The Crystal Circle: A Paranormal Romance Novel

by L. Rosenman

  “Hello, gentlemen… ladies,” began Zahavi in a somewhat squeaky voice, due to the magnitude of the occasion. “It’s now two weeks since the disappearance of Michal and Raul, and we have several investigative directions. As you can see, we’ve involved a team of senior inspectors from Tel Aviv in our investigation. This is Inspector Tomas, who will now present his current findings.”

  Tomas cast a dark and ominous look at both partners of the missing persons. Yossi expected the worst. His mind leaped uncontrollably between the options - rape and murder, kidnapping for the purpose of bargaining, being caught in a barrage of gunfire between criminal organizations...

  Tomas began. “First, we’d like to talk to you both about our findings so far. Obviously, the absentees themselves have not yet been found, but there are some surprising advances, I’d say. After my presentation of what we have to say to both of you, we’ll split up. Inspector Zahavi will talk to you, Mr. Rafael, and I’ll continue my conversation with Mrs. Dominguez here.”

  He paused and gave another grim look to Yossi and Orna, then continued. “We know that Raul and Michal did not disappear together. Michal didn’t return to the hotel and was gone long before the morning came. The last time she was seen was in the Florentine pub at around two in the morning. No one noticed when she left. Employees of the bank were all too drunk to notice, and the bartenders were busy. But we know that one of her friends...” he checked his notes, “looked for her in the pub to ask for a feminine product, but she was already gone. She looked for her in the bathroom, but found nothing. She remembered it clearly.

  “Her phone, as you know, disappeared and was probably stolen. The same with her purse, her wallet, and personal documents. Raul, in contrast, was seen going back to sleep at the hotel. The electronic room key was used and coded at one in the morning. It was used again to exit the room. He came down earlier than the others, around seven thirty in the morning. This was confirmed by some guests of the hotel and also by a receptionist who said he saw Raul leave wearing sneakers and a T-shirt, and so assumed he was going out for a morning run. He didn’t return to the room and his belongings, as you know, were left there, even his wallet, cellphone, and basically all he had in Tel Aviv. There was nothing amongst his possessions, no notes or reminders, nothing, suggesting where he was headed. I understand from his wife that Raul is a very neat and organized individual,” he looked up at Orna and she nodded without saying a word, “and had scheduled meetings at the bank starting from two in the afternoon that day, for which he did not turn up.

  “It’s very strange that two people from the same firm would disappear and not make contact with you for two weeks. My apologies to the families, but clearly this is not a coincidence, and there is a connection between them, despite your denial.”

  He looked up at Orna and Yossi, then looked back at his papers. “We had to consider the possibility of a romantic or other sort of relationship between them...”

  Yossi lowered his eyes to the floor and tapped his foot nervously. There was a dramatic pause, but then Tomas went on, “We found no such connection, but we can’t rule it out.”

  Yossi snapped. He pounded the table, injuring his right fist again. “Romantic relationship, my ass! Forgive me, Inspector! I know my wife. She wouldn’t go along with such a move. Focus on the kidnapping, can’t you? Nationalistic reasons, economic reasons, policy... terrorism… something!”

  Tomas looked at him as he had looked at many family members who’d lost their temper over the years, calmly and patiently. “There’s no need to shout, Mr. Rafael. We’re working systematically, and there’s certainly some progress. The Israeli Police will solve the mystery and inform you where your wife is. If she’s alive, she’ll be returned home.”

  Yossi lowered his head and bit his lip until it bled. He folded his arms tightly.

  “We distributed the pictures you’ve given us to all station houses in the country, as well as their credit card information. They’re probably not using their cards, only cash. There’s no way to trace it. We’re here, among other things, to remind you again that if they make contact with you, any of your children, parents, or relatives near or far, you’re to let us know immediately via Inspector Zahavi.” Tomas’ gaze rested for a moment on Zahavi’s smug face. It was hard to decipher Tomas’s dull and expressionless look, but it hinted that there wasn’t much fruitful cooperation between them.

