Murder Under the Bridge

by Kate Raphael

  “How are things at home?” she asked.

  The girl shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Has your dad found someone to take Nadya’s place?”

  “I don’t think so. My grandma’s still taking care of my sister and brother.”

  At that, Malkah looked at her watch as if realizing she was supposed to go home after school. Rania had better get to the point.

  “Malkah, do you know why I’m here?” she asked.

  Malkah shook her head. Okay, Rania asked herself. Why are you here? To get the girl to say her father murdered her nanny? She hadn’t thought this out very well. Malkah was waiting less than patiently for her explanation.

  “A Palestinian boy was arrested for killing Nadya, did you know that?” she asked.

  “No,” Malkah said.

  “Your father didn’t tell you?”

  Why was she asking her about this? What difference did it make?

  “No. He hasn’t talked about Nadya at all since the day you came to our house.”

  “A boy was arrested for killing her. He was her boyfriend. You know about boyfriends, don’t you?”

  “I don’t have one,” the girl blurted out.

  Rania was thrown for a loop. She had been trying to strike a rapport, yes, but she hadn’t expected Malkah to take her up on it. The girl was very lonely, she thought. She needed a woman to have heart-to-hearts with. Well, she was the wrong woman. Most Muslim Palestinian women didn’t talk about boys with their own daughters. She wasn’t about to try it with a settler girl.

  “Did you used to talk about boyfriends with Nadya?” she guessed.

  “Sometimes.” Malkah seemed disappointed. Whatever reaction she had expected to her admission, this wasn’t it.

  A spate of giggling from the road made both of them look toward the main street. The group of girls from the park was passing by. One of them glanced in the direction of where Rania stood with Malkah. She gave no indication of having seen them, but the look seemed to awaken Malkah’s jitters.

  “I’m not allowed to talk to you,” she said suddenly. “I have to go.”

  “Malkah, wait,” Rania called uselessly. The small figure was already dashing to catch up with her friends.

  What a mess I made of that, Rania berated herself as she made her way home to Mas’ha. So much for my quiet investigation to prove Fareed’s innocence.

  When she arrived at work the next morning, Captain Mustafa reamed her. Benny had called him and said he had a call from someone named Gelenter, who said she was harassing his daughter.

  “I wasn’t harassing her,” Rania defended herself. “She wanted to talk to me.”

  That was sort of true, she thought. She wondered, though, if Malkah had told her father about her visit, or if he had spies all over the settlement. She would have no right to feel betrayed if it was the former. Maybe if she had shown more interest in Malkah’s problems, the girl would have felt more loyalty to her.

  “This settler is very angry and very powerful,” the captain was saying. “He told Benny he was giving your name to the SHABAK. You need to leave this investigation alone, or you will soon be in prison yourself.”

  “But I haven’t broken any laws,” she protested, realizing that fact was irrelevant.

  “This is no joke,” Captain Mustafa told her. “You know how many Palestinian policemen are sitting in Israeli jails right now. This is not a safe profession.”

  “I know,” she acknowledged.

  “He did not only threaten to arrest you,” the captain said. “Do you want to know what else he said?”

  She didn’t, but she knew he would tell her anyway. She guessed Nir had threatened to arrest Bassam too, maybe even his brothers. The captain stood up behind his desk, to give extra punch to his warning.

  “He said they would take your son too,” he thundered.

  Her heart caught an express train to her feet.

  “But Khaled’s only six.”

  “He said to tell you he has broken boys younger than that,” Captain Mustafa enunciated each word.

  She didn’t believe even such a big military man could be so cruel. But she wasn’t going to find out.

  “Go home,” the captain told her. “You can take tomorrow off as well.”

  The next day was Thursday, so he was giving her a long weekend. Was it a favor, or a punishment? He would never say. She would just have to come in on Saturday and see how he acted, what new tasks he assigned her. She had two more days to figure out how to help Fareed. She wasn’t going to just let him be railroaded, but she couldn’t think what to do, with her hands tied like this. She would start by visiting Fareed’s family in Azzawiya.

