Read Online The Butcher's Theatre by Jonathan Kellerman - Free Book Online Page B

walking toward the guard post just inside the Dung Gate, to his back the peaceful southern valley that had served as ancient Jerusalem’s refuse dump. He passed the guards, walked under the graceful, scalloped arch, and stepped into the flow of people headed toward HaKotel Hama’aravi—the Western Wall.
    The skies were a canopy of spring blue, cloudless and pure as only Jerusalem skies could be, so free from blemish that staring up at them could cause one to lose perspective. A cool, serene blue that belied the blanket of heat that had
    descended upon the city. By the time he reached the Wall, he was sticky with sweat.
    The prayer plaza fronting the Kotel was uncrowded, the women’s section occupied by only a few hunched figures in dark clothing—righteous grandmothers praying on behalf of barren women, scrawling messages to the Almighty on scraps of paper and slipping them in the cracks between the stones. It was late, nearing the end of the shaharit period and the last of the Yemenite minyanim had ended, though he did see Mori Zadok reciting psalms. He stood facing the Wall, a tiny, white-bearded, earlocked wisp, rocking back and forth in a slow cadence, one hand over his eyes, the other touching the golden stone. Other elders—Yemenite, Ashkenazi, Sephardi—had taken their customary places of meditation in the shadow of the Wall; their solitary devotions merged in a low moan of entreaty that reverberated through the plaza.
    Daniel joined the only minyan still forming, a mixed quorum of Lubavitcher Hassidim and American Jewish tourists whom the Lubavitchers had corralled into praying. The tourists carried expensive cameras and wore brightly colored polo shirts, Bermuda shorts, and paper kipot that rested upon their heads with the awkwardness of a foreign headdress. Affixed to some of their shirts were tour group identification labels (Hi! im barry siegel), and most seemed baffled as the Hassidim wound phylactery straps around their arms.
    Daniel’s own phylacteries lay in the smaller of the velvet bags, his tallit in the larger. On a typical morning he’d recite the benediction over the tallit and wrap himself in the woolen prayer shawl, then draw out the phylacteries and unwrap them. Following a second benediction, the black cube of the arm phylactery would be placed on his bicep, its straps wound seven times around his forearm, over the scar tissue that sheathed his left hand, and laced around his fingers. After uttering yet another braha, he would center the head phylactery over his brow, just above the hairline. The placement of the cubes symbolized commitment of both mind and body to God, and thus consecrated, he would be ready to worship.
    But this morning was different. Laying the bags down on a chair, he pulled the drawstring of the larger and drew out not the tallit but a siddur bound in silver. Taking up the
    prayer book, he turned to the Modeh Ani, the Prayer of Thanks Upon Rising, which Laufer’s call had prevented him from reciting at bedside. Facing the Kotel, he chanted:
    Modeh ani lefaneha, melekh hai v’kayam,
    “I offer thanks to Thee, O Everlasting King,”
    Sheh hehezarta bi nishmati b’hemla.
    “Who hast mercifully restored my soul within me.”
    To the Hassidim and tourists standing near him, the prayers of the small dark man seemed impassioned; his rhythmic cantillation, timeless and true. But he knew otherwise. For his devotion was encumbered by faulty concentration, his words baffled by an unwelcome hailstorm of memories. Of other souls. Those that hadn’t been restored.
    At ten he drove up El Muqaddas to French Hill, past the cluster of towers where Yaakov Schlesinger lived, and down to National Headquarters. The building was half a kilometer southeast of Ammunition Hill, a crisp, six-story cube of beige limestone, banded by windows and bisected by a flag tower. To the front sprawled an expensive apron of parking lot, half-filled; the entire property was hemmed by an iron fence. At the