Pressure Chamber, page 24
“How do we do it without examining his clothes?”
“By knocking the particles off him. He doesn’t have a problem with beatings; on the contrary, he enjoys the suffering. The interrogators need to beat him but without injuring him. We don’t want him bleeding again, and we want him to be able to go back to the babies. Dry blows with an open hand. They know how it’s done. And we need a filter on the air conditioner’s intake vent. It’ll catch whatever flies off his clothing, and that’s what you examine.”
Daphne has never encountered the technique before. “I’ll speak to Nathan, and we’ll see what we can do.”
“But carefully. Nathan can’t know it comes from me.”
“Okay, it’ll come from him,” Daphne responds, remembering the instructions.
“We don’t have much time. His plan is in place. He’s going to join them together, to form them into a single entity. That’s why he abducted a doctor, to do it for him.”
“Join the babies together? How? Why?” Daphne can’t imagine such a process and she isn’t certain she really wants to know.
“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”
“And what’s with the tests he requested?”
“It’s part of his plan, and they’re going to have to give him the results without any games. If they lie to him, and don’t stop him in time, he could kill the babies without meaning to do so. He doesn’t want to kill them; he wants to transform them into something else. To connect them to one another; I don’t have a clue how. But I believe him.”
“Can I hear the recording?”
“Yes, just a heads-up though; we speak a little about you.”
“About me?” Daphne is taken aback.
“Yes. He asked about you and I told him the truth. He would have known right away if I’d lied.”
Rotem pairs her phone with the car’s Bluetooth. Daphne hasn’t heard his voice before, and a moment later it’s echoing through her speakers. But it isn’t his real voice. It’s a conversation between Rotem and a hoarse person who says terrible things in a whisper. When the recording gets to the description of her escape from home, Daphne’s eyes immediately well up with tears.
Rotem looks like she doesn’t notice. She’s listening to the conversation, too, focused, her eyes closed, searching for nuances she may have missed the first time. Daphne knows she’s thinking perhaps, between the lines, he did let something slip that she missed in real time.
Daphne quickly wipes away the tears with the back of her hand and doesn’t say a word.
72.
Nathan and Daphne are in the Forensics lab. Nathan takes the time to sort a pile of evidence bags and Daphne is feeding the DNA samples and fingerprints into the system.
“He’s keeping them alive. Why would he want their blood tested if he’s already killed them? It doesn’t make sense.”
“This case hasn’t made sense, Daph, from the second we started working on it,” Nathan replies.
“They’re going to release him in a day or two. I can guarantee you, the interior minister isn’t going to allow his grandson to starve to death. Investigations are going to let him walk and they’ll put him under surveillance.” She takes out the DNA samples and fingerprints from her forensics kit.
“Do you think he’ll lead them to the babies? He seems far too sophisticated to do that.” Nathan is sitting on the chair next to her, watching her scan the fingerprints into AFIS. “What’s he like?”
“In what way?”
“What does he look like? How did he act? What did he say to you?”
“Didn’t say a word. They say he screams at night but remains silent during questioning. Looks like your next-door neighbor. Listen to what I’m saying – he’s working an angle and messing with everyone.”
“I got a call earlier from someone from Investigations. Chief Inspector Assulin.”
Daphne remains quiet, focusing intently on the work in front of her and hoping that Assulin didn’t say anything about the two forensics investigators who’d turned up to collect samples.
“He wants us to run all the prints through our database, to see if they show up anywhere else, and through the biometric database too. By chance, perhaps, we may stumble over his details.”
“We know he isn’t in the biometric database from all the prints at the scenes.”
“He asked us to check all the same. And the DNA too.”
“Obviously.”
“So you don’t think he’s murdered them? He’s just playing with us all?”
“I mean he is playing with us all but not like that.”
“Why?”
“Why would he kidnap them just to kill them all?”
“Why abduct someone to raise them?”
“Who knows how many girls he killed before Anat Aharon?”
“I think you’re going a little too far now.”
“I’m going to look into it. I have a hunch.”
She can’t tell him anything about the recording she heard in the car. There were more before Anat. More unsolved cases that can be solved now, but she has to find Lee first.
“They’re alive. He’s holding them somewhere. Perhaps there’s more for us to work with and we’re missing it. There must be some way of tracing where he came from.” Daphne hopes Nathan will take the hint.
Nathan goes quiet for a while. “His clothes,” he finally says.
“His clothes?”
“We didn’t examine them at all. They might bear residue. He brought the blood, so he was with the babies. There’s a possibility that he changed into different clothes a second before walking into Messubim station—”
“Should we take his clothes for examination?” Daphne interrupts. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Yes. No. Actually, no. If we do that, he’ll figure out our objective right away, and he won’t lead us to the babies. We need to get it done without his knowledge.”
“How are we going to collect particles from his clothes without going over them with adhesive tape?”
Nathan looks at her intently.
