by Scott Blade
“Why are you asking about his lawyer? That’s not going to do him any good.”
She said, “He has a right to a fair trial. Right? Just like we do as citizens.”
I realized that she didn’t know that he was dead. I leaned forward, slid my coffee mug out of the way, and took her hand. I said, “Maya, Turik is dead.”
CHAPTER 20
“I KNEW IT!” she said over and over. “I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!”
Chris quit the Gameboy and looked at her, but didn’t speak. He looked at me, eyes puzzled.
She started to cry, but not hard. She was tough. I’d seen sailors cry harder. She looked away and let the tears roll out of her eyes and down her cheek. She looked out the window, stared over the snowy, green landscape. Then she turned back to me and wiped her face.
I placed my hand on top of hers, which dwarfed her tiny hands like it had completely vanished underneath mine.
Chris looked at my hand and reached out and did the same. His pintsized hand barely took up any landscape of the back of mine.
Maya stopped crying and smiled at me and then at her son. She calmed her breathing and said, “Thanks. I…”
But she stopped and was still a little choked up. We broke our hands apart and she reached out to her son and hugged him.
I said, “Take your time. I’m sorry. I thought that you knew.”
She didn’t respond to that. Instead she said, “I’m not close to my family. I haven’t spoken to my sisters or parents in years. Turik and I kept in touch, but we had only recently become close. I heard from him about six months ago. Out of the blue. He wanted a relationship. He started to email me and sometimes we Facetimed.”
I nodded, thought back to the years that I hadn’t spoken to my own mother. That was something I regretted, a relationship that I’d never get to relive because she had been murdered.
She said, “Do you know how he died? Did they kill him? Did he suffer?”
I stared at her son. He seemed unaffected by the news. The only thing that affected him was that his mother was crying. He was at that age where death was still a misunderstood ambiguity like the question of where babies came from. So, I used a word that I hoped he didn’t know. I said, “Suicide, Maya.”
She was quiet again, looked away.
“You really should speak with the MPs.”
“I tried. I told you.”
“I know. But I think you should try again. I wouldn’t worry about that one not letting you in. I doubt he’ll be there.”
She drank some of her tea and said, “The thing is, if he’s dead, then I shouldn’t meet with the MPs. At least not voluntarily. No, I should avoid that meeting.”
“Why not?”
She paused a long, long beat.
“Why not?” I repeated.
“No. Meeting with them is a mistake. I have to think about myself, now. I have a son. I have to think about him. I can’t bring Jimmy back.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got a career to think about.”
I stayed quiet.
She said, “Look. I changed my name many years ago to Maya Harris. It’s not my birth name.”
I nodded. Romey had told me that.
Harris wiped the remaining tears from her face and said, “Harris is my ex-husband’s name and Maya isn’t my birth name.”
I nodded and waited.
“The reason I changed it is because of my work. And because of my religion. Or rather lack thereof. I’m from a Muslim family.”
I took a pull from my coffee and watched her eyes, a technique that I’d learned in the NCIS. Eye contact was a simple thing, but it was one of the most valuable weapons in a cop’s arsenal. The eyes are the windows to the soul, after all. You do something that distracts and relaxes the other person, like drinking from a coffee mug. Make things seem routine, not a big deal. We’re just friends talking. And they let their guard down. I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I wasn’t suspecting Maya of lying to me. It was more of habit than anything.
She said, “I’m not a Muslim. I’m an atheist. A fact that killed my parents. When Jimmy and I were little, I was in an arranged marriage situation. Can you imagine?”
She took another drink from her tea. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time on it. She must’ve forgotten about her watch. I’d seen a lot of people do this. I didn’t have a cell phone or a watch.
She got a text message as if it was on que. She tilted it and read the text to herself in one short glance. It was a quick, unimportant text, I guessed. Maybe it was from her husband or ex-husband. A text asking where she was or if she was okay. She made no indication that it was important.
I said, “I can. I was in the service. I knew a lot of different types of people. All walks of life. The military is like that. I’ve met foreign Muslims and Hindus; both had arranged marriages in their cultures.”
She nodded and said, “I wasn’t the family favorite growing up. I was constantly questioning everything. Our religion, our father’s control over us. After I graduated from high school, I was supposed to marry this guy my father picked out. And I bolted. I never looked back. Six months ago, my brother wrote to me. Of course, our father is so proud of him. Or at least he was. But my brother told me a secret.”
I listened, stayed quiet.
She said, “He wasn’t a Muslim. He was also an atheist. He’d been pretending for years. Just doing the right thing. I suppose.”
“That must’ve been tough on him.”
“It was.”
I said, “Maya. I don’t want to be insensitive, but why did he do it then?”
“What do you mean?”
“The MPs are thinking this is ISIS. Like a terrorist thing. But if your brother wasn’t Muslim, then he wouldn’t have been involved with an Islamic terrorist group. Atheists don’t tend to side with extremists.”
