A Possibility of Violence (12 page)

“Why do you think that?” she asked, and he said, “Because I found a cassette case for a tape recorder in her trunk. And the cassette was missing. I think that the assailant arranged a meeting with her and that she intended to record it, because he blackmailed her or threatened her. And then something happened.”

Ilana studied him. “He didn't plan to hurt her in advance,” she said.

“No. She was attacked with a rock that was in the ditch. An argument developed that boiled over into violence. Maybe the assailant discovered the recording device.”

“And why did he take the wallet and cell phone with him?”

“Why? Either so it would look like a mugging or because she had something in her purse that might expose him. It's likely there was an exchange of text messages or phone calls between them. They had to have coordinated the meeting somehow.”

Ilana wasn't yet convinced. Perhaps she just wanted to be hard on him. “I think you're going in the right direction but are running too fast. And there are two details in your story that are hard for me to accept. The first is that the phone threat she received at the daycare was from a woman while the assailant, apparently, was a man. And the second is actually connected to this. It's hard for me to believe that Chava Cohen would go out in the middle of the night to meet with someone who threatened or blackmailed her. Unless it was a person she knew well. We checked—her ex has an alibi, and there seems to be no conflict there. And I don't believe that it could have been her son, although if there's one person she would go to meet regardless of the time or place, it would definitely be her son.”

He looked at her amazed: that was exactly the detail that was tough for him as well. The only detail in the story that didn't sit well with the rest of the details.

He was searching for a woman's voice. And Chava Cohen hadn't been afraid of coming to a late-night meeting perhaps because she thought that she was about to meet with a woman and not a man. But her assailant was a man, without a doubt.

Ilana looked at the wall clock sitting on the floor and called the hospital.

Chava Cohen was in surgery, and it was too early to know when she would get out, or in what condition. Avraham lit another cigarette and paced around the room while Ilana spoke with the forensics lab. “And there's another possibility,” she said after she put down the receiver. “I understand that the main direction of your investigation before the assault was parents of children at the daycare? So perhaps we're looking for a man
and
a woman. The man placed the suitcase and the woman made the phone call. And Chava Cohen planned to meet the woman but ended up meeting the man.”

The exchange of thoughts and words with her always caused something in him to come alive.

He looked at her and smiled. “That's a brilliant idea,” he said. It had crossed his mind too since the investigation was opened.

She asked, “Do you have someone in mind?” and he said, “Perhaps.”

And it was exactly then that the list of phone calls arrived.

A young cop Avraham didn't know entered the room and Ilana introduced Avraham to him as the commander of the investigation. Sergeant Lior Zaytuni shook his hand and extended the fax to him. “There are no incoming or outgoing calls near the time of the attack, but look here—from ten at night she had more than ten calls from the same number that went unanswered. But at eleven thirty she answers that number and speaks with it for four minutes.”

Avraham immediately knew that he had seen the number before.

He opened the notepad and leafed through it but Zaytuni beat him to it. “The number belongs to a man by the name of Chaim Sara, who lives on Aharonovitch Street in Holon,” he said, and Ilana looked at Avraham. He nodded but wasn't able to add any details because Natalie Pinchasov returned his call just then.

He asked if she knew what had happened during the night and she said she did. When Chava Cohen didn't arrive at the daycare she called her and didn't get an answer. Afterward she called her son and he told her about the assault. In the meantime the daycare was still open, because there were parents who insisted that they couldn't drop everything to come get their children, but she hoped that by noon everyone would come and she'd close it. Avraham asked, “Did Chaim Sara's son come to the daycare?” And the assistant said, “No. Maybe I should have called you but I forgot. The father already told me yesterday that the boy wouldn't be coming because they're going out of town.”

 

WHEN THEY WERE AGAIN ALONE IN
the room, Ilana asked him to tell her about Sara, and Avraham went over the details of the testimony he'd collected in his office.

Actually he didn't know much about him. Yet.

An older father of two young children, fifty-seven years old. No criminal record. Presented himself during questioning as the owner of a catering business. There were signs of anxiety evident in Sara throughout their conversation. His answers were brief and clipped, as if he had difficulty speaking.

Did he arouse suspicion in Avraham? Maybe for a moment, as when he prolonged his answers of all things. What disturbed Avraham was the gap between the stammering in his answers to seemingly simple questions and the fluent and complete story he told about the incident with Chava Cohen. As if only that answer had been prepared in advance. “But most of my suspicions at that stage were directed toward Chava Cohen's lies, and it could be that I wasn't attentive enough,” he conceded. If Sara was indeed the assailant, his motives were clear: He suspected that Chava Cohen hurt his son. Sara claimed that his wife wasn't available for questioning because she had traveled to the Philippines and he didn't know when she'd return, and this response also disconcerted Avraham. After all, she didn't fly to the Philippines on a one-way ticket. But Sara also inspired trust in him, perhaps even pity, and perhaps it was exactly because of this feeling that Avraham was now quite certain that they had to arrest him immediately.

