The Man Who Wanted to Know Everything

by D. A. Mishani

  There were only electric and property tax bills on the dining room table, and in the sink were two bowls with the remains of Corn Flakes and a bit of milk. Avraham turned over the bills, and on the back of one of them read a short line written out by hand: I’ll be back in the morning. Sorry about everything. Tomorrow I’ll explain to you what happened. This wasn’t Bengtson’s suicide note. But when had he written it? And what had he needed to explain? In this apartment no one had been murdered, but nevertheless Avraham again felt he was walking through a murder scene. The silence was exactly the same silence. Quiet rooms that no one would live in anytime soon.

  Like his previous visit to the apartment, two days before this, it seemed to him that no one had lived there before what happened, either, as if the place weren’t a home or as if the tenants were preparing to vacate it and leave. In the living room were the two couches covered by a blanket and the television. On one of the couches was a princess costume that seemingly had been forgotten there when the tenants rushed to leave. And the picture of the hunted deer on one of the bare walls that reminded him immediately of the other picture. And it wasn’t possible, but he had a feeling that he wasn’t in the apartment by himself. The stairs that he hadn’t climbed the time before led him to a small room with a window opened onto the roof. A washing machine and a plastic basket full of clothes—but the handbag wasn’t there, either. Nor on the table or in the chest of drawers in which a thorough search would have to be conducted.

  He went out to the roof and looked down over the cement railing, and suddenly he was able to imagine Bengtson looking from here down at the detective’s car parked in the street. Heavy clouds touched the roofs but the rain had stopped.

  He already understood that he wouldn’t be asking Bengtson the questions he wanted to ask. Why did you actually do it? Did you think you’d catch your wife’s rapist? Then he called Eliyahu Ma’alul and Esty Vahaba, but there wasn’t any news from the hospital.

  Or perhaps you wanted to take revenge? But on whom?

  The only room that he still hadn’t gone into was the bedroom. And when he turned on a light he immediately saw the white dog. It lay at the foot of the bed and didn’t move from its place even when it noticed Avraham, just stretched its head and turned its watery eyes to Avraham and then placed its head on the floor again. Even though he tried with all his might not to see it, Avraham’s eyes met the picture hanging on the wall. He averted his gaze from the two bodies while in his ears could suddenly be heard Mazal Bengtson’s confession to Vahaba in the interrogation room, that he heard through the glass window.

  Bengtson wore the uniform for the first time here.

  It was as if all the sights that Avraham saw and the testimony that he heard crowded into this room: Leah Yeger’s body was sprawled out next to the white dog and next to her kneeled her son who had collapsed on her grave, and Mazal Bengtson was lying in the bed and recovering from the rape, and her husband, who took care of her with devotion, entered the room dressed in a policeman’s uniform and asked her to tell him exactly what happened.

  Every detail. From the beginning.

  Avraham took a step into the room in order to convince himself that none of this was there and because he needed to search the drawers next to the bed as well, and the white dog again stretched its head and looked at him while his knees buckled as if all on their own and he had to leave.

  He called Marianka from his office and told her that he’d return tomorrow morning. She asked him if the killer had been arrested, and Avraham only said, “Yes,” and didn’t elaborate. The station was opened to the public, and behind the reception desk stood a different policeman, not David Ezra. Policemen approached Avraham and asked him how he was doing, and no one blamed him for anything. Lital Levy checked if he had eaten and asked that a sandwich be brought up to him from the cafeteria, and before he took a bite of it he washed his hands in the bathroom.

  Were Mazal Bengtson not at the hospital with Vahaba perhaps he would have gone there, but he had a report to write, and when Saban called to remind him that the district commander was waiting, Avraham promised that he’d get started on it. Vahaba told him that the girls were with Mazal Bengtson’s parents and still didn’t know a thing about what had happened, and that Bengtson wasn’t there alone but rather with her twin sister.

  When Ma’alul entered his office after five, Avraham still hadn’t started writing the report. On the computer screen the video of Mazal Bengtson’s interrogation was frozen but he hadn’t dared to watch it. In the file that he had opened only two lines were written, which were cut off: In my role as head of Leah Yeger’s murder investigation staff, this morning I received Mazal Bengtson, the wife of the murder suspect, Yaakov Bengtson, who arrived at the station voluntarily and without advance notice in order to deliver

  “You okay?” Ma’alul asked, and Avraham nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I spoke with Saban, and it looks to me that everything will work out, Avi. They think that we should have assumed that Bengtson had a gun, but assuming that he’s the murderer, no one’s going to come to us with too many complaints.”

  When Ma’alul asked him, “What else do you need to do, Chief? Can I help you with something or should I go home?” Avraham was filled with a desire for him to stay so they could together watch the video of Mazal Bengtson’s interrogation and the video of the security camera at the station’s entrance, in which Yaakov Bengtson is seen shooting his neck and then he himself bending over him and David Ezra and stopping up his wound. And so they could together write the report for the district commander. He said to Ma’alul, “Sure, you can go,” and Ma’alul’s dark eyes smiled at him when he said to him, “You sure?”

