Murder Under the Bridge

by Kate Raphael

  She nodded. “But I think he will not object.” She hoped she was right about that. She thought she had picked up subtle indications that Captain Mustafa was unhappy with the limitations imposed by his old friend. She could be seeing what she wanted to see, she realized.

  “I am going to take Khaled to my sister’s in Jericho,” he said. “We can stay there until you are finished with this case.”

  “You can’t. He has school.”

  “I can arrange for him to attend school in Jericho. All the curriculum is the same.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  “No, it’s better that you stay here.”

  He was right, of course. His sister Zeina did not like her; they had been in different political movements in college. And if the Israelis were watching her, it was safer for everyone if she was not with them. But she couldn’t bear to be apart from Khaled for an indefinite time. Even if she didn’t have so much time to spend with him right now, she needed to see him every day and tuck him into bed.

  “You can’t take my child,” she said.

  “It will be better,” Bassam said.

  She wanted to continue arguing, but she didn’t. He was not trying to punish her for keeping secrets, she told herself. He wasn’t saying she was a bad mother. He was just keeping their son safe, and no one wanted that more than she. But she couldn’t help feeling that he would never completely trust her again.

  Chapter 27

  Rania walked into work the next morning projecting a confidence she did not feel. A glimpse of her reflection in the dirty windows told her that her face was still blotchy from crying. Good thing she was not close with either of the women who worked in the station, so they would not ask what was wrong. The men would not ask, even if they noticed.

  She greeted everyone perfunctorily and made coffee as usual. She was carrying the little cup to her desk when Abdelhakim emerged from the captain’s office.

  “Did you have a good day yesterday?” he asked.

  She counted to five before answering. “Fine.”

  “Abu Walid wants to see you,” he told her.

  Why had the captain given him this message? Usually if he wanted her, he came to her desk. She could only conclude they had been talking about her, but why would her boss talk about one of his officers to the newest recruit in his station? She straightened her shoulders and walked into the office.

  “Is everything all right?” Captain Mustafa greeted her.

  “Yes, fine.”

  “There is nothing you need to do today?” He was gently mocking her.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Your husband is well?”

  “Hamdililah.” Thank God.

  “And your son?”

  Did he know that they had left? She didn’t see how he could have. They had been gone less than an hour. Had Bassam told someone from his work, to explain why he would be late? Even if he had, from the Ministry of Interior in Ramallah to the police station in Salfit was a long and winding grapevine. The news could not have traveled here so far.

  “Hamdililah,” she said finally.

  “Good,” he said. “Please go to see Um Nader in Hares. Her husband is beating her again.”

  She groaned inwardly. Her least favorite type of interview in her least favorite village. The woman would show off her injuries and complain, but not want to do anything that Rania might suggest. She would flatly refuse to go to the shelter in Jericho. A good thing nearly everyone refused, or the little shelter would be overflowing. The thought of Jericho brought the vision of the car speeding its way there, taking her son from her. She put it out of her head.

  She had one thing to do before she headed to Hares. Unfortunately, Abdelhakim was using the computer. She should have done her research last night at home, but she’d been too upset.

  “I am sorry,” she said to him. “I need to go out now. Is it possible I could look up something very quickly?”

  “No problem,” he mumbled. He stood behind her shoulder as she settled her hands on the keyboard. She pushed the wheeled chair back a little, nearly knocking into him. He shifted a bit, but stayed where he was. She couldn’t ask him not to look. The computer was there for police business, and one detective’s business was everyone’s. Let him look, she decided. She was trying to keep a Palestinian boy from going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and if no one else cared, so be it.

  She quickly called up Google and typed in the name Yuri Shabtai, hoping she was spelling it correctly in English. There were three hits, two from the Jerusalem Post and one from Haaretz. She clicked on the first link.

  “The article you have requested is no longer available,” she read. She tried the next one and got the same result. Come on! she said under her breath. She clicked on the third link, the Haaretz one. After what seemed like an age the story came up. “Soldier Suicides Soar” the headline read. Suicides? She skimmed the article, looking for the name. There it was, in the next to last paragraph. “The most recent death was Air Force Reservist Yuri Shabtai, 25, of Kibbutz Ets Or, who was found dead in his barracks last month.” The article was almost a year old.

  Why had Shira Zohari mentioned this Shabtai to her? What connection could there be between a soldier who killed himself and Nadya’s death? Of course, she didn’t know there was any. Nadya’s death might be—probably was—unrelated to whatever happened in Jenin, and this might not even be the right Yuri Shabtai. She had no idea if it was a common Israeli name or not.

  On a whim, she switched to Google in Arabic and searched several phonetic spellings of the name. Nothing. She bet there would be more in the Hebrew press, but she couldn’t read it. She looked again at the first two links. If only she could get to those articles. Whom could she ask for help? Not Abdelhakim, who was still looking intently over her shoulder. Not Benny, who was satisfied Fareed was as good a scapegoat as any. She thought of Chloe and her Israeli friend. Chloe had gotten the information from Malkah that led her to Zohari and Shabtai in the first place. She surrendered the computer to Abdelhakim and on the way to Hares, called Chloe and invited her over for dinner.

