Bethlehem Road Murder

by Batya Gur

  “And then?” asked Michael. “Do you really think that people who are . . . who like you say, are in the grip of an idée fixe, people like that—did you really think that it’s possible to silence them by buying them an apartment?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Rosenstein. “In a situation like that, you can only try . . . There’s no one who can’t be bought. Don’t look at me like that. You weren’t born yesterday. It’s just a matter of the right price, the price that suits the person. I thought that she wouldn’t be able . . . that she would owe me . . . What interested me,” he said emotionally, “was that Tali and my wife hear nothing about this. I didn’t know . . .” He indicated the newspaper article with his head. “I didn’t know Zahara had spoken to anyone, and with . . . with a journalist, yet. And I thought that if she owed me a favor—it wasn’t exactly extortion what she did; she didn’t say, ‘If you do this and that I won’t talk’—and I, I have experience with people. I knew she wanted to study and I knew she didn’t have an apartment of her own and that she wanted to move out of her parents’ house, and I thought . . .” He swallowed. “Only I didn’t know she was pregnant. That would have changed the whole picture . . . Had I known . . . I couldn’t tell you what I would have done . . . All I cared about was that my wife and Tali wouldn’t hear what she had to say.”

  “But after the confrontation with Zahara there was no escaping it,” said Michael. “Then you knew that they would hear.”

  “Not Tali,” said Rosenstein in alarm. “I thought that just my wife, and she . . . My wife knows somewhere . . . We . . . People always know more than they think they know. In fact she knew.”

  “The safest or the most effective way, and in fact, the only way,” said Michael pleasantly, “to silence a person with an idée fixe that threatens your life is to silence him entirely, isn’t it?”

  Rosenstein drummed his hands on the desk in despair. “You’ve checked out our story,” he said with exhaustion. “You saw that we were at the opera, like I said. How—”

  “More than that,” Michael said, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “We compared your DNA to the fetal DNA, and there’s no match.”

  “You compared the DNA?!” exclaimed Rosenstein. “How could you do that without . . . I didn’t even give blood and—”

  “It doesn’t take all that much time,” said Michael, “and as a lawyer I’d have thought you knew that blood isn’t necessary for a DNA test. I’m surprised that you—”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times, from the beginning: I’ve never dealt with criminal cases. I don’t touch that dirt. How did you do that test?”

  “We have our methods,” said Michael. He wasn’t going to say a thing about the strands of hair Balilty had brought from the Rosensteins’ house. “So we know that the baby isn’t yours. But as a lawyer I don’t need to tell you,” said Michael, “that people of a certain standing don’t need to do jobs like that with their own hands . . .”

  “Against that,” said the lawyer, his fingers gripping the edge of the metal desk as if he were hanging on for dear life, “against an argument like that I have nothing to say, except that she wrote there”—he nodded at the pages of the newspaper—“that Zahara went to a place where . . . Of her own free will, and she wasn’t a girl who went with every . . .” He leaned back in the wooden chair and his eyes wandered for a moment, until he suddenly sat straight up and cried: “It’s that fellow, Baleeti. Isn’t that what he’s called? He went to the bathroom, roamed around the house. Is he the one?”

  Michael said nothing.

  “If you think I’m a Mafioso who pays a hired gun, then I don’t have . . . I’m telling you, please, think whatever you want. Now that my wife knows I have nothing to lose . . . I’m prepared to . . . what’s that?” he asked in alarm. “Did you hear that? What was that?”

  “I think it was a sonic boom,” said Michael reassuringly. “It didn’t sound like an explosion.”

  “No,” said Rosenstein. “What was that scream? There was a woman’s scream.”

  “I didn’t hear any scream,” said Michael.

  “You didn’t hear that?!” Rosenstein looked at him suspiciously. “A woman’s scream . . . as if they were cutting her throat . . . How could you not hear it?”

  “Maybe because I’m concentrating on what you’re telling me,” Michael replied, and touched the drawer where the tape recorder was whirring.