Ilana put down the pen in her hand.

For a few moments they didn't speak. They looked at one another in silence, which he was also very familiar with. The silence before a decision. The report was no longer a barrier between them, but were it not for Avraham reading it this morning, he might not have seen what he saw. Finally Ilana said, quietly, “I want to locate him but I don't want to arrest him yet,” and Avraham said, “Come on, Ilana, he called her more than ten times before the attack. And she left home after a conversation with him, or with his wife. Give me a few hours with him and the investigation will be over.”

Ilana smiled. “I see that your confidence has returned. That's good. But we have time, Avi, and we have a lot to do before then. This time I want us to be prepared for the arrest and interrogation so we can submit a perfect case to the attorneys, without a single loose end. Let's wait for the results from the lab. The scene was very messy, and it's likely we'll have finger- and shoe prints and DNA. And don't forget that if we're lucky Chava Cohen could regain consciousness at any moment and simply tell us that he was the assailant. I'm with you on your feeling, but to arrest him on circumstantial evidence would be to shoot ourselves in the foot. I'll request a sweeping gag order. Not only on the name of the victim but on the attack itself as well. And in the meantime we'll locate him and put him under surveillance. Look into this information that he plans to go away. And check what vehicle he owns and if he moved it during the night. Go over all the cameras on the way from Holon to Tel Aviv. I want to see his car on the way to the scene of the assault. And try to find out if his wife went away or not. If he lied and she's in Israel, then another detail in our story lines up and we'll be able to assume that Chava Cohen arranged the meeting with her. When we have direct evidence we'll arrest him. Only, in the meantime let's make sure he doesn't escape, okay?”

8

HE THOUGHT ABOUT JENNY FROM THE
moment he woke up in the morning, and in his thoughts she had unexpected vitality.

He must have dreamed about her—that was the only explanation—but Chaim didn't remember the dream or what happened in it. Blurred shards of memory floated in his body: the thick soles of her feet, her brown thighs, the line of hair running from her navel down her abdomen. Her face was hidden by a pillow. It seemed to him that in the dream he saw the smiling face of Agapitos, the driver. And one other dull memory retrieved from the night: a wide rectangular window, with a wooden frame, looking out on a small courtyard from beyond which came screaming voices.

Did he already know when he woke up that the reason for the trip wasn't only to avoid the police's interrogation? The questioning at the station scared him less the day after. When he had left the station, his hands trembled on the car's steering wheel, but since he started carrying out the plan, the shaking had ceased. He was frightened not because of the questions the detective posed to him but rather because of those he did not. And he had no reason to panic. At night he'd spoken with Chava Cohen and the conversation had gone well. The investigation had certainly turned away from him, or would do so in the days to come. He could have canceled the trip—and in retrospect, if he had canceled it, it's possible he wouldn't have been caught—but he already wanted to get away for other reasons. He wanted to get away for the sake of Ezer and Shalom, in order to bring Ezer back to him, and to let him understand what really happened. And in some way that wasn't entirely clear to him he also wanted to get away in order to prove something to Jenny, or in order to bury her once and for all.

 

OUT OF HABIT HE LOOKED IN
on the children's room. The beds were empty and the room cool. Perhaps because he was by himself, for the first time in a long while without Ezer and Shalom, he woke up with those thoughts of Jenny. And maybe it was because of the searching he did the night before, and the wedding pictures. He moved the transistor radio from the kitchen to the bathroom so he could listen to the Voice of Israel while he shaved, but the raised voices got mixed up in his thoughts with his own voice and he turned it off. When he got dressed in the bedroom he noticed the suitcase. And was that perhaps the reason Jenny was able to penetrate his thoughts? Everything was carried out according to plan. And from moment to moment it filled up with details. In the suitcase there was still room for the clothes that were drying on the line, and then the idea came to Chaim to buy Jenny a present.

He fried up the eggs and placed them on the windowsill, so they'd cool off, and left for the bakery. This time he didn't drive quickly, and on Sokolov Street he slowed almost to a stop and could look into the windows of the travel agencies and the closed clothing stores. He didn't know where Jenny bought clothes. He recalled that she once told him that they're more expensive at the malls than in the city.

