The Missing File (8 page)

“As far as I'm concerned, the investigation hasn't started yet and all options are open,” Shrapstein went on. “Clearly, we haven't acted fast enough thus far. Even if he did run away from home—and I don't believe that is the case—he got farther away from us with each passing night. And I still don't know anything about the missing boy—that's what troubles me. Anything is possible—a kidnapping, involvement in a crime and an escape, anything. Even murder. It doesn't make sense for a sixteen-and-a-half-year-old to run away from home for five days and not be in touch with anyone at all.”

Avraham was momentarily befuddled by a burning sense of anger and defiance that Shrapstein's words were evoking in him. After all, there had been moments when he had thought the same. How many times in the past few days had he asked himself that same question: How can a sixteen-year-old boy disappear from home without anyone knowing a thing about it? Perhaps the defiance was sparked by Shrapstein's adamant tone, his attempt to convey the sense that everything he said had to be right. “Perhaps he has made contact with someone we have yet to get to,” Avraham said, as if to himself, not directing his comment at anyone in particular, to which Shrapstein responded quietly, “Well, that's a different matter.”

Ma'alul remained on the sidelines of the conversation until Ilana addressed him, asking him if, based on his experience, he thought they were dealing with a runaway. As always, he took his time before responding. His brown eyes closed for an instant, and then opened again, while his stubby fingers ran lightly over his bald head. “Based on what we have heard so far—no,” Ma'alul said, looking over at Avraham slightly apologetically. “I'd like to be cautious here,” he continued, “but when it comes to planned disappearances at this age, there are usually warning signs. Truancy or dropping out of school, mixing with street gangs, criminal records related to alcohol or drug use. The fact that he has no history of any of these, if I am to understand correctly, adds to my concerns that something has happened to him—and not the contrary, as Avi has presented things. And, again, I'm saying this with caution. I also agree with Eyal that we need to act quickly, to put as much effort as possible into the investigation over the coming days. Five days without a sign of life is much too long.”

Ilana took off her glasses. Over the past weeks, Avraham had come to believe that she would wear the rectangular-framed glasses when she wasn't looking at anything in particular, and would remove them when she wanted to study something in earnest. She looked over the pictures of Ofer that were scattered on the desk in front of her. The lateness of the hour dictated that the meeting would be a short one.

“I'm pleased you have different gut feelings,” Ilana said. “It could benefit the investigation. What I'd like to ask of you, however, is not to race ahead with your hunches and get too attached to any one theory, because it's pretty clear that we don't have anything solid to go on right now. We are at a very preliminary stage of collecting material and findings, and we cannot approach the matter with any foregone conclusions at this point; we'll only end up missing certain details and focusing too intently on others. I know it's the hardest thing for us all to do, but we have to accept the uncertainty, to remain with it and try to understand it. A lack of information can also tell us something—just as Eyal and Eliyahu have seemed to imply—although I am not sure exactly what. I want us to be attentive to both what we have and what we don't have, and not to lock in on just one option.”

She was looking at him. Then she asked, “Avi, have you requisitioned the records of the calls made from Ofer's cell phone over the past weeks?”

“No, not yet,” Avraham replied. “I'll do it right away.”

“I already ordered them—from a year back,” Shrapstein cut in. “I spoke this morning to his service provider and, as usual, it will take a day or two, but I have some good contacts there and I'm trying to speed things up. I'll go over the printouts when they arrive.”

The mood in Ilana's office had taken on the energy and decisiveness that typified the start of an investigation, with each member of the team assigned certain tasks and each one eager to fulfill them, and only Avraham feeling a sense of profound weariness—an overall depletion of body and soul that would usually overcome him at the end of a case, or on vacation. He thought he should ask Ilana to take him off the case, and hoped she could sense his waning spirits.

Shrapstein continued. “Aside from that, this morning I started going through the criminal reports from the area in recent weeks,” he said. “I'd also like to check if any of the residents in the neighborhood has a criminal background. I think, too, that we should check for any criminal reports related to the school. They may turn up nothing, but it's worth a shot.”

