by Elik Katzav
“Are you one of those guys who get arrested every day? Is that why you know the rules?” He snickers and turns to the officer behind him, “We have a lawyer in the making here.”
Then, a policeman who just walked in gasps in surprise as he asks me, “Is this where you live?”
- Gotta live somewhere, and I would be happy if you didn’t go through my stuff, unless you have a warrant allowing you to touch ’em. Like I said, I know my rights.
He exits the back room.
“If the stuff is laying around, I do not need a warrant. Besides, if this isn’t your first time, play along quietly and will wrap this up quick.”
- You still haven’t told me what you’re booking me for.
“We never said we you were under arrest. We’re only taking you down to the station for a chat, so technically, we are not supposed to give you any answers.”
- So technically, I do not have to come along with you. You know that.
“Listen, you’re inside a business out of working hours, which in and of itself is tantamount to trespassing, so I could book you for two or three days just for that. Do you really want to go that road?”
I am banging my head against the wall here. They will take me by force if they have to. ‘I am such an idiot for letting her keep me on the line for so long.’
- Let me grab my cell phone.
I bend over to pull the phone out of the charger, and my shirt rides high to reveal my waistband.
“A gun! Careful! He’s got a gun!”
The officer by the door is shouting when my shirt reveals the holster.
‘I completely forgot I was carrying it...’
I go back up slowly, turn around towards him, hands in the air.
- Listen, I am carrying a gun bec-
I do not get to finish the sentence, as the officer who was in my room tackles me and knocks me down to the floor very hard, through the sales desk. I can feel the splinters cutting through my forehead, and this warm, wet sensation all over my face.
- Get off me, you idiot, I didn’t do anything.
I scramble under the weight of this policeman as the other officers quickly enter the room and hold me down tightly to the floor. The officer over me is pushing my arms down and folding my hands into the cuffs while another one pulls the holster out of my pants.
- This shit is exactly why I left the force! This stinks, you pack of brainless thugs!
Here I am, shouting under a pack of police officers.
They take no notice of me. Once I am handcuffed, they get off of me and stand me up, looking ever so pleased with themselves.
I look down. The now shattered desk is covered in blood. It’s also pouring over my eyes.
They grab me by each arm and pull me out.
- I can make it on my own! I would have come along willingly had you lot not behaved like a pack of apes!
“I don’t know about that,” one of the officers, the one who spoke with me earlier, retorts. “It looked you were about to pull your gun on us, so we stopped you. You could not look guiltier.”
A small crowd of spectators had already assembled right outside the upholstery shop, looking to catch a glimpse of the ‘public enemy number one’ that took four officers to grab hold of.
Two policemen clear a path and shout at everyone to disperse and not take any pictures. Everyone with a smartphone is an effin’ investigative reporter nowadays.
The police officers shove me into the first car and take off.
Chapter 5
We reach a police station in Tel Aviv, whereupon they unload me from their car. My forehead keeps twinging as my blood congeals and I can sure feel my face swelling. I expect this feeling will not leave me for a few days.
We don’t even take five steps before this policewoman, a real hottie, appears before us, bearing that “you’re messin’ with the wrong woman” kind of look on her face as she proceeds to shout at the stunned officers. Na’ama.
I blink as she gives them hell, complete with a run-down of everything she’s got to say about their level of intelligence, including the fact that “this here guy you’re holding in cuffs is one of us, you didn’t even bother wiping the blood off his face when you took him, so now the net is full of pictures of all four of you after you beat a suspect up, his bloodied face spread all over the news.”
They never saw it coming.
“He tried to resist,” one of them attempts to defend himself.
- No, I didn’t.
“He pulled his gun on us,” says another cop.
- Not at all, I was raising my hands up when you lot decided to smash my face in using that counter.
“Maharani, you’re not helping!” she barks at me. “Butt out!”
- Hey, I’d be glad to leave, just get these cuff off of me and give me back my stuff, and, of course, cover the huge suit I am about to file against the police.
“You’re not helpin’-”
One of the officers is looking right at me.
“What lawsuit?”
- Oh, let’s see here: assault, battery, bodily harm, false arrest, violence, there’s plenty, oh, and of course any number of pictures by way of evidence to establish my case.
“Bullshit,” he talks back, “none of it will stand up in court.”
- Maybe, or maybe when it’s all over, internal affairs will boot the four of you out so far you won’t even find a job as a mall security detail.
“Maharani, that’s enough!” Na’ama comes over to me, pulls a set of keys out and uncuffs me.
“What are you doing? He’s a suspect, he needs to be processed by the book,” one of the officers protests.
“He’s a suspect? You went after my lead, so it’s up to me to tell you whether he’s suspected of anything or not.”
- Wait a moment, you sent these goons after me? Are you nuts?
One of them gives me an angry look.
“Hey! We’re still here!”