  “Do you beat people here when you question them?” asked Rosenstein, and his fingers clenched.

  Michael dropped his hands to his sides and said: “Nu, you see how we beat and torture people here.”

  Rosenstein looked at him confused. “But there was a scream, a woman’s scream,” he insisted. “I’m not used to dealing with criminal matters,” he said warningly.

  Michael said nothing.

  “Are we done?” asked Rosenstein. “Is that it for now?”

  “Just one more little thing,” said Michael.

  “What? What thing?” said Rosenstein in alarm.

  “That the apartment wasn’t from the bailiff, and Moshe Avital wasn’t about to go bankrupt.”

  Rosenstein hung his head. Almost inaudibly he said: “Okay, that’s nothing. So you’ve realized that I wanted to buy it. So I gave . . . I gave a few details that . . .”

  “What interests us is how you got something for such a bargain price,” said Michael.

  “Ah,” said Rosenstein. He raised his head, and his face took on a cunning look. “That has to do with a completely different matter. That concerns Mr. Avital himself.”

  “Yes, but how does it concern him?” asked Michael impatiently. The lawyer was annoying him now.

  “He knew that it involved Zahara and he made a special price for her,” declared the lawyer. “Such things happen.”

  “Why did he ‘make her a special price’?” insisted Michael.

  “That,” said Rosenstein with a look of satisfaction on his face, “you will have to ask him.”

  “But no doubt you have some suppositions?” said Michael coldly.

  “Suppositions, suppositions. They won’t stand up in court. Of course I have some. So do you. Zahara was a very pretty girl. And that’s all I have to say about it. Are we done?”

  “We’re done for today,” said Michael thoughtfully.

  “And if it turns out that I’m not . . . What difference does it make?” said Rosenstein. “Nothing makes any difference anymore. From the moment my wife sees the newspaper . . . and if she doesn’t see the newspaper, then someone is sure to . . .” He stopped and looked out the window over Michael’s shoulder. “We have to be thankful for the years we had,” he muttered gloomily. “Even so, it was a miracle, and whatever happens, happens. I did my bit, the best I—”

  And at that moment Balilty burst into the room, and ignored the lawyer and the slamming door. “I need you,” he said to Michael, breathing hard, and he lowered his voice to a whisper. “I need you right now, because things have gotten utterly and totally out of control . . .”

  “So there was a scream!” There was victory in Rosenstein’s voice. “A woman screamed there in the room. I wasn’t just hearing voices, you see?”

  Michael pushed back his chair. “Wait here a moment,” he said to Rosenstein, and called a number on the internal phone. “Someone will be here right away to arrange with you what comes next. We also need to speak to your wife.”

  “Does it have to be today?” said the lawyer in alarm.

  “Why not?” asked Tzilla, who suddenly appeared in the doorway. “In any case she’ll know everything the day after tomorrow.”

  “But I wanted . . . ,” called Rosenstein after Michael, who had already risen from his chair and was on his way out of the room. “I wanted to talk to you about the restraining order.”

  Balilty stopped and turned around. He gave the lawyer a piercing look. “Mr. Rosenstein,” he said to him, “the less noise you make, the less attention it will get. That’s how it wo
rks, and you know this from experience. Listen to me—drop it.” He patted his arm. “Be a fatalist, like your wife. She’s waiting for you there.” He waved his arm in the direction of the end of the corridor. “There’s a girl there with her.”

  The lawyer paled, and he grasped the desk. “Was it she who screamed?” he whispered. “Was it she? What have you done to her?”

  Balilty tilted his head. “Mr. Rosenstein,” he said to him solemnly. “Your wife—I would not let them lay a finger on her . . . and she’s just fine, better than you, I would think. We didn’t tell her anything new. She knew everything. And you took so much trouble,” he added, and Michael was astonished to hear the pity in his voice. “You could have saved yourself all the trouble had you taken your wife’s good sense into account. She’s already phoned your daughter. What your wife wants now”—Balilty laid his hand on the lawyer’s shoulder—“is a DNA test for your Tali, to see whether she’s the Basharis’ or not. That’s what she wants.”

