by Chris Culver
“Baker-19, this is Major Case. Settle my curiosity and tell me what’s on fire.”
“Major Case, it’s a single-vehicle fire involving a recent model, gray, four-door sedan.”
I closed my eyes and swore to myself before keying the microphone.
“Confirmed, Baker-19. Keep the scene secure. I’m on my way.”
I got out of the patrol vehicle and drove my borrowed Mustang to the school. It was only about five blocks from the house, so the drive only took a few minutes. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have used the GPS on my cell phone to find the location. I didn’t need it today, though. The plume of black smoke rising from the parking lot led me right there. When I arrived, a patrol vehicle with its lights flashing blocked the entrance, but there were already a couple of people standing to watch the car burn.
I parked on the street and flashed my badge to the officer.
“You Major Case?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m Lieutenant Ash Rashid,” I said, nodding. “You call in the license plate yet?”
He looked over his shoulder to the burning heap. Had the shooter parked that vehicle during a school day with a full parking lot, we might not have found that car for hours. Hell, had he driven just a couple of blocks away to the grocery store up the street, he could have gotten away for even longer. He didn’t, though. Instead, he set the car on fire, setting up a literal signal to come and find the vehicle. He could have been taunting us, but just as easily, he might have been trying to tie up our resources and send us on a fruitless chase.
“Yeah. Plate was stolen. It belonged to a pickup truck in Carmel. We’re trying to track down the owner.”
“Any sign of the driver?”
The officer shook his head. “No, but there’s something you need to see in the far corner.”
He pointed to the northwest corner of the lot. I looked at the section of asphalt and then back to the officer.
“You going to tell me what it is?”
“I figured I’d let you come to your own conclusion.”
I grunted and started walking. At first, I thought he might have been messing with me, but then I found a pile of cigarette butts and a small puddle on the asphalt. I snapped a picture with my cell phone as the scenario started coalescing in my head. There were at least two people and probably a third involved in this murder. Two drove getaway cars, and a third did the shooting. The first driver parked in the elementary school lot. He kept his air conditioner blasting and smoked five cigarettes while he waited. The second driver parked near Kim Peterson’s house and let the shooter off. He was the diversion. The first driver had the real getaway vehicle.
I swore under my breath and walked back to the officer I had been talking to earlier.
“When CSU gets here, have them bag the cigarette butts and vacuum the parking spot. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll find some fibers from the vehicle that was parked there.”
“You not sticking around, Lieutenant?”
I drew in a breath and then looked at the car before shaking my head.
“No. I’m no use here, and I’ve got to get back to another crime scene. Good luck, and thank you. You did good work.”
“Thanks. Good luck to you, too.”
I walked back to my car with my hands in my pockets and my gaze low as I tried to work out what I knew and what I didn’t know.
Whoever my shooter was, he was dangerous. He had the foresight to know he needed an escape plan after the massacre at Kim Peterson’s house, and he had the prescience to realize his original getaway car might be spotted. His escape plan, then, had two steps. First, he’d get away from the house in one car. Then he’d call our attention to that car by lighting it on fire while he escaped in another.
The plan was methodical and effective. It anticipated the police response and accounted for it in a very surprising way. The bad guys got away, and I had no idea where they were despite a massive police presence in the area. Frankly, it made my head spin.
I had been attacked by a teenager. That teenager looked as if he had been driven away by a second teenager. Those were the facts, but I couldn’t believe a sixteen-year-old kid had decided to do all this on his own. Someone else was directing this, someone who could think tactically and analytically, someone who had a motive to murder everyone in that house and the ability to talk at least two teenagers into committing the crime. Whoever this mastermind was, he was dangerous.
And I didn’t have the first clue who he could be.
Chapter 29
Sami Beran’s blue and white postal carrier uniform stuck to his chest and back. Even late in the afternoon, it was warmer out than he had expected. He had been assigned to this route for three years now. He knew the neighborhood and the people within it. He also knew their sins.
Most of the families on his route probably considered themselves Christians, but they only went to church on Christmas and Easter. None of the Jewish families he served were devout, and the very few Muslim families on his route lived decadent, sinful lives. By their lifestyles, they had declared war on God and all that was decent. They deserved what was coming to them.
He opened the rear door of his mail van and pulled out a package. It was Memorial Day weekend. In less affluent areas, that meant families would have gone to the local public pool or park for a little fun. On Sami’s route, though, that meant families went to Miami or Hilton Head or places more exotic. He double-checked his clipboard before pulling his van’s rear door shut.
The home in front of him had a four-car garage and big windows out front. It was owned by a twice-divorced physician and her two kids. The doctor had put in a stop-mail order from Friday to Tuesday, probably so she and the kids could take a vacation. Unlike many of the homes on his route, this one didn’t have an alarm. It would work very well.