Na’ama looks at them.
“Yeah, so why the hell are you still here?”
She then turns to me.
“I didn’t send them. I am part of an investigative team. I tried to talk to you through that young woman on the phone, but you’ve decided to play hardball, so by that time they decided to bring you in for questioning.”
She grabs the paper bag containing my stuff from the cops.
“Now, get the hell outta my sight, all of you, before I help him file his complaint against you lot, one form after another.”
They head back to their cars, grumbling.
“Come on,” she says, “let’s get you washed, go have a seat outside, and chat. It’s too messy in here.”
Na’ama leads me to the washroom, where, looking at the mirror, I discover my face is still bleeding courtesy of a few woodchips. I clean the cuts and wash the dried blood away.
‘These scratches will last a few days. At the very least. Lucky for me, there’s nothing more serious’.
Na’ama is standing by as I leave the police bathroom and takes me back out to a nearby coffee shop.
Café Bean happens to be very close to the International Crime Investigations Unit’s HQ. It’s also known as the very place where officers who shun office coffee go to have freshly ground quality Joe.
“Wow, you lost a lotta weight since I last saw ya. I hardly recognized you!” she says the moment we’re sitting down, attempting to make things more pleasant after the morning I’ve been.
- Yeah, it’s one of those things that happen when you lose your livelihood, your home, and your mind. You see, you’ve got nothing left to buy any food with, so you lose a few pounds…
She looks at me closely.
“But you’re working now, aren’t you? Things are getting back in shape for you, right?”
- Well, I
work when work comes in. Nothing steady.
She examines me again.
“Did you order? What do you feel like having?”
I shake my head.
- Nah, no need. I’m not hungry.
“Don’t be silly, I’m buyin’.”
She calls the waiter despite my objection.
“So tell me, why did you screen Dana?”
- Why couldn’t you speak for yourself? Why did you have to get her involved in the call? Couldn’t you give your old partner the heads up that he’s about to get his head busted open? I would have gotten the place ready for them, had I known they were coming.
“It’s not that simple,” she lowers her eyes. “I’m sorry it turned out this way. I’m just part of a large investigative team, a small part of this deal. I couldn’t give you a heads up.”
I nod.
- An investigation about Noga Ophir? What happened to her?
“You know the drill, what’s the connection between you two?”
- I’m pursuing my own case and her name came up. I followed the lead I had.
“What does your investigation have to do with Noga?”
- I’m investigating a case involving a boy who ran away from home and her name came up as one of the people he was in contact with.
‘A small white lie. I gotta give ’er something.’
“And? What sort of contact? Who’s the kid?”
- I cannot disclose that. What’s your interest in Noga?
She looks at me again, sighs and shakes her head.
“After what you’ve gone through this morning, I feel I owe you that much at least.”
She pauses for only a second before she continues, “Noga Ophir has been found. Her body was found yesterday. We are trying to retrace the events leading up to her murder.”
- Wow, murder! Sounds like a major case, not the sort of thing the Counter Cult Squad usually handles. How come you’re in on it?
“Eh, well, you know how it goes. Tit for tat. Your turn.”
I take a deep breath.
- I’m investigating this case involving a missing child. Like I told you, we combed through the search history in his computer and gleaned that he’d looked Noga’s name up and explored her work in the media right before he disappeared, so I left her a message to look into her connection with this boy, and then you people called me.
“Are you serious? Is that all you’ve got?
- Yes, my sincere apologies for not murdering her and all, but you jumped right on me like I was your man.
Na’ama gestures with her head again, “You’re right, I had it coming for not talking to you first.”
- Ok, one second, let’s be serious now, why did this case reach the CCS in the first place? No offence, but this sounds like a high profile case, too high for the squad.
Na’ama sighs, opens her bag, and produces a brown case file, which she lays out in front of me.
“Look, this is strictly because I hold myself responsible for what you look like right now, so don’t count on it in the future. Let’s see what kind of insight you might have.”
She moves over and sits next to me as I open the file. The first photo here is Noga’s, dressed in a black suit. This pic came from the newspaper’s archives. She looks much younger, no older than twenty five. She seems to have elbowed her way forward, doing whatever she could to promote herself. There aren’t many women who are investigative reporters, and even fewer who do undercover work like infiltrating organizations. By and large, that field is dominated by men and is considered brutal.
“She went on assignment in disguise, inserting herself into this group of people who retired from the rat race and went to live in the Judean Desert,” Na’ama begins, as I start going over the text constituting the initial investigation.
“A group of people living off the grid, led by some charismatic guy. When she pitched this story to her editor as a scoop, she apparently hadn’t met any of them yet or even spoken with any of them directly. She only knew that some remote farms run by individuals do sell them food and supplies, and that this group wanders through the desert, like in the bible—or at least, that’s the data we gathered from her office computer back at the paper.”
