Pattern crimes

HIDDEN SYMMETRY

Five victims in four and a half weeks, then, suddenly, the killings stopped.

Rafi was right: the serial case, so incomprehensible to the Israeli mind, had been replaced in the public imagination by the double murders of Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson.

For David, Horev-Isaacson came as a welcome relief; the enormous pressure that had been on Pattern Crimes was now transferred to the Jerusalem homicide squad. While the Israeli press and public feasted on the extramarital scandal, the PC Unit went quietly about its business, assembling lists of violent men who'd been in military prisons.

He called in Shoshana. As always, she appeared in his doorway in an instant.

"What's new on Gutman?"

"Refuses to say a word. He's got himself a first-class lawyer, Abramsohn. They're going to make a motion for bail."

"He's still in the lock-up then?"

"Prosecutor told the judge he's got lots of money and there's reason to believe he might try and flee."

"Plus, I suppose, the 'heinous nature of the crime.' "

Shoshana nodded. "They put him in a cell by himself. Worried he might get hurt. Meantime, most of the scrolls have been identified. I've been talking with Netzer, who's going to try the case. As the arresting officer I'll have to testify. He says even with Abramsohn, Gutman doesn't have a prayer. The evidence is strong, he won't get any sympathy, and about the only things he's got going are that he's old and doesn't have a record."

David phoned his father. "What does it mean: 'A man who has been wronged'?"

"You arrested him."

"Did I wrong him?" Silence. "He calls us Nazis."

"Well?"

"You think that's what we are?"

"Let me ask you something, David: Do you think Gutman's nothing but a shrewd old crook?"

"Tell me about him."

"Talk to him."

"He won't talk."

"No, of course not. Stupid of me. Of course he won't." A pause and then a change of tone, as if Avraham wanted genuinely to help. "Think of it this way: there's a colored translucent screen between you and Gutman. Don't mistake the colored light that passes through for the hard white light that burns behind."

Anna called from Strasbourg. The recital series was going well. So far the reviews were good, and now there was a chance the tour would be extended to Amsterdam.

"I'm always thinking of you, David. I love you very much."

"I love you too."

"How is Jerusalem?"

"Beautiful. There're flowers everywhere."

"Your father?"

"We're getting on better now." He paused. "I miss you, Anna. Coffee together in the morning, you in your white robe, the light streaming in. And at night when I come home. And watching you practice. And in bed, holding you, kissing you, tasting you, whispering. Listening to you breathing in the night…"

"I've been thinking about Micha's theory."

"It's nonsense."

"Yeah. But there's a germ of something, especially when I put it together with something my father said to me the other night."

He had taken Dov to lunch at the Mei Naftoah, an arcaded Iraqi-Jewish restaurant on the edge of Jerusalem. Below the sunlight glittered upon the ruined roofs of an abandoned Arab village. Beyond the gully lay the stony Judean hills.

"Forget a conspiracy between two killers, but keep the notion of two classes of victims, 'easy' and 'hard.' Easy victims are whores and hustlers and soldier-girls hitching rides. Easy to pick up. Young and sexual. You stop, exchange a couple words with them, they get into your car, and you've got them. Right?"

Dov nodded.

"Okay, up till now we've been thinking of this as a serial murder case. That's what it looks like. That's the pattern. And it fits with the easy victims-no problem there. But it doesn't fit with Schneiderman and Mills. They're hard. They're not the kind you can get into your car. They're not sexual either. It's as if… there are two different things going on at once."

"The marks are always the same, David. The blankets, the method. Everything."

"Forget all that. I'm talking victims. Ever hear the expression 'hidden symmetry'?"

Dov shook his head.

"Particle physicists use it, biologists too, to describe a situation where two totally different results derive from one unseeable source. For example, the crab that has two claws, one big one small. That kind of crab looks unbalanced, but there's symmetry-it's just not visible. Both claws derive from a single gene. You have to understand genes and the purposes behind them before you can recognize the symmetry in what at first you think is just a weird lopsided crab. So, okay, we have two classes of victims. The symmetry's concealed because we don't know the killer's purpose. So suppose we forget serial murders. Let's ask ourselves what other purpose he might have had. Start by throwing the easy victims out. Then what have we got? Schneiderman and Mills. So why were the others killed exactly the same way? Maybe to make it look more complicated than it is, give it a shape, a pattern that disguises what was really going on."

