The Missing File Page 25

  “Can you give me the names of your friends and tell me where you met up?”

  She was still hesitant. Was she unsure of exactly what her husband had said? Or perhaps she wanted to believe that the investigator’s dramatic exit from the room and his return two hours later was just an interrogation ploy.

  “Remember what I asked of you, Hannah?” he said. “We know everything now, and if there is something we aren’t yet aware of, we’ll find out easily enough. I want the names of the friends you met with and the café where you spent the evening.”

  “Somewhere in the center of town,” she blurted out. “I don’t remember the name.”

  “Okay. According to your husband’s confession, he returned home alone at ten thirty because he felt unwell, and you stayed behind with your friends. We don’t believe this.”

  The entire investigation team was of the same opinion—the parents had coordinated their stories. But he noticed a hint of surprise in her eyes, and she seemed to be struggling to decipher his intentions. What had surprised her? Was it possible that they weren’t in sync and that Rafael Sharabi had made a statement that exonerated his wife without her knowledge? Avraham was never able to clarify that particular detail.

  “It’s true,” she whispered. “That’s what happened.”

  “That’s not what you told us in your previous statements,” Avraham said. “You both told us you returned home together. And we can easily verify it. You realize that, don’t you? We’ll bring your friends in for questioning and find out.”

  “Rafael wasn’t feeling well and needed to go to bed early because of work. I wanted to stay longer.”

  Without either of them saying it, this was the first moment when they both acknowledged that Ofer wasn’t missing. That he never went missing. Ofer hadn’t run away from home, he wasn’t in Rio de Janeiro, he wasn’t in Koper, and he wasn’t in Tel Aviv. The story she had told him, and which he had told himself over the past three weeks, lost its steam. And Avraham didn’t want to hear the story he was forcing her to tell him now.

  “Can I see my husband?” she asked, and he said, “Not yet. You may be able to see each other later.”

  The thing he failed to understand at that point in the interrogation was that Hannah Sharabi hadn’t cracked. To the contrary. She may have changed her story and stuck to almost every detail of her husband’s confession, yet she still refused to divulge anything he didn’t already know. He could press her and try to “root out the truth,” as Shrapstein had demanded, or he could allow her to tell her story—at least for now, as Ilana had said.

  “So tell me,” he continued. “How long after your husband did you get home?”

  “How long?”

  “How much time passed between the moment your husband went home and you came back to the apartment?”

  “I don’t know exactly how long. Maybe an hour.”

  “And how did you get there? Do you recall?”

  “Get where?”

  “How did you get home? On foot? By taxi? Did your friends drive you home?”

  “I walked,” she replied, and he said, “And as I understand it, when you came home Ofer was already dead.”

  They were both startled by how suddenly and how directly he said it. He was even more surprised than her. He had heard it two hours earlier but only at that moment did the full impact of the truth hit him.

  Ofer was already dead.

  Was he trying to take it back, say something that would take the certainty of that question away, when he quickly repeated it using different words, ones that could imply that Ofer was still alive? He asked, “Where was Ofer when you got home?” and she said, “In his room.” He saw her face tightening again.

  That was not what Rafael Sharabi said in his confession. Avraham felt a surge of rage, and tried to contain it. He wanted her to tell the truth. And at the same time he didn’t. Ilana had instructed him not to press her too hard, not at this stage. “It’s enough that she corroborates his story, even if it is not an exact match,” she had said.

  “Your husband said something different,” he said, and Hannah Sharabi replied, “That’s how I remember it.”

  “So try to reconstruct it. Do you remember opening the door to the building? Did you open it, or did you use the intercom to call your husband, who then let you in?”

  “I came in by myself,” she lied, and he thought back to that Friday, two days after she had reported Ofer missing, and about how he had waited outside the entrance to the building. He had tried the intercom and got no reply. A neighbor let him in, and he caught her just after her shower. They drank coffee at the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. She asked if there was anything new in the investigation. All that time she knew what had happened to Ofer.

  “How did you open your apartment door? Did you also open that door yourself?” he asked, and she said, “Yes.” The apartment opened up for him too—in his memory. The living room on the left. The dining room and the kitchen on the right. Across from the entrance—a narrow doorway to the passage that led to the bedrooms. Ofer’s room was at the far end.

  “You entered the apartment and then what did you see?” he asked, and she said, “Nothing.”

  “Was the apartment lit? Was it dark? What did you see?”

  “A light was on. There was no one there. It was quiet.” The television was not on and no one sat on the sofas in the living room. The kitchen cupboards and the dining table and the walls were silent too. The light was weak. But that’s not how it happened.

  “Where was your husband?”

  “In the bathroom.” She saw a light through the small glass pane in the bathroom door. Some noise came from there, maybe the water flowing. But that’s not how it happened.

  “So what did you do inside the apartment? Describe it to me. What was the first thing that you did? Where did you go?”

  “I knocked on the bathroom door and asked Rafael how he was feeling.”

