Pattern crimes

DOUBLECUTS

He strode out the back gate of the Russian Compound, past the Ticho house on Ha-Rav Kook, up narrow Ethiopia Street, then into Me'a Shearim. A mere five minutes by foot from the Pattern Crimes offices in Jerusalem Police District HQ, but for David Bar-Lev a walk into the enemy camp, the only neighborhood in Jerusalem he truly disliked.

And yet he had to come here.

It had been a year since his father had sold his apartment on Disraeli Street, closed down his practice, given away most of his furniture and moved to a shabby single room on an alleyway off Hevrat Shas. To devote himself to the study of Jewish mysticism, he said, to discover God within. Not that he ever actually pronounced the name of The Creator-among Kabbalists God was written G-d.

The light was fading fast, street lamps were already lit as David made his way among the clusters of yeshivas toward his father's little room. Black-suited Hasidim strode briskly by, jewelers, scholars, forgers for all he knew. An old bearded Jew with a bent back struggled up the street with a pair of canes. Cloaked youths with curled ear-locks glared at him with suspicious eyes. Men in flat fur fringed hats. Men dressed in the costumes of eighteenth-century Poles. Didn't these people realize they were living in the Middle East?

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.

David, Dov, and Shoshana Nahon were waiting in an unmarked police Subaru in front of Jacob Gutman's home.

"It would not be wonderful if we got spotted here." Dov had been opposed to the foray. It would not do for the commander of an important SIT to be observed staking out a man suspected of brokering stolen Torah scrolls.

But Shoshana had been adamant. She'd been watching Gutman for a week. Now the case belonged to her, her first real case, and she was certain Gutman was behind the thefts. She didn't want to share the arrest with an undercover officer, and if David wouldn't let her have this chance then she might as well go back into the army-at least there a young person could prove what she could do.

So now they were waiting, Shoshana coiled with tension, chain-smoking in the back seat while Dov munched potato chips in front. He and David passed the time tossing around ideas about Schneiderman and how he could be made to fit the pattern of their case.

"Suppose Yaakov had knowledge," Dov said. "He'd seen something, suspected who the killer was. He tried to blackmail him and the killer said okay. Then, when they met to make the deal, the killer sandbagged him and did him up like another victim in the series."

"You're nuts!" Shoshana was puffing furiously. "Gutman's in there. He's a pushover. Why the hell are we sitting around?"

"Don't get impatient, sweetie. It's not too smart to go into apartments until you're sure how many people are inside." Suddenly Dov turned around and grabbed her cigarette out of her mouth.

"David!"

"Okay. Enough. Let's get this over with." Tired of their bickering he was relieved to get out of the car.

Silence on the street. No one around. A single window lit in the first floor apartment. Jacob Gutman lived there, and it was there, Shoshana was convinced, that he kept his store of stolen goods.

She'd done a thorough job, talked to his neighbors, identified him as a private dealer in rare Judaica. An old man, German born, Gutman had immigrated to Palestine in the thirties. He'd joined the Jewish Brigade, later served in the Palmach. Distinguished himself in the '48 war, lost his wife in 1960 and his only daughter in an automobile accident in 1972.

Shoshana had photographed him surreptitiously, showed her pictures to Aziz Mansour, gotten a positive ID that this was the man who'd sold him the Torah crowns. She'd tracked him through the city, found no evidence he had an outside stash. Assumption: The stolen scrolls were stored in his apartment. Based on proof which she had submitted that several of the crowns had come off of stolen scrolls, a judge had issued her a warrant for a search.

In the entrance hall of the subdivided house David read the tenant roster: Rosenfeld, M.; Rosenfeld, E.; Cohen, L.; Levi, L.; Gutman, J. A purely German building. He looked at Shoshana and nodded toward Gutman's buzzer. "Your bust," he told her. "Your case. You ring."

She nodded, rang, then rang again. No answer, but half a minute later an elderly man in a frayed gray bathrobe came to the glass door and peered out.

Shoshana held her ID against the glass. "Police." Gutman cupped his ear. He was bald on top with tufts of unkempt hair protruding from the sides of his head. "Police." The second time she shouted. The old man's eyes darted as he took in the three of them, then he brought his finger to his lips, opened the door, and stepped into the hall.

"What? What?"

Shoshana showed her warrant. David watched Gutman carefully. He was pale, poorly shaven, and he looked scared. But there was also in his manner a subtle hint of relief. David had seen this before: the reaction of a man who, having engaged in illegal activity for years, is finally relieved to be rid of his fear of being caught.