I read through the case file until I come across photos from the murder scene. According to the records, she was found near a parking lot in the region of the Twins Cave, east of Beit Shemesh.
These images from the crime scene hit me hard. There she is, laying naked, and she appears to be covered by a thin layer of powder. Noga’s eyes are still open, looking towards the heavens, her mouth opened slightly. She was stabbed with a sharp instrument right at the center of her solar plexus. That was my first association with this location on Noga’s abdomen. ‘Yeah, solar plexus, right, Rose’s lessons have left their mark’.
The next image is a close up of the stab wound itself. Whoever did it was aiming for her solar plexus. The stab wound looks like it was done with a strange shaped knife, and the first thing you notice is that all the veins and smaller blood vessels around the puncture mark are highlighted, as though the location of the stab is the sun and the thin veins coming out are rays of light along and across the stomach and chest.
Noga’s skin looks tight, with a thin layer of what seems like dust covering the whole area.
“The stab ran only half-way through her stomach; it did not come out through her back. Whatever they used to stab her with was like a syringe because it apparently drained out her blood, ,” Na’ama responds before I even get a chance to ask.
An involuntary chill runs all the way down my back as Na’ama describes it.
“Here’s the next photo from the crime scene. Pay attention; the close-up of the stab wound shows that the blade was in the shape of a cross..”
The following pictures show ligature signs on Noga’s hands and feet, then a face picture. Her hair is ruffled sideways, and blue veins continue along her neck towards her face. Her eyes have gone from white to blue, and her cornea has turned into a blue spot over her eye.
- Did you find out what made her eye turn blue? What kind of substance they poured into it?
Na’ama is shaking her head.
“The lab is still testing it, but they claim they’ve never seen anything like it.”
- And what’s this powder the body is covered with? Sand?
“Dried skin,” Na’ama examines me. “The skin had dried and turned to powder, with a new layer of skin forming underneath. Turns out this is what’s happening to us all the time, but not all at once and not all over the body.”
I return to the photo featuring Noga looking ahead with her dead blue eyes.
- Her hair—was it like that, or did you move it?
“You know we never move anything. Her hair looks like she got a static shock right before she died. Her hair remained standing like that during the entire time she was laying there.
- You mentioned that… her blood had been drawn out?
“Yes, look here.”
Na’ama refers me to a close up of the wound. “When they wanted to clear the body, it began to disintegrate into dust. Around the puncture, the skin had already dried up. The lab guys updated me that almost all her blood had been pumped out, and that her internal organs had dried up, just like mummies back in ancient Egypt.”
- So where’s the blood? If all her blood was removed, how come there’s no blood at the crime scene?
Na’ama directs my attention to the photo showing the area where Noga was murdered.
“This is why the CCS was brought in, if anything seemed normal to you thus far,” she mumbles.
The pic she’s showing me features Noga’s body at the center of a circle with geometric shapes etched into the ground all around it.
There’s a wicker basket at her feet, filled with apples. Over her
head, there’s a clay bowl with two fish.
I pause to examine this image. The entire situation makes no sense.
- Did you notice these markings on the ground are gibberish? It’s just the sort of thing someone looks up online when they want to make a sacrifice.
She nods in agreement. “This is why they brought us in, like I said. It looks like a ritual, not your everyday murder.”
- Someone certainly took the trouble to stage the whole thing in order to make the police think this was some ritual.
“They’re still checking the place for more DNA, but for now, there are no finger prints or anything to tie anyone else to the scene.”
- Whatever it was, the fish appear to be fresh, so whomever placed her there did it fairly recently.
She sighs. “Nevertheless, the state of Noga’s body does not allow us to figure out when she was murdered. The whole mummification process she was put through, it was all internal. It’s not like the one at funeral homes, like in the US, where they drain the body and remove the internal organs before they can have an open casket. In our case here, she was simply dried out altogether.
- Blood. Well, that’s obvious. Blood was a very powerful part of many rituals in ancient times. Blood has powers, it confers life. Whoever it was who performed all this probably thought they could really use this blood for some ritual or some invocation.
It might be used for something like that. I’ve come across stranger things than this, I think to myself.
Na’ama is nodding. “You have a point. In any case, whoever it was who wanted to get rid of her could have simply dumped her someplace and not taken such care to stage a scene, remove every trace of evidence of their existence. Looks like someone is attempting to give us a clue.”
- What about the material she managed to gather concerning this cult she was following in the Judean Desert? I know it’s a stretch, but there might be a connection there?
“Still under investigation, so it’s still under wraps.”
I finish my coffee.
- At any rate, you and your team should take into account that if the body really is in a state of such a degree of decomposition, there’s a good chance that the people who brought her to the crime scene didn’t travel far, because she would crumble to pieces on the way over. You might look into cameras nearby, maybe there is something we, ehm, you, can find.
