Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  He looked at her sharply. "What do you know about my case?"

  "I saw you on TV. I know you're up to your ass in something big."

  "How big?"

  "I don't know, David. All I've heard is rumors."

  "What rumors?"

  "I gather there're some people around who're getting…well…upset." Suddenly she seemed nervous, as if she'd said more than she'd intended to. She shrugged. "I see I've offended you. All I can say is that your Anna may have reported back on a man named Aleksandr Targov and that it wouldn't surprise me now if she were also reporting back on you."

  He set down his glass, stood up, then walked over to the door. She watched him. She didn't look too happy. He turned to her, ready to leave. "I don't know what to think of you, Stephanie. Whether you're a lying little schemer or just a run-of-the-mill American bitch. Whatever your game is, I'm not interested in playing. I'm sorry I was stupid enough to come."

  She nodded. "Okay, David, if that's the way you want it. But please trust me on this: I'm worried for you. I think you're in over your head and that if you keep on the way you're going you might end up getting hurt. I wouldn't want that. I'd be very upset if something bad happened to you." Their eyes met. She blew him a kiss. Then, as he was shutting the door, he heard her light another cigarette.

  Later, when he thought back over their conversation, he realized she'd offered only one detail: Titanov, the conductor, whom she said had been seen recently in the West.

  Anna had spoken of this man several times, described how much she'd loathed him and her pleasure in knowing that when she'd fled he had taken most of the blame. Her defection story was rock-solid. She'd left her cello in her bed because she wasn't a thief and so that when Titanov looked in on her he'd think she was asleep. But there was a fifty percent chance he'd come in anyway – that had been her greatest risk. He thought nothing of awakening her. "My discovery, my property," he called her. "I own you body and soul." She'd defected, she'd told David, as much to get away from him as to live freely in the West.

  Now Stephanie said Titanov had been seen, and that was a fact that could be checked. He took it to Sarah Dorfman, who inquired of her music world friends, one of whom even telephoned a knowledgeable impresario in New York. Word came back. Titanov had not toured outside the Soviet Union since the day Anna Benitskaya had asked for asylum in Milan. He was still in disgrace, still blamed for her defection. Sarah's sources, David knew, were absolutely reliable, so Stephanie's single "fact" was proven false. For David that was enough to discredit everything she'd said.

  An American nun on tour of the Holy Land and a working class Israeli trucker. Could they somehow be linked? Could their lives have crossed?

  Susan Mills had kept a travel diary. Dov, Uri, and Micha had each been through it several times. Names, dates, places-it was the basic source for their attempts to trace her friends. She commented on the weather, the impact of first seeing certain important religious shrines, everyday encounters with Israelis, her excitement at walking where Jesus Christ had lived and trod. No mention of a truck driver named Yaakov, or of any truck at all. David reread the diary, and then looked at her photographs, including ones developed from the roll found in her camera after she'd been killed.

  These photographs amounted to a diary in themselves. Susan seemed to have shot two or three thirty-six-frame rolls a day. Her camerawork was excellent. She changed lenses, shot interiors and exteriors, all perfectly focused, perfectly exposed, perfectly framed for the scrapbooks she would make.

  Together, David and Dov examined every shot. They were looking for Schneiderman, or possibly his truck. Nothing. But everything else was there, every shrine described in the diary, every person mentioned, even the facades of the hotels where she had stayed. If she mentioned getting into a conversation with an old bookstore owner, there would be a photograph of him standing before his shop. Susan was a documentarian. She was on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. She had carefully constructed a record of it. But they could find no Schneiderman, no matter how hard they looked.

  "We have to go deeper, Dov. She tells us a lot, but she couldn't put down all of it."

  "Deeper how?"

  "Several times she says: 'Wrote Margaret today.' We ought to have a look at those letters. Check her address book. Search for a Margaret.' Probably her closest friend."