"So, in Israel now the police come in the middle of the night?" Gutman's eyes gleamed with righteous anger. "To humiliate an elderly person before his neighbors? Are these the approved tactics of officials in our Jewish State?" Suddenly he presented his wrists. "You have manacles of course? And instruments of torment? No! But you must extract my confession. You will use pain as a lever. Yes? Am I right? Oh, the pain! Oh! Oh!"

He muttered something about "storm troopers" as he led them back into his apartment. But when they ignored him and Shoshana began her search, he seemed to realize the game was up. "I'm a Jew like the three of you. I fought in the War of Independence. Why pick on me? Why don't you go after bad guys? Child-murdering Arab terrorists?"

He didn't even bother to turn when Shoshana announced her find. "Scrolls. A closet full of them. Other stuff too. Menorahs, pointers, candlesticks."

"So," Dov asked, "are you the broker or the thief?"

"The menorahs are all legal. I have proof!"

"Sure. They'd be recognized. But scrolls all look alike. Did you organize the robberies or do you just fence the loot? Come on, talk!" Gutman stared at the floor. "You'll talk, old man. In time."

Shoshana glowed. Her first bust and she'd hit gold. This case would make the papers: Stolen Torahs were much better than diamonds and furs.

But then a strange thing happened. For the first time since they'd come into the apartment Jacob Gutman turned to David and stared into his face. "I know who you are," he said. "You're David, aren't you?" He smiled, then slowly began to nod. "Sure, you're David. That's who you are. You're David. David Bar-Lev…"

"He kept staring at me, all the way back to the Compound. I asked him several times how he knew me but he wouldn't say. He just kept smiling and nodding as if I were someone he'd run into unexpectedly, someone meaningful in his past whom he hadn't seen in years."

"No idea who he is?" David, naked, was lying on his back. Anna, wearing just a T-shirt, sat astride him, knees gripping his flanks, sensuously massaging around his neck.

"Just this old crook, that's all I know. Claims to be religious, but then he brokers stolen Torahs."

"Maybe you arrested him once."

"I'd remember." He groaned with pleasure. She had powerful Russian hands and an instinctive ability to locate knots of tension and smooth them away.

"Maybe you knew him in another context. Now he's older, looks different, and you can't remember because he doesn't fit."

"This is a man I'd remember. I'd remember his eyes."

"So how does he know you?"

He blinked. "Can't figure it out."

He twisted beneath her pressure. She bent down to kiss his chest. "Well," she said, "maybe he knew you as a child."

Yes, that could fit with his smile. Gutman had smiled at him the way one smiles at someone one hasn't seen since he was small.

"He could have known my parents." David shook his head. "What a strange thing. I'm glad I didn't know before."

He reached up, slipped his hands beneath her shirt, ran his fingers along her sides. She was a lean girl; he could feel her ribs, ripples beneath her flesh. When he grazed her breasts she trembled slightly, rose, then sat down again directly on his sex.

After they made love, they lay together beneath the covers, clothes scattered where they'd tossed them. Jerusalem hung like a backdrop framed by the window, illuminated towers, domes, and walls dark amber against a deep black velvet sky.

"…Gideon was always the handsome one. Golden youth, golden man. He had beautiful features. Not like mine. Beside him I looked rough."

Anna, running her fingers lightly over his face, protested with her lips.

"No, it's true. People always said I had a good Israeli face, whatever that's supposed to mean. But Gideon had my mother's eyes and her beautiful fine carved lips. Artist friends of my parents were always asking to draw him. People who visited from overseas would take our picture together and then a separate one of him. As he grew older I began to notice that people stared at him, men and women both. He had that special kind of face people can't tear their eyes away from. But there was something wrong with him-I think I always knew there was. It was as if he was somehow too perfect-perfect student, perfect son. And something bad was going on in the family. I still don't know what it was. Some kind of complicity between my parents-whispered conferences behind closed doors, my mother emerging with tears in her eyes, my father with his unhappy worried face. And then those quicksilver alliances between the three of them…"

He paused, trying to recapture an old feeling of separateness, of being part of his family and apart from it too. She was watching him, her eyes large, her compassion written on her face.

"I think that's why you became a detective," she said. "To figure out your family's mystery."

She was right and he loved her for understanding him so well. Also for the quickness of her mind, the direct way she spoke, and, too, for her sensuality, the uninhibited joy she took in making love.

He described for her again Gideon's death, that strange last self-destructive flight, how, on a training mission, fully loaded with bombs, he had suddenly broken formation, flown out over the water, then turned his Phantom to the sky and begun a steep ascent.

