When Avraham entered the interrogation room on the second floor with Shrapstein, he saw the son up close for the first time. Erez Yeger walked from side to side in the room, ungainly and very tall. He wore a thick, checkered sweater that, without his knowing, played perfectly into the investigation’s plan. He watched the two policemen while they sat down in their places and afterward sat down across from them. Shrapstein spread out the summary of his investigation from two days earlier on the table, and when he stretched his fingers over it he seemed to Avraham nervous, perhaps because Erez Yeger lied to him in his previous questioning and perhaps because of Avraham’s own presence in the interrogation room.
“Do you know why we brought you back here?” Shrapstein opened. Avraham sat at the edge of the table and examined Yeger’s facial expression.
“You said there were developments in the investigation.”
Shrapstein looked at the papers laid out before him and not at Erez Yeger, when he nodded. “There are definitely some developments,” he said. “Important developments even. Do you want to know what the developments are?”
Shrapstein smiled as if to himself and turned the gold ring on his finger, and Erez Yeger looked at Avraham. Did he recognize his face from the funeral? Avraham hadn’t said a thing since he entered the room, not even his name or rank.
“Soon I’ll tell you about the developments, but first there’s something I want to clarify with you,” Shrapstein continued. “During the previous questioning you said to me that there hadn’t been communication between you and your mother in recent months. Can you confirm this statement?”
“Yes.”
“And you continue to claim that there wasn’t communication between you two?”
Yeger’s face reddened, but he only nodded. Why had he lied? From his experience Avraham had learned that most of those questioned don’t lie because they believe they’ll succeed in deceiving the investigators, but rather because they’re ashamed of what they’re hiding.
“Go ahead and explain to me why there wasn’t communication between you. Can you do that?” Shrapstein asked, and Yeger answered, “I told you already. I didn’t want any communication with her.”
“Correct. That’s what you said. And that satisfied me during the first round of questioning. But now, following the important developments, your answer doesn’t satisfy me. I would like you to please elaborate on the reasons.” Yeger didn’t respond, and when Shrapstein said, “Should I write that you refuse to elaborate on the reasons for the conflict between you?” The son immediately answered, “There was no conflict between us.” He again looked at Avraham, who signaled to him with his hand to turn his gaze to the officer questioning him.
“What was it? Money? A dispute over your father’s inheritance?”
“I told you that there was no conflict between us.”
The heat in the room was working at full power, and Yeger was already sweating inside his checkered sweater. Underneath it he was wearing a warm white undershirt. His face and palms were damp. When he asked to air out the excessively heated room, Shrapstein explained to him that the window didn’t open. But Erez Yeger wasn’t the man who sat opposite his mother next to the kitchen table and afterward strangled her and left her body on the carpet, and only at that moment did Avraham suddenly understand why he was certain of this. If it were him, the scene would not have been as ordered as he found it. Leah Yeger arranged her apartment for an official meeting and not for a meeting with her son. And it wasn’t possible that she had told no one about this meeting. Earlier that morning Avraham phoned Leah Yeger’s daughter and asked her if she was sure that her mother hadn’t told her that she was supposed to be questioned again by the police about the rape, and the daughter said that she didn’t know anything about it. But maybe the son knew? Avraham wanted to ask him about this immediately, but Shrapstein continued laying his trap around Yeger. And he wasn’t up-to-date on Avraham’s new lead.
“So what if you told me that there wasn’t a conflict,” Shrapstein continued quietly. “You also said that your last conversation was a long time ago. Isn’t that right?”
Yeger placed his palm on the table and then lifted it and moved the hand onto his forehead in order to wipe the sweat from it and looked at Avraham when he responded to Shrapstein, “That’s what I said. Yes.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No.”
“What do you think, Avi? That he’s kidding us?”
Shrapstein rose suddenly from his place, and Yeger followed him with his gaze as he approached him. He erupted once he was bent over Yeger, his mouth right above his head, and it was impossible to know if this was a real outburst or part of Shrapstein’s interrogation plan. “Do I look retarded to you, Erez? Or maybe the policeman sitting here next to me looks retarded? You’re lying to me like I don’t have a record of your mother’s phone calls and like I don’t know when the last time you talked was.”
Yeger again looked at Avraham in order to test with his expression if the things Shrapstein said to him were correct. And then of all times, when Yeger walked into the trap that Shrapstein had prepared for him, Avraham opened up an exit door for him inside it. He said to him, “Erez, we’re asking you if you spoke with your mother not because we’re suspicious that you’re involved in the murder but rather because we want to know if she told you that she expected to be questioned by the police.” And Yeger said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Shrapstein turned and looked at Avraham, and in his eyes then there was still only misunderstanding. Avraham knew that his interference disrupted Shrapstein’s interrogation plan and that he should have prepared him for this in advance, but only during those moments did he understand what he wanted to hear from the son. “I mean questioning about the rape she went through,” Avraham continued. “According to the phone log you did speak with your mother on Sunday, twenty-four hours before the murder. And it doesn’t interest me why you’re lying but only if she informed you during your conversation that a policeman was supposed to come to her for questioning the next day.”
