Lineup (6 page)
ZIV
thought he must’ve misunderstood. He was so tired, maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. “Raped?” he said, echoing the detective’s words. What was he talking about?
“Forget it. It’s just a legal term. Write it however you want. You don’t have to use the word if it makes you uncomfortable,” Nachum said in his nice-guy voice.
His mind wasn’t playing tricks. All this time Nachum had been talking about some girl who got raped. He’d got it all wrong. They were looking for a rapist. A rapist!
He took a deep breath. His arrest was just a case of mistaken identity. It had nothing to do with Meshulam and what he’d done last night. They thought he was a rapist. He was so relieved, he nearly jumped up and kissed Nachum.
“You’re not writing,” the detective said.
“No, you don’t understand. You got it wrong. I’m no rapist. I didn’t rape anybody. You made a mistake. It’s some other guy, not me. I’d never do anything like that.” The words were coming out rapidly and confidently now. And to think he was just about to tell the truth, to tell them about Meshulam, about what he was doing in north Tel Aviv last night. How lucky can you get!
Nachum kept silent.
“I’m really sorry. I didn’t get it. Rape? No way. I swear on my life, on my son’s life, on anything you want, I’m not a rapist.” Nevo continued in the same animated manner.
Nachum’s expression was frozen. Does he realize he made a mistake, Nevo wondered.
“I see you’ve decided to play games with me,” Nachum said. “Okay, you’re not a rapist. I believe you. You’re just here by accident.”
Nevo couldn’t tell if the detective was mocking him or not.
“So if you didn’t rape Adi Regev, what were you doing in north Tel Aviv last night? What was all this about the crime, the victim? Explain it to me, Mr. Nevo, starting with what you were doing last night.”
By the end, Nachum was almost screaming.
Nevo felt like a balloon with all the air sucked out of it. His relief had been premature. But no matter what happened to him now, there was no way he was going to tell the cop about last night. He didn’t want to end up with a bullet in the head.
“I’m waiting, Nevo. I’m all ears. Go on, I’m listening.” Nachum crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.
What could he tell him? How could he answer his questions? Rape? The detective didn’t have the slightest idea what kind of trouble he was in, how deep in shit he was.
“Let me explain something to you, Nevo,” Nachum said, breaking the silence. “The case against you is ironclad. You already told me enough. What you said about Adi Regev, about how you chose your victim. I don’t need to sit here and listen to you anymore. I can go home to my family. I can take my son out for a bike ride like I promised. I’m done here. Whether or not you write down what happened, it makes no difference to me. But I want you to know I’m not like you. I wasn’t playing games. I meant it when I said I wanna help you. So it’s up to you to decide if you wanna spend the next twenty years in jail. All you gotta do is write it all down, the rape, the knife, the whole thing.”
“But I didn’t do anything.” Nevo could hear his voice trembling, but he was no longer able to summon the confidence he’d felt only moments before.
“You’re not hearing me, kid. I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime deal. You tell me what happened and I make sure they go easy on you. If I were you, I’d grab it with both hands. But it’s up to you. You can decide to pass, and I’ll go home and you’ll never see me again. But then you’re gonna rot in jail, and believe me, you’re gonna be very sorry you missed your chance. You’re gonna curse yourself for being such an asshole you refused to take the only help you’re ever gonna get.”
Nevo stared at him in silence. Whatever he did now, it wasn’t going to end well for him. He was trapped. Suddenly he had to pee so bad he thought he would burst.
“I need to take a leak,” he said.
Nachum gave him a nasty laugh. “It doesn’t work like that. You piss when I say you can piss. You better get used to it. That’s how it’s gonna be for the next twenty years.”
He sure changed colors fast, Nevo thought. A minute ago he was saying how much he wants to help me.
“I’m gonna give you two minutes to make up your mind. Either you pick up that pen or I’m outta here.”
Nevo squirmed uncomfortably in the chair. Nachum drummed his fingers on the table, tapping out a rhythmical beat. The second hand on the clock was counting down. Time was running out for him. Nachum tapped faster.
The silence was broken by the sound of a phone ringing. Nachum glanced at his cell phone and smiled at Nevo.
“You know what?” he said.
Nevo shook his head. He really had to go. Urgently.
“That’s the crime reporter from Channel Two,” he said. “He got word we made an arrest. He wants a name, a photo. Whaddya say, should we give the guy what he wants? Should we make you famous so everybody in the whole country knows what kinda man you are? You want your family, your son, to see your face on the news?”
