Sassoon did not have a phone, so he told his teenage son to run as fast as he could to the nearest police station and inform them that a murder had been committed in their building. Half an hour later, a police car arrived. The two officers ascertained that indeed there were two murder victims inside and called for a detective and a photographer.
I inspected the photographs one at a time. The first few centered on Esther. She lay on her back, one arm stretched over her head, the other at her side. Her left leg was bent at an awkward angle; her right was straight. She was wearing a nightshirt that covered her to her knees and was barefoot. The nightshirt was white, but its top half was drenched red with blood. More blood stained the floor around her head. Some of her long black hair was matted to the floor with it. The source of the blood was a gaping wound that ran across her throat. But that wasn't the extent of her injuries.
Her face had been slashed and cut numerous times. Not an inch of it appeared to have been spared. Her cheeks were scored, her nose gouged, her forehead crisscrossed with lacerations. But that wasn't the worst of the damage. That had been inflicted on her eyes. Both had been stabbed, leaving eye sockets that were saucers of blood and gore.
Reuben had been right. This was gruesome.
The second batch of photographs showed Willie Ackerland lying on his back in a crib. The crib stood by the bed in which Esther must have slept in. One of Willie's stubby hands protruded from between the wooden bars of the crib, his fingers clenched in a tiny fist. He was wearing a white shirt and blue pants. His hair was golden. The blanket that had covered him in his sleep had been twisted and cast aside to the end of the crib. He had been stabbed through the chest several times and his face had received a similar treatment to that of Esther's. His eyes had also been stabbed out. I doubted Henrietta herself would have recognized him. There was much less blood in the crib than around Esther's body. Probably the result of the initial stab wound finding Willie's heart.
I set the photographs down and leaned back in the chair. Intense anger gripped me and I noticed my fingers were clenching and unclenching of their own volition. A low growl escaped my throat. I couldn't remain seated. I stood and looked out the window. A crow was perched on the windowsill. It one-eyed me, tilting its head, as if considering my worth. Then it squawked twice, flapped its wings, and flew away.
I stuck my hands in my pants pockets and paced the small office. Four strides was all it took to reach from one wall to the other. I felt like hurling something at the wall, but figured the racket would draw curious policemen to the office, and I might be made to leave before I finished with the report.
This was no regular murder, and the man I was pursuing was no ordinary killer. This was brutal, depraved, and immensely evil. Whoever did this had a purpose beyond killing. A dark purpose.
When I felt I was calm, I returned to my chair and went on reading.
The apartment had been ransacked. Dresser drawers had been rummaged through and closet doors left hanging open with clothes thrown to the floor. In the living room, sofa cushions had been slashed, while in the kitchen, the killer had gone through drawers and cupboards.
A handbag had been emptied on the dining table. A compact, a handkerchief, a tube of lipstick, some tissue paper, and a pencil lay scattered. No money. No keys. The killer had taken them with him, which explained the locked door.
The bodies were removed to the morgue, where they underwent a more thorough examination. Various statistics were noted—height, build, hair color—and the many injuries were listed. It was a long list. For both woman and child.
Esther had died of her neck wound. All of her facial injuries occurred postmortem. She had not been sexually assaulted.
Willie had suffered multiple chest wounds and, as I suspected, one of the stabs had gone through his heart. Like Esther's, his disfigurement occurred after death. At least he didn't suffer much. That was some comfort, I supposed.
There were no defensive wounds on Esther's hands, which likely meant that her attacker had managed to catch her off guard and struck quickly. Perhaps the killer was a person Esther knew, which allowed him to surprise her. Or perhaps she had been sleeping when he broke through her door, rose to see what was happening, but was still sluggish from sleep when he came upon her in her bedroom. In short, the lack of defensive wounds did not help me narrow the pool of suspects.
They had both died during the night, between 23:00 and 04:00. Which meant that they might have died on August 27, but their date of death was officially set to the 26th.
Included in the file were two identity cards for residents of Mandatory Palestine. The first bore the name Esther Kantor. Various details were noted on the card. Birth date: April 8, 1919; Place of Residence: Tel Aviv; Occupation: Secretary; Race: Jewess; Height: 5 feet 9 inches; Color of eyes: Blue; Color of hair: Black; Build: slender.
A picture of Esther's face was pasted on the left side of the card. Henrietta Ackerland was right. Esther had been very beautiful. It was as if her face had been carved from marble by an artist's hand. Her eyes were large and deep, her forehead tall, her mouth luscious, her cheekbones high, her nose pert, her features symmetrical. Her hair was pulled back, and not a strand of it was out of place. To have been reduced from such exquisite beauty to a bloodied mangled mess seemed sacrilegious, not merely criminal.
The second identity card bore the name Erich Kantor. I took out the picture Henrietta had given me and compared it to the picture on the card. The boy in the second picture was older, of course. He had been six months old when it was taken. But the resemblance was evident. These two pictures were of the same boy.
"You came so close, little one," I found myself muttering to the dead boy in the photos. "So close."
There was another picture in the file. This one showed both victims together. Esther was sitting on a park bench with Willie on her lap. He was a big boy now, nine months old perhaps, chubby-cheeked and healthy looking, and was leaning back into Esther, like young children sometimes do with their parents. Esther wore her hair loose and had on a red summer dress and a necklace of pearls tight around her long neck. Willie had on black shorts and a blue shirt that looked a little too big for him. He was smiling a crooked little smile and his eyes twinkled. She had her arms around him and was smiling broadly. The smile elevated her beauty from exquisite to dazzling. She exuded such joy and warmth that my mind rebelled against the notion that she was dead. Mira had been right when she told me Esther had grown to love the boy with whom she had been entrusted. They looked utterly happy and carefree in each other's company. No one would have doubted for a moment that the two were mother and child.
I reread the list of items the police cataloged in Esther's apartment. A pearl necklace was not among them. Nor was any other kind of jewelry—a friend of Esther's had reported her owning some earrings and rings, nothing very expensive. A handwritten note in the margin of the item list read "Killer swiped all jewelry."
Returning my attention to the picture, I recognized the location: Gan Meir Park in Tel Aviv. A date had been scrawled on the back. August 22, 1939. Just four days before the murders.
Would Henrietta Ackerland like to have this picture? Would it ease her hurt to see that her son had been happy when he died? Or would it augment her pain to see him so happy with another woman? I couldn't really say. With a pang of guilt, I slipped the photograph into my pocket. Reuben would not have approved of me taking anything from a police report, but I figured it would do no harm. If I hadn't asked to read this report, no one would have ever laid eyes on it again.