The Butcher's Theatre (8 page)

So different from the old Russian Compound, with its green copper domes and cold, dingy walls, the ancient plaster crackled like eggshell. The constant press of bodies, the eternal human parade. His cubicle had been noisy, cramped, bereft of privacy. Suspects rubbing elbows with policemen. Vine-laced leaded windows offering views of manacled suspects escorted across the courtyard, bound over for hearing at the Magistrates Hall, some shuffling, others fairly dancing to judgment. The bitter smell of sweat and fear, voices raised in the same old cantata of accusation and denial. The working space of a detective.

His Major Crimes assignment had meant a move to National Headquarters. But National Headquarters had been built with administrators in mind. Paper blizzards and the high technology of contemporary police work. Basement labs and banks of computers. Well-lit conference rooms and lecture halls. Clean, respectable. Sterile.

He turned the key. His office was spanking-white and tiny—ten by ten with a view of the parking lot. His desk, files, and shelves filled it, so that there was barely space for a single guest chair; more than one visitor meant a move to one of the interrogation rooms. On the wall was a framed batik Laura had done last summer. A pair of old Yemenite men, brown figures on a cream-colored background, dancing in ecstasy under a flaming orange swirl of sun. Next to it, a pictorial calendar from the Conservation League, this month’s illustration a pair of young almond

trees in full snowy blossom against a backdrop of gray rolling hills.

He squeezed behind the desk. The surface was clear except for a snapshot cube of Laura and the children and a stack of mail. At the top of the stack was a message to call Laufer if he had anything to report, some Research and Development questionnaires to be filled out as soon as possible, a memo explaining new regulations for submitting expense vouchers, and a final death report from Abu Kabir on the Dutch tourist who’d been found dead three days ago in the woodlands just below the Dormition Abbey. He picked up the report and put the rest aside. Scanning the stiff, cruel poetry of the necropsy protocol (“This is the body of a well-developed, well-nourished white male …”), he dropped his eyes to the last paragraph: Extensive atherosclerotic disease including blockage of several main blood vessels, no sign of toxins or foul play. Conclusion: The man had been a heart attack waiting to happen. The steep climb to the abbey had done him in.

He put the report aside, picked up the phone, dialed the main switchboard, and got put on hold. After waiting for several moments, he hung up, dialed again, and was answered by an operator with a cheerful voice. Identifying himself, he gave her three names and left messages for them to contact him as soon as possible.

She read the names back to him and he said, “Perfect. There’s one more, a Samal Avi Cohen. New hire. Try Personnel and if they don’t know where he can be reached, Tat Nitzav Laufer’s office will. Give him the same message.”

“Okay. Shalom.”

“Shalom.”

The next number he tried was busy. Rather than wait, he left and climbed to the fourth floor.

The office he entered was one-third larger than his, but it housed two people. A pair of desks had been placed in an L. On the wall behind them, a single shelf held books, a collection of straw dolls, and a sachet that emitted a light aroma of patchouli.

Both youth officers were on the phone, talking to bureaucrats. Both wore pastel short-sleeved blouses over jeans.

Otherwise, physically and stylistically, they were a study in contrasts.

Hanna Shalvi sat nearer to the door, diminutive, dark, be-spectacled; baby-faced, so that she didn’t look much older than the children she worked with. She asked a question about a family’s fitness, nodded as she listened, said “yes” and “hmm” several times, repeated the question, waited, repeated.

A few feet away, Alice Yanushevsky hunched over her desk, jabbing her pencil in the air and smoking like a chimney. Tall and moon-faced, with straw-colored hair cut in a Dutch-boy, she demanded fast action from a recalcitrant pencil-pusher in a voice tight with impatience.

“This is a girl in jeopardy! We’ll have no more delays! Am I understood?” Slam.

A sweet smile for Daniel. A drop in vocal pitch: “Good morning, Dani.” She picked up a cardboard tube, opened it, and unfolded the contents. “Like my new poster?”

It was a blowup of the American rock band Fleetwood Mac.

“Very nice.”

“Avner gave it to me because he says I look like one of them”—she swiveled and pointed—“the English girl, Christine. What do you think?”

“A little,” he conceded. “You’re younger.”

Alice laughed heartily, smoked, laughed again.

“Sit down, Pakad Sharavi. Just what is it that you need?”

