The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Bernardo introduced them in English, and when Roselli said “Good afternoon, Chief Inspector,” it was with an American accent. Unusual—most of the Franciscans came from Europe.

  Roselli listened as Bernardo summarized his conversation with Daniel. The priest ended with: “The chief inspector isn’t at liberty to say what’s happened to her, but I’m afraid we can assume the worst, Joseph.”

  Roselli said nothing, but his head dipped a little lower and he turned away. Daniel heard a sharp intake of breath, then nothing.

  “My son,” said Bernardo, and placed a hand on Roselli’s shoulder.

  “Thank you, Father. I’m all right.”

  The Franciscans stood in silence for a moment and Daniel found himself reading the wooden tags: CORNICHON DE BOURBON,BIG GIRL HYBRID,AQUADULCE CLAUDIA (WHITE SEEDED), TRUE GHERKIN . . .

  Bernardo whispered something to Roselli in what sounded like Latin, patted his shoulder again, and said to Daniel: “The two of you speak. I’ve chores to attend to. If there’s anything else you need, Daniel, I’ll be across the way, at the College.”

  Daniel thanked him and Bernardo shuffled off.

  Alone with Roselli, Daniel smiled at the monk, who responded by looking down at his hands, then at the watering can.

  “Feel free to continue watering,” Daniel told him. “We can talk while you work.”

  “No, that’s all right. What do you need to know?”

  “Tell me about the first time you saw Fatma—the night you took her in.”

  “They’re not the same, Inspector,” said Roselli quietly, as if admitting a transgression. His eyes looked everywhere but at Daniel.

  “Oh?”

  “The first time I saw her was three or four days before we took her in. On the Via Dolorosa, near the Sixth Station of the Cross.”

  “Near the Greek Chapel?”

  “Just past it.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “Nothing. Which was why I noticed her. The tourists were milling around, along with their guides, but she was off to the side, not trying to beg or sell anything—simply standing there. I thought it was unusual for an Arab girl of that age to be out by herself.” Roselli hid the lower part of his face behind his hand. It seemed a defensive gesture, almost guilty.

  “Was she soliciting for prostitution?”

  Roselli looked pained. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Do you remember anything else about her?”

  “No, it . . . I was on a . . . meditative walk, Inspector. Father Bernardo has instructed me to walk regularly, in order to cut myself off from external stimuli, to get closer to my . . . spiritual core. But my attention wandered and I saw her.”

  Another confession.

  Roselli stopped talking, eyed the casks, and said, “Some of these are getting wilted. I think I will water.” Lifting the watering can, he began walking along the row, probing, sprinkling.

  The Catholics, thought Daniel, tagging along. Always baring their souls. The result, he supposed, of living totally in the head—faith is everything, thoughts equivalent to actions. Peek at a pretty girl and it’s as bad as if you slept with her. Which could make for plenty of sleepless nights. He looked at Roselli’s profile, as grim and humorless as that of a cave-dwelling prophet. A prophet of doom, perhaps? Tormented by his own fallibility?

  Or did the torment result from something more serious than lust?

  “Did the two of you talk, Brother Roselli?”

  “No,” came the too-quick answer. Roselli pinched off a brown tomato leaf, turned over several others, searching for parasites. “She seemed to be staring at me—I may have been staring myself. She looked disheveled and I wondered what had caused a young girl to end up like that. It’s an occupational hazard, wondering about misfortune. I was once a social worker.”

  A zealous one, no doubt.

  “Then what?”

  Roselli looked puzzled.

  “What did you do after you exchanged stares, Brother Roselli?”

  “I returned to Saint Saviour’s.”

  “And the next time you saw her was when?”

  “As I said, three or four days later. I was returning from late Mass, heard sobs from the Bab el Jadid side, went to take a look, and saw her sitting in the gutter, crying. I asked her what the matter was—in English. I don’t speak Arabic. But she just continued to sob. I didn’t know if she understood me, so I tried in Hebrew—my Hebrew’s broken but it’s better than my Arabic. Still no answer. Then I noticed that she looked thinner than the first time I’d seen her—it was dark, but even in the moonlight the difference was pronounced. Which made me suspect she hadn’t eaten for days. I asked her if she wanted food, pantomimed eating, and she stopped crying and nodded. So I gestured for her to wait, woke up Father Bernardo, and he told me to bring her in. The next morning she was up working, and Father Bernardo agreed to let her stay on until we found her more suitable lodgings.”

  “What led her to drift through the Old City?”

  “I don’t know,” said Roselli. He stopped watering, examining the dirt beneath his fingernails, then lowered the can again.

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  “No. The language barrier.” Roselli flushed, shielded his face with his hand again, and looked at the vegetables.

  More to it than that, thought Daniel. The girl had affected him, maybe sexually, and he wasn’t equipped to deal with it.

  Or perhaps he’d dealt with it in an unhealthy way.

  Nodding reassuringly, Daniel said, “Father Bernardo said she was frightened about having her family contacted. Do you know why?”