She shook her head and then she said, “He wasn’t.”
I asked, “Maya, what did he say in this video message that he sent you?”
She looked around the room, like she was making sure that no one could hear. She said, “I got it this morning.”
She had already said that, but I didn’t interrupt her.
She paused a beat and then said, “First, he called me. Three times. Right in a row, but I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it. It wasn’t from his phone. I was in the shower. When I got out I saw that he had left me a video message.”
I stayed quiet.
She didn’t explain. She just reached into her purse and pulled out her phone, again. She unlocked it and swiped and pressed with her finger. Then she handed it to me. She also reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of earbuds. She handed them to me as well, and said, “Watch it with these.”
I nodded, took them and plugged them into the phone’s headphone jack.
I looked down at the screen. The video file was paused. I saw Turik’s face in the still. He looked just as he had hours ago. I hit play.
The timer said that the video was only forty-one seconds long.
Short.
I watched it. Turned the volume on the phone all the way up.
Turik looked the same, only completely different at the same time.
He said, “Maya…Maya. I’m so sorry.”
He looked up and away from the phone like he was checking to make sure that he didn’t get caught by someone. Then he said, “I’m so scared.”
It was true. I could see it in his face, his eyes. He was terrified. He was even visibly shaking.
Then he said, “I’m innocent. Whatever they tell you. I’m innocent.”
He paused and said, “There was this guy. Widow. Jack Widow. He was a cop. He can help. Find him for…Good Measure.”
I stared at the video, a little thrown off that he had mentioned my name.
He said, “Maya, I love you.”
That was it. The video was over. I touched the screen and scrolled the video back to th
e beginning and rewatched it. This time I looked all over the screen for clues. I tried to look for reflections, background images, or anything else that would tell me where he was because he seemed to be in a confined space. The wall behind him was painted in generic, military green. And the room was dim, not dark, but not lit up either.
The waitress came by and dropped off Chris’s fries and Maya asked for the check. She kept her eyes looking down so that the waitress wouldn’t see that she’d been crying.
I waited for the waitress to walk away again. Then I closed my eyes and played the video from the beginning, listened to the sounds in the background. I listened hard. I heard his words all over again and tried to concentrate between them.
I heard ambient echoes. Then I realized that he was practically whispering. Although, it wasn’t an actually whisper, more like he was speaking low enough not to be heard, but loud enough for the phone’s microphone to pick up his voice.
I continued to listen. I paused the video and replayed it one last time. I heard the same echoing room, ambient noises, and his low voice. Then I heard something else. Something right at the end, right before he shut the video off.
I replayed just the last few seconds.
I concentrated hard and listened. He said, “for…Good Measure.” And then right at the last second, right as the video cut off, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.
CHAPTER 21
IN THE VIDEO, I could see Turik’s hands. The background of the video appeared to be the inside of a military building, but I couldn’t be sure. If Maya was telling the truth and she received this video message right after the calls that she ignored, then it was probable that Turik had recorded it right after he tried to call her.
If that was the case and he made this video from inside the command building at Arrow’s Peak, then it wasn’t possible that he fired that gunshot that I heard. And that was a damn fact.
I wondered how hard it would be to prove that it was a gunshot. Proving the time and location wouldn’t be hard.
We stayed quiet, both sitting in silence for a long time. I pulled out the earbuds and slid the phone back to her. She leaned forward and said, “I need your help.”
I said, “We need to get this to the MPs back at Arrow’s Peak.”
She said, “No way! We can’t trust them. They already wrote my brother off as a killer.”
“Can you blame them? He looks guilty. They got him on base. Probably blood all over him.”
She stayed quiet, just stared at me, pleading.
I said, “Why the hell did he kill himself if he’s innocent?”
She shook her head and said, “I don’t know. All I know is that my brother would never do what they’re saying he did.”
I nodded. I wasn’t quite so convinced. If he was being set up, it was intricate.
I thought about Romey and Kelly. Kelly had argued that Turik was mentally unstable. He’d argued that all mass shooters were. And mostly, he was right. But not always.
Suicide bombers are often called whack jobs, crazy people, or insane, but are they? Certainly, that was an easy thing to say. But most suicide bombers are religious. They think that what they are doing is God’s work. They think that what they are doing is right.
Beliefs are funny things. Ideas can destroy worlds.
She stared at me like she was trying to choose her words wisely. Then she said, “You were a cop, right?”
I shot her a sideways look that I didn’t mean to do. I said, “Yeah.”
“Then you have to help. You can investigate. Or whatever you need to do. Prove my brother’s innocence.”
I said, “I really think that the MPs can handle this. You should give it to them.”
“You heard my brother. He asked for you. They won’t help. They’ll just say that this is an example of how crazy he was. They’ll say he’s just another homegrown terrorist. A Muslim terrorist.”
She reached out and spread her fingers out in front of me like she was trying to grab my hand, but didn’t touch it. She said, “You know I’m right. They already think he’s another Muslim terrorist. My brother’s got a purple heart. He was no terrorist!”
