The Arson at Happy Jack

by Charles Williamson

  After the brief call with Mr. Jabran, I got back on the phone with the Arizona Republic columnist. I explained that the call had been from Zayd’s father. This newsman is less obnoxious than many of his brethren, and I spent half an hour answering questions before I got off the line. The columnist left me the impression that he’d write a sympathetic story about a young man in love with nature, who’d volunteered to work helping campers and rafters for the summer. I promised him another interview once we found out why the forestry major was left to die of thirst in the wilderness south of the Grand Canyon.

  I called Sheriff Taylor and told him about my discussion with Mr. Jabran. He agreed with my suggestion for the delivery of the young man’s remains to the airplane. Four deputies in full dress uniform would accompany the body and act as pallbearers to put the casket on the airplane. Sheriff Taylor would personally supervise the delivery and express his condolences. I would describe the event in my e-mail to the State Department this evening.

  Rose delivered six more phone messages from reporters, but I decided that I’d spent enough time on the press for the morning. I had Rose call them back and report that I’d be out of touch until after 5:00, but I would return all of my calls before going home for the day. I badly wanted to make some progress on the Cataract Creek case before my meeting with Ali Jabran.

  I went to Chad’s cubicle and waited for him to get off the phone. He’d been talking to his friend at the NAU Bursar’s office. “I’ve got the home address for two of the three Saudis on your list, and four friends of Zayd’s from other countries. The Saudis share a rented house near downtown. I’m still looking for where the third Saudi is spending the summer, but I’m told his father has a vacation home in Aspen, and he might be there. Shall we drop in and see who’s home?”

  “I like that idea. There’s no reason to give them time to coordinate stories, and I’d like to see their faces when we interview them. Let’s go,” I said. As we headed out of the office, I explained that we’d be meeting Mr. Jabran at 3:30 and I wanted to have more details by then. Rose caught me just as we were leaving and handed me a note. It listed the make and model of Zayd’s truck. It was a GMC Sierra extended-cab pickup. I handed the note to Chad as we got into my Explorer.

  “Mike, I know you don’t believe in coincidences, but there’re thousands of GMC trucks in Arizona. Zayd’s truck was white rather than dark green,” Chad said.

  “If I took a dead man’s truck, I think I’d have it painted,” I replied. “There’s probably no connection, but it’s an interesting new bit of information. Zayd was likely to be committed to protecting the forest since he majored in International Forestry. There’s someone in the area driving a similar truck who’s interested in burning it.”

  As we drove up to Flagstaff, Chad called in the APB on Zayd’s missing truck, and contacted his friend at the NAU Bursar’s office again. NAU actively recruits at the local high schools, and the scholarship office has addresses and phone numbers of all of last year’s and next year’s high school graduates. Chad’s friend offered to look for girls named Ashley. Since they also had last year’s yearbooks for every high school in the county, she could find which ones were blondes.

  “This woman is certainly helpful,” I said to Chad after he explained her project to find Zayd’s friend, Ashley.

  “Can I put the dinner and drinks on my expense account?” Chad asked. He didn’t expect an answer. Her helpfulness might have exceeded the university’s regulations, so her name is not in this story.

  We decided to try and locate the four students who were friends of Zayd, fellow Shiites, who were spending their summer in Flagstaff. We found two of the four on campus. Both lived in the same dorm and were attending summer school. They last saw Zayd the Sunday afternoon after the school term was over. He was packing for the trip to Oregon and excited about spending the summer in the Pacific Northwest. The prospect of nearly constant rain and living in an old growth forest were the main attractions to the job. The friends confirmed that Zayd loved the outdoors and enjoyed hiking and camping in the Arizona forest.

  One of the summer school students told us where the two other men on our list were working. They waited tables at a motel restaurant on Old Highway 66 in east Flagstaff. We drove to the 1960’s era motel and interviewed them. The stories from all four of Zayd’s classmates agreed, and none had any idea who might have killed him. He was quiet and studious but easy to get along with. He had no enemies.

