Lineup (17 page)
ELI
Nachum was sitting in his car waiting patiently for his former second-in-command to come out of the building. Ohad was now occupying his office. When Nachum read about the second rape, he hoped they’d cancel his suspension and reinstate him. But the call never came. No one even asked for his help on the sly. He’d been a cop for more than twenty years, and suddenly it was over, as if he’d never carried a badge.
He should have expected it. He had no doubt that everyone was blaming him, saying the second rape was on him, that he was responsible for allowing it to happen. If he hadn’t bungled the investigation, if he hadn’t created an impossible situation that forced the DA to let Nevo off with no more than probation, the creep wouldn’t have been able to do it again. In the wake of the criticism in the press, with the headlines screaming that police incompetence had put a rapist back on the street, the police spokesman had been compelled to issue the standard statement: “The police force has looked into any errors that were made and drawn the necessary conclusions.” That local guy, Amit Giladi, wasn’t alone anymore. They were all out to get him. Nobody had to tell him what “the necessary conclusions” meant. It meant his dismissal. His career was over.
One of the few friends he had left in the precinct told him they were concentrating all their efforts on finding Ziv Nevo. There was no question in anyone’s mind that his release had given him a sense of euphoria and complacency, provoking him to rape again. But so far they hadn’t had any luck. He’d disappeared without a trace.
Nachum agreed with their basic assumption: the two rapes were committed by the same man. The MO, location, victims, and brutality were too similar. Of course, there might be a copycat, but it didn’t seem likely. A single incident didn’t usually generate that sort of response.
The second rape was horrible, but it was also his chance to get back on the job, to fix the mistakes he’d made. He’d work the case and bring them Nevo’s head on a platter. He wasn’t dead yet, and now he didn’t have to answer to anyone. He wasn’t required to follow orders or justify every move he made. In a way, he had resources at his disposal that he didn’t have when he carried a badge, and he no longer needed his commander’s authorization to work overtime.
At five minutes to nine, Ohad came through the door. He stopped by his car to shake hands with two people Nachum knew very well: Yair Bar, the crime reporter at
Ma’ariv
, and Amit Giladi.
Nachum looked at them with a sour face. He belonged to the generation of cops who didn’t leak information to the press, who only talked to reporters when he thought it could further an investigation. But times had changed. Handling the media was part of the job now. If he’d internalized that a little sooner, he might not have found himself in this position with his future hanging by a thread.
Nachum waited until the three men had driven away before getting out of his car and heading toward the station house. Ohad was a good cop, but he didn’t have enough experience. He needed a few more years to hone his instincts. Nachum figured the enormous pressure on him to find Nevo wasn’t helping either. If he himself read the file, he might see something Ohad had missed.
The guard at the door looked at him in surprise. After twenty years on the job, he was incensed by the idea that he needed an excuse to be there.
“I forgot something in the office,” he muttered apologetically as he hurried inside, hoping the guard was the last person he’d have to explain himself to.
He walked into his former office and turned on the light. Even before he took in the files thrown around haphazardly, the empty coffee cups staining the desk, and the papers covering every inch of space, he noticed that the odor was different. On the cabinet behind the desk, someone had placed a small bottle of air freshener that gave off an odd scent and turned the room he’d spent so many years in into an alien space with an unpleasant smell.
His heart seized up. He hadn’t been in need of any more proof that his career was finished, but every additional bit of evidence still hurt. He was shocked by how quickly and cruelly things had changed. What was he going to do with himself? He wasn’t a kid anymore. He’d been a cop his whole life. It was the only thing he knew.
As he’d expected, the file was on his desk, Ohad’s desk, he reminded himself. Ohad had always been sloppy, so it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t bothered to lock it away in a drawer. Nachum snatched it up and began reading, page by page, detail by detail. The similarity between the two cases was striking. Even the pricks under the chin appeared to have been made by the same hand. They were cut at the same angle and the same depth. There was no question that the second rape was also the work of Nevo.
