Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel

by Michal Hartstein

  In my case, the fact that I studied in the same class with boys didn't have any effect on the fact that I eventually went astray. When I was a student in high school, my only friends were girls. We were a group of five girls: Dganit, Tamar, Anat, Inbal and myself. We separated ourselves socially, especially from the boys' class.

  While all the others from our grade met every Friday night on the street corner across from the local Bnei Akivah chapter, flirting and hanging out, we met at one of our houses to fantasize about the day we would also have the courage to sit on the street corner with all the cool boys and girls. Don't get me wrong, the meetings on the street across from Bnei Akivah were not especially glamorous affairs. Not dance parties full of alcohol and cigarette smoke like secular youth, just a get-together of all the guys and girls. Everyone was dressed in accordance with the Bnei Akivah dress code: boys in tailored pants and a white shirt and the girls in skirts no higher than the knee and long sleeved blouses.

  Not really Sodom and Gomorrah. The most risqué it could get was if someone invited a girl for a walk around the nearby synagogue, which led to many speculations, the most extreme of which was that they kissed. This was more or less the farthest we dared to go.

  The fact that we avoided social contact with our male classmates didn't stem from religious modesty, but from chronic shyness. We very much wanted to talk to them, but we couldn't. Almost every Friday, we would plan to go to the street corner and we almost always ended up in one of the girls' houses. On the few occasions we reached the street corner, we understood why we never came. No one took the slightest notice of us. Nothing was done maliciously. Everyone always greeted us nicely and even chatted with us a bit about the recent history exam or the latest gossip about the civics teacher, but after a few minutes of polite chit chat, we were left alone on the street corner.

  The couch at home was much more comfortable. There, we could also talk freely, that is, gossip about all of the grade hotshots. At some stage we were dubbed "The Convent". I think I invented that nickname, but I might be mistaken.

  Once we finished high school, we parted ways; although, we still tried to meet up on Fridays. This became more difficult with time. Dganit and I went to the army, while Tamar, Inbal and Anat did civil service.

  The first one who officially left the convent was Anat. During her civil service she met Motti, and by the age of twenty she was a married woman. I was happy for my friend, but there was also a little pinch in my heart. I knew the age of The Convent was over.

  Hanni Levin, on the other hand, spent almost every Friday night at the street corner and was always surrounded by boys. She was a true beauty. None of The Convent girls were ugly—we were all fairly normal girls, nice looking, even pretty—but no one was as beautiful as Hanni. The word about her spread as far as the Malabes branch. In fact, we all called her "Pretty Hanni". Not that there was an ugly Hanni, but that is just what she was distinguished by.

  Hanni had blonde hair—naturally blonde hair (in religious society, teenagers don't normally dye their hair)—and huge blue eyes. Although it was not acceptable for us to wear revealing clothing, Hanni knew how to show off an amazing sculpted body within the appropriate boundaries. Years after we finished high school, I ran into her at the grocery store. She was with her son, who was rather small then, and she was much less beautiful than I remembered. Everything was still in place: the hair, the eyes, even the body, but there was something a bit more fatigued about her.

  In the store, as in all of the years we studied together, Hanni made a point of ignoring me. I looked at her passing through the aisles of fruit and vegetables, occasionally scolding her little boy who was running all around the shop. There were moments when our eyes almost met, but she kept from looking in my direction. I had a feeling this was not accidental. In high school, the little attention I did receive from the cool kids came from the fact that I was a very good student and someone always needed some favor from me.

  Hanni didn't need me. She was an excellent student in her own right. Actually, she was younger than all of us because she skipped the first grade. I think she was just jealous of me. She was good, but I was a little bit better than she was and didn't fuss over my grades too much. The few times she gave me any notice was after math tests. She always compared her score with mine, which were usually the same.

  In our math midterm in the 12th grade, I finished first (as I usually did) and was waiting outside for Tamar, who studied for five study units along with me. A few more students came out after me and about five minutes before the test ended, Hanni came out as well. As usual, she approached me to compare results. All of our answers were the same except for one main, very complicated question which was worth fifteen points. Hanni was alarmed and rushed to compare her answer with the others that had come out of the class by then. Most of the students got an answer similar to hers. No one got mine.

  "Don't worry," she said, with a smile she couldn't hide, "Eighty-five’s also a good score." She tried to console me.

  A week later, we came to school for a physics lesson that would prepare us for the final test. To our surprise, the math tests were already checked and ready to be returned to us. I was the only one who scored 100. Hanni got ninety (the teacher gave her five points out of fifteen for the question that all of the grade failed to answer, apart from me). I will never forget the cold, hard glare she gave me, as if I stole ten points from her. As if I was guilty for the fact that only I managed to answer the question correctly.

  The other students got grades ranging from thirty to eighty-five. Hanni wouldn't accept the respectable second place; she went to school management and demanded they cancel the “faulty” question.

  "It’s impossible that only one student could solve it, apparently by chance," she lectured. In the end, everyone was awarded an extra 5 points (except for me because I couldn’t score over 100) and the teacher agreed to give her a 100 as her final grade.

