Lineup (5 page)
AS
soon as Nevo saw the look in Nachum’s steely eyes he knew things were about to get worse. The bald detective was short and wiry, with a thin mustache adorning his upper lip.
“You know why you’re here?” Nachum asked quietly, sitting down opposite the suspect. Nevo had expected the room to be like the ones he saw in the movies, with a big two-way mirror so the cops outside could watch what was going on. But it was no more than a tiny office, with two chairs and a table, a few plastic cups and a pitcher of water. The bareness of the stifling room just made him more nervous. They took the cuffs off his hands and legs when they put him in here, but he still felt that he couldn’t move.
Nevo didn’t answer the detective’s question. He’d been trying to work it out ever since he saw the two cops jumping out of the patrol car. He’d screened different scenarios in his head, run through the possibilities. All the cops were willing to say when he asked where they were taking him was that they were bringing him in for questioning. “What do mean bringing me in? Am I under arrest? What’d I do?” he’d asked. “They’ll explain everything at the precinct” was the only answer he got.
He knew why the police wanted to question him. He just didn’t know what had put them onto him. The idea that it was all over, that they knew everything, made his blood run cold. If that was true, he was going away for a very long time.
“I asked you a question,” Nachum said, pinning him with his eyes.
But what if they didn’t know and were just on a fishing expedition? If he confessed now, he’d lose any chance of getting out of this mess. He’d be paying a very heavy price. He had to be smart. Watch what he said. Not let himself be played. He’d seen enough TV shows and movies to know how interrogators used mind games to force a confession out of someone, even when he was innocent.
“Cat got your tongue? Answer my question,” Nachum barked.
Nevo took a sip of water from the cup in front of him. His best move was to say nothing, find out what they had before he incriminated himself. Let them do their job, he thought.
“I’m still waiting for an answer!”
“No, I have no idea,” he said quickly in as confident a tone as he could muster.
Nachum shook his head in disappointment, like a teacher whose student had just given the wrong answer. “It’s a shame you want to do this the hard way. I thought you had more sense,” he said.
The words “the hard way” sent a chill down his spine.
The two men sat facing each other in silence. Nachum stared intently at Nevo, not looking away for a second. Not even when he refilled the cup of water. His piercing eyes were like searing laser beams.
“Let’s try again. Would you like to tell me why you’re here?” Nachum said, breaking the silence.
“I already told you . . . I don’t know . . . I have no . . . ,” he stuttered, his voice cracking despite his efforts to sound self-assured. He felt like Nachum could read his mind just by staring at him, like he knew he was lying.
“Start by telling me what you were doing at one a.m. last night in north Tel Aviv,” Nachum cut in.
His heart fell. They knew. The minute he saw that man tailing him, he knew things were going to go bad for him. When he came out from behind the bushes in the yard and didn’t see the guy on the street, he’d let himself hope that it was all in his mind, that no one was following him. But deep down he knew it wasn’t true. He knew the guy didn’t just happen to be there, that he was going to take him down.
“What were you doing there last night?” Nachum screamed, his fist coming down on the table so hard that the water splashed out of the plastic cup.
“Nothing,” he said, looking at the puddle in front of him to avoid meeting Nachum’s eyes.
“That’s only because someone got in the way. If it wasn’t for him, who knows what you would’ve done,” Nachum said.
Nevo didn’t answer. Every word out of the detective’s mouth was another nail in his coffin. They knew everything. The man must have kept on his tail even after he thought he’d shaken him off. He realized it was all part of a plan. The guy was waiting for him. So they must’ve found what he left behind and they probably had his fingerprints too.
Did they also know about Meshulam? No way he was going to rat him out. He might be locked up for years for being stupid, but at least he’d still be alive. At least he’d see his son grow up. That meant a lot. Gili was the one ray of light in his life, and he needed his father. Even if he was doing time.
Maybe Meshulam was already under arrest and this whole thing was an act. He finished off the water. If that’s the case, why not look out for himself? That’s how it worked: the little fish gave up a bigger fish who gave up a whale. He’d broken the law, but what he did was nothing compared to Meshulam.
“It’s over for you, Nevo. Somebody saw you. He saw what you did and we’ve already put all the pieces together. So don’t play games with me. It’s not in your best interest.”
He passed his hand through his hair nervously, rubbing his head as if it were Aladdin’s lamp. Gili loved that movie. But no genie appeared. Just ugly reality. And in this reality, he didn’t have enough facts to make the right decision. He needed more time. More information. If he opened his mouth now, there was no going back.
“I want a lawyer,” he said abruptly. He knew from all those TV shows he’d watched that he was entitled to one. He was in desperate need of someone to talk to, someone with experience to tell him what to do.
Nachum leaned back in his chair and sneered. “No problem, pal. You’ll get your lawyer. But what good is it gonna do you, huh? What can he do for you? We’ve got an ironclad case against you. The best lawyer in the world isn’t gonna get you off. The more you fight me, the worse it’s gonna be for you. It’ll just cost you money and it won’t do you any good.”
