The Arson at Happy Jack

by Charles Williamson

  The Hummer was parked in the driveway of the Saudi students’ house. When Hamad came to the door, he invited us in and asked Ibrahim to turn off the DVD of Terminator II. I declined an invitation to sit and mentioned that we were looking for Ahmed Khan because his house was on fire.

  “Is that the fire we saw over near campus,” Hamad asked. “Is it a bad one?”

  “The house was completely destroyed. We’re not certain if Mr. or Mrs. Khan was home, but their car is not there,” Chad said.

  “We went by to see Ahmed this afternoon, and no one was home. It’s lucky they weren’t there,” Ibrahim said.

  We were within easy walking distance to the Khan house. I assumed that Ibrahim and Hamad would not have parked their maroon Hummer in front of a house they were going to torch, but they might be involved in the Saturday Night Arsonist case together with Ahmed Khan as part of the same al-Qaeda or Islamic State cell. “We’re anxious to find them and make certain that no one was in the house. Do you have any idea where they might have gone, maybe out to dinner?” I asked.

  “Like most Afghan women, Dehjat can’t read, and Ibrahim takes her to a lot of movies to improve her English. They also like to go to cafeterias and buffets so Dehjat can see the food before she chooses it,” Hamad said.

  “Terrible about the fire,” Ibrahim said, “I’m sure their house is rented, but they’ll lose all of their personal things, not that they had much to lose. The Khans are from poor families who lived in a country destroyed by foreign aggression. The other Muslim students at NAU will help; charity is one of the pillars of Islam.”

  “Do you know of any reason why Ahmed Khan would store flammables in his garage? There was an enormous explosion when the fire reached it,” I asked. Of course, I was fishing for a reaction from the two Saudis, but they had good poker faces. I saw nothing suspicious. We asked a few more questions before letting the young men go back to their movie. We drove by several buffet restaurants before examining the parking lot at the Harkins Theaters. We didn’t find their old Honda. I asked a friend from the Flagstaff Police to check the parking lots at the Flagstaff Mall, but the car was not there either. Since there was an APB out for the Khans and their car, there wasn’t much else we could do, and it would be a relief for my rear end to get out of the Explorer’s seat and into bed. We headed back to Sedona.

  CHAPTER 31

  As we drove back through Oak Creek Canyon, we were stopped at the roadblock south of Flagstaff. The deputies reported that there’d been a lot of angry motorists turned around that afternoon. Many people either didn’t see or completely ignored the warning signs that indicated Highway 89A was closed except to local traffic. I was relieved to see they were enforcing the regulations strictly. Ahmed Khan had disappeared, and even if the ATV and its trailer were destroyed, it would be easy for the Saturday Night Arsonist to go back to his earlier MO of tossing flares into bark beetle damaged trees.

  At the top of the switchbacks that lead down into Oak Creek Canyon, I could see another approaching monsoon storm far to the southeast. The billowing white clouds were brightly illuminated by the setting sun even though the pine forest was in shadows. I could also see that the black mushroom cloud of the Happy Jack wildfire was drifting north, an indication that the smoke and probably the fire were moving towards Flagstaff again.

  Chad called his girlfriend to pick him up at my house and drove me home in my Explorer. Margaret’s reaction when I entered the house was to begin crying at the first sight of my burned hair and absence of eyebrows. I should have called to warn her; it looked much worse than it was. She served me dinner like an ancient Roman reclining on my side on the living room couch. I took some pain pills and went to bed at 9:00 without spending much time discussing the case.

  The next morning I was feeling much better. Sometime during the night a storm had passed through Sedona, but there was no sign that rain had fallen. Broken limbs and overturned trashcans indicated that the wind must have been fierce. As we drove toward the Village of Oak Creek for my haircut appointment, I could clearly see the menacing mushroom cloud of the Happy Jack Fire. The smell of smoke was much stronger in the Sedona area than any time since the fire started. I wondered what impact the dry storm had on the wildfire, but I had had no time to watch the morning newscast.

