The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything

by D. A. Mishani

  The report that he requested from Eliyahu Ma’alul was e-mailed to him the next day at noon.

  And from the first line it was clear that pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Yaakov (Jacob) Bengtson was born in Australia in 1975, Ma’alul wrote, and this explained his accent that Diana Goldin mentioned in her testimony. He arrived in Israel in 1990, received citizenship because his mother had Israeli citizenship, was drafted into the army in 1995 as a lone soldier, served in the Nahal and was discharged in 1998 with the rank of first sergeant. He had no criminal record. His first visit to the police station was when he submitted a complaint against an employer who had allegedly harassed him, but the case was closed for lack of public interest. The second was when he gave testimony about the rape of his wife to the Eilat police.

  Avraham asked Lital Levy not to forward him calls other than those from Ma’alul and Vahaba. He read the report in his office, twice, while eating lunch. He didn’t hear from Saban throughout that day, and the conversation with Ilana had been forgotten, because everything happened so quickly during those hours and exactly as he had hoped. In the margin of the report that he had printed, Avraham began writing down for himself by hand questions in advance of Bengtson’s interrogation, some of them questions he formulated at night and some of them that expressed themselves during the reading. And the more he read about Bengtson, the more Avraham felt how much he longed to sit across from him in the interrogation room. Since the morning there had been a policeman and a volunteer from the district detective staff in front of the building at 8 Uri Zvi Greenberg Street, but Yaakov Bengtson hadn’t left his apartment. His wife, by contrast, dropped off her daughters at day care and elementary school and continued in her car, a Suzuki Alto, to a branch of Bank Discont on Shenkar Street.

  When Ma’alul called Avraham and asked, “So, did you read it?” he immediately asked him, “Tell me, do you have any idea if he has a valid Australian passport?” and Ma’alul promised to find out. What especially drew his attention was the fact that Bengtson tried a few times to receive work in the security services and was rejected, usually because he didn’t pass psychological evaluations. In 1999, Ma’alul wrote, Bengtson passed a security examination with the Shin Bet as well as the evaluations, and was accepted to an agents training course with the prime minister’s office, but he was released a few weeks after the start of the course due to unsuitability. In 2002 he tried to get accepted for police work but was rejected on the basis of the first round of psychological evaluation.

  He wasn’t a policeman but wanted to be.

  When Avraham read that Bengtson’s last place of work was a security company that guarded construction sites near the Green Line, and that he was fired from his job following a conflict with his supervisors, he added in the margin of the report the question: He’s not working somewhere else now?

  Ma’alul didn’t have a definite answer for this when they spoke in the afternoon.

  “And do we know why he didn’t pass the psychological evaluations?”

  “Unsuitability. I asked that they transfer the reports to me, but it’s uncertain that they keep them, and even if they did, they have to find them in the archive. But listen, Avi, I spoke with two of his former employers and both of them tell me that he’s very borderline. Or unstable. One of them is the man who Bengtson filed a complaint against. He has a tendency for confrontations and outbursts, and it was impossible to know when he would come to work and when he wouldn’t and in what mood. You don’t want us to bring him in yet?”

  He thought that it wasn’t yet time. It was necessary first to obtain evidence that tied Bengtson directly to the murder, in addition to the testimony of the neighbor who confirmed that he saw him on the stairs, and it seemed to him then that they had time to obtain it. Ma’alul said, “Are you sure, Avi? So he won’t flee on us to Australia.” But there was no chance he’d flee, because he was under surveillance. “What’s with his car?” he asked. “Did you start searching for photos of the vehicle from the area of the murder scene?”

  “Not yet. I’ll start now.”

  “And Facebook?”

  “He has quite an active page, but in recent days he hasn’t posted anything. This maybe also says something, no? Other than that there’s nothing special there. Pictures of his daughters and clips of Thai boxing.”

  “Nothing against the police?”

  After the conversation with Vahaba, who called him a little before three, he felt that they were even closer to him.

  Mazal Bengtson had worked at Bank Discont for sixteen years and was considered an exceptional employee. Vahaba couldn’t go to the branch where she worked and gather testimony from her coworkers for fear of being discovered, but she spoke discreetly with Mazal Bengtson’s immediate supervisor and he told her that she was absent from work one day last week, that she hadn’t requested extended time off, and that to the best of his knowledge she wasn’t planning a trip. Vahaba also spoke by phone with the detective from the Eilat police who was responsible for the rape case, and the detective told her something that possibly had a connection with regards to both members of the Bengtson couple and the police. As Avraham read in the file, during the rape investigation they examined the possibility that Bengtson was assaulted by a man she knew at the party and invited to her room, even though she refused to admit this. The detective had no evidence for an invitation of this sort, but a few things gave rise to the suspicion—the fact that the complainant was apparently drunk on the evening of the assault, the time that passed between the assailant leaving her room and the reporting of the assault, and the clothes that she afterward claimed she had changed into. Similarly, the investigation looked into the possibility that it was the husband, Kobi Bengtson, who assaulted the complainant, and he was asked to prove where he was during the time of the rape. His alibi convinced the detective and the possibility was dismissed. According to their examination, during the assault Bengtson was with the couple’s daughters in their apartment in Holon.

