Asylum City (20 page)

Anat turned to the computer. Mindless computer games always calmed her nerves. She'd play for a few minutes and then reassess the situation, she thought, moving the mouse to bring the screen back to life.

A headline came up on the screen. Her heart stopped as she scrolled down. “The police have announced that a second attempt to get the suspect to reenact the crime will be carried out in the coming days by the head of the Special Investigations Unit, Chief Inspector David Carmon, who is returning from a seminar in Austria,” she read. Anat bit down hard on her lip until it hurt.

GABRIEL
was waiting. The tall policeman had shoved him back into the interrogation room and left him there. No one had come in since. Had they forgotten about him? After what happened in Michal's apartment, maybe they figured out that he didn't kill her. He froze when they took him back there. He could feel her presence. He expected her to come out of the other room any minute with a smile on her face. The picture he drew of her was gone. Who took it? He remembered the day he did it. “I went to the hairdresser's specially, so make me look pretty,” she said, laughing. The way she was always bustling around, he didn't think she'd be able to sit still for more than five minutes. But she surprised him and posed for two hours straight without moving.

Back in her house, the good memories mixed with the bad one from the last time he'd been there. It was hard for him to talk, and anyway he didn't know how to answer the questions they asked him. And he couldn't bring himself to say it out loud, to say that he killed her. He knew he had to do it, but he couldn't. He liked her and he looked up to her too much.

When the policewoman went and stood in the exact place where he'd seen Michal's body, he had to fight to hold back the tears. She even looked a little like Michal—the same height, the same kind face. He had to remind himself that she wasn't on his side. And he didn't want to cry in front of her.

Gabriel knew he had to be strong. He had to make them believe him. Otherwise, the Israeli wouldn't pay Arami, and Arami wouldn't be able to pay Liddie's ransom. If Michal were here, she'd tell him to do it.

He looked at the door. He didn't notice if the tall policeman locked it when he left. He could try to escape and look for another, a better, way to save Liddie. He stood up, sliding his shackled feet slowly across the floor. But even if the door wasn't locked, how far could he get chained up like this? And where would he go if he got away?

Gabriel took a deep breath before pressing down on the handle. If the door opened, it would be a sign from God.

The door swung open abruptly, hitting Gabriel in the head. He fell backward.

“Where do you think you're going?” the tall policeman asked, towering over him. Before Gabriel could respond, he was grabbed by the shirt, heaved into the air, and thrown down on the table. He tried to sit up, but the policeman was too quick. With his large hand, he pressed him to the table.

“Trying to escape, you motherfucking asshole?”

Gabriel shook his head. His back hurt.

The policeman pulled him up and slammed him into a chair.

“Listen up,” he shouted, sticking his face in Gabriel's. “The commander is coming, and you're going to tell him exactly what you did. You tell him how you asked Michal Poleg for money and she didn't want to give it to you so you got mad. You took a beer bottle and hit her on the back of the head. She fell and broke the table. When you saw she was dead, you ran. Nobody saw you. The next morning you remembered the bottle and you were afraid we'd find your fingerprints on it. You went back for it and Michal's neighbor saw you, so you ran again. You threw the bottle in a Dumpster.”

Gabriel listened in silence. God had sent him a sign. It wasn't the sign he was expecting, but that didn't matter. “God moves in mysterious ways,” his father always said. He'd been given a second chance to describe how he killed Michal. If he got it right, the Israeli would pay Arami and Liddie would be safe.

“Got it?” the tall policeman asked, his tone threatening.

Gabriel nodded.

“Repeat what I said. I want to hear you say it.”

Gabriel repeated the story, not missing any details. He could feel the blood spilling from his lower lip as he spoke.

The tall policeman patted him on the back. “Well done. Maybe you're not such an asshole after all,” he said, before leaving again.

Alone, Gabriel brought his hand to his face, gently wiping away the blood.

The door opened and the tall policeman came back in with another officer. He was short, dumpy, and bald.