  “And then? Did he stay in the bathroom? Did you find Ofer by yourself?”

  “No, Rafael came out. He had vomited.” The bathroom door opened and she saw her husband. Could she tell right away from the look on his face that something was wrong? But that’s not how it happened. She had been in the apartment with him, the whole time. Avraham had no doubt at all.

  They both went silent.

  He could still stop the interrogation, leave the room, and ask Ilana to take over.

  “How did you discover Ofer?” he asked.

  “Rafael told me something happened to Ofer. He took me to his room,” she said.

  “You’re sure that Ofer was in his room?”

  “Yes. He was lying on the floor.”

  “Was he bleeding?”

  “No. There was no blood. He was lying on the floor, and there was no blood at all.”

  He could have stopped there. Ilana had authorized him to do so. The fact that there was a disparity between the two versions of events with regard to the room in which Ofer had been found was of no significance at this stage in the investigation. But he could no longer suppress the rage building up inside him over the lies she had told for the past three weeks. Only later that night, when writing up the summary report of the investigation, did he understand what it was that he wanted her to tell him, and why she had refused to tell him that, even with all the facts laid out before them.

  “According to your husband’s confession, Ofer was not in his room,” he insisted, and she said again, “That’s how I remember it.”

  “Your husband said he was in Danit’s room.”

  It was the only room in the apartment he hadn’t gone into, hadn’t even considered entering, and it had always remained shut when he was there. That’s why he could not open its door in his imagination, either.

  “When I arrived, he was in his room.” There was no
hesitation in her voice. Only hatred.

  “Hannah, do you know what Ofer was doing in Danit’s room?” he asked, and she answered quietly, “He wasn’t there, I told you.”

  “That’s not what your husband said.”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were shielded from him.

  “Was that the first time you found Ofer in Danit’s room?”

  She wouldn’t have answered, even if he had asked a thousand times. He should have stopped asking.

  “Hannah, I’m asking you if that was the first time you found Ofer there.”

  She didn’t hear his questions anymore.

  At the tips of his fingers he felt that he was about to pounce on her, like before. “Don’t you realize I’m going to ask you the same question over and over and over again until you answer me?” he yelled. “Tell me how long it had been going on for. How many times did Ofer hurt Danit? When did he start abusing her?”

  He didn’t want to know, so why did he not relent?

  “Don’t you understand that you have to talk to me if you want to help your children? You have a daughter that needs looking after.”

  Now she heard him and she turned her face toward him. With contempt. She said, “Don’t tell me how to look after my children. I would never hurt my children—no matter who asks me to do it,” and he said, “Your husband told us that he returned home and found Ofer in Danit’s room. Ofer didn’t hear him come in. You know what he was doing in her room, don’t you?”

  Also later, that night, when he watched the recording of the interrogation in his office and prepared to write up the report, he was unable to read his own face for a sign of what he had wanted her to say.

  “Don’t tell me how to look after my children. I won’t let anyone hurt them,” she repeated.

  The recording was coming to an end. And the investigation too. Perhaps by the following day he wouldn’t recall a thing from the past three weeks. Their exchanges became rapid and urgent.

  “What did your husband tell you?”

  “He didn’t say anything. There was a fight between him and Ofer.”

  “And what was the fight about?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “And you expect me to believe that you didn’t ask?”

  “I don’t expect anything. Would it help Ofer if I asked?”

  “And then what happened?”

  “When?”

  “When your husband and Ofer fought. What happened during the fight?”

  “Rafael pushed him against the wall and Ofer hit his head and fell. It was an accident. It was in Ofer’s room.”

  “And how did you react to what he told you?”

  “How do you think I reacted to it?”

  The video showed him about to lose his nerve.

  “I don’t know how you reacted. I’m looking at you sitting here now, lying to me, and I don’t know. You haven’t stopped lying to me. For three weeks now, you haven’t said a single truthful word about your son. I’m struggling to understand just what kind of a mother you are. I’m asking you to tell me how your son died, and you aren’t able to. I’m asking you to look at him, to look at your son—and you aren’t capable of doing that, even now that he is dead.”

  She didn’t respond.

  And he finally relented.

  “So what did you do?” he asked, drained of all strength, and she muttered, “What could I do?”

  “What did you do with Ofer when you found him dead in Danit’s room? Or in his, whichever you like.”

  “What did I do? I hugged him. That’s it. What else was there to do?”

  Shrapstein wanted “five minutes with the mother” to root out of her whatever needed to be rooted out. “There’s no way she wasn’t home at the time. I don’t buy that story about her returning home after him,” he said. They all knew he was right.

  Ilana was hesitant and asked Avraham for his thoughts on the matter. He said, “Do whatever you think is right, Ilana. It makes no difference to me.”

