She sneered. "You're desperate, aren't you? That's why you're here, making these wild accusations, spinning these wild theories. I don't know what you hope to gain by all this nonsense."
"Either you did it or someone did it for you."
"Ah, so now I have an accomplice. Pray tell, who might that be?"
"I don't know yet. But it would have to be someone close to you. Otherwise, he wouldn't kill for you over and over again. It's someone who likes killing. Someone with a beard."
I was watching her closely when I spoke, and I caught it. The small muscle twitching in her cheek, the flicker of fear in her eyes. It happened when I mentioned the beard. It meant something to her. She recovered quickly, turning to the ashtray, and took way too long to stub out her cigarette. When she faced me again, her features were inscrutable, her acting skills coming to the rescue.
"Who is it, Miss Wexler? Who has been killing on your behalf?"
"I," she began, but her voice cracked, and she had to clear her throat before she tried again. "I've never killed anyone, and I've never asked anyone to kill for me. I swear to God I didn't."
"Who is the man with the beard, Miss Wexler?"
"There is no man, Mr. Lapid. Only in your warped imagination."
She looked right at me. Eyes steady, no flinching. No sign she was lying. Doubt infiltrated my mind. Had I misread her? Was I being overeager, seeing things that weren't there?
"Did he kill anyone else for you besides Dattner, Ornstein, and Anna?" I said, ignoring my doubts. "Any more of your colleagues?"
She frowned at me. She blinked a few times. Then she rose from her chair and pointed to the door. "I'm through indulging your fantasies, Mr. Lapid. You need to leave."
I didn't move. "I'm going to find out the truth, Miss Wexler. I will not rest until I know everything. If you're guilty, I'll see to it that you're locked up and never breathe free air again."
Her cheeks were flaming now. With one hand she still pointed to the exit. The other was bunched into a fist.
"Get out!" she screamed. "Get out and leave me alone. If you ever bother me again, I'll...I'll—" She didn't finish her threat. She just stood there, trembling with fury.
I left. I had done it. I had rattled her good and hard. I knew that if she was the killer, plans for my death were already brewing in her brain.
29
This time, there was no sign of the old cleaning lady. The lobby's floor sparkled, so she must have finished up and gone home. I made my way up to the second floor of Ohel Shem, entered the theater hall, and found Isser Rotner where I'd left him. On stage, alone.
He held no script in his hands this time. In its place was a pen and a notebook. He moved across the stage, stopping here and there, making notes. I was five rows from the stage when I must have made a noise, because his back stiffened and he whipped his head around and saw me.
His dark eyes narrowed, and his jaw flexed. As in our previous meeting, he obviously disliked my being there. But he showed no fear. I would have to change that.
"Good morning, Mr. Rotner," I said, stopping before the stage.
He closed the notebook with a snap. "This is the second time you've interrupted me in the middle of my work, Mr. Lapid. Your rudeness is beginning to annoy me. Can't you see I'm busy?"
"What are you doing?"
He exhaled through his mouth. "If you must know, I'm working on the stage directions for an upcoming production."
"The stage directions? What's that?"
"It's where each actor will be during each scene, at every point of it."
"I had no idea you planned things to such a degree."
He smiled thinly. "You thought we just went up on stage and winged it?"
"I thought you learned your lines and rehearsed your scenes and that was it."
"Some theaters may settle for that level of preparation. But in this theater, we strive for excellence."
I levered myself up onto the stage as I had done the last time. "May I see it?"
He made a face, but his vanity won the day. He wanted to show off his efforts. He handed me the notebook. "I doubt it would mean anything to you."
I opened the notebook to the first page. Inside a large rectangular shape that represented the stage were several X marks, and next to them what I assumed were initials for either characters or actors. Arrows of varying lengths and curvatures cut across the page. At the top were a series of numbers. Acts and scenes? It looked elaborate and painstaking. The work of a man who is patient and methodical. The sort of man who can plan a murder to its finest detail.
"So," he said, "how is your investigation going?"
"Very well." I gave him back his notebook.
"Really?"
"Yes. I now know who killed Anna Hartman."
His eyebrows shot up, and it took him a couple of seconds to speak. "Well, don't keep me in suspense. Tell me who it is."
"All right," I said. "It's you."
The silence that followed had a distinct texture. It was not the empty silence of a vacant theater hall long after the audience had left. It was not the anticipatory silence before a play began. It was that unique loaded silence that followed a major turning point in a play, a moment of separation between before and after, when everything changed irrevocably.
Rotner's eyes turned to slits. His face hardened, and through the narrow space between his lips, I saw his teeth were clenched. His animosity toward me rolled off him in waves that were almost palpable, like shimmering heat rising off pavement. Good. I wanted him to hate me, and I wanted him to fear me. If he was the killer, that was the emotional combination that would cause him to strike at me.
When he spoke next, his voice was low and thick and belligerent. "You have a great deal of nerve to make such an absurd accusation."
"Yet I'm making it, all the same."
"You have no proof."
"Don't I?"
The question hung between us like a threat. It gave him pause, and for a couple of heartbeats his eyes skittered across my face, as though trying to determine if I were bluffing. I thought I saw a glimmer of fear in them before he called upon his talent and expunged it. He raised his chin, looking more amused than anything else.
"You forget something, Mr. Lapid, I was at home that entire evening and night. I know you spoke to my wife and she told you this."
"You're right, she did."
"Then why the hell are you accusing me of a murder you know I did not, and could not, commit?"
"Because I think your wife is lying, Mr. Rotner. In fact, I'm sure of it."
This appeared to stun him even more than being accused of murder. Rotner might have wanted to believe he was a better actor than his wife, but inside he knew the truth. He recognized his wife's exceptional talent, had depended on it for his alibi. He simply could not fathom how anyone would question anything Dahlia said.
"You have no reason to doubt her," he said, sounding like he was trying to reassure himself.
"I do. I was watching her closely when she told me of your whereabouts that night. I caught a tell. You know what a tell is, Mr. Rotner?"
He didn't answer.
"A tell is an involuntary reaction when someone is lying or trying to hide something. Not everyone has a tell, and often they are hard to identify, but your wife displayed one. And I saw it." I hoped to God I was not showing a tell myself, spinning him this tale.
"I don't believe you," he said, and I realized I had failed to shake him. He trusted his wife's skills implicitly.
I made another attempt. "Believe what you want, but I know you weren't home that night. You have no alibi."
"Of course I do. The police talked to my wife. They know she spoke the truth."
"They believed her, yes, which is a testament to her acting skills, because spouses are by their nature unreliable witnesses. Maybe those acting skills have deteriorated from lack of practice over the past five years, because I was not convinced."