  During the ten minute drive, we had a chance to discuss the case. After I described yesterday’s events, Margaret said, “Something doesn’t make sense to me, Mike. If Ahmed Khan is the Saturday Night Arsonist and he’s now on the lam, why did he attract all that attention by burning his own house? He could have left the ATV and trailer somewhere in the forest and just driven away. It would have been days before people began to look for him, and we’d have nothing specific to connect him to the crimes.”

  “I wasn’t thinking very clearly yesterday after getting blown across the front yard of the Khan house, but you have a good point,” I said. “I’ll call and see if there were any bodies discovered after the fire was out.”

  A friend with the Flagstaff Police Department explained that no bodies had been found, and there was clear evidence of an accelerant used inside the house. The FBI had cordoned off the area, and no one local had been able to get near the burned house since the fire was out.

  “If Ahmed is involved, he could easily have crossed the border at Nogales before the fire at his house was even out,” I said.

  “An Afghan would be pretty unusual in Mexico. I’d think Vancouver or a large American city would be a better place to hide,” she said. “But I don’t think he’s on the run; I think he’s in trouble.” Margaret was usually right about that sort of thing.

  I discovered it is possible to get a haircut standing up, and I looked OK with a burr. I gave Dennis a $20 tip for showing up on a Saturday morning to make me presentable enough to go to the office. Margaret ran her hand across my almost bare scalp and told me she thought it was very sexy. After the haircut, Margaret drove me to the office in Uptown Sedona, and I began to review the latest information from the arson taskforce while I stood and drank coffee in my small cubicle. I wondered how many more times I’d drink coffee here if my staff reduction proposal were accepted.

  About 8:30, Chad stuck his head in and said, “I’m surprised you’re here. You look like a chemotherapy patient. What are you working on?”

  “I’m reviewing the arson taskforce file. I’ve crosschecked against the international students’ files we got from Linda Surrett. Ahmed Khan is not a good fit for some of the fires. If he’s involved, he couldn’t have been working alone. He went home to Afghanistan and got married last July. He wasn’t in the US when two of last year’s fires were started. I think he was set up.”

  “What do you think happened to the Khans? They should have come home from dinner yesterday and discovered their house on fire, but no one saw them. Why would they run if they’re not involved?” he said.

  “We assumed they’re on the run, but they might have been abducted like Zayd,” I said. “All we know is that they’re missing and their house was destroyed by an arson fire.”

  “But we found the ATV and trailer in their garage. That’s pretty solid proof that Ahmed had knowledge of the fires even if he has accomplices.” Chad had made up his mind that Khan was involved, but I wanted to keep an open mind.

  When Chad went to get a cup of coffee, I called Major Ross for an update on the fire and the arson investigation. I wanted to make certain that he was aware that Ahmed Khan was out of the country when two of last year’s fires were started. It was new information to him, but I suspected the FBI was well aware of it and hadn’t bothered to inform the local authorities. We talked about other suspects. I still considered Hamad and Ibrahim prime suspects as well as Mohammad al-Mukhtar. Major Ross committed that there would be no slackening of the taskforce’s efforts and every member of the Muslim Student Association would be under surveillance tonight.

  Major Ross updated me on the Happy Jack Fire and the news was bad. Seven small fires had been
started by lightning in the Coconino and Kaibab Forests by last night’s rapidly moving monsoon storm. Crews were busy extinguishing them, but the new fires had reduced resources devoted to the Happy Jack Fire. There had been no measurable rain in the Flagstaff area last night, and forty-five mile an hour winds had blown from the east, driving the fire across the fire lines in the direction of Munds Park and towards Interstate 17. The wildfire now might go around the areas of controlled burn near Mormon Lake and Upper Lake Mary and threaten Flagstaff through the corridor of pine forest along I-17. The eastward movement of the fire might force the closing of I-17 later today. If that happened, the taskforce would be forced to open Highway 89A through Oak Creek Canyon as the only alternative route to reach Flagstaff from the south.

