Pattern Crimes
| Pattern Crimes | |
| William Bayer | |
| Crossroad Press (1986) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Mystery & Crime |
### Product Description
It begins when the strangely marked body of a young prostitute is found just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. A similarly disfigured corpse of an American nun turns up. Then an Arab boy. As the list of victims grows, their only apparent connection is the bizarre markings on their bodies, it appears that Israel is facing its first serial murder case.
David Bar-Lev, chief of the Pattern Crimes Unit of the Jerusalem police, is not so sure. A tough yet sensitive investigator with a powerful intelligence and a querying mind, he begins searching for a pattern that will explain the apparently random killings.
At first the disorder is overwhelming, the case unfathomable. But then, as David probes deeper into this particular pattern crime, he is not so sure he wants to understand it. Pieces emerge that suggest that this time the key may lie within his own life. During the course of his investigation he must uncover and confront many painful secrets:
• The mysterious behavior of his father, Avraham, a retired psychoanalyst;
• The tragic suicide of his brother, Gideon, a talented fighter pilot;
• The hidden past of his beautiful Russian lover, the cellist Anna;
• The possibility of corruption within the Jerusalem police and the ultra-secret General Security Services(Shin Bet).
But despite the pain of these and other revelations, David probes on until he finally glimpses his astonishing solution—for, as one cop says of David Bar-Lev, "It is not enough for him to investigate. David has to understand."
The Jerusalem of Pattern Crimes is not the idealized Holy City of the guidebooks. Depicted as the capital of an angry, anguished, torn-up nation, a city of prostitutes, narcotics dealers, lusting journalists, ruthless politicians and zealots of every stripe, it becomes here an arena for a remarkable story of crime and punishment.
This is a book about patterns – in love, in relationships, in politics, in art, in death. And always at the center is David Bar-Lev, one of the most memorable characters in recent crime fiction, relentlessly searching for the pattern that will unlock his case – the pattern he must uncover in order to clarify his vision … of himself, his family, and the country that he loves.
With Pattern Crimes William Bayer raises the detective novel to a new level of excellence. In the best-selling tradition of his previous novel, Switch, he has created a powerful story of psychological suspense and one of the strongest, most intriguing novels of recent years.
PRAISE FOR PATTERN CRIMES:
New York Times: “William Bayer has the reader panting to keep up with the pace he sets in ‘Pattern Crimes.’ The novel’s virtues: its intriguing intellectual hero, the multi-layered humanity he encounters in his investigations, and his fascinating observations on a Jerusalem no casual tourist gets to see.”
San Francisco Examiner: “Bayer has got the real stuff: a pounding narrative line; real people you can identify with; dialogue that snaps with authority even as it advances the exposition; a riveting sense of locale. Bayer is the new king of the crime fiction heap. At a minimum he has written one unputdownable book.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review): “A richly dramatic and thoughtful police procedural, a sort of ‘Gorky Park’ set in Jerusalem. Provocative and intelligent entertainment.”
Newsday: “’Pattern Crimes’ is a surprise from beginning to end¼. Bayer takes us on a psychological roller-coaster of a trip that is harrowing yet always controlled.”
Washington Post: “There is an electricity to Bayer’s writing - rich design, crackling fabric - that sets it apart from the usual competent thriller. Bayer is a bona fide novelist, you first think to yourself, but it is really the combination of the two, formula writer and writer-writer (not unlike Dashiell Hammett) that puts Mr. Bayer in a special niche.”
By William Bayer
First Digital Edition Published by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2011 by William Bayer
Cover Design by David Dodd
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FOR PAULA
Many people helped me with this book, but none of them is responsible for its concepts, its fictionalized "facts," or the political views held by its various characters.
Thanks, first, to the director and staff of Mishkenot Sha'ananin in Jerusalem for warm and wonderful hospitality. Mishkenot is, indeed, "a peaceful dwelling," and a true paradise for a writer.
Thanks also for help, encouragement, and/or assistance to: Arlene Donovan, Riva Freifeld, Peter Gethers, Joseph Katz, Avraham Kotzer, Dubi Leshem, Joan Nathan, Mildred Newman, Kenneth Pressman, Geoffrey Weill, and the "Wednesday Night Gang."
And finally very special thanks to three Israeli detectives whose names, for obvious reasons, cannot be given here. They were most generous with their time, but the responsibility for any errors which may appear in these pages belongs solely
to me.