Nevo could picture Merav and Gili watching the news in the living room. What would she think? Would she believe he could do such a thing? How would Gili feel when he saw his face on the screen? He was all the family he had now that his parents were dead and he’d split from Merav. He hardly ever heard from his own brother, Itai. He didn’t have any friends either. The friends he used to have when he was married all went with Merav after the divorce. The image of his parents sent a knife through his heart. A day didn’t go by when he didn’t think of them. He felt their absence so intensely, especially in the good times when he thought about what they were missing out on. He’d learned to deal with the bad times on his own. Even when they were alive, he never told them anything he knew they didn’t want to hear. His arrest would’ve broken their hearts.
“This’s crazy,” he said, whether to himself or Nachum. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t rape anyone.”
Nachum just gave him a cold stare, not saying a word.
“It wasn’t me . . . You got it wrong,” he muttered.
“I’m still waiting for you to make up your mind. You’ve got forty-five seconds. Then I’m outta here,” Nachum said, standing up.
He paced back and forth in the interrogation room, looking at the clock every few seconds to remind him that his time was running out. The pacing made Nevo even more nervous. His bladder pressed down harder. It really hurt. He hadn’t been thinking straight when he drank all that water Nachum poured him. And after he’d downed the six-pack, his bladder was already full when he got here.
“But you got it wrong,” he said, nearly shouting. “It’s not like you said . . . I didn’t rape anyone.”
Nachum threw him a look of disgust, picked up the phone, and said dispassionately, “Arrange for a transfer to Abu Kabir.
“You ever been in Abu Kabir, Nevo?” he asked.
Nevo shook his head.
Nachum snickered maliciously.
“You’re gonna regret your decision, you can’t even imagine how much you’re gonna regret it. I already got your confession. Not writing it down for me, that’s your mistake. You know what an asshole you are? You’re leaving here a confessed rapist without my help. I haven’t seen a loser like you in a long time.”
NACHUM
wasn’t happy. Something had gone wrong at the last minute. Nevo was broken, consumed by remorse, ready to make a full confession, and then for some reason he’d backed off. How had he fucked up? He was so sure he had Nevo right where he wanted him that he’d taken the bait, swallowed the hook, and all he had to do was reel him in. Secretly, he was even hoping that once he confessed to raping Adi Regev, he could get him to confess to prior acts as well. There was a good chance this wasn’t the first time he did it. Adi’s father had seen him stalking another victim.
Had he been too eager to hand him the pen and paper? Timing is everything. Maybe he should’ve waited a little longer, or written it down himself instead of telling Nevo to do it. If he’d done it that way, he might be sitting here now with a signed confession in his hand.
He looked at the feed from the surveillance camera that continued to show Nevo in the interrogation room, hunched up in his chair, hardly moving a muscle. An hour had gone by since he’d walked out and left him there alone. He’d told his assistant, Ohad, to escort him to the toilet. Pain made some people even more recalcitrant. So he’d let Nevo relieve the pressure in his bladder, but it didn’t get him anywhere.
Something had changed right before the end. Then again, maybe nothing had changed and it’d been an act from the beginning.
Nachum got up and walked to the window. It was four thirty in the afternoon. He was exhausted. He hadn’t had a break since he got the call from Yaron Regev yesterday morning. He hadn’t made it to Friday-night dinner with his family. At least one thing he said to Nevo was the honest truth: he’d promised Omer, his fifteen-year-old, a bike ride through the Jerusalem hills. He knew how much Omer had been looking forward to it, knew he’d let him down. And he’d been looking forward to it too. But this was his job, and sometimes it had to come first.
The first rain of the season began coming down, chasing the cluster of cops who’d gone outside for a smoke back into the building.
He’d gotten a lot out of Nevo, but it wasn’t enough to make a case against him. His lawyers would argue that it was worthless, and someone in the DA’s Office would get cold feet and go for a plea bargain. They might even decide not to charge him at all.
Adi’s identification wouldn’t have the slightest merit for them. They wouldn’t even consider the possibility that she was telling the truth. The whole thing would fall apart as soon as they found out it wasn’t conducted by the book. And they wouldn’t put much stock in the cap they found in Nevo’s apartment, no matter how similar it was to the one Adi described. Or the sunglasses, or the shoes, even though they were the right size and style. He could already hear the DA: “It’s a common size, it’s a popular style, lotsa people have baseball caps and sunglasses.” There was no end to it. People can talk their way out of anything. Little kids did it in school, suspects did it in the interrogation room, defendants did it in court.
