The interrogation room door was open and the corridor was long and empty and she didn’t know in which direction she should run, but when she saw policemen hurrying down a staircase she ran in the same direction and didn’t feel the movement of her legs, even though she hadn’t run in so many years. It was easy, like she hadn’t ever stopped running and she was fast like she could still catch the assailant who left the room. On the second floor many people were running, downward, on the stairs, mainly policemen in uniform, but in the commotion that was created no one noticed her. Vahaba wasn’t among them, nor was Avraham.
Afterward her running came to a stop and her memory was cut off all at once. As if life had ended. A sense of time and place was lost to her for a few hours, and from out of the darkness other times and voices appeared. She ran out of the room at the hotel and would never return to it. On the forest ground lay a policeman in uniform. From another time, even earlier, the words could be heard in the voice that was once her voice, Kobi, can you hear? The war started. Do you hear me at all?
15
Avraham was sure that he heard the shot first, as if it were fired next to his ears an instant before it could be heard throughout the station. And even though there were policemen who reached Bengtson before him because he was waiting for him in his office on the third floor, Avraham was the first to identify the man lying on the floor in the station’s entrance. Dressed in uniform. David Ezra, the desk sergeant, tried to stop up the wound in Bengtson’s neck with his red hand, and people screamed, “Policeman shot!” and Avraham pushed his way through them. Did he know it was Bengtson when he heard the shot through the open window? And how did he immediately recognize that it was him on the station’s floor? The gun lay next to Bengtson. Ezra was bent over him, his knees in the expanding puddle of blood. When Avraham leaned over them, Ezra looked at him in shock and Avraham said to him only, “He’s not a cop.” His shoes were in the red puddle when he placed his right hand next to Ezra’s, and he felt the blood and the pieces of wet flesh between his fingers. The gunshot wound in Bengtson’s neck was black and giving off smoke and his head was twisted on the floor in a strange position, almost torn from the body, and Avraham tried to massage his chest and called out loud, or so it seemed to him at least, “Can someone perform CPR?”
Bengtson’s legs struck against the floor again and again. And like Leah Yeger’s eyes, his eyes weren’t closed all the way.
The ambulance left for Wolfson Medical Center within less than three minutes, and Ma’alul called Avraham from there when they arrived, in order to tell him that Bengtson was alive. And this filled him with hope. On the way to the hospital Ma’alul searched Bengtson’s clothes for a suicide note or a confession, but didn’t find anything. At first Avraham didn’t understand why this was what Ma’alul searched for, but Eliyahu said to him, “Trust me that this is the thing we need to find right now. Can you search his car and their place?” In those moments Avraham was unable to think of what the right thing to do was. He went out to the street in order to digest it all.
Because of the ticket that Bengtson had received he knew the make of his car and license plate number, and for a few minutes he searched for the blue Toyota in the streets near the station, until he found it parked on Golomb Street. One of the rear windows was open a bit, like Bengtson’s pale eyes before he was taken away, and Avraham threaded his hand inside and opened the back door. When he sat down in the driver’s seat and looked through the windshield, he suddenly thought that this was the closest he’d get to Bengtson, and the thought caused him to tremble. It couldn’t end like that. He asked himself if when Bengtson left his car behind and walked to the station, he knew that he wouldn’t be returning to it and if so, why did he bother parking and locking the doors?
The rain let up and then grew stronger, and Avraham returned to the station dripping wet. Only when he encountered Ezra standing outside smoking, his shirt spotted in blood, did he see that his own pants and the blue sweater he wore were also covered in Bengtson’s blood that had been absorbed by the fabric and gotten wet in the rain and now turned brown. Someone brought Ezra tea in a Styrofoam cup, and Avraham saw through the glass door that the forensics team was working around the large puddle of blood. The gun was still lying on the floor in the place where Bengtson had let it drop from his hand.
“So he’s not a cop?” Ezra asked without looking at him, and Avraham shook his head.
“No.”
“Why was he wearing a uniform?”
They stood under the awning at the entrance because the rain continued. The tumult in the station was considerable, and Avraham needed to go inside and put an end to the rumors that were passing from mouth to ear, that a criminal had shot a policeman who tried to arrest him or that an armed terrorist had infiltrated the station and fired, but he remained outside another moment in order to calm down and think.
“So who is he then?” Ezra asked. They stood right beside each other in order not to get wet, and the steam rising from Ezra’s cup of tea reached Avraham as well. “He was suspected of murder,” he said. “Did you manage to speak with him before he fired?”
“Speak about what? He entered and immediately pulled out the gun. I didn’t see him at all before then. And when I saw him he was already on the ground.”
“And he didn’t say anything to anyone? He didn’t scream anything?”
“Not a word.”
Ezra tossed his cigarette butt and immediately pulled a pack out of his pants pocket and lit himself another cigarette, and when he brought it to his mouth Avraham noticed that his hands had already been washed. He, by contrast, didn’t wash his hands until the afternoon hours and not only because he didn’t have time.
