"What about the other bit, what she regrets doing?"

"I don't know that either. There's a whole lot I don't know. That's why you're here."

I lowered the note and looked at him. He appeared to have aged ten years in the space of a minute. Grief can do that to a man. Sometimes, it can kill him too. Often this doesn't happen all at once. Rather, the sorrow worms its way into your marrow and drains the life out of your body drop by drop until nothing is left. It was possible that Gafni was in the grip of such a process and that he sensed on some level that it was happening.

He said, "My daughter and I weren't on the best of terms. In fact, we hardly had contact with each other these past few years."

"Why?"

"That doesn't matter."

"It doesn't? You're sure about that?"

"Yes, I am," he said, stressing each word.

I dropped the matter. There are ways of making a man talk when he's not inclined to, but I was pretty certain none of them would work. And I still needed to tread carefully around Gafni.

I said, "What is it you want me to do, Mr. Gafni?"

"You read the note. What do you make of it?"

"It's deliberately vague, which is strange. Moria could have named the person, but she chose not to."

"Why do you think she did that?"

"Impossible to say. Perhaps the police can find out."

"The police don't get involved unless a crime has been committed."

"I'm sure they'll make an exception if you ask them."

"Perhaps, but I don't think that would be appropriate." He paused and cleared his throat, struck by the absurdity of his statement. I was living proof that he was quite willing to ask the police to bend the rules when it suited him. He made a vague motion with his hand. "The police have enough on their plate as it is. Protecting the Knesset, for example."

I ignored the barb, recognizing it for what it was: a reflexive jab by a man unaccustomed to being on the defensive. I had no doubt he could have mustered the resources of the police to dig into his daughter's life, to, perhaps, decipher the meaning of her suicide note. The fact that he had decided not to, that he'd opted to engage a private detective instead, spoke volumes.

I looked him right in the eye and let him have it like a kick to the heart. "Maybe Moria was referring to you."

"No!" Gafni slammed a fist on his desk, making a pen jump. He shook his head resolutely, as though to emphasize his assertion. "No, I don't believe that for a second."

But he clearly did, and for quite a bit longer than a second. And the possibility, however much he wished to discount it, had been burrowing ever deeper into the nethermost regions of his mind, likely infecting his dreams and his waking thoughts as well. Perhaps that explained the heavy bags under his eyes, the haunted look within them. I could empathize. I was well acquainted with nightmares.

This was likely the reason he refused to tell me what had torn him and his daughter apart. Whatever the secret was, he couldn't rule out the possibility that it had ended up pushing his daughter to suicide. A man could go crazy doing battle with such thoughts.

"My daughter didn't kill herself because of me," Gafni said firmly. "Why would she? Last time I saw her was over three years ago."

I thought of my own daughters. How much I missed them. How their absence was a gaping wound at the center of my soul. If they were alive today, I could not imagine anything that would keep me from seeing them for three whole years. Yet Gafni, who did not strike me as a man who'd let anything stand in his way, admitted to just that.

"I did my best to improve our relationship," he said, speaking quickly and disjointedly. "I wrote to her, bought her things, helped as much as I could... I spent a lot of money, Mr. Lapid. A lot of money. More than she... The couple of times we spoke on the phone, I tried to arrange a meeting, but she wouldn't let me near. No matter how much I begged her, no matter how much I spent, she..." He paused, out of breath, a man trying vainly to cast off his mantle of guilt. "That note—I can't get it out of my head. Whenever I close my eyes, I see those three lines shining in lurid red and yellow. I need to know what that note means. I need to know why Moria wrote it. I need to know why she killed herself." His voice was rough with anger now, the raw kind an injured animal might feel. He growled the next words. "I need to know who made her do it."

"And if you know, what then? What will you do?"

He didn't answer right away. He collected himself by smoothing down his jacket lapel and lacing his fingers. "I don't know. Sometimes, most of the time, I just want to know what happened."

"And other times?"

"Other times," he said simply, "I think I'd like to kill him."

The second option was what worried me, as did the casual tone in which he'd voiced it. But at least he didn't lie to me. That made it better. It meant there was a smaller chance he'd actually go through with it. At least, that was what I told myself.

He said, "You asked me before what I want you to do. Well, now you know. I want you to find out why Moria killed herself, and I want to know the identity of the man in the note."

And if you end up killing him, I thought, I will bear part of the blame. Then again, if this mysterious man was responsible for the death of Moria Gafni, he deserved to be punished. He... a sudden thought hit me.

"If it's a man at all," I murmured.

"What was that?"

"I was just thinking that it might be a woman. Moria's note doesn't make it clear either way."

Gafni's brow furrowed. "I just assumed—"

"I did too. But maybe we were both wrong."

"I don't see that it matters, do you?"

His expression was neutral, as was his tone, and I felt a shiver slither its way up my spine. It was one thing to contemplate killing a man; it was quite another to do the same to a woman. At least, it was that way to me. If Gafni was of a different persuasion, he might be more inclined to violence than I wished to believe.

I did not relish the role of his bloodhound, but what choice did I have? If I turned Gafni down, I would likely find myself at the nonexistent mercy of Inspector Kulaski. Furthermore, as the father of dead daughters, I related to Gafni's pain. Their estrangement notwithstanding, he obviously still cared deeply for his daughter. The questions surrounding her death were a constant torment and would remain so as long as they went unanswered. And besides, the content of Moria's suicide note both intrigued and troubled me. I was curious to learn the truth hidden behind her opaque message, and I feared that truth might prove even more terrible than Moria's early death. The possibility that Gafni might try to avenge his daughter worried me, but I figured I could deal with it later, when—if—I got to the bottom of all this.

So I would take on this assignment. But before I did, there was one thing I needed to say: "Are you sure you want me to do this, Mr. Gafni?"

His cheeks bunched as he pressed his lips. "Do I look like a man who's in the habit of second-guessing himself?"

"Not in the slightest. But there's something I want you to consider. If I go digging into Moria's life, I might uncover things that would stain the image you have of her. Things you would in retrospect prefer never to have known. Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Yes," he said. The word was unequivocal, but a twitching muscle near his right eye betrayed his fear. "Whatever it is, it would be better than not knowing."

Words he might live to regret, I thought, but I accepted them with a nod. "All right," I said. "Now tell me what you can about Moria."

He shifted awkwardly, likely because he didn't know as much as a father should. Just the basic, general facts. Her address, her birthday, that she'd moved to Jerusalem in December 1946. That she'd never been married and had lived alone. That she'd worked as a nurse. He didn't know any of her friends.

"They weren't at the funeral?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I wanted the funeral to be small and private."

Of course he did. A daughter's suicide brought shame and embarrassment, precisely what Gafni wished to avoid. That was why I was sitting here in his office.

I asked about his family, and he said Moria had been his only child. Her mother had died some years ago. He hadn't remarried.