"Three innocent people killed just to throw us off?"

"It's a possibility. All I know is that when I throw out 'serial killer' I get a whole new angle on the thing. Look, suppose we've got a pattern that conceals another pattern? Suppose we've been so blinded by what we've been shown that we haven't looked at what we've really got?"

"What do you want to do?"

"First, keep searching for Peretz's men, because, whatever his motive, the killer used their unit signature. But I want you to split off and concentrate on Schneiderman and Mills. Track back and get as much detail as you can. Don't worry too much about looking for connections. Just bring in the data. Then together we'll see if we can't find something that links them up."

Micha was frustrated. The lists of imprisoned men were long. Peretz's unit had no name or designation. The task was to find men who'd been suddenly and unexpectedly released.

"Since Peretz is out looking for his forger, wouldn't it save a lot of time if we just let him do the work?"

"You mean follow him?" David laughed. "I don't know, Micha. Seems to me we tried that once before."

Stephanie Porter: After she waved to him that night at Fink's, he had a feeling she would get in touch. The night she did he was sitting home, lights off, staring out at the city, feeling lonely and powerless and somewhat scornful about himself.

He'd just spoken with Hagith. The conversation had not gone well. His daughter was polite but distant, dutifully answering all his questions but sounding as if she wished she were doing something else. He wondered if he was losing her, whether she was being infected by Joe Raskov's vulgarity and Judith's sour view of life. A notion tormented him: that the little girl he loved might grow up to become a woman he wouldn't like.

Just then the telephone rang. He picked it up. "Hello?"

"How are you, David?"

That calm, low-pitched, seductive voice-he recognized it at once. "Well," he said, "this is a surprise."

"Oh, I don't think you're all that surprised. Your friend, the cellist -is she there?"

"Away on tour."

A throaty giggle. "I hear she's very talented." Then: "Guess it's been a while."

"More than six months."

"And now you're a bachelor. How lucky to call you at just this time."

"What's on your mind, Stephanie?"

"As if you didn't know." She laughed, her knowing laugh. It annoyed him. He was certain she had known that Anna was away.

"Did it occur to you that…?"

"Come on, David. What do you think she's doing tonight? She's probably balling her accompanist."

"He's gay."

"Sounds interesting." She giggled again, then her tone turned serious. "Listen, why don't you come over? I'm all alone. I won't force myself on you. We can talk, have a drink, in the bar if you'd feel more comfortable. Or do anything else our little heart's desire. Am I being brazen? I think I'd be a fool if I weren't. No obligation. I promise, David. Really. So, okay? Will you come?"

Even as he started up his car he knew he would probably regret the visit. But he went anyway, over to the American Colony Hotel where she lived in permanent luxury. Driving there he asked himself: Why am I doing this? The only explanation he could come up with, an explanation that maddened him, was that he was curious.

He parked in the dark lot concealed by palms just behind the portico, sat in his car reconsidering the venture. Then, disliking himself for not returning home, he entered the hotel.

"You know, David, I really liked you a lot." They had had a drink in the bar, now were seated on the couch in her room. She stared at him, swung her head so that her precision-cut hair flicked across her face, then fell back to the exact place it had filled before.

"Maybe not all that much."

She smiled. "Well, no, we weren't in love if that's what you mean."

He knew he had not loved Stephanie but he had certainly lusted for her. At her suggestion he'd called her "Lynx" in bed. An appropriate name, he thought, on account of the way she moved. She wore a lecherous feline smile when she unclasped his belt and when they made love she shrieked like a cat and scratched and simmered and fussed and curled sensually around his limbs.

She took his wrists in her hands.

"I think it was your wrists. I was very conscious of them from the start. The hair and the thickness of them. I noticed them the first time we met at what-his-name's, that boring journalist."

"Menachem."

