Missing

by Adiva Geffen

  “Impressive, the way you protect the people who sent you. Very loyal. But I know them — when the shit hits the fan, they’re going to deny ever knowing you. That’s all the loyalty you’re going to get. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to call the police.”

  “I brought her to a hotel,” Deliveries suddenly started to sing. “It’s a sort of medical guesthouse in Haifa.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Jasmine at the Carmel, I swear on my children’s lives.”

  “Good.”

  Deliveries extended his cuffed hands. “That’s all I know. Now you’d better let me go. Since you’re so smart, I’m sure you know what you’re doing is kidnapping. You can get five years for that.”

  He was right. We let him go.

  He stretched his muscles, shook our hands as if we’d just finished a night of beer and wings at the bar, and left us a business card I knew only too well. “If you ever need a professional, you’ve got my number,” he said with a wink and walked away.

  31

  Half an hour later, we were at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. We asked about Ehud Gal at the information desk and went up to the ward.

  “Who are you here to see?” A nurse with a long ponytail blocked the entrance to room number 4.

  “Ehud,” said Cooper and flashed one of his irresistible smiles. “We’re army buddies.” Since it was Cooper, who knows, maybe he wasn’t even lying.

  “All right, but don’t stay too long. He’s still weak.”

  Cooper rewarded her with another heart-melting smile.

  Ehud Gal looked drowsy. A few days’ worth of stubble dirtied his scrawny face. He opened his eyes as we got closer to his bed. I hurried to sit next to him and held his hand.

  “How are you today?” I tried to sound natural.

  “I think this is some sort of misunderstanding. Who are you people?”

  “That’s Cooper. I’m Dikla. I’m the one whose roof Daria jumped off. You remember Daria, don’t you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We need your help,” I told him. “We’re trying to find answers to questions that may be bothering you too: Who attacked you? Is there a connection between your attack and Daria’s death? Who is Galia? And what’s the connection between Daria and Avital?”

  As expected, hearing his sister’s name startled him. He pulled his hand from mine and tried to sit up, but his face twisted in pain.

  “Here, let me help you,” Cooper said and adjusted the pillow under Ehud’s head with the gentleness and patience of an expert nurse. “Better?”

  Ehud nodded.

  “We know Pastor Raphael paid you a visit. And unless we’re mistaken, he gave you something that belonged to Daria.”

  “What are you, crazy? Who are you? Who sent you here? I don’t have to talk to you. Get out right now,” he said and started to shout, “Noga, Noga!”

  I placed a hand on his chest. “Please, Ehud, listen, we’re the good guys.”

  He pushed my hand away. “Noga!” He tried to scream, but Cooper covered his mouth gently. “Just listen to what she has to say.”

  “It’s you.” He turned to me. “Don’t you dare get anywhere near my sister or her house ever again,” he hissed through Cooper’s hand.

  “You’re right, I’m so sorry. I thought I should talk to her, that maybe she could give—”

  “I don’t care. My sister filed a police report against you for impersonation and harassment.” I knew he was just trying to scare me. I would have been called by the police if there had been an actual complaint.

  “Ehud, please talk to us. I know Daria tried to reach you. Maybe she gave you something, some sort of message. And I’m guessing that she knew something having to do with Avital.”

  “Yes, Ehud?” The nurse appeared in the doorway. “Did you call me?”

  “Call security, these people are bothering me,” he said.

  “No need,” said Cooper. “Come on, Dikla, I think we’re done here.”

  I took a piece of paper from my bag and wrote Sammy’s number on it. “Just in case you change your mind,” I managed to tell Ehud before Cooper pulled me out of the room. Noga’s suspicious eyes followed us all the way out.

  “Shit,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  “He’s still drugged and disoriented. Maybe we should try again later.”

  “That guy has all the information we need to solve this mystery,” I said stubbornly. “It’s just a matter of finding the right way to get it out of him. All right, Cooper, let’s move on.”

  “Where to?”

  “First of all to Herzliya. I think it’s time we had a little chat with Eve, ‘the mother of all who live,’ and her world-renowned husband and coach, Dr. Barak.”

  “I have a feeling they won’t be too happy to see you.”

  “Frankly, my dear…”

  That won me a kiss. When it comes to kissing, Cooper is the world champ.

  32

  “Eve no home now,” said the voice from the intercom.

  “And Dr. Magidal?”

  “Who asking?” the broken English continued.

  “Dikla,” I answered in a friendly voice. “Remember me? I was here a few days ago. Tell him I only want to ask him a question.”

  “Hold on,” she said.

  A minute later, she said, “Doctor no see now. You need appointment.”

  I heard a child crying in the background. “Who is that crying in there?”

  “Go away, doctor too busy.”

  “You have a child in there?”

  There was a click that let me know she had turned off the intercom. “Did you hear that?” I asked Cooper. “There’s a child crying in there.”

  “So?”

  “Because of the baby bracelet we found in the envelope, because of the maternity care release form. I’m telling you, there’s a child involved in all this.”

