Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel (24 page)

"But it's the home computer. The kids use it to play."

"I promise we'll return it as quickly as possible." I tried to calm her down.

One of the babies started crying and Dina rushed to him.

I gestured for the other officer to come to me. "Omer," I whispered. "Don't let her out of your sight. I don't want her to try and throw our search. I don't think she has any intention to, but just to make sure we avoid any glitches." Omer nodded and stood in the doorway, watching Dina soothe one of the babies.

I went to the bookshelf and searched among the books and drawers. Maybe there was a letter from Meir, maybe an envelope identical to the one we found at Meir's house.

Yaniv was done disconnecting the computer and placed it in the doorway. I asked him to go upstairs to the bedroom and search through the closets.

"What am I supposed to look for?"

"Anything that doesn't belong in a bedroom."

"Like what?" he asked. He had no idea what the search was about.

"Letters, money, pictures."

"No problem, boss," he said.

The search in the study was barren. I went up to the girls' rooms and took a look inside them. Each of the girls had her own room. I did a shallow search because I didn't think I'd find anything there. I went down to the kitchen again. Dina's kitchen was spacious, neat, fully equipped and clean. I opened the refrigerator not to search it, just out of curiosity. As I expected, Dina's fridge was full of bounty. The cupboards, the refrigerator and the pantry were incredibly tidy. It didn't imagine I'd find anything there. The kitchen looked like Dina's personal kingdom. If Yigal were hiding something, it wouldn't be there.

"Hadas." Yaniv surprised me from behind, just as I took another (longing) glance at the cream cake in the fridge.

"Yes?" I turned around and smiled an embarrassed smile. I was caught red-handed.

"I found this in the upper closet." Yaniv handed me a laptop computer, a pretty old one.

"Oh, wow," I said to myself and took the computer to the living room. Dina was sitting on the carpet, playing with the baby who had woken up.

"Mrs. Einav," I said in an authoritative voice and she raised her eyes to me. "Can you explain this is to me?" I waved the computer. "Just to remind you - I specifically asked where the computer is."

She looked at me, surprised, "Uh… umm…” she faltered. "I really wasn't trying to hide anything," she sounded sincere. "I totally forgot about that computer. It's my husband's old computer. I don't even know if it works." It was clear that she really hadn't thought about the computer. For her, it was just an old computer that could be discarded, not a computer a demon could come out of.

Immediately, I knew that what we were looking for was there and not on the home computer. If Yigal had something to hide, he wouldn't hide it where his wife and three grown daughters play and use the Internet. He'd do it on a hidden computer no one used or remembered.

I looked at Yaniv and Omer. "Load 'em up!" I commanded and they took both computers to the police car.

"Can you please explain to me what this is about?" Dina stopped me from leaving.

"Do it without me," I said to Omer and Yaniv. "I'll be right there."

"I'm really sorry," I told Dina, "I have no doubt that it was not pleasant for you to have three cops come into your house and go through your personal belongings, but I assure you that we did this because we have cause to believe that your husband has committed a serious crime."

"Crime?" she echoed. "Serious?"

"Yes." I looked down.

"What crime are you talking about? My husband is a law abiding citizen."

"I'd appreciate it if you could come to the station tomorrow morning for an interview. If it's difficult for you to come, we can come to pick you up."

"I can get there," she said immediately. "But what for?"

"I need to ask you a couple of questions and maybe I can give you a couple of answers regarding the suspicions we have about your husband."

She looked at me, her eyes gleaming with tears. I really felt bad for her. She was headed toward even more difficult times.

She simply married the wrong man.

When we arrived at the station, Yaniv helped me take the computers to Amos's room.

"Put them there," he pointed to a random spot in the room without lifting his gaze from the computer. Yaniv placed the computer on the floor, and I took the laptop to Amos.

"It's urgent." I stood in front of him.

"Everything's urgent." He still didn't look up.

"Do you want Alon to tell you it's urgent?"

He sighed and finally lifted his gaze from the computer. "What I'm doing right now was also urgently requested by Alon."

He managed to confuse me. We called Alon, who asked Amos to give first priority to the computer I’d just brought in. On the one hand, I didn't like bossing Amos around like that, but on the other hand it felt pretty good to be top priority.

Amos tapped something on the computer he was working on and then put it aside.

"What do we have here?" he took Yigal's laptop from me. "Phh…what's this archive specimen?"

"A laptop is an archive specimen?" I marveled.

"Everything in life is relative; this laptop is at least ten years old, which is certainly some type of dinosaur."

He looked the computer over from every angle. "So what exactly do you want me to do?"

"As a first step, I'd like to open it."