“Photographs of missing girls. Brunettes, probably fifteen or sixteen, but let’s play it safe and go twelve to nineteen.”

Alice’s green eyes jumped with alarm.

“Something happened to one of them?”

“Possibly.”

“What?” she demanded.

“Can’t say anything right now. Laufer’s put a gag on.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Sorry.”

“All take, no give, eh? That should make your job easy.” She shook her head scornfully. “Laufer. Who does he think he’s kidding, trying to keep anything quiet around here?”

“True. But I need to humor him.”

Alice stubbed out her cigarette. Another shake of the head.

“The girl in question has dark skin, dark hair,” said Daniel. “Roundish face, pretty features, chipped teeth, one missing upper tooth. Anyone come to mind?”

“Pretty genera! except for the teeth,” said Alice, “and that could have happened after the disappearance.” She opened one of her desk drawers, pulled out a pile of about a dozen folders, and thumbed through them, selecting three, putting the rest away.

“All our open cases are being entered into the computer, but I have a few here that just came in recently. All runaways—these are the ones in your age range.”

He examined the photographs, shook his head, gave them back.

“Let’s see if she has any.” said Alice. Rising, she stood over Hanna, who was still nodding and questioning. Tapping her on the shoulder, she said: “Come on, enough.”

Hanna held up one hand, palm inward, thumb touching index finger. Signaling savlanul. Patience.

“If you haven’t convinced them yet, you never will,” said Alice. She ran her fingers through her hair, stretched. “Come on, enough.”

Hanna conversed a bit more, said thank you, and got off the phone.

“Finally,” said Alice. “Take out your recent files. Dani needs to look at them.”

“Good morning, Dani,” said Hanna. “What’s up?”

“He can’t tell you but you have to help him anyway. Laufer’s orders.”

Hanna looked at him, dark eyes magnified by the lenses of her glasses. He nodded in confirmation.

“What do you need?” she asked.

He repeated the description of the murdered girl and her eyes widened in recognition.

“What?”

“Sounds like a kid I processed two weeks ago. Only this one was only thirteen.”

“Thirteen is possible,” said Daniel. “What’s her name?”

“Cohen. Yael Cohen. One second.” She went into her

files, talking as she sorted. “Musrara girl. Fooling around with twenty-two-year-old pooshtak. Papa found out and beat her. Next day she didn’t come home from school. Papa went looking for her, tried to beat up the boyfriend, too, got thrashed for his efforts. Ah, here it is.”

Daniel took the file, homed in on the photograph, felt his spirits sink. Yael Cohen was curly-haired, bovine, and dull-looking. A missing tooth, but that was the extent of the resemblance.

“Not the one,” he said, giving it back to Hanna. “The rest are in the computer?”

“In the process of being entered,” said Alice.

“How many cases are we talking about?”

“Missing girls in that age range? About four hundred nationally, sixty or so from Jerusalem. But the files are classified alphabetically, not by age or sex, so you’d have to go through all of them—about sixteen hundred.”

Tedious but workable.

“How can I get hold of them?”

“Go down to Data Processing and pull rank.”

He spent the next two hours on the phone, phoning Dr. Levi at Abu Kabir and being told by an assistant that the pathologist was out of the office; requesting a copy of Schlesinger’s service record from Civil Guard Headquarters; getting a records clerk to search for any sort of priors on the Amelia Catherine staff; attempting, without success, to find out if any of the three detectives had received his message. Letting Data Processing know that someone would be down to examine the missing-juvenile files. Filling out the mountain of requisition forms that legitimized each of the requests. Hampered at every step by his inability to satisfy the curiosity of the people whose cooperation he needed.

At twelve-fifteen, Levi called.

“Shalom, Pakad. I’ve finished the preliminary on the young one from this morning. I know it’s priority so I’ll read from my notes: Well-developed, well-nourished mid-adolescent female of Eastern descent. Multiple stab wounds, shock from voluminous loss of blood—she was drained.”

“How?”

“Gravity, probably. Tipped over so that it flowed through the throat wound.”

Like a butchered animal, thought Daniel. One hand tightened around the receiver. The other scrawled hastily as the pathologist continued to recite his findings:

“The ear pierces were old. Inside the hole was some blackening, which turned out to be steel oxide on the specto-graph—non-gold wire, which means the earrings themselves probably weren’t gold and they may have been removed recently.”

