A Possibility of Violence (10 page)

On the back of the picture Jenny had written the woman's name, in English, in dainty letters: Marisol. After the wedding she was traveling to South America with her husband.

Chaim had taken off his pants and shirt in a storage room in the city hall and over his undershirt put on the suit his mother had bought him. Jenny was in her underwear and bra when she fixed his tie for him, and for a moment he saw the part of her body that pleased him most of all: a dense, dark line of hair that started above her navel and continued to the panty line on her brown rounded stomach. He waited a long time for her to do her makeup. She explained to him how to work the camera and he photographed her in the dress she had bought in south Tel Aviv. The picture came out dark and her face was barely visible in it. Marisol photographed the two of them together before they entered the office: he is taller than Jenny even though he's standing hunched; the suit fits him; and he of course looks older than her.

Fifteen years separated them.

The mayor asked if they had prepared something to say to each other before they signed the documents and he said no. Agapitos, the driver, waited for them in the office, where he functioned as witness, interpreter, and photographer. And that was it. Agapitos asked them to kiss against the background of the large window that looked out onto the sands and the palm trees and the sea. In the afternoon they arrived at an otherwise deserted hotel, the Flamingo Beach, and a waiter brought, just for the two of them, a bottle of champagne and macaroni in cream sauce. They sat by themselves on the balcony. His mother called to congratulate them and Jenny said that her sister would call soon from Berlin, but she didn't call. In the evening they undressed, as they had done a few times in his apartment, she before him, in the bathroom. She waited for him in bed without clothes on. He used the bathroom after her, brushed his teeth, took Cialis, returned to the darkened room, and got into bed in his underwear. The two of them wanted children then, or at least he thought so. As usual, they first lay silently next to each other for a long time, on their backs, and Jenny slowly caressed his soft stomach and his smooth thighs, without looking, until something happened.

The next morning they returned to Israel, and on the flight he again was stricken with nausea.

And now he will need to get on a plane again because of her.

 

HE COMPLETED HIS WORK EARLY, BEFORE
nine thirty. And didn't imagine that this might be the last time. He covered the bowls of fresh salad with tinfoil, cleared a place for them on the shelves in the refrigerator, and cleaned the kitchen. On the call-in talk shows a woman from Jerusalem said that her husband was in the middle of becoming religious and was growing distant from her because of her impurity, and afterward another caller said that his wife had abandoned him with a four-month-old baby, and Chaim listened in shock to his story. The apartment was dark and silent after he turned off the radio, and he turned some lights on. But the silence didn't bother him. He hadn't been alone at night for many years. Tonight he wouldn't stretch the thin thread across the bedroom's door frame, he would just lock the door.

It was true that his search didn't turn up anything, but the packing was over. And the activity lessened the stress he had been feeling since the afternoon. There was still space in the suitcase, and he put toys, as well as two children's books, inside, and only afterward did he call his mother. The children were already in bed. She said to him, “They asked when you're coming. I told them tomorrow. I didn't say anything about a trip,” and he said, “No need, I'll tell them.” She didn't ask where he planned to take them, and if she had asked he wouldn't have told her, although she apparently knew already.

“Did you make all your arrangements?” she asked, and he said, “Almost.”

“And did you talk to the teacher?”

“Not yet.”

“Call now. Afterward it will be too late.”

He had put off the conversation with the teacher because he didn't know what he would say to her exactly. Would he have to reveal that he was interrogated by the police and say that that was why he was calling? Of course she already knew. When he picked up Shalom from daycare this afternoon he saw a patrol on the street. And should he tell her that he was taking the children on vacation for a few days? This would explain to her why Shalom wouldn't be coming to daycare when she didn't see him in the morning, and that's why he told this to the Russian assistant, but if he was right about her having directed the investigator to him, then she was liable to inform the police that he was going away.

The thought of making the apology caused him shame, but he didn't have a choice. He wasn't doing this for himself but rather for the sake of the children. He also hadn't yet decided if he'd tell her that he had no connection to the suitcase or only that he was no longer angry with her and understood that he had made a mistake. He recalled the day he returned from work and saw the cut on Shalom's forehead. Jenny refused to do anything and didn't want to talk about it. He went to the daycare the next day and confronted the teacher only because of her.

He spread out the blankets in the children's room and straightened them over the sheets. Afterward he called the teacher and didn't get an answer.