"What's the problem? Here, you press here." He pointed to the "on" button.

"Very funny," I smiled. "I'm not that stupid. I turned the computer on already. I just can't open it because there's a passcode."

Amos looked at me with the look of a genius who has to do novice mental exercises. "That's the only problem?"

"I don't know what’s on the computer. I assume, or actually, hope, that we'll find something useful on it."

"What?"

I understood there was no use in trying to withhold information from Amos, and he wouldn't run off to tell anyone. I told him briefly the direction the investigation was going in. "In short, I want to find something that could tie Yigal to Meir's extortion. A letter, maybe."

"No problem. Do you also want me to look through the other two computers?"

"What two computers?"

"The one you just brought in and the one Shachar brought in earlier." I realized Shachar had confiscated Yigal's work computer.

"Yeah, sure, but this one first. If Yigal had something suspicious on a computer at all, I’d bet it’d be on his home computer rather than his work one."

"Okay." He stretched and began working.

*

I found Shachar in the smoking area.

"May I join you?" I sat down next to him and he handed me the pack of cigarettes.

"No, thank you."

"Do you even smoke?"

"Only second hand."

He smiled and blew a bubble of smoke in my direction.

"Tell me how the arrest went."

Shachar took a final drag from the cigarette and stomped it out with his heavy shoes. "I can't say it was particularly pleasant."

"Is there a pleasant arrest you can tell me about?"

"Look, it's not every day that I go into a fancy high-tech company and arrest one of the executives. Let's say that when we arrest a member of one of the organized crime families, they're a little less surprised."

"So… tell me how it went down."

"The building he works in - in the lobby are two receptionists. My cat probably has a higher IQ than both of them put together."

I smiled. Shachar didn't seem like a cat person.

"It took about twenty minutes for them to tell me what floor Yigal works on and let me in."

"You didn't show them your badge and warrant?"

              "Of course I showed them, but they had to call the security officer, who was at lunch. Eventually I went up. The offices there are amazing, like the kind you see in movies. I didn't believe there're places like that in Israel. At the entrance to Yigal's floor there's another receptionist, a bit more intelligent than the two sitting downstairs, and also, if I may, much better looking."

"And I assume you already have her phone number." I added.

Shachar flashed a telling smile. "We have a date tomorrow night." I laughed and he went on. "She escorted me to Yigal's room. Listen, that guy is serious there. He has a corner office with a huge window. He was sitting with two other people. I went in and asked him if he’s Yigal Einav. He said yes and asked for me to wait outside because he was in the middle of an important meeting. I told him it couldn't wait and he got angry."

"What did he say?"

"I don't remember exactly, just got annoyed and said anything could wait until the meeting was over. I flashed my badge and he immediately got rid of the two guys who were sitting with him. They were shocked."

"So, once you showed your badge, he stopped the important meeting?" Yigal wasn't completely surprised to see an officer before him. He’d known this day could come.

"Yes. The two left, and Yigal closed the door behind them. I showed him the warrant and told him I was arresting him for investigative hold. He asked if it could be postponed to another day and I told him the warrant was immediate. I pulled out the handcuffs and he started to cry."

"He cried?"

"Full on tears, like a little kid."

"Wow."

"Wow indeed. It was very awkward. I explained to him that there was no choice and that he had to come with me, cuffed."

"I'm sure it's uncomfortable to leave your office handcuffed and accompanied by a police officer."

"Very."

"Where is he now?"

"In holding room two."

"Take him to the interrogation room near my office, I'll be there to interrogate him in a minute."

"Will you just tell me what this dork did?"

"I'll tell you later, I promise."

*

I went to get ready in my office. Amos called me.

“Come in here, now!” he said excitedly.

“I have to go into an interrogation right now.”

“Whose? This Yigal guy?”

“Yes.”

“Then come here first. Believe me, it’s urgent.

I rushed to Amos’s room. He sat looking at Yigal’s laptop, shaking his head.

“Just horrendous.” He looked at me when I came in.

“I see you’ve cracked the code.”

Amos smiled as if I’d told an old, bad joke. “It is a pretty old computer, but it’s been upgraded pretty well, the hard-disk and screen card were replaced. Of course, the password wasn’t really a problem.”

“So what did you find?”

“I didn’t have to look too hard.” He said and gestured for me to sit next to him.

“I checked what took up the most memory and got to the video file.”

Amos clicked on the “My Videos” file. Dozens of videos popped up. Amos clicked on one of them. A young boy, of about eight or nine was sitting on a red couch. The voice from behind the camera instructed him in a foreign language, German or Dutch, and the boy undressed in front of the camera.

