At around six he called Eliyahu Ma’alul in order to verify when he’d arrive, and when he said that they were delayed on their way back from the training session in Jerusalem because of an accident between two buses, Avraham no longer had any choice and went into the bedroom to conduct the first round of questioning with the daughter. She sat on the bed, and Avraham brought a chair into the room and sat across from her, very close because the room was small. The paramedic was asked to leave, but the female patrol officer, who called the daughter Orit, remained and held her hand throughout their conversation.
He began and said, “I offer my condolences,” and then he introduced himself and added, “Please tell me how this happened,” and immediately regretted his flawed phrasing, even though she understood what he meant.
“She was supposed to pick up my daughter from day care,” she said. “This is her set day because I don’t have anything planned for her in the afternoon.”
“When was she supposed she pick up your daughter?”
“Day care ends at three thirty. But she didn’t get her. She didn’t come.”
Her eyes, like the eyes of her mother, were green. The next day he realized she was only thirty-three and divorced but at the time of the interview he thought she was forty.
“How did you know she didn’t come?” Avraham asked, and she said, “They called from day care that my daughter was still there. I also called her cell and the house but she didn’t answer. I thought maybe she was stuck in the rain.”
“And when did you speak with your mother before then?”
“At around one.”
“And she didn’t say she wasn’t coming? Do you know if she was here in the apartment when you spoke?”
Orit Yeger nodded her head. And then added, “I think so.”
“Was someone with her when she spoke with you?”
“Who could have been with her?”
“I don’t know.”
“No. I don’t think anyone was.”
“And did she sound okay? Like she normally does?”
“Yes. If I thought something wasn’t okay I would have . . .”
She stopped and Avraham didn’t go on right away so that she wouldn’t burst into tears.
“So when did you come to check what happened?” he asked after a while.
“I was at day care and afterward came here because I had to go back to work and I wanted to leave my daughter here. We heard the TV from inside.”
“Do you work in the area?”
“In a clothing store in the center.”
“And where is the day care located?”
“Not very far.”
He explained to her that he was asking these questions because he was trying to figure out exactly when the body was found.
“I arrived at four fifteen. When I called the police.”
“And do you recall if the door was open or closed?”
“Closed. But I have a key.”
Now she burst into tears because in her imagination she saw the moment when the door opened. And it was actually because of this that this time Avraham didn’t wait for her to stop crying and immediately asked her, “When you opened the door, did you happen to notice if it was locked?”
She hesitated before saying to him, “I don’t remember anything. I think I turned the key.”
“And you’re certain there was no one in the apartment other than your mother?”
She collapsed onto the officer sitting next to her and didn’t answer his question. He should have just continued the investigation later, at the station, but he didn’t restrain himself and asked, “Where is your daughter now?”
She said, “She saw everything. She asked me, ‘Why is Grandma on the floor?’ but she understood. I pushed her out and shut the door, but she saw.”
The time was 7:10 p.m. and there were two television crews down below the building. And Avraham was still the only detective at the scene. All the rooms other than the living room were undisturbed and there were no signs of burglary or a search for something. Despite this he asked Orit Yeger if there was a safe in the apartment or if her mother kept large amounts of money with her, and the daughter said not that she knew of. Only her purse could not be found anywhere: not in the bedroom and not in one of the cupboards in the kitchen, where she kept it when at home. As Avraham assumed, the keys to the apartment had been taken, because they weren’t in the lock or in the bowl in the living room, next to the keys to the car. Before this, during the conversation in the bedroom, he had already written to himself on the sheet of paper: Murderer locked the door behind him? He extended the walk-through and asked her questions, some of which he had already asked earlier, only because he didn’t want to leave her alone. And suddenly he remembered that Leah Yeger had a son as well, so he asked, “You’re not an only child, correct?” and she nodded and asked him, “Has anyone informed my brother?”
Only once Ma’alul arrived, his uniform as wet as if he had walked from Jerusalem, Avraham was able to collect the neighbors’ testimonies. Most of the tenants were of no help to him because they weren’t home in the afternoon and mainly wanted to know if it was safe to remain in the building. In one of the apartments he met two young parents who were packing baby clothes and diapers into a large bag because the wife insisted that they go sleep at her mother’s. Their twins were in the apartment throughout the day with the nanny, and they gave him her phone number. In fact, only one neighbor shared any information of value with him. He lived on the second floor, under Yeger’s apartment, and said that around two, while he was resting in his bedroom, he heard a noise from the apartment above. “Something fell,” he said, “or was dragged.” There were shouts as well but he wasn’t sure who shouted because his hearing isn’t very sharp. It lasted two or three minutes, of this the neighbor was certain.
Avraham asked him, “What lasted?” and the neighbor said, “The noise. There were sounds of a struggle coming from up there.” Yeger was a quiet neighbor and she usually rested in the afternoon hours, like the neighbor himself. So he opened the door and walked up half a flight of stairs, only then it got quiet and he decided not to knock on the door. But his afternoon nap had already been disturbed, so he didn’t go back to bed, and a few minutes later he heard footsteps and through the peephole saw a policeman going down the stairs. He thought that someone had called him because of the noise and that the policeman had checked into the matter, so he didn’t call the police himself.