  * * *

  Chloe was sitting in the garden, writing on her laptop. Rania recalled her suspicions that Chloe had had something to do with Fareed’s arrest. She didn’t really want to talk to her until she felt sure which side she was on, but she wasn’t sure how she was going to get that information except by talking to her.

  “Abu Fareed mawjood?” Rania asked. Is Fareed’s father here?

  “Mush mawjood,” Chloe said. Not here. She looked back at her laptop. Why so standoffish? Rania wondered. Every other time she’d seen this woman, she wouldn’t shut up.

  “Do you know when he will return?” Rania asked.

  “No, they all went to Nablus.” Chloe gestured toward the house as if to say, Look for yourself, there’s no one home.

  Rania sat down next to her on the porch.

  “Fareed confessed,” Chloe said.

  “I heard,” said Rania. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Do you think you can do something?” The hope in Chloe’s voice put Rania on edge and made her want to snap. Why was this American pinning her hopes on a Palestinian policewoman? She must have resources in her back pocket no Palestinian could even dream of. The portable computer she was using probably cost more than Rania’s annual salary. She cut off these unhelpful thoughts before they became an outburst she would regret.

  “Not really,” she said. Chloe’s face registered disappointment.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them from taking him,” the American said.

  “Did you expect you could?” Rania asked.

  Chloe took time to think before answering. “Pretty much no,” she said, “but I think many people here think I can do a lot more than I can. They think the Americans run everything, and I’m American. They don’t realize I don’t know one person in the government.”

  Rania smiled because Chloe had come so close to verbalizing her own thoughts. “I’d like to help Fareed,” she said.

  “Isn’t it too late now?”

  “He hasn’t been sentenced, has he?”

  “No. That’s why his parents went to Nablus, to talk to a lawyer.”

  “Then it is not too late.”

  “Well, what can you do?”

  “I’m not sure, especially because I’m not even supposed to be working on it any more. I just can’t let it go.”

  “His mother’s really freaked out,” Chloe told her. “She’s been getting strange phone calls.”

  “What kind of calls?”

  “One guy called and said he was a friend of Jaber’s from prison. He described Ahlam and said he remembered Fareed as a baby. But Jaber says he never heard of the guy. It’s giving her nightmares,” Chloe said. “She has flashbacks to the time when Jaber was in prison, and she had to raise Fareed by herself.”

  “I know,” Rania murmured. “We all have nightmares like that.” She shook her head to banish the flash forwards of Khaled, led away in shackles, ineffectually calling her name. “I wish I had been able to make friends with Nir Gelenter’s daughter,” she went on. “She knows something that would help us, I can tell. But I messed up, and now I cannot even talk to her.”

  “I could try,” Chloe said.

  Rania was on the verge of saying, “Forget it,” but something stopped her. A few minutes ago, she was thinking about her distrust of
the woman, and now she was going to send her to Elkana as her proxy? But she couldn’t think of an alternative, and this might give her a chance to observe Chloe’s motives more carefully.

  “You would need to move gently,” Rania said. “The girl is really scared of something.”

  “What would she be afraid of?” Chloe wanted to know.

  “Her father, probably. But Delmarie, a foreign woman who works in the settlement, told us she saw Nadya arguing with a man, perhaps one of the people who brought her to Israel. Maybe he came to the house, and Malkah saw him. Or, I don’t know,” she trailed off. She wished she had the photo of the man Alexandra Marininova had identified, for Chloe to show Malkah, but Benny had kept all the photos. She couldn’t ask him for them now. She would have to hope Chloe could get some information out of Malkah. It went against her grain to have to sit on her hands and wait.