At the Brothers' Bakery it was a morning like any other. The smell of baking dough rose from the ovens and the flour-covered floor. Chaim told the younger brother that he was going away for a few days with the boys and that he'd let them know when they were coming back so as to restart his daily order, and he was surprised by the ease with which the story flowed out of him. Exactly like it had gone last night, in the conversation with the teacher, he thought. The younger brother patted him on the shoulder and wished him a pleasant vacation, and Chaim wished him an easy fast on Yom Kippur.

On his way back home it was already daylight and the roads were no longer empty. This was exactly how he drove on the morning he hid her body. He returned home then and still didn't know what he'd say to the boys, and he hadn't thought about the police at all. He called his mother once the sandwiches were wrapped up and stacked one on top of the other in the crate. The children hadn't woken up yet, and he saw before his eyes their sleeping faces, sunk into their thick pillows in the same room where he had grown up. His mother asked him immediately, “Did you call the teacher?” and he answered, “Everything's okay, don't keep worrying. How did they sleep?”

“Shalom had a hard time getting to sleep, but they didn't wake up during the night. What did you say to her?”

“I told you already, everything's okay. We had a good talk. Don't keep thinking about it.”

She didn't ask any more questions.

From the exhaustion in her voice he guessed that she hadn't slept well, her thoughts turning her over in bed. He said, “Maybe call Adina and ask her to help with the kids,” and his mother said, “I already did. I think she'll come by this evening, after work.”

 

PERHAPS HE SHOULD HAVE CALLED HIS
mother last night after talking with the teacher to reassure her, but it had been late.

Chava Cohen didn't answer him until eleven thirty. She hadn't recognized his voice, and even when he told her his name she didn't immediately remember.

At the start of the conversation she was impatient, just as she had been at daycare, but afterward she softened. She asked, “Did you just call me a few times?” and he said, “Yes. I'm sorry to bother you.” She asked him how he got her phone number, and he said from the daycare's contact list. Afterward she asked what he wanted and he answered her directly, like he had decided. “I want to apologize for what happened. We're celebrating a new year, so I wanted to wish you a good year and to start a new page.” She didn't answer right away, and he listened to the sound of her breathing. Was she not certain it was him? She asked, “Why would you call me at this hour, Mr. Sara?” He responded, “As I told you, to ask for your forgiveness. And also to say that I have no tie to the suitcase with the bomb that they put by your daycare. I would never do a thing like that. If you knew me better, you'd know that's not me.”

Again he heard her breathing. And in the background, voices from a distant television. She asked, “And you called only for that?” And he confirmed this and said, “Now we're in the Days of Forgiveness, no?”

By then he already felt their conversation was going well. His anger with her dissipated while he spoke.

She asked him suddenly, “Did someone from the police question you about the suitcase?” and he said, “Yes, they called me in for questioning at the station today,” even though he wasn't sure that this was what he should have said. She was silent again. Subsequently when she spoke her voice was more polite, less aggressive.

“Can you tell me what they asked?”

“If we had a dispute, and if you have disputes with other parents at the daycare.”

“And what did you say?”

“That what happened wasn't a dispute, and that there aren't any disputes at the daycare.”

“They didn't ask you about people who worked at the daycare?”

He didn't understand her question and said no.

“Are you sure? They didn't ask anything about the assistant who worked for me last year?”

Afterward she asked additional questions about the police interrogation and he answered, emphasizing all the good things he'd said about her. She ended the conversation after wishing him a good year and he said he'd see her at the daycare, not the next day but rather after the holidays. Before this, she said to him the sentence he had hoped to hear: “I didn't think that you had any connection to that suitcase, Mr. Sara. That suitcase has no connection to the daycare, either. But thanks for calling. And give little Shalom a kiss from me.”

 

HE STARTED HIS ROUNDS AT WORK
early that day, before eleven, although business was always slow at this time of year. He wanted to get back home before one and continue with his plan.

Most of the work was at the Ministry of the Interior building. In the large hall where they renew passports and issue identity cards, the line was short, because of the holidays. He moved on to the small hall of the visas department, where most of the work took place. Dozens of foreigners and their spouses or employers crowded in line without knowing when the clerk would call them. Some of them had been standing there without food since 7:00 a.m.

Chaim himself had gone there for the first time with Jenny, to extend her visa, which had expired before they got married, when she lost her job.