  * * *

  She didn’t need to cook, because she had the leftover mlochia and rice. She added hummus, labneh, and a salad of chopped cucumber and tomato. Chloe arrived at 5:30 as promised, bearing a box of chocolates and a toy cat that meowed when you pushed its tummy.

  “Where’s your son?” the American asked, looking around.

  “He and his father have gone to Jericho. My husband’s sister lives there.”

  “I’m sorry I won’t get to meet them,” Chloe said. She settled the stuffed animal in a corner of the sofa. “You can give him this when he returns.”

  “I’m sure he will love it. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to make chicken,” Rania said.

  “I’m glad you didn’t, because I don’t eat meat,” Chloe said. “I never know if it’s more polite to warn people in advance, so they don’t go to the trouble, or just eat around it, so they don’t worry about making something special.”

  “I would rather know,” Rania said. The house seemed unbearably quiet without Khaled running around, asking a million questions. Over dinner, Chloe talked about her life in California. Rania tried to imagine what it would be like to work in a big software company and go roller skating by the ocean. She found herself liking the American better. She was not as smug and self-righteous as she had seemed at first. After dinner, she made coffee and then worked the conversation around to her meeting with the attorney and what she had found on the internet. As she had expected, Chloe was eager to help. She called her friend Avi right away.

  “His father is in television news,” she told Rania. “He will be able to find the information in no time.” Avi called back after fifteen minutes.

  “Shabtai was one of those who testified in the Knesset about the incident in Jenin Camp,” Chloe reported. “His testimony matched Wilensky’s. The Palestinians fired at them, and they fired in self-defense. They c
onfirmed that their targets were armed. The inquiry found that they followed the rules of engagement. Six months after the hearings, he killed himself, during his month of reserve service. No one knows why. He didn’t leave a note. But Colonel Wilensky found the body.”

  “That is interesting,” Rania said. “But I don’t understand why this lawyer, Shira, thought it would help me.”

  “I don’t either,” Chloe said.

  “Wait a minute,” Rania said. “What date did you say he killed himself?”

  “I didn’t,” Chloe said. “Is it important?”

  “I think it could be.”

  Chloe took out her phone again, and Rania chewed her lip as she waited for her to finish her conversation. She didn’t know what she expected, but she had a feeling this was big.

  “April 7,” Chloe reported.

  “April 7, 2003?”

  “That’s right. What’s the significance?”

  “It was the anniversary of the shootings in Jenin.”

  “That’s right,” Chloe said. “But what does that tell you?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “What makes you think Nadya’s death had anything to do with Jenin?”

  “It probably didn’t,” Rania replied. “Honestly, at first I just went there because it was something I could do. But there are a lot of unanswered questions about it.”

  “Maybe we can poke around at the Ministry of Defense,” Chloe suggested.

  “I would love to,” Rania said. “But I don’t think I would be able to get in.”

  Chloe looked embarrassed. “I meant me and Avi.”

  Rania nodded. Even though she knew she couldn’t go, it hurt her feelings that she hadn’t been invited.

  * * *

  Rania hoped she would not run into Maryam in the compound or on the road. She didn’t need to worry about any of the others; they seldom got up as early as she did. Fortunately, she saw no one as she fed the chickens and took out the garbage. The only others waiting for the bus were people she knew slightly, who greeted her politely enough.

  The bus was very late. Rania looked anxiously at her watch. She had left early today, figuring that these days while Khaled and Bassam were gone, she could make up for her unauthorized absences by being early to work. At this rate, she wouldn’t even be on time. There must be a problem on the road. That was something Palestinians took for granted, like the weather. If she was late, others would be late as well. She couldn’t do anything about it, but still she watched the second hand on her watch go around and around, and looked at the swelling crowd with annoyance. Perhaps when the small bus finally arrived, there would not even be room for all of them on it. She couldn’t be one of those who had to wait for the next one. She edged her way to the front, near the road.

  Thwack! Something hard and wet struck her arm, nearly knocking her into the man next to her. He helped her steady herself and handed her a handkerchief.

  “What happened?” she asked him, checking the damage to her clothes. The yolk of an egg was running down her sleeve, a bit of shell clinging to the mess. She scrubbed at it with the handkerchief.

  “Settlers,” the man spat, pointing across the street where the Israeli buses stopped. She saw them, three young men with the ritual fringes and skullcaps of religious Jews, pointing and laughing. Whoever their God was, she thought, He could not be very nice. One of the young men held the carton of eggs, and she saw one of the others grab one and pull his arm back to throw.

  Without thinking, she ran toward him and knocked him back just as he let go of the egg. It fell harmlessly in the middle of the street. She snatched the carton from the shocked youth and threw it, eggs and all, against the wall of the little stone shelter where they stood. She felt nothing but the pent-up fury of years of humiliation from scenes like this one, like the one two days ago at the checkpoint.