Fifteen minutes after he returned to the station he already had to provide explanations, and he realized that Ma’alul was right. The only thing that interested his supervisors was verifying that Bengtson was the murderer. They didn’t want to know if he would remain alive and perhaps even hoped that they’d announce from the hospital that he died on the operating table. They questioned Avraham only about the evidence.
The Tel Aviv district commander arrived at the station with the district spokesman, and they conducted a preliminary inquiry in Benny Saban’s office. The main entrance to the station was closed, and reception was indefinitely suspended. The police commissioner demanded an immediate report on the incident and the minister of internal security was also updated, even though he was on a trip to Berlin. First, it was necessary to repudiate the rumors that the man who was shot was a policeman as well as those about a terrorist who had infiltrated the station. In Saban’s office there wasn’t an extra chair and Avraham stood the entire time, but this didn’t bother him.
“Can you explain to us what happened? Saban told me that he’s a suspect of yours,” the district commander addressed him, and Avraham tried to explain, to himself as well.
Everything was supposed to have happened differently.
He planned to question Bengtson during the morning hours in his office. The investigation file was ready and the evidence was arranged in order, and the questions that he prepared at night on the porch and in the day before then in his office were written down on a piece of paper. Can you tell me what happened when you arrived last Monday at Leah Yeger’s apartment? When did she become aware that you’re not a policeman? Immediately when she opened the door? Or only when you sat at the table and began speaking?
He didn’t believe that Bengtson would answer his questions immediately, but he thought that when he understood that they had in their hands enough evidence to place him in the building that he’d break. He’d permit Bengtson to look at the photograph in which he was seen in a police uniform, and would place his umbrella on the table. Bengtson would break, this was clear to him when he prepared himself at night for the interrogation, and he only feared that at the last moment he’d succeed in fleeing by means of the Australian passport, and therefore a detective team stayed outside the build
ing where he lived and was prepared to immediately implement the arrest and search warrants issued by the court.
The district commander spoke to Avraham quietly. Avraham didn’t know him, since he was new to the position and had arrived from Jerusalem, and had only heard that he was thought of as an officer who likes getting down to details and is involved in investigations conducted under him, especially white-collar investigations. Saban looked at him with concern when he presented Avraham with his questions, but he didn’t appear agitated and made no accusations. He wrote a few lines down himself with a pen in a notebook while Avraham spoke. The district spokesman, who sat next to him, wrote nonstop on a laptop without interrupting the conversation.
“Can you tell me what you know about the gunman and to what extent you’re certain that he’s involved in the murder of this woman? And how, at all, did he enter the station with a weapon?” he asked, and Benny Saban said to him immediately, “We are absolutely sure of this,” even before Avraham started to answer.
At the beginning of the day he truly thought he knew all he needed to know about Bengtson. That he understood why he dressed up as a policeman and questioned rape victims and what happened when he arrived at Leah Yeger’s apartment last week. Afterward it became clear that he didn’t know everything. But he had in his possession much evidence for the fact that Bengtson was in the building at the time of the murder but he was missing a last, additional piece of evidence for the fact that he was also in the apartment, and this he would obtain easily by examining Bengtson’s DNA and fingerprints. He was also convinced that Bengtson would admit to it during questioning and believed that a search of his place would turn up the handbag that he took from Yeger’s home in order to disguise the murder as a robbery or the cell phone with which he recorded her, or the calendar he took from her kitchen. But since then the plans had changed. Mazal Bengtson was apparently frightened by the questioning conducted with her two days before this, and decided to turn in her husband without knowing he was suspected of murder. And the announcement that she was on the way to the station disrupted his plans. He instructed the detective team to delay executing the arrest and search warrants until he heard from her, and he received her in his office without knowing why she came and what to ask her, and the uncertainty made him anxious because he had been so prepared. Despite this, while questioning Mazal Bengtson he still sensed that everything was under control and that the change in plans was even working in their favor, and he didn’t think he was wrong when he hid from her the information about the true suspicion directed toward her husband. She entered the station voluntarily and said that her husband dressed up as a policeman and questioned rape victims. And she even explained, without understanding this, how Bengtson obtained addresses and telephone numbers of rape victims from a list of women who participated in a support group that she had in her possession, and when she did this Avraham felt that the decision to postpone the execution of the arrest warrant and listen to her was the right thing to do.
But there was also one moment during her interrogation in which Avraham’s confidence was weakened, and he didn’t share it with the district commander. Perhaps then he should have understood that nothing would happen as he thought, because from the start of this investigation almost everything actually happened by chance. This was when they tried to understand how Mazal Bengtson knew that her husband was dressing up as a police officer and asked her about this over and over until she broke and said, Because he did the same thing to me. Avraham halted the questioning and left the interrogation room not only because she burst into tears but also because suddenly he wasn’t sure that he understood Bengtson and his motives. And when she told Vahaba afterward what happened in their home, he understood even less. Mazal Bengtson again said, You don’t know Kobi. He did the same thing to me, and Avraham looked at her through the glass window of the interrogation room and thought that perhaps she was right. And also that he should not have under any circumstances brought her into the interrogation room and interrogated her after what she went through. Then she suggested that she get Bengtson to come to the station. Avraham explained to the district commander and to Saban that he hesitated before deciding, but accepted her suggestion because he thought that this way Bengtson would be apprehended unprepared. He would be led to the interrogation room, ostensibly on other grounds, and only there would discover that he had entered into a trap. Mazal Bengtson had begged that they not arrest her husband at their home and her plea also influenced his decision.
