understand the policeman, who was getting mad.
So, Uri summarized, there were four of them on the sidewalk, and Schneiderman over by the van. Anybody else? Yes, three more men, two of them helping a third who seemed to be hurt. Using the dolls Amit reconstructed exactly what she'd seen: the hurt man placing his arms across the shoulders of the other two, and then the three of them together limping rapidly away.
'All three of them? You're sure, Amit? Up this way, up Berenice Street? And what about the others? Oh, you mean this was before the argument? But the other night you said you heard the quarreling and that's when you went over to the window to look out.'
Amit had forgotten. When Mrs. Shapira had gone to her bedroom, she had gone over to the window because she wanted to go outside and play. Then she saw the truck coming and saw it hit the van. Then she saw the policeman get out of the driver's door of the van and then she saw the woman who spoke the other language taking pictures of everything. The policeman wasn't nice to the lady, or to the couple who'd been passing by and stopped to help. He made them all show him their identity cards, and then he spoke very angry words and wrote down all their names…
So, three men and a phony cop had been in a dark blue van, and after Schneiderman had hit it the three men, one injured, had fled the scene. The cop, who, of course, had been 'Igal Hurwitz,' had taken charge, exchanged names with Schneiderman, then demanded that Susan Mills turn over her film. Important evidence, he'd told her, but Susan had refused. Amit Nissim remembered hearing Ruth Isaacson explain to the cop that the American woman didn't like his attitude.
When they left Amit, after thanking her and presenting her with a gift of the policewoman doll, Uri, who'd been so calm and paternal during the interview, began shadowboxing on the stairs. A quick succession of left jabs, then four quick rights, then a hard right cross.
'Horev-Isaacson! Same case! Congratulations, David-you were right! But you know something? When you told us that the other day I thought you were full of shit…'
Horev and Isaacson-all of Israel knew about them.
Aaron Horev: engineer, devoted husband of Rivka, obstetrician at Hadassah in Ein Karem. Three boys: Zvi, Yigal, and Ehud. A typical, honest, striving, middle-class Jerusalem family, with a two-bedroom apartment in Gillo and a good second-hand Fiat sedan.
Ruth Isaacson: librarian at the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University, wife of Asher Isaacson, professor of geology at Givat Ram. The childless Isaacsons, close friends of the Horevs, owned a comfortable two-bedroom house on Bezalel. They'd done their own fix-up, put a sleek modern menorah in their window, parked their shiny Japanese car out front.
The assignations took place at 49 Alexandrion, in a second-floor apartment belonging to Ruth's friend, Zena Raphael. The arrangement, as it was later revealed, was that for the reasonable sum of fifty thousand shekels a month, the lovers had the optional use of Zena's place, including sheets and towels, from noon to two each weekday afternoon.
How often they actually met there was a matter of dispute. Zena said possibly once or twice a week; a neighbor said every afternoon. But there was no dispute about the finale. A little after 6 P.M. on Thursday, April 18th, Zena Raphael returned home by bus from a long and tiring day. She unlocked her door, carried her groceries to her kitchen, rinsed her oranges, made tea, then went to her bedroom to lie down. From the doorway she saw two nude and tangled bodies. The lovers, each shot expertly twice in the head, lay dead in each other's arms.
Who had done it? Asher Isaacson? Rivka Horev? Rivka's brother Samuel, who had always despised Aaron? Some said Zena had done it, that she was herself in love with Aaron and madly jealous of Ruth. Rafi's homicide investigators weren't sure. The clean method of the double slaying, four precisely fired shots from a. 22 caliber Beretta, suggested the possibility of a professional hit. And since the 'injured parties' in the affair had each been at work at the time, Rafi was basing his investigation on the theory that one or the other of them might have contracted the executions out.
All parties claimed innocence. Asher Isaacson hired an attorney. Rivka Horev, persecuted by reporters, took her three sons to Haifa and threatened to leave Israel for good. The religious demagogue, Rabbi Mordecai Katzer, described the double killing as the wages of infidelity, a consequence of 'perverted values' and 'secular Hellenism' in Israeli life.
'So now you want Horev-Isaacson?' Rafi's sad eyes drooped with skepticism. He sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.
'I've got a witness.'
'A six-year-old. David-please…'
'I'm telling you, Rafi, she may be six but she's very very good. Look at my tape. See if you believe her. Horev and Isaacson saw the accident-that's why they were killed.'
After Rafi looked twice at the tape he agreed that Amit made a convincing witness. 'You didn't lead her and she makes good sense,' he said. 'Too bad there's no corroboration.'
'So?'
Rafi paused. 'So-okay, you get Horev-Isaacson. I'll have to tell Latsky, but we won't mention this to anybody else. My homicide guys will just have to keep spinning their wheels. Which is about all they've been doing anyway.' He leaned back and lit his pipe. 'Of course on one level you've solved it. Now we understand the motive. Get rid of witnesses. Conceal two of them in a phony serial case. Sacrifice three other people including an innocent soldier- girl. Knock of a pair of lovers too.'
'Ruthless people.'
'So what's behind it?'
'A cover-up. The witnesses saw something dangerous,' David said.
'What?'
'I've been thinking about that. It couldn't have been obvious, or they would have had to kill all of them right away. The killers didn't do that. They executed them slowly. Spent two months playing out a complicated charade. So the witnesses-Schneiderman, Mills, Horev and Isaacson-saw something that maybe didn't register as important at the time, but that might appear to be very important in retrospect later on. Four guys, one of them dressed like a cop, driving in an illegally registered van. Something about connecting them-that's what it's got to be. Guys who were going to do something so bad they were willing to kill seven innocent people rather than have four of them look back at some future date and remember seeing them together.'
David kept his unit up until 4 A.M. talking out the case. Their first decision had to do with Amit. Since everyone else who'd seen the accident had been murdered, she might now be in danger too. She would have to be protected. David assigned Shoshana to guard her, with Uri and Liederman as relief.
Their second decision concerned Susan Mills. She'd refused to turn over her film to the phony Hurwitz. That could account for the fact she'd been tortured before she'd been killed. Had she talked? She was strong-willed, Dov reminded them-he'd always admired the American nun. So it was possible to presume she hadn't talked, which meant the dangerous photos she'd taken might still be around. David gave the order: Go to every photo store and film-processing outlet in the city working in concentric circles from the Holyland Hotel. Show pictures of Susan to the shopkeepers. Had the nun ever come into their stores? Had she bought film, left off rolls to be developed? Had they any uncollected developed pictures in their files?
At dawn David went home to sleep. He rose in the early afternoon, made coffee, ate some yogurt, and fixed himself a salad. He was in the midst of taking a shower, long and hot, thinking of Anna, becoming excited at the thought that she'd be home in just a week, when he heard the sound of the buzzer downstairs. He turned off the water, wrapped himself in a towel, and went out to the intercom to find out who was there.
'Yigal Gati. I tried your office. They told me you were home.'
'General Gati?' Even through the intercom he recognized the famous voice.
'Yes. I'd like to come up and talk if it's not inconvenient.'
'I'll buzz you in,' David said.
He rushed around the apartment straightening up, wondering what he'd done to deserve this visit from a living legend. He was still struggling into his pants when the doorbell rang. He pulled on a sweater before he opened up. When he did, the general stared with faint disgust at the wet bath towel he was still holding in his hand.
'Worked late last night. I just got up.'
'Maybe I should have phoned.' But, as David noticed, the general continued to stand there, not offering to