  While Dov went through Susan's personal address book, David turned back to the papers taken from Yaakov Schneiderman's flat. Again, he, Dov, and the others had been through the material several times. Bills. Receipts. Business correspondence. Tax forms. Check stubs. An appointment book. Cryptic, hurriedly written notes and orders for pick-ups and deliveries all over Jerusalem.

  The amount of material was massive, but it struck David as a pathetic remnant of a life. A man like Schneiderman would not confide in a diary. His fantasies, illusions, beliefs, and dreams had died with him, and all that was left were papers having to do with money.

  "Okay, there's a Margaret Dupuy, Convent of Mary, St. Louis."

  "Susan's convent." Dov nodded. "Try and get her on the phone."

  The connection was clear and Sister Margaret Dupuy's voice was warm.

  "Yes, the police, I understand. I'm so happy you haven't forgotten her. We won't ever forget her, of course. But you didn't know her and love her the way we did."

  "Did you keep her letters?"

  "Oh yes, every one."

  "Could we read them-if they're not too personal?"

  "They are lovely sensitive letters and I'll be happy to share them with you. I could read them to you now, but it would take too long. How would it be if I made copies? I'll mail them to you tomorrow."

  "We'd be grateful," David said.

  The search for men who served with Peretz was proving slow and difficult. One wall was posted now with the lists of men who'd done time in military prisons. Micha's, Uri's, Shoshana's, and Liederman's desks were covered with computer printouts from IDF central files.

  These four detectives had gone home at six. David and Dov now sat alone in the PC Unit office. Dov was discouraged. "I don't know, David. We've been through this stuff a dozen times."

  "That's the thing about hidden symmetry, Dov. It's very difficult to see. You have to try out different pieces in different combinations. So now we go through it all again."

  They had divided their material, placed it on separate tables: Schneiderman's miscellany; Susan's diary and photographs. David had decided they would confine themselves to the period of Susan's stay in Jerusalem. They would forget the early part of her trip, concentrate instead on the final eight days of her life.

  He and Dov tacked up a fresh plastic overlay over the large street map of Jerusalem on the cork-covered wall. Then they stuck pins in every place that Susan Mills had gone. The main clusters were around the great Christian shrines. She wasn't an extravagant woman, had used public transportation to get around. And since the Holyland Hotel was in Ramat Sharett, there were limitations on the bus routes she would have had to use.

  She walked a lot too-that was evident from her descriptions and her photographs. So they began to chart, as best they could, her probable itineraries on each of her eight final days. They did this by connecting up the pins with different colored threads. Yellow for the first day, blue for the second, orange for the third, and so on until they had a mass of crisscrossing daily routes.

  Next they charted Schneiderman's movements, the various deliveries and pickups he had made over the same eight days. Household furnishings transported from Qiryat Moshe to Talpiyyot; a refrigerator from a store on Nathan Strauss to an apartment in Emeq Refaim… Again yellow for the first day, blue for the second, orange for the third, etc. And they didn't forget that he had started out each morning from his home and returned with his truck there every night.

  Wherever two threads of the same color crossed, they went back to the documentation to see if the crossing fell within a couple of hours. There were many instances of crossings. The work of check
ing on each was laborious. Most often, it turned out, the crossings were not true intersections but had occurred at completely different times of day.

  David made a decision. If they could pinpoint a crossing which they could estimate had fallen within three hours or less, then there was a possibility that Susan and Schneiderman had met. After four evenings of work they came up with six such possibilities. They circled each one in crayon, then sat back and studied the map.

  "What bothers me, David, is that it's all so chancy. Susan must have done things she didn't document, and as for Schneiderman, in a city like this there're just too many different routes. Suppose he glances at his gas gauge, sees he needs to fill up. Does he go out of his way to a favorite gas station, or does he just continue until he spots one on the road?"

  "We can only use what we've got. Now we know a meeting's not impossible. Before we thought it was. So we keep on searching. That's all, really, we can do."

  When the letters arrived from Margaret Dupuy there were things in them they hadn't found in Susan's diary or photographs. Feelings mostly, sensitive reactions to the shrines, and occasional notes on Israel as an embattled, embittered nation-state.