  I hadn't seen her since we graduated from high school (apart from that time at the grocery store). She did a year of service while I, as an officer, served in the army for almost four years. Occasionally, when I met with my Convent friends, we would talk about her, just as we talked about the rest of our classmates. That was how I learned that right after her year of service she started law school at Bar-Ilan University. There, she also excelled and made sure that her successes were well publicized (the news of them reached me, so there you go).

  At the age of twenty-three, after four years in the army and a year of travelling in South America and the United States, I began law school at Tel-Aviv University. Hanni was already at the height of her internship.

  Now, Hanni was lying still on the bed. The bullet hole disfigured her forehead and her light hair was dipped in the blood that flowed from her skull. Although we weren't friends, it was painful for me to see her like this. I recalled her smiling, confident and exuberant image, and my heart cringed.

  I knew she had married a guy named Meir, who was one of the more sought after bachelors (with a winning combination of good looks and a wealthy family) in Petach Tikva. What brought this Meir, who was now lying lifeless on the leather couch in their living room, to shoot his wife and three kids and then take his own life? Or maybe our presumption was wrong. Maybe the killer was on the loose?

  Who put an end to this family ideal?

  A killer outside the family was an interesting, and even possible theory—maybe even a professional? Someone who was able to do a job like this quietly and leave the apartment with no uncovered tracks?

  But why would a professional do something like this? What could the Danilowitz family have done to anyone?

  The gun that was probably used to commit the murder was found in the living room near Meir's body, which was why he was the main suspect, but Ariel's body was also found not far from the weapon. Maybe Ariel found her daddy's gun and thought it was a toy? It's a bizarre scenario, but not something completely detached from reality that hasn't happened bef
ore.

  Chapter 3

  That same day, I crossed little Ariel off the list of potential suspects because the bullet that killed him entered his body from his back. The thought that this infant child probably tried to save his life and ran horrified me. How could someone shoot a child in the back?

  There were no signs of forced entry. The door was, as we already knew, locked from inside, and the apartment's windows were shut tightly and securely. The balcony that was used as a laundry room was the only place where a potential intruder could have escaped from the scene, but no footprints were found to indicate someone had come in or out of the laundry room. The only prints found on the gun were Meir's, and there was gunpowder residue on his hands. Solid evidence, but the kind that is possible to fake.

  Seemingly, there was no other option besides Meir, the father. According to the analysis of the scene, we estimated that Meir first shot his wife while she slept. Then he shot baby Noa; they were both killed in their sleep, so we assumed they were the first killed. Seven-year-old Ariel tried to escape and was shot in the back, and the body of five-year-old Galit was found shot dead at the foot of her bed. Apparently, she woke up, but the shooter caught her seconds after she left her bed. The body of Meir, the father, was found on the sofa. Meir was shot in the head at point blank range. The gun was lying on the floor and I assumed that, in the case that Meir had killed himself, the gun's thrust cause it to fly from his hand.

  The apartment was locked from the inside. There were no signs of forced entry. There were no visible signs on Meir to suggest a struggle with a potential killer. This was not the first time, and, unfortunately, wouldn’t be the last, that a family member committed such a horrifying act, but in spite of all the evidence, the thought of a father doing something like this was hard to stomach. Within me, I hoped that we would find an external killer (although, I knew the chances of that were nonexistent), not that this would reduce the severity of the event, but it would remove the horrible thought that a father could do this to his own children.

  Alon swore to me that he’d had no idea I knew Hanni from high school. "A chilling coincidence," was how he said it. Because I was never close with Hanni, I saw no reason to disqualify myself from the investigation. Alon thought so as well.

  We decided not to ignore the option of a killer who escaped from the scene. Despite the miniscule chance of this, we assumed that if this was an escaped murderer, it had to be a skilled professional. Meir left no suicide note or explanation for this insane act, so we took the family's computer to be examined. We hoped to find a lead that would shed some light and maybe clarify the reasoning for this. Maybe we would find a motive for another killer?

  A little before noon, we received word that Hanni’s and Meir's parents had been notified. Hanni's mother wanted to come to the scene, but her husband and the police officers finally convinced her to relinquish the unbearable experience. Immediately after the families had been updated about the scale of this horror, we issued a press release. Alon wanted my inauguration to be complete, so I had to deal with the news reporters. I went down to the street, where the broadcast vans of all of the Israeli news channels and two or three foreign press vans now stood.

  I can imagine that some cops enjoy the limelight, especially those with flawless complexions or a blessed lack of personal awareness. I, unfortunately, was not blessed with either of these characteristics, nor with a personal makeup artist. I stood before the herd of vultures, praying that the cameras weren't seeing the new pimple that had sprouted on my chin or the dark circles that this week had sprouted under my eyes.

  Again and again, I had to describe the gruesome scene, while attempting to be as gentle as possible. Apart from describing the bare facts (five family members dead) I added no detail. Of course, this didn't appease their insatiable hunger. I heard a barrage of questions, some relevant, most not: "When was the murder committed?" "How was it no one heard anything?" "Was this done by a professional hit man?" "A serial killer?" "Are the rumors about involvement with the mob true?"