“She didn’t say anything to me about a questioning,” Yeger said. And then added, “Because I didn’t speak to her.”
Shrapstein didn’t relent. He remained where he was standing, over Yeger, and said to him, “Let’s go back to the phone conversation. Explain to me why you’re hiding it. And try to stop lying.” But Avraham continued asking questions as if he were the only detective in the room, and Yeger spoke only to him.
“So tell me something else, Erez,” he said. “If your mother were to set up a meeting or make an appointment with a doctor, where would she write a reminder for herself about this meeting?”
“I don’t know. What do you two want from me? I told you from the beginning that we weren’t in contact.”
“We conducted an examination of her computer and we saw that she didn’t keep an electronic datebook. But she certainly had some other datebook, no? Older people write things like this in a set place, because they tend to forget.”
This was the moment that Avraham was waiting for. Yeger was silent and then said, “She had a calendar, I think. In the kitchen. She would write dates of birthdays and other things there, but I don’t know if she still has it.” Avraham tried to recall if he had seen the calendar at the scene.
“Are you sure that the calendar is in the kitchen?” he asked, and Yeger said, “I think so. That’s where it used to be.”
Shrapstein left the interrogation room and slammed the door behind him, but Avraham continued asking questions.
“Other than this calendar she didn’t have another place, a datebook perhaps?”
If Leah Yeger kept a datebook it’s possible it was in her handbag that was stolen, but it was also possible that it was someplace else.
“I don’t know if she had a datebook. I think she did. Maybe my sister knows.”
“And do you have any idea where she put her datebook? Did she usually ke
ep it in a purse?”
“Don’t know.”
“So try to remember.”
“But I told you, I don’t know. You didn’t ask my sister about it?”
Shortly after this, when he was in the car on his way to the scene, Avraham called Orit Yeger, and she confirmed that in the kitchen her mother had a calendar on which she wrote reminders for meetings and events. She saw it for the last time two weeks before, and even wrote there a reminder herself for her daughter’s Purim party. Her mother also had a datebook, with phone numbers and addresses, but Orit Yeger didn’t know where the datebook could be and if it was reasonable to assume that it was in the handbag that was taken from the scene.
Before he opened the door to her apartment Avraham put gloves on his hands, and right as he turned on a light he noticed that the calendar was not hanging on the wall in the kitchen. The apartment hadn’t been opened for two days, and in it stood warm air. Nothing had been moved in the rooms, and the sights came back to Avraham, the birds on the carpet, the lamp, the painting of the two women in the field, the table set for a meeting. Leah Yeger waited for a knock at the door, but the man who stood behind it wasn’t her son but rather a policeman. And suddenly he understood that he didn’t need to look at her body anymore in order to understand her death, as he had sensed, but to think instead about Leah Yeger’s life in this apartment before the knock at the door was heard.
She didn’t tell her son about the policeman who had contacted her and asked to arrange another round of questioning, because the relations between them had been severed. And she didn’t say a thing to her daughter, either. Did she include anyone else in her life? On the refrigerator in the kitchen was a picture of her with her daughter and granddaughter and next to it an old picture of her son with a tall man who apparently was his father.
But her son didn’t visit her, for reasons he was hiding. Nor his children, her grandchildren. There was a set day when she picked up her granddaughter from day care and brought her to her place, and on Fridays she would go to her daughter’s for dinner, but during the rest of the time she was forced to live alone in the apartment where she was raped, the apartment where her husband died of a heart attack. Was this the reason she agreed to meet with the policeman? That other than him no one wanted to listen?
Avraham sat down for a moment on the chair in the kitchen. How much time had passed until Leah Yeger understood that something wasn’t right? In the living room, next to the television, there was a cordless phone, but Leah Yeger didn’t use it because the policeman would have noticed, so Avraham walked the length of the hallway. He peeked into the bedroom and then continued to the office and there saw the device. On the writing table was an old telephone, but the cord wasn’t plugged into its socket on the wall. He immediately called Orit Yeger.
“Do you know if your mother used that phone in the office? Was its cord always in the socket?”
“What phone?” she said, but seemed to remember it a moment later saying, “Oh, wait, yes. It was.”
In contrast to his first visit to the scene Avraham knew exactly what to look for, but this time, too, he wasn’t alone there because Leah Yeger was the one who guided him. Next to the phone, under a pile of documents, he found the datebook she had apparently hidden. In the square for the day when the murder occurred—Monday, February 23—only numbers were written, in tiny handwriting, with a red pen: 2:00.