"Yes. And then the hair that shows in the opening of your shirt." She eyed it. "I had a kind of erotic vision of you. I undressed you in my mind and imagined how the hair at your wrists and at your throat would connect-the pattern on your body, up your arms, across your chest." She sat back, looked him up and down. "I thought about that a lot, actually, got all hot thinking about it. It got so I couldn't put it out of my mind and then I had to see you stripped. So I set up that meeting at the King David swimming pool and when I saw you there, saw your body was just the way I'd imagined it, well…" She giggled.

"Do you remember what we did that afternoon? God, I'll never forget it. For days I'd wanted to do that particular thing. As I remember the occasion I did it under the sheets." Again she tossed her head to flick her tawny hair across her face.

He remembered, and at the memory felt his cock grow hard.

"…ever wonder why? You, the detective, I bet you did. I wanted to hide from you because I knew if you saw my face you'd know how much I liked it. I imagine my face is very lewd when I'm doing a thing like that. Hey! What's the matter? Don't go away. I'm not going to leap on you, poor man!"

He was up on his feet now and halfway across the room, feeling like a fool. He knew she knew she had him aroused and was getting ready to pounce. He knew too that he had not come to see her just out of curiosity, but because something about the way she'd stood at the bar at Fink's and her voice on the telephone had turned him on.

"Tell me," he asked, "did you care for me, or did you just sleep with me for information?"

"Of course I cared for you. Jesus, David-do you think I'm some kind of slut?"

"You were in half a dozen beds far as I could figure out."

"That's what I do, how I find out what's going on."

"Then you are an agent."

"I'm a journalist."

"You're an American agent, Stephanie. And a cop like me with access to all sorts of dossiers-I suppose I could have been a useful contact if I hadn't caught on to you so soon."

She laughed. "You underestimate your attractiveness, David. I have plenty of sources. I didn't need you."

"Anyone in the police?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. But I can tell you I've got at least one cabinet minister in my pocket. And, this may surprise you, he knows exactlywhat I do. Better that way-he only tells me stuff he wants me to find out. That's the game, you see. They leak stuff to me and I pass the stuff along. And from all those deliberate little leaks, certain inferences can be drawn. I don't personally draw the inferences. Other people do. I just bring in the raw stuff and let the inferences fall where they may. And you know something else? I like it. I like getting into the sack with powerful men and getting them to tell me things. But you, David, you were something else. I was crazy about you. Your body, yes, and something more. I think it was your inaccessibility. Because you weren't really there. You held something back. Day and night, no matter what we were doing, you were always a cop. You're one now. It's quite maddening. A maddening trait you have."

She got up then and began to stalk around the room, and as she did he was conscious of her breasts and that she wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts!

"…you'll never be able to really love a woman. Not even this new one you have, the cellist, what's-her-name, Miss Pluperfect, Miss Great Performing Artist, whatever she thinks she is. You love your work too much. Shit, David, have you any idea how maddening, maddening it was to hang out with you when you were on a case?"

She stopped at her dresser, poured herself a small glass of Scotch, took his glass and refilled it, then sat down.

"You do love her, don't you?"

He nodded.

"Good for you. I really hope you do. But it's interesting that you picked the two of us, neither of us Israelis or even Jews. I'm not saying I blame you. There're some hot little numbers walking around, but your basic Israeli female is an earth-mother. Boring, too, compared to the mythical commando girls, the ones on the covers of the gaudy paperbacks. Breasts straining against khaki shirts, sunburned skin, fabulous legs showing out of the military shorts. Ever get it on with one of those?"

"Maybe."

"And?"

"What?"

"What was she like?"

He studied her. "You want me to tell you you're a great lay, don't you, Stephanie?"

She laughed. "I admit I wouldn't mind hearing you say it, since I happen to know you think I am. Thing is, David, I have this feeling that no matter how much you may love your cellist, you probably got bigger hard-ons for me. I don't expect you to acknowledge that. No point. But I wonder why you never fell for me. Would you mind explaining that, now that we're quits?"

"How could I love a woman who wasn't honest?"

"I wasn't dishonest. I just didn't tell you everything. Question is: Is she honest with you? Is she? Do you really understand her? Totally? Completely? Do you really think you know everything?"

