Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  “They obviously thought you would have those answers.”

  “They asked about personal effects, papers—anything recovered from the corpse.”

  “And you told them ...”

  “The truth. The corpse had no personal effects, papers, or anything else when we found it.”

  “Why would they care?”

  “I never got the chance to ask them.”

  “Few survive such encounters with your Hamas.”

  “They’re not ‘mine,’ Pakad.”

  “In any event,” Danielle resumed, without missing a beat, “I’ll have to settle for the next best thing: the murder scene itself.”

  * * * *

  T

  he only remaining indication that something had occurred in the alley where the murder had taken place were several dirty yellow strips of the crime-scene tape clinging doggedly to their original spots.

  At Danielle’s request, Ben reviewed every aspect of the case while she performed her own methodical check of the alley. He filled her in on the steps he had ordered his men to take and the conclusions that formed the basis for his strategy. She listened attentively, asking an occasional question, seeming content to merely accept items drawn from his official report. When he had finished, Danielle stepped off distances, sifted her hands through gravel, inspected areas of the alley.

  “So much blood,” she noted, imagining the way it had been the previous morning. “The killer should have been covered in it himself, under the circumstances.”

  “He may have been. We have no way of being sure.”

  “Did you check the street for additional drops?”

  “Yes, and found nothing. We also typed a dozen blood samples taken randomly from the scene. They all came from the victim.”

  Danielle accepted that like input into a computer. She moved back into the sun and squinted her eyes against its jetting rays. At ninety feet below sea level, the town of Jericho held heat like an oven.

  “Vulnerability and isolation,” Danielle said finally. “All victims were killed alone and in the dark, usually fairly close to their homes. Unusual, don’t you think?”

  “Practical, more likely. Maybe al-Diib stakes out their homes instead of stalking them. Kills them when they return or follows them when they leave.”

  “But no one ever notices.”

  “Or admits they do.”

  “What about the first of the two Jericho murders?”

  “Eleven days ago. Friends dropped a girl named Leila Khalil off in front of her house. No one ever saw her alive again.”

  “The Wolf was lying in wait, then.”

  “As he always is. He must stalk them until he has their routines—their very lives—committed to memory.”

  “But how does he get away?”

  “Walking a long distance would be out of the question,” Ben said.

  “Especially since not all the victims were killed within walking distance of their homes.”

  “Someone who knows how to blend in, then, someone who doesn’t stand out.”

  “Maybe he’s a cop,” Danielle surmised.

  “Cops stand out here. Believe me.”

  “Granted. So if the Wolfs following his victims, how does he know when to park the car or have the taxi deposit him? And how does he get back to it without ever drawing any attention to himself, or leaving any trail of blood?”

  “Again, he would have to be able to blend in.”

  “Blood never blends in.”

  “That is, if any witness has the opportunity to see it. I’ve been thinking about his vehicle, Pakad. We’ve never had one identified or even spotted anywhere close to a crime scene. But he has to get there somehow, doesn’t he?”

  Danielle rose, brushing the grime of the alley off her hands and skirt. “Why don’t we take a look at another one of the crime scenes? Let’s go and see exactly what the killer saw.”

  “Not yet, Pakad. We need to stop at a refugee camp first.”

  “And what are we looking for, Inspector?”

  “A witness.”

  * * * *

  B

  en briefed her on the varied events of the previous night during the one-hour drive to the Jalazon refugee camp outside Ramallah where the woman named Shanzi supposedly lived. They arrived to find the whole camp still under curfew after a series of protests several days before had ended in a particularly violent fashion. There were rumors of several shootings as recently as yesterday, and Ben sensed a pall even thicker than the stifling air hanging over the camp.

  The only people in evidence at Jalazon were those belonging to the security force. They functioned like a militia, their training similar to, but not nearly as complete as that of the Palestinian police force. They had taken over security in the camps from the Israelis and were often accused of even more brutal behavior.

  Upon entering Jalazon, the first thing Ben noticed were the ominous guard towers the Israelis had built in each corner. Though abandoned, they had not been dismantled and that seemed to symbolize how little things had changed for the residents.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” a captain named Fawandi greeted Ben, after he had been escorted into his tin box of an office; Danielle remained discreetly outside the camp by mutual consent. “What can I do for you?”

  At least here, unlike his experience at the Einissultan camp yesterday, he had a name to go on. “I am looking for a woman who is a resident here.”

  “Her name?”