  Major Ross was calling a full meeting of the taskforce for 1:00 in the afternoon. With the addition of the FBI, the meeting might last until dark. I asked that we be connected by phone. I had no interest in sitting on my sore rear for six hours of repetitious discussions. If we participated from my office, I’d have a lot more flexibility and be able to listen standing up if I became uncomfortable.

  Next, I called Sheriff Taylor with an update. I asked if Chad and I could use the department helicopter to search for Ahmed Khan’s car in remote parts of the county in case he and his wife had been abducted in the same manner as Zayd. I had a hunch that they might be chained in the wilderness and left to die of thirst. The sheriff was skeptical, but he agreed to allow the search. He agreed because he also doubted that Ahmed Khan would set fire to his own house and leave evidence that would tie him to the arson cases in his garage where it would be certain to be found. Something was unquestionably strange about the fire and his disappearance.

  The helicopter would meet us at the Sedona airport at 9:30, and we could use it for three hours. It was a huge area to search, and it would take a lot of luck to actually find the Khans even if my hunch was correct, but a search on the ground would be even less likely to be successful in the huge empty areas of northern Arizona. Before ending the conversation, Sheriff Taylor reminded me that he needed my staffing cut proposal by the end of the day. I assured him that I’d completed the task. If I didn’t get to Flagstaff by this afternoon, I’d e-mail the documents to him.

  I spent thirty minutes updating the expense reduction documents for the changes that Chad had suggested. I was sad as I typed the names of those to be terminated even though I was on the list too. Enough well-liked people would be fired that morale would be rotten for months. I attached the proposals to an e-mail that explained in detail why I’d included myself in the cut list and saved the whole thing as a draft so that it could be sent in a few seconds when I was ready.

  CHAPTER 32

  The phone rang as Chad and I were planning the search grid for our attempt to find the Khans’ old white Honda. It was Jacob Timber, the special agent in charge of the Phoenix office of the FBI. We’d never met, but I’d been told he was extremely competent. However, other law enforcement people claimed he was always looking for favorable publicity for the Bureau and very quick to claim credit for other’s work. Timber was particularly unpopular with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department because both organizations loved being in front of news cameras.

  “Lieutenant Damson, I understand that we have you to thank for first proposing that the Saturday Night Arsonist might actually be a terrorist cell based at NAU and connected to one of your homicide cases. I’ve heard other good things about your work. I’m calling because of the Ahmed Khan matter.”

  “I understand your agency has control of that arson scene. I’ve been curious about what you’ve learned,” I said.

  “Perhaps we can exchange information. Tell me your personal opinions about the case, not just the stuff that gets into written reports, and I’ll tell you everything we’ve learned.”

  I spent fifteen minutes describing the details of our investigation including the information that Ahmed Khan was not in the US for several of last summer’s fires. He asked two insightful questions, but mostly just allowed me to tell my story in my own words. After I finished, I said, “Now it’s your turn to be frank.”

  He told me there was little concrete evidence in the Khan house. Gasoline had been spread in a trail through the rooms and a road flare had been tossed through the backdoor. All of the doors and windows had been closed, so that the fire had smoldered until I’d opened the front door. There was no sign of the Khans or their vehicle. All of the drawers had been pulled out and tossed on the floor, indicating the house was searched before it was torched.

  He also mentioned that the downtown house rented by Hamad and Ibrahim was under surveillance and being electronically monitored. When Chad and I had gone to see them yesterday evening, a group of six students had been listening to a recorded sermon from one of Saudi Arabia’s most radical clerics. They had a lookout posted and replaced the recorded sermon with a movie DVD before we got to the front door. The other students had moved into a bedroom while we’d been there.