  "I do so admire the Jewish people," she wrote, "but here sometimes they do test my love. I've never seen so many chain smokers or such pushing and shoving in crowds and shops. Nobody likes to stand in line here. It's 'me, me, me' and never mind the rest. But they can be saintly too. An old lady goes out of her way to show me a street. A busy teacher spends hours explaining an archaeological site. And then I'll encounter rudeness again. It's because they have so many terrible problems, I think…"

  One reference from the letters leapt out at David: Had a very unpleasant encounter today with an extremely nasty cop. Usually they're so polite but this one was awful. 'You must do this, must do that.' Just like a German. And perhaps he was a German Jew…"

  An encounter with a nasty cop in Jerusalem. She wrote that it had occurred that very day. The letter was dated March 12. David went to the map to trace her route.

  The white thread: It didn't lead to a direct crossing with Schneiderman but there were two times when they'd come fairly close. Back to the documentation. The second instance seemed possible. Susan had eaten lunch at a suburban dairy restaurant near her hotel and around midday Schneiderman had been driving empty toward Romema, having completed a hauling job in Gonen Bet.

  "Wait," Dov said, "I think that's when he had his accident."

  While Dov rummaged through Schneiderman's papers David thought about Susan's reference to a nasty cop. When Dov found what he was looking for he read it aloud, a computerized notice from Schneiderman's insurance company concerning a collision he had had on March 12.

  The notice stated that according to the motor vehicle registry office the reported plate number of the other vehicle did not exist. Would Mr. Schneiderman please consult his notes and as soon as possible submit an amended form.

  Across the bottom Schneiderman had scrawled the plate number, and underlined it twice. He had also scrawled a name, Igal Hurwitz, and then another number, A29103.

  The insurance company was in Tel Aviv. Dov and Micha drove down early in the morning, were waiting at the door when the office opened at eight. They brought back a copy of Schneiderman's original report, which included a crude diagram of the accident. They also brought back the extraordinary information that the other vehicle, the one whose plate number could not be traced, had been described as a late-model dark blue Chevrolet van, and that Igal Hurwitz, a policeman, serial number A29103, was listed not only as the cop who had taken charge at the scene but as a witness to the accident itself.

  The only trouble was that when Dov checked with police personnel he was told there was no Igal Hurwitz. There was no such serial number either. A29103 did not exist.

  An iron-gray windy afternoon. David, along with Dov, Shoshana Nahon, Uri Schuster, Micha Benyamani, and Moshe Liederman, drove in two white police Subarus to the alleged collision scene. Following Schneiderman's diagram, they positioned their cars and then tried to reconstruct the accident.

  Schneiderman, according to the statement filed with his report, had been driving at reasonable speed along Yehuda Ha-Nasi in his empty truck, when, quite suddenly, at the intersection with Berenice Street, the Chevrolet van had pulled into his path. Nearly all the damage had been done to the van; Schneiderman's truck was barely scratched. No other information had been provided on the form, since, Schneiderman wrote, patrolman Hurwitz had taken detailed notes.

  A fairly bleak intersection-not much going on during the day. A suburban area, private houses mostly, a few small apartment buildings scattered about. The usual service stores: a small grocery, a laundry and dry-cleaning establishment, a shoemaker, a newsstand that also sold candy and film. Yet within the past three weeks this modest neighborhood had become notorious. Around the corner, at 49 Alexandrion, was the borrowed apartment where the bodies of the murdered lovers, Ruth Isaacson and Aaron Horev, had been found.

  While the others marked the street and photographed the scene, David and Dov strode three blocks against the wind to the little dairy restaurant just of Ya'agov Pat, where Susan Mills had eaten lunch.

  David stood outside while Dov went in to interview the waiters. When Dov came out he shook his head. He had shown Susan's picture, but it had been two months and no one could recall her face.