  None of Zayd’s friends had heard of anyone named Ashley, and they were certain that Zayd would not have dated a Christian. All four of them had ridden in his truck and confirmed that he was packing it for the trip the last time they saw him. It was a white GMC just as the records showed.

  When I mentioned the names of the Saudi students that we wanted to talk with, all four claimed that they were not friends of Zayd. Apparently the Saudis wanted nothing to do with any of the Shiite students at NAU, but they were not enemies. They just ignored Zayd and the other Shiites as if they were beneath notice. None of the students had been the victim of overt hostility from the local community, but they sometimes drew unfriendly looks when they chatted loudly in Arabic. Hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists pass through Flagstaff every year on their way to the Grand Canyon, so a group chatting in another language is not unusual at Flagstaff restaurants. I suspected they’d been pretty boisterous to attract much attention. When we pressed them for suspects, none of Zayd’s friends could think of anyone who would want to kill him.

  Next, we drove to a home near downtown Flagstaff rented by two students from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They were Hamad al-Subayyal and Ibrahim ibn-Mazin. Both were in the NAU Business College. Hamad had finished his freshman year, and Ibrahim would be a senior in the fall. Their NAU transcripts indicated that they were mediocre students. Ibrahim had been put on probation his sophomore year for cheating in several subjects. They lived in a two-story house built of the volcanic rock common in the Flagstaff area. It was probably more than seventy years old, but in good condition. It had a substantial growth of perennial flowers and ornamental scrubs lining the cracked concrete sidewalk that led to a covered front porch, and three crabapple trees shaded a picnic table near the detached garage. Both men were home.

  Hamad answered the door. He was about six feet two with a shaggy black beard, bad complexion, and rail thin. His roommate Ibrahim was about five ten and muscular. He also had a beard, but it was neatly trimmed at about half an inch. The young men seemed unconcerned by a visit from law enforcement officers. Hamad’s accent was much more difficult to understand than his roommate’s.

  “Is this visit about Zayd Jabran?” Ibrahim said, “I heard about his death on Channel Twelve this morning.”

  I explained that we were trying to find the last time Zayd was seen on campus before his disappearance and asked if they knew anything about his activities the last few weeks of school. The young men seemed to be cooperative. Since they had not shared any classes with Zayd and they didn’t live on campus, they hadn’t seen much of Zayd during his last weeks on campus. I asked if they often saw him at Snow Bowl during the season.

  “Every Saturday and Sunday during ski season. I think Zayd must have regularly been the first person in the lift queue when it opened,” Ibrahim said. “He was an excellent skier.”

  “Did either of you ever see him with a blonde American named Ashley?” Chad asked.

  “Sure, they often skied together. She followed him around like a puppy. I think she’s outrageously forward,” Hamad said. “I’d never seen a brazen woman like her until I came to Flagstaff.”

  “If you’re looking for someone who might want to harm Zayd, I’d start with her father. If she were my daughter, I’d have killed both of them for their conduct,” Ibrahim said.

  “I’m surprised that Saudis are such avid skiers. Where did you learn, Hamad,” I asked.

  “My dad owns a house in Zermatt. I’ve been skiing since I was five,” he said with considerabl
e pride.

  We interviewed the young men for half an hour, but didn’t learn much. They both had known Zayd, but he was from a different part of Saudi Arabia and they had not shared any classes with him. They’d not seen much of him since ski season.

  After we were back in the car, Chad asked, “Well, what do you think of them?”

  “If Hamad spent a lot of time in Zermatt, Switzerland, Ashley was not the first assertive blonde he’s ever seen,” I said. It seemed to me that they wanted to direct attention toward this young woman and her family. I wondered why.

  CHAPTER 14

  We were having lunch in a downtown Thai café when Chad’s friend from the NAU Bursar’s office called with the names, phone numbers, and addresses of four girls named Ashley who might have known Zayd. While we ate lunch, Chad called each one until he found a recent graduate of Sinagua High School named Ashley Campbell. She knew Zayd and had seen the report of his death in the Daily Sun. She agreed to meet with us at her house in the Country Club neighborhood.

