Vanished Without A Trace (21 page)

"Are you sleeping?" his wife yelled.

"How can I go on sleeping if you are shouting like that?"

"Angry, huh? What happened, the mistress of the night was not good enough? Do you think I didn’t notice you threw me out?" She tried to make him laugh. "What are these papers? You brought work home? Now I understand why you pushed me away."

"Don’t worry, this will be the last time I do it. I'm not built for an investigation any more. My mind is gone. I fell asleep right away after reading the first page or maybe the second. How was the movie?"

"Shocking. Ronit came late so we arrived at Cinema City only at ten, and there were no tickets to any movie anymore. She was not just late but she even insisted we go to the movie at twelve twenty at night. We did not want to disappoint her. We roamed around in the coffee shops and stores until midnight and then went to a movie. But during those hours there were only five movies and only one movie had tickets. In short, we stayed for some silly action movie, you know, the one you love, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal ... and the like... "

"It's always nice to hear your positive thoughts about me."

She kissed him. "You're not perfect, much less than that. But after forty years I still love you." She made two cups of coffee and put cookies on a saucer and sat down beside him.

"What was the movie all about?" He asked. She was always saying he was not interested in her, so he tried to show as if it interested him.

She took a bite from the cookies and motioned her hand. "It was nonsense. A company steals information from another company just like industrial espionage, you know, good against evil. I thought it was a movie suits you. Actually it started well, until I saw the man, who came to save the world. Leave it, it’s not for us. We were in these movies already. I have lived in this film for forty years."

Gideon could not help but laugh. She really was a funny woman, who takes life easy, moving and dynamic. He recalled one time when he invited his friends from the police headquarters, and the curiosity was he had to cook for them. He really managed to make a special meal and was proud. One of the women complimented him and said that he could open a restaurant, and at once, like a rocket, his wife replied, "A restaurant that opens once a year?"

"So the movie was not something special?"

"Never mind, I consoled myself with a thousand shekels. Feel free to bring work home any time. Now seriously, why did you bring work home?"

"A tough case fell on me. It’s too hard to crack."

"What is it?" she encouraged him while munching some cookies.

"Never mind, it's complicated. They found a woman's body who claimed she had an illegitimate son from Moshe Kowalski’s married son."

"Who is Kowalski? The one from the media?" She was surprised and impressed, "Well, do you think Kowalski killed her?"

"Probably, because for all we know, no one knows her except him."

"Come on, no one kills someone just because she is pregnant out of wedlock," she said, "Well, except for Arabs."

"So why did he murder her?"

"I'm surprised you are even asking such a question. There are two reasons to kill, it’s either because of unrequited love, which is the most common, or because of money!"

"That's what I told Alon, that his son was afraid if his wife found out he had an illegitimate child, she would divorce him, dismantle the financial partnership and cost him a fortune."

"She wouldn’t get a divorce. She would be angry but she would get over it. After all, she would also be part of the breakdown, wouldn’t she? It’s definitely about money, but you are looking for it in the wrong place."

Gideon looked at her with admiration, convinced she was right. "If it is not about an illegitimate child, why kill the mother of the child?" Gideon looked for answers from his wife.

"You're going the other way. You are looking for the killer before you understand the motives of the murder, and you can’t get the correct answers that way. Look for the cause, then find the killer. The woman died. Even if you find a killer, you can’t prove it was him because you have no motive for the murder, right?"

Gideon looked at her solemnly.

"What?"

"Did you learn all these in the teacher’s seminar?"

"No, I learned it from work in the field with the students. You need to be smarter than the thirty clever students."

It was five o'clock in the morning. Gideon and his wife had not been in the business of mutual pleasuring. There had been no sex between them for a long time, but now she was the sexiest woman in his eyes. Her sharp mind turned him on. The dress she had worn to the movies flattered her. And she was the woman whom he wanted to sleep with the most.

