?” he heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice asking. He didn’t have the patience for this right now. “Wrong number,” he barked, hanging up.
He lay back down again. He was in a foul mood. He’d finished off the six-pack he’d bought at a nearby convenience store a few hours ago. Things weren’t going well for him. They hadn’t been for a long time. Too long. He knew that drinking wasn’t the answer, but he needed something to give him courage.
For at least the hundredth time his mind went back to the man who’d been following him last night. His face still haunted him. Especially the look in his eyes that first time, as if he knew what he was doing there. It was lucky he’d managed to give him the slip. A chill went down his back at the thought of what could’ve happened if he’d been caught in the act. He’d have to be more careful tonight. Make extra sure there was no one around, no one sitting in a car somewhere. Tonight he was going to do it right. His stomach quivered in a mixture of fear and excitement.
The phone rang again.
“Is this Ziv Nevo?” the same woman’s voice asked.
He hadn’t been expecting that.
“Who’s asking?”
No answer. The woman hung up.
He pressed *69, but the number was blocked. He didn’t like that. First that man following him last night, and now this.
He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter and went out to the small balcony for a smoke. That was another nasty habit he’d lapsed back into this past month. But he never smoked in the house. For Gili’s sake.
This was supposed to be his weekend with him. But when he went to pick him up this morning, he discovered that Merav had taken him to her parents’ house.
“You won’t see him until you start paying child support,” she’d shrieked at him when he called her cell phone to find out where they were. He did his damnedest to keep his voice calm, rational. To explain that he wasn’t trying to shirk his responsibility, he just didn’t have the money to give her. She didn’t want to hear it. A year and a half ago he’d destroyed his marriage, got himself canned from his job, and reduced himself to what he was today. He’d apologized over and over
again, but Merav still wasn’t ready to forgive him.
He stared despondently at the photograph on his cell phone screen—Gili at the swimming pool, grinning, happy—and pondered his life. Maybe it was a good thing Gili wasn’t here. He was better off with her, he thought, looking around the miserable apartment he’d rented. Clouds of dust swirled through the air, some of it settling on the unopened IKEA cartons that held the few pieces of living room furniture he’d purchased. Even though he lay around the house all day with nothing better to do, he hadn’t gotten around to assembling them yet. He slept on a mattress on the floor. So maybe it was for the best. He loved his son in a way he never believed he could love another human being, but what did he have to offer him? His life had been a cesspool for a long time, and it just kept getting worse.
He blew smoke out into the nighttime air, counting the minutes. Very soon he’d go out and finish what he’d started. When it was over, he might feel a little peace. He heard the screech of tires and looked down at the street. A patrol car had pulled up in front of the building and two cops were jumping out. It made sense now. That’s what the phone call was all about. They were coming for him. First, they’d made sure he was home.
His heart was pounding wildly. He had to think fast. It was that man from last night. He’d seen him. Now they were coming to arrest him. Think! He passed his hand nervously through his hair. The thought of being locked up made him sick. He’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. Think! He was trapped. They’d found him. He still had a little time. The stairs would slow them down. There was no elevator in the building. Maybe he could make it to the roof.
He ran to the chest near the door, a decrepit piece of furniture the previous tenants hadn’t bothered to take with them. He was sure the key to the roof was in one of the drawers. As he ransacked the contents, he was pulled up short by the sight of his wedding ring thrown in among the other useless items. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t bring himself to take it off even when he knew it was over for good, even when the divorce was final. A couple of months ago he’d finally pulled it off in a rage and hurled it into the drawer after yet another fight with Merav on the phone over child support and custody.
But he didn’t have time to worry about that now. He had to find the key. It wasn’t there. Where did he put it?
He heard Fritz barking excitedly in the Bashans’ first-floor apartment. They’d be here any minute. He was running out of time. He cracked open the door and heard their footsteps coming closer. He’d hide on the top floor. With any luck they’d find an empty apartment and leave.
Very gently he closed the door behind him and started up the stairs, keeping his back to the wall, making as little noise as possible. The top of a cop’s head came into view. There was only one flight between them. No more. He pressed up against the wall, praying they didn’t see him.
He heard them knocking on his door and a voice calling, “Mr. Nevo?”
He held his breath and froze.
“Police. Open the door, Mr. Nevo,” another voice shouted as the knocking got louder.
He didn’t budge an inch. Two floors below, Fritz was still barking.
“Sigi spoke to him five minutes ago. The sonofabitch is inside,” a cop said. “Open up, Nevo, or we’ll break the door down.”
Half a flight above him a door opened. His heart jumped. One of his neighbors, a man in his sixties, poked his head out.
They stared at each other in silence. He didn’t know the man’s name, only that he lived there with his wife. They passed each other on the stairs from time to time, but they’d never so much as exchanged a greeting.
“Whaddya say? Should we call Nachum?” one cop asked.
The neighbor took a step forward. He was now standing outside the door of his apartment. Ziv gave him a halfhearted smile.
“Last chance, Nevo. Open up. Police!” a cop shouted, banging on the door again.