  “My adorable genius.” Cooper stroked my hair.

  ◊◊◊

  When we got back to the car, Cooper told me he was pooped. I offered to drive to Jasmine at the Carmel so he could take a little nap.

  “Just don’t start anything without me.” He got comfortable in his seat and moved his hand between my legs.

  I moved his hand away and called Sammy.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about me.” Sammy never missed an opportunity to complain.

  “You’re unforgettable, Sammy. How are you, sweetheart?”

  “Sweetheart, huh?” She sounded amused. “Your sweetheart is doing just great. The operation was a piece of cake. I hardly felt anything, and Yoel got me back home by three. He’s been torturing me ever since.”

  “Another argument?”

  “Not yet. The pest won’t stop chopping salad for me. The doctors warned him that unless I lose weight, my other knee is going to go, and they won’t operate on me. Where are you?”

  “On the way to Jasmine at the Carmel.”

  “Give me a full report.”

  I told her everything. For a change, she actually listened.

  “Very good, Shoshkowitz.”

  “They operated on your brain as well?” “Why?”

  “Since when do you give people compliments?”

  “It looks like you’re headed in the right direction. The story about the medical hotel sounds very suspicious. Just find that poor girl before it’s too late.”

  She sounded like she was in a great mood. I guess she and Yoel had decided to take a break from their Punch and Jusy routine, at least temporarily. Perhaps her kind-hearted brother was hoping the post-surgery Sammy would show signs of weakness and go back to being his needy little sister Sammy from childhood. Good luck with that.

  We got stuck in traffic trying to leave Herzliya. Cooper’s hand
returned to traveling up my thighs, but we didn’t get a chance to cherish the moment. My cell phone rang. Miss Meniscus.

  “Shoshkowitz, take a U-turn and come see me immediately. And tell Cooper to get his hand off your thigh; work now, hump later. I’m waiting for you.”

  “We’re on our way to find Galia. What’s so urgent?”“There’s been an earth-shattering development!” she shouted. “Come back home. Right now.” She hung up.

  ◊◊◊

  Toward evening, we drove into Neve Tzedek, Sammy’s neighborhood in Tel Aviv. The wind whistled down the neighborhood’s beautiful alleyways, gathering scraps of newspapers and leaves on its way. It was the end of November, and there was still no sign of rain.

  Yoel opened the door for us. He looked worn-out and desperate.

  “I know,” I said and gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Brace yourself, it’s probably going to get much worse tomorrow.”

  “She’s waiting for you. I told her she needs to rest, but you know what she’s like…on fire and spitting flames all over the place.”

  We found Sammy lying on the sofa with a bandaged knee.

  “How are you, Sammy?”

  “Never better.” She measured us with her eyes, trying to see if her plan had worked. Then she waved her hand dismissively and stretched her leg.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “My leg is fine. The only thing that hurts is my stomach. Who says a person needs to eat watery chicken soup just because she’s had an operation?”

  “And that’s why you called us?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Sammy, darling, what was so urgent?”

  “You’ll never believe who called me.”

  “Donald Trump?”

  “Even better. You two need to go to the Koteret Hotel, room 305.”

  “No problem. Would you mind giving us a hint about who we’re supposed to meet there?”

  “The Shimron family,” she gasped excitedly. “Our new clients. They’re—” she paused for dramatic effect, then announced “—Hadas’ parents.”

  “Hadas? Hadas who became Daria?”

  “Yes, that Hadas.”

  “Her parents?”

  “Her real parents. First I was surprised, then I was completely shocked. After I regained my composure, I promised you’d be with them soon.”

  “How did they find you?”

  “Search whatever’s left of that broken little brain of yours. Who did you leave my number with today?”

  “Ehud Gal.”

  “Exactly. And he gave it to Daria’s parents when they came to visit him. It turns out they’ve been looking for their daughter for the past three years.”

  “Three years? Where were they till now?”

  “Out of the picture. They didn’t have a clue.”

  “I think the police would find this information very interesting.”

  “Of course. But you need to understand — Daria, or Hadas, had cut off all contact with her parents. She told them not to bother her, that seeing them would block her spiritual evolution, take the wind out of the sails of her inner boat sailing toward the light. She told them she had a new life, that she had been reborn into a new family, that she was on her way to finding the heavenly spheres, that they were egotistical people, that because of them the world had been robbed of its light.”

  “Just as I suspected, that poor child was trying to escape from the clutches of a cult.”

  “Cult, classroom, community, support group, family, God’s loyal flock… The quacks have a lot of names for it. That’s everything I’ve managed to get with my nut-sized brain. You’ll have to find out the rest for yourselves. I’m done playing the hero for one day.”

  “So those two, your czardas princess and her psycho doctor husband, what are they? Her new parents? They gave her a new birth at the age of twenty? Do you understand what this means, Sammy?”

  “It means that we went looking for the right girl for the wrong parents. It means that we were fooled into helping some very bad people. Now we have to help her real parents find out the truth. They deserve to know what happened to their little girl, what made her fly.”

