by By Jon Land
Baruch’s dark eyes seemed to sink even deeper into his skull. “I don’t really care. It’s not my problem anymore.”
“It was Hessler himself who called National Police to make sure I was assigned to the case. He must have called Mossad to have us taken off it. Why would he do that? Yesterday he was so determined to have me find out why he had been targeted. What made him change his mind?”
“Again,” Baruch said impatiently, “I don’t care. I care about supervising the cases assigned to my own investigators. The one I gave you to close yesterday, for example. I notice you haven’t turned that report in yet.”
“You assigned me to the Hessler investigation before I finished the paperwork. Just a formality,” Danielle lied. “I’ll have it to you as soon as I can.”
“In that case, I left another case on your desk this morning. I suggest you busy yourself with it and the Saltzman one instead of a case that is no longer yours.” Baruch seemed to be finished but then suddenly resumed, “It is time you learned your parameters, Pakad.”
“A difficult task when you keep changing them, Rav nitzav.”
* * * *
D
own in her office, Danielle quickly reconstructed the tattoo on the killer’s arm as best she could. Her memory pictured it perfectly, but her drawing skills were not sufficient to re-create anything but a vague outline. In spite of the killer’s old bullet wound, glass eye, and possible service for the Americans in either World War II or Korea, the tattoo was likely the best evidence she had to aid her in determining his identity.
Of course, this case didn’t even belong to her anymore; the cases that did lay in file folders she had doodled all over in search of a better rendition of the elderly killer’s tattoo.
A worm holding a knife dripping with blood. . .
But what kind of worm? And what was the significance of the knife?
First things first.
Danielle slid Michael Saltzman’s file aside and quickly skimmed the contents of the one Moshe Baruch had left on her desk that morning: a thirteen-year-old boy who had died in a bicycle accident. Fractured skull. He hadn’t been wearing a helmet. Remained in a brain-dead coma for two weeks before his parents were finally able to turn the machines pumping what passed for life into him off.
So he didn’t fit the profile of Michael Saltzman and the other dead students who’d attended the cooperative school outside of Jerusalem. Danielle closed the thirteen-year-old boy’s file and shoved it aside.
She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes, reviewing the cases in her mind. The first of the students to die, by all accounts, had been the Israeli girl, Beth Jacober, who’d been killed in a car accident. According to Michael Saltzman’s mother, the girl’s death might have had something to do with Michael’s alleged suicide, committed around the very same time the mother of the murdered Palestinian boy told Ben her son began to act frightened, terrified of something.
Another parent, another dead child.
Was that why this whole matter so obsessed her, why she was almost glad to be pulled off the Paul Hessler investigation for the opportunity it gave her to pursue this?
Danielle needed to talk to the parents of the girl who had died in the car crash. Learn the details. Come to know their grief.
Oh God...
She felt like a monster, prying into the lives of others to better understand her own. Taking solace, comfort, in those whose grief was worse than hers. Therapy for her own damaged soul following her meeting with Dr. Barr that morning.
Danielle hadn’t prayed in a long time and she found she couldn’t start again now. God had already taken too much from her.
But it wasn’t just God who killed children. There were three students who attended the same school. All dead. All killed, perhaps, by man.
Why?
Moshe Baruch didn’t care about them. Just cases to be closed to assure and continue her misery. Well, Danielle was going to surprise him. She was going to bring him an answer he never would have expected.
If they had been murdered, then why?
Danielle knew she had to find the answer.
For her own child.
For herself.
* * * *
CHAPTER 21
A
s instructed, Ben was waiting on Amman Street across from the municipal building that housed Jericho’s police station when the minivan pulled up to the curb. He could see a number of kids buckled tightly into the seats: a half dozen, evenly split between boys and girls, all looking to be between six and seven. He slid open the passenger side door and found Colonel Nabrial al-Asi of the Palestinian Protective Security Service in the driver’s seat.
“Get in, Inspector,” the colonel said. He was wearing a cream-colored linen suit and a carefully knotted green Armani tie deliberately left outside the strap of the shoulder harness. “It’s my day to drive the car pool. I just picked up my youngest son and the others at school.”
Ben gazed back at the three boys, wondering which one of them was al-Asi’s youngest son. “You did say you wanted to be around your family more.”
The colonel carefully pulled away from the curb. “I have decided to act more like a normal parent. Soccer coaching and now car pooling. I had this American minivan imported especially for the task.”
“How many shadow vehicles are watching us?”
“Three. One behind and one in front.”
“That’s only two.”
