The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything

by D. A. Mishani

  She hadn’t intended on returning home before work or trying to speak with Kobi, but after the conversation with Harry she couldn’t do otherwise. She shortened the meeting with Gila as much as she could without Gila noticing that something had happened, and even while Gila spoke she thought only about what Harry had said. And she couldn’t say anything to her about the pregnancy, either.

  She had nothing to be ashamed of, but nevertheless she suddenly filled up with shame over their lives and over what she would say about them to her sister if she dared to reveal anything. She just wanted to return home and ask Kobi if he really intended to leave her alone with the girls and travel to Australia, and she wanted to hit him, if she were able, or to sit him down across from her and not let him go anywhere until he told her what had come over him. She knew he wouldn’t call, since she was always the one forced to appease him, since Kobi simply didn’t know how to stop fighting. This was his problem at the places he worked as well. Small sources of tension, which other people knew to undo or ignore, Kobi turned into bitter wars. And if it seemed to him that someone hurt him, he was unable to forgive them.

  Gila placed a new bag on the table, and before even ordering coffee told her about the man who kept her from sleeping last night. He was six years younger, a lawyer, and they met when she showed him an apartment in a new luxury project in Tel Aviv, by the sea. Afterward she asked Mali, like always, as if intending to anger her, “How are you all with money? Has he already found work?” And when Mali answered not yet, Gila said, “Can you tell me what he’s waiting for?”

  These sentences didn’t actually distance her from Kobi but rather brought them closer together. Maybe because despite everything she understood what had come over him and how humiliating the interviews were for him and how much scorn he had to absorb, and she also knew that she had a part in this. When she told Gila she had to run, she already wanted to go home not only so she could ask him about Australia but also so she could hug him without saying a word and tell him about the nausea and about the fact that the fear was returning and that yesterday, before she fell asleep, she felt the heavy hand that comes from the darkness, but when she got home all that was forgotten.

  The door again wasn’t locked.

  Kobi stood in the living room among clothes and objects that he had removed from the cabinet and the closet by the entrance. The doors to the girls’ rooms, which she had arranged that morning, were open, and there, too, she saw toys thrown about and clothes and books on the beds and on the floor. And his look scared her, just like the previous night, when he had turned around to face her. Harry came out from the bedroom and looked at her and then came up to her with slow steps and lay down on the floor. Kobi said quietly, “I can’t find the umbrella. Do you know where it is?”

  He wore the black polo shirt he had worn the day before, and his hands shook. “It’s there, under the sofa,” she said to him. “You left it there after I gave it to you yesterday. And are you going to straighten up this whole mess?” Kobi looked in the direction she pointed and said, “Not that. The old umbrella.”

  She looked at him in fear, without understanding. He moved the cupboard in the living room and the armchairs from their places and rolled up the rug. The stool was overturned and far from its place near the television, as if he had sent it flying with a kick. “You said that you lost it and that you don’t remember where, no?” She tried to control her voice. “That’s why I bought you a new umbrella.”

  And anyway the rain had already stopped.

  Kobi’s eyes continued to search for the umbrella as he mumbled, as if to himself, “I don’t remember where I forgot it. You sure you didn’t see it anywhere?” She stood there another moment and then went down in the elevator and got in the car and did not try to stop the crying, and even if she had tried to stop it, she wouldn’t have succeeded.

  4

  His sleep was short but when Avraham woke up at five fifteen he was ready. The shock that seized him for a moment at the crime scene at the sight of the body had disappeared, and its place had been taken by a desire to be at the station working. His cell phone hadn’t received any new messages, but he nevertheless hoped that when he arrived at his office, findings from the forensics lab would be waiting for him, perhaps because of a dream that he dreamed at night, in which Ilana Lis informed him over the phone that the fingerprints the murderer left on the plate in the kitchen had been identified—and then the call was disconnected before she told Avraham his name.

  Marianka got up with him, even though she didn’t have to. While they ate breakfast Avraham studied the newspapers and the lines passed sadly before his eyes as he expected: “Body of Sixty-Year-Old Woman Found in Holon,” “Yeger murdered in her home,” and, of course, “police still don’t have any leads.” Leah Yeger’s murder joined four acts of murder that had taken place since the start of winter and still hadn’t been solved, and a wave of investigations that had been opened against senior members of the police, all under suspicion of sexually harassing female officers. The joke at the station was that the only thing less pleasant these days than being a female cop in the Israeli police was being a male one. In all the papers Yeger’s face could be seen in the passport photo provided by the family, while only at him did a different face peer out, one beaten and lifeless.

  Avraham prepared rolls with cream cheese and thin slices of tomatoes and made black coffee for the two of them. When Marianka asked him what was written in the paper, he spun them around to her on the table as if she could read them. While drinking the first cup of coffee the need for a cigarette was still intense, and he took another roll for himself instead. In recent weeks he had gained ten pounds, not because he’d quit smoking but rather due to the fact that since Marianka arrived he ate two dinners each evening—the one they ate together and the one he ate alone after that, when he snuck into the kitchen without her seeing. Afterward they sat at the table for a few more minutes in uncharacteristic silence, as if the silence had crawled to their apartment from the scene where the body was found.