  Chapter 23

  Chloe could easily have walked to Elkana from Azzawiya; there was even a hole in the fence by the water tower, which she could slip through and be right near the girls’ school. But she thought she would be less conspicuous on the bus. She got off by the market Rania had told her was near the Gelenters’. She wandered along their street, hoping she had picked out the right house, wondering how to be sure.

  A stroke of good luck came her way in the shape of a young Ethiopian woman delivering mail. When she was out of sight, Chloe ran to check the addresses on the newspaper and catalogues she had placed in the box she thought was the Gelenters’. The Hebrew address confirmed it. Okay, she told herself. Well done, so far.

  Now where would be a good place to watch? The pristine, silent street was not a place a stranger could stand around unnoticed for more than a few minutes. There was no view of the house from where the store sat, and the street curved around at the end of the block, so she couldn’t walk down a few blocks and then seem to be ambling back up. A house across the street had a tallish tree with sufficient foliage to secrete someone. She studied its branches. She was never much of a tree climber, even as a child, and as an adult she nurtured a healthy fear of heights. A burst of young female voices forced her to act quickly.

  The driveway of the house where she stood pondering the tree held two vehicles. The front one was a red van, the kind you cursed on the freeway because it kept you from seeing what was going on ahead of you. She supposed it was perfect for transporting the broods of children many religious families boasted. The one behind it was a little Citroen, like eighty percent of the cars on Israeli roads. They made a great contrast, an automotive Mutt and Jeff. They also made a great little shelter. She wedged herself onto the hood of the Citroen, hidden from sight by the Econoline but afforded a great view of the street via its massive windshield and twin side mirrors. Even better, she was comfortable. As long as none of the girls coming home belonged to the family with the fleet, she was in good shape.

  She imagined she might not have to wait long, as the Hebrew chatter drew closer. The Econoline’s passenger side mirror showed a pair of girls, with matching glossy ponytails and long appliquéd denim skirts, dawdling near the Gelenters’ house. But neither of them turned into the house. They continued down the block and turned the corner. Less than five minutes later, a slightly younger girl in a navy school skirt and knee socks made her way up the street, balancing her bookbag on one hip. Chloe recognized Malkah more by the attitude than the physical description Rania had given her. One of Israel’s top military muckety-mucks could have only two types of daughter: the kind who thought she was all that or the kind who dreamed every day that she would wake up someone else, somewhere else. Malkah clearly fit the latter profile.

  After Malkah unlocked the door and disappeared behind it, Chloe racked her brain for an excuse to knock on the door. She could be a lost American visitor, and ask for directions, but whom was she visiting, and where could she be going? And once Malkah gave her the information, on what basis would she engage her in conversation? She couldn’t be selling anything; she had no idea if there were door-to-door salespeople in high-tech Israel, but if there were, presumably they all knew Hebrew.

  Looking for work? She toyed with the idea. Maybe she was staying with a relative in Elkana who mentioned that the Gelenters had lost their housekeeper. She might be able to pull that one off, but then Malkah would presumably say she had to come back when one of the grownups was home. For all she knew, one of them was home now. She was thinking she had better take the plunge and find out, when the door opened again and Malkah emerged. Chloe followed her to the school playground. Malkah sat in one of the low swings, swinging slowly back and forth and writing in a notebook. Chloe strolled up, trying for nonchalance, and settled into the swing next to Malkah’s. Malkah looked up, so startled she dropped her pen in the sand.

  “What are you writing?” she asked.

  Malkah dropped down to collect her pen. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Chloe decided it was best to stay close to the truth.

  “I live in that village there, Azzawiya,” she said pointing toward the minaret peeking over the tops of the trees. “I have never been in a settlement before, so I just came here to look around.”

  “Are you an Arab?” Malkah asked, a little fear creeping into her face.

  Don’t be so judgmental, Chloe instructed herself. When you were thirteen, you thought what your parents thought too. “No, I’m Jewish.”

  “You are living with Arabs?” Malkah was aghast.