“Wow,” I exclaimed in horror.

“This is a soft one.”

I didn’t want to know what a “hard” one was, but Amos left nothing for me to imagine. He looked through the video library and found a video of a handsome boy, no older than ten, performing oral sex on a man and later being sodomized by another man.

Amos fast forwarded the video just so I could get a sense of what we were watching, but just a few seconds in fast forward was too much for me. It was just horrible.

I closed the laptop and shut my eyes. I tried to erase what I saw from my memory, but I knew the pictures would stay etched in it forever.

We sat silent for a few moments. I could only imagine what these sights were doing to Amos, who was such a devoted father.

“The owner of this computer is sitting right down the hall.” I finally broke the silence. “I don’t need to tell you that there are a number of hot tempered people here in the station who could beat him to death if they saw these videos.”

“I could kill him,” Amos whispered.

“I’m asking you to keep these videos between us. Please make a copy of the file for me. I’ll have Shachar try to find Israeli videos, in the meantime try to find out where Yigal gathered this disgusting collection. Besides, I’m reminding you that we’re also investigating the Danilowitz family murder here, so try to find letters that he may have written to Meir.”

*

I left Amos's office enraged. The pictures kept running through my head. I consider myself to be a pretty calm person, but I felt like going into the interrogation room and shooting Yigal.

Shachar stood outside the interrogation room. "The suspect's inside," he said when he saw me.

"Is the door locked?"

"No."

"Then lock it. I want to talk to you first, but first I'm going to speak with Alon."

Alon was sitting in his room, looking through follow up reports on the Mirashvilli case. He seemed defeated. The media kept talking about how poorly the police were handling the case. Despite the amount of evidence gathered, the police still hadn't managed to formulate an indictment.

"Yes, Levinger?" he looked at me with an almost sleepy gaze.

I updated him about what we found on Yigal's computer. This woke him up immediately.

"I'm updating Shachar about everything. I want him to go through all of the videos. It's enough that he just sees a second or two of each of them. I want to see if there are any homemade or Israeli videos in there. Amos is working on the computer as we speak and looking into the sources of this disgusting collection."

"No problem."

"I just want to know how I go forward from here. We started on the Danilowitz case and now we have a different case altogether."

"Look," Alon began tapping on his computer, "these are not exactly separate cases. I think it's clear to all of us that Meir was blackmailing Yigal because he caught on to his sick hobby. I think we have no doubt that Meir himself killed his wife and kids and then took his own life, so Yigal is not a murder suspect, but who knows what kind of trigger he was for this act?"

I nodded and Alon continued.

"Start with the pedophilia and we'll go to the extortion from there, maybe it'll come from him eventually. I'm connected to the camera in the interrogation room. I’ll be watching, so if there are any problems I'll come in."

"No problem," I said and left the room. I felt my heart beating all through my body. I'd never interrogated a pedophile, let alone in such a complex case.

Shachar waited for me by the interrogation room, I pulled him to Amos's room and updated him about all the details of the investigation. I saw the blood go to his head when I told him about the videos.

"I'd beat this disgusting pervert to a pulp," he said and I just held him still. "Here I was, feeling sorry for him for arresting him at work like that. If I'd known about this, he'd have seen what humiliation is…"

I was glad Shachar didn't know anything until now. That's the last thing I needed right now, a hotheaded cop putting on a show at the heart of the high-tech industry.

"Anyway, stay here with Amos, he'll transfer Yigal's library to you. I want to know if there are any videos in there that were shot by Yigal, or Israeli videos. Maybe that way we could find other pedophiles that we can reach."

"Do me a favor," Amos added. "Watch that abomination with headphones on, I don't even want to hear it."

*

I entered the interrogation room and looked up at the camera straight away. The red light was on. Alon was watching us.

It was the first time I’d met Yigal. He seemed stunned and humiliated, but not surprised. I've interrogated quite a few people and, apart from a small number of good actors, the difference between innocent and guilty ones was that the innocent ones looked confused. They didn't understand what they were doing in an interrogation room, because they really weren't supposed to be there.

Yigal knew very well why he was sitting in an interrogation room; he seemed defeated and ashamed, but not confused. He looked a bit tired, probably because he had cried quite a bit. He wore the same clothes he’d had on in the morning, except for the confiscated tie. Shachar would have now happily handed him a noose.

I introduced myself and then asked him his name.

Silence.

"Yigal, I need your personal details, you have no reason to worry about giving your personal information."

Silence.

It wasn't the first time I was confronted with silence. Any time that someone refused to talk, without exception, they had something to hide. Five minutes later, which felt like an eternity, Yigal said, "I want a glass of water and an attorney."