  The meeting of the special investigation team that had been scheduled for that morning began at seven thirty exactly, and this was the only thing on the first day of the investigation that happened as planned and as he had hoped. Avraham arrived early and thought Ma’alul would be late like always, but Eliyahu entered the conference room first, his dark bald head and the hair around his temples wet as if he were coming out of the shower. Other than them, Commander Eyal Shrapstein, Investigations Coordinator Lital Levy, and Sergeant Esty Vahaba, who was in charge of Leah Yeger’s rape case and who was being temporarily added to the team, participated in the meeting. District Commander Benny Saban was supposed to arrive at some point but had been detained at Tel Aviv district headquarters.

  When the members of the team entered the room, Avraham tried to forget that this was the first time he was running a special investigation team meeting about a murder case. In the past he had taken part in investigations opened for deaths occurring in unnatural circumstances, but Ilana Lis usually stood at the head of them. She, too, would always arrive early and wait in the conference room for everyone. Like him, she sat at the head of the table back then, rectangular glasses resting on the end of her nose and her eyes on the pages spread out before her. Waiting patiently for everyone to get coffee for themselves and grab their seats. During those same briefings, Avraham sat in the spot where Eliyahu Ma’alul was now sitting. Always with a blue pen in hand and an open notebook. Waiting for Ilana to begin speaking. But Ilana was now on sick leave, in and out of cancer treatments at the hospital, and Avraham was by himself, commander of the Investigations and Intelligence Units, and the responsibility fell on his shoulders only.

  “As you know,” he opened the meeting, “yesterday, at four fifteen, the body of Leah Yeger, resident of Holon, sixty years old, was found at 38 Krause Street. She was found by her daughter. At present we don’t know much about what happened to her, but I hope that this will change
when findings from the forensics lab arrive. I want us to visit her apartment again, with one of her family members, or with a few of them, but at present it appears that only a set of keys and a handbag were taken from the victim. They were not found anywhere at the scene. On the other hand, there are no signs of a break-in and her car wasn’t stolen; the keys were discovered in plain sight at the scene. We have no eyewitnesses to the murder, but it appears we have a witness who heard, a neighbor who lives on the second floor. Around two the witness heard sounds of a struggle from the apartment above him, and his testimony correlates with the time of death as determined by the paramedic. The testimony also matches the autopsy, according to which Leah Yeger was murdered after a struggle, by strangulation, after being struck on her head. And as I said, there’s a high likelihood that we’ll have good DNA findings and it appears we will be receiving them today. According to a conversation I had this morning with the lab, there are findings from under the nails and between the fingers of the victim that can be used to produce DNA of the person with whom she struggled. In any event, the state of the scene and the circumstances of death indicate an unplanned murder, perhaps the result of an argument that deteriorated into violence. An additional detail, which I ask you to keep secret even within the station, so that it doesn’t accidently leak out, is that Leah Yeger was victim of a rape we investigated. In the meantime we have a gag order on this. Yesterday she was not sexually assaulted.”

  He looked at Esty Vahaba when he said these things. She dealt with the rape investigation, and Avraham’s glance explained her presence in the room. When she sat next to Ma’alul she looked to Avraham like his daughter, and perhaps therefore he felt an immediate closeness to her, as if they were siblings. Like he and Eliyahu, Vahaba was short and her eyes were dark and very serious. Her facial expression nearly didn’t change even when Avraham turned to her, and if being there disconcerted her, she hid this well. The only thing Avraham knew about her was that she wasn’t married, that she lived with her parents and supported them, and that the two of them were deaf.

  Avraham paused for a moment when he lifted his head from the papers and examined the faces of those present in the room, as Ilana always did. Shrapstein wasn’t listening to him, or so it seemed. His eyes were stuck on his cell phone. The day before as well, when Shrapstein arrived at the scene before evening, he did everything he could to avoid a conversation with Avraham and spoke to Ma’alul most of the time. Avraham saw him for a moment before he went home, walking around with his hands in his pockets and examining the window and door hinges, as if he were debating whether to buy the apartment. It was clear to everyone that Shrapstein had not gotten over Benny Saban’s decision to appoint Avraham and not him commander of the Investigations and Intelligence Units. A short time after the appointment he requested a transfer to the Fraud Investigation Unit or some other national unit, but in the meantime he was being forced to continue working in full cooperation with Avraham. It was impossible, however, to force him to hide his resentment.

  “During this initial stage of our investigation,” Avraham continued, “and until findings from the lab are received, and if we are lucky and they point to the identity of the attacker, I think we have at least two scenarios that we need to develop. The first is a break-in gone bad, or in any case, a random act of violence. The second is a connection between the murder and the rape.”

  Ma’alul interrupted his speech and said, “Avi, I would like to say something in this context. May I?”

  Avraham signaled with his hand that he could speak. Shrapstein continued looking at his cell phone.