  The gun was in Bengtson’s hand when he opened the station door, but it was impossible to know that he wasn’t a cop. As Ezra testified, he didn’t speak but instead pointed the barrel at his neck and pulled the trigger even before the door had closed. Avraham was in the puddle of blood and massaged his chest. The shout that he remembered shouting wasn’t recorded by the camera’s video.

  They notated the exact times according to the camera’s video and then switched to watching Mazal Bengtson’s interrogation video, and when Ma’alul asked why they were watching it, Avraham explained that he had to detail in the report how Bengtson voluntarily offered to bring her husband to the station. But after they started they were soon watching it for other reasons. Ma’alul looked at the video as if hypnotized, even when Avraham was seen in it drawing near to Bengtson and raising his voice, when he himself couldn’t watch. He wouldn’t question either of them nor would he get answers to the questions he had composed. Everything that was possible to know was seen and spoken in the video being screened before them.

  The continuation of the conversation between Vahaba and Mazal Bengtson, which Avraham watched that morning through the glass window, did not resemble the interrogation. Vahaba remained in the room without him, placed her hand on Mazal Bengtson’s hair and stroked it while she spoke. Vahaba asked her, “Mazal, do you want to tell me what he did to you?” And when Bengtson answered it was in a whisper, and on the tape it was hard to hear everything she said.

  “It can’t be that he hurt her. You don’t know Kobi. He couldn’t bear it anymore.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “You have to know him to understand. I simply didn’t want to go back to it. I didn’t want to tell him. I just wanted to forget it all.”

  “And he insisted?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he insist? Was he violent with you?”

  “He repeated it. Tell me what happened.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he beat you, Mali? You can tell me the truth.”

  “No, you don’t know Kobi. He’s not a violent person.”

  “So why did he want to know?”

  . . .

  “Why did he want to know, Ma
li?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask him?”

  “It was hard for him not to have a job, and he couldn’t find anything. He was ashamed that he wasn’t supporting the family and that only I was working.”

  “But how are they connected to each other?”

  “They’re connected. He couldn’t stand himself anymore.”

  “But why did he want you to tell him about what happened in Eilat? Did he want to prove to the police that he could find whoever assaulted you?”

  “No. He didn’t try to find him.”

  “So what then?”

  “He returned with the uniform. I asked him why he was wearing it, and he told me that he questioned a woman who was raped.”

  “Do you remember what her name was?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you what her name was?”

  “I didn’t ask him.”

  “And when was this?”

  “A few weeks after Eilat.”

  “And what did he tell you? What did he do to this woman?”

  “Like I told you. He was at her place and questioned her.”

  “How did he obtain her information?”

  “I didn’t ask him. I think from the page I got of the support group.”

  “And did he record her? Did he let you hear the recording?”

  “Record with what?”

  “What did you say to him about this?”

  “You don’t understand how he was. He cried all the time. He didn’t want . . . you don’t know Kobi; he wasn’t supposed to be like that. Something happened to him. I don’t understand what, but he had no choice. He wanted to be other things. And I think he wanted you to catch him. Maybe because of that he went back to it now.”

  “Why do you think he wanted us to catch him?”

  “Because he was suffering.”

  “Suffering from what?”

  “From himself. From everything that happened.”

  “And then did you tell him yourself? So that he wouldn’t do it another time?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Everything. What happened in Eilat. My rape.”

  “What?”

  “Everything. How I went back to the room and he came in while I was asleep or was already on the balcony. How he put his hand on my neck, and the knife.”

  “And Kobi didn’t return to it anymore? Did that stop him?”

  “He saw that it was hard for me, so he let me stop, but after a few days he put on the uniform again and asked.”

  “For the same story?”

  “Yes. But with all the details about how he did it and how long it lasted.”

  “And how many times did it happen? Once?”

  “No, maybe a month. Afterwards he saw that I couldn’t anymore so he stopped.”

  “And why did you agree to tell him?”

  Silence.

  “Did you agree because you didn’t want him to do the same thing to other women?”

  “Yes. What could I do?”

  “You could have complained about him to the police, Mali. You didn’t have to agree to that.”

  “But I didn’t want anything to happen to Kobi; I didn’t want there . . .”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know him, he wouldn’t have been able to stand it. He’s not strong and he was . . .”

  Avraham and Ma’alul watched the video in silence and didn’t say a thing about it that day. And when Ma’alul left Avraham’s office in the evening hours, the report still wasn’t complete. He finished it alone at night and sent it to Saban after four in the morning. He walked Ma’alul out of the station and thanked him for staying with him, and when Eliyahu walked away in the direction of the bus station, Avraham asked for a cigarette from a man who was standing in front of the station and smoked. Its taste was potent and scorched his throat, and when he put it out he walked to a kiosk nearby and bought two packs of Time, like he used to.

  The rain had stopped completely, but the streets still glistened with water.

