'What's with Malkovsky?' Daniel asked him.
'Nothing. Still edgy. I wish I were there instead of playing the shithead's game.'
'The shithead cornered me in the hall this morning.'
said Shmeltzer. 'Wanted to know what we've gotten out of these sweet souls-just itching for another press release.
I told him we just started, it was too early to tell, but from the way it looked, they were all blameless as newborn lambs-did the esteemed Tat Nitzav wish us to continue in the same vein? 'What do you mean?' he says. I say,
'Should we start checkin' out the other MK's and their people too?''
Daniel laughed. 'What did he say to that?'
'Made like an old car-sputters and snorts, metal against metal-then headed straight for the bathroom. Primed, no doubt, for a little vertical communication.'
Daniel got back to Jerusalem at two-thirteen, bought a felafel from a street vendor near the train station, and finished it while driving to Headquarters. Back in his office he began transcribing the interview with Kagan onto official forms, wanting to be rid of it as quickly as possible, then called the operator and asked for radio contact with the Chinaman. Before she completed the transmission, she interrupted, saying: 'There's one for you coming in right now. Do you want it?'
'Sure.' He endured a minute of static, was connected to Salman Afif, the mustachioed Druze, phoning from his Border Patrol Jeep.
'I'm out here with some Bedouins-the ones we spoke about that first morning. They've migrated south, found something I think you'll want to see.'
He told Daniel what it was and reported his location, using military coordinates. Daniel pulled out a map and pinpointed the spot, three and a half kilometers due north from the Scopus ridge. Fifteen hundred meters past the perimeter of the grid search he'd ordered after viewing Fat-ma's body.
So close.
'What's the best way to get there?'
'I can drive up into the city,' said Afif, 'and take you back, retracing on the donkey paths, but it would be quicker for you to climb down the first kilometer or so on foot-to where the slope eases. From there it's a straight ride. How are your shoes?'
'They'll survive. I'm leaving now-meet you there. Thanks for keeping your eyes open.'
'Nothing to it,' said the Druze. 'A blind man couldn't have missed it.'
Daniel hung up, put his papers away, and called Forensics.
He parked the Escort across the road from the Amelia Catherine, put on a narrow-brimmed straw hat to block out the relentless Judean sun, tightened the buckles on his sandals, and got out. The watchman, Zia Hajab, was sitting at the entry to the hospital. Slumped in the same plastic chair, apparently sleeping.
Taking a quick backward look at the gully where Fatma had been found, Daniel sprinted toward the ridge, climbed over, and began his descent.
Walking sideways on bent legs, he made rapid progress, feeling nimble and fit, aware of, but unperturbed by, dry fin-gers of heat radiating upward from the broiling desert floor.
Summer was approaching-twenty-three days since the dumping of Fatma, and the case was snaking its way toward the new season. The rainy season had been brief this year, attenuated by hot easterly winds, but clumps of vegetation still clung to the terraced hillsides, denying the inevitability of summer. Digging his heels in and using his arms for balance, he half-walked, half-jumped through soft expanses of rusty terra rossa. Then the red earth began yielding to pale strips of mendzina-the chalky limestone that looked as dead as plastic but could still be friable if you knew how to work it-until soon all was pale and hard and unyielding-a crumbling, rocky course the color of dried bones. Land that would rather dissolve than accommodate, the emptiness relieved only by the last starved weeds of spring.
Afifs jeep was visible as a khaki spot on the chalk, its diameter expanding as Daniel drew near. Daniel removed his hat and waved it in the air, saw the blue Border Patrol light flash on and off. When he was forty meters away, the jeep's engine started up. He trotted toward it, unmindful of the grit that had lodged between his toes, then remembering that no sand had been found on either body. Afif gave the jeep gas and it rocked on its bearings. Daniel climbed in and held on as the Druze made a sharp U-turn and sped off.
The ride was spine-jarring and loud, the jeep's engine howling in protest as Afif tortured its transmission, maneuvering between low outcroppings of limestone, grinding single-mindedly through dry stream beds. The Druze's pale eyes were hidden by mirrored sunglasses. A red bandanna was tied loosely around his neck, and the ends of his enormous moustache were blond with dust.
'Which Bedouin clan is this?' Daniel shouted.
'Locals, like I told you. Unrelated to any of the big clans. They run goats and sheep from here up toward Ramallah, come in for the summer, camping north of the city.'
Daniel remembered a small northern campsite, nine or ten low black tents of woven goat-hair, baking in the heat.
'Just past the Ramot, you said?'
'That's them,' said Afif. He downshifted into a climb, twisted the wheel, and accelerated.
'How long have they been herding here?'
'Eight days.'
'And before that?'
'Up north, for a month or so.'