The neighbor looked at him in astonishment. Ziv put his hands together in a gesture of pleading. Don’t turn me in, he begged with his eyes.
“He’s up here,” the neighbor called out suddenly before retreating back into his apartment and shutting the door behind him.
He heard them running up the stairs.
He knew it was a lost cause, he no longer had any chance of escape, but still he turned and started upward. All the beer he’d drunk was making him dizzy. His feet felt like blocks of cement.
He reached the top floor and stared in amazement at the door to the roof. It was open. Why had he wasted time looking for the key? If he’d run as soon as he saw the cops downstairs, he might’ve gotten away. Why didn’t things ever go his way? Not even once!
He looked around. Could he make a running leap onto the roof next door? He dismissed that idea immediately. They’d be on the roof before he could reach the edge. They’d probably start shooting too.
“Don’t move,” he heard behind him.
He turned around slowly. The cop was pointing his gun at him. He raised his hands.
The other cop came through the door, breathing heavily from the climb. He moved over to him quickly. “Hands up,” he ordered, even though they were already in the air.
The second cop came around to the rear, twisted his arms behind his back, and cuffed him.
“On the ground,” he commanded, not letting go of his arm.
Ziv lay down on the ground. The cop slammed his foot on his back, squashing him down onto the cold roof as if he were a cigarette butt. He didn’t move. Just lay there under the heavy foot, his tears dampening the filthy concrete.
Chapter 8
NACHUM sat in his room and gazed at the screen showing the interrogation room. The hidden cameras caught Ziv Nevo pacing back and forth. He kept passing his hand nervously through his hair and glancing impatiently at the door. Nachum decided to wait a little longer. Some interrogators pounce on a suspect, taking advantage of the initial shock of the arrest to get a confession out of them. He had nothing against that method, but he had a different style, preferring to let them stew in their own juice for a while. He believed they were most vulnerable when they were left on their own. That’s when they started playing out in their mind all the horrible things that were going to happen to them. It was especially scary for the ones like Nevo, who weren’t accustomed to police interrogations. They were sure they were in for a beating.
He’d had him put in a room with no windows. Not a drop of fresh air. There was hardly any furniture, just an ordinary office table and two simple chairs. It was nothing like you see on TV, just a room. He’d turned off the AC too. He wanted him to sweat. He wouldn’t be able to tell if the sweat and the nauseating stench were coming from the hot air in the room or from his own fear. That’s when Nachum would make his entrance. That’s when he’d be ready to talk.
Adi’s father had good intentions. There was no doubt in Nachum’s mind that he thought he had done the right thing for the investigation, for his daughter. As a father himself, he could sympathize. If anything like that happened to his own daughter, heaven forbid, he’d do whatever it took to nail the bastard, probably a lot more than Yaron Regev had done.
But he also knew that Yaron had ruined their case, no matter how good his intentions were. There were legal standards for conducting a lineup. It was like baking a cake. As long as you followed the recipe, the cake came out fine, the judge would sanction the identification, and they’d get their conviction. But if you didn’t follow the directions precisely, you ended up throwing the cake in the garbage.
For the results of a lineup to be admissible, they needed eight foils whose appearance was similar to that of the suspect. The suspect had the right to choose where to stand, and the police had to respect his decision. He also had the right to have his attorney present. You weren’t allowed to show the witness any pictures of the suspect before the lineup. In fact, you were barely allowed to talk t
o them. The lineup had to be videotaped. The suspect and his attorney were entitled to question the witness. And the whole procedure had to be recorded in detail in writing.
Yaron Regev hadn’t done any of those things. Even without consulting with the DA’s Office, Nachum knew he’d never convince a judge that the victim’s identification of the rapist was “spontaneous.” There was no question she’d been coached by her father. He’d showed her the pictures, asked her directly if he was the man who had raped her, told her he’d seen him hanging around her house at night. Any defense attorney would have a field day with a story like that.
While his team was out picking up Nevo, Nachum had read up on verdicts pertaining to lineups. “Considerably doubtful,” “very little evidentiary weight”—those were the sorts of expressions judges used to describe the value of the sort of identification he had in this case. Even worse, at this stage it was too late to repair the damage. There was no point in doing it again. Even if Adi picked Nevo out of a lineup conducted by the book, even if they stood a hundred men up in front of her and had fifty lawyers arguing the case, it wouldn’t do any good. The cake was already in the garbage.
The situation infuriated him. He believed all the rules and regulations made up by attorneys, judges, and other bleeding hearts were making it impossible to win the war on crime. It’s true they still had a pretty high conviction rate, but he’d lived and breathed the system for so long that he could feel the change. He could sense the tectonic plates moving under their feet, the winds of liberalism blowing their way.
He watched Nevo. His gut told him he was the rapist. After twenty years on the job, he could trust his gut. And common sense told him the same thing. But you couldn’t take that to court. All that mattered in a trial were evidence and the law, what was admissible and what wasn’t. Rules. He had an excellent understanding of them, but that didn’t mean he liked them. Nothing could substitute for the gut feeling of an experienced cop, or for plain old common sense. Everything else was just words, a game played by prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges in the courtroom.
