Pattern Crimes (7 page)

Israel, of course, was their country too, but David couldn't help himself—these ultra-orthodox filled him with disgust. Was it because he knew how hypocritical they could be, how cleverly they could cheat and steal? The way they cowed their women? Their exemptions from military service? Their professed hatred of the Zionist State which protected them, financed them, and in whose politics they participated with a disproportionate obstructionist power?

Yes, all that angered him, as it did all secular Israelis, but David's dislike had deeper roots: a love of the Hellenic, the humanistic, the heroic Zionist ideal; a distaste for medieval, self-righteous, self-limiting ways of life, Jews who, even as they claimed a monopoly on truth and virtue, stoned other Jews and called them "Hitlers."

And yet here he was trudging his way into the very lair of their intolerance. If a year before someone had told him that Avraham Bar-Lev would come here to live, David would have held his sides and roared.

It was dark now. Black-garbed religious people flitted like phantoms down the narrow streets. Squashed fruit on the narrow sidewalk. A smell of cooking oil and boiled cabbage. The aroma of old cracked sewers. The sounds of people chanting, praying. A large graffito on a wall, the work of a fanatic: "Zionism and Judaism Are Diametrically
Opposed."

His father's building was part of a complex of old structures, connected by courtyards, divided and subdivided again. Walls so thin you could hear the neighbors, unpainted thin old concrete walls sweating moisture and maybe grief. To live here was to live in the old Pale of Settlement. To renounce. To turn backward. To truly become a Wretched Jew.

Avraham took him in his arms—these embraces, too, were new; in the old days Dr. Bar-Lev was far more formal. But at least then David knew where he stood with him. Now he was never sure. The flowing white fringe was the same, the trimmed white beard, the thick glinting glasses, the powerful grip he remembered from his boyhood. But now he had no notion of what was going on inside his father's head.

Two old armchairs and a worn old couch, remnants of the psychoanalyst's consulting room. On a side table, framed photographs of David's mother and younger brother, both now dead, and one of himself taken years before when he was married to Judith and Hagith was a tiny child. A shelf crammed with books but containing no works by Freud, Reik, Rank, Ferenczi. Instead the Zohar, Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria, and the Kaballah studies of Gershom Scholem.

"Well?"

"What?"

"The meaning of this visit please."

"Must it have a meaning, father?"

"Usually you drop by. Tonight you phoned."

"To be certain you'd be here."

"And where should I go?"

"Well, father, I'm sure you go out sometimes. At least I hope you do."

Avraham did not respond. He was like that lately, listening but refusing to acknowledge, gazing at David with curiosity, waiting. The old analyst's trick—waiting the patient out.

"It just occurred to me how odd it is you even have a telephone." Still no response. "That suggests a little less renunciation than you'd have us all believe."

"And who is this 'us' you speak of, David?"

"Those of us who know you."

"I don't recall ever using the word
renounce."
This was true—he had simply stated that he was going to give up his profession and devote the rest of his life to study. There was even doubt among his friends that he had actually turned religious. Many thought his study of Kabbalah was a scholarly pursuit that had nothing to do with belief.

"Well?"

"Why
am I here? I need help."

Avraham smiled. "A brave reply."

"I have a case. Multiple homicides. The most difficult I've ever had." Avraham nodded, encouraging him. He was good at that, getting a person to talk.

As David began then to describe the killings, he was surprised at his own clarity. Surprised because, whenever he pondered them, which now was always, he found a pattern that tied him up in knots.

The first three victims had suggested a vague but graspable symmetry—sex crimes committed by a classic serial murderer. An apparently well-adjusted American nun; a transvestite Arab street hustler; a prostitute who, in fact, had been a sad lost child of oriental Israel.

But that very morning a fourth victim had turned up, and now the symmetry was broken: Yaakov Schneiderman, bachelor, fifty years old, fine military record, loyal reservist, owned his own truck, specialized in local hauling around Jerusalem. His body found by the side of the road near the UN House on the Hill of Evil Counsel. Same killing method, same marks, same blanket, same signs of abuse after death, but now suddenly nothing fit.

Two men, two women; one Arab, one Christian, and two Jews; two sexual people, two not-sexual; three young, one middle-aged. A pattern yes, but a pattern of technique, not one that suggested a man coherently disturbed. What was in this killer's mind? Did these strange marks he left convey a message? Did he simply slay at random out of bloodlust, compulsion, some irresistible need to kill and mark?

Oh yes, father, in case you're about to ask, we have employed the latest in investigative techniques. Detailed autopsies. Checks for tooth marks. Fingerprints. Debris beneath the victims' nails. Fibers. Tire tracks. Possible eye-witness sightings at the dumping sites. Investigations into the victims' pasts. Research into the meaning of the marks….

Avraham's eyes did not leave his—clearly he grasped everything. In the end he nodded and summed it up. "You have a psychological case. You bring it to me because I am a psychologist."

"I need criteria, father. A profile of this man. What does he think? What's he like? So we are convening experts. I'd like you to be on the panel."

"Who have you got?"

David mentioned some of the names, the criminologists Shimon Sanders and Professor Haftel from the University of Haifa, various experts too on political extremism, sociology, and psychological stress. "I believe you could help. You've helped me understand criminal behavior before. The criminal's 'calling card.' The compulsion to confess."

Avraham was silent. Finally when he spoke it was not in response to David's request.

"Tell me, please, why do you do all this?"

David winced; he had heard it all before. How could the son of a Disraeli Street psychoanalyst and a French-Hebrew literary translator choose a career with the lowliest arm of government, the police?

"...a life of risk, terrible hours, ridicule, lousy pay. Do you pride yourself on that, David, on being a dustman, a man who picks off the vermin from our fine Israeli streets?"

"No, I don't pride myself on it."