  “Last night,” said Ma’alul, “after you left the scene, Yeger’s son arrived. I questioned him on the spot, and he conveyed to me information that seems to me to be of some importance. According to his testimony, and Esty can elaborate on this in a moment, the family members of the person convicted in her rape have not come to terms with the results of the trial. They harassed the victim before the trial and demanded that she drop the charge, and after the conviction the situation worsened and they threatened that they would harm her in revenge. Following the reading of the verdict there was even a skirmish between the families in the court parking lot.”

  Avraham looked at him dumbfounded, and Eliyahu identified the question in his eyes and smiled as he added, “Wait, wait, Avi, that’s not the end. And I didn’t update you because it was late and I assumed you were sleeping. The man who was convicted is called David Danon, and his son who threatened the victim is called Ami. He’s the owner of a construction company and resides in Rishon. I contacted him immediately and he denied that they threatened Yeger, but it was clear they had an account to settle with her; I have no doubt about this. He claims there was no rape and that the sexual relations between Yeger and his father were consensual. From his perspective, his father shouldn’t be sitting in jail for even a day. In any case, he has an alibi for yesterday, and the alibi has been checked and confirmed. He was in a business meeting with clients. He’s willing to take a polygraph and will be arriving at the station this afternoon.”

  Most of the details about Leah Yeger’s rape that Esty Vahaba later delivered were known to Avraham from reading copies of the documents he took home the previous night, and he tried to listen to her and not think about the betrayal of Ma’alul, who for a few hours hid from him a possible direction for the investigation.

  David Danon, who was convicted of the rape, was Leah Yeger’s husband’s business partner. They jointly owned a taxi and operated it themselves or through hired drivers. After Yeger’s husband died of a heart attack, Danon asked to purchase her piece of the partnership, but Yeger refused because this was her main source of income. A few months after she became a widow, they met in her apartment in order to talk about the business, and it was then that she was assaulted. She filed a complaint that same night and was taken for medical tests at Wolfson Medical Center, and the findings were unambiguous. Despite this, Danon argued that the sexual relations were consensual and that this wasn’t the first time they had had sex. According to his argument, there was a romantic connection between them that began when Yeger’s husband was still alive. He was arrested that same night and brought before a judge the next day. The case was relatively simple, and Danon was convicted, primarily on the basis of the medical test and Yeger’s testimony, and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. His family, as Ma’alul had said, refused to accept the conviction. Vahaba said that they even hired a private investigation company in order to gather incriminating evidence about Yeger.

  Avraham’s gaze passed from Ma’alul’s face to Leah Yeger’s face in the picture that he asked Lital Levy to hang on the board, next to the photographs from the scene. A picture that was taken when she was still alive. He didn’t participate in the rape investigation, but he did meet Yeger at the station and was familiar with the incident from discussions at division meetings, and he wondered if the picture was taken before the rape or after. Yeger looked directly at the camera, and her facial expression in the photograph was serious, with a shadow of a smile. The facial expression of someone who grew up in the days when photographs were something you prepared yourself for, he thought. When she was photographed was her husband still alive? Did everything start to go wrong the moment he died? First her husband’s heart attack and a short time after that she’s assaulted by his partner. And accused by the rapist of having consensual intercourse with him before her husband died. And now the murder. Yeger herself apparently opened the door for a person she knew, and was then attacked and strangled. And if her husband were still alive, none of this would have happened. David Danon wouldn’t have dared to attack her, and the man who entered her apartment yesterday perhaps wouldn’t have found her alone. But what are the chances that she would have set up a meeting with or opened the door for one of Danon’s family members?

  Vahaba’s diction was quiet and matter-of-fact, and when she finished reviewing the rape file Avraham said to her, “Thank you
, Esty. You’ll work on this angle with Eliyahu. Call the rapist’s family members in for questioning as well as the private investigators who they hired. And if there’s DNA from the scene today we’ll be able to know easily if it belongs to a relative of his, without even asking for samples from them, because his DNA is in the database, right? Other than that, order her call log from at least the last month and check if she received any calls from them, okay?”

  He asked Shrapstein to receive Leah Yeger’s son and daughter and gather additional testimony from them, and at the same time work on the hypothesis that she was murdered during a break-in or burglary. He faced everyone but referred mainly to Shrapstein when he said, “I don’t know if you noticed, but renovations are under way in two buildings on the street. This means that there are workers in the area and this must be checked as well. Check who the workers are and if they have criminal or terroristic backgrounds and if someone from among them has been absent since yesterday. Other than this, we have to find her handbag. And before you leave, go over the pictures from the scene, okay? Perhaps you’ll see something you didn’t see before.”

  This was an investigation procedure that he’d learned from Ilana Lis, and it seemed to him that only Shrapstein noticed it. To examine photographs from the scene a day or two later with fresh eyes. To present them to police who aren’t participating in the investigation and hadn’t before looked at the scene. Maybe someone will notice a detail that no one saw before. Shrapstein and Lital Levy got up to leave when Avraham said, “Just one more word,” and Lital Levy sat back down in her seat. “We received testimony that we haven’t managed to verify so far regarding a police officer who was in the building a short time after the murder,” he added. “We’re making sure that the testimony is correct, and if so, who the officer is and if he arrived at the building as a result of someone contacting the call center. I request that you don’t speak about this testimony, either, with anyone before we understand what’s going on.”