  Did you think that the police didn’t seriously investigate your wife’s assault? Was this your problem? Or were you hurt by the insinuation that she invited the rapist to her room?

  Avraham didn’t put the pen in his hand down during the conversation with Vahaba, either. And when he listened to her he thought that she was the only person on the staff for whom the investigation was as important as it was to him. Vahaba was the one who on a Saturday found Bengtson’s picture in the security footage and the one who felt, as she gathered testimony from his wife, that she knew more than she was revealing. Without her it was possible that they wouldn’t have reached Bengtson and would be exactly as far from the murderer as they had been on the day the murder took place. And in retrospect, her feelings about Mazal Bengtson were correct as well. Before they hung up Vahaba said to him, “You don’t think it’s possible that she’s not cooperating with him? That she’s concealing the investigation and that it’s worthwhile trying to speak with her?” And Avraham said to her that it wasn’t. He thought this wasn’t logical, because Mazal Bengtson lied in her testimony. And also in the afternoon, when Vahaba called again and there was excitement in her voice when she said to Avraham, “Mazal Bengtson might be on her way to the station,” he didn’t think she’d turn him in. The two of them waited on the phone while Bengtson parked her car not far from the police station and walked in the direction of Fichman Street. But she passed by the station and didn’t enter, and then continued walking to someplace else.

  “She wants to tell us something, Avi. I’m sure of it. She’s simply scared of him. Maybe she even knows that he murdered. Are you sure you don’t want me to bring her in now? I’m telling you she’ll talk to me.”

  He asked to think about it before deciding, but by then Eliyahu Ma’alul had already entered his office, without knocking, his eyes sparkling and a smile stretched out across his face. Avraham asked him, “What happened?” and Ma’alul said, “We have him, Avi. We’re onto him.” And from everyt
hing he could have said, this was the one thing Avraham hadn’t thought of. “Bengtson got a ticket,” Ma’alul said, and sat down across from him, and Avraham asked, “What do you mean?”

  “A parking ticket, Avi. A stupid parking ticket. On the day of the murder. About two hours after. Guess where.”

  He guessed, but all the same asked him where, and Ma’alul placed a sheet of paper on his desk and said to him, “On Krause. Do you get it? From now on every time we say ‘With God’s help,’ we also add ‘and with the help of the city’s parking inspectors.’”

  The arrest warrant and search warrant of the Bengtson family’s apartment were issued that evening, a little after nine o’clock. Avraham was at home and told Marianka how everything was working as they thought and what their plan was for the next day. A team of detectives was supposed to arrive at the apartment in the morning, when Mazal Bengtson was at her job and the couple’s daughters were at school and day care, conduct a preliminary search there, confiscate electronic equipment, and bring Bengtson to the station. The investigation file, and in it the list of questions Avraham had prepared, was already there, in his office.

  The first question was very direct: Can you tell me what happened when you arrived last Monday at Leah Yeger’s apartment?

  “Do you think he’ll confess?” Marianka asked, and Avraham said, “I don’t know. I still don’t have any idea who this man is.” On the table in the interrogation room he planned to spread around pictures of Leah Yeger’s body from the murder scene and next to them he planned to place the umbrella that Bengtson forgot at Diana Goldin’s apartment as well as the pictures of him, wearing a uniform, from the security video. In the middle would be the picture of Leah Yeger that was taken when she was still alive. The camera in the interrogation room would start working, and Avraham would wait silently, allowing Bengtson to look at the pictures, the umbrella, to digest his situation, to understand that he was trapped. Only afterward would he begin asking him questions without exposing the information they had in their possession about the ticket that he received and the testimony of the neighbor who saw him in the building.

  And the next morning they even managed to eat breakfast together. Marianka asked him, “Are you ready?” and Avraham nodded while sipping coffee. He said that perhaps they’d be able to go out to a restaurant that evening if he returned early. Through the small window in the kitchen it was possible to see rain clouds, but that wasn’t the only reason he wore the heavy blue coat that he forgot at the murder scene. This was the last day of his first murder investigation, which began a week and two days earlier, and he wore the same coat on the day it was opened as well. He wanted to sit across from Bengtson and look at him up close as he examined the pictures scattered on the table, but also thought about the next case that perhaps wouldn’t be a murder case and about the fact that he’d take another day off in order to be with Marianka. Because of the rain he planned to go to the station on foot, but at seven thirty his cell phone rang.

  Lital Levy sounded upset. “Avi, are you on the way? Because it looks like we need to change our plan.”

  He asked, “What happened?” and looked at Marianka, who set down her cup of coffee.

  “His wife left alone, without the girls. This means that he’ll apparently take them to school and it’s not clear if he’ll return to their apartment after that. Apart from which, his wife is probably on her way to us.”

  He quickly drove to the station, and even though he arrived within five minutes, Mazal Bengtson arrived before him all the same. Lital Levy called him again when he pulled the car into the parking lot and said, “She’s already inside. Where are you? She told Ezra that she wanted to speak with Vahaba and she’s waiting for her at Registration. What do you want me to tell her?”