Avraham's glasses glinted as he shook his head. "Crimes, crimes. You may solve a few, but do you ever cure the underlying ills?"

"That isn't why I do it."

"Why then? I want to understand."

"The same reason you sit here and study. Because I like it. It's my work."

Avraham turned away. His gaze was now on the family photographs. On the one of beautiful serious Gideon, David knew. Gideon —sensitive warrior-poet, fighter-pilot, family prince.

"Anyway, I don't think that what we do is all that different," David said. "Detectives and psychoanalysts—we work to uncover the truth and render the demons harmless."

"Harmless? That's your delusion. Anyway, I'm no longer a psychoanalyst."

All at once David was irritated, tired of their duel. It had turned sour, and he felt it was his father's fault. "Look," he said, "will you be on my panel or not?"

Avraham turned back to him, suddenly looking tired and old. His voice became a meager whisper: "I need help too."

Help! Dr. Bar-Lev would ask his policeman son for help! Unprecedented, but still there was something thrilling about this grand reversal of their roles.

"My old papers. Suddenly some are missing." Avraham shook his head, perplexed. "The files of my practice, some going back many years. I had them stored at Blumenthal's, in the garage behind his house. And then just a few days ago he phoned to tell me someone had broken in. I went over to see and yes the lock was broken off the door, my papers scattered everywhere as if someone had gone through them very fast. I have the impression some are missing. I'm sure of it, in fact. But I don't understand why. They'd be of no interest to anyone. I should have burned them. I thought of it but didn't." Avraham shrugged. "Now I wish I had...."

A curious story, David thought, for he had listened to it as a detective. And perhaps it was not really the story that was so curious as the way his father had told it—in the classic manner of a victim reluctant to file a complaint.

"Did Dr. Blumenthal report the break-in?"

"Of course."

"And the police came?"

Avraham nodded impatiently. "The point is there was nothing valuable to steal."

"You insist your files were of no interest?"

"None at all."

"Yet some were taken, so then they
were
of interest." Avraham did not react. "My feeling, father, is that very few people would take that kind of stuff. Only two thoughts come to mind: a former patient looking to clean up his past, or a prospective blackmailer searching for information he can sell. If you want me to help you'll have to be specific. Make an inventory, determine exactly what is missing, and then I'll look into it. How's that?"

Avraham's eyes turned cagey. "I have a feeling you're very good at what you do."

"Thank you. I try to be."

"So, anything else?" Avraham stood up to end the audience. "Yes, I'll come and try to analyze your killer. Tell me where and when. Perhaps it will even do me good. To get back to that kind of work for a couple of hours—yes, I will do it. Of course..."

Rafi Shahar turned Pattern Crimes into an SIT, a Special Investigating Team. All other cases were to be temporarily shelved. Focus now was on the solution of the killings. Five new detectives were added, including Moshe Liederman, who had approached David privately and begged to be allowed to join.

It was interesting, David thought, the way each of them had his favorite victim. Uri liked Yaakov Schneiderman, perhaps because they were both large physical men. Dov was extremely fond of Susan Mills, and Micha identified in some strange way with Hail Ghemaiem. But no one cared for Ora Goshen except Liederman and himself.

David had asked for a large bulletin board. Uri brought in cork panels and nailed them to the unit room wall. Photos of the victims were pinned up, and a large map showing the locations of the dumping sites. Detectives came in, stared at these displays, then went out again. Rebecca Marcus, head always covered, disposition always sweet, manned the continually ringing phones, while David, with Dov as deputy, supervised from his office in the back. Everyone worked "skeleton hours," grueling duty, twelve on twelve off. And no one came up with anything. Yet all sensed the homicides would go on.

Certain facts were established:

The most important was the plate number of the car, recalled under hypnosis by Ora's friends. A light tan Renault stolen from a lot in Independence Park. The owner had a solid alibi. Much excitement when finally the car was found, parked in Gonen on a residential street. The forensic specialists swarmed over it, but in the end declared it immaculate. Every print wiped clean. A professional job. Which suggested to David a little less passion and a far cooler approach than the vicious mutilations had implied.

Nothing new on Halil. His friend, Ali Saad, continued to make havoc with Micha's IdentiKit. Meantime, Susan Mills's Israeli friends all agreed she'd been a modern but not a reckless nun.

Dov uncovered more: that she'd been deeply disturbed by the hatred that gripped the Holy Land, a woman who had longed for peace and had believed in universal brotherhood. Thus a sucker, he theorized, for Palestinian tales of woe. Perhaps she'd befriended one and he had killed her—Dov wanted to follow this notion up. David set him loose to interview everyone she'd met, but Dov's search for an "Arab friend" yielded no result.

Schneiderman, of all the victims, presented the greatest difficulties. Break Schneiderman, they told each other, and you begin to solve the case. This was not a man who would be easily overpowered. Burly, strong, accustomed to heavy physical work, brash in his dealings, kind but curt, described by his brother and several friends as "an honest, no bullshit guy." No evidence of homosexuality. No weakness to attract a predator. No signs in his modest Talpiyot flat of forced entry or a struggle. A homely man; one might even describe him as ugly. Which left two questions: How could the killer, if unknown to him, have lured him into a position where he could cut his throat, and what about Schneiderman could have attracted the killer anyway?

As for the old army blankets thrown over the mutilated bodies, investigation revealed these were standard issue, available by the ten thousand in flea markets throughout Israel.

Ten P.M. Hananya Street, one of the sweet-smelling streets of the German Colony near the big public swimming pool off Emeq Refaim. A cool Thursday evening the first week of April. The season of icy nights was done. Passover was coming and, soon after that, Easter. Jerusalem was filling with tourists and pilgrims, and flowing with rumors about a "slasher" who had stymied the police.