While gathering testimony from the neighbor there was a call from Benny Saban, the district commander, and Avraham apologized to the old man and went to speak with him outside. Saban, too, was in the training session at the national headquarters and was supposed to drop by the crime scene on his way back, but his wife had bought theater tickets and the heavy traffic forced him to continue straight home. He asked Avraham, “So what do you have to tell me?”
And Avraham said, “Not a thing for now.”
“But what does it look like? Domestic violence? A burglary?”
Apparently it wasn’t a matter of domestic violence because Yeger was a widow, and according to her daughter, she didn’t have ties to any other men. And was there any chance that this was a break-in gone bad, in the middle of the day, when all that was taken from the apartment was a purse and maybe a set of keys, and in the rest of the rooms perfect order prevailed?
“In short, Avi, do we need to involve Central Unit or should the investigation remain with us?”
That was the first time he told anyone. He had to report it to Saban, and this also was a reason to keep the case in the district and not to drag it over to the central investigation unit. He said to Saban, “The case has to stay with us because she’s one of our rape victims,” and Saban either didn’t understand or didn’t hear.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“The woman who was murdered here. Her name is Yeger. She had already been assaulted in the past. And we dealt with the case.”
For
a moment there was silence on the phone.
“You said she was raped?”
“Yes.”
“And we caught the rapist?”
The rapist was arrested on the day that Yeger filed her complaint, and had already been charged and convicted.
“And now it was a rape again? Who did it to her now?”
Did Saban think that the case had already been solved?
“I don’t know,” Avraham said, “but according to the findings at the scene I don’t think she was sexually assaulted this time. We found her dressed. But we’ll wait for the examination and see.”
Before hanging up, Avraham told Saban that apparently there had been a policeman in the building a short time after the murder, but Saban only asked if it was nevertheless worth it for him to come to the scene and Avraham told him that they’d manage. He immediately returned to the neighbor’s apartment.
On his sheet of paper, which was becoming more and more filled up with short sentences in his rounded, childish handwriting, he had written, Aharon Pranji, neighbor from the apartment below: heard a noise around 2:00 p.m., something falling or furniture being dragged, sounds of a struggle. A long blue line connected the last sentence to the word struggle that appeared at the top of the paper, in the things he had listed earlier from the mouth of the paramedic. Under the last sentence he wrote: Was a policeman there minutes after the murder?
“Explain this point to me one more time please,” Avraham said. “A few minutes after you heard the noises, even though you didn’t call the police, you saw a policeman in the stairwell?”
“Yes. Like I told you. Ten or fifteen minutes after.”
“Do you know if someone called and requested the police?”
In the questioning he conducted so far no neighbor said that he called the police.
“That’s what I assumed. That someone else called the police. And that the policeman checked and saw that everything was okay. That’s why I didn’t call.”
“The man who went down the stairs was wearing a uniform, you’re sure of this?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s not someone who lives in the building?”
“No policeman lives here. I’ve lived here forty-five years now.”
“Do you remember if any other people came down the stairs before or after him?”
The neighbor couldn’t know this. He hadn’t looked through the peephole the entire time. He also admitted that he fell asleep a bit afterward and woke up when he heard Leah Yeger’s daughter screaming. But he did watch the policeman through a window when he left the building and saw that the policeman did not get into a car.
In the kitchen where they sat there was a smell of cooked chicken. Pranji offered him warm tea and Avraham declined, but then he suddenly felt thirsty and asked for a glass of water. The last line that he wrote before leaving was: A policeman on foot didn’t get into a car. Need to clarify: maybe he left the other apartment on the top floor?
Like always, Avraham was relieved by Ma’alul’s presence. He returned to the scene and told Ma’alul that Saban called and that he wouldn’t be coming tonight and Eliyahu looked at him with his deep-set eyes, which reminded Avraham of his father’s eyes, and smiled. He asked Avraham if there was anything new in the neighbors’ testimonies and Avraham said, “We might know the time of the murder. The neighbor from the apartment below says that he heard sounds of a struggle from here around two. And it’s also possible that there was an earlier call to the police. Before the daughter arrived. The neighbor saw a policeman coming down the stairs a few minutes after two.”
Without saying so explicitly, both of them considered the same disastrous possibility at that moment: was a patrolman sent to the building at the request of the police, who then politely knocked on Yeger’s door, and when he didn’t get a response simply left? Of course there was another possibility as well, but for now they didn’t even want to think about it. “That policeman needs to be found,” Ma’alul said. “I’ll find out who it was with the police and at the station. And you should go home now. You’re by yourself here for a few hours now, aren’t you?”
Did something in Avraham’s eyes give away how he felt? He reached for his pocket but there were no cigarettes there.
