Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02] Page 2

  “You know someone else this happened to?”

  “I’ve heard about it.”

  Ben returned his attention to the Fatuks. “Has your daughter ever been gone for a time before?”

  “No.”

  “And she had no reason to run away that you’re aware of?”

  “No!” Hanna Fatuk said. “Of course not!”

  “I’ll need to take this with me,” Ben said, realizing he was still holding on to the picture. “Do you have any others?”

  “Recently, just of Leila with a school group.”

  “Hanna,” her husband interrupted.

  “They were part of an exchange program with an Israeli school in Jerusalem.”

  “He doesn’t have to hear about that,” Amir Fatuk said, sounding embarrassed. “I told you it was a bad idea.”

  “Not to Inspector Kamal,” sneered the hulking Nazir Jalabad. “He is a great believer in the benefits of peace.”

  “I’m going to need a list of your daughter’s friends,” Ben said to the Fatuks, ignoring him. “People she spent time with outside of this house. Teachers, too. Anyone she might have had contact with.”

  “That night?”

  “Anytime,” Ben told Hanna Fatuk. “Also anyone who might have a reason to harm either of you.”

  “You think ...”

  “I don’t think anything. Not yet. We simply must cover all the possibilities.”

  And the possibilities, Ben had to acknowledge to himself, were not pleasant. Once a child had been missing this long, the odds of her returning on her own diminished significantly. He wondered what would have happened if he had taken Hanna Fatuk’s call on Tuesday instead of today.

  “We have no enemies,” Amir Fatuk said staunchly.

  “What is your job?” Ben asked Amir.

  “I am a mechanic. Cars.”

  “I’ll need a list of all your customers as well.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I assume your daughter has been to your shop, where someone may have seen her.”

  Back in Detroit, Ben would have gathered the assembled lists and run all the names through a computer. And, if he was lucky, the names of several possible suspects would emerge. But in Jericho no such database existed. The closest thing to it remained the files the Israelis turned over, which often had no listings for crimes actually committed, and hundreds of listings for crimes that either never happened or were exaggerated to provide cause for arrest and incarceration. And that was assuming he could gain access to them, which these days was hardly a foregone conclusion, since he was no longer considered an investigator.

  Amir Fatuk shrugged. “She’s been to my shop a few times.”

  “And I want you both to think of vehicles you may have seen that didn’t belong in the neighborhood.”

  “The day she disappeared?” Hanna Fatuk asked him.

  “As far back as you can remember.”

  “Anything else?” Hanna Fatuk asked him.

  Ben turned toward Nazir Jalabad. “You said before that other girls have disappeared.”

  “Ask anybody.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “I already told you.”

  “Not names, you didn’t.”

  “I don’t know names.”

  “But you can find out, can’t you?”

  “Why should I do your job for you?”

  “Because your goddaughter is missing.”

  “Wait,” said Hanna Fatuk suddenly, “I just remembered something else. . . .”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  P

  akad Barnea?”

  Danielle Barnea entered the crime scene alone, moving into the gift shop past the uniformed police and other detectives, who were obviously surprised to see her. “Spare me the welcome and just tell me what we’ve got here.”

  Two of the uniformed officers looked at each other.

  “Seventy-five-year-old male with his head bashed in behind the counter,” one of them said.

  Danielle continued stepping through the cluttered confines of the shop. Furniture was strewn about and broken. Tables and display cases had been toppled everywhere, their shattered contents scattered all over the floor. She knew enough about antiques to recognize the real thing among the few pieces left whole. The shop had only a small sign outside, and Danielle noted the absence of any price cards or tags attached to the pieces on the floor.

  Located near the start of the covered lane that formed Jerusalem’s bustling Mahane Yehuda marketplace, the shop was squeezed in between open spice and fruit stands. The result was a lusciously sweet smell of cinnamon, cumin, and ripe figs that reminded Danielle of her mother’s kitchen long ago. She was almost sad when the smell faded away once she closed the door to the shop behind her.

  Careful of where she stepped, Danielle headed toward the photographer snapping off pictures behind a counter upon which rested an old-fashioned cash register. A detective hovering near him brushed against it accidentally and bells jangled. The detective turned when he heard Danielle approaching.

  “Good morning, Pakad. They told me you were coming.”

  The young man looked familiar. He wore his curly hair long, and his deep-set brown eyes blinked often.

