by Kate Flora
"When you searched him, did he have any ID? Anything on him at all?" Burgess asked.
"Student ID and a library card."
A freakin' library card. It sounded so benign, thugs who carried library cards. "What year is he?"
Kyle rolled his eyes. "Freshman."
"That makes him what? Maybe fifteen?"
Dylan was fifteen. Burgess shivered.
"Or older," Kyle said, "depending on how far behind he was, or is, and how long he's been in the system. We can check with the school tomorrow. See what the family told them when he registered. Whether there's anything like a birth certificate or what birth date got assigned to him when he came here. But no matter what we learn, no way he's an adult."
"But he just committed a very adult crime. Crimes."
"Like armed robbery and attempted murder of a police officer."
"Officers. Which some bleeding-heart legal aid lawyer will attribute to the violence and lack of social structure in the country he came from. Like any of that mattered to the clerk tonight. Or would matter to his family if he'd resisted and we hadn't come along, or to your family if the kid's aim had been better."
"Sure as hell would matter to my family," Kyle said. "The girls would have to go back and live with Wanda."
The content didn't matter, really. They were talking to get their lungs working again. To give their bodies time bring the adrenaline levels back down. Put space between them and what had just happened.
"Sending him to juvie might be the best thing anyone ever did for that kid. It doesn't look like anyone's setting good examples for him at home," Burgess said. "Actually, based on our experience, they're setting a pretty good example of how not to cooperate. I expect we'll be seeing more of that in the next few minutes. Boy is definitely a graduate of the 'I know my rights' school of bad attitude."
"And the 'everyone owes me 'cuz I've suffered' school as well."
Kyle sighed and pushed off the wall. "Lead on, oh fearless Detective Sergeant. We should be thinking of ourselves. Of warm beds and a good night's sleep."
"Right. We could have been there already, Ter. Next time you suggest going for a drive, I am going to claim I have too much paperwork. Which, in fact, I do."
"You spend too much time at your desk, you'll get soft. Lose your edge. Forget how it is when you mix it up with bad guys."
Burgess started toward the truck. He hoped he still had his edge, had felt like he did tonight, but things could have gone so wrong in so many ways.
"We're heading over to the hospital now," he told Ali as they climbed back in the truck. "How's your arm?"
For an answer, he got a string of obscenities.
"Playing the tough guy won't work with us, son," he said. "Detective Kyle and I both saw you blubbering like a baby instead of standing up like a man. If you're big enough to threaten people with a gun, you need to be man enough to accept the consequences. You should be thanking God... my God, your God, someone else's God, that you are still breathing."
Oh what the kid didn't know about how close that call had been. "So let me explain to you how this works. We take you to the hospital, get you checked out, and then we take you over to the jail and you'll be booked on armed robbery and attempted murder of a convenience store clerk and two police officers. Once the booking process is done, you'll get to make a phone call. Clear so far?"
There was no response from the back seat.
"Now, Detective Kyle has read you your rights. You do not have to talk to us unless you want to. But just so we're clear, we don't have any questions for you about what happened tonight. We don't need to ask about that. You've got three witnesses, a surveillance tape, a gun with your prints all over it, a hole in the ceiling and a spent cartridge casing. It's an open and shut, slam-dunk of a case of robbery and attempted murder. Even as a juvenile, you aren't going home any time soon."
He drove a while, let that sink in, then said, "But sometimes your situation can be improved by cooperating with the police. You understand that word? Cooperation?"
"I'm not stupid," Ali said.
They all knew he was.
"We're looking for information about your grandfather. About the mosque. How it operates. What the organizational structure is. We want to know who the girl is who was locked in that closet. Who put her there, and why. What the baby's name was. Whose baby that was and where we find the father."
He watched Ali's impassive face in the rearview. "Sad to think of burying that poor little guy without ever even knowing his name."