This wasn’t much, but it was all Avraham needed. He returned to the station within less than five minutes and asked Lital Levy to call an urgent team meeting. Saban entered the conference room first, and when he asked Avraham, “Where’s her son? Did you arrest him?” Avraham had no doubt that Shrapstein had told him about the events of the morning. Avraham nodded and said to him, “Soon,” because he was waiting for Eliyahu Ma’alul and Esty Vahaba, who entered after him and grabbed seats around the table. Ma’alul noticed the facial composite that was drawn with Diana Goldin’s help and that Avraham had placed on the table next to the umbrella and asked, “That’s it? Did we catch our killer?” And Saban looked at the computerized drawing in amazement. He asked Avraham to start the meeting because his time was short, and Avraham looked mainly at him when he began by saying, “We have a new lead in the investigation.”
He was certain about so few facts, and to most of the questions presented to him in the meeting he didn’t have answers, but the feeling that accompanied him since yesterday and guided him in the investigation from the morning hours was one of real certainty. Saban asked, “So it’s not the son?” and Avraham said, “No. I believe Leah Yeger was murdered by a policeman who set up a meeting with her for the purpose of an investigation.”
Saban straightened up in his chair and placed his cell phone on the table. And Avraham continued. “Yesterday evening I received new testimony that I didn’t manage to tell you about, since this morning we were in the interrogation room with the son. Another rape victim, Diana Goldin, testified that a few days ago a man was at her place who introduced himself as a policeman working in the Ayalon district and questioned her about the rape she went through. According to inquiries we since made with all the departments in the district, no policeman was sent to her with this task. I believe this is what happened to Leah Yeger as well.”
Saban was flustered by what Avraham said. “But on the basis of what are you determining this?” he asked. “Just on the basis of that neighbor’s testimony who . . .” He suddenly went quiet, and Avraham took advantage of this in order to continue.
“We have the testimony of the neighbor who saw a policeman in the building after the murder. And today I found in the apartment of the murder victim her appointment book with an entry for the time at which the murder took place. So we have two policemen that we cannot locate, at scenes tied to rape victims, at a distance of a few kilometers and separated by a few days. Diana Goldin wasn’t assaulted by the policeman because he succeeded in deceiving her until the end, but I believe that Leah Yeger understood that he wasn’t who he said he was, and therefore she tried to call the police. He figured this out, and then a struggle between them began, at the end of which she was murdered.”
Ma’alul pointed at the composite drawing. “That’s the man?” he asked, and Avraham nodded. Esty Vahaba also studied the composite and her gaze was serious.
“In my estimation,” Avraham continued, “the policeman’s methods are very sophisticated. He makes arrangements by phone with the rape victims and confirms that they’re not suspicious of him by means of two phone calls. This at least is what he did in the Goldin incident. He offers to meet them at the station in order to neutralize any suspicion. I assume that if they are suspicious of him or ask too many questions on the phone about who he is exactly and the reason for the questioning, he cancels or doesn’t show up. He comes to the meeting dressed in a uniform and asks them to describe the rape they experienced, ostensibly for reasons tied to the investigation or legal deliberations on the matter. At the meeting with Diana Goldin he took notes and also recorded everything she said to him on a cell phone.”
Saban held his cell phone in his hand when Avraham finished speaking, and then said, “This sounds like a dangerous lead to me, Avi. Beyond that, even if we suppose that there’s a connection between the incidents, how do you intend to find the suspect?”
The facial composite that was drawn with Diana Goldin’s help was lying on the table. Avraham explained that the policeman forgot an umbrella at her home, thus they will have fingerprints that can be compared to prints from the murder scene. It would also be possible to compare the log of incoming phone calls to Leah Yeger with the list of calls made in recent weeks to Diana Goldin. Other than that, this weekend Diana Goldin will go over the photographs of every policeman in the district, and, if need be, over the photographs of all the policemen in the country. “Why of policemen? Do you think he’s really a cop?” Ma’alul asked, and Avraham said, “I think so. Or an ex-policeman. Otherwise he wouldn’t have access to information about
rape victims.” In addition, Avraham planned to identify the suspect in the footage of security cameras in the area where the murder was carried out. To go over camera after camera and look for the policeman who, according to the testimony of the neighbor, didn’t get into a patrol car but instead left the scene on foot. Until they find him.
“And then what?” Saban asked.
He hadn’t thought about this beforehand but immediately said to Saban that then it would be possible to publicize the facial composite or a picture of the policeman in the media, and Ma’alul smiled at his words but Saban did not. “You’re suggesting that we publish a photograph in the newspaper and say that the man in the picture is perhaps a policeman who perhaps harassed rape victims and perhaps murdered a woman, without being certain that this is correct? Did you fall on your head, Avi? This is just what the police need with everything that’s happening here already? For every policeman in the country to become a suspect in the harassment of rape victims and murder? You’re out of your mind.”
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything Page 11