  Calm now, she became aware that both the young men at the Israeli bus stop and the crowd at the Palestinian one were staring at her. She walked slowly back across the street. Thank heavens, the young men let her go, only yelling after her a filthy phrase in Arabic—doubtless the only Arabic words they knew. The Palestinian men at the bus stop had warm smiles for her as they slapped one another’s palms. “Did you see her?” she heard one of them ask another. She couldn’t remember when she had seen a group of people so happy besides at a wedding. She accepted their congratulations quietly. Something was happening to her. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, or if she liked it or not. Maybe Chloe’s fearlessness was rubbing off on her, or maybe hanging around Israelis like Benny and Nir was making her less in awe of their power.

  The bus was coming. By popular unspoken agreement, she got on first and settled herself in the front seat behind the driver. The others piled in and they took off. Now that she had time to think, her mind returned to last night’s meeting with Chloe, and what Avi had learned from the Israeli newspapers. The young soldier had waited six months after he testified at the Knesset hearing, then killed himself on the anniversary of the massacre. It seemed unlikely that it was a coincidence, but assuming his suicide had been out of remorse, she was still left with the question of why Shira Zohari had made sure she knew about Shabtai. She had a sudden thought. She dug in her purse for the card Abu Saif had given her, in case she returned to Jenin and needed a driver. He answered on the second ring.

  “Abu Saif,” she asked, “do you by any chance know when the young man you introduced me to, Mohammed, got his wheelchair?”

  “Two years ago,” the man responded.

  “I meant exactly,” she said.

  “No, I don’t remember exactly. In the spring, I think.” Rania sighed. She shouldn’t have expected the man to remember the exact date a young man who was not even a relative had gotten a wheelchair. “The spring, yes. I picked the chair up from the store in Tulkarem,” Abu Saif added.

  “You did? The medical supply store?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She could barely hang on long enough to say a civil goodbye. But after she hung up, she realized she had no idea where to get the phone number for the store. Once she got to work, someone would know someone who would know the number of the store. She couldn’t explain to anyone why she wanted it, though. She quickly signaled the driver to stop and let her off. She crossed the road and waited tensely for a bus going the other way. On a good day, Tulkarem was less than half an hour’s ride. Hopefully, this would be a good day.

  It was. The blue and white Tanib bus sailed along the settler highway and pulled up opposite the checkpoint at Jbarra. The soldiers at the checkpoint didn’t even glance at her as she passed. Once inside Tulkarem, it was easy to get directions to the medical supply store.

  “Of course, the young man from Jenin,” the owner of the store said. “I remember that chair. They wanted the very best of everything.”

  “Do you remember when it was ordered?” she asked, holding her breath for the answer.

  “I will check for you,” the man answered. He brought her a cup of tea before pulling an enormous sheaf of papers from a desk drawer. He went through them one by one, licking his finger between each one. Rania shifted from one foot to the other, wishing the tea were not too hot to drink. It would give her something to do other than concentrate on the time passing.

  “Here it is,” he said triumphantly. “April 2, 2003.”

  “You are positive that is the one?”

  “Yes, absolutely positive.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She gulped down the tea and raced out of the shop. Yuri Shabtai had killed himself the same week Mohammed had bought his expensive wheelchair. That, she thought, could not be a coincidence.

  * * *

  She heard the silence descend when she walked into the police station two hours later. She looked around and guilty eyes shifted away from her. Only Abdelhakim met her gaze.

  “Problems on the road?” he asked.

  She wiggled a shoulder in a way that could mean yes, or could mean she was try
ing to work out an itch. She didn’t want to lie to their faces. She could tell them about the settler boys, and their sympathies would overwhelm any curiosity about where she had been. She could imply that she had gone home to change her clothes, though the more discerning among them would surely notice the dark spot on her sleeve. Thinking about the egg striking her made her conscious of the sting on her arm.

  “I had to do an errand in Tulkarem,” she said finally. The recklessness that had made her confront the settler youths seemed to be following her even here. She unpinned her hijab and put it with her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk.

  “I thought perhaps you had been in Jericho,” he said. “Your husband and son are there, are they not?”

  She raised her eyes and caught his in a death stare. “Who told you that?” she asked.

  “Abu Ziyad,” he said. “Was it supposed to be a secret?”

  “Why was Abu Ziyad talking to you about my personal life?”

  “He just mentioned it,” the young man said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” He took a pack of cigarettes and walked out to the street. He didn’t need to go outside to smoke; most of the men in the station smoked constantly. She had obviously made him uncomfortable. Good.

  She withdrew the hijab from the drawer and covered herself, then followed him outside. She felt her coworkers watching. Abdelhakim was nowhere in sight. He must have stepped into a shop for a coffee. That was fine; she wasn’t looking for him. She crossed the street and took the marble stairs of the city hall two at a time. Abu Ziyad was sitting behind his big wooden desk, leaning back in his big leather chair. He stroked his heavy mustache as he talked on the phone. She barged in without knocking, ignoring the secretary who was objecting that she had no appointment.

  “I will speak with you later,” Abu Ziyad said into the telephone.

  “How did you know my husband and son are in Jericho?” she demanded. “And why are you talking about it to my coworkers?”

  “Bring Um Khaled some tea,” he said to the secretary. A minute later, the woman returned with a tray and two cups.