by Elik Katzav
- Well, I’ve got some credit card information here. I need to pull Idan’s travel details from the past two months. Could you please help me with that?
She looks at me funny.
“You could have done all that from the internet café downstairs.”
But then I would not have met with you.
- Well, you told me to never share credit card details on public computers, spyware and so on.
“Right! So glad to see you’re learning!”
She turns back to the screen and types away for good few seconds. After about a minute, she turns the screen so I can see it.
“He has made the same rides all the way back to the rest of the year. In the past two months, he made trips to two extraordinary destinations. Two transits to Omer and two others to Savyon. What was he after?”
- Yeah. I am looking at the dates. The trip to Savyon is also the last transit. There are no other records after that. Let’s try and focus on Omer for now. I need to see if you can log on to the Ministry of Education.
“What’s your business with the board of education? Do you want your grades updated or something?” She laughs. I smile, but because I feel self-conscious, not because it’s all that funny.
- Well, no. Actually, I need to find this girl. It’s related to the case. Idan’s buddies said her name was Lynn and that he went to visit her twice. She lives in the south of Israel, which is in line with his transit pass.
“Is this the girl from the pic? Her name is Lynn?”
- I suppose so. She’s the only girl his buddies are aware of.
“So, high schools in the south of Israel?” She takes her hand off and returns to her screen.
‘Damn! Thanks a lot…’
“So, can you tell me what I’m looking for?”
- Yeah, I guess so. You wanna look her name up and focus on Israel’s southern district, high schools around Omer, near Be’er Sheva.
“No prob,” she begins to type and then stops. She suddenly turns to me and looks me over, frowning.
“Are you trying to shirk your duties?”
- Duties? I never. What duty would that be?
“It is your duty to rub my feet.” Without any prior warning, she lifts her leg and places it right on my thigh. Her skin is soft and cool to the touch after her shower. I caress her leg as Rose pauses to absorb the sensation of my sliding hand. Her leg warms up pretty soon.
“So, I got into the Ministry of Education’s website and found the only high school in town, and now, now I’m gonna log into the school itself and pull up its student list to see where Lynn is hiding. It’s not a very common name, after all,” Rose says after a few minutes.
- That quickly?
She glances in my direction for a moment, giving me her ‘did you doubt my abilities for even one second?’ look.
My hand reluctantly caresses Rose’s leg and climbs up her shin. Well, maybe not so reluctantly…
Whether she’s paying attention or not, Rose is focused on her laptop once again. “She’s graduating either this year or the next. Let’s narrow the list of classes down,” she continues to play on her keyboard while I am melting away over here.
“Got it!” She suddenly jumps and straightens herself, pulling her leg from my hands. She turns her screen over for me to see. She’s looking victorious. “Her full name is Lynn Shmueli, and this,” she points at the screen, “is her postal address.”
I produce my notepad quickly and take those details down. As I lift my head away from the screen I catch Rose looking at me slightly frustrated.
- Rose, have I done something wrong?
“No, I did,” she replies. “I gave you what you came for too quickly, and now you’ll bow your head, say a few words and return back to the dark, until you so happen to need me again.”
I lower my head and begin apologizing, just as she predicted.
- Ah, it’s not that, I am not-
“You’re just like any other man. You simply can’t take a hint.”
- You mean-
The doorbell cuts me off mid sentence.
Rose sulks. “Who can it be at this time?”
She leaps over me and runs to the door.
I hear the door opening, bringing in sounds of laughter from the entrance before it shuts. A second later, Rose reappears in her living room, blushing and looking insatiable. Standing next to her is Itay, my foster brother, in his white buttoned-up shirt and dark jeans, all clean shaven and smelling so fresh his scent reaches all the way to where I am sitting.
Itay and I met at this foster family when I was fourteen and he was about twelve, so we’re bros, although he is not my biological brother. Unlike me, he got there because he did have a family of his own. But between his abusive father and a dope fiend for a mother, he, like myself, became a case for social welfare to work, complete with boarding schools and foster care, until we met.
Despite his police record from the time he was a teenager, he nevertheless joined a combat unit in the IDF and went on to volunteer for an elite corps. When he completed his military service, he opened his own business, specializing in providing top notch security detail to the 1%. Itay was also the one who introduced me to Rose. They had been together since before my period of rehabilitation and broke up afterwards, only to come back and break up again.
Itay did not approve of everything that had happened to me at Nazareth, at least not my version of events. This caused a rift between us, which he excused by saying he “cannot have a monster-spotting madman for a brother; it’s not good for business.”
Itay is looking at Rose, then at me.
“Bro, whatcha doin’ here?” He says, giving me a look that conveys how little he’s happy to find me at his girlfriend’s place—or his former girlfriend, or whatever the status is at the moment. I make no effort to try and figure this relationship out, but suffice it to say Itay always stands on his two hind legs when he feels someone else is stepping into his own turf.
- Well, you know.
“Know what?”
I decide to avoid giving him a straight answer.
- Rose is helping me out with something on her laptop.