  He didn’t know then why Mazal Bengtson decided to come to the station to talk and if she was cooperating with her husband or was there without him knowing. Did he already feel that something in the connection between the two of them would disrupt the order of things that he had planned? He thought he would question Mazal Bengtson in his office, but then changed his mind, because of the cameras. And he didn’t know exactly what he’d ask her because he’d prepared himself to question her husband and not her.

  When Avraham entered the station he saw her standing next to the registration desk.

  He took a deep breath before he approached and noticed her as if by accident. And then he asked, “Are you looking for me?”

  14

  In the days that followed, all the rage that was inside Mali was directed at him, not at Kobi. She saw Avraham in a dream slowly walking out of a room that resembled the room at the hotel in Eilat, and then heard an explosive sound that woke her in a fright from her sleep. Her fist was clenched and damp, because she was the one who held the gun and shot the policeman in his back. The time was 3:21 a.m. The girls were in their beds, and her father, who insisted on sleeping in their apartment, was folded up on the couch in the living room. By then Mali knew his name, but at the start of that morning, at the police station, she didn’t remember what he was called and if he introduced himself when he questioned her two days earlier.

  But she remembered his heavy steps on the stairs and the coat he wore, a heavy blue winter coat. When he suggested that she come up to his office, she assumed that she’d wait there for Esty Vahaba. And he actually didn’t need her to tell him a thing because he knew more than her and only took advantage of her in order to confirm what he had discovered and then entice Kobi into turning himself in. To her it seemed that she was finally taking responsibility for their past and their future, but only when it was already too late did she understand what in truth happened at the station that day.

  ***

  Other than the rage, what stayed with Mali from that morning were sights that devoured one another and fragmented sentences, and especially so very many unimportant details. Had the rain not gotten stronger it’s possible she would have stopped in front of the stairs leading to the police station and maybe even taken off, but the rain sent her fleeing inside, and she found herself standing across from the policeman at the entrance, unprepared, even though she had thought only about this moment over the last two days. At that moment, the day still had logical outlines of time and place that she thought she’d be able to control, like a girl who plays with the hand of a clock: the time was eight o’clock, and Mali believed that she’d spend no more than a few hours at the police station and would manage to get to the Purim party at the school. She planned to ask Esty Vahaba to invite Kobi in for questioning in the afternoon or tomorrow, and then to come there with him, to join him in questioning and explain what he would be unable to, or wait outside the room so he wouldn’t be there alone.

  Her hair was wet, and she wiped water from her forehead. Before her in line stood a man who wanted to complain that his car had been stolen overnight and Mali hoped that taking care of his complaint would never end. She looked out through the glass door. Maybe the rain had stopped and she could escape into the street. And outside it was still Holon then, cars and buses stood in a traffic jam that the rain had created on Fichman Street, and she wasn’t yet lost in the labyrinth of massive forests that surrounded her afterward.

  The desk sergeant asked the man to wait until the on-duty detective became available to take his complaint, and then he asked how he could help her. The business card that Esty Vahaba gave her was in her jacket pocket, and Mali removed it and asked to speak with her, and the desk sergeant asked, “I don’t know if she’s here. Did you arrange to meet with her today?” And she didn’t notice Avraham until she heard his voice. He approached her from behind and asked if she was looking for him, and Mali told him she was waiting for Esty Vahaba. It seemed to her that he was surprised to see her there, beside the desk, but she didn’t see a thing.

  She did remember that when they sat in Avraham’s office his first question was, “How can I help you, Ms. Bengtson?”

  Before this he took off h
is blue coat and hung it on the door and offered her coffee. He waited for her to sit down and then left and closed the door behind him, and Mali placed her bag on the desk as if she had come for only a moment. Of all the details why does she remember those so well? Instead of remembering what shirt Kobi wore that day and how his face looked sunk into a pillow when she gazed at him that morning. Thick folders were arranged in a high pile on Avraham’s desk, and it didn’t occur to Mali that in one of them were kept documents from a murder investigation in which Kobi was the primary suspect. Next to them was a wooden frame and in it was a picture she couldn’t see.

  When Avraham returned, with a coffee mug in his hand, he asked Mali to come with him, and they left his office and went into another room, farther down the hall. A small room with a table and a computer on it and two chairs, and on one of its walls, above the table, a camera hung. It took her time to understand that he wanted to begin questioning her and didn’t intend to wait for Vahaba. She knew that she’d be able to insist, because since she had decided to turn in Kobi, the woman she saw in the mirror was herself and not the woman whom she met there in recent years. Avraham asked for her identity card and filled out the details, first on the computer and afterward on paper, by hand. There was no expression on his face, and this strengthened her sense that he didn’t know why she was there. When Avraham finished registering the information, he raised his head from the page and for the first time looked at her directly and asked how he could help her. And she said to him without her voice shaking, “Esty Vahaba hasn’t arrived? Because I’d prefer to speak with her.”