“Perhaps,” Daphne suggests, “we can tell them to beat him until he blacks out and then we can do it.”
“No. That could make him suspicious too, and I don’t need too many fibers for the test. We need to get the particles off him. To shake him, that’s for sure, and to somehow suck up the dust that comes off his clothes.”
“Something that will filter the air in the room…”
“The intake vent! We’ll place one of our filters in the air conditioner’s intake vent. They can rough him up but not beat the crap out of him, and we’ll collect the dust. We can remove the filter when he’s out the room and examine it here.”
“That’s brilliant,” Daphne enthuses. “I think it’ll work. You’re right.”
“Let’s go now. Bring some sterile gauze pads for the air-conditioning vent. I’ll give Assulin a call.”
Daphne goes over to the equipment cupboard and allows herself a secret smile. Rotem was spot on. She takes out a few rolls of strong adhesive tape and listens to Nathan issuing instructions on the phone.
“…you’ll come up with some excuse, we only need a few minutes.
“No, leave his clothes on. Just as they are, yes.
“Exactly, like a carpet beater.
“No, we don’t need saliva and blood.
“No feces either. It’s fine.
“I’m sure you can arrange for those too, but there’s no need. Thanks. Just blows that will give his clothes a good shaking.
“Yes, we’re heading your way now. We’ll be there in an hour and a half or so.”
He turns to Daphne, who is already waiting for him with her mobile kit and a bag with the accessories he requested. “Should we go in two cars, or just mine and then come back here to examine the findings?”
“Of course we’re coming back here. I want to be here for the examination. I’ll leave my car.”
“Let’s get going.”
73.
It’s two in the morning, and Lee’s entire body aches, but she finds something. Nothing of any use to her, but something new, nevertheless. Under the bed, on the underside of the iron frame, she discovers silicone residue. That’s where he must have stuck the key with which he opened the handcuffs three days after being shackled to the bed.
She goes through every inch of the room all over again but still fails to locate any hidden switch to press or handle or hook to pull. She empties all the cupboards, arranges their contents on the floor and checks to see if they contain anything for the thousandth time. Nothing.
How did he get out of the room?
Lee can feel the despair creeping up from her stomach towards her throat and forming a lump that chokes her. Tears lurk behind her eyes. He’s out there in police custody and she’s locked in here with an ever-diminishing supply of food that will soon run out.
She stands up and leans back against the door, trying to scan the room from a different angle. Maybe her brain will pick up on something. She’s exhausted and can barely keep her eyes open. The babies are sleeping soundly in their cribs. She begins playing with the light switch, trying to wake herself up, to refresh her thoughts.
On.
Off.
On.
Off.
The orange-red light that appears and disappears actually soothes her. Her eyelids close.
She’s almost falling asleep standing up when she suddenly hears a buzzing sound. The door opens and she falls backwards onto the floor of the Images Room.
The blow startles her, and for a moment she thinks someone has attacked her. That he’s back. She springs to her feet and looks around for him, but no. She’s alone. After a few more seconds of confusion, she realizes what happened. The door opened on its own. No one opened it. No, she did. The light switch.
She leaves the door open and flicks the light switch on and off again, counting in her head. When she reaches ten, a soft buzzing sound comes from the doorframe.
Sophisticated, but so simple. That’s how he got out. He had an escape route ready. He guessed she would cuff him to the bed, and that’s exactly what she did. He got into her head. But she won’t dwell on it. Now she has to figure out how to get out of there. How the other doors open.
The weariness is suddenly gone. Her eyes are no longer heavy, her body is filled with energy. She peeks into the cribs – they’re all snug in their beds, breathing softly. She gulps down a glass of water over the sink and gets working.
From the Images Room to the X-ray Room. She feels along the underside of the metal surface and retrieves the key. He hasn’t bothered to move it elsewhere. That’s a good sign. The key in the hallway, hidden behind the light fixture, is still waiting there too. Now, she can continue the search that was interrupted eight months ago.
She’s going to find a way out of here.
She walks down the hallway, humming Miri Mesika’s ‘November’.
74.
“Remember the definition of dust?” Nathan asks.
“The thin sediment of the universe that crumbles under the forces of nature. In the words of one of our professors at least.” She tries to recall who said that to her recently. She could have sworn that someone discussed it with her. She does a reality check. She’s awake.
“An interesting definition.”
“Outside, for the most part, it’s soil particles, volcanic eruptions and man-made pollution; in homes, it’s mostly pollen, clothing fibers, skin particles and hair and paper fibers, in addition to the dust from outside that mixes with all of them. Plant pollen can tell us if someone works in an office, for example. And I can’t believe you’re still testing me after two years of working together.”
“And I’ll probably never stop.” Nathan grins and reaches into the transparent evidence bag for the strip of gauze they’d planted in the intake vent. He then applies a strip of clear adhesive tape to the fabric, pressing it down firmly before carefully pulling it back and fixing it to a thin plate of glass.