"Heading higher, higher, until finally he went too high, blacked out, and lost control. The plane flipped over, then dove straight down into the sea. The news seemed to break my father. Afterward he was never the same. As if somehow it was his fault, his failure, as if he was responsible for Gideon's self-destructive streak. Gideon always had it, of course. He was forever fracturing a wrist in soccer practice or breaking a leg on a camping trip. It's a wonder they didn't catch on to him in the Air Force-they're supposed to watch the pilots so carefully. Anyway, a month after that my mother was diagnosed as having cancer. Three months later she was dead. Father stopped taking new patients, phased the old ones out. So now he sits in his little room gazing at Gideon's photograph. And then I drop by, a mere detective, mere captain in the police, and I can see the disappointment in his face."

Anna's dark brown eyes were staring straight into his. She held her palm against his forehead. "Why go on like this, David? Why torment yourself?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes it helps to talk. Now I wonder how Gutman fits in. I'll ask father, of course. But he may not tell me. He's like that lately. He hears the question but half the time he doesn't bother to reply…"

The conference room of Jerusalem District Police HQ, between Superintendent Latsky's suite and Rafi Shahar's CID. It was late in the day, shadows were long; fading sunlight reflected off the top of the conference table adding luster to the old worn wood.

Rafi sat in the head chair, pipe and tobacco set out in front of him, his sad watery eyes scanning the others as they spoke. David sat to his right. Sarah Dorfman perched behind vigorously taking notes.

Dr. Sanders and Professor Haftel had done most of the talking, but the five other specialists had contributed too. Including, David was pleased to note, Dr. Avraham Bar-Lev, who had spoken not with his usual lethargic delivery but with his former clarity and force.

And yet what did it all come to? David wondered as Rafi tried to reconcile and then summarize their views. So much that was obvious, so little that was new: that the killer was almost certainly an Israeli male between twenty and fifty years old; that he had almost certainly served in a military unit where signs of psychological disturbance may have brought him to the attention of a staff psychologist. Possible criminal record, suggested by his expertise in stealing cars, though that was far from clear. The killer knew Jerusalem well, so he either lived here or had done so in the past. A strong possibility that he also knew Tel Aviv.

Such were the objective parameters that could be fed into various computerized data banks, the basic one that held the Israeli national identity list as well as those of the police and the IDF (Israel Defense Force). But as Rafi had pointed out very quietly at the beginning of the conference, he expected such a search would produce between one and two hundred thousand names.

Which left the psychological criteria, not entered into any computer system and thus not useful as a means to screen the citizenry.

"We are dealing here with an entire country of suspects," Dr. Sanders announced. "There're at least a million and a half adult Israeli males. We can give you a feeling of what this man may be like, but we cannot tell you where to find him, or even where to begin to look."

A loner, they all agreed, perhaps even a brooder, but socially adept too, able to inspire confidence, get people to go off with him, lure them to a lonely place. With Ora Goshen and Halil Ghemaiem he had been a man in search of sex, but with Susan Mills and Yaakov Schneiderman he had assumed a more subtle identity which these victims had believed.

Once he killed he owned his victims' bodies, believing he had full permission to "sign" their flesh. Autopsies revealed Susan Mills had been tortured before she'd been killed, but that the others had only been mutilated after death. This change in method struck Dr. Bar-Lev as an important, perhaps even vital clue:

"She was his first victim, so he may have learned from his experience with her that he couldn't bear to hear human screams. Then he decided that in the future he would work only on bodies that were dead. You see, really he's a butcher. The live person doesn't interest him at all. He's less a sadist than a man detached from life. He could be a worker in a slaughterhouse or a mortuary, or an actual butcher in a meat market, or a hunter who likes to skin and cut up game."

Rafi nodded at David-the old man was sharp; he had indicated certain professions and thus places to begin a search. But then the others started in. It was the double marks that interested them, those quick cuts, slash-slash across the cheeks, the lips, the breasts. Stigmata, perhaps, marks of derision or disgrace. A possible religious dimension there, or some form of ritual punishment. Perhaps the killer thought of himself as a sacred executioner who marked his victims so that those who found them would know they had offended God.

That was one line of interpretation; there were others; one could speculate endlessly. One thing, however, was agreed upon by everyone: The message was in the marks.

The shadows grew longer in the conference room. No one bothered to turn on the lights. The table gleamed. The participants became energized. Their faces were etched, half lost in gloom, half illuminated with brilliant light.

"He wants us to know him. He doesn't want his victims confused with those of anybody else."

"He wants the bodies found, his work recognized, his purpose feared."

"Attention. Fame. Notoriety."

"He's a megalomaniac. A kind of terrorist."

"He may not be aware of this self-aspect. Or even of the contempt he shows by the way he dumps them-amid rubble, in a drainage ditch, at a construction site."

