Every Deadly Kiss

by Steven James

  WEATHERS: So are you also saying that there is also no such thing as radical Islam?

  BASHIR: Just as with any religion, there are those who call themselves Muslims but do not live out their beliefs, those who are not devout. Muslims who follow the Qur’an are not extremists who have been radicalized. They are not the radical ones, they are simply the ones who take their religion seriously, who are faithful and obedient to its decrees. If you wish to call me radical, feel free. I will take it as a compliment, one that I will carry with me to the grave and on to paradise.

  —FROM THE TRANSCRIPT OF EXTENDED STORY LIVE,

  EPISODE 46, FEATURING THE AUDIO INTERVIEW BETWEEN

  CABLE BROADCAST NEWS JOURNALIST JORDAN WEATHERS

  AND THE MAN CLAIMING TO BE FAYED RAABI’AH BASHIR,

  FOUNDER OF THE BRIGADE OF THE PROPHET’S SWORD

  44

  Back in my motel room, I cleaned up and changed.

  I thought about calling Christie to tell her what was going on, but decided it might just cause her to worry more if she heard that I’d been burned, even if the injuries weren’t that serious.

  After dictating some notes and observations from the day, I went online, bought a digital copy of Sanctuary, and, unsure that I would have the time now to make my way through the whole thing, I moved the cursor to the end to watch the last twenty minutes.

  While I completed the report of what’d happened at the school, I let the movie play.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened earlier in the movie, but in reviewing the plot synopsis on IMDb, I was able to get the gist of it. A young girl’s father died trying to save her from drowning. Her mother, hoping to find a positive male influence for her daughter, ended up unwittingly inviting a man who was violent and dangerous into their lives.

  In the current scene, the girl that Sharyn was playing watched this man, who was covered with blood, walk up to the house after he’d just murdered one of her mother’s coworkers.

  Millie tried unsuccessfully to warn her mom and to send Harris on a futile search outside. However, he caught on, went upstairs, and found Sharyn in the closet of the master bedroom.

  Just like the first four victims were found in the upstairs bedroom closet.

  Yes. It fit.

  Sharyn looked so scared, her tears so real, her prayer sounded so genuine. It was no wonder she’d been nominated for an Academy Award. The movie was clearly well directed and had superb cinematography. Even though I hadn’t watched the beginning, I found myself distracted from my paperwork and engrossed in the story.

  We still didn’t know what had happened to her mom.

  Harris was leading Sharyn down the stairs when my phone buzzed.

  Assistant Director DeYoung’s number came up on the screen of my cell, so I paused the movie.

  “Pat,” he said when I answered the call, “I heard you were injured. Burned?”

  “Nothing serious, sir.”

  “Are you anywhere near the Field Office there in Detroit?”

  “That’s downtown. Not too bad. Why? What is it?”

  “I need you there ASAP. We intercepted a video. You’re going to need to watch it for yourself. The most secure feed is at their cyber center.”

  I wanted to ask for more info, more clarification, but this line wasn’t encrypted, and if he wanted me to know more he would’ve already told me.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “When you get there, ask for SAC Kennedy.”

  ++++

  Blake and Mannie struck out at the first two martial arts studios and military supply stores they visited. However, at the third dojo, the rather brash karate instructor and two of his students snickered when Mannie asked them about a person fitting Dylan’s description.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him,” the guy said, “but I’m not planning to tell you anything about him.”

  “And why is that?”

  He was glaring at Mannie. “Don’t like people of your . . . ethnicity.”

  Blake shook his head. “Oh, that was not a smart thing to say.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll tell you what.” He nodded toward Mannie. “If any of you can knock him down just once, we’ll leave. If he ends up being the only one standing, you tell us everything we want to know. Or, you can just tell us now and avoid any chance of injury and embarrassment.”

  He scoffed. “I’m a sixth-degree black belt. These are two of my top students.”

  “If you must.”

  “If I must?”

  “Call for more help. You have my permission as long as it doesn’t take too long for them to get here. We’re on a bit of a tight schedule.”

  He sneered. “Screw you. I don’t need help. I don’t need anyone.”

  “Well,” Blake said, “in that case, since there are only three of you, I suggest you work together, or I can’t guarantee that any of you will be walking out of here.”

  Mannie cracked his neck as the three men surrounded him.

  Probably to save face, the instructor went first. He sent a flying kick to the side of Mannie’s head, but the metal plate that Mannie had on the left side of his skull from a car accident he’d been in twenty years earlier took the brunt of the kick.

  When the man’s heel smacked against it, he was the one who yelled out in pain.

  He attacked Mannie a second time. Another flying kick, but Mannie snatched him out of the air, spun him around, and threw him roughly at the other two students.

  After that, even when the other two black belts moved in to work together, there wasn’t much of a fight.

  None of their kicks or punches had any consequential effect on Blake’s hulking friend, and in less than thirty seconds, all three of the black belts were on the floor groaning in pain.