  “I assumed there’d been some sort of abuse.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Sociologically it made sense—an Arab girl cut off from her family like that. And she reminded me of the kids I used to counsel—nervous, a little too eager to please. Afraid to be spontaneous or step out of bounds, as if doing or saying the wrong thing would get them punished. There’s a look they all have—maybe you’ve seen it. Weary and bruised.”

  Daniel remembered the girl’s body. Smooth and unblemished except for the butchery.

  “Where was she bruised?” he asked.

  “Not literal bruises,” said Roselli. “I meant it in a psychological sense. She had frightened eyes, like a wounded animal.”

  The same phrase Bernardo had used—Fatma had been a subject of discussion between the two Franciscans.

  “How long were you a social worker?” Daniel asked.

  “Seventeen years.”

  “In America?”

  The monk nodded. “Seattle, Washington.”

  “Puget Sound,” said Daniel.

  “You’ve been there?” Roselli was surprised.

  Daniel smiled, shook his head.

  “My wife’s an artist. She did a painting last summer, using photographs from a calendar. Puget Sound—big boats, silver water. A beautiful place.”

  “Plenty of ugliness,” said Roselli, “if you know where to look.” He extended his arm over the rim of the roof, pointed down at the jumble of alleys and courtyards. “That,” he said, “is beauty. Sacred beauty. The core of civilization.”

  “True,” said Daniel, but he thought the comment naïve, the sweetened perception of the born-again. The core, as the monk called it, had been consecrated in blood for thirty centuries. Wave after wave of pillage and massacre, all in the name of something sacred.

  Roselli looked upward and Daniel followed his gaze. The blue of the sky was beginning to deepen under a slowly descending sun. A passing cloud cast platinum shadows over the Dome of the Rock. The bells of Saint Saviour’s rang out again, trailed by a muezzin’s call from a nearby minaret.

  Daniel pulled himself away, returned to his questions.

  “Do you have any idea how Fatma ended up in the Old City?”

  “No. At first I thought she may have gravitated toward The Little Sisters of Charles Foucauld—they wipe the faces of the poor, and th
eir chapel is near where I saw her. But I went there and asked and they’d never seen her.”

  They’d come to the last of the casks. Roselli put down the watering can and faced Daniel.

  “I’ve been blessed, Inspector,” he said, urgently. Eager to convince. “Given the chance for a new life. I try to do as much thinking and as little talking as possible. There’s really nothing more I can tell you.”

  But even as he said it, his face seemed to weaken, as if buckling under the weight of a burdensome thought. A troubled man. Daniel wasn’t ready to let go of him just yet.

  “Can you think of anything that would help me, Brother Roselli? Anything that Fatma said or did that would lead me to understand her?”

  The monk rubbed his hands together. Freckled hands, the knuckles soil-browned, the fingernails yellowed and cracked. He looked at the vegetables, down at the ground, then back at the vegetables.

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “What kind of clothes did she wear?”

  “She had only one garment. A simple shift.”

  “What color?”

  “White, I believe, with some kind of stripe.”

  “What color stripe?”

  “I don’t remember, Inspector.”

  “Did she wear jewelry?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “Earrings?”

  “There may have been earrings.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “No,” said the monk, emphatically. “I didn’t look at her that closely. I’m not even sure if she wore any.”

  “There are many kinds of earrings,” said Daniel. “Hoops, pendants, studs.”

  “They could have been hoops.”

  “How large?”

  “Small, very simple.”

  “What color?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Daniel took a step closer. The monk’s robe smelled of topsoil and tomato leaves.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me, Brother Roselli?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?” pressed Daniel, certain there was more. “I need to understand her.”

  Roselli’s eye twitched. He took a deep breath and let it out.

  “I saw her with young men,” he said, softly, as if betraying a confidence.

  “How many?”

  “At least two.”

  “At least?”

  “She went out at night. I saw her with two men. There may have been others.”

  “Tell me about the two you saw.”

  “One used to meet her there.” Roselli pointed east, toward the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, with its grape arbors and fruit trees espaliered along the walls. “Thin, with long dark hair and a mustache.”

  “How old?”

  “Older than Fatma—perhaps nineteen or twenty.”

  “An Arab?”

  “I assume so. They talked to each other and all Fatma spoke was Arabic.”

  “Did they do anything other than talk?”

  Roselli reddened.

  “There was some . . . kissing. When it got dark, they’d go off together.”

  “Where to?”

  “Toward the center of the Old City.”

  “Did you see where?”

  The monk looked out at the city, extended his hands palms-up, in a gesture of helplessness.

  “It’s a labyrinth, Inspector. They stepped into the shadows and were gone.”

  “How many of these meetings did you witness?”

  The word witness made the monk wince, as if it reminded him that he’d been spying.

  “Three or four.”

  “During what time of day did the meetings occur?”

  “I was up here, watering, so it had to be close to sunset.”

  “And when it got dark, they left together.”

  “Yes.”

  “Walking east.”

  “Yes. I really didn’t watch them that closely.”

  “What else can you tell me about the man with the long hair?”