"But compulsive, too. The blankets suggest this. Perhaps he has purchased a certain number. Perhaps if we knew how many we would know how many times he intends to kill."

"He may stop suddenly, or go on indefinitely. We have no way of knowing without knowing what his purpose is."

"He strips them to reduce them. Naked they are like dead animals."

"The lack of semen suggests he's impotent. These are sex crimes, certainly, but extremely devious ones by which, most likely, he conceals their sexual content from himself…"

Later David would not recall the exact moment when the idea struck. "Inject the dye and wait for it to circulate," he said. "Then, when it reaches him, hopefully it will stain."

They were all staring at him. He had stood up, had his palms planted on the table.

"The best detective in Israel," Rafi was saying. "So go on, David, tell us what you mean."

He glanced at his father, saw a querying look. "An analogy with the tracer-dye method of the bone-scan radiologists," he said. "Look, it will be extremely difficult to go out and find this man, but listening to you talk I think there may be a way to make him come to us."

"Explain please." It was Dr. Bar-Lev. David nodded to him and went on.

"You all say he wants recognition, that he's sending us some kind of message. So why not attract him by doing in public just what we're doing here? Hold an open forum, give him the opportunity to hear us speculate about what kind of man he really is."

"Would he come?"

"If we make ourselves accessible enough, how, really, could he resist? And even if he doesn't, he can write in for a transcript. We'll publicize that too, print up the text and mail it out on request. Meantime, we'll covertly videotape our audience. If you provoke him enough he may react. At the very least we'll end up with a manageable list of suspects. Anything's better than two hundred thousand names."

They decided to hold it in the auditorium of the Rubin Academy of Music-centrally located, no security gate, yet a perfectly credible place. The "forum" would be held under the auspices of a fictitious ad hoc group they decided to call "The Society for a Better Israel" -a name consistent with those of other wound-healing groups that had sprung up to protest the break-down of civility in Israeli public life.

Stories about the conference were planted in newspapers. A poster was printed and placed in strategic locations around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Jerusalem Post ran a tantalizing article quoting some of the ideas of Professor Haftel. Shimon Sanders, Israel's foremost criminologist, was interviewed on the radio, along with David Bar-Lev, who played a typical no-nonsense cop.

One particular interchange was carefully contrived:

SANDERS: To catch this man you must understand his mind. There is brilliance there, evil perhaps, but brilliance nonetheless.

BAR-LEV: The guy's a savage, that's all I know. An animal. I'm tired of hearing how damn smart he is.

Outside the Rubin Academy, tables were set up. People entering could sign petitions and anyone wanting a free printed transcript had merely to leave his name. Pattern Crimes personnel mingled with the audience, exchanging whispered views with strangers who appeared especially engaged. The videotaping of the speakers was carried out by a single cameraman stationed at the back. Nothing threatening about him-he was shooting over the tops of people's heads. But three unattended cameras were concealed beneath the speakers' table, remotely controlled from a van parked around the corner on Balfour Street. From here, cramped in with three technicians, David and Rafi watched the symposium on a bank of monitors.

"This set-up cost me one hell of a bundle of favors." Rafi had borrowed the special equipment and personnel through a friend in the Mossad, the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service. "I always feel humiliated by these informal arrangements, David. Wheeling and dealing for decent stuff. The intelligence guys get the goodies while we get surplus radios and crappy cars. The politicians say they want professional police, but they won't vote the money to back us up."

Rafi's oft-repeated gripe. He claimed he hated protektzia, the system of influence in high places, the old-buddy-in-my-reserve-unit way of doing business. But even more than that, he seemed to hate the present era, the way the government careened from crisis to crisis-corruption scandals, cabinet meetings that ended in insults, physical shoving on the floor of the Knesset, lawlessness, tribalism, violence, pervasive cheating, rage, and greed.

Dr. Bar-Lev was speaking now. Listening to him David was amazed. His father had rudely interrupted Shimon Sanders, and now was putting on an astonishing performance, provoking and arousing the entire audience:

"This killer thinks he's maybe The Messiah but we know he's the most despicable kind of Jew. The self-loathing kind, the Jew trying to kill in others that which he hates within himself. Pervert. Sadist. Secret homosexual, terrified of women, furious with men. A coward but he can't admit it. On the symbolic level, when he cuts his victims, he affirms to us his impotence…"

Rafi nudged David. "Your dad's terrific."

Blow up frames from the videotapes, turn them into photographs, mount them in rows on the PC Unit bulletin board. One hundred seventy Israeli males attended the symposium. All of them were suspect. The first job was to give them names.