There were, however, two differences. This time the attacker had beat his victim unconscious. Although Nevo had hit Adi Regev too, the blows hadn’t been this violent. On the contrary, he wanted her to be awake, to cooperate, to beg for her life. The second difference was that this time they were certain Nevo hadn’t ejaculated. In Adi’s case, that question had remained unanswered. Too much time had elapsed before she got to the hospital for any traces of DNA to survive. The description she gave suggested that he had ejaculated, but they couldn’t be sure, and Nevo refused to say. These two points needled him. They might be related. If he’d gotten what he wanted out of Adi and not Dana, and if he’d only beaten Dana unconscious, maybe it was because he wanted to keep her quiet because he was afraid of being seen. That meant he might have been interrupted by something or someone. Could there be another Mrs. Glazer out there?
He looked at the pictures of Dana Aronov. She was badly beaten. He didn’t have to read the medical report to see that the perp had broken her nose. He started to examine the photographs more closely. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He pulled open the drawer of the desk. Good thing Ohad hasn’t had time to empty it, he thought, taking out the magnifying glass he kept there. Bringing it up to his eye, he went over the pictures section by section. Police work was a painstaking job. The smallest, most insignificant detail might turn out to be critical. He put the photos back in the file and picked up the crime scene report, but he was finding it hard to concentrate. Something was still gnawing at him, some hidden asymmetry. Turning back to the pictures, he went over them again meticulously, but nothing jumped out at him. He didn’t even know exactly what he was looking for. Suddenly he stopped. There. The right hand, the middle finger. He reached for the magnifying glass and looked again. He was correct. A ring was missing. The difference in skin color was clearly visible.
His eyes remain focused on the photograph. She could have taken it off before the attack. But there was also a chance it fell off in the struggle, if there was one. There was no way to tell.
By the time they got the report of the assault on Adi, it was already three days after the incident. She’d gone home, showered repeatedly, and thrown out the dress she’d been wearing. It was only because of pressure from her parents that she’d gone to the hospital and reported the rape. In vain, he tried to remember if he’d asked her if anything was missing afterward.
He looked through the office for the Regev file, but the case had been closed and apparently there was a limit even to Ohad’s lack of order. It was probably already gathering dust in the archive room. If he were in charge of the Aronov case, one of the first things he’d do would be to pull the previous file and try to find more connections between the two cases.
Nachum sat down in the chair that used to be his and stared into space, thinking, as he had done so many times before in this very spot. The missing ring troubled him. There were all sorts of rapists. Was Nevo the type that collected trophies?
He’d questioned Nevo for hours on end. At no point in the interrogation had he seen any sign that the man was a psychopath, that rape was a ritual for him, or that he took pride in what he’d done. It was just the opposite.
He leaned forward and massaged his temples in an effort to relieve the pulsating pain that had come on suddenly. Now that he took the time to think about it again, he had to ask himself if Nevo was the type of obsessive sex offender who’d rape again even after getting caught. He seemed too apprehensive, too squeamish. It was highly unlikely that after facing the almost certain prospect of hard time, he’d risk that fate again such a short time later. He didn’t seem the type to taunt the cops, to dare them to try to catch him. And he didn’t seem the type to collect trophies either.
Nachum turned to the computer and typed in
PCL-R
, wanting to go over the checklist of antisocial characteristics to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. His head was throbbing. He scanned the markers of a psychopath. Nevo didn’t display any of them. Before his divorce, he’d maintained a steady long-term relationship with his wife, was devoted to his son, and held down a job that provided comfortably for himself and his family. The fact that he’d been an officer in a combat unit meant he was capable of respecting authority and worked well with others. His responses during the interrogation had been emotional rather than indifferent, and there was no record of juvenile delinquency.
