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relive the rape.
    He couldn’t do that to Adi. He wasn’t willing to have her go through such an ordeal, to have so many people examining her, documenting her reactions in minute detail. And later some slimy defense attorney would start grilling her about why she hesitated for a second or two before pointing to the rapist. He’d seen it in the movies, how they use any dirty trick to cast doubt on the victim’s testimony. He couldn’t allow that.
    He wanted her to walk into the lineup and point directly at her attacker. No hesitation, no stress. In and out in one minute. And then it would all be over. At last, it would all be over.

Chapter 5
    INSPECTOR Eli Nachum hated reporters. Especially crime reporters. And most especially assholes like Amit Giladi. If it were up to him, he’d have nothing to do with him. But it had been a month since the rape in the old north, and the investigation was going nowhere. After making headlines for a couple of days, it had soon disappeared from the pages of the national press. But the local paper kept at it. Week after week they printed a story decrying the lack of an arrest, the ineptitude of the police force, his own incompetence as the lead detective. In his opinion, the whole crusade was nothing but yellow journalism, a sleazy way to sell papers. But it was stressing out the higher-ups, and when they were stressed out, they leaned on him.
    So he’d had no choice but to give in to the district spokesman’s demand that he meet with Giladi. He was forced to sit opposite him for an hour, put up with his insolent questions, and do his best to convince him that although it might seem otherwise to the public, they were making progress and working the case every minute of every day. What’d the asshole know, anyway? He was just a kid, barely over twenty—a kid pretending to be a man. He sat there looking serious, waving his pen around like a sword, patronizing him. He wouldn’t last more than five minutes as a cop, that idiot.
    Nachum watched Giladi walk away down the corridor, and he went back to his desk, drained. They’d moved here only three years ago as part of a general face-lift for the police force. They were now in the heart of the Tel Aviv high-tech area. He preferred the old station house, the shabby, dilapidated building that was there even before the state was declared. Every one of its rooms reeked of history. He missed the small diners, where the food was so spicy it sharpened his mind. Here everything was modernized, computerized, sanitized, with plasma screens everywhere, and instead of real food, they ate sushi. The police force was trying to be something it wasn’t.
    He didn’t think the reporter had bought his story. People thought that if they didn’t make an arrest within twenty-four hours, they’d bungled the case. They didn’t know what they were up against, how complicated their job was. They expect it to be like the movies where it’s all tied up with a bow in just ninety minutes.
    He’d been honest with Giladi about one thing, at least. Ever since he’d caught the case, it had occupied all his time and was never out of his mind. It had been that way from the very beginning.
    He’d shown up at the hospital within minutes after getting the call. The right side of Adi’s face was covered in bruises from being dragged on the ground, she had a cut on her chin that needed stitches, and her eyes were swollen from crying. She sat there hunched up, withdrawn, chewing on her hair like a little girl. It was hard to get the facts from her. Mostly, she just responded to his questions by nodding her head or shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t want to be there. That was one of the few things she actually said. But when her parents turned up on Saturday night, worried that she hadn’t answered her phone all weekend, and found out what had happened, they’d talked her into going to the hospital and reporting the rape. It had taken them half the night to convince