He hurried up the front walkway and then knelt beside the fake rock that held the family’s spare key. He was inside in moments. The package in his hand held a simple black-powder explosive with an ignition device fashioned from an old cell phone. By itself, his bomb could damage a kitchen table, but it wouldn’t hurt the house. It didn’t need to, though.
Sami carried the package to the kitchen and left it on the counter beside the refrigerator before pulling the gas stove from the wall to expose the half-inch flexible yellow cable. He cut it with a pocketknife, and instantly, a hiss filled the air. Sami coughed and left the building, pulling and locking the front door shut behind him.
According to Hamza Bashear, an engineer by trade, the house would fill with approximately two thousand cubic feet of natural gas in the next twenty-four hours, becoming something akin to a giant pipe bomb.
When Sami reached his van again, he looked over his shoulder at his remaining packages and checked another address off on his list. Four to go. Truly, tomorrow would be a glorious day for God.
Chapter 30
I drove back to Kim Peterson’s house. Where there had been one patrol vehicle before, now there were half a dozen with their lights flashing. I parked about a block away and unclipped my badge from my belt so I could attach it to the front pocket of my jacket. One uniformed officer stood near the front porch with a log sheet, while four or five others interviewed the neighbors, many of whom had exited their homes to stand on their front lawns and watch.
The uniformed officers had the scene in hand, so I called Captain Mike Bowers, the commanding officer of IMPD’s Crimes Against Persons division.
“Mike, it’s Ash Rashid. I’m at the home of Kim Peterson. We’ve got a lot of bodies in the house. You sent anybody out here yet?”
“Nancy Wharton. Elliot Wu’s going to be second. I’ve got the entire division on notice, though, in case we need additional resources. Are you still working for the Bureau?”
“Sort of. It’s a long story,” I said. “Nancy and Elliot are both good, but this is going to be a bigger case than the two of them alone can handle. Go ahead and call in everybody you’ve got. And you
need to be on the scene to deal with the media.”
Bowers paused. “If you think this investigation is that big, maybe major case should take it.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t be on TV right now. It’s a long story.”
“All right. I’ll get more people down there. Nancy and Elliot shouldn’t be too far away. Anything I should tell them before they arrive?”
I thought through my answer for a moment. “The victims are connected to the case I’m working for the Bureau. My case with the Bureau is somehow connected to the attack on Westbrook Elementary. You connect the dots.”
Bowers swore under his breath. “I’ll call Kevin Havelock at the Bureau, then.”
“The Bureau isn’t going to be the most reliable partner right now. I don’t know what’s going on over there, but it’s probably best we stay out of their internal politics. And it’s best you don’t mention me to them at all. They think I’m in custody right now.”
Bowers swore again. “Tell me you didn’t break out of federal custody.”
I didn’t respond, so Bowers repeated himself and requested an honest answer.
“You want me to be honest, or do you want me to tell you I didn’t break out of federal custody?”
“What the hell are you doing, Lieutenant?”
I caught movement to my left and saw a gray, unmarked Crown Victoria sedan pull to a stop on the side of the road. Detectives Wharton and Wu stepped out.
“I’m working the death of an undercover FBI agent, but it’s veered off in an unexpected direction,” I said, nodding to Detective Wharton as she walked toward me. “Wharton and Wu are here. I’ve got to go.”
I hung up before he could say anything else. I knew Nancy Wharton reasonably well, but I had only met Detective Wu a couple of times. Bowers wouldn’t have promoted him to homicide, though, if he weren’t good at his job. While I talked to him and filled him in on what had happened at the house, Detective Wharton went inside to see what was going on there.
Homicide work was a painstaking process. On TV, the detectives solved cases through brilliance and superior forensic science. In real life, most homicide investigations were closed through legwork and self-made luck. You knocked on enough doors and talked to enough people, you were bound to find somebody who saw something. One eyewitness could open a case right up.
Detectives Wharton and Wu would talk to the neighbors, they’d research everyone the victims had called recently, and they’d crawl through the house with technicians from Forensic Services. In total, they’d spend thousands of manhours trying to solve a crime that had taken moments. And even then, that wasn’t always enough. It was the system we had, though.
After Wu interviewed me, I went to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, knowing Detective Wharton would likely want to talk to me next. The first news van showed up a few minutes later. Uniformed officers kept them well away from the house, but even still, I stayed in my car to avoid being inadvertently caught on camera.
After that, things moved quickly. Forensic Services arrived and took over the search inside the house. They were followed by three vans from the coroner’s office. Dr. Rodriguez and his fellow forensic pathologists were going to be busy for a while.
As I sat, I called Kevin Havelock to fill him in on what had happened. He offered to send additional resources, but I declined. As I started to hang up, he cleared his throat.
“Before you go, Nassir’s been released. So have the other men we picked up.”
“How?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Bad press combined with a directive from President Crane directly to the director of the FBI.”
“That’s good,” I said, nodding.