  The neighborhood was one of the areas being considered for evacuation because it is south of Interstate 40 and east of Interstate 17. The wide expanses of the interstate highways were the last lines of defense if the Happy Jack wild fire could not be contained outside of the city limits. As we exited Interstate 40 at Country Club Drive, the black clouds were unmistakable on the horizon. The fire continued its relentless march towards town, and the air was as smoky as a 1960’s era nightclub.

  KNAU radio reported that lower wind speeds had allowed the firefighters to contain 25% of the fire by noon; unfortunately, the portions not contained were in a direct line to Flagstaff and in difficult to reach terrain. The mayor would meet this afternoon with other government officials and experts from the Forest Service to discuss the possibility of evacuations in some south Flagstaff neighborhoods.

  The house was a block away from the golf course. It was one of the more modest houses in the upscale neighborhood. The heavily wooded greenbelt behind the house, the dull green wood siding, and the shake roof made it a very high fire risk building. I wondered if they’d had difficulty insuring the place. Ashley saw us drive up and opened the door before we rang. The puffy eyes in her otherwise flawless face were the result of crying. She directed us to sit on an orange couch in the inexpensively furnished living room.

  “I heard about Zayd this morning. I was too upset to go to work. Do you know what happened to him?” she said in the voice of a little girl.

  “We’re investigating the case as a probable homicide. We want to track the last time Zayd was seen in town,” I said.

  “I saw him the Sunday after his school term was over.” She choked back tears as she continued. “He was driving to Oregon the following day. Zayd had lunch here after church and went home to pack about 2:30. I thought he’d call from Medford before his job started, but I never heard from him. I was actually mad at him for not calling.” She dissolved into tears for a minute.

  “After church?” I said after the tears slowed.

  “Yes, my dad is the minister at Christ Evangelical Chapel. Zayd had been attending services with me for about a month. He hadn’t converted and been baptized yet. He still went to the mosque every Friday and said his prayers five times a day, but we had hopes that he’d be saved. Now it’s too late.” She broke down again. After a pause, she nodded for us to continue.

  “What was your relationship with Zayd?” Chad said.

  “I loved him with all my heart. The first time I saw him at Snow Bowl, those Colin Farrell eyes just got to me. He was so gentle and considerate, so much more mature than the groping creeps in high school. We weren’t actually engaged, and he respected me too much to make advances. Our relationship wasn’t intimate in that way, but we shared one heart.” She broke down into tears, and I thought that we might need to continue the interview at another time. After a few minutes, she regained her composure enough to continue.

  “Do you have any idea of anyone with a grudge against Zayd?” Chad asked.

  “He was afraid to say anything to his friends or family about me, and he was terrified that they might learn that he was attending church with us. He said that for a Saudi to convert to Christianity was just unthinkable. His family and friends would never allow it.”

  My cell phone vibrated, but I ignored it. I didn’t want to interrupt the interview. “Do you have any reason to think that Zayd was afraid for his life if word of your friendship got out?”

  “He once told me that his father and brothers would kill him rather than let him convert. He sounded almost like he meant it. He had a jillion brothers and sisters because his father had four wives. At the time, Zayd was trying to get me to consider learning more about Islam, but my dad would have never allowed that. Can you imagine being one of four wives? Gross me to the MAX. I could never have given up eternity in heaven to become part of a harem, even for Zayd.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us that might help catch whoever killed Zayd? We have very little to go on so far,” I said as gently as possible.

  “There were two really nasty Saudi guys that we saw a lot during ski season. Zayd seemed intimidated by them, and they were always rude to me. The one called Hamad always referred to me as the blonde with boobs or the ripe melon. The other guy, Ibrahim, tried to trip me skiing several times, but I practically grew up at Snow Bowl. I could out ski any of those Arab jerks.”

