by Chris Culver
I hurried down the hallway before anyone could stop me. Nawaz’s office was on the end of the hallway. He had a big, wooden desk and flimsy black bookshelves that looked as if they had once been flatpacked and sold in a big box store. He had books—mostly religious texts, but also a well-loved copy of the first Harry Potter book—stacked on his desk. It wasn’t a welcoming space, but it looked well used.
I walked around the desk, hoping to find a laptop or at least an appointment book. Instead, I found his cell phone. I hit the home button to turn it on, but it wouldn’t let me access anything without Nawaz’s fingerprint. I thought I could work around that, so I put it in my pocket and walked back toward the entryway.
Someone in the congregation had begun leading the group through maghrib in Nawaz’s absence. I stayed outside the prayer hall and paced for a few minutes.
Eventually, a pair of uniformed patrol officers walked through the front door, dragging Nawaz with them. His ears were red, and he kicked his feet. The officers had secured his hands behind his back with a pair of cuffs.
“Here you go,” said one of the officers. “You think you can handle him?”
Two officers held Nawaz upright. He scowled at me, but he didn’t try to break free and attack. That was always nice.
“If these guys let you go and take off the handcuffs, what are you going to do?”
“Call my lawyer,” he said.
I looked to the officers and nodded. “You can let him go. Do you mind sticking around in the parking lot for a few minutes?”
“Not at all,” said a uniformed sergeant, removing Nawaz’s cuffs. He patted the imam on the shoulder. “No hard feelings, buddy. There’s no law against running from us, but in this neighborhood, it gives us reasonable suspicion that you’re involved in some kind of crime. We’re going to run you down and talk to you every time.”
Nawaz scowled again and looked at me. “And this is the work you do? You arrest innocent men simply for refusing to talk to you?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, my lips straight as I nodded at him. “That’s why I got into this business. It’s my life goal. I want to expend great amounts of energy to momentarily inconvenience powerless people who annoy me.”
Nawaz screwed up his face. “What?”
“It’s sarcasm,” I said, pulling back my jacket to show him my badge. “As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m a police officer. I’ve got some questions for you.”
“I will never talk to you,” he said, lifting his chin slightly.
I let him see me ball my hands into fists. Interrogations and interviews were more of an art than a science. My goal was always to get information or a confession, but how I went about doing that varied with every individual. It was theater, a story told for one person alone. Nawaz thought he was getting the better of me, that he was making me angry. And if that’s what he wanted and expected, that’s what he’d get.
“I’m working a murder,” I said, raising my voice. “Can’t you just talk to me?”
“You’re here because I’m a Muslim,” he said. “You look like one of us, but you’re not. You hate us.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but I held back.
“My feelings toward you and people like you don’t matter,” I said, getting into the role and spitting the words out as if I were disgusted by him. “A man matching your description was seen at the scene of a murder. That’s it. I tracked you to a hotel, and you ran away from me. I just want to talk. If that wasn’t you at the crime scene, we have nothing to talk about.”
I looked toward the prayer hall, hoping no one would come out and recognize me from Islamic events around town.
“And your true colors come out,” he said, lifting his chin. “I’ve seen you before, you know. You were on the Interfaith Council. The police set that up so you could watch us. Or did you do that on your own?”
I didn’t know what planet this guy came from, but I nodded as if he had caught me in some grand conspiracy.
“We watch your community, okay?” I said. “My parents came from Egypt, so I fit in well. Happy?”
“Very,” he said, smirking. “You’re a snake.”
“I’m a man doing my job,” I said, continuing the lie. “A witness saw a man matching your description at a murder scene.”
“I wasn’t there,” he said. “Now leave.”
“I wish your word were good enough, but it isn’t,” I said. “We’ve got fingerprints. They match you, we’ve got a problem. They don’t, you’ll never see me again.”
“So you’ve got to fingerprint me now,” he said. “You have no shame.”
“I lost that a long time ago,” I said, speaking honestly for the first time in this conversation. I reached into my pocket for his cell phone but kept my eyes on his. As he looked at me, I popped his black rubber case off with my thumb so he wouldn’t recognize the phone at a glance. “I just need your thumbprint on my phone. An app will scan it and compare it to the fingerprint at the crime scene. If you weren’t there, you’ll be cleared, and you won’t see me again.”
Nawaz didn’t blink. I felt as if I were in a staring contest, which worked out just fine for me. I held out his phone, making sure not to blink so he wouldn’t have the chance to look down. He pressed his thumb against the phone’s screen without looking.
“Happy?”
I looked down to make sure he had unlocked the phone.
“Yep,” I said, nodding and turning away. “Thanks.”
“Did I match?” he asked. I looked around to see him cross his arms and smirk.
“No, you’re good,” I said. “Thanks. I appreciate your cooperation.”
I turned to walk away. Nawaz cleared his throat.
“Who did I supposedly murder?”
I turned around for just a second and blew out a long breath, thinking quickly.
“A guy named John Doe, but you’re cool. Your fingerprint didn’t match.”
