'Looking into that is someone else's job. This is ours.'
At eleven-ten, a man out of the Rashmawi house, looked both ways, and walked silently down the pathway. A small dark shadow, barely discernible against a coal-black sky. The detectives had to strain to keep him in their sights as he made his way east, to where the bluff dipped its lowest.
Climbing gingerly down the embankment, he began walking down the hill, in the center of their visual field. Merging in the darkness for stretches of time that seemed interminable, then surfacing briefly as a moonlit hint of movement. Like a swimmer bobbing up and down in a midnight lagoon, thought Daniel as he focused his binoculars.
The man came closer. The binoculars turned him into something larger, but still unidentifiable. A dark, fuzzy shape, sidling out of view.
It reminded Daniel of '67. Lying on his belly on Ammunition Hill, holding his breath, feeling weightless with terror, burning with pain, his body reduced to something hollow and flimsy.
The Butcher's Theater, they called the hills of Jerusalem. Terrain full of nasty surprises. It carved up soldiers and turned them into vulture fodder.
He lowered the binoculars to follow the shape, which had grown suddenly enormous, heard the Chinaman's harsh whisper and abandoned his reminiscence:
'Shit! He's headed straight here!'
It was true: The shape was making a beeline for the grove.
All three detectives shot to their feet and retreated quickly to the rear of the thicket, hiding behind the knotted trunks of thousand-year-old trees.
Moments later the shape entered the grove and became a man again. Pushing his way through branches, he stepped into a clearing created by a tree that had fallen and begun to rot. Cold, pale light filtered through the treetops and turned the clearing into a stage.
Breathing hard, his face a mask of pain and confusion, the man sat down on the felled trunk, put his face in his hands, and began to sob.
Between the sobs came gulping breaths; at the tail end of the breaths, words. Uttered in a strangulated voice that was half whisper, half scream.
'Oh, sister sister sister? I've done my duty? but it can't bring you back? oh sister sister? we of the less flavored wife? sister sister.'
The man sat for a long time, crying and talking that way. Then he stood, let out a curse, and drew something from his pocket. A knife, long-bladed and heavy-looking, with a crude wooden handle.
Kneeling on the ground, he raised the weapon over his head and held it that way, frozen in ceremony. Then, crying out wordlessly, he plunged the blade into the earth, over and over again. Unleashing the tears again, snuffling wetly, sobbing sister sister sister.
Finally he finished. Pulling out the knife, he held it in his palms and stared at it, tearfully, before wiping it on his trouser leg and placing it on the ground. Then he lay down beside it, curled fetally, whimpering.
It was then that the detectives came toward him, guns drawn, stepping out of the shadows.
Daniel kept the interrogation simple. Just him and the suspect, sitting opposite one another in a bare, fluorescent-bright room in the basement of Headquarters. A room wholly lacking in character; its normal function, data storage. The tape recorder whirred; the clock on the wall ticked.
The suspect cried convulsively. Daniel took a tissue out of a box, waited until the man's chest had stopped heaving, and said, 'Here, Anwar.'
The brother wiped his face, put his glasses back on, stared at the floor.
'You were talking about how Fatma met Issa Abdelatif,' said Daniel. 'Please go on.'
'I?' Anwar made a gagging sound, placed a hand on his throat.
Daniel waited some more.
'Are you all right?'
Anwar swallowed, then nodded.
'Would you like some water?'
A shake of the head.
'Then please go on.'
Anwar wiped his mouth, avoided Daniel's eyes.
'Go on, Anwar. It's important that you tell me.'
'It was a construction site,' said the brother, barely audible. Daniel adjusted the volume control on the recorder. 'Nabil and Qasem were working there. She was sent to bring food to them. He was working there also and he snared her.'
'How did he do that?'
Anwar's face constricted with anger, the pockmarks on his pale cheeks compressing to vertical slits.
'Pretty words, snake smiles! She was a simple girl, trusting-when we were children I could always fool her into thinking anything.'
More tears.
'It's all right, Anwar. You're doing the right thing by talking about it. What was the location of this site?'