He didn't answer. He knew he didn't understand Anna, that as much as he loved her she still remained a puzzle. Perhaps because she too held herself apart. But in Anna's case this didn't madden him; it intrigued him all the more.

"I'm asking for a reason. It would be great to make love with you tonight, if you decide you'd like to stay, but even if we do I wouldn't expect us to go back to being lovers the way we were. And I'm not out to hurt you, or to interfere with your sweet domestic bliss over there in scenic Abu Tor. But I have to tell you that I know a thing or two about your cellist. I wonder if you'd like to hear."

What could he say? Of course he'd like to hear. But there was no way he was going to ask.

"She has a past, you know."

"Everyone has a past."

"Hers is more complex than most. Just the fact she's Russian makes it more complex."

"What are you trying to tell me, Stephanie? Are you speaking to me now as my friend?"

"I want to be your friend. And I admit that if from time to time I could go to bed with you, I'd enjoy that too. But even if you never touch me again in my entire life, I still think I should tell you what I know."

"So what's holding you back?"

"What's holding me back is that you won't come straight out and ask."

"You'd feel better if I asked?" She nodded. Damn her! "So, okay, I'm asking: What do you know?"

She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, then slowly blew out the smoke. Then for the third time she shook her head to fling her hair across her face. "It's like this, David. Your Anna Benitskaya-yes, of course I know her name-has been involved with a prominent Russian emigre, a man the KGB wants to discredit. She was his mistress. I'm not saying she is now. I can't be sure. But she was very much involved with him, and there's a school of thought that goes that she was sent out to the West to go after him, get close to him, and maybe not just him either, maybe some other important controversial emigres as well. Her defector story, you see, has got some holes. Makes good copy, that tale about leaving her state-owned Montagnana cello under the sheets in her hotel bed, slipping out to the U.S. Consulate, begging for asylum, all of that. But did it really go down that way? Or was she ordered to do it? To gain credentials-you see what I mean? To gain a super credibility so no one would suspect her later on."

"If you're saying she was a false defector, that's a load of shit."

"I knew you'd be angry. And I expect you to be skeptical considering this is coming from a woman who admits she gets horny just looking at your wrists. Look, I'm just passing on what certain people think, based on information obtained in Moscow and confirmed by at least one other source I know about. It was interesting that the people who accompanied her were never punished. The man she was sleeping with at the time, that conductor, Titanov, he's been allowed to travel to the West since her so-called defection and that doesn't add up because he was responsible for her-unless of course he was in on the deal too. Now hear me out, David. She's a world-class musician, no doubt of that. A star cellist, not a spy. But there could have been a trade-off. Something like: 'You defect, build yourself a career in the West, make lots of money, and become a star, and in return for our letting you do all that you'll get close to certain people we're interested in, find out what they're up to, and report back on them to us.' "

"What you're saying is that she's just like you. I don't believe that. But suppose you're right. Then what the hell is she doing with me? I'm of no use to a spy."

"Oh, I don't know, a smart young Israeli police officer, a man who might have a big career ahead of him. A man, moreover, who's in a certain position right now, involved in a case that could have implications that go beyond…well, I'm only speculating."

He looked at her sharply. "What do you know about my case?"

"I saw you on TV. I know you're up to your ass in something big."

"How big?"

"I don't know, David. All I've heard is rumors."

"What rumors?"

"I gather there're some people around who're getting…well…upset." Suddenly she seemed nervous, as if she'd said more than she'd intended to. She shrugged. "I see I've offended you. All I can say is that your Anna may have reported back on a man named Aleksandr Targov and that it wouldn't surprise me now if she were also reporting back on you."

He set down his glass, stood up, then walked over to the door. She watched him. She didn't look too happy. He turned to her, ready to leave. "I don't know what to think of you, Stephanie. Whether you're a lying little schemer or just a run-of-the-mill American bitch. Whatever your game is, I'm not interested in playing. I'm sorry I was stupid enough to come."

She nodded. "Okay, David, if that's the way you want it. But please trust me on this: I'm worried for you. I think you're in over your head and that if you keep on the way you're going you might end up getting hurt. I wouldn't want that. I'd be very upset if something bad happened to you." Their eyes met. She blew him a kiss. Then, as he was shutting the door, he heard her light another cigarette.