  “Most recently, as far as I know, Shanzi.”

  “Last or first?”

  “Only.”

  Captain Fawandi scanned his registration book, every item handwritten, the idea of computers in Jalazon and the other camps only a dream at this point. “We have no one by that name I can find.”

  “She is among several women running late-night robbery scams.”

  “Wait a minute,” Fawandi said, and went to a file folder resting on the top of his desk. He ruffled through a few pages. “Yes, I thought I remembered her . . .”

  “What?”

  The captain’s eyes looked up emotionlessly. “She was shot yesterday during the protest. Killed.”

  Ben felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. “I wouldn’t have thought her the type to join the protest.”

  “She was a bystander. Stray bullet got her in the skull.” Fawandi shrugged. “It happens.”

  “Rather too frequently.”

  “Look, officer—”

  “Inspector.”

  “Inspector.” Fawandi lowered his voice. “Is there anything else?”

  “I want her body transferred to the medical examiner’s office in Jericho. I will send a car.”

  “You don’t have jurisdiction here.”

  “This is still the West Bank, Captain, and I am the chief investigating officer.”

  “I wasn’t aware you were investigating this woman’s death.”

  “I believe it could be connected to others I am investigating.”

  “All the same, there is nothing in the articles to say that camp militia must comply with requests from civilian authorities.”

  Ben sat down on a rickety chair poised before Fawandi’s desk and made himself look comfortable. “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “Not really.”

  “You heard about the murder committed two nights ago on Jaffa Street in Jericho near the Hisbe?”

  “Of course. Everyone has. Another of al-Diib’s victims.”

  “I’m here because official opinion is that al-Diib comes from one of the camps, and I’ve only got a week left to deliver the mayor a suspect. I could bring in anyone, fabricate a whole case, and the authorities would buy it with a wink. Do you like your job, Captain Fawandi?”

  “Do not threaten me, Inspector.”

  Ben leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I’ve heard it told that many of the goods intended for your residents end up being sold on the black market. Now there’s a subject that would make for an interesting
investigation. Or, better yet, a newspaper story. I know an editor who’d be most interested.”

  Fawandi’s expression didn’t change. He simply fixed his gaze ahead and drummed his fingers against his desk, the only sound in the tin room while Ben waited.

  “I will get the body ready to transport,” Fawandi said finally.

  * * * *

  B

  en foundDanielle standingoutside thecamp gatebeing eyed lasciviously by a complement of guards.

  “I should have told them you were a Jew,” Ben said, glad to be driving off.

  “They asked. I told them I was your sex slave and that you beat me regularly.”

  “That explains the looks I got on my way out,” Ben said. He spent the next few minutes updating her on what he had learned inside the camp.

  “Do you expect an autopsy will turn up anything?” Danielle asked him after he finished.

  “I don’t like the coincidence of one of our only two likely witnesses to Sunday night’s murder dying accidently. Too convenient.”

  “That’s the American in you again. The Palestinian side would embrace the convenience.”

  “And which side did the Israelis request to work with?”

  She didn’t bother denying it. “The one who can better serve our interests, of course.”

  “Our interests are the same, Pakad: solving this case before the peace talks reconvene a week from tomorrow.”

  “Then come with me.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 20

  J

  erusalem was the only part of Israel Ben had ever been to before, but his memories did not do it justice. Built on a hilltop, the walled city of legend is itself overlooked by taller hills. From the higher peaks nearby, Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives, the church spires, bell towers, golden domes, and minarets that compose the city’s skyline are breathtaking.

  It was not the sights, though, that Ben remembered most about Jerusalem; it was the sounds. The ubiquitous yet pleasing chime of church bells, the muezzins’ precisely timed calls to the faithful, and the constant murmur of prayer at the Western Wall. He knew of the latest security precautions, but nothing could quell the fervor and devotion so many cultures brought with them to the Wall.

  The first of the Wolfs known victims, a twenty-six-year-old woman named Najwa Halevy, had been found in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. According to Danielle’s file, though, she lived in East Jerusalem. She had stopped in briefly to visit her parents in the Muslim Quarter. Her body was found four or five hours later, dumped in an abandoned cistern within sight of Damascus Gate.

  “A guard just happened to peer down the well on his rounds,” Danielle reported when they reached it.