They'd go away for a few days, and when they returned there would be no more investigation. They'd go back to their routine, and with time the children wouldn't ask him about Jenny anymore. How would he make sure that the investigation was over? He thought that he could ask his mother to follow it in the papers. In any case, if they didn't look for him again, he would know that it was okay for them to return. And maybe the trip would return Ezer to him. Maybe it would make clear to his son what really happened that night. Maybe it would explain to him who his father really was, and who his mother had been.

He waited a few minutes, then called again, but once more didn't get an answer. For a moment he thought that she wasn't answering because she knew that he was the caller, from the number, but it was unlikely that she would know his home number.

The time between attempts got shorter and shorter, and he held the receiver for a long time before he gave up and put it down.

He called her for the last time at eleven thirty.

7

THE REPORT ABOUT THE PREVIOUS INVESTIGATION
was in his in-box when he woke up Monday morning, a little after five. In the subject line, Ilana wrote
For your eyes only
and the message was brief: I
WAS ASKED TO WRITE, AND
I
COULDN'T HAVE WRITTEN DIFFERENTLY
. I
HOPE YOU'LL UNDERSTAND
. A
ND PLEASE DON'T DISAPPEAR ON ME
. I
LANA
. The report hadn't arrived from a police account but from a Hotmail account under the name of
rebeccajones21
. It was sent after midnight, probably from her home.

Avraham placed the coffee on the burner, to let it brew, and showered in water that hadn't gotten warm enough. It was still possible to delete the report from his in-box, still possible to put off reading it. Marianka would certainly have implored him to do just that. He was in the middle of a new investigation, and it was best not to return to a case that he had left behind. His cell phone started ringing while he was reading but he didn't get up to check who was calling him at such an early hour, because he thought that he knew and couldn't have imagined what had happened a few hours earlier.

The threat had been carried out.

The suitcase
was
in fact just the beginning.

 

THE FIRST SENTENCE THAT ILANA WROTE
in the report was sharp and painful:
On the evening of Wednesday, May 4th, Hannah Sharabi, the mother of the victim, Ofer Sharabi, submitted a complaint about the disappearance of her son. At this time she already knew that Ofer was no longer among the living and that he had met his end in a violent incident with his father, Rafael Sharabi, the previous evening.

Everything that Avraham hoped would be forgotten came back to him while reading.

The spring evening when Hannah Sharabi arrived at his office and said that Ofer hadn't returned from school. She sat, frightened, before him, and he thought that this was because she feared for her son's fate. He suggested that she ought not to submit a complaint immediately, and the next morning she appeared in the station with a bag of photos of Ofer. Avraham was in their house later that same day. An investigation was opened. He believed every word she said to him, and everything the father told him later. He was certain that Ofer ran away from home and defended the parents even when Ilana and Shrapstein thought he ought to examine their scenarios and question the parents again.

The cell phone continued ringing in the bedroom. He didn't intend to respond to Ilana.

Under the heading
Work of the Investigation Team—Evaluation
, Ilana wrote the following lines, and he read them slowly:

The commanding officer of the investigation team, Inspector Avraham Avraham, committed a few errors
that brought about a delay in solving the investigation and made it difficult to gather evidence against the suspects in the case. Yet it is important to point out that the analysis of these mistakes is being done after the fact and in my opinion there is nothing here to indicate concrete negligence in the management of the investigation.

First, it can be said that the commander erred in the interrogation of the mother immediately after she reported her son's absence. There is a reasonable possibility that a more substantial investigation, and especially an extensive search of the apartment at this stage, would have revealed findings in the apartment arousing suspicion against the parents of the victim that would have contradicted their
original version, according to which their son was miss
ing. The backpack of the victim, who, according to the mother's claim at this stage, had left in the morning for school and hadn't returned, was still in the apartment and was only thrown away a few days later. Similarly the commander refrained from entering various rooms in the apartment, which, after the fact, it became clear were part of the crime scene. It is possible that had the commander ordered an extensive search of them in the first few days
following the incident between the father and his son, various suspicious findings would have been discovered.
During the substantial amount of time that passed between the committing of the crime and the solving of the case, the scene was cleaned up, and this made the consolidation of the evidence more difficult.