Some of the more agitated people were followed home. Meantime, David showed the tapes to cops in other units. Whom did they recognize? Whom did they know? More names. Run them through the computers, check out military records, identify professions, discover which men were qualified to drive. Marital status. Police and medical records. Identify, collect data, analyze, and set priorities. Likelies, possibles, unlikelies, impossibles. Refine the lists, then start to winnow, eliminating from the top.

Three days into this new phase of the investigation, David received an unexpected call. A man named Ephraim Cohen, a friend, from youth movement days, of Gideon Bar-Lev.

"I remember you, of course," David said, though he wasn't positive he did.

"Saw you on TV in connection with the nastiness. Have something interesting you'd maybe like to hear."

"Please. I'll listen to anything."

"Well, this isn't something I can talk about on the phone." Why's he being so careful? "Want to meet? I'll come to you." No response. "What's the problem?"

"David, I'm with another service. This would just be something I'd pass on in a strictly informal sort of way."

They arranged to meet at seven that evening at The Garden, a dairy restaurant near the YMCA on King David Street. David arrived first, found a quiet table on the terrace, ordered tea, and settled down to wait. He was forced to endure a lecture then, given by an American tourist, holding forth to his wife and bedazzled tablemates. The man was loud, his voice carried across the terrace, and he was very sure of himself, an instant expert. Listening to him explain the parameters of the current political situation, David was amazed at how every single "fact" he recounted was wildly distorted or else completely false.

After ten minutes a well-dressed, well-groomed man appeared. David, guessing his age at thirty-one or two, recognized the fine edge of arrogance he associated with officers in the Mossad.

After a few seconds this stranger caught David's eye, smiled, strode over, extended his hand. "Hello. Nice to see you. I'm Ephraim Cohen."

"Yes," David said, "I do remember you." And he did. Ephraim had been one of those beautiful boys Gideon always used to choose as friends: Nordic, blond, with carved cheeks, and sensitive eyes and lips.

"It's been a long time. I wrote your parents when Gideon died. How's your father?"

"Retired. He's become a Kabbalist."

"Oh?" Cohen raised an eyebrow as if to say, "That sounds a little batty, but who am I to judge?" David studied him, decided he didn't like him: Cohen was too good-looking and much too cautious. David glanced at his watch. "Well, here we are. You were going to pass something on."

"You understand this is strictly unofficial."

"Yes, yes." Why do they always have to say that a hundred times?

"Well…" Cohen hesitated. Watching him work himself up to speak, David was happy he had not chosen the intelligence service instead of the police. "Seems one of our technicians, guy who worked your little job a few nights back, his name's not important-seems he recognized someone in that audience. Someone he served with once." Cohen cleared his throat. "Someone, he says, who used to like to cut."

"Liked to cut?"

Yeah, that's what he says. He didn't mention anything to you about it at the time, because, after all, he works for us. But some of us talked it over this morning and we thought we ought to pass the information on. Maybe nothing to it. Maybe you know it already. But this case is very disturbing to everyone, and we thought the least we could do is try and help."

How very good of you, you slimy bastards. " So, who did he see who 'used to like to cut'?"

"Guy named Peretz."

"That's a pretty common name."

"This Peretz was a professional military officer, a major. Major Chaim Peretz. That ought to give you a start."

David nodded. "Would your guy be willing to come in and point him out on the tapes?"

"Afraid not. Policy is to stay out of police affairs."

"What about unofficially, as a private citizen performing a civic duty?"

"Well, we rather feel he's done that already. Don't you, David? After all, here I am passing on the name."

Rafi may have loathed the old buddy system, but it was a lot quicker than working one's way through the IDF bureaucracy. That evening David started making calls. By ten the following morning he found what he was looking for: a friend, Yehuda Merom, now a colonel, whom he'd served with in Sinai during the '67 war.

"Oh, sure, David, I know Chaim Peretz. Even had a feeling one day I'd get a call like this."

"Why's that?"

"We'd better meet. Unofficially, of course."

"Of course."

"A drink after work?"

"This is pretty urgent."

"Okay. Let's have coffee. You know the Pie House? Meet you there in fifteen minutes."

On his way out the door David told Dov to drop what he was doing and find Peretz. "Used to be a major. I want to know what he looks like and where he lives. Try doing it the easy way: Start with the phone book. If that doesn't work, then use the computer."

It was a perfect Jerusalem spring day-deep blue sky, the smell of blooming shrubs and trees. Even the traffic on Jaffa Road was bearable. The old buses spewed out fumes but not enough to spoil the pure dry April air.

Yehuda embraced him, then they clapped each other's shoulders and punched lightly at each other's girths.

"David, we're middle-aged."