  Yossi thought about how he hadn’t yet called his or his wife’s distant relatives. He had to do it that same day and overcome the embarrassment of having to say, “My wife is missing,” although he could probably assume that they’d heard about it by now. Until that day, he’d walked like a caged lion, functioned as a full-time father and mother, and repeatedly postponed his work abroad, looking for creative solutions for his direct supervisor to allow him to stay at home for a few more days.

  He thought about sharing the reports of the private investigator with Zahavi, but not in the presence of representatives of Raul’s family, of course. Although he didn’t trust the police at all, he’d reluctantly paid the investigator and then fired him. Since June 23rd, he’d come up with absolutely nothing new. The hopes with which Yossi had come to the police station that day were dashed.

  “Now,” said Tomas, getting to his feet, “As I said before, we’ll split up. I need to ask you, Mr. Rafael, to go with Inspector Zahavi to discuss the new findings related to your wife. I need to have a personal conversation here with Mrs. Dominguez.”

  Yossi mumbled his thanks, but added, “Before I go, I’d just ask you... no, I demand you exert yourselves and find them!”

  “We’re doing our best -” Zahavi began defensively.

  “It’ll be all right!” Tomas interrupted authoritatively. “You’ll have some news from us soon.”

  Yossi was pacing the corridor, scratching his head and considering further steps, when he saw Raul’s sister-in-law leave the interview room.

  “They kicked you out too?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s a personal thing,” she said. “I only came here because I’m really worried about her. She’s devastated by all this.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Yossi patted her gently on the shoulder, not at all convinced by his own words. Zahavi came out into the corridor and showed Yossi into a small interrogation room to their left.

  Once they settled down, he got straight to the point. “Yossi, there’s a development that you’ll probably find relevant.”

  “I’m listening,” said Yossi, turning toward him.

  “We’ve received a complaint, one in a thousand, about a petty burglary at a house in Tel Aviv, and the theft of a phone, clothes, and some cash. Not something that usually grabs our attention. The complainant, a Mrs. Linda Weiner, welcomed into her home, at three in the morning on the day of Michal’s disappearance, a drunken woman who was in a daze. The woman slept there. In the morning, Linda made a mistake and decided to take a long shower while the woman was still in her house. When she came out of the shower, the drunk was gone. She’d stolen a phone and some money. We wouldn’t bother you with this nonsense were it not for three facts.”

  Zahavi paused dramatically, then continued. “First: the complainant lives only a block away from the pub where Michal was last seen. Second, the thief took Mrs. Weiner’s clothes, leaving behind your wife’s clothes.”

  “Why would she be my wife? Someone robbed my wife and robbed that Linda as well,” said Yossi in a tone that lacked any conviction. He recalled the unfamiliar clothes Michal was wearing in the picture sent by the private investigator.

  “Perhaps,” said Zahavi, smiling while giving him a skewed look. “The third fact: we showed Mrs. Weiner a picture of your wife and she identified her for sure. Moreover, when the woman went down the stairs on her way out, she saw Linda’s neighbor as well. We showed the neighbor her picture and she recognized Michal too. Your wife even did something strange and inexplicable: She left the stolen phone with the neighbor in what appeared to be a burs
t of spontaneity, Mrs. Weiner’s cell phone, that is. A strange and, perhaps, very sophisticated ploy. Anyway, I’m sorry. It was Michal.”

  “Okay...” Yossi collapsed on the bench and breathed. “I don’t understand. So you’re telling me that my wife wasn’t abducted, but became a thief, stealing clothes and cash in Tel Aviv? Does that make sense to you? That’s what she lacked in life?”

  “Nothing makes sense here, sir. Hear me out. The woman who stole Mrs. Weiner’s clothes was observed getting on a bus to Eilat that day. Two witnesses saw her.”