  “Fatma seemed to like him.”

  “Like him?”

  “She smiled when she was with him.”

  “What about his clothing?”

  “He looked poor.”

  “Ragged?”

  “No, just poor. I can’t say exactly why I formed that impression.”

  “All right,” said Daniel. “What about the other one?”

  “Him I saw once, a few days before she left. This was at night, the same circumstances as the time we took her in. I was returning from late Mass, heard voices—crying—from the Bab el Jadid side of the monastery, took a look, and saw her sitting, talking to this fellow. He was standing over her and I could see he was short—maybe five foot five or six. With big glasses.”

  “How old?”

  “It was hard to tell in the dark. I saw the light reflect off his head, so he must have been bald. But I don’t think he was old.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “His voice—it sounded boyish. And the way he stood—his posture seemed like that of a young man.” Roselli paused. “These are just impressions, Inspector. I couldn’t swear to any of them.”

  Impressions that added up to a perfect description of Anwar Rashmawi.

  “Were they doing anything other than talking?” Daniel asked.

  “No. If any . . . romance had ever existed between them, it was long over. He was talking very quickly—sounded angry, as if he were scolding her.”

  “How did Fatma respond to the scolding?”

  “She cried.”

  “Did she say anything at all?”

  “Maybe a few words. He was doing most of the talking. He seemed to be in charge—but that’s part of their culture, isn’t it?”

  “What happened after he was through scolding her?”

  “He walked away in a huff and she sat there crying. I thought of approaching her, decided against it, and went into the monastery. She was up working the next morning, so she must have come in. A few days later she was gone.”

  “Following this meeting, what was her mood like?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did she look frightened? Worried? Sad?”

  Roselli blushed again, this time more deeply.

  “I never looked that closely, Inspector.”

  “Your impression, then.”

  “I have no impression, Inspector. Her moods were none of my business.”

  “Have you ever been in her room?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Did you see anything indicating she used drugs?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You seem very sure of that.”

  “No, I’m . . . she was young. A very simple little girl.”

  Too pat a conclusion for a former social worker, thought Daniel. He asked the monk: “The day before she left she was wearing the striped white shift?”

  “Yes,” said Roselli, annoyed. “I told you she only had the one.”

  “And the earrings.”

  “If there were earrings.”

  “If,” agreed Daniel. “Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”

  “Nothing,” said Roselli, folding his arms across his chest. He was sweating heavily, gripping one hand with the other.

  “Thank you, then. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Have I?” asked Roselli, looking perplexed. As if trying to decide whether he’d been virtuous or sinful.

  An interesting man, thought Daniel, leaving the monastery. Jumpy and troubled and something else—immature.

  When Father Bernardo had spoken about Fatma, there had been a clearly paternal flavor to his concerns. But Roselli’s responses—his emotional level—had been different. As if he and the girl were on a peer level.

  Daniel stopped on Bab el Jadid Road, near the spot where Roselli had twice seen Fatma. He tried to put his impressions of the monk into focus—something was cooking inside the man. Anger? Hurt? The pain of jealousy—that was it. Roselli
had spoken of Fatma being wounded, but he seemed wounded himself. A spurned lover. Jealous of the young men she met at night.

  He wanted to know more about the redheaded monk. About why Joseph Roselli, social worker from Seattle, Washington, had turned into a brown-robed roof-gardener unable to keep his mind on sacred meditation. And his thoughts off a fifteen-year-old girl.

  He’d put one of the men—Daoud—on a loose surveillance of the monk, run a background check himself.

  There were other matters to be dealt with as well. Who was Fatma’s long-haired boyfriend and where did she go with him? And what of Anwar the Punished, who knew where his sister had found sanctuary. And had scolded her shortly before she disappeared.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Words, thought Avi Cohen. A flood of words, clogging him, choking him, making his head reel. Pure hell. And on Saturday night, no less. His heavy date: the goddamn files.

  Looking at the missing-kid pictures had been tedious but tolerable—pictures were okay. Then Shmeltzer had gotten the phone call and announced that it had all been for nothing. That his job had changed; there was a new assignment: Go back over the same two thousand files and search for a name—a hell of a lot more complicated than it sounded, because the computer boys had scrambled the folders, and nothing was alphabetized. Pure hell. But the old guy hadn’t seemed to notice his slowness—too caught up in his own work.

  Finally he finished, having found no Rashmawis, and told Shmeltzer, who didn’t even bother to look up as he gave him a new assignment: Go up to the Records Room and look for the same name in all the crime files. All of them. Rashmawi. Any Rashmawi.

  The Records officer was a woman—nothing more than a clerk, but her three stripes outranked him. A hard-ass, too; she made him fill out a mountain of forms before giving him the computer lists, which meant writing as well as reading. More words—random assortments of lines and curves, a whirlpool of shapes that he could drown in unless he forced himself to concentrate, to use the little tricks he’d learned over the years in order to decipher what came so easily to others. Sitting at a school desk in a corner, like some overgrown retarded kid. Concentrating until his eyes blurred and his head hurt.