The Hyena Murders by The Hyena Murders (retail) (epub)

Author:The Hyena Murders (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

36

Maya didn’t stop for lunch on her way back to work. She drove straight to Headquarters, not even stopping for a coffee. She wanted Roni to find her working at her desk. Too busy for his prying questions.

But it was almost one, and she was famished!

She felt a drop of sweat trickle down the side of her cheek. The damn A/C must be pumping hot air directly into her office! She wiped the sweat away with the back of her hand but stopped short of wiping the hand on her skirt. She could probably get at least one more wearing in before sending her dress blues out to clean.

She leaned back in her chair and stared at a meandering crack in the ceiling. Why had Dani shown up at the Aklilu funeral? Up until now she’d enjoyed keeping him a secret, even from Masha. It was bad enough she had told her mother. Now Roni would start hounding her for his name, the status of their relationship. It would give him another barb to needle her with.

Her desk phone rang.

“Maya Rimon?”

“Speaking.”

“Stop spy on Moshe Aklilu!”

The man had an accent as thick as hummus. She couldn’t place it, but it was definitely not European or American. Didn’t sound Ethiopian, either.

“You punch the moon. You be sorry!”

Before Maya could say a word, the man hung up.

From his brusque tone, she could tell that this call was meant as a threat. Her investigation had clearly touched a nerve.

She knew that Moshe had plenty of enemies. But who were his friends? Who would risk raising the hackles of the Service to protect him?

The caller had used a peculiar phrase—“punch the moon.” It was not an Israeli idiom. Then she remembered seeing this same expression in an interrogation transcript she’d scrolled through during a previous investigation. That case had involved a sex trafficking network. The ringleader had been Filipino. What was his name?

Maya’s ears chimed like a carillon as the name suddenly came back to her. Joey Villanueva! He’d been on the Service’s radar for almost ten years. His formal name was Jejomar Hernando Villanueva.

Maya swiveled around to her desktop and pulled up the man’s file. He was certainly one of the most unusual criminals she’d ever come across.

Villanueva had first come to Israel as a temporary contract worker, caring for an elderly Jewish man with diabetes and other ailments. He was one of thousands of Filipinos who had poured into the country in the 1990s to serve as caregivers for Israel’s steadily aging population. A small number of these temporary workers were men like Villanueva, who were in the process of transitioning to women. Unwelcome in their conservative Catholic homeland because of their unconventional lifestyles, they found an opportune niche for themselves caring for old Orthodox men who according to Jewish law could not be physically tended by women outside their families.

Villanueva hadn’t stayed long in his caregiving role, however. He set his sights on greener pastures. When his visa had expired, he’d gone

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