Nachum was scaring him, confusing him. He sounded so sure of himself. What was he supposed to do now? How did he get into this mess? It was because he was so weak, because he couldn’t resist temptation. And now he was paying the price. One stupid mistake and he was going away for a long time.
“Look at me, Nevo,” Nachum ordered.
He raised his head slowly, not wanting to look into those X-ray eyes again. Maybe he was imagining it, but something in Nachum’s expression seemed different, softer.
“Let me help you, Nevo,” the detective said.
ALL
in all, Nachum was quite pleased with how the interrogation was going. The first stage had taken even less time than he’d anticipated. Now Nevo was ready for stage two. If he played his cards right, he’d be closing the Regev rape case very soon.
Actually, he thought, interrogations are more like a game of chess. Both pitted one mind against another, and both required the same two stages for a win. First comes the “check,” the threat to your opponent’s king, and then the “mate,” when you’ve got him cornered, with no way out.
Nevo knew very well that he’d been made, that his arrest wasn’t just some mistake he could worm his way out of. And like most rapists, he was no fool. That’s why he was hunched over in his chair, agitated, drinking water like a fish, passing his hand through his hair in a gesture Nachum already recognized as a nervous tic. He wondered how he had any hair left on his head the way he kept pulling at it. The detective reached up and touched his own bald pate.
The only question in his mind was exactly how to go about the next phase of the interrogation. He had enough experience to know you can drag a confession out of practically anybody. He’d witnessed it over and over in his long career. Time and again he’d seen how weak and fragile people are. Apply pressure in the right places, and they break. Some hold out longer than others, but ultimately the outcome is the same.
He could go at it like many other detectives would and spend hours with Nevo, confusing him with endless questions, threatening, shouting, switching interrogation teams, and making him start all over from the beginning each time, not letting up on him for a minute, driving him crazy, wearing him down until he confessed. But his instincts were telling him to use a different tactic here. He knew how much defense lawyers loved to get their claws into confessions they could claim were obtained under duress. But it was more than that. He sensed that Nevo was already teetering, that all it would take was one more nudge to push him over the edge, to get him to tell the truth, to make a confession no one could poke holes in. If he tried to intimidate him or tire him out, he might shut down. No. He was going to take the positive approach; he’d be the “good cop,” empathetic and understanding. He’d set him a honey trap.
“LET
me help you,” he repeated.
There was a look of surprise on Nevo’s face. Nachum knew that very soon that look would turn suspicious, that he had to work fast, to use what he’d learned when he did his homework before coming in.
“It may be hard for you to believe, but I’m serious,” he went on in a quiet, confident tone. “I wanna help you. I checked you out earlier. That’s just normal procedure before we start questioning anyone. You were a demolition officer in the army, an officer in the 605, right?”
Nevo nodded. A good sign, Nachum thought to himself, refilling Nevo’s cup yet again. It was an old trick of his, making the suspect suffer the physical discomfort of a full bladder.
“My brother was an officer in the same unit. He was killed in Lebanon, five days into the first war.”
Nachum paused, studying Nevo’s face. The pressure he’d been feeling was starting to lift. The story about his dead brother was a lie, but it had affected him. Now he had to gain his trust, to make him forget the role each of them was playing in this room, the fact that he was being interrogated, that he’d been arrested on a rape charge.
“When I saw that you served in that unit, it made me think twice about you,” he continued. “I know what kind of guys you are, especially the ones who get picked to be officers. So I know you’re not a bad person, Nevo. You’re like a lot of good people who get into trouble; you’re just a good person who made a mistake.”
For the first time, Nevo looked Nachum in the eye without being ordered to. Knowing he was on the right track, he took a deep breath before going on. It was time for the last little nudge.
“You made a mistake, didn’t you, Nevo?” he asked gently.
Nevo took a sip of water but didn’t answer. Nachum kept to his game plan. He waited for him to put the cup down and then repeated the question. This time, Nevo nodded.
“I saw you got a divorce not long ago,” he went on, encouraged by Nevo’s response. “It must be a hard time for you. Your ex-wife is out to get you. She filed a complaint against you for an assault that never happened, right? What was that all about? She get mad at you for hooking up with the girl at work?”
Nevo nodded again. “Something like that,” he said.
“And that girl screwed you too, didn’t she? You can’t imagine how many cases like that I’ve seen. They ask for it, and then when you give it to ’em they change their minds and start screaming ‘sexual harassment’ and call the cops. Is that what happened? Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You got it right,” Nevo agreed, looking down.
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s only natural for a guy like you, a guy who gave so much to his country, it’s only natural to get mad when women treat you like that. They can ruin your life. Those two broads ruined yours, didn’t they?”
Nevo kept silent. Nachum examined his face. For a minute he thought he’d lost him.
