THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller Read Online Free PDF

bright, spitting and smoking like a sparkler. Around their arms. Around their necks and thighs.
    Captain Rubenstein was calling him. “I think you’d better take a look at this.” He pointed toward a video camera set up on a tripod in a corner of the room. “He taped the entire . . . thing,” he added, faltering. “Shall I play it for you?” Rubenstein rewound the tape. It was one of those Japanese models with a mini-screen that popped out to the side. It whirred like a toy.
    “Not now,” said Seiden. “Later. I think I can see what happened.” He turned toward the sliding door. “The suspect scaled the façade of the apartment building and climbed up over the balcony. The curtains were probably drawn at the time and they didn’t see him until he was in the room. By then, of course, it was too late.”
    Seiden walked over toward the balcony and gazed down through the sliding door at the street below, the stores and small apartment buildings just across the way, the tranquil sea . . . the naked woman lying on the broken light blue Fiat. Without turning, he added, “He probably threatened to kill the children, the two boys, unless she killed herself, sacrificed her own life for theirs.” His voice was slow and steady, emotionless. “Eventually she agreed, and slit her own wrists.” He turned and looked at the immolated figures in the chairs. “Then he stripped the children of their clothes and lashed them to the chairs. Once their ankles and wrists were secured, he used what appears to have been a long, sharp knife or razor blade, flaying the skin on their backs into those tiny curved strips.” He shook his head. “Although he was faced the other way, I’m sure the father knew exactly what was happening to his children. Then the suspect pulled out a roll of metal ribbon and trussed the bodies up in silver coils – first the boys, and then the man – wrapping them up like . . . like presents at Hanukkah. He set them on fire, while they were still alive. You can see that from the soot in their throats. They were still breathing when their skin began to burn.”
    Seiden paused for a moment. “Then he took the body of the woman – wrapped in that carpet over there – and tossed her from the balcony onto the car below.” He looked over at Rubenstein. He smiled a flat thin smile. “Well,” he added, “am I right?”
    Rubenstein nodded. He closed the side of the video camera, removed it from its tripod, and dropped it into a large clear plastic bag. “I’m sure you know what this means,” he said.
    Seiden walked over to the man lashed to the chair by the sliding door. Sheer white cotton curtains wafted around his body like the wings of an angel, a shroud newly thrown. They shivered on the breeze. The dead man’s face looked tattooed, a mask of petrified terror. His brown eyes bulged as if the magnesium ribbon – which had been wrapped, again and again, around his neck – had constricted slowly as it burned, strangling him with fire. He had bitten his tongue off at the tip. It hung like some organic growth from his lower lip. His entire body was covered with burns, bright black, like the carapace of some gigantic beetle.
    “Call in the forensics team,” said Seiden. “And have the IDF take the suspect to police headquarters. I’ll have a car pick him up from there.”
    “It’s him, isn’t it?” Rubenstein continued. “Isn’t it, sir?” His voice was filled with awe. “Who else would . . . ” He could not finish. He pointed at the boys. “This is his trademark, isn’t it? This kind of writing with fire. I thought he was dead. That’s what I heard. Killed by a rocket strike in Lebanon three years ago.”
    “Call your men please, Captain.”
    Rubenstein stepped forward and yanked the Arab to his feet. He was still praying. He was still mumbling underneath his breath as the soldiers returned and ushered him away.
    Seiden pulled off his latex gloves, wiped his hands across his trouser