When Ma’alul asked him, “Was the body here when you had arrived?” he just nodded and saw again the open green eye and was filled with regret for not touching Yeger’s forehead when he entered the apartment, as if he had done things differently she would still be alive. He tried avoiding Ma’alul’s gaze and asked him where her daughter was, and Ma’alul told him that she left.
“Alone? Without an escort?”
“What escort, Avi? Her ex-husband came to take her and I okayed it. There’s no reason for her to be here, right?”
Her brother, on the other hand, had been informed of his mother’s death and was on his way to the scene. Avraham wanted to wait for him but Ma’alul told him, “Get out of here already. Everything will be all right. He lives in the north and won’t be here for an hour. I’ll speak with him. And you’ll rest. In any case there’s nothing else to do here, and tomorrow you have a long day ahead of you.”
This was true, but all the same Avraham lingered at the scene for a few minutes, as if he were having difficulty saying good-bye or feared that if he left he’d miss something that he wouldn’t be able to see again. But that evening he didn’t discover anything there that he had failed to discover at first glance. In the other apartment on that floor a sixteen-year-old boy, wearing a red sweatshirt, opened the door for him. His parents weren’t home but neither of them was a policeman, and it wasn’t possible that a policeman had paid them a visit that afternoon because his parents were at work and he was at school. And only when Shrapstein arrived did Avraham call him and Ma’alul to the kitchen, tell the two of them that Yeger had previously been a rape victim, and see Ma’alul’s dark face turn pale. Like Saban, Ma’alul asked if the rapist had been caught and Avraham said that he had and that he was still serving his time in prison. Then he asked them to come to an early staff meeting the following morning and when he got into his car he realized he forgot his coat at the scene.
He didn’t turn on the car and sat in it without doing a thing. The street was empty, even though the wind had died down and the rain now fell in a light drizzle. Ma’alul called to ask if the blue army coat at the scene was his and then promised to take it with him and bring it back to Avraham the next day.
Suddenly it was clear to him that he was not watching himself on a television show but rather was in the city where he was born and had lived almost his entire life, on Krause Street, below a building whose number was 38 and on whose third floor a woman he knew had been murdered. At the beginning of his first murder case.
When he entered the station to pick up copies of the documents from Yeger’s rape case he asked David Ezra, the desk sergeant, if the policeman called to 38 Krause Street that afternoon had been located. Ezra told him, “Not yet, Avi. Not yet. Eliyahu asked me to check and I’m trying to figure it out for you, but c’mon, give me some time. Do you know what went on here today with this storm?”
Avraham rushed to place the folder in their study without Marianka seeing it, but on the way from the station he still managed to glance at them.
Leah Yeger was raped in 2012. The detective who received her complaint, escorted her to room 4 at Wolfson Medical Center, and dealt with the case was Esty Vahaba. This was an easy case because Yeger knew the rapist and turned to the police a few hours after she was assaulted. He was charged and sentenced to only four and half years in prison, due to his age and other mitigating circumstances, but he couldn’t have harmed her today because he was still serving his sentence in prison.
Someone else killed Leah Yeger. Someone else violently attacked her and then took her purse and the keys to her apartment and locked the door behind him.
Had he surprised her when he knocked on the door of her apartment or did she know he was
coming and was waiting for him? And was he still in the apartment when the policeman—Avraham hadn’t thought about this possibility before now and it alarmed him. He didn’t say a word to Marianka about the rape when she asked him to tell her what happened. Only that a sixty-year-old woman was found dead in her home.
“Her husband did it?” she asked, and he shook his head.
“Her husband’s dead.”
“So you don’t know who killed her?”
“No.”
“And you’re in charge of the case?”
“Yes.”
“How are you feeling?”
He felt terrible.
The morning they spent together first in bed and afterward at the seashore was far off now, as if it had happened months ago. He took off his clothes and put on sweatpants and a T-shirt and got into bed without eating dinner or even watching the reports about the murder on the late-night news. Marianka lay next to him, in the dark, but fell asleep long after him. Of all the things he saw at the scene, it was the colorful birds that wouldn’t let go of him.
“Do you have a lead?” Marianka asked him before he fell asleep, and for some reason Avraham immediately said, “Yes,” without knowing what lead he was referring to.
3
The second sign was given to Mali the next day in a phone call with Harry, but she didn’t understand this one as she should have, either. She was hurt by Kobi ignoring her on their anniversary and especially by the fact that he let her sleep alone for the first time, and of all days on the one when she had felt the fear of the heavy hand.
When Harry called she was waiting for Gila in a café. A man with glasses who wore a white sweater and a scarf sat two tables away from her and looked at her over a newspaper. She was sure that it was Kobi calling when she searched for her phone in the pocket of her coat that rested on the seat opposite her, because ever since she left the house she had been waiting for a call from him. An international number appeared on the screen, and she knew immediately that it was Harry, and debated whether to answer him. She feared that with him of all people she wouldn’t be able to control herself and that the anger would erupt.
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything Page 3