The tall one moved closer to Gabriel, making him flinch. But this time he didn't put a hand on him, merely straightened the table and arranged the chairs around it.

The short one stood and watched, licking his lip.

LIDDIE
lay, bound and blindfolded, on the floor of the car. A few minutes ago, Ahmed had suddenly burst into the room and tied her hands behind her back. “Move it, cunt,” he'd snarled, grabbing her and dragging her roughly out the door.

Nothing changed after the call to Gabriel. She continued to lie on the mattress in her cell, the thin sheet wrapped around her. From time to time, the door opened and Ahmed tossed some food on the floor. Except for that, she was all alone. Her cough was getting worse. She called out to Gabriel in the dark, begging him to rescue her. And she prayed. She knew that if he didn't come soon, she would die in this room.

She didn't ask where they were taking her. She remembered only too well the last time she was moved without warning. That was in Sinai. Rafik got rid of her when he discovered she was pregnant. “Yalla, get out of here. The Jews can have you,” he'd grumbled, taking her to the border and ordering her to start running.

She was fired on by Egyptian soldiers, but she kept running. This was her chance to escape—from Rafik, from the daily violations of her body, from the beatings she took from her captor and his cohorts, from the constant abuse. She knew about Israel from church. It was the land of milk and honey, the Holy Land, the place where Christ was born. She ran for the border as fast as she could. She had to get away from Rafik and reach the Promised Land. Liddie had no idea where Gabriel was, but she believed with all her heart that he was already there, waiting for her.

She was picked up by Israeli soldiers who took her to the detention camp along with the other refugees who snuck across the border. For the first time since she'd left home, she was given a hot meal, a real bed to sleep in, and a chance to shower. A doctor examined her. Then they questioned her, wanting to know where she came from, why she left, how she got here, why she chose to come to Israel. Two weeks later they handed her a bus ticket to Tel Aviv and the address of a shelter for women in her condition.

That's where she met Dahlia, her guardian angel. She also met a lot of other girls like her, all of them carrying a baby they didn't want. Some arrived too late to do anything about it. She was one of the lucky ones. Dahlia arranged for an abortion, but she had to lie about how far along she was. She heard from the other girls that the Israelis wouldn't do it if she'd been pregnant for more than a few weeks.

Dahlia comforted her, telling her time and again that she had nothing to be ashamed of. What Rafik did wasn't her fault. Almost all the African refugees ran into someone like Rafik on the way to Israel.

Dahlia promised that everything would be fine now, and Liddie was starting to believe her. She didn't know that Rafik had sold her to a pimp in Israel, to Ahmed. He was just waiting for the Israeli doctors to get rid of the baby. As soon as she was fit for work, Ahmed snatched her from the shelter. Rafik had lied when he pointed her in the direction of the border. He wasn't letting her go, he was delivering her to her new owner.

Now Ahmed was fed up with her, too. She was no use to him sick. Where were they taking her? She knew Gabriel would do what he could to help her. But the ransom Ahmed was demanding was too high. How would her brother get that kind of money?

The car slowed to a stop.

Liddie's mother had pleaded with them to leave. “There's no future for you here,” she said over and over, urging her children to flee. Her poor mother. She had no idea where she was sending them.

Ahmed opened the door and tugged at her dress. “Yalla, yalla,” he barked, pulling her out of the car. She prayed every day for God to release her from Ahmed's prison cell. Now that it was finally happening, she was frightened. What was waiting for her outside?

She landed painfully on a hard surface. “Move,” Ahmed said, punctuating his order with a kick. Liddie cringed, readying herself for the next blow. There was a lot of noise. Where was she?

The second blow never came. She heard Ahmed walk away, but she continued to lie there without moving, shivering from the cold. She could hear voices nearby. Traffic in the street. Horns honking. She thought she heard the car drive away. If she could only get the blindfold off her eyes she could see where she was, but her hands were tied behind her.

“Here, let me help you,” a man said in Tigrinya.

Liddie tried to pull away from the voice. She could sense more people around her. What did Ahmed do with her? Where did he take her? Who did he sell her to this time?

