The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

Twenty fruitless minutes passed. The room was hot and humid. Daniel felt his clothes sticking to him, a tightness in his chest.

"Let's go over it again," he said. "The exact words."

"Whose exact words?"

"Abdelatifs."

"Snakes don't talk."

Like a broken record.

Daniel opened his note pad.

"When you confessed, you said he had plenty to say. I have it here in my notes: '… he started to walk toward me with the knife, saying I was dead, just like Fatma. That she was nothing to him, garbage to be dumped.' You remember that, don't you?"

"I remember nothing."

"What else did he say about Fatma's death?"

"I want my lawyer."

"You don't need one. We're not discussing your crime, only Fatma's murder."

Anwar smiled. "Tricks. Deceit."

Daniel got to his feet, walked over to the brother, and stared down at him.

"You loved her. You killed for her. It would seem to me you'd want to find out who murdered her."

"The one who murdered her is dead."

Daniel bent his knees and put his face closer to Anwar's. 'Not so. The one who murdered her has murdered again- he's still out there, laughing at all of us."

Anwar closed his eyes and shook his head. "Lies." 'It's the truth, Anwar." Daniel picked up the copy of Al fajr. waved it in front of Anwar's face until his eyes opened, and said, "Read for yourself."

Anwar averted his gaze.

"Read it, Anwar."

"Lies. Government lies."

"Al Fajr is a PLO mouthpiece-everyone knows that, Anwar. Why would the PLO print government lies?"

'Government lies."

"Abdelatif didn't murder her, Anwar-at least not by himself. There's another one out there. Laughing and plot-ing.'

'I know what you're doing," said Anwar smugly. "You're trying to trick me."

'I'm trying to find out who murdered Fatma."

"The one who murdered her is dead."

Daniel straightened, took a step backward, and regarded the brother. The stubbornness, the narrowness of vision, tightened his chest further. He stared at Anwar, who spat on the floor, played with the saliva with the frayed toe of his shoe.

Daniel waited. The tightness in Daniel's chest turned hot, a fiery band that seemed to press against his lungs, branding them, causing real, searing pain.

"Idiot," he heard himself saying, words springing to his lips, tumbling out unfettered: "I'm trying to find the one who butchered her like a goat. The one who sliced her open and scooped out her insides for a trophy. Like a goat hanging in the souq, Anwar."

Anwar covered his ears and screamed. "Lies!"

"He's done it again, Anwar," Daniel said, louder. "He'll keep doing it. Butchering."

"Lies!" shouted Anwar. "Filthy deceit!"

"Butchering, do you hear me!"

"Jew liar!"

"Your revenge is incomplete!" Daniel was shouting too. "A dishonour upon your family!"

"Lies! Jew trickery!"

"Incomplete, do you hear me, Anwar? A sham!"

"Filthy Jew liar!" Anwar's teeth were chattering, his hands corpse-white, clutching his ears.

"Worthless. A dishonour. A joke for all to know." Daniel's mouth kept expectorating words. "Worthless," he repeated, looking into Anwar's eyes, making sure the brother could see him, read his lips. "Just like your manhood."

Anwar emitted a wounded, rattling cry from deep in his belly, jumped out of the chair, and went for Daniel's throat. Daniel drew back his good hand, hit him hard against the face with the back of it, his wedding ring making contact with the eyeglasses, knocking them off. A follow-up slap, even harder, rasping the bare cheekbone, feeling the shock of pain as metal collided with bone, the frailty of the other man's body as it tumbled backward.

Anwar lay sprawled on the stone floor, holding his chest and gulping in air. A thick red welt was rising among the crevices and pits of one cheek. An angry diagonal, as if he'd been whipped.

The door was flung open and the guard came in, baton in hand.

"Everything okay?" he asked, looking first at Anwar hyper-ventilating on the floor, then at Daniel standing over him, rubbing his knuckles.

"Just fine," said Daniel, breathing hard himself. "Everything's fine."

"Lying Jew dog! Fascist Nazi!"

"Get up, you," said the guard. "Stand with your hands against the wall. Move it."

Anwar didn't budge, and the guard yanked him to his feet and cuffed his hands behind his back.

"He tried to attack me," said Daniel. "The truth upset him."

"Lying Zionist pig." An obscene gesture. "QusAmakr Up your mother's cunt.

"Shut up, you," said the guard. "I don't want to hear from you again. Are you all right, Pakad?"

"I'm perfectly fine." Daniel began gathering up his notes.

"Finished with him?" The guard tugged on Anwar's shirt collar.

"Yes. Completely finished."

He spent the first few minutes of the ride back to Headquarters wondering what was happening to him, the loss of control; suffered through a bit of introspection before putting it aside, filling his head instead with the job at hand. Thoughts of the two dead girls.

Neither body had borne ligature marks-the heroin anesthesia had been sufficient to subdue them. The lack of struggle, the absence of defense wounds suggested they'd allowed themselves to be injected. In Juliet's case he could understand it: She had a history of drug use, was accustomed to combining narcotics with commercial sex. But Fatma's body was clean; everything about her suggested innocence, lack of experience. Perhaps Abdelatif had initiated her into the smoking of hashish resin or an occasional sniff of cocaine, but intravenous injection-that was something else.

It implied great trust of the injector, a total submission. Despite Anwar's craziness, Daniel believed he'd been telling the truth during his confession. That Abdelatif had indeed said something about Fatma being dead. If he'd meant it literally, he'd been only a co-participant in the cutting. Or perhaps his meaning had been symbolic-he'd pimped his ewe to a stranger. In the eyes of the Muslims, a promiscuous girl was as good as dead.

In either event, Fatma had gone along with the transaction, a big jump even for a runaway. Had the submission been a final cultural irony-ingrained feelings of female inferiority making her beholden to a piece of scum like Abdelatif, obeying him simply because he was a man? Or had she responded to some characteristic of the murderer himself? Was he an authority figure, one who inspired confidence?

Something to consider.

But then there was Juliet, a professional. Cultural factors couldn't explain her submission.

During his uniformed days in the Katamonim, Daniel had gotten to know plenty of prostitutes, and his instinctual feelings toward them had been sympathetic. They impressed him, to a one, as passive types, poorly educated women who thought ill of themselves and devalued their own humanity. But they disguised it with hard, cynical talk, came on tough, pretended the customers were the prey, they the predators. For someone like that, surrender was a commodity to be bartered. Submission, unthinkable in the absence of payment.

Juliet would have submitted for money, and probably not much money. She was used to being played with by perverts; shooting heroin was no novelty-she would have welcomed it.

An authority figure with some money: not much.

He put his head down on the desk, closed his eyes, and tried to visualize scenarios, transform his thoughts into images.

A trustworthy male. Money and drugs.

Seduction, rather than rape. Sweet talk and persuasion- the charm Ben David had spoken of-gentle negotiation, then the bite of the needle, torpor, and sleep.

Which, despite what the psychologist had said, made this killer as much a coward as Gray Man. Maybe more so, because he was afraid to face his victims and reveal his intentions. Hiding his true nature until the women lost consciousness. Then beginning his attack in a state of rigid self-control: precise, orderly, surgical. Getting aroused by the blood, working himself up gradually, cutting deeper, hacking, finally losing himself completely. Daniel remembered the savage destruction of Fatma's genitals-that had to be the orgasmic part, the explosion. After that, the cool-off period, the return of calm. Trophy-taking, washing, shampooing. Working like an undertaker. Detached.