  “She went to Eilat!” Yossi gave him a hard look. “Okay, I get it. So look for her in Eilat! Have you looked for her over there yet?”

  “There was no Linda Weiner or Michal Rafael in any hotel in Eilat. She hasn’t used a credit card. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. In fact, her tracks were lost. She could easily have slipped away to Sinai, so she could be in Egypt by now. She could have fled to Jordan and from there to anywhere else in the world. We find it hard to believe that she’s still in Eilat. We distributed her picture two days ago, and the police are on the lookout for her. So far, nothing.”

  “I’ve known she was in Eilat for two days now. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “How... how did you know?”

  “I used my own detective. No matter. He lost her. As if she just evaporated.”

  “You don’t trust the long arms of the law, Mr. Rafael?” Inspector Zahavi raised his voice, and Yossi’s stomach lurched as he stood up and sat down again.

  “They’re weak arms, Inspector. They need strengthening.”

  “So what else have your private investigations discovered?” Zahavi inquired mockingly.

  “Nothing.” Yossi lifted his foot and stepped on a little ant on the floor near his chair. “Lost track of her.”

  Inspector Zahavi sighed. “So did we. As stated, there’s no certainty that she continued from Eilat to any other destination in the country or the world. Now that we’ve exhausted the immediate investigation, we’re sharing our findings with you.” He looked round conspiratorially, leaned toward Yossi, and whispered, “I still think you should look at what made her escape and why she went with Raul.”

  Yossi jumped back on his feet, stirred up.

  “Relax. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a romantic thing,” the inspector assured him. “Maybe they helped each other disappear, and perhaps they shared some little trick. Look for clues around the house...”

  Yossi stood up and grabbed Zahavi’s shoulders. He towered over Zahavi at least by a full head and shook him hard. “You don’t understand, Zahavi! Our lives have been destroyed, and the girls and our parents are crazy with worry, but it’s not us. It’s her! You have to use everything you’ve got. Every minute counts! She’s the one in danger. Maybe he has her. I don’t know. But she’s in danger. If not because of others, then by her own right. I know it! I feel it!” He flopped down hard in the chair and buried his face between his large hands.

  Meanwhile, back in the conference room, Tomas began, “Mrs. Dominguez...”

  “Call me Orna,” she said quietly.

  “As you wish, Orna. Before we begin presenting the data we found, in order to better understand the profile of your husband and to find him faster, I ask for your cooperation.”

  “Yes?” Orna narrowed her eyes to long black slits decorated with sculpted eyelashes.

  “Do you have, or does your husband have, severe financial problems? Anyone in the extended family with debts you want or need to cover?”

  Orna looked at him for a long moment. She swallowed and then sighed. “Look, Inspector...”

  “Call me Thomas,” he said with a pleasant smile and moved his chair to sit next to her without the table creating a barrier between them. “You can tell me anything. There’s nothing that I haven’t heard in this life.”

  “There’s nothing specific to tell. In Migdal Haemek, there’s no such thing as wealthy families. There are those who get along better and those who get along worse. While my husband comes from a family with means... he was born in Argentina, you know, and his family still has a lot of money. That doesn’t mean any of it came our way. Those bastards!” she whispered quietly.

  Tomas didn’t pressure her. He knew she’d continue. When the faucet opens, the dripping always advances to a steady stream. “To tell you the truth? He had a bright future waiting for him, or so his oh-so-charming sister says, who I’ve seen maybe three times in my life. They planned a career as a lawyer for him, or a bank owner, with acquisitions of startup companies, and who knows what. But he married me while at university, and ever since, they’ve blamed me for holding their darling son back...”

  “And what did he think?”

  “He also blamed me, a little...” She thought a bit. “He followed me to Migdal Haemek because my whole family lived here. It’s true, he’s a financial wizard and could’ve been a CEO, but what’s wrong with being a bank branch manager? He could be the bank’s chief executive one day.” She looked away. Lying to herself was harder than lying to others. “Look, we did all right. We didn’t have financial problems, thank God. Mr. Officer or Policeman, sir…” Tomas didn’t respond to this mistaken title, “we have a small house on land in a rural neighborhood north of the city...”