Saban looked confused when the district commander lit himself a cigarette, since smoking in his office was forbidden. He handed him a coffee mug for the ashes and got up to open a window and the district commander straightened himself in his chair and placed his notepad on the table.
“How much time passed from the moment you called him until he arrived?” he asked, and Avraham said, “It took him some time.”
They waited more than an hour for Bengtson, and already by then it was clear that something was wrong. He didn’t arrive at the station right away, and the detective team trailing him informed them that the suspect had traveled to his home. For a moment Avraham thought about instructing the detectives to go up to the apartment and immediately carry out the arrest and search, but the temptation to surprise him unprepared in the interrogation room was too great, and there was also the promise he made to his wife. When Bengtson got into his car and drove in the direction of the station, the detective team updated them that he was on his way, but didn’t notify them that he was wearing a uniform. And Avraham was relieved. He asked Lital Levy to make him another black coffee and again arranged the papers on his desk and then called Ma’alul, and Eliyahu said to him, “It’s nice when the fish jumps on his own into the net, no?”
Had Bengtson noticed he was under surveillance? Or did he know his wife planned on turning him in and had laid a trap for him? In contrast to the district commander and Saban, these were the only questions that interested Avraham, and in order to get answers to them, the doctors at the hospital would need to save Bengtson’s life. He peeked at his cell phone, but Ma’alul hadn’t sent him a text from the hospital. And it was impossible to call him in the middle of the inquiry with the district commander, which was getting longer and longer.
“How did he have a gun, do we know?” he asked, and Avraham said, “He was a security guard.”
“And you didn’t take into account that he’d be carrying a weapon when you called him to the station?”
“According to the information we received he is not presently employed by any security company.”
“And do we know what the connection was between him and the victim? What’s her name, Leah?”
“There was no connection. As I said, her name apparently showed up on a list of victims from his wife’s support group. And he apparently set up a meeting with her, as he did in earlier instances with other victims, with the aim of questioning them. And I assume she figured out that he was impersonating an officer.”
The district commander placed his burning cigarette in the mug, and Saban looked at him anxiously. “There are too many apparentlys in your answer,” he said. “I don’t like that. It’s enough of a mess if a murder suspect enters a police station with a weapon and shoots himself in front of civilians and police, but it’s an even bigger mess if he’s wrongly suspected. So let’s get his DNA already, and thank God we aren’t wanting for pieces of him down there, and we’ll compare them as fast as possible to the findings from the scene. And did you send someone to his home to look for her handbag or that list of victims?”
“I’ll go there myself,” Avraham said.
“And please prepare a report about what happened, because we need to brief the police commissioner and the minister and put out a formal announcement. In the meantime there’s a gag order, but we must publish something by tomorrow morning. And please emphasize in your report that the two of them arrived at the station voluntarily. Both the husband and the wife as we
ll. And that the evidence points unambiguously to the fact that this man who committed suicide is the killer.”
Saban said, “No problem, Doron. There will be a full report by tonight, right, Avi?” When the district commander interrupted and asked, “And what’s with the wife? Did she see him shoot? Is she still at the station?” Avraham looked at Saban because he didn’t know what to answer. He hadn’t seen Mazal Bengtson since the shooting. Only when he left Saban’s office did he see her through the glass window of the interrogation room folded up in Vahaba’s arms. For a moment he debated going in, but in the end only knocked on the window.
“Did she see him?” he repeated to Vahaba the question the district commander had asked him.
“You didn’t hear her scream? I managed to stop her two meters before she reached him.” Vahaba’s eyes were red.
“And does she understand what happened? Did you tell her why we were looking for him?” he asked, and Vahaba said, “Yes. Did I have a choice? She says that she murdered him. That because of her he’s dead. And she wants to go to the hospital. Can I take her there?”
What could he have told her? That he, too, wants to go to the hospital? Vahaba noticed the blood that had turned brown between his fingers, and perhaps therefore she asked him, “And how are you?” And even though he knew that this wasn’t what she asked, Avraham said, “I’m heading out to their place. Can you ask her for the key to the apartment?”
That was the closest Avraham would get to Bengtson that day. He was asked to find a suicide note or a bag or a list of rape victims in the apartment that would prove Bengtson murdered Leah Yeger, but he searched for something else, exactly as Ilana had accused him of doing, but he admitted this to himself only a few days later.
He opened the door with Mazal Bengtson’s key. The same smell was in the elevator that he smelled earlier in the car, a smell of wet clothes and dog hair. The windows in the living room were closed, and he turned on a light in the apartment. And he remembered the girl who stood next to the door while he questioned her mother.
The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything Page 20