Burgess paused to let a tattered man wheel a shopping cart across the street. He'd probably never see one again without expecting to see his friend Reggie. Funny how it surprised him every time to remember that Reggie was gone. But he knew. There was a difference between the victims in the cases they worked, and the victims in their own lives.
But that wasn't always true, either. Every detective had victims they'd never known alive who stayed with them. He had Kristen Marks. He and Kyle shared little Timmy Watts. Getting justice for victims was their life's work and their calling. Getting justice for children made greater demands and took a bigger toll.
Now they had Baby Doe, who had suffered miserably and died miserably.
In the rearview, he watched Ali fumble to undo his seatbelt. Out of consideration for his injured arm, they'd cuffed his hands in front. Now it looked like that might be a mistake. Burgess checked to be sure the rear doors were locked, then said, "Terry?"
Kyle turned suddenly in the seat. "Leave that seatbelt alone and put your hands on your knees where I can see 'em."
Ali jumped like he'd been struck. Opened his mouth.
"And unless you have something worthwhile to say, keep your mouth shut. We've heard enough obscene crap from you already."
The open mouth snapped shut. Evidently Ali didn't have anything worthwhile to say.
"So," Burgess said. "That baby... your brother... he was sick. He needed emergency medical treatment, or he would have died anyway. Did you know that?"
He'd taken a gamble here. What he thought was that the baby was probably a nephew. If Jason was right, the child of one of Ali's brothers. It would have to be someone close to the Imam to have ready access to the mosque, and that closet, without people asking a lot of questions. Maybe the congregation, or whatever they called it, was so submissive they didn't ask any questions. He really didn't know.
"That screaming brat is not my brother."
"Thank you," Burgess said. "So he's your nephew. Which of your brothers is his father?"
Ali Ibrahim could choose the right course here, one that would be hard for him in the short term and beneficial in the long term, or he could cling to his tough-guy pose, put loyalty to family first, and hope that the courts were kind to a poor misguided refugee child.
Tenderhearted judges did not make his job—his and Kyle's—any easier. Juvenile criminals often seemed too well-informed about their prospects for leniency. Burgess could only hope that Ali was not well-informed.
But Ali had lapsed back into silence.
"It's a nice night for a drive," Kyle said. "Seems a pity to rush right over to the hospital, spend more hours inside. Those harsh lights. That chemical atmosphere. Seems like we've done enough of that this week. Be nice to park somewhere by the water, someplace nice and quiet. Watch the moon and the scudding clouds. Remember that poor little baby. That... what did our friend Ali just call him? That screaming brat?"
"You're so right," Burgess said. "We've already been over there two nights this week. I'm in no hurry to be there again. And Ali doesn't seem to be in much pain."
He watched Ali shift nervously on the seat as he changed course and headed toward the waterfront.
* * *
Burgess swung off the road and into a tank farm, weaving among the tall gasoline storage tanks until they were right by the water. Then he threw the truck into park and they both climbed out.
Portland was an up-and-coming city with great resta
urants and interesting shopping and a vibrant music and art scene. It was also an old port with a working waterfront. There was security here, but they wouldn't bother a couple of Portland cops, even ones driving an unmarked. They'd know.
They pulled Ali out of the back seat, led him across the lot, and fastened one hand to a metal railing. A cold, briny wind was blowing off the water. He and Kyle had their leather jackets. The boy, looking miserable and scared, shivered in his thin sweatshirt.
As they were cuffing him to the railing, Ali made one more attempt at bravado. "You mess with me," he said, "and my brothers are going to mess with your families."
"Did you hear the boy, Joe?" Kyle said. "He's threatening our families."
Even in the limited light from a security fixture on one of the tanks, Burgess could read Kyle's anger. There had already been too much threatening in this case. They stood facing the water, backs to their squirming prisoner, voices raised to be heard over the wind.
"He's threatening our families, Terry," Burgess said. "Last two guys who tried that ended up in jail. And there was that one guy, you remember him, ended up in the ICU. They did their best, but he was never the same again. I think he's in some sheltered workshop now."