Later, when he thought back over their conversation, he realized she'd offered only one detail: Titanov, the conductor, whom she said had been seen recently in the West.

Anna had spoken of this man several times, described how much she'd loathed him and her pleasure in knowing that when she'd fled he had taken most of the blame. Her defection story was rock-solid. She'd left her cello in her bed because she wasn't a thief and so that when Titanov looked in on her he'd think she was asleep. But there was a fifty percent chance he'd come in anyway – that had been her greatest risk. He thought nothing of awakening her. "My discovery, my property," he called her. "I own you body and soul." She'd defected, she'd told David, as much to get away from him as to live freely in the West.

Now Stephanie said Titanov had been seen, and that was a fact that could be checked. He took it to Sarah Dorfman, who inquired of her music world friends, one of whom even telephoned a knowledgeable impresario in New York. Word came back. Titanov had not toured outside the Soviet Union since the day Anna Benitskaya had asked for asylum in Milan. He was still in disgrace, still blamed for her defection. Sarah's sources, David knew, were absolutely reliable, so Stephanie's single "fact" was proven false. For David that was enough to discredit everything she'd said.

An American nun on tour of the Holy Land and a working class Israeli trucker. Could they somehow be linked? Could their lives have crossed?

Susan Mills had kept a travel diary. Dov, Uri, and Micha had each been through it several times. Names, dates, places-it was the basic source for their attempts to trace her friends. She commented on the weather, the impact of first seeing certain important religious shrines, everyday encounters with Israelis, her excitement at walking where Jesus Christ had lived and trod. No mention of a truck driver named Yaakov, or of any truck at all. David reread the diary, and then looked at her photographs, including ones developed from the roll found in her camera after she'd been killed.

These photographs amounted to a diary in themselves. Susan seemed to have shot two or three thirty-six-frame rolls a day. Her camerawork was excellent. She changed lenses, shot interiors and exteriors, all perfectly focused, perfectly exposed, perfectly framed for the scrapbooks she would make.

Together, David and Dov examined every shot. They were looking for Schneiderman, or possibly his truck. Nothing. But everything else was there, every shrine described in the diary, every person mentioned, even the facades of the hotels where she had stayed. If she mentioned getting into a conversation with an old bookstore owner, there would be a photograph of him standing before his shop. Susan was a documentarian. She was on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. She had carefully constructed a record of it. But they could find no Schneiderman, no matter how hard they looked.

"We have to go deeper, Dov. She tells us a lot, but she couldn't put down all of it."

"Deeper how?"

"Several times she says: 'Wrote Margaret today.' We ought to have a look at those letters. Check her address book. Search for a Margaret.' Probably her closest friend."

While Dov went through Susan's personal address book, David turned back to the papers taken from Yaakov Schneiderman's flat. Again, he, Dov, and the others had been through the material several times. Bills. Receipts. Business correspondence. Tax forms. Check stubs. An appointment book. Cryptic, hurriedly written notes and orders for pick-ups and deliveries all over Jerusalem.

The amount of material was massive, but it struck David as a pathetic remnant of a life. A man like Schneiderman would not confide in a diary. His fantasies, illusions, beliefs, and dreams had died with him, and all that was left were papers having to do with money.

"Okay, there's a Margaret Dupuy, Convent of Mary, St. Louis."

"Susan's convent." Dov nodded. "Try and get her on the phone."

The connection was clear and Sister Margaret Dupuy's voice was warm.

"Yes, the police, I understand. I'm so happy you haven't forgotten her. We won't ever forget her, of course. But you didn't know her and love her the way we did."

"Did you keep her letters?"

"Oh yes, every one."

"Could we read them-if they're not too personal?"

"They are lovely sensitive letters and I'll be happy to share them with you. I could read them to you now, but it would take too long. How would it be if I made copies? I'll mail them to you tomorrow."

"We'd be grateful," David said.

The search for men who served with Peretz was proving slow and difficult. One wall was posted now with the lists of men who'd done time in military prisons. Micha's, Uri's, Shoshana's, and Liederman's desks were covered with computer printouts from IDF central files.