Abruptly, the blindfold was removed. Liddie saw four men standing over her. They were going to rape her. Ahmed had tossed her like a wounded animal into a pack of hungry wolves. She looked at them in terror. No, not again.

A hand reached out to her and she flinched. Her teeth were chattering. The cold night air penetrated down to her bones. Liddie looked around for Gabriel, but she didn't see him.

“Gabriel?” she shouted. “Where are you?” He didn't appear.

“It's okay, Liddie. I'm Arami, Gabriel's friend.” A man she'd never seen before reached out and touched her face. Ahmed had known her name, too. He'd waited for the Israelis to take out the baby, waited for her to get better, and then he'd come for her and made her one of his whores. She wasn't going to go through that hell again. This time she'd fight back. She didn't care if they killed her. Her life wasn't worth living anyway.

“Liddie.” She could feel his breath on her cheek.

“No,” she screamed, and bit down hard on his hand.

ANAT
rang the bell of Apartment 3 at 122 Stricker Street. No one had spoken to her since the item appeared on the Internet news site. Even David hadn't called. As far as Anat was concerned, until she was officially notified otherwise, she was still the acting chief of the Special Investigations Unit and would continue to work the case as she saw fit.

A dog barked on the other side of the door. The last time she'd seen Shmuel Gonen was at the lineup, when he failed to ID their suspect.

Mrs. Gonen cracked the door open.

“Shmuel's resting,” she said with a sour expression.

“I just need a minute,” Anat promised, reaching out to pet the mastiff that was rubbing up against her leg.

“You said he got it wrong at the lineup. He took it very hard,” Dvora Gonen said accusingly, blocking Anat's entry.

“I'm very sorry,” Anat said gently, although she didn't feel she had anything to apologize for. “It happens. People make mistakes. It's fine. No one's blaming him. It wasn't some kind of test.”

“That's exactly what I told him, Inspector Nachmias. But he really wanted to help the police, to feel useful. You don't understand what that means to people like us,” Mrs. Gonen scolded. She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her, making it clear that as long as she had anything to say about it, Anat wasn't coming in.

“I do understand, but I have a few more questions to ask him. It's important,” Anat said with as much empathy as she could muster. She found Dvora Gonen's protectiveness a little ridiculous.

“I think you've asked enough questions,” Mrs. Gonen answered, not conceding an inch. “What else do you need? Shmuel told you what he saw. Why do you have to talk to him again?”

Anat remained silent.

“Is this how you spend the taxpayers' money?” the old lady said in a loud whisper. She doesn't want to make a scene for the neighbors, Anat thought, struggling to keep a straight face. “You've got enough. Throw the African in prison and move on to something else. There's no reason to keep harassing law-abiding citizens. That politician, what's his name, Regev. He's right. You should be making sure they get what they deserve instead of protecting them.”

“Your husband told me he heard shouting the night Michal was killed. I just want to ask him about it,” Anat said quietly. It's hard to go on attacking somebody if they don't fight back. That was one of the first lessons she learned when she was working as a patrol officer.

“That's absurd,” Dvora said, waving her hand dismissively. “Shmuel doesn't hear anything at night.”

“Excuse me?”

“He sleeps like a log,” Mrs. Gonen went on. Leaning in closer, she whispered, “You should hear him snore.”

“But he told me that the night of the murder, he heard . . .”

“It was me. I heard it,” Dvora cut in.

“What exactly did you hear?” Anat hadn't even questioned Mrs. Gonen. They'd focused all their attention on her husband. He was the one who said he'd seen Gabriel. They'd canvassed the neighbors, but no one had thought to ask Mrs. Gonen. She was playing bridge when Shmuel ran into Gabriel.

“Shouting . . . someone was calling her name . . . yelling obscenities at her.” She was no longer whispering.

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“A man, definitely a man.” There was a trace of condescension in her voice. “Women don't shout like that in the middle of the night. And they don't use that kind of language, either.”