“Did I forget to mention the helicopter?”
Ben leaned his head out the open window and looked up.
“Who knows what’s next?” said al-Asi, sounding genuinely excited. “My daughter’s school is having a graduation party. I’m thinking of chaperoning.”
“I didn’t know Palestinian schools were permitted to have parties.”
The colonel cleared his throat. “My daughter attends a private school in Israel.”
He continued driving the minivan slowly, clearly unfamiliar with its controls. Ben watched him fiddle with the steering wheel adjustment. Then with the air conditioning controls.
“Were your people able to reconstruct the files on that. computer, Colonel?”
“No, I’m afraid not, Inspector. Because there are no files. Someone removed the machine’s hard drive.”
Al-Asi’s revelation caught Ben totally off guard. Clearly, the perpetrator hadn’t wanted Shahir Falaya’s files recovered under any circumstances.
“Would you like to tell me what’s going on, Inspector?” al-Asi asked.
“I did tell you: The boy who owned the computer was murdered in an apparently random crime.”
“But you, of course, did not believe the crime was random and now you appear to be right. How is it these things seem to fall into your lap?”
“I don’t ask for them, Colonel.”
“I didn’t mean it as an insult, Inspector. Quite the opposite. You see things other men don’t. You should consider a position where your talents would be more appreciated.”
“As your assistant soccer coach, you mean.”
“Why not? In the eyes of many it’s a position you have already held for some time, given our close relationship these last several years. You might even say it explains why your many enemies in Palestine have not acted against you. I dare say that they fear the repercussions.”
“You want to make the relationship official.”
Al-Asi shrugged. “You look comfortable sitting there in the co-pilot’s seat, Inspector. I ask only that you keep that in mind.”
‘I will.”
“Especially since I understand you are considering another line of work anyway.” Something in the colonel’s tone had changed. He sounded slighted, hurt. “I’m not sure how well you would fare in the private sector, my friend.”
“How did you find out?”
“Your meeting occurred in the West Bank, didn’t it?” Al-Asi flashed a brief smile. “An American like John Najarian comes here and I pay attention. I ha
ve never trusted the Armenians.”
“Why?”
“Because they tempt my friends with career changes.”
“Is this a negotiation, Colonel?”
“Everything is a negotiation. But I’m surprised I had to hear about your meeting from someone other than you. Believe me when I say there’s nothing for you in the United States, Inspector. Here at least you have me.”
“I haven’t forgotten your offer.”
“What about Najarian’s?”
“I haven’t had many options to weigh for a while. I’d like to enjoy the feeling a bit longer.”
Al-Asi shrugged, letting it go. “In that case, tell me who you think killed the Falaya boy.”
“I don’t know.”
“But this other bit of information you asked me for will help you find out.”
“It might.”
The colonel waited for a red light and fished a piece of paper from his pocket.
“I’m hot, Daddy,” a boy in the rearmost seat said.
Al-Asi’s fumbled for the air conditioning switch and started the minivan through the intersection. Then he handed the piece of paper to Ben.
“The Ashawi family is quiet, reserved, of modest means. They’re not troublemakers so, unfortunately, we have no recent intelligence file on them. It’s a common name, but I believe I’ve narrowed down their relatives to the three on that list.”
Ben studied the names and addresses quickly. “Interesting that you could still come up with this so fast. I hadn’t realized your office was so technologically advanced.”
“It’s not,” al-Asi said, switching on his left-turn indicator. “We inherited the files from the Israelis who were quite good at keeping tabs on everyone. Give me until tomorrow morning and I’ll have the list narrowed down to one.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 22
E
xhume her body? In God’s name, why?”
“Please,” Danielle told David and Sheri Jacober as compassionately as she could manage, “I know how this must sound to you. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have my reasons. The fact is.... I’m here because the possibility exists that your daughter Beth’s death was not an accident.”
The Jacobers exchanged an anxious glance. They lived in Saryan, a wealthy, exclusive suburb of Tel Aviv notable for fenced and gated yards that were much larger than what ordinary Israelis were used to. The freshly paved streets were wider than most and a private security force patrolled them to supplement the local army contingent and police.
“What are you talking about?” Sheri Jacober asked.
“I believe your daughter may have been murdered.”
Tears welled up in Sheri Jacober’s eyes. Danielle recalled a picture of her late daughter from Layla Saltzman’s coffee table. The resemblance between mother and daughter was striking. The dark hair and delicate features. An even, natural Mediterranean tan with a slightly red nose for both of them.