“Excellent, good thinking,” Ilana said. “Just make sure you coordinate everything with Avi so we don't end up doing the same work twice. And go through the material we get from the IT Division. Make sure they pass on as much information as possible. Just sit yourself down and read through it all. Eliyahu will return to the school and reinterview Ofer's classmates, and, if need be, we'll bring in another investigator from Juvenile. Divide up the ongoing questioning of the family among yourselves.”

Shrapstein asked Eliyahu if it was possible to look into the criminal backgrounds of all the students at the school. Everything's possible, the veteran investigator replied, jotting down something in a small notebook he had taken out of an inside pocket of his Windbreaker.

“We should consider what we want to do about the media,” Shrapstein suggested. “It may be worth initiating a report for one of the news broadcasts; they won't take it upon themselves to approach us.”

There wasn't a single member of the police district who was unaware that Shrapstein's sister was a producer for
Channel 10 News
, and that he could turn any trivial investigation into an item on television.

Avraham switched off. He had been full of adrenaline when he arrived early that morning at the station, feeling sure that the meeting in Ilana's office would breathe some life into the investigation, which had come unstuck in the dunes. He had even momentarily toyed with the idea that it would all be over that same day. But something had gone wrong since.

“We'll wait awhile with the media,” Ilana said. “I want us to be careful about releasing information we don't know the significance of. Ah yes, and one more thing—the father; he returns to Israel today if I'm not mistaken. He's a member of the local Labor Party branch and the Workers Council Union of Zim Shipping Lines. I've already received calls from ‘people' inquiring about our progress in the case and what we are doing to bring his son home. I'm sure I don't need to explain things to you . . .”

The three investigators stood up. “To work, then,” Eliyahu Ma'alul said.

Avraham asked him why he was wearing a Windbreaker. “What do you mean, Avi?” Ma'alul responded. “Against the wind.”

I
lana opened the large window facing the street and placed a small glass ashtray on the desk. The sudden rush of air into the room restored his spirits somewhat, and the noise of the bus traffic along Salame Street lightened his mood as well.

“You look shattered,” she said to him.

“I'm tired,” he replied, lighting a cigarette.

“Because of Wednesday night?” she asked, her voice sounding closer with just the two of them in the room now.

“I don't know,” Avraham replied.

“Don't be too hard on yourself about Wednesday evening,” Ilana continued. “You made a decision that may or may not have been the right one but can certainly be understood and justified in the broad context of police work. In any event, there's no point in wallowing in it. You have a complex investigation on your hands and now need to manage things quickly but also in a focused and clear-thinking fashion. Would you like a coffee? We have ten minutes.”

He looked at her, bemused. “A clear-thinking fashion?” he said, repeating her words.

“Yes, a clear-thinking fashion. What's wrong with that? You can't conduct an investigation out of a sense of guilt, particularly without knowing if you have any reason to feel guilty. We've been working together long enough for me to know you can do it.”

“Of course there's a reason. Even if it turns out to be insignificant, I shouldn't have sent her home from the station without doing anything. And on top of that, I gave her a lecture about being worried for no reason and how Ofer would come back that same night.”

“About mysteries and why there are no detective novels in Hebrew?” Ilana questioned. “I thought you had vowed to stop with that.”