  "Still," David said, "it's looking good. At around the same time on the same day we can place them within a hundred meters. She comes in here for lunch. Afterward she decides to take a walk. She arrives up there at the corner just in time to see the accident, and that's when she has the encounter with the 'nasty cop.' But it's better than that-the nasty cop turns out not to exist. Neither does the Chevy van, and we know our wildcard, Yael Safir, was picked up in a dark blue American van we've never been able to trace. Phony nasty cops. Unlisted vehicles. Witnesses killed off and then easy victims picked up and killed and thrown in as a disguise. Doesn't feel much like a serial murder case now, does it? More like a conspiracy and cover-up."

  They started to walk back to the accident scene. Then David changed his mind. "Let's take a look at Forty-nine Alexandrion."

  Dov nodded. "Sure."

  When they reached the building, they stared up at the windows of the famous love nest on the second floor. David shook his head. "Horev and Isaacson. Okay, it could just be a coincidence about the neighborhood. But the timing bothers me. They used to get together around noon, spend their lunch hours making love. That's too close, Dov. Too big a coincidence. Suppose they also saw the accident?"

  "But they were shot, David. Point-blank range, two each in each of their heads."

  "Sure. Take them out clean. A professional hit-that would add another layer of concealment. No point trying to blend them into a phony psycho murder series. They were adulterous lovers so make it look like it was done by a killer hired by an angry spouse."

  Back at the intersection the wind was blowing harder and the clouds were darker, about to burst. David called Micha, Uri, Shoshana, and Liederman together into the middle of the street. A flock of black birds tore across the sky.

  "Canvass the neighborhood," he told them. "Every house, every apartment, every shop. Find me a witness. They couldn't kill everyone. There must be someone who saw this accident who's still alive."

  THE WITNESS

  In every district there's a busybody. Find her, play up to her, get her talking about her neighbors. Discover who stays home during the day, who goes to work, and did she hear anything about an accident? Knock on doors between noon and two when the accident took place. Talk to the news store owner, the shoemaker, the garbage collectors, the Arab maids. Make lists. Figure out which apartments overlook the intersection. Talk to the residents and if they're not at home come back in the evening when they are. Show familiarity. The woman who lives on the corner-is it true her son's retarded? What about traffic patterns, and who owns those cars parked out on the street, and who'
s reliable, and who's not, and who takes a midday snooze?

  At last David had set a task at which Moshe Liederman excelled. He was good at chitchat, spoke excellent Polish, was patient with the old ladies, generous with cigarettes. In four days he and the other four detectives heard a lot about Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson. But no matter how many people they asked about an accident, they couldn't find anyone who knew anything.

  David said this was impossible, that when a truck hits a van and there's a confrontation between a nun and a cop, someone has to see something or at least hear some noise. But the intersection was nearly deserted that time of day. This was a bedroom community; no orthodox people; most of the wives held jobs. There were kids of course, but they were either infants or at school. Still, maybe, on that particular day, for one reason or another, someone had stayed at home.

  Go back. Ask again. It's hard, but people will help if they see how much you care. The intersection could be viewed from thirty windows. Check each one again. There has to be a witness. Has to be.

  Amit Nissim, six years old, short, pixieish, with bangs of light brown hair and playful dark brown eyes, was home from school that day with a cold. Her aunt was in the hospital recovering from gastrointestinal surgery, her mother had to visit her, so she asked old Mrs. Shapira next door if she would look after Amit while she was gone. Mrs. Shapira said sure, and could Mr. Nissim help her by changing some light bulbs when he got home. Yes, certainly. A bargain was struck. And when Mrs. Shapira lay down for her noontime nap, she left Amit on her sofa with a doll.

  Later Amit heard noise, people talking loudly on the street. She went to the window, saw a woman quarreling with a man. Was there a truck? She wasn't sure. She remembered a woman clutching a camera and a man in uniform trying to snatch it away.

  Mr. and Mrs. Nissim did not like the way their daughter was being questioned. Amit was blinking, a sure sign to them that she was under stress. She wasn't used to so much attention, six police officers hanging on her words. She was intimidated. Couldn't they tell? Anyway, she hadn't seen any accident so would they all please leave now before the child became even more upset.