  In the report that he wrote at night he noted that Yaakov (Kobi) Bengtson murdered Leah Yeger on Monday, February 23, at approximately 2:00 p.m., because that is what needed to be written, but he already understood that the murder began a long time before then, in a different room and in a different apartment, without anyone sensing that it had begun.

  A few hours after this, Vahaba called and informed him that Bengtson died in the hospital.

  16

  Yaakov Bengtson’s cell phone was found in his pants’ pocket, and Esty Vahaba brought it from the hospital the next morning. It was registered as evidence and transferred to the computing unit, and a short time after this the voice file in which Bengtson recorded the moments preceding the murder was sent to them by e-mail. Avraham listened to the recording for the first time in Benny Saban’s office, in the company of Eliyahu Ma’alul and Esty Vahaba. He didn’t sleep at night and hadn’t showered since the shooting, and throughout that whole morning he barely said a word. In the pocket of his pants were a lighter and a pack of Time cigarettes, and once an hour he again went out to smoke on the stairs leading to the station.

  And it was exactly as he thought.

  Bengtson turned on the recording app on the device only when they sat down at the kitchen table in Leah Yeger’s apartment, so Avraham couldn’t hear the knocks on the door that he imagined from the moment he entered the scene, nor the first sentences they said to each other, but the exchange that led to the struggle and murder were heard clearly. Bengtson asked Leah Yeger to say her full name and her identity card number, and then said, “Tell me, please, about the rape,” and she said, “What do I need to tell?”

  Bengtson’s accent was more noticeable in the recording than Avraham had expected. Avraham now knew that it was an Australian accent, and that this was also the source of his strange last name. Bengtson was born in Perth to an Israeli mother and an Australian father, and arrived in Israel at age fifteen.

  There was hoarseness in Leah Yeger’s low voice, perhaps traces of the flu. And what especially surprised Avraham was her confidence and courage.

  Saban was glad the recording was found, because it confirmed beyond any doubt, and prior even to lab tests, that Bengtson was the killer. Vahaba, who like Avraham hadn’t slept all night, rested her elbows on the table and covered her mouth with her hands. Ma’alul looked at Avraham when Bengtson said on the recording, “Tell me everything you remember. From the beginning. Where did it happen? How did it begin? When did you sense that the rapist was there?”

  The same questions that Diana Goldin had been asked.

  Only Leah Yeger said to him, “What do you mean ‘there’? I invited him to my home. He was my husband’s partner.” And Bengtson said, “Right, I mean when did you feel that you were in danger.”

  Leah Yeger was silent. Avraham wanted her to continue speaking, because when her voice was heard in the room it was as if he had succeeded in bringing her back to life. She said to Bengtson, “But what do you need this for, actually? You know this.” The words in Bengtson’s mouth shook when he said to her, “For the needs of our inquiry it’s important that you tell everything from the beginning.”

  When Esty Vahaba’s name was mentioned suddenly in the recorded conversation, Saban and Ma’alul looked at her. Leah Yeger said to Bengtson that she would like to speak with the policewoman who took her testimony, and he explained to her that he didn’t have her phone number. “I think I have it,” Yeger said. “Her name is Esty.” Based on the creak of the chair she got up, and Bengtson said, “If you prefer to do this with the policewoman then we can postpone it to another day,” and Yeger’s response was not recorded by the device. The creaking of another chair indicated that perhaps Bengtson, too, got up from his seat. A few seconds after this, the recording was stopped, and the rest Avraham had to complete by himself on the basis of what he knew. And imagined.

  Her fear. And his.
r />   The quickening heartbeats of the two of them once they understood.

  They didn’t know each other, but nevertheless they were imprisoned there together with no way to escape. Everything could have happened differently but the two of them had no such luck.

  Saban asked, “Can you explain how he didn’t even erase this from his phone?” and Avraham remembered that Mazal Bengtson said in her interrogation that her husband wanted to be caught. Had he therefore forgotten the umbrella in Diana Goldin’s apartment on purpose? And despite this took a risk and carried out the same offense a few days later? And did Leah Yeger lock the door with the key so that Bengtson wouldn’t flee? According to the confidence in her voice this was possible. Maybe she didn’t lock the door and only walked quickly to the study to look there for Esty Vahaba’s phone number, maybe in the datebook that Avraham discovered in the room, but didn’t find it because in the end she didn’t call Vahaba but the police instead. When she went to the study, Bengtson presumably tried to escape, but if Yeger did indeed lock the door, as Avraham imagined she had, so that he wouldn’t flee, he discovered that he couldn’t leave. So he followed her to the study. In Avraham’s imagination Leah Yeger held the phone receiver and put it down when she saw Bengtson approaching. Did she hide the datebook under the papers on the desk because she understood what was about to happen and wanted to leave a sign for him?

  2.23; 2:00.

  Bengtson pulled on the chord and tore it from the outlet on the wall because he understood who she was calling, and then she knew.

  But even then everything could have ended otherwise. He could have admitted that he wasn’t a policeman and asked her to let him leave. And she could have opened the door for him.

  “Can you give me the key? I’d like to leave here.”