It was still raining. He stared out the window, mesmerized by the falling drops. Nevo was the rapist, there was no question in his mind, but he couldn’t figure out why he’d denied it at the very last minute, why he’d refused to confess. There could be a million reasons. Maybe he suddenly realized he was sealing his own fate and panicked, maybe he got scared when Nachum said the word “rape,” maybe he hadn’t even admitted it to himself before. Who knows? But that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was whether he was guilty or not, and Nachum had no doubt about the answer to that one.
He’d even asked Ohad and the other members of the unit. He wasn’t the type who’d never admit he could be wrong. But everyone’s gut was saying the same thing. They had the right man.
Ohad tapped lightly on the door and walked in. Nachum made an effort to shake off the thoughts gnawing at him. Ohad was a good cop. A little too political for his taste, a little too concerned with what other people would say, but all in all he did good work and got results.
“We gotta get a move on,” Ohad said, gesturing with his head toward the clock on the wall. In a few short hours Nevo would have to be brought before a judge. That was the law. They couldn’t hold him for more than twenty-four hours without an initial arraignment.
That didn’t worry him. He was confident the judge would remand Nevo into custody as soon as he saw the evidence they had against him and the procedures they still needed to perform to move the investigation along. And the judge was the only one who’d get a look at that material. Not Nevo and not his attorney. As usual, they’d list procedures from here to Timbuktu, all of them requiring that Nevo remain in custody. Most judges didn’t even bother to read it. They had too many arrests to handle and very little patience for them, so they were very generous with remand orders. Especially at this early stage in the investigation of a serious crime.
No, it wasn’t the arraignment that was weighing on Nachum’s mind, it was what would happen afterward, when all their investigation reports and warrant applications were no longer confidential. Nevo and his attorney would get copies of every piece of paper pertaining to his arrest. Nachum knew only too well that if he revealed that Adi had seen pictures of Nevo before the lineup, it would eventually be thrown out. It didn’t conform with any of the legal requirements, and they didn’t get a do-over. So he’d just have to risk keeping that information to himself. There was a good chance that if they kept at Nevo for a few more days, they’d either get their confession or find new evidence. But there was also a chance they wouldn’t.
What would happen if they didn’t dig up anything new or if Nevo took his lawyer’s advice and kept his mouth shut? Once Adi’s identification was thrown out, they’d be left with nothing.
Ohad handed him the documents for the judge. Nachum went over and over the description of the lineup. It wasn’t good enough. He had to think ahead, to consider how things were going to play out later.
With a sigh, he started rewriting the report. Ohad came to look over his shoulder, gave him a pat on the back, and left.
They had arrested Ziv Nevo, he wrote, in the wake of a phone call from the victim’s father, who had seen a man answering his daughter’s description of the rapist loitering late the previous night on the street where she lived and displaying suspicious behavior: he was hiding between parked cars and stalking another woman. A squad car was sent to the suspect’s address and he was taken into custody. A lineup in the presence of the victim had yet to be conducted and was planned for Monday morning. Since Nevo had been arrested on Friday night, at the start of the weekend, they had been unable to arrange for it earlier.
Nachum reread what he’d written. He wasn’t born yesterday. He knew plenty of cops who played fast and loose with the facts. But that had never been his way. Just as he’d never doctored the numbers to improve his chances of a promotion, he’d never submitted a false report to the court. But that’s precisely what he was doing now. In order to get Nevo remanded into custody, he was claiming they hadn’t done a lineup even though they had, inventing a story about plans for a lineup that was never going to happen. What’d gotten into him?
It wasn’t just that he was certain Nevo was guilty. There’d been enough times in the past when he was sure he had his man and he knew the perp could slip through his fingers because of some stupid technicality. But never before had he even considered doing what he was doing now.
Was the pressure to close his cases getting to him? Was he bitter about being passed over for promotion for longer than he liked to remember? The police force was his life. He’d given it his all. It ate away at him to see other guys being promoted over him, getting jobs that were rightfully his. And there was no point in denying that it was also affecting his family life. He’d married pretty late in life. Even when he was younger, he wasn’t much to look at, and his reserve and serious nature made it hard for him to approach women. It probably put them off too. Leah was the younger sister of a cop he’d worked with in logistics. They’d never been equal partners in the marriage. From the beginning, she’d looked to him to make the decisions for both of them. The division of roles in the family had been comfortable for him, and he imagined for her as well. But things had been changing lately, especially since the last time he missed out on a promotion. Leah had started complaining that he didn’t help her enough around the house, demanding that he do things he’d never been expected to do before.
The thoughts clogging his brain were giving him a headache. Why was he tormenting himself with this rubbish?
He read the report he’d written one last time. There were no personal motives behind it. Nevo had raped Adi Regev. Nachum was just doing what he had to do to prevent him from raping some other poor girl. No one could fault him for that, no one at all.