He woke up at seven in the morning. He barely slept an hour. Now he had to talk to Alon, who was still asleep when he heard the phone ring. "Alon, I have a new lead." Alon sat at the back of the sofa and looked at the clock. He never woke up before eight. Gideon continued, "Let's drop the subject about Julia and Daniel. The murder of Julia is suggesting there are more serious things. People kill because of two things, unrequited love, or money. Julia's murder was not due to unrequited love because Naor didn’t love her and Kowalski certainly did not either. Therefore, there is only one piece missing in the equation - money. We must look for the money trail as a motive. Even if we can find the killer and pinpoint him for sure, we still can’t prove anything without a motive for the murder. Talk to Matthew or Benjamin and ask them to send you some information about their business, their liabilities, rivals and the stages of the development of the company, as well as, potential enemies, if there are any."

"Did you get all this drive from reading the material?"

"Don’t ask. Better not ask," Gideon said,

"I’m not asking. It is late night in New York now. I will call Matthew at six. It will probably take him a couple of days to send me the information. Extracting information from the computer can be done anytime but we have to work on finding a connection and more extensive .details. I will ask him for detailed information about the progression of Naor’s business from beginning to present, a business resume, as well as, things that are seemingly not important and information that is seemingly not related. There may be some leads. I'll ask him not to alter the information but instead to send me as is."

Gideon loved Alon’s mind. He understood how important it was to get unaltered information, especially when there was a suspicion of criminal activity. The end of the rope can always be found in small details which are ignored, in details the criminal didn’t pay much attention to.

Now Gideon was sure he wanted Alon as a partner in the firm. "Alon, we need to sit down and talk about some personal matters."

"Like what?" Alon wondered.

"It’s not something we can do over the phone."

30

Alon called Matthew at six in the afternoon, Israel time, to ask for the information, but got some sort of resistance.

"But I just recently gave you the information about Naor," Matthew said.

"Yes, you gave me information on when he arrived in the United States, when he got married, when he started his business. Now I want to know about his business management from the beginning up to date.”

"May I ask why you need it?"

Alon wanted to tell him he was paid to give information and not to be a part of the investigation, but he decided to be polite. After all, Americans were attentive when it comes to good manners. "I'm looking for something will shed light on a case that I’m investigating."

It sounded strange to Matthew the man did not know exactly what he was looking for, but the order he received from Benjamin was to do everything Alon asked him to do, especially since it was just simple paperwork and the payment was pretty decent; so he didn’t have any reason to refuse. However, Matthew’s intuition began to raise warning signs. He concluded to himself that given the opportunity, he had to talk to Benjamin about it, but not until he was sure about the matter, so as not to bother his boss for nothing.

"How long will it take for your assessment?" Alon asked.

"A month," Matthew replied instantly.

"I'm willing to pay for additional personnel if necessary. One month is too long."

Matthew did not like Alon’s response. "Why are you in a hurry? You do not even know what you're looking for. I have to think about how I will draw the information, perhaps through someone who would enter the company with false identity, or a hacker, or anything else. It takes time."

"Why a hacker? It is not classified information. We are not looking for the future plans of the company. It’s all about material that anyone who knows how to use the computer can access."

"Wait," Matthew interrupted, "Are you not interested with such material? I thought it should interest you the most."

"At this stage no," Alon said.

“Okay, so I will probably deliver you the report next week. It’s good that we clarified this point.”

After a week, the information was sent to Alon’s computer. There were two hundred pages describing the thirty years of the company’s enterprise in the United States, two hundred pages that separated him from Natalie. He needed once again to delay his pursuit with Natalie who, somehow, treated his presence at home as poisonous air and never stopped harassing him for every little thing. If he didn’t take himself into his own hands and strike the target, she might leave the apartment. Who knows if she had already left?