Nachum looked up from the screen. He heard the elevator doors open at the far end of the hall, followed immediately by the voice of Superintendent Navon speaking loudly on his cell phone. Nachum stood up quickly. He couldn’t let Navon find him here. If his independent investigation was to have any chance of success, no one could know about it. How could he explain his presence in what was now Ohad’s office? The excuse he’d given the guard at the entrance wouldn’t work with the superintendent.
He switched off the light and hurried out of the office. He only had a few short seconds before Navon turned the corner and was right in front of him.
HE
looked at his face in the large mirror in the ladies’ room. The place was spacious, clean, and smelled a lot better than the men’s john at the other end of the hall. More to the point, it was much closer to his old office. He could still hear Navon screaming into the phone in the distance. How did he get himself into a situation where he had to hide in the ladies’ room? How low had he come?
Until the car crash near Netanya, Nachum was sure he’d live out his days in logistics. Then one day he and a couple of other cops from the unit were on their way to the station house in Tel Mond when there was a horrific accident right in front of them: a truck collided with a sedan, and the car flipped over and caught fire. The gas tank could explode at any minute. He heard the screams of the woman trapped behind the wheel. Everyone else kept their distance, but not him. He was no different then. He’d always felt compelled to take action and not simply stay on the sidelines. He raced to the burning car, smashed the window, and pulled the driver out. The next day he was hailed as a hero in all the papers, but he didn’t feel like a hero. When there was a job to be done, he did it. That’s just who he was. He took advantage of the medal ceremony to tell the district commander about his ambition of becoming a detective. Two months later, his application was approved.
The missing ring was still eating at him. If the perp took it, it was much more than an insignificant detail. It told them something about his character.
Nachum pulled out his cell phone, went into a stall, and sat down on the toilet seat. He was stuck here until Navon left. Adi Regev’s number was still in the phone. He had to talk to her, ask her if he’d taken anything. A ring, maybe?
She picked up on the third ring.
“Adi,” he said softly, “it’s Eli Nachum.”
NACHUM
leaned his head on the cold tiles and stared at the door of the stall. His eye was caught by a fading sticker with the number of a hotline for rape victims. You didn’t find that sort of thing in the men’s toilet. He was worried that Adi wouldn’t agree to talk to him, that she was still mad at him, but his apprehension turned out to be unwarranted. She said she’d been trying to contact him ever since she heard about the second rape, but they told her he was on extended leave. She apologized over and over again for backing out on them. “I was confused, angry,” she said, assuring him that now she was ready to ID Nevo as the rapist. He listened patiently, doing his best to calm her, insisting that he wasn’t upset with her, that he understood.
THE
hallway was quiet. Navon must have left.
The conversation with Adi convinced Nachum he’d made another mistake, probably his biggest one. One of her rings had been missing since the attack. She noticed it was gone as soon as she got inside her apartment and assumed it had fallen off when she was dragged on the ground. Since then, she’d been too scared to go back into the yard to look for it. She hadn’t given it much thought. It wasn’t expensive, and since the police hadn’t found it when they searched the scene, she figured it was lost.
He might be able to blame Ohad for Sarah Glazer, but he couldn’t blame him for this. He’d questioned Adi himself. Why hadn’t he asked her if anything was missing?
Had he known then what he knew now, the whole investigation might have gone in a different direction. Ziv Nevo didn’t fit the profile of a serial rapist who collected trophies and taunted the cops. Had he let himself be swayed by Yaron Regev’s accusations, by his pain? Had he let fucking CompStat get to him, make him too eager to prove that he could close cases quickly, lead him to draw hasty conclusions and accept the easy answers, even if they were fundamentally flawed? He was so sure it was Nevo, so keen for him to be the attacker. He must have read what he wanted to into his words.
Nachum’s head was about to explode. If Nevo didn’t rape Adi, what was he doing on Louis Marshall Street in the middle of the night? Why did he look so guilty? That was one thing the detective was certain of. He knew his instincts didn’t get that wrong. Nevo was guilty of something. But what? How could he have let himself conduct such a sloppy investigation?