  He pulled Michael quickly along the corridor, then all of a sudden he stopped and turned back. “I have something to tell Tzilla,” he muttered, and went back to the office and opened the door and called Tzilla out.

  Next to the door, Balilty said something to her. Michael, who had begun to walk toward them, could not see her expression well, although he did manage to hear her say, “That’s an absolutely crazy idea,” before she went back into the office.

  In half an hour,” Balilty called to her. “In another half hour,” and he pulled Michael and ran down the steps with him to the bottom floor. There he stopped by one of the doors and opened it wide. “You wanted Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon? So here he is, in person.”

  Michael looked at the red patches on Clara Beinisch’s neck and at the beads of perspiration that were glittering on her son’s forehead. The front of the mother’s blouse was wet and water was dripping down her arms. Her legs were stuck straight out in front of her, and her brown pumps were lying under the chair. With her right hand she fingered the large, pale birthmark on her cheek. “The lady fainted here,” whispered Balilty to Michael, “and it was lucky that our dear sergeant was a medic in the army, because he knew enough to raise her feet and open her blouse.”

  “The moment she heard about the search at their place, she began to hyperventilate. She got dizzy and she almost . . .” Sergeant Yair pointed to the floor, to show that she had almost collapsed there.

  “It’s against the law,” said Clara Beinisch faintly. “You’re not allowed to come into our home without permission or without . . .”

  “Without a search warrant,” her son finished, and wiped his hands on the sides of his trousers. “You got us out of the house so you could search, like you stole my car in order to—”

  “Why are you holding them in the same room?” asked Michael. He looked at Yoram Beinisch, who pressed his pinkish lips together and sat up straight in his chair. “Why aren’t you holding them separately? And where is Mr. Beinisch?”

  “She wasn’t prepared to . . . ,” said Sergeant Yair. “She fought it tooth and nail . . . It was impossible. And the father is upstairs. Talking to Alon and Yaffa, because there are questions that the Criminal Identification Unit . . .”

  Michael sat down in Balilty’s chair behind the black iron desk, and the intelligence officer, who leaned his shoulder against the closed door, returned his gaze.

  “It’s very simple,” said Balilty. “The hysteria began the moment we told her about the Ralph Lauren. We brought his bottle from the house. It’s the same smell Yair identified. We told her and then she began to scream.”

  “It’s not an aftershave that . . . A lot of people use it,” said Yoram Beinisch suddenly. “It doesn’t prove anything.”

  “By itself, it’s no proof,” replied Sergeant Yair. “I’ve already told you that by itself it’s no proof, but there are—”

  “What? What else do you have?” asked Clara Beinisch.

  “There are indications that . . .” Yair looked at Michael, and Michael nodded to him. “There are also indications in the contents of the material from the car,” he said cautiously.

  Yoram Beinisch crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “What do you say?” he muttered sarcastically. “Did you find a fingerprint there or something?”

  “No,” said Michael. “What we found was material that has enabled us to compare your genetics with Zahara Bashari’s fetus. It will take a day or two, and everything will be perfectly clear.”

  “That nonsense again!” shouted Clara Beinisch. “My son never . . . he never even touched her!”

  “That’s not what we heard from her brother,” said Michael. “Her brother Netanel. Do you remember what he did to you when he caught you in the shed with Zahara?”

  Clara Beinisch sprang up, as if the anger had imbued her with strength, and moved to the desk and banged her hands on the iron desktop and shouted: “We don’t need to be here! I told you—he was at home. He didn’t leave the house!”

  Yair pulled her back to the wooden chair, sat her down there and stood behind her. Michael did not take his eyes off Yoram Beinisch. “Do you remember that occurrence?” he said to him. “There are things you never forget, especially when they catch you naked and pull you out of a crate by force. Do you remember anything like that?”

  “There was never any such thing,” said Yoram Beinisch coldly.

  “That’s not what her brother told us,” insisted Michael. “We heard exactly how you played as children, despite all the prohibitions.”