These four detectives had gone home at six. David and Dov now sat alone in the PC Unit office. Dov was discouraged. "I don't know, David. We've been through this stuff a dozen times."

"That's the thing about hidden symmetry, Dov. It's very difficult to see. You have to try out different pieces in different combinations. So now we go through it all again."

They had divided their material, placed it on separate tables: Schneiderman's miscellany; Susan's diary and photographs. David had decided they would confine themselves to the period of Susan's stay in Jerusalem. They would forget the early part of her trip, concentrate instead on the final eight days of her life.

He and Dov tacked up a fresh plastic overlay over the large street map of Jerusalem on the cork-covered wall. Then they stuck pins in every place that Susan Mills had gone. The main clusters were around the great Christian shrines. She wasn't an extravagant woman, had used public transportation to get around. And since the Holyland Hotel was in Ramat Sharett, there were limitations on the bus routes she would have had to use.

She walked a lot too-that was evident from her descriptions and her photographs. So they began to chart, as best they could, her probable itineraries on each of her eight final days. They did this by connecting up the pins with different colored threads. Yellow for the first day, blue for the second, orange for the third, and so on until they had a mass of crisscrossing daily routes.

Next they charted Schneiderman's movements, the various deliveries and pickups he had made over the same eight days. Household furnishings transported from Qiryat Moshe to Talpiyyot; a refrigerator from a store on Nathan Strauss to an apartment in Emeq Refaim… Again yellow for the first day, blue for the second, orange for the third, etc. And they didn't forget that he had started out each morning from his home and returned with his truck there every night.

Wherever two threads of the same color crossed, they went back to the documentation to see if the crossing fell within a couple of hours. There were many instances of crossings. The work of checking on each was laborious. Most often, it turned out, the crossings were not true intersections but had occurred at completely different times of day.

David made a decision. If they could pinpoint a crossing which they could estimate had fallen within three hours or less, then there was a possibility that Susan and Schneiderman had met. After four evenings of work they came up with six such possibilities. They circled each one in crayon, then sat back and studied the map.

"What bothers me, David, is that it's all so chancy. Susan must have done things she didn't document, and as for Schneiderman, in a city like this there're just too many different routes. Suppose he glances at his gas gauge, sees he needs to fill up. Does he go out of his way to a favorite gas station, or does he just continue until he spots one on the road?"

"We can only use what we've got. Now we know a meeting's not impossible. Before we thought it was. So we keep on searching. That's all, really, we can do."

When the letters arrived from Margaret Dupuy there were things in them they hadn't found in Susan's diary or photographs. Feelings mostly, sensitive reactions to the shrines, and occasional notes on Israel as an embattled, embittered nation-state.

"I do so admire the Jewish people," she wrote, "but here sometimes they do test my love. I've never seen so many chain smokers or such pushing and shoving in crowds and shops. Nobody likes to stand in line here. It's 'me, me, me' and never mind the rest. But they can be saintly too. An old lady goes out of her way to show me a street. A busy teacher spends hours explaining an archaeological site. And then I'll encounter rudeness again. It's because they have so many terrible problems, I think…"

One reference from the letters leapt out at David: Had a very unpleasant encounter today with an extremely nasty cop. Usually they're so polite but this one was awful. 'You must do this, must do that.' Just like a German. And perhaps he was a German Jew…"

An encounter with a nasty cop in Jerusalem. She wrote that it had occurred that very day. The letter was dated March 12. David went to the map to trace her route.

The white thread: It didn't lead to a direct crossing with Schneiderman but there were two times when they'd come fairly close. Back to the documentation. The second instance seemed possible. Susan had eaten lunch at a suburban dairy restaurant near her hotel and around midday Schneiderman had been driving empty toward Romema, having completed a hauling job in Gonen Bet.

"Wait," Dov said, "I think that's when he had his accident."

While Dov rummaged through Schneiderman's papers David thought about Susan's reference to a nasty cop. When Dov found what he was looking for he read it aloud, a computerized notice from Schneiderman's insurance company concerning a collision he had had on March 12.