He has no intention of letting go.
He examines me closely. “What happened to your face? Not that you ever had a nice face before, but still…” he softens up a bit and smiles.
- Ah, well, work. Close encounter with a table. I lost. ‘And not just to a table.’
I get up and hold my arm forth for a hand shake, before he jumps to any conclusions. His response is classic Itay. He pulls me towards him for this long hug, complete with lifting me up and laughing as he does that.
‘So typical.’
Rose looks on over his shoulder, her eyes conveying a note of apology. “Sorry, I didn’t know he was coming.”
“I’m on my way to a party. I did try to get hold of Rose on her cell but I couldn’t get through, so here I am,” he gives us this beaming smile, full of pearly whites.
At the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Rose blushing slightly.
I decide to come clean and let Rose catch her breath in the meantime.
She runs over to the kitchen and comes back with a cup of tea for Itay.
- Rose is helping me out with an investigation I am assigned to.
“Really? An actual case? Not some kook thinking some witch put a spell on his cat or something?”
- Yes, a real case, a runaway child who’s gone missing. The police can’t actually search for him right now, so his folks hired me to find him.
“Hired? For like, real money?”
“Itay, let him be.” Rose then adds, “He’s working for Uri.”
“That slave driver? Well, it’s better than for you to be standing in some street corner shouting ‘The end is nigh!’”
“I said that was enough,” Rose gives him this look. “This is a judgment free zone. People come here to grow and develop, not to be stifled. If you wish to fight, take it outside.”
Itay shrugs and looks at her screen. “What are you looking for at Savyon?”
After a pause, I decide I might as well answer him.
- One of our leads pinpoints the boy in that area.
“That’s some place. Fancy suburb, Savyon. Not your style.” He pauses for a moment and continues. “Well, if you need help getting to the people there, I’ve got a few clients over there, maybe I can be of some use to you,” he’s looking at Rose now, and she nods approvingly.
“What do you say, Rosie? Come to the party with me tonight.”
She looks at me. I shrug, however disappointed I feel. I urge her to join him.
- I’m not going anywhere else except to sleep. Had a long day, and tomorrow is probably gonna be the same. Go with him, go dancing. The laptop’s working anyway, so you’ve got nothing else on besides waiting for it to be over, so you might as well enjoy yourself while you’re at it.
She thinks for a moment and eventually rises up. “I’ll go change. And for your sake, if I’m taking the trouble to go out, it might as well be someplace real nice, Itay.”
“The hippest place in town, at least for this week,” Itay lays his hand over his chest and smiles. “Cross my heart.”
Rose smiles and hops along to her bedroom.
Chapter 9
The morning light comes through the shop window. I can feel it hitting my face as I lay on the sofa. Something is moving in the corner of my eye. I glance at the upholstery shop’s front door, only to see a black line of smoke passing under the door and gathering at the foot of my sofa. It forms and collects until that nebulous figure of black smoke stands before me, firm and upright. Solid smoke. I try to scream, but I don’t seem to be able to utter a sound. I cannot form a sound! My eyes fill with tears as I lay motionless, unable to move. This unfolding nebulous figure takes out a long sharp knife made of liquid metal from within its cloud and swings it over its head, where a pair of yellow eyes light up at the top as it is about to plunge this blade right into my chest....
I am woken up by the sound of my own screams, all sweaty and in tears. It’s three AM. There goes my beauty sleep, my night cut short earlier than expected. Too late for a sleeping pill.
When the alarm clock hits seven AM, I get out of bed and turn on the radio to have some background noise as I take a shower. This radio talk show has devoted the entire week to how important it is to keep the Sabbath in the framework of chats between observant folks and secular folks. As I shave, the radio program cuts to a news flash that recaps that a body had been found near Twins Cave. I run back to catch a police investigator explaining to the reporter at the scene that this is an ongoing investigation and that so far, there’s no new information.
My cell phone’s battery ran empty the previous night, but I just noticed it, so I connect it to a power outlet. The moment it comes on, it begins to flash and beep. Six new messages, all from Na’ama. Each of them came in during last night.
I dial to call her back.
“Have you seen the news?” She begins the conversation from the middle, sounding pumped up on adrenaline. “They found another body near Twins Cave, with the same puncture marks and the same drying up from within of its internal organs,” she continues without letting me respond. “Once again, I did what you recommended and followed the surveillance cameras in the parking lots. Again, I came across the same pickup truck without a plate.”
- So the murderer turned the woods into his own dumping site?
“Well, not quite. The body wasn’t found in the woods like Noga’s body. It turned up at a dumpster in one of the park’s parking lots. The city’s waste disposal team discovered it very early in the morning and called the cops, so here I am. I’ve been up for twenty two hours or so now.”
- Same MO as Noga’s murder, only this time they didn’t take the trouble to stage the scene. Whoever it was, they were in a hurry. Chances you’ll come up with more details on the perp are higher this time, because people make mistakes when they are in a hurry.