"Listen, we're still alive."

"So you're a big-shot detective now. Saw you on TV." David shrugged. "Seen any of the guys?"

"A few. Shai. Yig'al. I saw Zvi Shapira at the airport about a month ago. Making a fortune in computerized imaging. He was on his way to Japan."

They spoke briefly of old comrades, and then of how they'd cheered that first morning when they'd seen the planes return. David remembered: the terrible heat, the blisters on his face, the dust and the wind, then the roar of the fighters just above their heads and how they'd jumped up and down upon the burning sand: all the Arab air forces destroyed on the ground. The great conquest had begun. Heroic days.

"It's not the same now, is it? Remember how we all adored Arik? Then Lebanon. I was there. It stunk. Bastard! We didn't know it then. '67! That's when everything started going wrong."

"Tell me about Peretz."

"In connection with the murders, right?"

David nodded. "His name came up."

"I'm not surprised." Yehuda looked uneasy. David didn't say anything, just waited for him to talk.

"…a perfect commander for reprisal assaults, which I suppose is why he got the job. It was a covert unit. Strictly volunteer. But there was a level of brutality even the toughest types couldn't take. So then Peretz came up with this idea, a way to staff it out. Fill it out with criminals, guys in trouble, violent guys. They had these guys in stockades, and they didn't know what to do with them. 'Let me have them,' he said. 'It's a filthy job so give me filthy guys.' "

"So what exactly was this filthy job?"

"Counter-terror. They do bad things to us, we go do even worse to them."

"Crossing frontiers?"

"Nothing new about that. We've been doing it for years." Yehuda looked away. "Of course this was different. Real nasty stuff. The justification was that it was aimed at the hard-core terrorists, the ones who sneak in, kill kids, and shoot up schools."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything, David. The unit was small, covert, and when it was disbanded all the records were destroyed. You won't find anyone now who'll admit it ever existed. No one wants to own up to having signed off on the damn thing because of the way it got out of hand."

"I heard something about Peretz, that he 'liked to cut.'"

Yehuda nodded.

"They cut people?"

"That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to strike back hard."

"So what's all this about cutting?"

"Stories. Tales. You couldn't prove any of them. It was all hearsay kind of stuff."

"What kind of hearsay?"

Yehuda looked away again. "The way it started out, the unit was supposed to leave some kind of mark. That way people would know we had a reprisal squad and that the squad always got its man. So let's say they did a termination, they'd leave these cuts on the guy, their signature. But then, later, with this violent criminal element involved, it got out of control." He tightened his lips, squirmed in his seat, then looked David directly in the eye. "There were, at least we heard, some mutilations, things like that. You know, ears, eviscerations-though I find that hard to believe. Women and children too, somebody said. Tell you the truth, David, I don't really want to talk about this. It makes me want to puke."

"So what happened?"

"The unit got disbanded."

"What about Peretz?"

"The army quietly let him go."

"Just like that?"

"Actually, they found a desk job for him. But he didn't like it, so when he complained they suggested he resign."

"No investigation? No inquiry?"

"The stories couldn't be verified. The witnesses were criminals. As for Peretz, he was an outstanding officer who took on a dirty job and did it well. Relentless, maybe merciless, but at first no one was too concerned. They wanted results and he gave them results. Later, when they got to know him better, there developed this feeling that he might be getting off on it, which is when they began to have second thoughts. I think that's what really bothered them. Not that Peretz did these things. We're at war. Counter-terror's not supposed to be a Boy Scout jamboree. But if the commander was actually enjoying his work, as opposed, you understand, to treating it as a dirty job… I mean, if it'd been you or me, David, we'd have tried to get out of it, or have griped until they pulled us out, or, failing that, done it half-ass. But Peretz didn't do it that way. He liked it and after a while everyone could see he did. So in the end that was the real reason they closed him down."

Yehuda sat back. Then he gave David a bitter little smile. "I could get into a lot of trouble if it ever came out I told you this."

"Forget about that. It won't. But I've got a couple of questions. You say the unit records were destroyed. Does this mean I can't get a list of the men?"

"No list. The unit didn't exist. It didn't even have an official name. Whenever anyone mentioned it he'd just say 'Peretz and the boys.' Peretz recruited for himself, so he might remember. Didn't occur to me till now, but he might have some kind of informal list of his own."

"Second question: What exactly was the 'signature'?"

"I don't know exactly but I have a vague recollection of hearing it discussed one time. I think the original idea was to convey the notion of double trouble, two-for-one. You know, like in Hosea: 'They have sewn the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.' I remember something about sets of cuts-double cuts, something like that."