He places the small glass plate on the tray of the electronic microscope. “Assulin had a word with me when we went out for a cigarette,” he casually remarks.
“About what?” she responds, trying to sound nonchalant as she prepares another sample from the fabric.
“About your visit this morning to the Babysitter.”
“Was he so impressed by my professionalism and well-mannered approach that he couldn’t get me out of his head?”
“The thing that impressed him and that he couldn’t get out his head was the appearance of the young woman who accompanied you and whose telephone number he asked for. When I avoided the subject, he thought I was brushing him off because I didn’t want him messing with my female officers.”
She thought she and Rotem managed to keep their work under the radar. Damn. She tries to figure out a way to control the new situation. Best treat this as a non-issue and hope Nathan won’t take it too hard.
“Ah. That.” She remains completely focused on the fabric, on which particles from the Babysitter’s clothing are mixed up with everything else that had come off the interrogators and was flying around the room.
“I seem to recall a conversation we once had. You told me about some friend outside the police who you wanted to consult about the investigation, and if I’m not mistaken, I told you not to even consider it at all.”
“Ahhh.” Her eyes are still fixed on the screen of the electronic microscope.
“I have a feeling that this friend of yours was with you. Assulin told me you were there for quite some time. Collecting prints and taking cheek swabs takes two minutes.”
Daphne lifts her head from the microscope and looks at Nathan. “Do you really want to know who was there with me?”
“No. It’s better I don’t know.”
“Are you sure?” She keeps looking at him.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet.” His gaze is fixed on her, and she can’t work out if he’s angry or deep in thought. “You’ve had some very interesting insights lately, and I kind of guessed they weren’t all yours.”
“It’s hard to tell if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
“A bit of both. You’re an excellent investigator, but you’re not a psychologist, and you did exactly the opposite of what I asked you to do.” Okay, anger then.
“Okay, look. My friend received special permission to look into the case from the organization where she works. It wasn’t my initiative. We just happen to be friends, and we just happen to be working on the same case, and she received instructions to look into it quietly, in parallel with us, and not to share her involvement with anyone but me. Yes, I know it sounds problematic, but that’s the way it is. And as far as the Babysitter’s concerned,” she continues to speak rapidly so that Nathan can’t respond, “his day-to-day appearance is different from the one he’s presented to us. He showed up hoarse deliberately so as to conceal his true voice. He screamed during the night when he felt his voice returning. The babies and Lee are alive. Before Anat, he was responsible for the deaths of other young women over the past three years. He’s about to do something terrible with the babies and needs to be stopped quickly. He quotes passages from the Bible and New Testament all the time. He sees himself as a prophet of sorts who’s going to change the world. A lunatic through and through, but an intelligent one.”
“And all of that you got from him this morning?”
“She got it from him alone. I waited outside.”
“So you leave a civilian in a room with that psychopath and go wait outside?”
“She’s not a civilian…”
“Forget it. I don’t want to know. You should have told me about it earlier.”
She doesn’t respond. There’s no point in telling him that she wouldn’t have hidden it from him had he not objected to the idea in the first place.
“Okay,” Nathan continues, “we need to bring Investigations up to speed. They’re going to be a little put out by the fact that he chose to share this information with two forensic technicians of all people and not their own officers, but life’s a bitch.”
Daphne turns back to the microscope, relieved that she’s put this issue behind her and can focus back on her work. “It’s not an office. Not enough paper fibers or printer toner dust. I see clothing fibers, mostly his probably, maybe some from Lee and the babies, but they won’t get us anywhere. Carpets or drapes perhaps. We’ll have to check. Hair follicles – head and body. Skin cells. Mostly his probably. No talc or cosmetic powder – just basic bathroom facilities probably. No flour, spices, starch, so no kitchen. A small amount of saliva and blood particles, all his probably. What I do see a lot of are these gray particles. What are they?”
Nathan takes a look too. “They look like cement particles.”
He carefully cuts off a piece of the fabric and places it in a particle analyzer.
“As for your friend, I don’t care who gave her license to work in parallel with us; keep working with her. She seems to be able to do a better job than Investigations has done. But let’s keep it to ourselves.”
“Of course.”
The analyzer spits out a strip of paper and Nathan reaches for it. “Chalk, sand, plaster. They’re cement particles that have come off concrete. He’s in a concrete structure.”
“And judging by the quantity of the particles, he’s there a lot. What is it? A bomb shelter? A basement? Some sort of public building? I’m ruling out a standard safe room because there wouldn’t be enough space for him and his victims.”
“Could be. I’ll send a sample to the Standards Institute. They have a large number of samples from public institutions. Maybe we’ll get lucky, though I’m not counting on it. We can’t rule out a safe room.”
“I’ll pass on samples to Biology so they can check which germs are present. Maybe an interesting culture will jump out at us in three days’ time.”
“Do it.”
“Okay.” She cuts off another piece of fabric and seals it in an evidence bag.
“Daph.”
“Yes?”
