"I had brought a change of clothes with me. After washing my hands in the kitchen, I removed my bloodied clothes and put on clean ones. Then I went back to the bedroom to take the baby. He was still asleep. I picked him up and got out of the apartment. I descended the stairs slowly, but then the baby woke and started bawling. I didn't want his crying to wake any of the neighbors, so I hurried down the stairs and out of the building. Then I was in the clear."

That explained what Haim Sassoon had heard. The baby's cries sounded louder to him because they did not come from the third floor as they usually had, but from the staircase. The crying softened gradually because Michael was putting more distance between himself and the building with each step.

Michael had stopped talking. He was rubbing his hands together, his palms making a soft scratching sound.

"You didn't take anything from the apartment? No money?"

His hands stopped moving. He shook his head resolutely. "Of course not. I'm not a thief."

No, you only stole a child, I thought with sadness. So Yossi Cohen had told me the truth. He was the one who had ransacked the apartment and stolen the money from Esther's purse, but he wasn't the murderer.

"What happened then?" I asked.

His face spasmed in painful memory. "I thought she'd be happy, but she wasn't. When Talia woke up and saw the baby, she went insane. She wanted to know where Judah's body had gone and who the new baby was. When I told her, she slapped me and threatened to go to the police. It was all I could do to get her to keep her voice down so the neighbors wouldn't know what I'd done. I finally got her to calm down. I told her we could be happy again, that we could be a family, that we could say that this baby was Judah. No one will come looking for him. No one will know. All we needed to do was move to another city, where no one knew us or how the real Judah looked.

"For the next few days, I did not let Talia out of my sight. She seemed to be getting better. She took good care of the baby. I could tell she liked him. Then I had to go out to get food. When I returned, I found her dead. She'd opened her wrists in the bathtub."

Michael closed his eyes. His breathing sounded hard and fast in the stillness of the apartment.