  “Maybe,” Yoram Beinisch said, and examined the tips of his fingernails. “But not everyone remembers everything from his childhood. I don’t remember anything like that. And definitely as far back as I can remember, I never spoke to her at all.”

  “But you saw her,” interjected Balilty.

  “Okay,” said Yoram Beinisch scornfully. “I’m not blind. How could I not see her? She lived on the other side of the fence. Sometimes in the morning . . .”

  “A pretty girl,” commented Balilty.

  “I didn’t look,” Yoram Beinisch said, and turned his eyes to the window and looked out at the parking lot and the rows of police vehicles that were parked there. “Not my taste, in any case,” he added after a while.

  “That’s not what you thought when you were little,” said Balilty.

  “I don’t remember,” replied Yoram Beinisch after a long moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Also about that little girl you said to me . . . and I never in my life spoke to her, the sticky pest. Underfoot all the time, coming into the yard all the time. I almost caught her once but she ran away. On purpose her dog would pee on the wheels of my car. On purpose.”

  “When you were little,” said Michael, “you played . . . doctor and patient in the hiding place? Mother and father?”

  Yoram Beinisch shrugged. “I’ve already heard that. I told you: I don’t remember and I don’t believe it. Her brother invented that story to incriminate me, because they hate us.”

  “They want our house, that’s what they want,” Clara Beinisch said, and clasped her hands. “It’s all because they want all the land and—”

  “They informed on us to the income tax,” cried Yoram Beinisch, “so is it any wonder that he’s telling you things like that about me? They did everything to—”

  Balilty stuck his hand into the inside pocket of his windbreaker and took out an opaque plastic envelope. He put the envelope on the table in front of Michael. “Ask him about this,” he said, and went back to stand by the wall, where he put his hands in his pockets and leaned on the windowsill with a sealed expression.

  “Here we have”—Michael opened the envelope as he spoke—“this item.” He set down on the table a large, pale pecan nut with holes on either end attached to a thin chain. Under the fluorescent lamp that illuminated the room it was hard to tell whether Yoram Beinisch’s face paled. He sat absolutely still.

  “Do you recognize this?” asked Michael.
“There’s a hole here, as you know, and this hole is sealed with wax. This was in a leather pouch, and inside” . . . He shook the nut, and a faint sound emerged from it. “Tell us what is inside.”

  Yoram Beinisch shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said with exaggerated indifference. “What am I, a magician? Why should I have any idea?”

  “Because,” said Michael pleasantly, “we found this in the glove compartment of your car—which, by the way, was found last night—and we checked to see if there was any damage . . .”

  “How lovely that you are so concerned about the well-being of the citizens of this country,” said Yoram Beinisch scornfully, “and all by yourselves you found the car you stole. Last time they stole my car, you never found it and the police, when I came to file a complaint, laughed in my face.”

  “This, as you see, is attached to a chain,” said Michael Ohayon, “and do you know why?”

  Yoram Beinisch raised his eyes from the pecan and tilted his head a bit. “No, I don’t know but I know you are going to tell me, because you’re a nice person, aren’t you?”

  “You know that this is an amulet. And it’s connected,” said Michael as he drew a rolled-up slip of paper out of the envelope, “to what’s written here. Do you want to tell us, or shall I read it to you?”

  Yoram Beinisch put his hands on his knees. “My fiancée has been waiting for me at home for hours and she doesn’t know where we are. My mother isn’t feeling well,” he protested, “and you’ve been keeping us here for hours, without a doctor or anything. If anything happens to her, it’ll be your responsibility.”

  Michael spread the small scroll out in front of him and read aloud: “To cancel a spell or the Evil Eye, take the living silver called zaibak, and the white stones found in the gizzard of a black rooster, male to male and female to female, add a pinch of salt and put everything into a pierced nut. Seal the hole with wax and then wrap the nut in leather and hang it around the neck of the person in need and he will be saved, so that neither the Evil Eye nor a spell shall rule him.”