  “Children?”

  “Four. Each one more successful and beautiful than the other. They’re grown up now. Some moved to Tel Aviv and some went looking for a future in South America. Like all young people. They don’t write or speak to him at all. Not since...” she paused. Tomas did not respond, just looked deeper into her dark eyes from which tears began to flow. She sighed and wiped away the tears. “Since... I don’t know why I’m telling this to the police of all people. Even my best friends don’t...”

  “Orna.” Tomas came even closer to her. “Don’t worry. No secrets will leave this place. I just want to understand more about Raul’s nature and ambitions, to anticipate his plans and where to find him.”

  “I didn’t expect the police to invest so much in this really...” marveled Orna.

  “The children?” Tommy reminded her.

  “Yes,” Orna began to stir the spoon inside the nearly empty mug of tea on the table. “My youngest son is twenty today. A couple of years ago, he came out to us.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and looked toward the closed door. “He came home and announced he’d been with a boyfriend for six months. That he loved him! That he wasn’t going to finish high school and was tired of having to lie to us and to the world… that school wasn’t at all important to him and he was moving to Holland to follow his lover! To say that we were shocked… well, a thousand times over! His brothers already knew, it seemed, and his sister promised to help him with everything.

  “Raul went mad. He screamed and broke things around the house and locked himself in our room for two days. He cried and said it was the most magnificent failure in the chain of failures of his life... that if it was to become public knowledge in Migdal Haemek, his career was finished. He said he’d spent the most on this son and now he’d brutally thrown all of our investment and his future into the garbage. From the moment I tried to tell him that this was our son and that everyone turns out differently, he stopped speaking to me for a week. And it wasn’t easy, Mr. Tommy. Our community doesn’t have such problems. At least not that they know of. Young people flee to Tel Aviv after their army service, and who knows what they do there, God forbid! But I accepted him because he’s my son, a part of me. In the end, he left the house, and his father stopped speaking to him at all, and the others were so angry at Raul that they cut their ties with him. They only talk to me. In any case, he was always stingy and never gave them any money. ‘Learn to support yourselves,’ he said. ‘This is education for life,’ he explained to me. So every now and then, I give them money from my salary without Raul knowing. But he lives like a lone wolf. If not for me... and his team at the branch, who see him as a great boss… there wouldn’t be any people in
his life. “

  “Did he ever go to treatment?”

  “Yes, for his knees. Oh,” she frowned and snickered, “you mean therapy? That’d be a step too far! A macho man like him? Go to a psychologist? No way!” Orna was quiet for a moment or two. “But, inspector, you said you’ve found something. Do you have any idea where Raul is?”

  “We’ve discovered something important about your husband, and I want to share it with you. I don’t know if you’re aware of what I’m about to tell you, but if you know, it’s important that you tell us immediately, okay? I’ll call in another inspector, with your permission, and the dispatcher. Okay?”

  Orna looked directly at him and sniffed. “No problem.” The policemen came in as soon as he opened the door and sat down at the table.

  “We found a major problem with the accounts at the bank branch run by Raul. We have a procedure: If bank workers go missing, we also involve the audit committee of the bank. In recent days, they went over the bank accounts managed by your husband. We found that, filed under ‘Lost Accounts - Dormant’ and mostly portfolios of people over the age of sixty-five, deposit amounts don’t match withdrawal amounts. Each month, even in accounts that haven’t been active for over a decade, there was a difference of a few shekels, sometimes dozens. The phenomenon repeated itself. We were looking for accounts that have had identical amounts deposited to them on matching dates and found that, eventually, all missing funds flowed, for years, to the account of a woman named Rosa Levy. Are you familiar with that name, ma’am?”