"I'll call the police, tell them you're harassing me."
"Fine. Go ahead. But you don't have a telephone in your apartment. You'll have to go out to make the call. I'll come with you. We can talk on the way."
Her jade-colored eyes flashed. Her small pretty features tightened. She sneered. "It gives you a thrill, doesn't it, to threaten a woman?"
"Not at all," I said. "But hunting and catching a killer does. Shall we step inside? I'll keep it brief."
Her jaw worked, sharp edges of bone moving under her fine skin. Then, without a word, she turned and moved toward the living room with rapid steps. I followed, swinging the door shut.
In the living room, Ofra went straight for her cigarettes. She had one burning before she took a seat. I remained standing. I wanted to appear intimidating. I wanted to rattle her hard.
She crossed her legs, trying to appear calm, but the way she sucked on her cigarette told me she was nervous.
She wore her hair loose today. It fell straight down her back. It made her look younger, like an adolescent. Once again, I was struck by her smallness, but now I saw it as the perfect camouflage for a murderess.
No one would suspect that a woman so small could be capable of murder. And she would know this. She would cultivate this impression. As an accomplished actress, it wouldn't be difficult.
"I've learned a few things," I said, "since the last time we spoke."
"Oh?" She blew out a stream of smoke. "I don't suppose good manners are among them."
"I learned that you took Anna's death pretty hard, that you wept when you heard the news."
"Anna and I used to be close, once upon a time. The fact that we were no longer friends when she died did not mean I didn't mourn her."
"Yet you didn't shed one tear when you learned Nahum Ornstein had died, and you and he were lovers."
She paused with her cigarette en route to her lips, obviously stunned by the question. For a second there, it looked like she'd forgotten how to breathe. Then she audibly exhaled, closed her lips around her cigarette, took a pull, and pushed the smoke out of her nostrils. Only then did she speak. "Who told you that?"
"Does it matter?"
"Was it Leon Zilberman? It had to be, because he was the one who told me Nahum was dead. He had no right to tell you. It's none of your business. Nor is it relevant to Anna's death."
"Isn't it?"
Again she froze, her thin eyebrows drawing closer together. "What are you getting at, Mr. Lapid?"
"I think you know, Miss Wexler."
"I haven't a clue."
"Then I'll enlighten you in a minute. First, I'm curious to know why you cried over Anna but not over Nahum Ornstein."
"If you must know, the reason was because I'd cried myself out over him when he said he wanted nothing more to do with me."
"Shortly before he died, wasn't it?"
"A month. But you knew that already, didn't you?"
"Where were you the night he died?"
Now she looked more amused than surprised. "Is this a joke?"
"Answer the question."
Another drag. "Right here."
"Alone?"
"Completely."
"So you don't have an alibi for the night of his death."
"Why would I need one? Nahum wasn't murdered."
"Yes, he was. And you know it."
She took a final, violent pull on her cigarette, then mashed it out in quick, hard jabs. "Let me get this straight: You think I killed Nahum? Are you insane or just plain stupid?"
"You had motive. He took advantage of you. You were in love with him, but he rejected you. It must have torn your heart to shreds when he ended your relationship."
"I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Nahum drowned. He wasn't murdered."
"You knew of his hashish habit. You knew it would be easy to get the police to believe it was an accident. How did you do it?"
"Mr. Lapid," she said, in an utterly placid tone, "the list of women who had been promised things by Nahum—eternal love, marriage, what have you—only to be discarded like soiled rags once he tired of them could fill a newspaper. My motive isn't stronger than any of theirs. If you truly believe Nahum was murdered, you have plenty of other suspects. Why pick on me?"
"Because of Eliezer Dattner."
That hit her even harder than my mentioning Ornstein. Now she didn't look like she merely forgot how to breathe. She looked like her heart had stopped too.
After ten very long seconds, she said, "What about Eliezer?"
"You and he were involved, and he betrayed you. He had a lover. And he was killed."
"By an Arab."
"That's what it was made to look like. It was in Jaffa, which at the time was majority Arab, and it was during the Arab Revolt. And the anti-Jewish pamphlet stuck in Dattner's mouth sealed the deal. It left no room for an alternative interpretation."
"And you think that I—"
"I think you were enraged by his betrayal. I think you decided he had to pay. I think you lay in wait for him on one of the nights he went to visit his lover. I think you shot him dead."
She shook her head. "You're wrong. So wrong. I didn't even know he had a lover. I only found out after he died."
"That's what your colleagues believe. But I know the truth. You murdered Dattner because he cheated on you. And when Ornstein rejected you, you decided he deserved to be killed as well."
She shook her head again, this time wordlessly.
"Only it couldn't look like a murder, not after Dattner. That would have looked suspicious. So you staged the scene. You made it look like he drowned in his bathtub." I paused, looking at her, feeling sick and trying to keep down the bile burning at my throat. I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance that she wasn't guilty, that I was putting her through hell for nothing. I told myself I was doing it for the right reasons, to catch a multiple murderer, but that didn't mean I enjoyed it, or that I didn't hate myself a little for doing it. I simply forced myself to continue, to get it done, because I saw no other way.
"The first murder is the hardest," I said. "The second is easier. After that, it becomes just another way to solve your problems. When Anna got the main parts after Dahlia Rotner's accident, you were enraged. You felt that you deserved it more. Maybe if it had happened years earlier, you would have done nothing, but you were already used to killing. So you stabbed her and left her dead body in Trumpeldor Cemetery. That's what happened, isn't it?"
"No," she said in a small voice and then repeated it louder, "No."
"I can understand why you did it," I said. "All three of them. They all had it coming. Dattner and Ornstein for hurting you, and Anna for taking what was rightfully yours. Come on, admit it. Get it off your chest."
She didn't speak for a moment, just breathed in and out deeply, her eyes locked on mine. Then she turned her head and reached a slow hand for her cigarettes. Once she had one lit and had taken a puff, she was herself again. She wore the same composed, almost haughty expression that she'd worn a few moments ago. No sign of fear whatsoever.
I thought I knew what was coming, and she didn't disappoint me.
She said, "Mr. Lapid, Anna was taller than me by eight inches, and Nahum was taller still and much stronger. Do you really think I could have overcome either one of them in a fight—even, in Anna's case, with a knife?"
I let out a little breath. I was glad she said it. If she hadn't, it would have meant she'd never even thought of it, and I'd have begun doubting myself entirely.
"It's possible," I said, but even to my ears I did not sound convinced. I didn't think Ofra could have lifted Ornstein into his bathtub. But maybe she'd convinced him to go in it and then attacked?