Second, the commander erred in managing the investigation of the father, who at the time the case was opened was outside Israel. The commander did not call him to return immediately after opening the investigation but instead waited five days for his return, during which
time the father disposed of the victim's corpse at sea and attempted to cover up his guilt in additional ways. In the absence of a body it became difficult for the prosecution to prove the exact circumstances of the death, necessitating the confessions of the parents, who finally spoke of an accident. In retrospect, it was also possible to establish that the first interrogation of the father was not sufficiently thorough, in light of the fact that he broke and admitted to killing his son during the shortest of interrogations, which was conducted by a different investigating officer on the team (Inspector Eyal Shrapstein).

The third mistake was the commanding officer's decision to ignore the unusual behavior of one of those questioned in the case, Ze'ev Avni, a neighbor of the Sharabi family and the private tutor of the victim. Ze'ev Avni ridiculed the commanding officer over the course of three weeks, and had he not confessed of his own accord it is possible that he would not have been exposed to this day. Two days after the investigation was opened Avni called the police and left a misleading message about Ofer's location and later on wrote anonymous letters to Rafael and Hannah Sharabi in the name of the victim, letters that eventually led to the case being solved. In my opinion, the investigating team did not devote adequate attention to Avni's unusual behavior, resulting in a delay in the resolution of the case, a delay that had a material effect on the evidence.

Yet it is my desire to emphasize that in the end Inspector Avraham stood at the head of a team that solved the investigation.

Inspector Avraham is an experienced and promising investigator who has participated in many complex investigations, and I am fully hopeful that the errors in the management of this particular investigation will not have any effect on his advancement or on his future contributions to the police.

Avraham sat in front of the open report for a long time. Marianka stared at him from a passport photo that he'd taped to the plastic frame of his monitor, and he remembered how distant she sounded to him the day before. The cell phone continued to ring, and he went to the bedroom and turned it off, but Ilana didn't give up and called the house line. He removed the cord from the jack. Silence prevailed in the room, though inside him a cacophony of voices roared. What especially pained him was the inescapable fact that because of his mistakes Ofer's parents evaded serious punishment. Because of his oversights in the investigation the police did not have a body; because of them the crime scene was cleaned before it was examined, and the prosecution was forced to base the indictment on the confession of the father that Ofer's death was the result of an accident. The father claimed that he saw Ofer sexually assault his sister in her room and that in his effort to defend the daughter Ofer was injured and died, and there was no way to contradict his version because the mother kept silent. But wasn't that his fault? Yes, of course it was, and he acknowledged it. More than anything Avraham wanted to respond to Ilana. But what could he write? He didn't understand who he was most angry with. Ilana? Ofer Sharabi's parents? Himself? He wanted to ask her who had read the report besides Benny Saban, and when it was written, and why she didn't send it to him to review. He wanted to explain and accuse and apologize all at the same time.

He opened a new message and wrote
Ilana
in it. But didn't continue.

“It's not important now,” he whispered to himself. “Not important at all.”

Now a new investigation was waiting for him, and it was an opportunity to prove, mainly to himself, that the failures of the previous case were accidental. He deleted the message with the attachment from his in-box to the trash. Had he managed to commit any fresh errors since the new case was opened? Had someone again ridiculed him, as Ofer's parents had done?

Chava Cohen's lies he identified from the first moment. His eyes were open and he didn't believe a word of what she said.

He got dressed quickly. Perhaps precisely because Ilana urged him not to disappear he didn't turn on his cell phone even when he entered his office, late, with no one noticing him. There were sentences in her report he already knew by heart:
The commander erred in the interrogation of the mother immediately after she reported her son's absence. In retrospect, it was also possible to establish that the first interrogation of the father was not sufficiently thorough, in light of the fact that he broke and admitted to killing his son during the shortest of interrogations, which was conducted by a different investigating officer on the team.

Benny Saban opened the door to his office hastily, without knocking, at eight thirty. He was surprised when he saw Avraham sitting behind his desk, immersed in the investigation file open before him. Saban said to him, “You're actually here? Ilana Lis has been looking for you since six this morning. Have you forgotten that your vacation is over?” Avraham looked at him in amazement.

Did Saban know that Ilana sent him the report to read? He was still convinced that that was why she called.

Avraham said, “I didn't notice that the phone was off. Sorry. Did she tell you why she's looking for me?” and was astounded to hear the answer. Saban said, “Your teacher. Chava Cohen. They beat her almost to death. She's been hospitalized, unconscious at Wolfson. Ilana's been at the scene since seven this morning, and she wants you there ASAP.”