“Yeah, but seeing as this is the same MO, it raises doubts concerning the importance of the all too organized scene of Noga’s murder. The general belief is that it was staged in order to throw us off the actual case—way off.”
- Any progress on Noga’s investigation? Anything to shed some light on her murder?
“No, not according to the meetings we’re still part of. Not a shred of a lead. The postmortem did conclude she had died about a week prior to the time she was found, but they don’t know the exact time of death because she was cold when they found her. The body was probably held in some fridge in order to keep it from decomposing, so the lab claims the decomposition process did set in, but it was slowed down, so they put her time of death about a week before they found her.”
- What about the current body?
“He too was completely drained of blood and in the process of decomposing, but this guy was also beaten up real bad prior to being murdered, complete with blue marks and broken ribs, and he wasn’t tied up like Noga.”
- A meticulously planned murder on the one hand, and another murder, seemingly carried out in haste, only all the evidence points to both having been committed by the same person.
“You seem to be right. The police are working frantically to prevent any leaks, and just as hard on combing the scene more thoroughly. If this murder was indeed perpetrated in haste, they wanna get as much evidence as possible. I am updating you now because once the case is under wraps we will not be able to speak, but if you do have any insight concerning what I told you, you are more than welcome to share,” Na’ama always knew how to work around the law. Clever girl.
We conclude our chat and I go out the shop’s front door to get the newspaper.
No mention of the murder in the headlines, seeing as they only found the body last night, after the newspaper had already gone to print. In any case, even after it is released to the media, they’ll dial down the information as befitting a case under a live investigation.
Murder or no murder, I have to get on with my own investigation. I take only a few moments to get my stuff together and head over to the car, carrying my suitcase. Driving all the way south to Omer will take well over an hour. With a bit of luck, though, the traffic is much lighter outside the metropolitan areas, so the moment I am out of the Tel Aviv district, it’s pretty much smooth sailing all the way until Omer, where I plan to ask Lynn a few questions.
The car is still spared the heat of August, thanks to me parking it in the shade between two buildings. I start the engine and merge with the traffic. The highway is pretty empty, since in Israel, a lot of folks don’t work on Friday.
All the evidence seems to point at Lynn. She is in fact the only person who has been in contact with Idan I haven’t spoken with yet. Their history together, at least according to what I gleaned from his friends, might have been the cause for his running away. Maybe they ran away together. Teenagers do that sometimes. Her dad sounds tough, the stringent type. Apart from that, I won’t have a clue what was on Idan’s PC until Rose manages to recover his hard drive.
The road down south is gray during most of the year. Well, gray doesn’t really describe it well; more like brown, save for those few weeks during which it rains enough to turn the brown green, but it’s August now, so the landscape is mostly brown.
During the first leg of my journey, the Mediterranean Sea is to my right, and I can still catch a glimpse of it every now and then between the far off sand dunes, but after I pass Ashdod, the road takes me further east and south, deeper into the Negev, all the way to Be’er Sheva, and from there, on to Omer. So it’s time for Michael Jackson. The disc begins to play. I sing along, over and over.
“
I’m stoppin’ at nothin’”
“I’ve got to be on time.” That’s the only thing I can think of.
Every now and then, the otherwise brown landscape is broken by the occasional line of trees, a reminder that I am approaching the international border with Egypt. Michael sings on.
“I’m headed for the border… / Speedin’ on the highway…”
The road turns and bends here and there, leading to a smaller road, then to a driveway to some smaller place with red roofs. Such a peaceful life, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Picket fences, on the other side of which the kids can grow safe and happy. Isn’t that what Michal and Yonatan wanted for Idan? Isn’t this what they left Tel Aviv in favor of the safety and security of the suburbs for?
“Mind is like a compass… / I’m stoppin’ at nothin’… / Look in the view mirror / Is he hot on my tracks / Is he getting nearer / I feel some heat is on my back”.
Ultimately, this sense of security is false. It’s what parents tell themselves, but the truth is they do not have full control over what their child does or who they might be hanging out with.
“Mind is like a compass… / I’m stoppin’ at nothin’…”
It’s a pretty monotonous drive. The landscape keeps repeating itself. Eventually, the disc begins to falter. It’s the only one I’ve got for the car. What an ending; one big scratch. I reluctantly turn the sound system off and pull the disc out. You certainly had a nice run.
The silence of the road engulfs me, save for the sounds that come through the window, which I need to keep open in order to ventilate the car.
Shall I dial Rose and check up on the results of yesterday’s endeavors?
Either way, it’s only for her own good. She’ll thank me down the road. She needs someone stable, solid—maybe even Itay. At least he’s mentally stable. I’m certainly not the healthiest choice for her.
I mull over this decision for a while longer, until I notice the road sign pointing straight on to Be’er Sheva, and then left, on to Omer. From there on, the road runs through desert land, with less and less vegetation. The occasional herd of sheep approaches the road. Upon closer inspection, you can see a shepherd sitting under some brown tree or chasing his sheep as they graze indifferently by the side of the road.