  Nothing had been said at the meeting that directly connected the foreign students to the arson fires. However, they were certainly a radical enough group for their student visas to be revoked. They were in the United States to learn about their enemy and his weaknesses rather than to get business degrees. This small group was at war with our culture and government policies even if they had not started the Happy Jack wildfire.

  The FBI had not yet identified all of those present, but Ahmed Khan was not one of them. After we’d left, the students had talked about the fire at his house. Hamad and Ibrahim had each committed a thousand dollars to help the Khans recover from the fire, and the other four students had made smaller commitments. The group was convinced that the fire was the result of a negligent Jewish landlord or an attempt by a Christian to drive Muslims from Flagstaff.

  “You might also be interested in some information we researched at the request of the State Department. An affected little pencil-neck named Cabot Cameron asked for us to check if Zayd Jabran’s death could have been an honor killing by a family member because Zayd was converting to Christianity. He said that he thought of that possibility after talking with you. It’s not really an FBI matter, but Cameron dropped names of several Washington big shots. I checked with Homeland Security, and no one in Zayd’s extended family traveled to the US in May or June of this year, at least not legally. It was a dead end.”

  “Do you have an open file on a nineteen year old Flagstaff native who changed his name from Tommy Gunderson to Mohammad al-Mukhtar about four years ago?” I asked.

  “I’d never heard the name. We wouldn’t have any records on him unless he has had direct contact with someone under surveillance, or he has been arrested for something. We don’t create files on Americans just because they convert to Islam. It’s still a free country,” he said. “Why do you suspect him?”

  “He was learning Arabic from Zayd, and may have been after the same girl. Mostly, I’m suspicious because he was evasive when we questioned him in Scottsdale yesterday.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you with an American citizen. We won’t put him under surveillance or do anything else without more than you’ve mentioned. Things haven’t changed that much since 9-11.”

  I understood the FBI has limits, and I was actually glad that was the case. However, I was suspicious of Muhammad and wished they had information about who he’d been associating with in Phoenix and Scottsdale. I wondered if Muhammad would be in Flagstaff tonight. I thanked Special Agent Timber, and we promised to keep each other informed in what he called a back-channel manner.

  I called Mr. Ari at the Grand Mogul Emporium and asked if Muhammad was working today.

  “Certainly. Saturday is our biggest day for deliveries because even in affluent households, there’s often no one at home on weekdays. Muhammad works from 10:00 until 8:00 every Saturday, but he has Sunday and Monday off. He is normally a polite and respectful young man. The customers like him much better than som
e other delivery people I’ve employed. I’m sorry if things didn’t go well when you interviewed him yesterday. Shall I have him call you?”

  “No. I’ll be out of the office this morning. I may try again this afternoon. Did he leave early last Saturday?”

  “No. He was definitely here when I closed the gallery at 8:00,” he said.

  “Did Muhammad work for you last summer too?”

  “Yes, this is his second year. He’s extremely reliable and hasn’t missed a day either summer. He applied to work for me because I respect his need to pray five times a day and to attend prayer service on Friday. I’m also a Muslim you know. We met at a local mosque last year.”

  I thanked Mr. Ali and considered the new information. Muhammad worked on Saturdays and got off at 8:00. If he drove directly to the arson location and set the fires, there would be plenty of time for him to be the Saturday Night Arsonist. However, he could not have been the person driving Zayd’s truck when Martin McPhee saw it near sunset last Saturday. There just wasn’t enough time. Either he left work early and Mr. Ari was lying, or he didn’t start the Happy Jack fire. Maybe this was an al-Qaeda or Islamic State cell with several members involved in the fires, or maybe I was just on the wrong track.

  Chad returned to my office and said, “Mike, there’s really no need for you to spend three hours sitting in an uncomfortable helicopter seat. If the Khans’ car is abandoned out there somewhere, I’ll find it. You haven’t sat down since you got here this morning, so I know you’re still hurting.”