  “Do I know you?” Danielle asked him.

  “We met once before in East Jerusalem. You were investigating the work of that serial killer they called the Wolf. I was a lieutenant in charge of a sector where one of the murders was committed.” He extended his hand. “Yori Resnick.”

  Danielle gave back his firm grasp. “I remember.”

  “I was surprised when I heard you had been assigned to this case,” Resnick said innocently enough, but the implication of his words was clear: Two years ago Danielle Barnea was a member of Shin Bet and a national hero. What was she doing assigned to a routine murder investigation in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda marketplace?

  My job, Danielle wanted to tell him.

  She had returned to work at the National Police ten days before after a meeting with Commissioner, or Rav Nitzav, Hershel Giott. Giott was a small, stoop-shouldered man whose grandfatherly demeanor belied the stern, uncompromising fashion in which he executed the duties of his office. He had welcomed Danielle with a firm grasp of both hands and light kiss on her cheek, inspecting her as a seldom-seen relative might. In fact, they hadn’t seen each other since her father’s funeral six months earlier.

  “You’re looking well,” he said, face quickly sombering. “All things considered.”

  “I got your note. Thank you.”

  “When I heard ...” He flapped a hand before him. “Accch, in the past. We must move on, all of us. Come, sit down.”

  Giott led her to a pair of leather chairs fixed before his desk and waited for Danielle to take one before seating himself in the other.

  “This isn’t a social call, Rav Nitzav.”

  “I didn’t expect it was.”

  “I want to come back to work for you.”

  He scratched his bald dome. Danielle realized this was the first time she had seen him without his ever-present yarmulke. “Your leave of absence is in effect from Shin Bet, not the National Police.”

  “My relationship with Commander Baruch was strained from the beginning, as you well know. I think he will welcome my reassignment.”

  Giott scorned her with his small eyes. “Commander Baruch will not want to lose you any more than I did when you were transferred the first time.”

  “Much has changed since then,” Danielle said, and looked down.

  Giott reached out and took her hand. “I’m sorry things did not work out. And I’m not speaking of Shin Bet.”

  “I know.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Eli Bourne.”

  “Israel Defense Forces?”

  “A captain.” Danielle smiled slightly. “We met at a firing range, of all places.”

  “And who was the better shot?”

  “He, apparently.�
� Danielle had hoped for levity with the remark. It didn’t happen.

  “He never proposed?”

  “I don’t think it was what either of us was looking for.”

  “Even after you became pregnant?”

  Danielle shrugged. “Maybe he would have. Who knows? But not now.”

  “I’m told it was a boy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m also told you had an unusual visitor after the miscarriage.”

  Danielle stiffened a bit. She had told no one about the strange-looking man who had appeared at her bedside that morning, she was certain she hadn’t.

  “He wouldn’t tell me who he was. Wouldn’t answer any of my questions.”

  “What did he say?” Giott asked her.

  “He asked if there was anything he could do.”

  “And you told him ...”

  “I told him there was nothing. He said he’d be back, but I checked myself out before he had the chance.”

  “Perhaps he was from the hospital.”

  “Maybe,” Danielle said, remembering how the dark of the man’s eyes seemed to have swallowed the whites. He had a gaunt, almost skeletal face and gold, weathered skin that looked as though it had shrunk back on the bone. “I don’t see how he could have known so much otherwise. Not just about the miscarriage, but about what it might mean for future pregnancies.”

  “The doctors aren’t sure yet themselves, are they?”

  “No,” Danielle replied, aware now that Giott must have already conferred with them. “I thought the man was a therapist, some kind of counselor.”

  Giott nodded. “And?”

  Danielle shrugged. “I don’t need therapy.” She straightened a little. “You sent him, didn’t you?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Who else would be so concerned for me? But it’s not counseling I need, it’s work. A different kind of therapy.”

  “You’re still young, Danielle.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Much to her relief, Danielle had been reinstated at her old rank, before serving in Shin Bet, of pakad, or chief inspector. And now, ten days later, she had been assigned her first case since her return.

  “Who was the victim?” Danielle asked Yori Resnick, still having made no move to inspect the body herself.

  “They called him the Engineer for his ability to arrange procurement of any item a customer desired,” Yori Resnick told her. “I remember him from my days in the army. He did business with Jews, Arabs, Christians. Everyone. Anyone. Culture stopped at the front door.”

