No such luck. Nothing drew me to one specific spot or another. It all seemed perfectly bland and innocent. Just ordinary stuff in an ordinary bedroom. No hint of where a hiding place might be. But the gun couldn't be the only thing lurking under the mundane surface of this apartment. There had to be more. My professional instincts were screaming it. I just needed to find it.
I lifted the mattress, but there was nothing beneath it. I removed both paintings from their nails, examined their backs, and hung them again when they proved to be no more than what they seemed. I hauled the bed away from the wall, circled it, and was rewarded with the disappointing sight of the cheap bed frame and nothing else.
Despite going through them earlier, I opened each of the three dresser drawers in turn, checked their undersides, went through every item they contained, and finally looked behind the dresser, gripped by a powerful certainty that I was closing in on a second secret, another clue.
Nothing.
That left the closet. I opened its door and ran my hand through the shirts and skirts and dresses and sweaters. I removed all the clothes and set them on the bare mattress. Then I checked the top of the closet and all the shelves before returning to the clothes and spreading them out on the bed, fingering every inch of fabric.
Nothing.
Swearing under my breath, I returned to the now empty closet. I checked for a false bottom, like the one I'd installed in my closet in Tel Aviv, but there was none. Only one place left to look. It had to be there, whatever it was. Whatever else Moria had hidden. Something that would explain things. Or raise new questions.
Gripping the closet in a wide hug, I heaved. The wooden legs scraped shrilly across the floor as the heavy furniture surrendered to my pull, and I wondered what Daniel and Lillian were thinking of all the noise I was making. Maybe they thought I was not all there. Maybe they regretted inviting me into their home. I couldn't blame them if they did. With all the furniture I'd dragged, yanked, and lugged over the past hour or so, it must have sounded like I was tearing this place apart brick by brick.
I pulled until I'd gotten the closet a foot and a half from its original position. My side was hurting again, but I paid it no mind. With soaring eagerness, I peered at the now exposed back of the closet and the wall it had shielded.
The sight that greeted me comprised a blank wall and empty floor tiles. No cavities in the wall. Nothing nailed to the back of the closet. Just what you'd expect to find behind every closet in every apartment—nothing at all—but I had been expecting... something.
For a moment, I just stood there, frowning in disbelief. I'd been so sure that Moria's apartment would yield another unexpected clue that I found myself unconsciously reaching for my pocket to make sure the gun was really there, that I hadn't imagined finding it.
The cool metal against my fingertips alleviated my doubts but not my disappointment. I gazed around me again, but I had looked everywhere. This apartment had surrendered its treasure. It had no more to give.
I plodded into the living room, plopped onto the sofa, and scrubbed my hands over my face. A fierce tiredness had settled upon me, pressing down on my head and shoulders. Had the mysterious visitor taken whatever else there was to find? Or were my instincts mistaken? Perhaps my judgment was impaired. Just like it had been on the night of the demonstration when I'd mindlessly clashed with police officers outside the Knesset, which was how I got myself involved in this case to begin with.
With an acute sense of defeat, I leaned back, raising my eyes to the corner of the ceiling, where that spiderweb of cracks reigned. What had gone through Moria's mind when she'd looked upon these cracks? Did they mirror the fissures that had spread through her life, finally shattering her will to live?
I remained there for a good few minutes, the heat of my exertion deserting my body and the cold of the apartment beginning to seep through my skin.
Then the apartment door handle rattled, followed by a knock. Daniel was on the other side, a mop in one hand, a bucket in the other. He wore a sheepish expression.
"I figured since you're here, I might as well wash off the mud I left."
He came inside, set the bucket in the middle of the living room, and began cleaning.
"Find anything?" he said, moving the mop back and forth.
"No," I said bitterly. "Sorry if I made too much noise."
"Don't worry about it. You do what you need to do."
He finished cleaning all the mud, moved to the doorway to Moria's bedroom, and touched the cratered wood where his fist had landed. He made a face. "I'll need to get this fixed before another tenant moves in. Is it true that Moria's father is keeping the apartment?"
"Just like you heard, till the end of next month. After that..." I shrugged.
"So I have a little time," he said, touching the wood again.
"Know of any cheap hotels in the area?" I asked, and he thought for a moment before giving me a name and an address.
"It's pretty basic," he warned. "Not that I ever stayed there, mind you, but that's what I heard."
"I'll check it out. Thank you."
He emptied the bucket in the tub, picked up his mop, turned to leave, but then stopped and asked, "You think this man, the one Lillian saw, you think he and Moria were really lovers?"
"It seems likely."
"You think he's the reason she killed herself?"
I considered the clandestine nature of their trysts and the contents of Moria's note and gave a noncommittal shrug. "I don't know, but I suppose it's possible. She wouldn't be the first woman to kill herself over a broken heart or something of that nature."
Daniel nodded a couple of times, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. "That son of a bitch," he said.
"Let's not jump to conclusions, all right? Like I said, I don't know if this man, whoever he is, had anything to do with the suicide."
He nodded again, and we shook hands. He asked that I let him and Lillian know of any development in the investigation, and I said I would, though I had no intention to.
I returned all the furniture to its place. Then, figuring other neighbors might prove as fruitful as the Shukruns, I knocked on the other doors in the building. Moria's fellow third-floor tenant was old, half blind, and more than half deaf, judging by how loudly he asked me to raise my voice. Predictably, he had seen and heard nothing useful.
No one answered the door of the apartment that shared the second floor with the Shukruns'. On the ground floor, the first door I knocked on was answered by a man who proclaimed that Moria had committed a grave sin by taking her own life. Other than that, she'd always seemed nice. In the second apartment lived a woman who said Moria had always been polite but reserved. She respected her greatly for her work as a pediatric nurse.
"My nephew was hospitalized in her ward," she said. "My sister told me she was the best nurse of the lot."
She knew little of Moria's life. If I wanted to learn more, she suggested in a somewhat malicious tone, I should talk to the second-floor neighbor, Lillian Shukrun. "She's the sort of woman who likes to know everything, always watching, always sticking her nose in other people's business."
I did not tell her that I'd already talked to Lillian and liked her quite a bit.
Overall, my second search of Moria's apartment and talking to her neighbors had both ended in abject failure. But I was nowhere near done. I was now more determined than ever to unravel the mystery of Moria's death. To discover the identity of the person in her note. To, perhaps, grant her a measure of justice.