The notice stated that according to the motor vehicle registry office the reported plate number of the other vehicle did not exist. Would Mr. Schneiderman please consult his notes and as soon as possible submit an amended form.

Across the bottom Schneiderman had scrawled the plate number, and underlined it twice. He had also scrawled a name, Igal Hurwitz, and then another number, A29103.

The insurance company was in Tel Aviv. Dov and Micha drove down early in the morning, were waiting at the door when the office opened at eight. They brought back a copy of Schneiderman's original report, which included a crude diagram of the accident. They also brought back the extraordinary information that the other vehicle, the one whose plate number could not be traced, had been described as a late-model dark blue Chevrolet van, and that Igal Hurwitz, a policeman, serial number A29103, was listed not only as the cop who had taken charge at the scene but as a witness to the accident itself.

The only trouble was that when Dov checked with police personnel he was told there was no Igal Hurwitz. There was no such serial number either. A29103 did not exist.

An iron-gray windy afternoon. David, along with Dov, Shoshana Nahon, Uri Schuster, Micha Benyamani, and Moshe Liederman, drove in two white police Subarus to the alleged collision scene. Following Schneiderman's diagram, they positioned their cars and then tried to reconstruct the accident.

Schneiderman, according to the statement filed with his report, had been driving at reasonable speed along Yehuda Ha-Nasi in his empty truck, when, quite suddenly, at the intersection with Berenice Street, the Chevrolet van had pulled into his path. Nearly all the damage had been done to the van; Schneiderman's truck was barely scratched. No other information had been provided on the form, since, Schneiderman wrote, patrolman Hurwitz had taken detailed notes.

A fairly bleak intersection-not much going on during the day. A suburban area, private houses mostly, a few small apartment buildings scattered about. The usual service stores: a small grocery, a laundry and dry-cleaning establishment, a shoemaker, a newsstand that also sold candy and film. Yet within the past three weeks this modest neighborhood had become notorious. Around the corner, at 49 Alexandrion, was the borrowed apartment where the bodies of the murdered lovers, Ruth Isaacson and Aaron Horev, had been found.

While the others marked the street and photographed the scene, David and Dov strode three blocks against the wind to the little dairy restaurant just of Ya'agov Pat, where Susan Mills had eaten lunch.

David stood outside while Dov went in to interview the waiters. When Dov came out he shook his head. He had shown Susan's picture, but it had been two months and no one could recall her face.

"Still," David said, "it's looking good. At around the same time on the same day we can place them within a hundred meters. She comes in here for lunch. Afterward she decides to take a walk. She arrives up there at the corner just in time to see the accident, and that's when she has the encounter with the 'nasty cop.' But it's better than that-the nasty cop turns out not to exist. Neither does the Chevy van, and we know our wildcard, Yael Safir, was picked up in a dark blue American van we've never been able to trace. Phony nasty cops. Unlisted vehicles. Witnesses killed off and then easy victims picked up and killed and thrown in as a disguise. Doesn't feel much like a serial murder case now, does it? More like a conspiracy and cover-up."

They started to walk back to the accident scene. Then David changed his mind. "Let's take a look at Forty-nine Alexandrion."

Dov nodded. "Sure."

When they reached the building, they stared up at the windows of the famous love nest on the second floor. David shook his head. "Horev and Isaacson. Okay, it could just be a coincidence about the neighborhood. But the timing bothers me. They used to get together around noon, spend their lunch hours making love. That's too close, Dov. Too big a coincidence. Suppose they also saw the accident?"

"But they were shot, David. Point-blank range, two each in each of their heads."

"Sure. Take them out clean. A professional hit-that would add another layer of concealment. No point trying to blend them into a phony psycho murder series. They were adulterous lovers so make it look like it was done by a killer hired by an angry spouse."

Back at the intersection the wind was blowing harder and the clouds were darker, about to burst. David called Micha, Uri, Shoshana, and Liederman together into the middle of the street. A flock of black birds tore across the sky.

"Canvass the neighborhood," he told them. "Every house, every apartment, every shop. Find me a witness. They couldn't kill everyone. There must be someone who saw this accident who's still alive."