  Blake guessed that the bone sticking through the instructor’s forearm was probably going to slow down his teaching for a while.

  By the time he and Mannie left, they had the information they needed.

  Dylan had indeed trained here a few times earlier in the summer. Though the instructor didn’t have contact information for him, he did say that Dylan had some sort of connection to the city morgue at Grandshore Medical Center.

  Before he was sent to prison, back when he was still active, Dylan would often visit the morgue to see the victims. Sometimes he broke in. Once he killed the custodian, wore his clothes, grabbed a mop, and simply walked in while a family was there to identify one of his victims.

  Knowing that Dylan had a connection to the morgue here made sense, and was plenty for Blake to go on.

  ++++

  When Sharyn met up with Schwartz at the 9th Precinct, she asked him to drive so she could look into a few things on the way.

  As he hopped onto I-94 toward Inntoit2U Designs’ office, first, she initiated a trace on Simone’s phone, but Cyber wasn’t able to locate it and, according to the phone company’s records, there hadn’t been any data usage on her account for the last two months.

  She also reviewed Dylan’s background, including his stint in the Army, to see if there was anything there that would help them find him now.

  Finally, she familiarized herself with the Hook’dup app and began to study the types of profiles that got the most traffic and generated the most interest, already planning what to include if she set up an account herself.

  45

  I parked in the garage adjoining the federal building.

  A hand-printed sign notified me that the staff entrance was closed for the day and included an arrow to the public one around the other side of the building.

  Christie’s daughter called as I was rounding the corner.

  Because of the urgency of getting into this meeting, I debated whether or not to pick up, but out of concern for Christie, I answered it. “Tessa, are you—?”

  “Well?
I’ve been waiting, like, all day. Did you call Mom?”

  “She’s okay. I touched base with her this morning.”

  “But something’s on her mind, right?”

  “Something. Yes. She’s going to call me again tonight. Until then, don’t worry about her.” I grabbed the door handle. “Right now I have an important appointment that I need to—”

  “Do you know where she’s going?”

  While opening the door, I paused in midswing. “What do you mean?”

  “Going, as in leaving. As in not being here. As in sending me to stay at Cherise’s house tonight after the babysitting gig and staying there until this weekend.”

  “Tessa, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about my mom asking me if I could stay with my friend Cherise—like I just said—while she goes to visit a quote friend. Unquote.”

  “What friend?”

  “Um, it’s pretty clear she didn’t say, or else I wouldn’t have just told you ‘quote’ and ‘unquote.’ She’s acting weird.”

  “And this friend, you don’t know if it’s—”

  “I don’t know who it is! That’s why I’m calling you!”

  “Okay. Hang on a sec. Let me think.”

  Christie hadn’t mentioned visiting a friend and, although we were dating, we weren’t married or even living together and she had no obligation to tell me where she was going or what she was doing.

  But still, I wasn’t thrilled that she was keeping something from me.

  Oh, as if you’re not doing the same thing when it comes to your history with Sharyn?

  That’s different.

  No. Actually, that’s pretty much the same.

  “Tessa, tell me what you know.”

  “I just did!”

  “Alright. Is she there now?”

  “She slipped out to buy some power bars or something. I don’t know.”

  An urgent and impatient-looking woman in a business suit was exiting the building and I held the door open but stepped to the side to give her space to leave. She bristled past me. “I’ll call her,” I told Tessa.

  “I’m worried.”

  “I know.”

  “This isn’t like her. Something’s going on.”

  “Don’t worry, Raven.” I opted for the Edgar Allan Poe–inspired nickname I called her sometimes and she seemed to actually like. “It’s going to be fine. In the meantime, let me know if you hear from her. Text me.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise?”

  “Do you promise it’ll be fine?”

  “Yes.” As I said the word, I thought again of how the word “fine” does not always mean good, but I didn’t get into that with Tessa. Sometimes reassurance is a gift you can offer people even if you have no direct control regarding the outcome. “I promise.”

  “Look, I gotta get ready for this babysitting thing tonight, but let me know what you find out, okay?”

  “When I reach her, I’ll have her call you. Until then, don’t worry.”

  After hanging up, I tried Christie’s number but she didn’t answer.

  I texted, asking her to give me a call, then entered the lobby and identified myself to the two guards flanking the metal detector. “Patrick Bowers. I’m here to see SAC Kennedy.”

  They verified my ID, then one of them led me past the first set of elevators to another elevator bank farther down the hall, where he swiped his badge.

  Inside, he punched floor 4, then 26, 2, and 12, a combination that was some sort of code.

  I looked at him curiously. “Which floor are we going to?”

  “The one that doesn’t exist.” He pointed at the floor. “Going down, Agent Bowers. Way down.”

  46

  Ali found the rest stop, pulled into a parking spot in a deserted corner of the lot, and turned off the ignition.