He dialed her cell phone without hiding his identity, and she did not answer. He decided flowers could represent his good intentions, at least until he was finished reading the report and could aim for a more energetic courtship. He called the secretary, asked her to send flowers to Natalie and dictated a note of greeting to write. Then he turned to the report and began reading the first page.

The company was founded in 1975 as a communications and electrical goods company. Since its establishment, it was already one of the ten major companies in the United States. Moshe Kowalski appointed his son as a manager of the company. He was considered as a child prodigy and the most desirable match in America.

In 1976 he married an American girl who he met in an electronics exhibit who was the only daughter of a businessman, who also owned a large company in the field of communications. The father died a year later, and Naor absorbed the two companies. The merger placed the company as the third largest in the United States. A year after the merger and after the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military conducted a large bidding process on optical and electronic devices for the military, whose leaders planned to spend a fortune to improve advanced fighting machines. The bidding war was constituted of a number of companies, and the last two that were left in the race was Naor’s company and the Electrosky Company, the largest company in the United States. It was about a lot of money, and the Electrosky Company, owned by David Fisher, was ahead. During the negotiations with the military, the Electrosky Company decided to give up the bidding, and the job fell like a ripe fruit into the hands of Naor. He was not a tycoon like David Fisher, but he was definitely on the right path.

Alon was impressed with the fortune that landed to the company. If, in the first page of two hundred, he was merging with big companies and winning bidding wars, what would happen in the additional one hundred and ninety nine pages?

He read a hundred pages and found nothing problematic or suspicious. He glanced at the clock. It was four o'clock in the morning and he retired to sleep.

Throughout the week he read the report again and again, but he did not find any new information that could help him. The week when he had hoped to uncover some details in the report and take them out from a dead end, passed by.

He felt defeated when he entered Gideon's office. "I read two hundred pages and there was not a single detail could lead us to a solution. Enough, Gideon, we have to give up and admit the truth, we want to get onto something big, but all we have are two mere speculations, and nothing more. You can’t establish a murder case with this."

Gideon pursed his lips, "It’s hard for me to give up."

"We have no choice. Let's assume Julia was murdered and she took the truth with her, and Daniel is indeed the grandson of Kowalski. This is not what Daniel wanted, but it is the reality."

It was evident Gideon was not satisfied. "It’s the first time in my life such a thing happened to me, that I see something suspicious, but I couldn’t prove it."

"What can we do, the case is stuck. It’s been a month and a half and there is no development. We thought we would find something from Matthew’s documents, but nothing. Honestly, I started to pay a price in my private life, and so are you, I think. We will bury our lives for the search of a body that has already been buried."

"But if we leave this case, it will leave us with a bad reputation, something will harm our professional ego." Gideon said.

Alon had to admit he also felt the same way. The dead end on one side and the big budget for the investigation on the other side caused him a burning sense of failure.

"It frightens me," Gideon said, "As we close the case due to lack of information, Amos will dig on his own and might eventually find out the truth. Believe me, he does not sit on the fence. While we are talking here, he is already in a hurry for a scoop, and the funniest is that, he tried to tell me I’m not okay, that I do not trust him, he will not publish anything, and reminded me of what I had forgotten from the army, of how much he helped me when I needed him. Well, let's move to something else which is not less important. It's time to keep you posted on something I decided a few weeks ago." Gideon asked the secretary not to transfer calls and for no interruptions until further notice. Then he began and said, "Alon, your contribution to the office in recent years was huge. I’m aware of this and see how you work and invest yourself. You do not neglect the work even if you have personal problems. The case we have is very complicated but you never gave up, which is a very important thing, to reach a point where there is no way out and yet again you reshuffled the cards and tried to find some information would illuminate the case. This feature brought me to a familiar office in Israel. Look, I’m not getting any younger from day to day. I'm getting older. I can no longer sit on the papers and examine them just like before. I admit much of the burden falls on you, so I wanted to offer you a partnership in the business. Fifty percent for a nominal fee on your part." Gideon saw the shock in Alon’s face.