WIlliam Bayer: Pattern crimes

There were more cars now. Cops were blowing their whistles trying to keep the traffic moving up the hill. People gazed out of car windows, their faces curious and disturbed. An ambulance arrived. Several pedestrians stopped by the side of the road to watch. David looked over at Abu Tor, found his building, wondered if Anna was standing before the large window rubbing her hands together, or sitting on her stool in the middle of the room already at work practicing her scales.

Liederman followed David to his car. "How did you know he'd know if she was Jewish?"

"I'm a detective."

"Yeah, I see that. But how did you know?"

"Just a guess."

"A good one. I've heard about you. I've heard you're very good." Liederman threw down his cigarette, then leaned in through the window so he could speak in confidence. "Rafi wouldn't have called you here if he wasn't going to give this to your section. If it turns out she was definitely Jewish, this could turn out to be a pretty interesting case."

David waited. The sun was up, already caressing the walls. In a few minutes it would strike full force and set Jerusalem aflame.

"…I never worked a good case, never worked anything that wasn't shit. I can't wait to retire. I've got other things to do. I have an archive. Books, old newspapers, documents. It's stashed in a room in the German Colony. An old lady's house. I do odd jobs for her, stay there when she's gone and keep an eye on everything. And for that she lets me have the room."

"What sort of archive?"

"Early 1940s. Poland. My father's collection. And I've added to it on my own. Thing is, I wonder if you'd come out one day and look it over. You've a good eye. You see things. I've heard that and now I know it's true."

"What could I see in all your papers?"

"Well, you might see something if you looked." Liederman stopped. "You don't like that kind of study, do you-examining the past?" He backed away. "I'm sorry. You're young. You were born here. People born here don't like that kind of thing. I understand."

"I'm thirty-six years old," David said. "Examining the past is my passion. If you think I can help, then of course I'll look at your stuff. Sarah in Rafi's office has my schedule. Pick a day when both of us are free."

At ten that morning he was sitting in the office of Rafi Shahar, Chief of Criminal Investigation, staring at stripes on the terra cotta floor projected by the sun through Rafi's blinds. Through the open window he could hear the buses grinding their way up Jaffa Road, and in the courtyard patrol cars revving up. He could also hear phones ringing unanswered in other offices, and echoes from the hall beyond the door, people striding, talking, cursing the coffee machine, and the quick high-heeled steps of the Moroccan girl who worked in Superintendent Latsky's office, who wore tight sweaters and used henna on her hair and fought with her fingernails and for this had been dubbed "The Claw."

Rafi sat back, his eyes watery and sad. The sun made a halo around his balding head. He held the headset of his phone between his cheek and shoulder and drummed his fingers on his desk. Every so often he nodded at Sarah Dorfman, who sat at her little table across the room listening on the extension and taking notes.

Finally, when Rafi put down the phone, the stripes on the floor compressed. David looked up; the back of Rafi's chair was crushing the blinds against the sill.

"So?"

"Nasty marks. Unusual."

"That's all you have to say?"

"Well -"

"What?"

David glanced back at Sarah Dorfman, then down at the floor. "Maybe whoever killed her marked her to say 'She's mine, belongs to me.' "

He looked up at Rafi, saw his eyes enlarge behind his glasses. Since the day David had met him, he'd been aware of the sadness in his eyes. Rafi was only five years older, but his remaining hair was graying above his ears and he had developed the pale complexion and growing paunch of a ranking officer who now, to his great regret, was forced to work behind a desk.

"Marks of ownership. Interesting, David. You've always had an interesting kind of mind."

Rafi stared at him a moment, then leaned forward. From the clutter on his desk he picked out a pipe. Pipes and orchids: Rafi liked Turkish tobacco and bred air orchids in his greenhouse after work. Though David considered him a friend, he was aware of the methods by which Rafi distanced himself: hiding at work behind clouds of aromatic smoke, performing his solitary hobby behind a wall of glass.

Rafi lit his pipe, then selected a file folder. He pushed it across the desk. There were photographs inside. As David examined them, he felt his stomach tighten. When Rafi spoke again, it was in a hoarse whisper that filled the little room.

"Same marks. Cheeks, breasts, lips. Found ten days ago in a wadi on the side road that leads up to Mevasseret. A nun from St. Louis, U.S.A. Staying at the Holyland Hotel. Doorman saw her get into a car, thinks it had Tel Aviv plates. No one else saw her after that."

Rafi pushed across another folder containing another set of photos. The same marks, except this time they were on the face and body of a boy.

"…Halil Ghemaiem. Arab street kid. Drug user. Male hustler. Sometime transvestite prostitute. Worked the beach in Tel Aviv. Picked up about one A.M. last Tuesday by a well-dressed gentleman. Driven away in a foreign car. Found dumped up here five days ago behind the Augusta Victoria Hospital at a construction site."

David heard a snap. Rafi's chair was crushing the blinds again. "You see what we have here, David? Marred flesh, consistently marred flesh. We have a pattern crime and," Rafi paused, "perhaps our first Israeli serial murder case."

Rafi accompanied him to the hall, stood with him as he fed coins into the coffee machine, getting half of them back, trying different ones from his pocket. The machine finally delivered scalding coffee with a hiss; it overflowed David's plastic cup.

"…kind of thing that happens in America. So maybe if we're lucky it'll turn out the killer's an American." Rafi started banging on the machine; he hadn't gotten his coins back and hadn't gotten any coffee either. "But suppose he's Israeli? Wouldn't surprise me much, the way things are going these days. A suburban housewife in Haifa feeds rat poison to her husband. A nice South African-born gentleman, technician at the Weizman Institute, injects his aging mother with kerosene. Beautiful kibbutz kids refuse to join the army. My younger brother, a tank commander, wants to move to New York and drive a taxi."

Rafi stood back and gave the machine a tremendous kick. Coffee started gushing out. He often spoke to David like this, bitter, ironic, contemptuous of what he called "the new mores," which he blamed upon the present government.

"A government elected by pickle sellers, so what should we expect? Much as I hated the old light-unto-the-nations crap, it was a lot better than this meanness we exhibit now." He sipped some coffee. "Still, David, now that we've got ourselves a crazy American-style society, isn't it time we got an American-style murder case? Long overdue, but," he shook his head, "very very difficult to solve. Random victims, no prior connection-don't need to tell you how tough that's going to be. A great big mess." He gazed at David. "I'm handing it to you. Refuse if you like-I'll understand."

"It's a pattern crime, Rafi. How can I refuse?"

"You can't." Rafi slapped him gently on the back. "Get the dossiers from Sarah. And give my best to Anna." He shook his head. "I like her, David-very much. What will she think of us when she hears about all of this?"

As he walked back to the Pattern Crimes offices, he turned over Rafi's phrase: "Consistently marred flesh." Of all the possible pattern crimes, he thought, consistently marred flesh was probably the worst. The PC Unit, of which he was commanding officer, was located on the second floor of Jerusalem District Police Headquarters in a complex of buildings known collectively as the Russian Compound, a hundred meters up from Bar Kokba Square.