I thought for a moment. I said, “Okay.”
She said, “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
I nodded and said, “I’ll help, but we still have to get this video to the MPs. I met them. There’s a good one. We can trust her. She’ll follow where the evidence leads.”
Maya nodded and asked, “What do we do next?”
“After we’re done here, take me back to Hamber. Take me to the base.”
She nodded.
We waited for the bill. She insisted on paying it and left cash on the table.
We left the restaurant and got back into the rented car. We drove in silence. Thirty minutes later, we were back in Hamber and ten minutes after that we were nearing the base.
I said, “I want you to go back to San Francisco and wait. Got it?”
“Don’t you think that I should stay here?”
“No. There’s no reason for you to be here. Besides, where would you go?”
“I can rent a room.”
“No. That’s not an option. Trust me. The hotel owner won’t rent to you.”
“Why not?”
“Just take my word for it. It’s better if you go back home and go about your day.”
“Give me your number. I’ll text you the video.”
I said, “I don’t have a phone.”
She said, “Take mine then.”
“No. Keep it. I might need to call you.”
“How will you show them the video?”
I said, “I’ll call you from the phone of an MP named Romey. You can send it to her.”
“Okay.”
We drove another minute and then we had to stop. Maya slowed the car and pulled over as close to the ditch as she could. We stared out the windshield.
She said, “I guess the word’s out.”
I looked on at a long line of panel vans and cab trucks pulling trailers with logos on the sides. People in suits and ties and professional attire crowded the street ahead. I saw cameramen and news anchors.
The media was here.
I reached over and put a hand over Maya’s hand on the wheel. Then I stepped out of the car. Maya made a U-turn and I walked to the base.
CHAPTER 22
ARROW’S PEAK’S ONLY GATE was still under the same guard unit—minus the one with the big nose. I imagined that he was resting up somewhere from our last meeting.
Everything else seemed the same. Same armor. Same hardware. The only difference now was that the street was lined with news vans from both the local news channels and the major networks, the twenty-four-hour news stations. The word had gotten out and the lid was off the story. Which would make controlling the story no longer a concern for Romey, but it would also mean that navigating her investigation would be infinitely harder. If she was still investigating.
I imagined dozens of hungry news chiefs all over the country, waiting back at their respective headquarters, but not patiently. I imagined them sweating and hounding. The news business was a horse race for stories like this.
I walked through the tight crowd of camera crews and field correspondents and news producers, all waiting for their big break, all chomping at the opportunity to get the scoop.
I guessed the time was around 16:00. I used my hands to move shoulders and traverse through people. I tried my best to stay off camera, old habit, but not particularly necessary.
I found my way to the front. There were new, thick road barriers put up on the street and new guards added to the gate. Everyone wore the same body armor and carried the same heavy hardware from earlier. I wasn’t sure that would stop the bloodthirsty reporters.
At the front of the gate, there was an invisible cone of no-man’s-land, where no one was supposed to step forward, but I did.
The guards all noticed at the same time. Even the guys who guarded the exit turned
and faced me abruptly.
The main guard on duty at the entrance hut walked toward me at a steady pace. He stopped about five feet from me, hands on his rifle. He said, “Stop there, sir.”
I stopped, kept my breath steady and my hands by my sides.
He said, “We’re closed off today, sir. I’m going to have to ask you to return to the road.”
“I’m not a reporter.”
“That doesn’t matter, sir. Please go back the way you came. The base is locked down today.”
“Marine, I’m here to see Major Romey.”
The Marine paused, looked me up and down. He said, “State the purpose.”
“Just tell her that Jack Widow is here. Tell her I have information.”
“I need a little more than that, sir,”
“Marine, that’s all you’re going to get. I suggest you get her on the horn. I suggest you don’t delay.”
He looked at me, seemed to debate for a long moment on the right move to make. In the end, he knew that it wasn’t up to him to decide. He looked back over his shoulder at the guard hut, kept checking back on me to make sure that I wasn’t moving.
He called out to his partner and said, “Baker.”
Another MP leaned out of the hut and said, “Yeah?”
“Call Major Romey down here.”
“Sure,” the MP named Baker said. He leaned back into the guard hut and got on the phone. I saw a landline, white receiver and long white cord. After a few moments he leaned back out and said, “She wants to know what for?”
I didn’t step any closer, but I squinted to take a look at the MP’s nametape. His name was Berry, like Halle Berry, the actress, only she was much better looking in my book.
Berry said, “Tell her that there’s a guy at the gate. Tell her Jack Widow needs to see her.”
Baker didn’t respond; he just leaned back in and got on the phone again. He spoke and then he listened. I saw him hang up the line. He stepped out and walked over to us. He held his M16 onehanded with his left hand under the magazine and the barrel. The muzzle pointed at the gravel, a safe operating position. He stopped just feet from us and said, “She wants me to escort him onto base.”