  “Too bad the killer didn’t do the same.”

  Resnick frowned regretfully. “He was killed early in the morning. Between two and four A.M. would be a fair estimate.”

  “Has the medical examiner arrived yet?”

  “En route.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “An army patrol noticed the spilled merchandise from the street. The door was locked, but they forced their way in.”

  “Locked? Is there another way out of this shop?”

  “A back door. Also locked, Pakad.”

  “Did you check his body for keys?”

  “I thought it better not to until the medical examiner arrived.”

  “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

  Danielle slid around the counter. The Engineer lay on his back with his head and legs turned to the side. She couldn’t see his face, but the large pool of blood beneath and around it more than revealed the level of damage done. The smashed contents of a curio cabinet covered the floor around him in a mosaic of ruined china and crystal. The crystal picked up some of the shop’s stray light and bounced it back at her as Danielle crouched over the Engineer’s small, slight body. She felt the shape of a large set of keys through the fabric of the first pocket she checked and didn’t bother to extract them. Stood back up and faced Yori Resnick.

  “Well, Detective, our victim still has his keys on his person, and yet both doors were found locked. Interesting, don’t you think?”

  Resnick gave her a slow nod, muttering an acknowledgment.

  Danielle did a slow pan of the shop. A breeze blew through the broken windows and started a number of exquisite wind chimes tinkling gently together.

  “All this damage,” she started. “Happened when he struggled against his attacker, you think?”

  Resnick shook his head. “His body shows no other sign of wound or bruising.”

  “You checked his hands?”

  “No lesions or lacerations. Nothing under the fingernails my preliminary examination could detect either.”

  “Meaning ...”

  “Unlikely there was a struggle at all.”

  “The Engineer knew his killer?”

  “The locked doors indicate the killer must have had a key of his own. That indicates an employee, or close friend,” Resnick surmised. “I think the Engineer must have come especially to meet him here. That would explain his presence in the shop so late.”

  “Where did the victim live?”

  “A house just across Navron Street.”

  “That close? So he didn’t have far to go,” Danielle said, thinking out loud. “This meeting could have come up suddenly.”

  “Is that important?” Resnick asked her.

  “Everything is important at this point.”

  Resnick thought briefly. “The Engineer did business with a number of Palestinians, Pakad.

  “In what capacity?”

  “Mostly procurement of items from the West Bank traditionally unavailable in Jerusalem these past few years.”

  “Items that were smuggled in?”

  “Yes.”

  “And nothing was done?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “The Engineer was a man to be left alone, Pakad. I have known this since my days in the army on patrol in East Jerusalem.”

  “Apparently nobody told his killer.”

  Danielle looked back at the Engineer’s body lying amid the shattered pieces of his life’s work. She came around the far side of the counter and crouched low again, this time to fasten her hands under the corpse’s legs. The doctors had cautioned her against lifting anything heavy for several weeks, warning about future complications. But it had been more than a month now since she had left the hospital.

  Danielle eased the Engineer’s legs upward. Beneath him the floor was barren, clean. The cracked pieces of crystal and china formed a perfect shadow around the outline of his corpse.

  She eased the legs down again. “I think, Yori, we can safely assume that all this destruction occurred after the attack.”

  “To make it look random, a simple robbery and nothing more?”

  Danielle hit two keys on the cash register. Bells jangled and the cash drawer slid out, revealing a modest amount of Israeli shekels. She lifted the tray and found an unkempt assortment of American currency as well.

  “A robbery that leaves the cash behind . . . No, Yori, I believe whoever killed the Engineer was looking for something. Now we need to find out what.”

  “How, Pakad?”

  “Asking a few questions.”

  “Asking whom?”

  Danielle flicked her eyes toward the Engineer’s corpse. “Him, for starters. You’d be surprised what the dead can tell us when asked. They’re often the most eager to talk.” She looked back at Resnick. “What was the Engineer’s real name, by the way?”

  “Levy,” the young detective replied. “Hyram Levy.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 3

  A

  white van!” Hanna Fatuk had realized. “When I watched Leila go, there was a white van parked down the street!”

  Now, as a long hot day of canvassing the missing girl’s neighborhood stretched on, Ben replayed the rest of the conversation in his mind.

  “It was old and rusted. I didn’t give it a second look.”