They found Peretz very quickly on the videotapes, and when they did they all wondered why they hadn't spotted him before.

"He's so still, David." Shoshana shuddered.

"Guy doesn't move, doesn't react."

They rewound the master audience tape and ran it again. The striking thing about Peretz was his total lack of affect. In a sea of highly disturbed people he was a noticeable island of calm.

"As if nothing anyone said touched him at all. How did we miss him?" Micha asked.

"We were looking for the wrong thing," David said.

"But still we got him! We got him!" They were excited: David's long-shot scheme of the false symposium had worked.

"Not so fast," he warned them. "He's a suspect. Now we watch him. No pressure. He mustn't know we're there. Full-press covert surveillance around-the-clock, which means constantly changing shifts. Not three guys wearing Ray-bans parked in a white car across the street."

He put Dov in charge of organizing the surveillance, gave Micha the job of digging into Peretz's past. But Micha was put out when David assigned him Moshe Liederman.

"He's a burn-out. He isn't any good. All he talks about is his retirement."

"Try and use him anyway," David said. "He told me in thirty years he's never worked a case that wasn't shit. I'd like it if, when he retires, he could tell people he worked one hell of a case one time."

That night, the Seder night of Passover, he called Avraham. "Do you know a Jacob Gutman?" No reply. "I know you do, Father. Please tell me who he is."

A long pause, then finally a response: "Jacob Gutman is a man who has been wronged."

Driving home the second evening of the holiday, passing Herod's Gate, David glanced up at the Rockefeller Museum and smiled. He remembered the day he had spotted Anna here, the day that had changed his life.

It was the previous November, just three weeks after he'd broken off his affair with the journalist Stephanie Porter. He'd bought himself a ticket to a recital at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. An exciting new Soviet-emigre cellist was being featured along with her Israeli accompanist. There'd been an article about them in the Jerusalem Post, an interview with Anna Benitskaya and also her photograph. Perhaps it was the inviting look in her eyes or the expression on her face. Something intrigued him. When he discovered he had a free evening he decided to go and hear her play.

The recital moved him. He loved chamber music, and when she played the third Beethoven sonata he found himself entranced. He couldn't take his eyes off her. She was a beautiful young woman but it was more than beauty that he saw. Vulnerability, something open and yet mysterious, a haunting quality too, an impression of depth that belied her youth. She had worn a gray silk dress, a pearl necklace, and tiny pearl earrings which glowed like soft little lights beside her head. She played with passion and her forehead gleamed. When the concert was over he left the church wondering wistfully where she was staying and whether it would be possible to meet her and if he did what she would be like.

Then, the next day, there was one of those coincidences that seemed to occur so often in Jerusalem. He had been driving mid-morning past the Rockefeller Museum on an errand concerning some now-forgotten case when he saw her walking alone up the entrance drive.

My chance, he'd thought. I mustn't let it pass. He quickly circled the museum, found a parking place, hurried back to the gate, bought himself a ticket, and entered too.

It didn't take him long to find her. There were few tourists that time of year, and the Rockefeller, an archaeological museum, was not one of the more popular sights. There were perhaps a dozen visitors moving quietly through the galleries, but when he found Anna she wasn't studying the collections. She was walking slowly beneath the vaulted arcades that lined the central sun-filled court.

He watched her. It would have been too obvious to follow her directly, and in any case he was a detective and knew how to follow without being seen. So as she moved slowly under the arcades he moved more quickly through the adjoining interlocking galleries, catching glimpses of her every so often through interior windows open to the cloister.

After a while she crossed to the center and sat down on an old stone bench. It was nearly noon. The sun was shining directly on her, showering her with brilliant November light. She shut her eyes, turned her head for warmth, and as she did, revealed her face. Her forehead gleamed as it had during her concert and then he caught a glimpse of skin glistening at her throat. Something so intimate about that gloss of perspiration: He was filled by an image of her writhing and moaning in sexual abandon that filled him with desire.

Perhaps he spent a quarter hour watching her. He remembered being fascinated and also feeling like a spy. When she left the museum, he followed her down the drive, across Suleiman, along the Old City walls, and then, turning the corner, along a little footpath that ran between an ancient Moslem cemetery and the massive Turkish wall.

Some Arab boys were playing soccer in the dust. There was a scent of pine resin in the crystal air, the leaves on the olive trees flashed silver, and the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock glowed brilliant beneath the sun. She stopped several times. At first he thought she was looking at Gethsemane. But then, as he drew closer, he saw that she was gazing upon the chalk-white graves that coated the slopes of the Mount of Olives.