  He let out a sigh of relief at having made it here safely.

  He was still exhausted, and the adrenaline rush he’d gotten from the near-miss traffic accident had worn off.

  Sleep.

  Just rest.

  Then you can pray and get back on the road.

  He set an alarm for thirty minutes and closed his eyes.

  ++++

  A stout, graying man in his late fifties met me as I exited the elevator.

  He had a kind face and probing eyes that held an entire weather system in them and I liked him right away.

  “Charles Kennedy.”

  “Patrick Bowers.”

  His handshake was crisp, brisk, professional.

  “I spoke with Assistant Director DeYoung,” he said. “My team is getting everything set so that we can watch the video in the suite at the end of the hall.” I caught a touch of east Texas in his voice.

  Kennedy invited me to follow him, and we made our way down the hall past four rooms that were clearly designed for suspect interviews. “Agent Bowers, do you know the story about the biting worms?”

  “Biting worms? No. I don’t think so.”

  “Two men come upon a boy who’s fishing in a creek. They ask him how the fish are biting and he says, ‘Not so good.’ Then he holds up a coffee can with some dirt in it and adds, ‘But the worms sure are.’ So they think that’s a strange response, and they go on their way, but when they return an hour later, they find the boy lying there dead, and when they look in the can, it’s full of baby copperheads. The boy had collected them, thinking they were worms.”

  It sounded like it might be an urban legend, but reality can sometimes be stranger than fiction.

  “Is that true?” I asked.

  “It’s truth.”

  “Assumptions can get you killed?” I said. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Their consequences cannot be overestimated.”

  We arrived at the cyber center and he placed his palm on a scanner. “From what DeYoung tells me, when we see this video it’ll be tough not to assume too much. Let’s both of us hold back.”

  “Alright.”

  Then he pressed the door open.

  All of the workstations in the room were oriented toward the eight sprawling video screens that covered one wall.

  Four other agents were present, but Kennedy excused them all and they joined the guard from the front desk who’d followed us down the hallway, leaving the two of us alone.

  Kennedy password-clicked his way past three levels of security, then logged in to a video conference call with Assistant Director DeYoung.

  “Pat.” DeYoung looked as grim as he’d sounded earlier on the phone.

  “Assistant Director.”

  “You scheduled a meeting with Maria Aguirre from OPR on Monday. What were you planning to discuss?”

  I couldn’t help but notice his use of the past tense, and being here under these somewhat obtuse circumstances, I didn’t anticipate that my meeting with Maria had simply been canceled. “What’s happened, sir?”

  “You don’t know where she went?”

  “Ralph mentioned earlier that she’d entered Kazakhstan. That’s all I know.”

  “And so, your meeting, though, what was it concerning?”

  “I had reason to believe that she might have a connection to Blake.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Too many coincidences. Too many arrows pointing in her direction.”

  “Go on.”

  When I was done delineating the reasons I’d come up with during my workout this morning for thinking that one of our Office of Professional Responsibility lawyers might be connected to a known terrorist, he said, “And you didn’t bring this up with anyone?”

  “She’s OPR. Who else would I bring it up to except—”

  “Me. Perhaps.”

  “Yes.”

  “And d
id you suspect me too, Pat?”

  “Not suspect, sir. But consider—yes. Briefly.”

  DeYoung leaned to the side and spoke for a moment to someone offscreen. They kept their voices low so I couldn’t make out what they were saying. When he appeared back on the monitor again, he said, “Okay. We’re ready on this end. We’re sending the link now.”

  Kennedy entered his credentials one final time and the main screen in front of us blinked on, showing the frozen image of a cement block–walled room. On the right, the corner of a cage that looked about a meter and a half high was visible on the edge of the screen.

  On the next monitor over, two faces came up. I didn’t recognize either of the people, but DeYoung said, “I’ve asked the Bureau’s Bioweapons and Counterterrorism Director Dr. Chung Qiao and Dr. Kate Ferrier, the director of the CDC, to join us.”

  The FBI is the responding agency in the result of a terrorist act on United States soil, but the CDC is in charge in the case of a bioweapon attack or a disease outbreak.

  I didn’t know much about Dr. Vladislav Kuznetsov, the man we found hanged on Wednesday, but we did know he was a Cold War bioweapons researcher.

  Bringing the CDC in made sense, considering the circumstances, but it did not bode well for Maria.

  But what struck me most of all was the fact that I’d even been invited to participate in this video conference at all.

  Why are they reading you in on this? What does it have to do with you?

  “This video was intercepted by NSA,” DeYoung explained. “They were following up on some jihadist chatter. The way my counterpart over there put it to me: ‘One of our analysts dipped her hand into the data stream and came up with a fish we didn’t even know was swimming in those waters.’ A little too metaphorical, if you ask me, but you get the gist. As far as NSA can tell, there wasn’t any disruption of the transmission, so it’s unlikely that the sender or the receiver knows we have a copy.”