Luckily for him, he didn't have to wait in line. They were received by the clerk immediately upon their arrival, because Ilan, his cousin, worked there. Jenny by chance saw Marisol, the Filipino woman whom they'd met before the wedding in Cyprus, and got excited. Her husband, a plumber, was much younger than Chaim and already twice divorced. They still planned on traveling to South America and were trying to extend Marisol's visa, but the Ministry of the Interior was creating difficulties, because they were skeptical of their marriage's credibility, despite the pictures from Larnaca. Jenny urged Chaim to say something to his cousin on their behalf, and he did. He wasn't selling his food there then, not until five years later, when the high-tech firm he was catering hot lunches for closed and a second company canceled its commitment for budgetary reasons, and after two months without work the idea of selling there occurred to him, or, actually, to his mother. She spoke to Ilan, and together they arranged the matter. Since then his cousin was promoted and appointed director of the Department of Population Registration. Chaim knocked on the closed door to his office and didn't get an answer, and one of the clerks told him that he was on vacation until after Yom Kippur. Chaim told the clerk that he too was going away for a few days, and she said, “How nice. With Jenny and the kids?” He said yes and smiled.

After work he returned home and took an afternoon nap, and at three thirty he walked downtown.

 

HE BOUGHT THE AIRLINE TICKETS AT
the Magic Tours travel agency in Holon's Weitzman Square at four thirty.

The wide square was quiet and gray, surrounded by old, tall, empty-looking residential buildings. Most of the travel agencies presented signs in Russian and landscape shots from Russia and the Ukraine, and so he chose Magic Tours, but the agents there were Russian too. The agent who invited him to sit opposite her typed with one finger of her left hand. She was around fifty, short and wide, wearing a suit and narrow glasses but no wedding ring. While waiting for the search results she tried to start a conversation with him and asked, “Do you do business there?”

He said, “My wife is there. I'm traveling to her with the children.”

Next to him an older couple booked a guided group tour of Spain and Italy. Chaim was prepared for the next questions as well.

“It's good that you say that two of the travelers are children. What ages?”

“The older one is seven and the other is three.”

“So that's almost full price,” the agent said, and Chaim imagined the moment in which he'd present Ezer and Shalom with the tickets. He planned to do this only the day before their trip. Maybe he'd first show them the packed suitcase and ask, “Can you guess where we're going tomorrow?” He assumed that they'd know the answer, but if they didn't, he'd say to them, “We're going to visit Mom.” The agent apologized for the computer's slowness and added, “Not a lot of Israelis are traveling to the Philippines right now. Not during this season—it's hot there like here, but with a lot more rain,” and he thought that he'd better pack umbrellas.

Ezer and Shalom would bound down the stairway from the plane and he would have to stop them from running through the airport to find Jenny. They would stand outside the airport, in the rain, under their little umbrellas, and wait. And they'd have no one other than him. They were already used to being disappointed by her, and this would be the last, and final, such disappointment.

The search results appeared on the computer screen and the agent said, “I have a flight after Yom Kippur. Sunday evening. With a stop in Hong Kong. Departing from Tel Aviv on El Al at 9:00 p.m. and landing in Manila with Cathay Pacific at 6:40.” Chaim immediately asked, “You don't have anything before Yom Kippur?” and the agent brought her face close to the screen and tapped the keyboard again with the same one finger of her left hand. She shook her head no, but then said, “There's a flight right before Yom Kippur. With Korean Air, via Seoul. Leaves Tel Aviv on Friday and lands in Manila on Saturday. Also in the morning. With a six-hour layover in Seoul. But the tickets are more expensive and you'll be in the air on the holiday.”

Chaim didn't want to wait. He asked, “Are you sure you don't have anything before that? Tomorrow or the next day?” She shook her head.

That was the flight.

She asked, “Three tickets, yes?” and he said, suddenly, “On the way there, yes. But on the way back we'll need four. My wife will be coming back with us.”

He didn't know Jenny's passport number but the agent had no need for it. She only wanted to know how her name was spelled in English. “Jenny. Jenny Sara,” he said.

“Do you know if on her passport it says Jenny or Jennifer?”

He didn't know.

“I'd better write Jennifer. With two
n
's and one
f
. I don't think there will be a problem with that.”

Only when she asked him about the hotel room in Manila did he falter. She thought that they'd have no need for a hotel, but he explained that Jenny had been living in Israel for many years, and that she had no relatives in Manila, and no apartment to stay in there. He didn't take into account that they would need a hotel for so long and was suddenly busy calculating the cost of the room. When she found them an inexpensive hotel, she said, “So, a room for four, or two rooms?” And he said to her, without thinking, “For three. Why four? Me and the two children.”

She observed him with a look full of amazement from behind her glasses. “And what about your wife?”