“Could the wire have been gold-plated?”

“Possibly, or gold paint. Let me continue. There were no defense cuts or ligature marks, so she didn’t resist and she wasn’t tied up. Which would indicate lack of consciousness during the actual cutting, but there was no evidence of head trauma. However, I did find two fresh needle marks on the arms and the gas chromatography came up with opiates. Heroin. Not enough to kill her unless she had an idiopathic sensitivity, but enough to sedate her.”

“Was she cut up before or after sedation?”

“From the lack of resistance, I’d say after. For her sake, I hope so.”

“Anesthesia,” said Daniel. “Considerate of the bastard, eh?”

“Any sign that she was an addict?”

“On the contrary: The organs were clean, mucosa clear. No other marks besides the two fresh ones. All in all, a healthy young lady.”

“What about sexual assault?”

“The whole damned thing was a sexual assault,” said Levi. “You saw the genitalia. If you mean was there semen, no visible patches, but the region was too torn up for a complete analysis. The tests we ran were negative. Let’s see what else … oh, yes, the wounds were caused by more than~ one instrument. At least two, maybe more.”

“What kinds of instruments?”

“Knives. Very sharp. One with a curved blade, the other larger, straight-edged. The larger one was used on the throat. One strong slash from left to right, so we’re probably dealing with a right-handed person, which doesn’t help you much.”

“Any similarity to the Gray Man homicides?”

“None whatsoever. Gray Man used a serrated blade, relatively dull—we hypothesized a kitchen knife, remember? Whoever did this used something finely honed.”

“Like a razor?”

“Razor sharp but definitely larger than your standard safety blade.”

“What about a straight razor?”

Levi’s pause implied contemplation.

“From my inspection of the wound,” he said, “I’d say the big one’s larger than your average straight razor. There was little or no sawing—the initial cut went right through. Though I suppose it could be one of those old-fashioned heavy ones the barbers used to shave people with.”

“What about the curved one?”

“Short-bladed. First thing I thought of was a curved scalpel, but I checked all of mine against the wounds and none of them fit. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t some kind of surgical knife that would. But it could just as easily be something else: wood-carver’s tool, linoleum cutter, even a ohe-of-a-kind—anyone can buy a knife, shape it, and sharpen it. I took wound casts. If you bring me a weapon I can tell you if it fits.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. What about the sheet?”

“We’re not finished with it but it looks like standard domestic issue so I doubt you’ll get anywhere pursuing that line of inquiry. Same for the soap and shampoo she was washed with. Neka Sheva Green.”

“What do you make of the fact that she was washed?”

“Someone was trying to get rid of physical evidence. And did a damned good job of it—so far we’ve come up with no fibers except for those from the sheet, no foreign secretions or residue other than a few grains of garden-variety silica sand. It took a lot of care to get her that clean.”

“I was thinking more in terms of psychology,” said Daniel. “A symbolic gesture. Washing away guilt.”

“Lady Macbeth?” said Levi doubtfully. “I suppose anything’s possible when you’re dealing with twisted minds.”

“You see this as the work of a madman?”

“Not a drooling, raving lunatic—too much planning and precision for that. But twisted, nonetheless. A sadistic psychopath.”

“Any ideas about the ethnicity of the girl?”

“Eastern is as far as I’ll go. I checked for clitorectomy but there was too much tissue damage to tell. Not that it’s the marker it used to be—many of the Arabs have stopped circumcising their women. The only ones you can count on to do it routinely are the Bedouins, and this one’s no Bedouin.”

“Why do you say that?”

“No tattoos. The soles of her feet were too soft. And when they kill their own, they bury them in the desert. Besides, a Bedouin girl of this age would have been married already and not allowed far enough out of the tent to get into trouble.” Levi paused. “Says something for primitive culture, eh?”

At one o’clock Daniel went down to the Forensics lab and received confirmation of Levi’s assessment of the sand: nothing unique. Steinfeld had just begun developing photographs of the dead girl. One was a head shot, which revealed none of the wounds. Her face was placid and she could have been asleep. Daniel got the tech to print two dozen. Slipping the pictures in a large envelope, he left Headquarters and-drove to the center of town.