He started complaining that the United States was turning into an oppressive, dangerous police state, but I ignored him. Outside, I thanked the uniformed officers and told them they could go. After that, I walked back to my car, where I quickly disabled the security features on Nawaz’s phone so I could turn it on again without his thumbprint. After that, I started browsing.
Despite having a reasonably nice camera, his phone had no pictures. Either he deleted his photographs, or he didn’t take any. Both were odd behavior for a modern man. Since he didn’t have any pictures to study, I focused on his list of outgoing calls. Not surprisingly, the same numbers kept showing up day after day. I wrote them down and began systematically calling them on my own phone.
The first number belonged to the switchboard at a local hospital. Nawaz was probably keeping up with ill congregants. The second number belonged to the hotel I had chased him from. That wasn’t too surprising if he had spent time there. I entered the third number and listened to the phone ring four times before the voicemail system kicked on.
“Hi, this is Kim Peterson at Kim Peterson Photography, and I’m not in right now. If you’re interested in having me shoot your wedding, please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. If this is an emergency or a personal call, you probably know where to reach me.”
I looked through Nawaz’s phone. Of the past hundred calls he had made, nine went to that photography studio, which was odd for a man who didn’t seem as if he were a fan of photography. I wrote the number down and circled it before looking through his text messages.
He contacted a lot of people, but his conversations were mostly benign. Most focused on his duties as an imam, but he had a few personal conversations as well. Nothing mentioned Jacob Ganim, Nassir, or Michael Najam.
I put Nawaz’s phone on the seat beside me and called my dispatcher for Kim Peterson’s home address. It took some back and forth because there were a number of women named Kim Peterson in the region, but we searched Facebook and Instagram to narrow it down to a twenty-six-yea
r-old woman who lived with a man named Imran Avari in Irvington, a historic neighborhood about five miles east of downtown Indianapolis.
I put their address in my phone’s GPS and headed out. Even with traffic, the drive didn’t take long. Kim Peterson and Imran Avari lived in a quaint bungalow with gray siding and a small front yard. The moment I stepped onto the front porch, I unholstered my firearm.
The front door was open, and there was blood on the ground.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one calling on Miss Peterson today.
Chapter 28
I stepped over the blood on the threshold and walked into the living room. My heart thudded against my breastbone. The front shades were drawn, leaving the room mired in shadows. I wanted to turn on the light, but I didn’t want to risk contaminating a crime scene. The blood led down the front hallway, as if someone had been shot and then dragged through the house.
Before going any farther, I got on my phone and called my dispatcher for backup. The nearest officers were four or five minutes out. I wanted to stay outside and wait for them, but if someone was hurt inside, five minutes was too much time to waste. I slipped my phone in my pocket and gingerly stepped down the hallway, hoping to avoid the blood on the floor where possible.
I found the first body inside the kitchen. It was an approximately thirty-year-old dark-skinned man, probably Imran. He lay on his belly at the end of the blood trail. I couldn’t see his wounds, but he wasn’t moving. He wore a pair of gray slacks and a matching suit coat, making him look like a banker or a lawyer just home from work. A cell phone rested on the ground beside him, as if he had tried to call for help.
I felt his neck for a pulse but found nothing. He was dead, but rigor had yet to set in, and his skin was still warm. As cold as the house was with the front door hanging open, he couldn’t have been dead long. A couple of minutes, maybe.
His killer very well might have been in the building still.
I walked over the body, my weapon held in front of me. Beads of nervous sweat had begun to form on my head and drip into the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away.
An open door on the other side of the kitchen led to a finished basement. There, I found seven bodies, all women. Six of the women wore hijab, while the seventh had red hair and wore a low-cut blouse. All seven women had clung to one another as they died. Their blood painted the wall and ceiling, and the air held a mix of gunpowder, metallic smelling blood, and rose oil perfume. The sight was almost overwhelming. I didn’t know who these women were, but they didn’t deserve to die like this.
I walked around the room. There were twenty or thirty shell casings piled in the center of the room. The shooter must have stood still, then. He had looked in their eyes, had heard them scream, had probably listened to them beg for mercy.
And then he executed every one of them.
The victims were young. Some of them were probably only fourteen or fifteen, five or six years older than my daughter. They looked like my kids’ babysitters. They should have been down there talking about boys or playing video games or whatever teenage girls did now. Instead, they were dead. They barely even had a chance to live.
I felt each girl’s throat for a pulse, but none of them would ever draw breath again. These were children. Early on in my career, a sight like that would have brought me to my knees. It still bothered me, but my reaction now was colder and angrier. My left hand balled into a fist, and I drew in a long, slow breath. Anyone who could execute seven women like this didn’t deserve to breathe. I hoped I got the chance to send him to hell.
Briefly, I closed my eyes and said a prayer for the families of the dead. Then I took a step back, being careful to avoid disturbing the crime scene further.
That was when I heard it.
It was a rustle, a sound almost below my threshold of hearing, and it came from my right. Instantly, every muscle in my body went tight. Slowly, I pivoted. There was a single closed door on the far wall. It probably led to a laundry room, or maybe a bathroom.
Blood rushed in my ears as I stepped forward.
If the shooter was in the house, I had no doubt he’d fire at me the moment he saw me. It was entirely possible, though, that we had another victim, maybe even one who needed help.