  On her advice they had driven back to Jericho after leaving the Jalazon refugee camp so Ben could change his clothes before making the twenty-four-mile trip to Jerusalem. Although regulations demanded he wear his police uniform when on duty in the West Bank, the same did not hold true for assignments elsewhere. And on this assignment the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself and risk any distractions from the subject at hand.

  “Her wounds,” Danielle continued, “as the case file indicates, were almost identical to those of your victim found in the alley off Jaffa Street. And the others.”

  Ben felt the gravel crunching underfoot as he moved about the scene. The fact that there were no residences in the immediate vicinity made it seemingly a much better place for a murderer to choose.

  “She told her parents she was on her way to meet someone?” he asked.

  “She told them she was on her way home, back to East Jerusalem.”

  “And she was killed at almost the same time of night as our latest victim.” Ben turned back toward Danielle. “Did her parents know if she was carrying identification at the time she left their house?”

  “A small handbag in which she kept everything,” Danielle replied. “It could have been stolen after the fact, of course. Her body went undiscovered for as many as five hours, after all.”

  “Could have been, but I don’t think so. For al-Diib, destroying his victims’ faces isn’t enough: he wants to strip away all essence of their identities. That means taking everything on their persons that could tell us who they are.”

  “Leaving them with nothing, so to speak.”

  “Probably because that’s what he feels he has, Pakad. He steals what’s left of their identities in order to get back the one he himself has lost.”

  “Could that tie in with the possibility of him having suffered some sort of genital mutilation?”

  “The inability to bear children would certainly constitute an even deeper loss of identity. But inability caused by more basic sexual dysfunction wouldn’t explain the time he spends mutilating them so horribly post mortem.” Ben stopped, thinking of something. “In the cases investigated by Shin Bet, do you recall which part of the bodies he mutilated first?”

  “The face. In all cases.”

  “So his victims wouldn’t be able to look at him,” Ben concluded. “Meaning that the root of his crimes lies as much in humiliation and embarrassment as rage. A very dangerous combination, Pakad.”

  “That further supports our theory that he himself was mutilated, either by accident, birth, or torture.”

  “Only torture could create a monster like this.”

  “Then we can focus our search for suspects on the year or so before the murders began,” Danielle suggested.

  “The problem is, we don’t really know for sure when the murders began, do we? We can’t be sure how many victims there really were before Shin Bet got interested. During the occupation the Israelis conducted virtually no investigations of crimes against Palestinians, as you know. That means we really have no idea how long our killer has been operating or how many victims he’s claimed.”

  “True,” Danielle conceded. “But up until this most recent murder in Jericho, there have always been significant gaps between the killings. Why the change in his pattern?”

  “I don’t know. It could be there have been more killings, at least attempts.”

  “Which we have no record of.”

  “Because it’s doubtful they were reported. Or, if they were, the cases went neglected. First, by the Israelis, who didn’t care. Then by the Palestinian Authority, who couldn’t do anything even if they did.”

  “Hard words.”

  “Justified, believe me.”

  “And yet you’re still here.”

  “I’m not exactly overflowing with options. I didn’t have to burn my bridges; they collapsed on their own.”

  “Then we’re back where we started. Are you doing anything about compiling lists from clinics that may have treated wounds like the ones we believe the Wolf suffered?”

  “The records at your Ansar 3 detention camp, Pakad, are far more likely to yield us our man.”

  “I called the authorities there. They weren’t very cooperative. Claimed such mutilations never took place there, and hung up on me. My superiors have agreed to see what they can do to help, but I wouldn’t count on anything.”

  “I never do.”

  * * * *

  T

  he drive back into the West Bank passed in uneasy silence. Although cities like Ramallah and Nablus had been transferred to Palestinian control, the negotiated agreements for limited self-rule had been very vague as to the specific parameters of a complete Israeli withdrawal. And, for her part, Israel continued to insist that security for the 120 Israeli settlements still in the West Bank remain the top priority.

  Ben noted that most of the vehicles and people they passed were Israelis moving out of those settlements that had either been sacrificed to the cause of peace, or rendered impossible to defend under the new conditions. Over 130,000 Israeli settlers were estimated to be living in the West Bank, of which 5,000 were being displaced.

  “I guess they know what it feels like now,” Ben said, regretting his words instantly.

 
; Danielle’s response, though, was eerily calm. “We are used to wandering. Having a homeland is relatively new to us.”

  “And to us, as well. Not quite there yet, but we’re getting closer.”

  She looked at him suddenly. “Why did you come back?”