W.B.
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day or night.
—Isaiah
BIG SUR,
CALIFORNIA
He woke up suddenly and then he remembered: Today was his birthday. Today he was sixty years old.
He was sweating. The sheets were damp. His nightmare had been terrible.
"Anna!"
No answer. He opened his eyes. Light was streaming in through the shutters. He squinted. Another blinding California day. They were all blinding here.
The dogs! Where were the dogs?
"Irina!"
When he heard her footsteps he lay back against his pillows and composed his face.
"Happy birthday." She gave him her look when she said it, the one she'd been giving him for years. It reminded him of her expression of amusement and contempt from the days, so long ago, when they still made love.
The dogs bounded in after her, Boris and Peter, great black shaggy leaping things, eyes moist, excited, gums wet, salivating. He petted them, massaged their ears. The maid followed with his breakfast tray.
"Felicidad, Senor Targov."
She was Mexican, young, pretty, dark. A good figure too—he often spied on her when she swam laps up and down the pool. While she arranged the tray, he watched Irina throw open the shutters.
"Take the dogs out with you, Bianca," she instructed the maid. Targov gave them each a final roughing of the ears.
"Why exile the dogs?"
"To talk privately."
"And you're afraid they'll overhear? Really, Irina, I think maybe you should go back to that psychiatrist."
She ignored him. "There's a load of mail. Letters, telegrams. The phone's already ringing."
"I'11 look at it all later. Rokovsky can handle the calls."
"That journalist, Boyce—he's coming for lunch."
"Fine. Serve something good. Not that salt-free stuff. Good Russian food today."
She didn't reply, and when he glanced up from his breakfast tray he saw that she was studying him.
"You're going to say something awful. I can feel it. So go ahead, Irina, say it now and leave."
He glanced at her again just as she smiled. Then it seemed to him that her entire face turned into a net of fine wrinkles and lines. The effect reminded him of a slow-motion film he'd once seen of a bullet fired at a pane of safety glass. The glass smooth and perfect, then suddenly crosshatched. When she smiled her face became a web.
"Anna wants to go." She announced the fact triumphantly.
"I'll talk to her."
"She's made up her mind."
"After all we've done for her."
"She acknowledges everything. Very grateful too. But now she's ready to move on. She doesn't like it here. A 'hothouse' atmosphere, she says."
"Hothouse!" He laughed. "Well, she may be right...."
"Of course she is. And much too young to be cooped up with us. Very comfortable here with the pool, the servants, but she's suffocating. She must get out, perform, and be with people her age."
"Find a nice young man. Isn't that what you mean?"
"Oh shut up! Here! I've been holding this." She flung a postcard at him. "It burns my hand!"
The card came at him fast, then stopped in midair, then fluttered down slowly until it settled on his quilt. He reached for it, but not before he glanced at her again. This time her expression was more than triumphal. It was gloating, crowing.
God, how she must hate me,
he thought.
He examined the card. A few words in Russian, a signature hastily scrawled. Then, when he understood what it was, he gasped and put it down.
"So he's out."
"At last!"
"Vienna?"
"A transit camp." She still wore her conquering look. He photographed her with his eyes, wanting to fix this image of her forever, knowing that someday he would look back upon this moment as one of the most crucial of his life.
"This didn't come today. Too big a coincidence. You've been holding it back."
"Only saving it for the proper time."
"My birthday! Irina, you're a snake."
"And what are you, Sasha?" she hissed. "Tell me—what
are you?"
"I'm an old man," he said finally.
She laughed. "Sixty. That's nothing! You're strong as an ox."
"The nightmares..."
"You've always had them. Ever since...."
"My sheets are soaked."
She came beside the bed, touched the sheets. "Just night sweats. Nothing to worry about."
She sat down on the bed and arranged his napkin so he wouldn't spill coffee on his quilt. It was an amazing quilt. He'd designed it himself, a multicolored patchwork filled, like a Russian futurist painting of the 1920s, with curves and arabesques. People admired it. A collector wanted to buy it. There had even been an inquiry from a commercial bedding firm asking if he would consider licensing the design.
"Tell me about your dream."
"What?"
"Your nightmare, Sasha. I want to hear."
"Oh." He tried to remember. "I was to be assassinated. But I saw it all through the assassin's eyes."