The two men were both Bulgarian Jews, recent arrivals in Israel, and their Hebrew was heavily accented and rudimentary. But we managed to communicate, and one of them, the one who spoke better, told me Davidson had gone home a few hours ago. "He be back—I not know, tomorrow in the morning, maybe?"
I told them I'd come by tomorrow and they both nodded as if they didn't care, which they probably didn't. They didn't ask who I was or why I was looking for their boss.
By now it was around seven and my stomach was sending me signals. I walked east and by seven thirty was at my regular table at Greta's, a melted cheese sandwich, a steaming cup of coffee, and my chessboard before me.
I stayed at my table for the next two and a half hours, had two more cups of coffee and a soda, and ate a second sandwich. I played one game after another, striving to clear my mind of all I'd learned over the past two days, of the possibilities that new knowledge aroused, of the case in its entirety. It worked only partly—I enjoyed brief snatches of mental liberty, in which my mind became joyously free of Esther and Willie and Henrietta and all the people I'd met and talked to during this investigation. But my mind never stayed liberated for long. It seemed intent on submerging itself in the swamp of details and facts that I'd learned, and in the questions and suppositions that those facts and details gave birth to.
What I really wanted, I realized, was to talk about the case, to voice my thoughts and see how another person reacted to them. So I remained at my table until I was the sole remaining customer in the café, until Greta had locked the door and flipped over the open/closed sign, until she'd flicked off half the lights and came over to my table.
She dropped onto a chair with a sigh. "Long day. My feet are killing me."
"You should soak them in hot water. Give me a minute; I'll hop to the kitchen and fill up a bowl."
When I returned with a large stirring bowl, she removed her shoes and socks and gingerly slipped her feet into the water. A smile spread slowly on her lips.
"That feels good. Now why didn't I think of it myself?"
"That's why you keep me around, to solve problems for you."
Her smile widened. "And you do a fine job, I must say. Even if you do eat me out of house and home." Her face turned serious. "You look tired. Sleeping okay?"
"As usual. It's not lack of sleep that's the problem; it's this case I'm working on." I told her about Henrietta Ackerland and how a hopeless missing person case morphed into an equally hopeless double murder investigation. I related to her the various steps I'd taken and described the people I'd met and the conversations I'd held with them over the past few days. I listed the things I'd learned and the open questions that had cropped up. I told her about Alon Davidson. Greta listened in silence, her wise eyes focused on my face, full of compassion and sorrow.
"The thing is," I said, "Davidson is the only good lead I have. He was Esther's lover and he hid this fact from the police. It's more than enough to make him a suspect. But until I talk to him, I won't have a sense of whether I like him for the murders, and a part of me doesn't relish the prospect of meeting him at all."
"Why not?" Greta asked.
"Because if he turns out to be innocent, or if I'm unable to reach a certain conclusion as to his guilt, I'll be left with close to nothing. No real leads. No suspects. No way to catch this killer. And I want to catch him pretty badly."
"You in a hurry?"
I nodded. "I can't take forever on this case, because I owe it to my client to tell her the truth about her son. She needs to start mourning if she's ever to rebuild her life. You think I did the right thing by not telling her?"
She pursed her lips. "Your heart was in the right place. But I'm not sure catching the killer will provide her with as much comfort as you may suppose."
She said, "But it's not just the sense of time running out that's bothering you, is it?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"A couple of things. One is the feeling that I'm too late, that too much time has passed, that no matter how hard I work this case, how long I stay with it, or how many people I talk to, I will fail to uncover the killer. I fear the information that could have solved this case is gone along with the people who held it, or that it's buried under ten years of more recent memories, or simply distorted the way old memories often are. The second thing that's weighing on me is that for all my efforts, I'm not sure I'm any closer to knowing who Esther Grunewald really was. I'm learning new things about her, some good and some bad, but who she really was still eludes me. It feels as if her true self is just around some nearby corner, but I don't know where that corner is, so I can't turn it." I sighed, running both hands over my tired face. "Am I making any sense?"