“Maybe,” said Havelock. “Right now, the United States government is conducting one of the largest investigations in the history of law enforcement. We have agents on almost every continent on the planet and every specialty in law enforcement investigating the attack on Westbrook Elementary, and a lot of their findings are pointing toward Indianapolis. Something big is about to happen in our neck of the woods. Jacob Ganim was in the middle of it, and he happened to hang out with your brother-in-law an awful lot.”
I couldn’t deny that, so I nodded. I started to tell him I planned to go back to the mosque I had been at earlier so I could interview Omar Nawaz, but then I saw Detective Wharton walking toward my car. She had her hair pulled back from her face, and her jacket flapped in the wind. She had the intense expression of a woman who knew the exact importance of the case she had just picked up.
“Thanks for the update,” I said. “I’ll keep you informed if I find anything.”
I hung up before Havelock could respond. Detective Wharton gave me a small but genuine smile as I stepped out of the car.
“Hey, Ash,” she said. “It’s been a while. How have you been?”
“Can’t complain. Kids are growing, my wife is healthy, and I still have my hair.”
For a brief moment, her smile widened but then disappeared.
“When my husband turned forty, his hair migrated to his back. It’s nice that yours has stayed put,” she said, turning. “Come on. There’s something in the house I want you to see.”
I kept my head down and followed her to the house, where I signed a log sheet before going inside. It looked as if Captain Bowers had requested the crime lab send every tech on staff to the scene because there were people in every single room. Considering we had eight bodies strewn through the house, that was probably the correct move.
I followed Detective Wharton to one of the bedrooms, where Detective Wu knelt beside a low bookshelf. He looked up at me and then to Wharton.
“You have an extra pair of gloves?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’ll find some. In the meantime, show Ash what you found.”
Detective Wu nodded and pulled a book from the shelf. It had a faux leather cover and probably held three hundred pages or so. There were no marks on the outside to indicate its contents.
“We found these on a bookshelf. There are more in a box downstairs.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding and catching his gaze. “What are they?”
“I was hoping you could tell us,” he said, cracking the book open to a lined notebook page covered in neat, black script. “The victims looked Middle Eastern. I thought you might be able to read it.”
I studied it but then shook my head. “I can’t, but I know people who can. This is Persian.”
He sighed and nodded. “Okay. Thanks, anyway. Now that we know it’s Persian, I’ll call somebody about a translation. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
I nodded toward the bookshelf. There were almost a dozen notebooks on it, none of which had exterior markings.
“Are all these notebooks written by the same person?” I asked.
Wu shrugged just as Detective Wharton came back in the room with a box of gloves. I took a pair of gloves from her and thanked her before snapping them on my hands.
“I can’t tell,” said Wu. “Some are in pencil, and some are in pen. I don’t know the language, so that’s all I can figure out.”
“May I?” I asked, gesturing toward the books.
“Help yourself,” he said.
I picked up another book. It, too, was in Persian, but it looked like different handwriting. I put that one back on the shelf. The writer of the second book I picked up, though, wrote Modern Standard Arabic with a very neat, very practiced hand. It almost looked like type from a printer. I picked up a third book and found Modern Standard Arabic again, but the script was sloppy. This was a different writer entirely.
“You find something?” asked Detective Wharton.
“Yeah, we’ve got different writers and different languages,” I said, glancing up. “Give me a minute. I’m reading.”
Wharton crossed her arms but nodded. My heart started beating a little faster with every word. It almost felt as if I were reading a novel, but I knew the stories in that diary were all too rea
l.
“Today, rijaal al-hisbah came for the Abidi family,” I said, reading. I glanced up and saw curious expressions looking back at me. “Rijaal al-hisbah is a reference to men who guard against those who sin. They’re the state religious police in certain predominantly Muslim countries. They arrest and punish those who disobey their government’s particular interpretation of Islam.”
“What countries?” asked Wu.
I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head to the side. “I don’t know every country, but Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, parts of Syria, parts of Nigeria, the Islamic State.”
“So places I probably don’t want to visit,” said Detective Wharton. “Go on. Keep reading.”
I looked back to the diary.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, finding my place again. “Today the hisbah came for the Abidi family. We weren’t allowed to cry. Anisa tried to run, but they caught her. They dragged her to the street by her hair. Somebody had told Brother Faiz that they were Shia, so he lined the family up outside their house and made them kneel in the dirt. Then he made all the neighbors come and watch. Faiz said that all Shia are apostates and should be slaughtered like lambs. Then he and his men slit the family’s throats in front of us.
“I braided Anisa’s hair last week while she played with a doll on my lap. Now I have her blood on my clothes, and I can’t wash it off. This can’t be what God wants. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
That was the end of the page. Neither Wharton nor Wu said anything. We all knew, though, that this wasn’t a novel. This wasn’t a story. This was a young woman’s life, probably one of the young women I had found dead in the basement. She had escaped hell only to find the devil in her new home.