  “Yes,” Chloe said. “I’m Jewish, and I live with Palestinians. They are very nice to me. Is that a journal?” indicating the notepad.

  “No. I’m writing a story.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m a writer too.” This was half-true. Years ago, Chloe had been a freelance writer for a local gay newspaper. It had been ages since she’d written anything other than an email, but once a writer, always a writer.

  “What do you write?”

  “Articles, mostly.”

  “You write about true things.”

  “I try to. Are you writing about made-up things?”

  “I write about things I wish were true.”

  “Like what?”

  “This story is about a girl from Elkana who is driving with her family one night and their car breaks down. They have to get out and fix it. They are next to a Palestinian village, and the girls’ parents are all freaked out and afraid. But the girl gets out of the car and goes up to the edge of the road, right by one of the houses. There is a girl her age there, with ragged clothing and no shoes on, and they make eye contact. It’s like a silent communication.”

  Chloe was flabbergasted to be having such a profound conversation with a teen she had just met. Malkah must be an extremely lonely girl.

  “And then what?”

  “Her father finishes fixing the car and they get back in and drive away.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes. But it changes the girl’s life.”

  “How do you think it would change her life?” Chloe probed.

  “I don’t know… it just would.”

  “Why are you here by yourself?” Chloe asked. “Instead of playing with your friends?”

  “I don’t really have friends,” Malkah said.

  “That must be hard.”

  “I don’t care. The other girls just walk around and around the settlement in circles trying to get the cutest boys to like them. It’s a waste of time.”

  “Don’t you like boys?”

  “They are all stupid, too,” Malkah asserted. “Look what some of them did,” and she pointed to the wall of the school. ARAVIM HACHUTZAH! ARABS OUT! was spray-painted in Hebrew.

  “Why does that upset you?” Chloe asked. “Do you know any Palestinians?”

  “No,” Malkah said slowly. “But it’s bad to be against a whole people. We should all live together in peace.”

  “If you want to meet Arabs, you could come with me to A
zzawiya sometime,” Chloe suggested. “A lot of the men who live there speak Hebrew.”

  “I couldn’t do that.” Malkah sounded frightened. She was moving too fast, Chloe realized.

  “I could bring you some information about the villages in this area, if you would like.”

  “Yes,” Malkah said. “I would like that very much.”

  “Can you meet me here tomorrow after school?” Chloe asked. Malkah agreed.

  * * *

  The next day, Chloe was at the playground right at three o’clock. Malkah’s round face lit up when she saw her.

  “I brought you some things to read,” Chloe said, handing the girl several brochures in Hebrew. “These are from the Israeli human rights group Btselem,” she said. She added the brochure she always gave to soldiers. “This one is from another group, called Yesh Gvul.”

  “Thank you,” Malkah said. Chloe had imagined Malkah would want to look at the literature right away, but she scarcely glanced at the brochures before tucking them into her school bag. “See you.” She started to walk away.

  “Wait!” Chloe was so afraid her contact with Malkah was ending precipitously, she nearly yelled. The girl hovered, poised for flight.

  “Let me buy you an ice cream,” Chloe suggested.

  She had hit the right note. Malkah was tempted. “I should get home,” she waffled. “My grandmother will be bringing my sister and brother home.”

  “Is there a shop on the way to your house?” Chloe asked. Malkah nodded and Chloe fell in beside her. “Do you take care of your brother and sister every day after school?” she asked.

  “Now I do,” Malkah said. “Except Wednesday when I go ice skating in Tel Aviv. Nadya cared for them before, but she is dead.”

  Here was the opening Chloe had prayed for. Don’t blow it, she told herself.

  “Who is Nadya?”

  “She worked for my family.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Someone killed her.”

  “Really? How awful.”

  “I guess.” Malkah didn’t sound that upset, talking about death. Either she was totally cut off from her feelings, or she didn’t care for Nadya. Chloe needed to know which.