Suddenly she glanced at her watch, then broke into a run. His heart stopped when, plunging forward, she almost tripped upon a step. He watched as she ran into the Jericho road, flagged down a taxi, then was gone, speeding back toward the center of Jerusalem. And then he knew he had to meet her, that if he did not he could not live.

Sarah Dorfman arranged it. Poor wonderful Sarah, Rafi's loyal middle-aged secretary, abandoned by her husband for one of those aggressive young German girls, the kind who come to Israel "to confront my parents' guilt" but in fact, or so it always seemed to David, came for a quick tan and to make love to a lot of swarthy Jews. Still, Sarah never complained, and now her life was devoted to the CID. Her only outside interest was music. She knew everyone in the Jerusalem music world and delivered on her promise that David would meet his cellist within the week.

All that had happened less than six months before and now Anna lived with him in Abu Tor. What if he had not driven by the Rockefeller that day? Would they have met? Or would he have forgotten her face and the extraordinary way she'd played? David did not know but he believed in the magic of Jerusalem, that it was a city of intersecting lives.

A rumble of thunder as he pulled into En Rogel Street, a flash of lightning as he parked. Just as he stepped out of his car the rainstorm began. He dashed to the doorway of number sixteen where he frantically stabbed out the code on the touch-tone combination lock.

He was soaked before he got inside. In the lobby he took off his jacket, held it away from him, and wrung it out. A spring rainstorm at last; the country needed rain. Water was a problem even more serious than the confrontation states.

Anna was wearing a faded yellow shirt. There was a crease between her eyes.

"What's the matter?"

"Rafi just called. You're to call him back right away. He sounded tense." She shook her head, disturbed.

He kissed her between her eyes, then strode to the phone. Dialing the Russian Compound, waiting for them to patch Rafi in, he threw her several more kisses as she stood by the kitchen door.

"David?"

"It's me."

"There's a terrific rain coming down."

"I know. I just got in."

"You're going to have to come out again."

"Another one?" He knew the answer and even before Rafi responded he could feel the dull ache again, the ache he had felt in his stomach ever since he'd been assigned the case.

"It's near you, anyway. A dumpster on the south corner of Bloom field Park."

He gulped. "Two minutes ago I passed within fifty feet."

"If I'd seen you I'd have flagged you down."

Anna had his poncho out, was smoothing it by snapping it in the air. He glanced out the window and at that moment a bolt of lightning cracked the sky. Anna held the poncho, he ducked under it, then straightened up so that his head was in the center hole. She pulled the hood up for him.

"When you come back we'll make love," she whispered. "And then I'll make us eggs."

Rafi wore a bright orange slicker, like a fisherman, David thought. Micha wore a trench coat, Moshe Liederman sucked on a cigarette beneath a poncho, while Dov Meltzer stood in soaked sneakers holding a pin-up magazine above his head.

"I heard it on the radio," Dov said. His T-shirt was soaked; through the wet fabric David could see dark curls of hair covering his upper chest.

"Peretz?"

"He's home. We spotted him around five going into his building. I've got four guys watching him now. Thought I ought to meet you here."

The dumpster loomed before them like an oversized coffin, huge and black, difficult to see, except when the lightning struck and then it was etched out. Five patrol cars and an ambulance were parked around it at converging angles. The forensic team was waiting for the illumination. A sergeant was setting up portable quartz lights, clipping the lamps to the door frames of a van.

David went up to Rafi. "Female?" he asked.

Rafi nodded, pipe clenched between his teeth. "Found by a couple of teenagers looking to scrounge up some discarded wood. Very young this time, like the third one by the wall. But I have a bad feeling she's not a prostitute. Five is too many, David. We never had a case with five."

"You said it before. Our first serial killer."

"But the scale's wrong. Know what I mean?" Rafi reached under his slicker, brought out a lighter, tried unsuccessfully to light his pipe. "Everyone's always talking about scale. We go to war, lose a thousand guys, and we say that's like the fifty, sixty thousand the Americans lost in Vietnam. So figure it out. Five is like two hundred fifty. Yeah, I know it doesn't work that way, but that's the way it seems." Another lightning bolt. Rafi winced at the thunderclap. Now the rain was slashing down in sheets. "Shit, don't know what they think they're going to find in there. With rain like this there'll just be soup."

"Same blanket?"

Rafi nodded.

Suddenly David was furious. "Pricks!"

Rafi squinted at him. "Anyone I know?"

"Mossad bastards. Their guy spotted Peretz but they had to wait a couple days before they clued me in. Now this. We've only been on Peretz since five o'clock today. He could have done this last night. We'd have seen him approach her. We could have stopped him. You understand, Rafi? If Peretz did this, then the blood's also on their fucking heads."