all, if it’s blood and if this shirt is connected to the crime scene—note I said ‘if ’ twice—then it’s sure not a woman.”
“Why? Because the label says LARGE?”
“No, not necessarily. Plenty of women like loose-fitting shirts, big roomy shirts. Maybe that’s another reason. But getting back to what I said about working on a bloodstain with boiling water—”
“Not every woman knows how to clean stains,” Michael protested.
“Aha!” Yaffa said, openly triumphant. “Not every woman knows how to clean stains, and not every type of stain, but if we’re talking about blood, well, that’s a different matter. Every woman knows that blood comes off first of all with cold water. If you’d ever gotten your period, you would have known that too.”
Michael raised his hands as if giving in. “Hmmmm, menstrual blood. If we’re talking about the menstrual cycle, then I really can’t—
who am I to stand up to the cyclical forces of nature?” he said without smiling. “But what about the size?”
“As you yourself said, sir, it’s a men’s size LARGE,” Yaffa confirmed.
“But here we’re in luck. If it’s connected to this case, then we’ve had a lucky break. If this turns out to be Zadik’s blood, then we’ve got a real lead, because this shirt is unique. I don’t think you can find it in Israel.
Maybe one of the fancier shopping areas in Tel Aviv, Gan Ha’ir or Kikar Hamedina. Look,” she said, showing him the label. “See that?
Brooks Brothers, made in the U.S.A., really expensive store. It’s only for men prepared to pay a lot for everyday clothes. I happen to know about it—I’m telling you, you never know what you remember and when you’ll make use of it one day: not long ago there was this woman at work who brought a pair of socks in for her boyfriend. But the guy’s married, and he asked her, ‘How am I supposed to bring a pair of Brooks Brothers socks home with me? What am I supposed to tell my wife? I mean, she knows I wasn’t in America, so who could possibly bring me something like this?’ Anyway, the fact that he was such a coward about the whole thing really made her mad, and she decided not to give him the socks—she’d brought him three pairs—so instead she gave them to Rami. You know Rami, don’t you? I heard this story by chance. I’ll bet you that the person this shirt belongs to has at least another one, along with a few pairs of Brooks Brothers socks. If you find somebody with Brooks Brothers T-shirts or socks, well, we’ll be on our way to wrapping up this case, you know what I mean? You can only get these things in America; a present for yourself or someone you love. You should know that, I mean, in life in general. And look what else I found,” she exclaimed, waving a tiny, sealed plastic bag in front of him that held a single gray hair. “It was on the shirt. Inside it.
If this is blood, and if this shirt is connected to the scene of the crime, then this hair could be the key to the whole case.”
“Who found this shirt?” Michael asked.
“Yigael did, right here between the computer table and the wall, all bunched up. What do you say about that?”
“Good job, Yigael,” Michael said, causing the sergeant to blush.
“Who’s been in this room today?” Michael asked Yaffa. “Have you checked it out yet?”
“Excuse me, sir,” Sergeant Yigael interjected from his spot near the door, “but everyone’s been in here. Turns out that the whole staff comes in and out of the foreign correspondents’ office, not just the foreign correspondents themselves: graphic artists, and people who need the computer, and just about anybody who has business in the newsroom. They all come in here.”
“So you haven’t checked who exactly was in this room today?”
Michael asked.
“Sure we checked, sir, of course we did,” Yigael said, slightly offended. “But … ,” he said, hesitating, then fell silent.
“But?”
“But look at the list,” he said as he removed a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, which he then proceeded to unfold. “There are like thirteen people on this list that said they were in the room or that someone else said they were here. Look. And we haven’t even finished yet, there were more people walking around, we only just got started because we only just found the shirt about half an hour ago … anyway, sir, Yaffa says that anybody could have come in, thrown the T-shirt behind the computer, and left immediately, and nobody would have known the difference.”
Michael perused the list of names, which included the assistant producers Tzippi and Zivia, and Karen the anchorwoman, and Hefetz (“What business did Hefetz have there?” he asked the sergeant, who scratched his forehead. “I don’t exactly know, sir, he says he only popped in for a second”) and Rubin (“He came in looking for Hefetz”) and Eliahu Lutafi, the correspondent for environmental affairs, and Elmaliah the cameraman, and Schreiber. Natasha had been there, and Niva, and even Zadik had passed through at around eight in the morning—in several instances Yigael had noted the times as well—and there were three names Michael did not recognize. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to everyone yet,” Yigael said, “but, say, Danny Benizri was in here with somebody, a cameraman, and they worked on something on the computer. You can talk to him, sir, he’s in Editing Room 8, he’s been sitting there for the past hour and he didn’t want to—he says to me, ‘If you people are going to shut me in here, at least let me work.’
What was I supposed to do, put up a fight? He said, ‘Call me when your boss gets here.’ What could I say to that? Arye Rubin’s there, too, in the editing rooms. He also said if you need him—”
Michael refolded the sheet of paper and, glancing at the sergeant, said, “Good job, Yigael. Now you’ve got your work cut out for you: I want you to fill in the missing information, find out exactly when—
and for what reason—these people were in the foreign correspondents’
room, and whether they noticed anyone else entering.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered, his round brown eyes shining brightly with the compliment.
“How long will it take for you to get the results?” Michael asked Yaffa.
“About the shirt? The blood?” Yaffa answered distractedly. “Not long, maybe by tomorrow already, but the hair will take longer, that’s more complicated. You know how long it takes with DNA … I hope we’ll have the results by the day after tomorrow, but we’ll get the blood test back first.”
“I’m going upstairs for a minute,” Michael said. “If Eli Bachar or Balilty are looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.”
Sergeant Yigael nodded vigorously, and Michael raced up the stairs, in part, perhaps, to test his breathing, to see whether the pressure he had felt in his chest over the previous few months, mainly when dashing up stairs—the chief reason his family doctor had insisted he quit, describing in lurid detail the effects of several lung diseases—had dulled or disappeared since he had quit smoking. Now it seemed as though the pressure had not decreased at all and that he could still hear a whistle in his breathing; he asked himself why he should suffer so, why he should give up smoking at all. Anyway, there was a NO SMOKING
sign at the entrance to the editing rooms, so at least he was spared having to search for somewhere to smoke, or to break the rules, which he had done so often in the past.
Danny Benizri was sitting in front of an editing table, his black button-down shirt open to reveal a white T- shirt underneath. At the sound of the door opening he raised his face from the monitor and stopped the film; frozen on the screen was a picture of Esty, pregnant behind the wheel of the truck, her hand on her stomach, writhing in pain and gesturing to something or someone beyond the camera, while Rachel Shimshi, on her knees next to Esty in the truck, was tapping her cheeks.
She was clearly rattled.
“This is the report about the wives of the laid-off workers for tonight’s broadcast,” Danny Benizri explained before being asked. “It’s … it’s really awful, what’s happening there. This one,” he said, pointing at Esty,
“she lost her baby today. First pregnancy. Today’s a terrible day, with everything that’s happened. I just need another couple of minutes to finish.” Michael approached the monitor for a better look at the picture Benizri was describing. “With everything that’s happened through this whole affair,” the reporter said, “I just don’t understand how Rachel Shimshi could have let Esty come with her, pregnant like that. And it took her a while to get pregnant, too. Believe me, I’m well informed, I know this story from the inside. She had so much trouble, lots of fertility