  I never understood why reporters ask questions, knowing they weren't going to receive an answer. They may be doing this only to get their question heard. The fact that the question was asked was enough to generate a headline with an array of speculations, provocations, conspiracies and assumptions surrounding it.

  When I got back to the office, I went over the details of the investigation again and again. It's a little hard to admit, but the longer you stare at them, the easier it is to see the gruesome images.

  A short while after sitting down in my dark, little office, Amos from the computer lab called me. "Almost all of the data has been erased from the computer,” he said, "including the internet search history."

  "Can anything be restored?"

  "Of course it can be restored," he chuckled. Amos was a computing genius who turned down dozens of lucrative job offers from dozens of high-tech companies, preferring to work for next to nothing in the police. "It's just a question of time and a bit of luck," he explained.

  "Take your time."

  The fact that somebody went through the trouble of deleting all data from the computer showed meticulous planning. This was not a spontaneous murder. There was no insane act, but a calculated, cold-blooded murder. Someone tried to hide something before killing them all.

  I was exhausted. I knew there was a lot of work ahead of me in the next few days, so I decided to go home earlier than is expected on the first day of an investigation (about seven o’ clock in the evening).

  I stopped at Alon's office before I left.

  "Leaving already?"

  "I have to get a bit of rest; I don't have too much information to work with anyway."

  "It's not every day you see a scene like that," Alon nodded with understanding."

  "I need a key to the scene," I said. A police locksmith changed the locks of the apartment which was now a crime scene. Alon handed me a key.

  "The entry code downstairs is #2795."

  "I'm going to go over there tomorrow morning."

  "Do you want me to send someone there?"

  "If I need anyone I'll contact you."

  "No problem, I should be in the office all day tomorrow. If not, you can call my cell."

  When I got home, I was too tired to cook anything for myself.

  When we were married, Yinon would sometimes surprise me and cook me a pampering dinner, especially when I was working at Lipkin, Danieli and Co., the law firm, and had just come home from a non-stop working marathon.

  Now, divorced and alone, I settled for a microwave pizza and half a carton of ice cream. Shira, my sister, was always appalled by my eating habits, even more so by the fact that I never gained an ounce.

  The images from the scene kept running through my brain. I couldn't fall asleep. I took the best sleeping pill I could think of: I watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off for the 534th time (more or less), the well-known and beloved movie became a cult favorite of Yinon’s and mine. Yinon and I had what you might call “cultural perversions,” like listening religiously to Professor Karasso's shows on the radio on Friday afternoons, thus lowering the average age of his listeners to about sixty-five.

  We never missed a public screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (always making sure to come equipped with newspapers, rice and candles) and our favorite movies were the teen movies of the eighties: Can't Buy Me Love, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and, most of all, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a movie that always made us laugh and relaxed us, even though we knew all the lines by heart. The movie quickly succeeded in helping me forget my rough day and before Ferris Bueller got back home from a day of pure pleasure, I’d sunk into a deep sleep.

  Tuesday, 5.19.2009

  The following day at the Danilowitz household, I was already better prepared to face the horror. Although, the bodies had been transferred the day before to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute to be autopsied, the blood stains and the marks made by the forensic
team that remained in the apartment were terrible scars of the horrendous crime that had taken place there. Alon updated me that the funerals of the wife and children were taking place that day at the Yarkon Cemetery at four o’ clock. Meir's parents, who understood the delicate situation, announced that they would not be coming to the funeral of their grandchildren and daughter-in-law.

  I began surveying the apartment. One of the things that caught my attention was the fact that the apartment seemed very neat and organized, as if Hanni knew someone was coming to visit. I may be a bit overly sensitive to this because my house is always in chaos, and when someone comes over, I simply shove everything in a senseless jumble into all of the closets and cupboards and create the illusion of a perfectly organized apartment. Despite the shocking crime which took place there, everything was surprisingly in its place.

  I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. The kitchen was carefully decorated and trendy. White cupboards, red countertop, a silver table with red chairs to match. The houseware was lined up in the cupboards like an Ikea showroom. I opened the fridge, which was stocked full of plastic containers filled with cooked vegetables, rice and chicken left over from Shabbat, fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products and yogurts. It was Tuesday. For the Danilowitz family, time stopped on Monday morning, this was a Sunday fridge, after a Shabbat full of meals.

  I moved on to the living room. The marks where little Ariel's body had lain on the floor, and Meir's body on the sofa, sullied the stylish décor. Light leather couches, a heavy wooden table and a sideboard to match. A large LCD television and trendy spot lighting. A standard Israeli living room. The complete opposite of my living room, which consists of two worn-out sofas (a result of failing to educate the dog, who wreaked havoc on them), a glass-top table that I’d purchased for an exaggerated price on Herzl Street in Tel-Aviv (I was positive that I finally acquired some taste until my mother and sister saw it and nearly cried laughing) and a 32-inch television, not a flat screen.