I shuffled across the room and stood near the door, listening.
Silence.
I took a step back, drew in a quick breath, and counted down five in my mind, preparing myself. When I reached one, I kicked the door as hard as I could. The wooden frame splintered, and the door flew open. I swept the room with my pistol.
Out of nowhere, pain exploded through my face, and I felt myself falling. A loud gong reverberated through the room, deafening me. For a moment, I didn’t know what the hell had happened. Then a shape blurred past me as somebody ran. A metal folding chair clattered to the ground.
For a second, I could barely focus. The figure ran toward the stairs and then turned to me, fumbling for something in his pocket.
I raised my firearm. Despite the ringing in my ears and the dizziness coming over me, my hand was steady. Something stirred in me, a dark whisper from the recesses of my mind. I’d be doing the world and the court system a favor if I killed him. He may have been reaching for his keys, but he might have been reaching for a gun. The department would clear me. They might even give me a medal. My finger slipped inside the trigger guard. A couple pounds of pressure, and this guy would die. Nobody would even miss him.
I’d know what I had done, though, and I didn’t want to be that man anymore.
“Hands in the air right now.”
The figure stopped moving, and I blinked some of the fog out of my eyes. My righteous anger began to dissipate as I got a better look at him. He was as much a kid as his victims. There were the wisps of a mustache on his upper lip and black hair on his head. He had light brown skin and a worried expression on his face. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and held them at his shoulders.
“Do not move,” I said. “If you reach into your pocket again, I will kill you.”
He seemed to nod. We stayed like that for a moment, and then I started to sit up. A fresh wave of dizziness came over me, and I fell back and blinked hard.
The kid hesitated and then took his chance and ran. I pushed myself to all fours and then stood. For a second, I thought I’d fall down, but eventually my adrenaline overcame my nausea and dizziness, allowing me to sprint after him. I reached the kitchen in time to look down the front hallway and see the kid jumping off the bungalow’s front porch and onto the lawn. The moment his feet touched the grass, a car took off from the curb to my left.
I was going to lose him.
I ran out of the house and reached the front walkway just as the boy I was chasing reached the car. It was a current-model, gray Toyota Camry. The kid dove into the backseat, and the car took off. I ran to the street. I didn’t have time to get my phone out to take a picture, so I focused on the license plate. The car had Indiana plates registered in Hamilton County. The first numbers were eight five eight, but I didn’t see anything beyond that.
As the car drove away, I holstered my firearm and took out my phone to call it in. In the distance, I could already hear sirens as patrol cars closed on our position. My dispatcher picked up very quickly.
“This is Lieutenant Ash Rashid. I need all available units to close on the 5000 block of East Clair Street in Irvington. Officers should look for a gray Toyota Camry with a license plate that begins with numbers eight five eight. Assume the driver and passenger are armed and extremely dangerous. Both are wanted for arrest in a multivictim homicide. In addition, call Tactical Air Patrol. I need a bird in the air now. The suspects are teenagers, but they have shot and killed at least six people.”
I paused for a moment to make sure the dispatcher was getting everything. I didn’t hear a sound from the other end of the line.
“You should be typing right now,” I said. “Move.”
The keys started clicking in rapid su
ccession.
“You have patrol officers en route right now. I will call in additional support teams.”
“Thank you,” I said. I hung up the phone and balled my hands into fists. I had so much adrenaline coursing through me that my legs practically itched. I couldn’t stand still.
I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, forcing my mind to clear so I could think analytically. Judging by the shell casings in the basement, the victims were shot by a high-powered rifle. If the shooter had walked through the neighborhood carrying an AR-15, he would have been noticed. People would have called the police. Very likely, then, he was either dropped off in front of the house, or he had the weapon concealed somehow.
As I thought through the crime scene, I found myself growing calmer. None of the windows or doors in the house had looked broken, so the shooter had probably been let inside—very likely by Imran Avari, Kim Peterson’s boyfriend. He shot Imran first and then methodically walked through the house to look for other victims. He ultimately found them in the basement, shot them, and hid. I must have come in before he could escape.
If that scenario was right, the rifle must have still been in the house because the shooter didn’t have it when he left. Why didn’t he shoot me, though? And who was he? How did he know to come to Kim Peterson’s house? Why would he gun down people he likely didn’t even know? Did he know Jacob Ganim, too? Did he kill him? If so, why?
None of my questions had easy answers, and I was getting real tired of asking them.
The first uniformed officer screeched to a stop in front of the house about two minutes after the shooter fled. Since I had already secured the scene inside, he stayed on the front porch and started a log book. I listened to the radio in his squad car as his fellow patrol officers scoured the surrounding neighborhood. For the first few minutes, the search was mostly fruitless. Then I sat up straighter.
“Dispatch, Baker-19 requests 10-51 at Irvington Community Elementary on Julian.”
The officer’s call sign indicated that he was a patrol officer from the eastern district, and he was requesting assistance from the fire department at an elementary school a couple of blocks from my location. He must have been on the job for a while because we had stopped using ten-codes for radio communications years ago. I waited and let the dispatcher coordinate with him for a moment before keying the radio.