 

THE STREETS TO TEL AVIV WERE
jammed, and for the first time in a while Avraham turned on his siren. He drove quickly and against the direction of traffic on Kugel Boulevard and from there to Jaffa, via the rundown neighborhood of Kiryat Shalom. Ilana picked up immediately. And didn't say a thing about his disappearance during the morning hours. She heard the wail of the siren and asked, “You on your way?” And he said, “I'll be there within five minutes.” She had already returned to her office at the Tel Aviv district headquarters.

She checked to see if he had received a preliminary report and he said that Saban had updated him verbally. Chava Cohen was found shortly after 3:00 a.m. She was lying in a ditch under a pedestrian bridge on the boardwalk, precisely on the border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, not far from the Etzel Museum. She had trauma to the ribs and chest—but worse to the head. Three Sudanese men found her unconscious and called the police. Saban had no idea how long she lay in the ditch or what her condition presently was. The Sudanese men were interrogated and were being detained even though they weren't suspected in the attack. Avraham asked, “And we know with certainty that this is the same woman?” and Ilana said, “Yes. Neither cell phone nor any identification was found on her, but we identified her from her car. At five this morning.”

“What do you mean, ‘from her car'?”

“Her car's in a parking lot. The patrol officers called the guard and went over the images on the security cameras. They identified her arriving and getting out of a red Subaru Justy at 1:30 a.m. We called her at home and woke up her son. He didn't know that she had gone out at all. He checked the bedroom and saw she wasn't there. A patrol vehicle took him to Wolfson and he identified her in surgery.”

Why was he surprised when he heard that Chava Cohen had a son? Perhaps because until this moment in the investigation she was only a teacher who, apparently, abused children. She blew up at him during her questioning and concealed the threatening telephone call. He didn't ask her if she was married or if she had children. He also didn't ask Ilana how old her son was. He asked, “Will she come out of it?” and Ilana said, “Hard to know, she's still in surgery. But she received very serious blows to the head. With a rock. I understand that the entire left side of her face was smashed in.”

Chava Cohen's stern face appeared in his imagination covered in blood. And her son, looking at her over the doctors' shoulders. Every time he recalled that face he was filled with hatred. Ilana said, “Avi, I understand from Saban that there were threats made to her. Did we do anything about them?” And a moment passed before he understood what she was actually asking.

Benny Saban had referred to Chava Cohen as “your teacher.”

He said, “No, Ilana, that's not correct. She received one threatening call and she concealed it and insisted that the bomb had no connection to her. I questioned her for hours and I asked her if she received any threats, and she denied it. And we've had patrol units around the school area since yesterday.” From afar he saw the small wooden bridge and the ditch beneath it. Patrols blocked the street. He asked, “So what now? Do I continue with the investigation?” and Ilana said, “I want to hear what you've got and then we'll proceed. Forensics has been working in the area for a few hours already, but you're familiar with the background and the threats and perhaps you'll see something we didn't see. I want you to come here afterward and tell me what you know. And we'll analyze the findings from the scene together. Can you be in my office at eleven?”

 

THE FIRST THING HE WANTED TO
do was see Chava Cohen at the scene of the attack.

She entered the parking lot in a red Justy at 1:36 and circled the deserted lot a number of times before parking the car close to the empty guard booth. Was she looking for another car? Waiting for someone? No other cars entered the lot between 1:00 and 2:30. The time of Chava Cohen's arrival seemed strange to him, because it wasn't a round number. Was she early for a meeting, or maybe late? She wore jeans and a short green shirt and was carrying a small cloth bag in her hand. She locked the car and looked around, and afterward looked at the watch on her wrist. She did not appear anxious. Avraham had no doubt it was her: her steps were small and quick as she walked toward the boardwalk and left the camera's range. Avraham circled the old car and didn't see anything exceptional. An old beat-up car that hadn't been washed in a long time. In the dust on the rear window a finger had drawn a crooked heart with two arrows through it. Even though she drove in it alone the Subaru was part of the crime scene, and he entered it carefully, his shoes covered in plastic booties and his hands enveloped in gloves. The smell permeating the car's interior seemed familiar to him. On the passenger's seat was a plastic bag with a pair of Adidas, size 10, inside, probably the son's, and at the foot of the seat a blue towel had been thrown. In the glove compartment were old road maps, gas station receipts, two CDs, and a Yellow Pages booklet.