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."
In every district there's a busybody. Find her, play up to her, get her talking about her neighbors. Discover who stays home during the day, who goes to work, and did she hear anything about an accident? Knock on doors between noon and two when the accident took place. Talk to the news store owner, the shoemaker, the garbage collectors, the Arab maids. Make lists. Figure out which apartments overlook the intersection. Talk to the residents and if they're not at home come back in the evening when they are. Show familiarity. The woman who lives on the corner—is it true her son's retarded? What about traffic patterns, and who owns those cars parked out on the street, and who's reliable, and who's not, and who takes a midday snooze?
At last David had set a task at which Moshe Liederman excelled. He was good at chitchat, spoke excellent Polish, was patient with the old ladies, generous with cigarettes. In four days he and the other four detectives heard a lot about Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson. But no matter how many people they asked about an accident, they couldn't find anyone who knew anything.
David said this was impossible, that
when a truck hits a van and there's a
confrontation between a nun and a cop, someone
has
to see something or at least hear some noise. But the intersection was nearly deserted that time of day. This was a bedroom community; no orthodox people; most of the wives held jobs. There were kids of course, but they were either infants or at school. Still, maybe, on that particular day, for one reason or another, someone had stayed at home.
Go back. Ask again. It's hard, but people will help if they see how much you care. The intersection could be viewed from thirty windows. Check each one again. There has to be a witness.
Has to be.
Amit Nissim, six years old, short, pixieish, with bangs of light brown hair and playful dark brown eyes, was home from school that day with a cold. Her aunt was in the hospital recovering from gastrointestinal surgery, her mother had to visit her, so she asked old Mrs. Shapira next door if she would look after Amit while she was gone. Mrs. Shapira said sure, and could Mr. Nissim help her by changing some light bulbs when he got home. Yes, certainly. A bargain was struck. And when Mrs. Shapira lay down for her noontime nap, she left Amit on her sofa with a doll.
Later Amit heard noise, people talking loudly on the street. She went to the window, saw a woman quarreling with a man. Was there a truck? She wasn't sure. She remembered a woman clutching a camera and a man in uniform trying to snatch it away.
Mr. and Mrs. Nissim did not like the way their daughter was being questioned. Amit was blinking, a sure sign to them that she was under stress. She wasn't used to so much attention, six police officers hanging on her words. She was intimidated. Couldn't they tell? Anyway, she hadn't seen any accident so would they all please leave now before the child became even more upset.
David sent the others out, then tried to calm the Nissims down. Mrs. Nissim hid her pregnancy beneath a cotton smock; Mr. Nissim lounged in a faded tennis shirt and polyester shorts. David peered around their living room. Behind the maroon sofa with the bright orange cushions, he observed a new Japanese stereo and a pile of tape cassettes. A short shelf contained the usual books: Hebrew editions of
Exodus
and
Story of My Life by
Moshe Dayan; copies of Michener's
The Source
and Kurzman's biography of Ben-Gurion in English. An oil painting of an old Jew praying at the Western Wall was prominently displayed, the paint laid on very thick, the scene garishly sentimentalized. David could see that the Nissims were good people —decent, law-abiding Jerusalemites. He knew that if properly approached they would cooperate.
"Your daughter has seen something very important," he told them. "But you were right to stop us. We didn't interview her properly. The proper way, without exerting pressure, is to turn the interview into a game. Amit is a vital witness. Would you consider allowing us to talk with her a second time? There'll be no intimidation. We'll videotape the interview, and when it's over that'll be the end of it. We won't bother her again."
After a brief whispered consultation, the Nissims solemnly agreed.
Since there could only be two interrogators, David asked himself who in the unit would be best. Shoshana? Too impatient. Liederman? Too old. He finally settled on huge weight-lifting Uri Schuster who, though tough, even brutal on the streets, was a lovable teddy bear with kids.
They set the whole thing up in Mrs. Shapira's apartment, just the way it had been that day: at noon with no one else around and a dark Chevrolet van and Schneiderman's truck positioned on the street just as they were in the insurance diagram.
David and Uri brought along two cartons of toys: a van, a truck, little buildings to create a model of the intersection, and various male and female dolls including dolls dressed in different military uniforms and one dressed as a Jerusalem cop. On one of the females they pasted a tiny photo of Susan Mills, and on one of the males, a photo of Schneiderman. They also made up dolls for Ora Goshen, Halil Ghemaiem, Yael Safir, and the murdered lovers,
Ruth
Isaacson and Aaron Horev, and they had a dozen more faceless figures with them too.
When everything was ready, Uri escorted Amit to the window, showed her the cars out on the street, and then asked her to use the toys to make a model of what she'd seen.
"That's right, Amit—the truck here at the corner, yes, and the van has just driven into it so they're together just like this... Now look at all these girl dolls. Do you see one that's like the woman with the camera? This one? Good. Put her just where she was when you saw her having the argument. And which of these boy dolls looks most like the uniformed man? The policeman. You're sure? And that they were standing together on the sidewalk here, like this, facing the truck? Uh huh..."
Yaakov Schneiderman was driving the truck—now Amit remembered. She also remembered him standing beside it after the collision, hands on his hips, shaking his head, inspecting the damage, then kicking the wheel of the van. Did she recognize any of the other dolls? Yes, these two, Horev and Isaacson—they came over during the argument. The woman with the camera was speaking in another language, and they came over to help her 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.