Rafi sat in the head chair, pipe and tobacco set out in front of him, his sad watery eyes scanning the others as they spoke. David sat to his right. Sarah Dorfman perched behind vigorously taking notes.
Dr. Sanders and Professor Haftel had done most of the talking, but the five other specialists had contributed too. Including, David was pleased to note, Dr. Avraham Bar-Lev, who had spoken not with his usual lethargic delivery but with his former clarity and force.
And yet what did it all come to? David wondered as Rafi tried to reconcile and then summarize their views. So much that was obvious, so little that was new: that the killer was almost certainly an Israeli male between twenty and fifty years old; that he had almost certainly served in a military unit where signs of psychological disturbance may have brought him to the attention of a staff psychologist. Possible criminal record, suggested by his expertise in stealing cars, though that was far from clear. The killer knew Jerusalem well, so he either lived here or had done so in the past. A strong possibility that he also knew Tel Aviv.
Such were the objective parameters that could be fed into various computerized data banks, the basic one that held the Israeli national identity list as well as those of the police and the IDF (Israel Defense Force). But as Rafi had pointed out very quietly at the beginning of the conference, he expected such a search would produce between one and two hundred thousand names.
Which left the psychological criteria, not entered into any computer system and thus not useful as a means to screen the citizenry.
"We are dealing here with an entire country of suspects," Dr. Sanders announced. "There're at least a million and a half adult Israeli males. We can give you a feeling of what this man may be like, but we cannot tell you where to find him, or even where to begin to look."
A loner, they all agreed, perhaps even a brooder, but socially adept too, able to inspire confidence, get people to go off with him, lure them to a lonely place. With Ora Goshen and Halil Ghemaiem he had been a man in search of sex, but with Susan Mills and Yaakov Schneiderman he had assumed a more subtle identity which these victims had believed.
Once he killed he owned his victims' bodies, believing he had full permission to "sign" their flesh. Autopsies revealed Susan Mills had been tortured before she'd been killed, but that the others had only been mutilated after death. This change in method struck Dr. Bar-Lev as an important, perhaps even vital clue:
"She was his first victim, so he may have learned from his experience with her that he couldn't bear to hear human screams. Then he decided that in the future he would work only on bodies that were dead. You see, really he's a butcher. The live person doesn't interest him at all. He's less a sadist than a man detached from life. He could be a worker in a slaughterhouse or a mortuary, or an actual butcher in a meat market, or a hunter who likes to skin and cut up game."
Rafi nodded at David-the old man was sharp; he had indicated certain professions and thus places to begin a search. But then the others started in. It was the double marks that interested them, those quick cuts, slash-slash across the cheeks, the lips, the breasts. Stigmata, perhaps, marks of derision or disgrace. A possible religious dimension there, or some form of ritual punishment. Perhaps the killer thought of himself as a sacred executioner who marked his victims so that those who found them would know they had offended God.
That was one line of interpretation; there were others; one could speculate endlessly. One thing, however, was agreed upon by everyone: The message was in the marks.
The shadows grew longer in the conference room. No one bothered to turn on the lights. The table gleamed. The participants became energized. Their faces were etched, half lost in gloom, half illuminated with brilliant light.
"He wants us to know him. He doesn't want his victims confused with those of anybody else."
"He wants the bodies found, his work recognized, his purpose feared."
"Attention. Fame. Notoriety."
"He's a megalomaniac. A kind of terrorist."
"He may not be aware of this self-aspect. Or even of the contempt he shows by the way he dumps them-amid rubble, in a drainage ditch, at a construction site."
"But compulsive, too. The blankets suggest this. Perhaps he has purchased a certain number. Perhaps if we knew how many we would know how many times he intends to kill."
"He may stop suddenly, or go on indefinitely. We have no way of knowing without knowing what his purpose is."
"He strips them to reduce them. Naked they are like dead animals."
"The lack of semen suggests he's impotent. These are sex crimes, certainly, but extremely devious ones by which, most likely, he conceals their sexual content from himself…"
Later David would not recall the exact moment when the idea struck. "Inject the dye and wait for it to circulate," he said. "Then, when it reaches him, hopefully it will stain."
They were all staring at him. He had stood up, had his palms planted on the table.
"The best detective in Israel," Rafi was saying. "So go on, David, tell us what you mean."
He glanced at his father, saw a querying look. "An analogy with the tracer-dye method of the bone-scan radiologists," he said. "Look, it will be extremely difficult to go out and find this man, but listening to you talk I think there may be a way to make him come to us."
"Explain please." It was Dr. Bar-Lev. David nodded to him and went on.
"You all say he wants recognition, that he's sending us some kind of message. So why not attract him by doing in public just what we're doing here? Hold an open forum, give him the opportunity to hear us speculate about what kind of man he really is."
"Would he come?"
"If we make ourselves accessible enough, how, really, could he resist? And even if he doesn't, he can write in for a transcript. We'll publicize that too, print up the text and mail it out on request. Meantime, we'll covertly videotape our audience. If you provoke him enough he may react. At the very least we'll end up with a manageable list of suspects. Anything's better than two hundred thousand names."
They decided to hold it in the auditorium of the Rubin Academy of Music-centrally located, no security gate, yet a perfectly credible place. The "forum" would be held under the auspices of a fictitious ad hoc group they decided to call "The Society for a Better Israel" -a name consistent with those of other wound-healing groups that had sprung up to protest the break-down of civility in Israeli public life.
Stories about the conference were planted in newspapers. A poster was printed and placed in strategic locations around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Jerusalem Post ran a tantalizing article quoting some of the ideas of Professor Haftel. Shimon Sanders, Israel's foremost criminologist, was interviewed on the radio, along with David Bar-Lev, who played a typical no-nonsense cop.
One particular interchange was carefully contrived:
SANDERS: To catch this man you must understand his mind. There is brilliance there, evil perhaps, but brilliance nonetheless.
BAR-LEV: The guy's a savage, that's all I know. An animal. I'm tired of hearing how damn smart he is.
Outside the Rubin Academy, tables were set up. People entering could sign petitions and anyone wanting a free printed transcript had merely to leave his name. Pattern Crimes personnel mingled with the audience, exchanging whispered views with strangers who appeared especially engaged. The videotaping of the speakers was carried out by a single cameraman stationed at the back. Nothing threatening about him-he was shooting over the tops of people's heads. But three unattended cameras were concealed beneath the speakers' table, remotely controlled from a van parked around the corner on Balfour Street. From here, cramped in with three technicians, David and Rafi watched the symposium on a bank of monitors.