"And of course, the folks at the hospital have no idea what kind of injuries the lad had when he left the convenience store," Kyle said. "Just that there was a baseball bat involved. And then there's the matter of escape. Ali might have gotten a lot more banged up trying to escape from us. We're just doing our duty, making sure he doesn't escape again, given the danger he poses to the general public."
"True," Burgess agreed, "and a baseball bat can cause some pretty serious injuries. I had a guy once, messed with another man's wife, by the time we got there, the husband had worked him over pretty good. Guy's testicles swelled until they were bigger than softballs. Moving him around so the tech could get a good picture of the damage, I've never heard a man scream like that."
"Guy who did it went to jail, right?" Kyle asked.
"Yeah. But he said it was worth it."
"Had another guy, messed with a girl whose husband was in a motorcycle gang. You don't want to know what was done to him."
"I heard about that one," Kyle said. "Docs over at the ER tried to sew it back on, right?"
"But it never worked right after that," Burgess said.
"You couldn't feel too sorry for the guy, though," Kyle said. "He knew what he was getting into. Just like someone does when they take a handgun, walk into a convenience store, and draw on the clerk. Someone who does that, he knows he's breaking the law. And he ought to know that there are penalties for that if he gets caught."
Burgess kicked at a stray coffee cup that had been blown up against his foot, and watched it roll away. This was a cold, dirty, empty place. It felt like he'd spent half his adult life in places like this, though his path to adulthood, and law enforcement, had begun in a hot, dirty place that only looked empty and was full of unimaginable and unexpected violence. You didn't survive a war like Vietnam without becoming adult. Fear was a powerful crucible.
"I have to wonder sometimes, Terry—how would one of those guys who threaten people at gunpoint feel if someone did it to them? You suppose they wouldn't be afraid if someone pointed a gun at them? You suppose it looks like a fair deal to them? Gimme the beer for free and I won't take your life?"
"Dunno." Kyle looked thoughtful. "One thing I'm sure of—you can't care about how another person feels. And maybe, you wanna be a gunman, you have to be fearless yourself. Let's ask our friend Ali. See what he thinks."
"We know he isn't fearless, Ter. He was blubbering like an infant... like a screaming brat."
They were staring through a chain-link fence. Beyond it, the current slapped dark water angrily against the rocks. Burgess was very tired, the aftermath of his earlier adrenaline surge. He wanted to go home and check on his family. Be sure that they were safe. Last night should have taken care of the threats, but this case seemed to have an endless supply of bad guys. Fill up the jail with bad guys, fill up the basement at 109 with bad guys' vehicles, but they just kept coming. It was a thankless task.
Beside him, Kyle was drooping, feeling the same thing. It took patience, and stamina, to play mind games like this.
"He ran away," Kyle said suddenly. "We'd taken off the cuffs because he said they were hurting him, and he jumped out of the truck, and ran. Young and nimble, he climbed this fence. Then he slipped into the water and we couldn't get there in time. Couldn't get him out."
"It could happen that way," Burgess agreed.
"The freakin' POS threatened my family, Joe. That's two of them in twenty-four hours. I can't do this job if I have to keep worrying about that. I can't."
The thin blue line problem. Cops could only do their job if respect for the job, and fear of the consequences, kept the bad guys in line. When that broke down, the job became impossible.
Burgess turned and walked back to Ali, who had crouched down and folded himself into a ball, trying to get some protection from the wind. He grabbed the boy's bad arm and jerked him to his feet.
"Which brother?" he yelled into the boy's startled face. "Which freaking one of your brothers got that girl pregnant?"
"Muhammad."
"And where did he get her?"
"My grandfather bought her for him. He wanted an American wife."
Behind him, he heard a grunt and then Kyle was right beside him, folding his height down over the boy like a heron about to spear a fish. Kyle's lean frame vibrated with anger.