“She was driving drunk, Chief Inspector. She left a party at a friend’s house and was driving drunk when she ...” Sobs drowned out the rest of her words.
“I read the report. Her friends said she hadn’t been drinking.”
“That’s what they always say. To protect each other.”
“We moved here from the United States to get away from this kind of thing,” her husband David added. “We thought it would be different.”
“Just as you thought the cooperative school your daughter attended until the semester ended a month ago would be different?” Danielle asked them both.
Sheri Jacober replied after glancing at her husband. “Why is that important?”
“Two other students from that school have died in the past week.”
“We knew about the Saltzman boy’s suicide, but we didn’t go to the funeral. Just couldn’t handle another.”
“A Palestinian boy from the school is dead too.”
“What does this have to do with us, with our daughter?” David Jacober demanded.
“The three were very close friends, inseparable according to the cooperative school’s principal.”
Sheri Jacober leaned forward, seeming to distance herself from her husband. She had offered coffee when Danielle first arrived, set the machine, and never returned to the kitchen to fetch it. Now the smell of the fresh brew hung heavy in the house’s air, swallowing everything else. “What do you want from us, Chief Inspector?”
“Upon your request, for religious reasons, an autopsy was never performed on your daughter. Why bother, when the cause of death was so obvious? But now that it may not be so obvious we need to be sure. Investigate every possibility.”
“The crash killed her,” David Jacober reminded. “What do you expect an autopsy at this point to show?”
Danielle leaned forward, longing for the cup of coffee— decaf, of course—Sheri Jacober had never brought her. She had a terrible craving for something sweet as well, a danish or cookie to go with it. It had been that way lately. Hungry day and night. Her stomach rambled and she thought she might have felt the tiny baby inside her move.
“I don’t believe your daughter’s car accident was an accident at all.” Danielle lowered her voice. “I don’t believe Michael Saltzman killed himself, and I don’t believe a Palestinian boy named Shahir Falaya’s death resulted from an ordinary carjacking gone wrong.”
David Jacober’s expression hardened, his jaw protruding outward as he took his wife’s hand. “What you believe or don’t believe is not enough to convince us to desecrate the body of our daughter.”
Danielle leaned forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Jacober, police reports indicate your daughter left the party somewhere between ten o’clock and ten-fifteen. But the car’s clock was frozen at eleven-twenty when the accident occurred. Now it’s only a fifteen minute drive back to your house from the Tel Aviv apartment where the party was being held.” Danielle paused to let her point sink in. “That leaves up to forty-five minutes unaccounted for.”
Sheri Jacober pulled her hand stiffly from her husband’s grasp. “You think something happened to Beth between the time she left the party and the accident.”
“Yes, I do.”
“This is ridiculous!” David Jacober roared and lurched to his feet, hands placed menacingly on his hips as he glared at Danielle. “Why are you pursuing this when none of the other police saw a reason to?”
“The Tel Aviv officials never bothered to look.”
“You would have us believe National Police is that much more efficient, then?”
Danielle turned in the chair to face David Jacober directly. “Mr. Jacober, I believe your daughter was murdered.” Rotating her gaze between the two of them now. “I know how painful it must be for you to hear that. But I’m sure if you give it some thought you’ll want to be sure, as I do. Because if I’m right, and I truly believe I am, that’s the only way we’ll ever be able to bring her killers to justice.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sheri Jacober interjected. “Why Beth? Why?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Danielle.
* * * *
CHAPTER 23
H
ans Mundt sat in the wobbly wooden chair he’d set next to his bed. He had rented a room in the Petra Hostel near the entrance to the Arab market in the old city of Jerusalem. He could have afforded something better but had chosen this for the anonymity it provided. Still, it would’ve been nice to have a room that had a desk; the cramped confines of this dingy one forced him to use his bed, atop which he had spread out his letters and notes. Instead of a desk, he had a crumbling balcony facing the Tower of David. Music wafted in at all hours of the night from a dance club downstairs, so much so that last night he had slid his balcony door closed and braved the suffocating heat to shut out the sound.
Mundt had been collecting correspondence from survivors of the Nazi labor camp north of Lodz, Poland, for years, doing his best to distill their contents into one coherent story to trace the
events that had come to dominate his life. Mundt knew he was close to the truth now. The tattered interview notes and replies before him held that truth. Mundt had laid them across the bedspread in chronological order starting nearly a year before the camp was dismantled in late 1944....
* * * *
T
he boy leaned over the hole, retching into the stink accumulated beneath it. He felt the gun barrel poke at him again from the doorway.