“Forget it, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look, I wanna help you. I’ve dealt with a lot of scum in my career, and I can tell who’s a scumbag and who isn’t. And you’re not. I saw it right away. The fact that you were in my brother’s unit is just a bonus; it just tells me I wasn’t wrong about you.”
Nevo made eye contact with him again. Nachum could see that he’d regained the trust he’d started to build with him, the trust he’d lost for a second when he talked about Nevo’s ex-wife and the woman he’d harassed at work. Maybe he still had feelings for one of them. Maybe that’s why he did it.
“I’m not gonna kid you, Nevo. What you did was really bad. It’s gonna cost you a long time behind bars. But if you cooperate now, if you tell me exactly how it went down and why, I’ll do what I can to make things easier for you. I’ve been on the job for a long time, people listen to me, and that’s good for someone like you who I wanna help out. You cooperate and I’ll go to the DA and put in a good word for you. It won’t be easy. All the prosecutors are women. A case like yours, they ask for the maximum, and they usually get it. They got the judges by the short hairs, too scared not to give them what they want.”
He could see that Nevo was starting to panic, that his tactic was getting to him. He’d go gentle with him, stroke his ego a little more, and then scare him shitless again.
“Just don’t lose it, kid,” Nachum went on, holding out the carrot. “Like I said, you be straight with me, you tell me everything, and I’ll do what I can to help you. My brother, may he rest in peace, for him the guys in his unit were like family. I know it sounds strange, but helping you out, it’s like I’m doing it for him. All you gotta do is trust me. You trust me, don’t you, Nevo?”
Nevo nodded.
“So let’s talk about Adi Regev,” Nachum said, refilling the cup again. He knew from experience how important it was to make the victim a real person in the perp’s eyes, to give her a name, an identity.
Nevo stared at him in confusion.
“Yeah, that’s her name. You didn’t know her name, did you?”
Again Nevo passed his hand through his hair, making it stick out in odd directions.
“You didn’t know her, did you?” Nachum went on, keeping his eyes on Nevo. This was the delicate part, when he actually started talking about the crime. He was walking on eggshells here. One false move and the whole structure he’d erected so meticulously could collapse.
Nevo didn’t respond. He couldn’t rush him. He had to keep his impatience in check.
“If you did know her, they’ll go harder on you. But you didn’t know her, did you?” he asked after a few minutes of silence, treading carefully.
Nevo shook his head.
Another stage successfully completed. Was it time to ask for a written confession now, or was it still too soon? He was definitely on the right track. The only question was how to proceed from here.
“Is she okay, that Adi woman?” Nevo asked suddenly, interrupting his thoughts.
Nachum stared at him, caught totally off guard by the question. He hadn’t anticipated anything like that. Was Nevo sorry for what he did or was he playing games with him? Was it possible that it’d all been an act? After all, rapists were typically liars, manipulators. Was he just scamming him?
“Yes, she’s okay, she’s doing better,” he said, deciding to continue to play his own game.
“Good, I’m glad to hear it,” Nevo said, the relief telling on his face.
Nachum managed to keep a poker face despite the storm raging inside him. What the hell was going on here? Where was this coming from? What was this display of sympathy for his victim, the girl he’d raped so brutally?
“I could speak to her, you know,” he said, keeping to his original plan. “I could ask her to forgive you, tell her you know you made a mistake and you’re sorry. They have this thing these days in court where the victims get to say how they feel.”
“Thank you,” Nevo muttered with a half smile. Nachum focused on the smile. He couldn’t see a trace of cynicism or maliciousness.
“What do you want me to say to her?” he asked.
“Tell her I’m sorry if I hurt her . . . that I didn’t mean to . . .”
“You can count on me,” Nachum replied gently.
He took a pad and pen from his bag and placed them on the table in front of Nevo. He was ready. Checkmate.
Nevo looked at him, mystified.
“If I’m gonna help you, you have to write down everything just like it happened. You understand?” he said, his eyes fixed on Nevo.
Nevo looked down at the plastic cup, unwilling to meet the detective’s eyes. He took a sip, barely able to swallow, as if his throat were bone dry.
“I know it’s hard, you’re scared,” Nachum said, leaning in closer to force Nevo to look up, to create a sense of intimacy.
“But that’s the only way for you to end this, the only way I can help you. And I really wanna help you, Nevo.”
He considered saying something about Nevo’s late parents, assuming the role of a father figure, but decided he’d leave that for later. He was so close he could taste it. Too much pressure could be counterproductive.
Nevo’s eyes filled with tears. Nachum breathed a sigh of relief. He had nothing to worry about. Nevo wasn’t putting on an act. He was genuinely sorry for what he’d done. Police work was full of surprises, and Nevo was a big one. Not only was he already feeling remorse, but the detective had managed to maneuver him into that state in record time.
“I understand . . . I understand.”
“Write it all down, how you raped Adi Regev . . . ,” Nachum said, pushing the pad closer to Nevo.