She tried to placate him with her smile and a further softening of her voice. They had known each other for almost nine years. Before her promotion to chief of the Investigations and Intelligence Division, she was Superintendent Ilana Lis, one of the most highly regarded investigators in the Tel Aviv Police District. A few months after Avraham completed his officers' course and joined the division, he was assigned to a team she was leading in an investigation of a lawyer who had stolen millions of shekels from his elderly clients. The frankness with which she had spoken to him about the investigation had stunned him; she hadn't made any effort to conceal her feelings or concerns, and she had listened to his thoughts. Together, they had come up with the strategy that finally broke the lawyer down after many exhausting hours of questioning. He had been thrilled by her ability to create trust among her colleagues. He had never before met anyone like her, in the police or elsewhere. She had invited him into her old office to celebrate the victory with red wine in plastic cups. It was almost three in the morning. She told him he had played a huge role in the success of the investigation, that she had enjoyed working with him, and that she planned to make him a part of any investigation team she would be heading in the future. And in the years to follow, before her promotion, they did work together continually, and grew close to each other. He had met her husband, too, on a number of occasions—at family events and ceremonies. He had been sitting in her office when the Israel Defense Forces representatives came to inform her of the death of her son, and he had held her when she collapsed and passed out, before driving her to the IDF training base. She was probably the one person closest to him, despite the fact that they spoke almost exclusively about work.

“Do you know what the hardest part of investigating missing persons is?” Ilana asked. “You only know if you did what you should have done once they are found. There's no way of knowing for certain beforehand.”

“That's not it,” Avraham responded. “The hard part is not knowing if you are investigating a crime or not. We know how to investigate crimes, and we know how to break down suspects in an interrogation, but when it comes to missing persons, you usually have no idea whether or not a crime has been committed. You go out into the world suspecting people, neighbors, friends, family members, the missing person himself, people who care about the missing person just as you do—or even a lot more so. And you have to suspect them; you have no choice. And in most cases, at the end of the investigation, it turns out that no crime has been committed and that no one hid anything. For all we know, Ofer Sharabi could be stretched out on a beach in Rio de Janeiro, without anyone knowing or being guilty of anything.”

“Nonsense. You know he isn't in Rio de Janeiro. And why Rio, of all places?”

“How do I know he isn't there? I don't know anything.”

“You can find out. You check with Border Security if he has left the country. He didn't get on a plane with a false passport. He's not a Mossad agent, he's a schoolboy.”

Avraham sighed. Thank God she had opened a window to let some air in. “Okay, you win,” he said, “he's not in Rio.”

“And I also managed to get us off the subject of your guilt and restore some of your strength and drive,” Ilana said, looking him directly in the eye, which always pained him. “I don't understand how you still sometimes crack so quickly,” she continued. “Every little Shrapstein seems to be able to get you down, as if you were the one who joined the force just yesterday and not he, as if you weren't one of the best investigators around.”

Ilana was good at speaking about things he didn't dare mention, out of shame, in a manner that didn't cause him embarrassment. Only once in all the time they had known each other had he dreamed about her resting the palm of her hand on his—no more, just a cold hand. He had come to forget over the years if it had been a night vision or a daydream, and he forbade himself to ever think of it again.

“It kills me to think that Ofer Sharabi will become just another missing boy who was never found,” he finally said. “That ten or fifteen years will go by without us knowing anything about what happened to him—if he's dead, if he's living somewhere.”

The image of Ofer again appeared in his mind. He could see him as he walked down the stairs with his black bag on his shoulder. He stepped out onto the street and turned right, heading for school. People passed him by and no one noticed anything. And what if he didn't turn right but went left instead? There was a neighborhood grocery store not far from the building where he lived, in the opposite direction to his way to school. Without knowing why, Avraham had stopped there that morning on his way to the police station. He had shown the owner a picture of Ofer and had asked her if he had been in the store on Wednesday, the day he disappeared. She didn't need the picture; she knew Ofer well. Everyone in the area was talking about his disappearance and they all wanted to help with the searches. Ever since he was a young boy, Ofer would come in almost every morning to buy milk and fresh buns, the store owner had told him. She was almost certain, however, that she hadn't seen him that Wednesday morning, and her husband had concurred. “Wait a moment, I can check,” she had suddenly said, opening a thick notebook in which she recorded the debts of her regular customers. “Sharabi—May third. That was Tuesday. They haven't bought anything since then,” she had added excitedly, as if they had just located Ofer thanks to her help. Ofer's most recent purchases came to a total of 44.60. He had signed his name in green ink alongside the amount.