  “What do you know about Zayd’s local friends?” I asked.

  “I never met any of them, but he talked about some. He admired an Afghani named Ahmed Khan who was a local leader of Muslims students, and there were a couple of other people he hung out with at the Student Union. He was friends with a guy from Iraq, but I don’t remember his name.”

  “We haven’t been able to locate Zayd’s truck. Do you have any idea where it might be?” I asked.

  “He planned to take it to Oregon. Maybe his killer got it.”

  “Do you think there was anyone that Zayd would trust enough to accompany to a very remote place south of Tusayan? That’s where we found his body, and we don’t know how he got there. Did he ride horses?” I asked.

  “He loved horses; it was part of his culture. I’m a little afraid of them, but I went with him once. We rented horses at a stable north of town, but I was uncomfortable and we didn’t ride long. Zayd was headed to Oregon on Monday morning. He wouldn’t have gone for a long trail ride. There’s no way.”

  We spent another ten minutes with Ashley, but we didn’t learn much. I borrowed a photo of Zayd. He was standing with Ashley in front of her house. She was correct about his looks; he did look a little like Colin Farrell. Zayd had been a nice-looking young man with a square jaw, a close cut beard, short black hair, and intense brown eyes. He was about the same height as Ashley, 5’ 9” and maybe 165 pounds. They were holding hands in the letter-size photo, and they certainly looked like they were in love as they gazed in each other’s eyes rather than at the photographer.

  It was time to drive to the airport to meet Zayd’s father. We got Ashley’s work number and cell phone number in case we needed to talk with her again. She seemed to genuinely have been in love with Zayd, the bigger-than-life see-no-problems sort of first love. It was very unlikely to have worked out, but I had no reason to suspect that she or her family had a grudge against the young man.

  “Do you think Zayd’s family would have really killed him for converting?” Chad asked. He had no children of his own yet. I had only one son, and I could not conceive of a father who could kill his own son. I thought of Abraham. The Jews, Christians, and Muslims all esteemed him, and he had been willing to sacrifice his son when God commanded it. The three religions also shared the story of Cain and Abel.

  “It’s a different culture, but it’s difficult to imagine that Zayd’s fears were literally true. ‘My dad will kill me’ must be said a million times a day.” I was wondering how I could even investigate that possibility because I certainly needed to handle Mr.
Jabran with kid gloves.

  It was difficult to see how this case could be resolved without political consequences. An American might have killed Zayd out of hatred and bigotry. That would certainly have political and foreign relations consequences. It didn’t seem possible that it was a run of the mill murder rather than a hate crime because the method of death was unusually cruel.

  A Saudi or other Muslim might have killed him over religious reasons or some other disagreement. The Arab press and Zayd’s family would probably be skeptical of that explanation, and I had nothing really pointing in that direction yet.

  But the resolution of the case with the highest political risk would be that Zayd was killed by his own family because of his intention to convert to Christianity. That would cause a firestorm of hostility from Christians and reinforce existing prejudices against Muslims. I wondered if it was even possible to extradite someone from Saudi Arabia if the case went in that direction. Any family involvement would certainly create a political problem with the attention the case was getting in Washington. I really didn’t want to go in that direction without a lot more evidence.

  CHAPTER 15

  I was uncomfortable with a discussion with Zayd’s father of his regular attendance at a local Christian Church, but I had less then ten minutes to decide what to say to Mr. Jabran. As Chad drove us to the airport for our 3:30 meeting with Ali Abdullah Jabran, I called Cabot Cameron at the State Department. After getting through two levels of assistants, Mr. Cameron gave me a diplomatic greeting. I explained that Sheriff Taylor and four deputies in dress uniforms would deliver the body to Mr. Jabran’s airplane later this afternoon. The sheriff would personally offer his condolences and stress our commitment to solving Zayd’s murder. Mr. Cameron seemed pleased with the show of respect. I reported that my partner and I would meet with Mr. Jabran in a few minutes to discuss the case for half an hour before the sheriff arrived.