  33

  At 8:00 pm, tired to the point of collapse but burning with desire for each other, Cooper and I knocked on the door of room 305 at the Koteret Hotel.

  A man wearing a white polo shirt and tennis shoes opened the door and ushered us in. “Thank you for coming. I’m Avi, and this is my wife, Dina.”

  We introduced ourselves and shook hands. Dina rose slowly from her armchair and extended a limp hand. Her husband hurried to her and helped her sit down again, as if she might shatter. They both looked like people who had been crushed by life.

  “It is my understanding that you believed Eve and Barak were her real parents and that Daria was her real name,” Avi began.

  “To tell you the truth, we’re perplexed,” I answered. “You claim to be her parents, but you’re not the only ones. Can you prove it?”

  “Here,” said Avi and handed us a file folder. It contained Hadas’ birth certificate — born weighing seven and a half pounds — Dina and Avi Shimron’s driver’s licenses, even their marriage certificate. They also had all of Hadas’ elementary and high school report cards and two photo albums. I flipped through the pictures and watched her grow from a little girl who went to sleep with a stuffed giraffe, dressed up as a clown for Purim, learned to ride a bicycle, took field trips with the girl scouts, graduated from high school, and finally smashed into the hard pavement.

  “When did you lose contact with her?” I asked.

  “It’s been almost three years. A few weeks before her twentieth birthday, she said she didn’t want us to call her. At first, she would send us short messages saying she was all right and that we shouldn’t worry. But six months later, she suddenly told us not to look for her, said she had to detach herself from us so she could be reincarnated.”

  “Reincarnated?”

  “That was the word she used,” said Avi. “She told us we were hindering her growth, preventing her from finding her true self. Maybe it was because I was too—”

  “You mustn’t blame yourself,” Dina said softly and placed her hand on his. “We did what we thought was best.”

  “We pressured her too much.”

  “You see,” said Dina, “parents make mistakes. Hadas had…difficulties. She always had adjustment problems, always felt she wasn’t as good as everyone around her.”

  “She told us she hadn’t passed the university entrance exams. Then we found out she’d never even registered,” said Avi. “She was terrified of failure. We had to let it go.”

  “Tell them about the Internet,” Dina said eagerly. It was clear they had wanted to tell someone their story for a long time.

  “She got addicted…would spend entire nights next to the computer then fall asleep at dawn and wake up in the middle of the day. She found friends there, soul mates, she said. Facebook became the center of her world. I guess she found a kind of comfort there. Then she contacted that doctor.”

  “Dr. Barak Magidal.”

  “Exactly.” Avi practically spat the word. “She said he was a world-renowned expert. I wasn’t able to find any reliable information about him, but by then Hadas had been poisoned against us. The questions I asked her about him just served to fuel her anger toward me.”

  “If you thought he was a crook, why didn’t you go to the police?” asked Cooper.

  “Because I was afraid it would harm our relationship. I still had hope for it back then.”

  “So what else was going on that made you so worried?” I asked.

  “They would have Internet chats for hours. Then she began to stay away from the house, just for a day or two at first. We didn’t know where she went. When she was gone for a full week,
we got even more concerned, but she wouldn’t tell us anything when she called. She would only say she had finally found her way.

  “We realized she was losing touch with reality, that we might lose her. I told her we were fine with her finding a new way, that she could come back home whenever she wanted, and we’d try not to interfere with her life. But it didn’t help. She stayed away, coming home only once to pick up her things. We begged her to talk to us. We told her we loved her, but she just started yelling. Said we were…not her family, that we had poisoned her, damaged her, harmed her, and that now she was on a course of self-correction.”

  “Then this thing with the money started,” said Dina.

  “She began to extort money from us, lots of it.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “The workshops cost a fortune. They’d have weekend seminars at the finest luxury hotels.”

  “Such as Jasmine at the Carmel,” Cooper guessed.

  “That’s the name. You know the place?”

  “We were on our way there when Sammy called and told us to come back to meet with you.”

  “On your way there?” Avi suddenly appeared suspicious.

  “A girl we’re looking for is there. Perhaps you’ve heard the name Gali, or Galia? Did Daria, sorry, Hadas, ever mention that name?”

  “No,” said Avi. “She never mentioned any names, other than the Heavenly Duchess, whom she admired.”

  “Deborah.”

  “Hadas called her the Heavenly Duchess. Duchess! She used to spout that nonsense with such reverence. But just like Dina’s psychologist said, every word I said against that Duchess only served to glorify her name.”

  “You took her to see a psychologist?” I asked.

  “She refused. At first we gave her everything she asked for. We’re not a poor family and had enough. We thought…why not? After all, she was our only child, and she wanted the money for studying — it wasn’t like she was going to spend it on drugs. Sure, it wasn’t what we wanted for her, but at least she seemed happy. But the more we paid, the more she asked for. She wanted us to wire an astronomical amount of money to her bank account so, in her words, she could be ‘completely independent and finally be able spread her wings.’”