  She decided to suspend the interrogations. “Let’s give them a few hours, or days, to digest it all,” she said. “They haven’t been lying only to us all this time; they’ve been lying to themselves too. It’ll be easier for them to talk in a few days. And even if we are right and the mother was there, I’m not sure what to do with that. I’m not certain it would add anything to our case if we recommend pressing charges against her.”

  Shrapstein objected. “She’s no less guilty than her husband, and she played a more active role in concealing it,” he said, but Ilana was adamant. “The final decision will come from the state prosecutor,” she said, summing up the discussion.

  At 4:00 p.m. a representative from welfare services showed up. Just as Avraham was beginning to update her on the case, Ilana entered his office without knocking. The two women knew each other and Ilana addressed her as Etti. She was in her fifties and her hair was graying, just like Ilana’s.

  “Both parents will remain in custody, so something has to be done about the children,” he said. “It appears that the sister, who has a handicap, was assaulted.”

  “By whom?” Etti asked.

  He was slow to answer and Ilana spoke in his stead. “By her brother, the boy who was killed,” she said. “It appears the father caught him in the act and a violent struggle broke out between them.”

  Avraham hadn’t had a cigarette in hours.

  Etti asked if the children had any other family, and Ilana replied, “A grandfather and grandmother,” and he interjected, “The daughter and mother are very close. I don’t think the mother will willingly let anyone but herself look after the girl.” That morning, through the window of the same police car he was about to use to bring the mother in for questioning, he had seen them waiting together on the sidewalk for Danit’s ride to school. Hannah Sharabi hadn’t let go of her daughter’s hand for even a moment.

  “And will the mother be remaining in custody too?” the social worker asked.

  “Yes, at least overnight,” Ilana replied.

  “Was she involved in what happened to her son?”

  “We don’t know yet to what extent,” Ilana said. “She was certainly involved in concealing the matter. They’ve given statements that exonerate her, hoping, probably, that she’ll be able to stay with the children.”

  The door opened and Ma’alul informed them that Danit had arrived at the station.

  Ilana and Etti hurried out of the office. Avraham didn’t know if he should go with them. He stopped at the doorway. A young woman, presumably a staff member from the school Danit attended, was escorting the tall teenager. Danit allowed the young woman to lead her through the reception area, among the policemen, who froze in their tracks. Her steps were small and cautious.

  Ilana asked for the conference room to be vacated and Avraham then watched as she entered the interrogation room in which Hannah Sharabi was waiting, emerged with the mother, and escorted her to the room into which her daughter had been taken. Ilana remained outside, closing the door behind the mother. Through the closed door and the walls, he heard Hannah Sharabi break down into bitter tears for the first time.

  Thirty minutes later, Etti and the young woman escorted Danit out of the station. He didn’t know where they were going.

  It was around 11:00 p.m. when Avraham finally found the time to sit down and write the summary report for the remand hearing. He took hold of the blue pen, and within seconds his fingers were stained with ink—just like always. Aside from himself and Shrapstein, there was almost no one at the station. Ilana had gone home earlier in the evening. Ma’alul too.

  The first words were easy to write. He summarized the circumstances of opening the case. But he soon reached the point at which he needed to describe the interrogation that had started that morning and found he was stuck. He went into Shrapstein’s room and said,
“I think it’s going to take me a while,” and Shrapstein asked, “Then maybe I’ll go home and take a look at it in the morning?”

  There was no reason for him not to.

  The nights were still pleasant, not too humid. The lights from the mall, the municipal library, and the museum instilled life in the dark. Avraham smoked one last cigarette. The building on Histadrut Street wasn’t visible from the station, although it was close by. It lay hidden behind the sandy lots, between other apartment buildings where all the windows and shutters were already closed. They would open again in the morning.

  Avraham returned to his office.

  He was supposed to describe in dry, simple sentences how Rafael Sharabi arrived home early and found Ofer in his sister’s room. He had to describe how the father lost his self-control, pulled the boy off his sister, hit him, and slammed him against the wall; how Ofer’s head smashed against the wall and how he fell, lifeless, to the floor. He was supposed to write that, a few hours later, the father folded his son’s body into a large suitcase, and that in the early hours of the morning, he dragged the suitcase down the dark stairs of the building and put it into the trunk of his car. According to his confession, his wife wanted to inform the police right away, but he warned her not to do so. He forced her to go to the station the following day and report their son missing. She didn’t want to do it, but she feared her husband. The father covered up what he had done out of fear of his expected punishment, and also because he feared for the fate of his family without him. He was supposed to describe how, the following night, more than twelve hours after the cargo ship he was on left Ashdod Port, Rafael Sharabi threw the suitcase containing the body of his son overboard far out at sea. Far away from any shore. And that when he returned to Israel, his wife again pleaded with him to tell the police what happened, but he insisted they say nothing about it. They realized later that Ofer’s bag had been forgotten in his room, and the father stuffed a few books inside and threw it into the Dumpster. He was supposed to write that the search for Ofer out at sea would continue in keeping with financial considerations, unless the suitcase with his body washed up onshore beforehand.