Kyle's anger made sense. Someone had sold a girl child about the age of his older daughter, and one of this boy's relatives had bought her. Slave trading. In Portland, Maine. In the twenty-first century.
"What's her name?" Kyle barked right into the boy's face.
"K... K... Kelly," Ali said through chattering teeth.
"And the baby?"
"Muhammad. Like his father. Like my grandfather."
Burgess, playing the good cop, put a hand on Kyle's shoulder. "Easy, Terry," he said, but Kyle wasn't done.
"Where did they get her?"
"Fuck you," the boy spat, trying to squirm away.
Burgess tightened his grip on the boy's arm. Police brutality? Absolutely. Abuse of power? You bet. Better than the normally righteous Kyle, who'd briefly considered tossing the boy in the sea.
They were supposed to let it roll off them. Sometimes they just couldn't. Hold your perfectly justified fire because it was a kid, and then the little POS threatens to turn his thuggish family loose on yours. And it wasn't just about him. Or tonight. The next time they were in that situation, they'd probably shoot. So much harm the kid was sowing and he didn't give a damn. A thug from a whole family of thugs.
"The man asked you a question," he said.
Ali's face was a fixed mask of defiance that went oddly with its sweet, childish roundness. "I'm not telling you shit. Now take me to the hospital, motherfucker. You're hurting my arm."
They both wanted to hurt a whole lot more than his arm.
Burgess released his arm. "I think he needs to consider his choices, Terry. Let's give him a few minutes."
They left the squirming, swearing boy by the fence, got in the truck, and started the engine. As they started to move away, Burgess heard the boy screaming that they couldn't leave him. Obviously, consideration for the welfare of others was a one-way street.
Burgess drove until they were out of sight, then shoved it into park. The heat felt good after the biting wind. Burgess turned on some music and they leaned back in their seats and listened.
"Too bad we don't have coffee," Kyle said.
"Yeah. That would be nice." Burgess checked his phone. Three calls from Chris. And a text message that read only Tomorrow. 3 p.m. at the library.
He showed it to Kyle. "Wanna bet it's the woman from the Imam's house?"
"Might be. Library's a good, neutral place," Kyle said. "Trust, then verify. Before long, Ali is going to
finish telling us what we want to know. Then she can confirm it."
Ten minutes. Fifteen. The wind had picked up, a reminder that mid-April was as close to mid-March as it was to the merry month of May. Their sullen little robber would be seriously miserable.
"Think he's ready to talk?" Kyle said.
"Five more minutes and we'll go see."
Ali Ibrahim was huddled into a tiny ball. Burgess grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet.
"Where does your brother live? At the Imam's house? With you?"
Through chattering teeth, the boy said, "No."
Burgess squeezed. "Where... does... he... live?"
"Cumberland. He's got a house in Cumberland."
"The address?"
Ali spat out a street and a number.
"And why were Kelly and the baby locked in that closet at the mosque?"
"Like I said, that brat wouldn't stop crying. It just until they could figure out what to do with them. How they could take the baby to the hospital without... problems."
"Before that, were they locked in the closet at your grandfather's house?"
Ali repeated a tedious string of threats and curses.
"Take your time," Kyle said. "We've got a nice warm truck."
"My brother wanted her where the women could take care of her when the baby came. And then the baby got sick. It kept crying and Kelly tried to run away to take him to the doctor, so they put her in the closet."
"And everyone was all right with that?"
Ali didn't reply.
"Who locked her in the closet at the mosque?" Burgess said.
Again, no reply. However scared he was of them, Ali was more scared of someone else. Well, maybe they had someone else in the house who might give them the answer. Burgess thought they'd gotten all they were going to get, but he had one more question. He gripped the boy's arm as hard as he could, watching the childish face contract as the boy tried not to gasp in pain.
"Where did your grandfather get the girl?" he said.
"Some guy my grandfather does business with. Some big old white guy."
