"Sounds good."
David paused. "Guess everyone's pretty depressed."
"Shoshana says she's going to quit. She won't. I had the same idea but I got over it. What gets me is the timing. What happened? The investigation seemed like it was at that point, you know-just ready to take off."
"Oh, a lot of things happened, Dov. I was stupid. I should have ordered Shoshana to run over those goons-anything to hold on to the van. Amit too. I mishandled her. Sticking some photos on some dolls wasn't enough. Should have done it like a line-up with a lot more dolls with pictures on them of people unrelated to the case. Then, if she'd picked out the same dolls, the ones that were related, we'd have had something that might have stuck."
"You think Levin's involved?"
"Doubt it."
"David, what the fuck is going on?"
For a few moments he didn't speak. For the entire evening ideas had been swirling in his brain. "I think originally all they wanted to do was to get hold of Susan Mills's film. But she was a feisty nun, she wouldn't hand it over, so they put pressure on her, and once they did that they had to kill her-if they'd let her go she'd have come straight to us. Once they killed her they were in real trouble. There were other witnesses. So they decided to silence them. One crime led to another. The thing escalated. They killed Yael Safir. We started coming after them. They had to protect themselves. Finally the cover-up became a devouring monster, maybe bigger than whatever it was they were originally trying to protect."
"Yeah, I see, but that still doesn't explain what was so important about the accident. I just can't believe we're really done with this."
"You are."
"But not you?"
David did not respond. "For a while now," he said, "like the good cops that we are, we're going to be doing just what we're told."
Mr. Nissim was not pleased to find him at his door.
"You promised us you'd only interview her once."
His wife nodded. "You can't see her now. She's gone to sleep. She's been very nervous since that afternoon."
David apologized. He and Uri had worked gently. They'd done their best to turn the questioning into a game. All he wanted now was to show Amit a few photographs.
"She won't be able to help you," Mrs. Nissim said. But when David lowered his eyes and asked again she reluctantly agreed.
When he came into Amit's bedroom and leaned over her bed to say hello, she reached up and gave him a big wet kiss. Then, when he sat down beside her, she reached for her policewoman doll and rocked it proudly while they talked.
David told her he'd brought along some pictures and all she had to do was look at them and tell him if she recognized any of the men.
He spread the pictures out on her bed. She looked carefully at each photo and was clearly disappointed that she couldn't recognize a face. When he brought out the IdentiKit sketch of the "nephew" who'd picked up Susan Mill's film, she shook her head again.
David thanked her, kissed her good night, and was across the room and at the door when she called out.
"I saw him on TV."
"Who?" He turned.
"Oh, one of the men," she said.
David walked back, crouched down. "The policeman?" She shook her head. "The man who hurt his leg?"
She grinned up at him. "No."
"Oh," he said, "then it must have been one of the two who helped him walk away."
Amit beamed. "Uh huh."
David sat beside her again. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"You didn't ask me."
"You're right." He smiled. "So, what did he look like, this man you saw?"
"Oh, he had a beard," she said. Her eyes enlarged. "He looked real scary too."
Mrs. Nissim came into the room. "I thought you'd be finished by now."
"Amit's just telling me about something she saw on TV."
"Tales. Nonsense. Ever since you questioned her she's been pointing at people on the screen. Look! The child's blinking again. It's time for you to go. And I'd appreciate it very much, captain, if this time you'd keep your promise and not bother us again."
There was something overtly irritable in Anna now-a sense he had that she was more than anxious, was truly distraught. Sometimes he would gaze at her and, before she'd notice and recompose her features, would catch a glimpse of pain.
What was bothering her? Whenever he asked she brushed his question aside. One time she told him it was her music-that she had felt she was struggling toward a breakthrough but instead now found herself against a wall.
"Tell me about it," he asked.
She touched her forehead. "It's difficult," she said. And then, after a pause, in a whisper filled with pain: "I want so much to be a major performer, David. Not just a fine cellist but a major one." She looked down then, as if ashamed of sounding grandiose. "Not just major either, David. Even better than major. Maybe…" She paused again; she could hardly bring herself to say the word. She whispered: "Maybe even the best."
The next few days were quiet. Members of the unit sat around sluggishly going through old dossiers. There were the unsolved pattern cases of the burglarized grocery stores, the kidnapped pedigreed dogs, and the "gentle rapist" who hadn't attacked in months.
Rebecca Marcus carefully took down all the pictures, maps, and documents relating to the case that were tacked up on the squad room walls. When she asked David where to store them, he instructed her to pack them up for him in a box.
Moshe Liederman asked to see him. He'd spoken with an officer in personnel and learned that with his accumulated vacation time he could begin his retirement at once. With the murder investigation shut down he saw no reason to wait. He had some papers for David to sign.
"No bother," David said. He signed Liederman's papers and thanked him for his help.
"It's me who should thank you," Liederman said. "I want you to know this-I've been a cop for more than thirty years but until I worked with you I never had any self-respect. I'm not talking about the cruel jokes-'Why do cops always work in pairs?' `Because one can read and the other can write.' That kind of stuff never bothered me. What bothered me, I think, was that I never really believed in the concept of a Jewish cop. When I put on the uniform and looked at myself in the mirror I felt I was looking at a clown."
"Maybe you just needed to work in civilian clothes, Moshe. The uniform's not for everyone. You'll be working on your archive now. I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to see it yet."
"Someday you will. Meantime, if you ever need help, unofficially, on the outside, please remember me. I'm not like you, I don't have intuition. And I'm not as smart as Dov or as fast as Shoshana or as ingenious as Micha or as tough as Uri. But after thirty years there're a few things I know how to do. I'm good at following people and I like to look under every stone."
He called in Shoshana. "When you go by Amit's school this afternoon ask her about the man she saw."
"Huh?"
"On TV. The scary looking man with the beard. She'll know who you mean."
Shoshana stared at him.
"You were going to stop by and see her, weren't you?"
"Well sure, David. Of course." Shoshana smiled. "I take it, then, we're still…"
He looked at his watch. "Friday afternoon. They probably let the kids out early…"
When he glanced up she was gone.
The Friday morning Jerusalem Post: He didn't get to his copy until four o'clock. He read it slowly; he'd been so busy the past week he'd lost track of the stream of news.
A taxi drivers' strike looming in Tel Aviv. The plummeting shekel. Gyrations on the Stock Exchange. A suicide car-bomb attack at the Lebanese frontier. Rabbi Katzer, visiting New York, raving against the Diaspora. A settler's demonstration-the Bloc of the Faithful accusing the government of welshing on a deal.