High Heat

by Richard Castle

  More to the point, if you had a victim, someone had to be the killer. And, in this case, if Qawi wasn’t involved, who was?

  Heat was looking around the room for answers when her gaze fell on Rook, who was seated in a chair, staring intently at Qawi.

  “Hello, you with us?” she said, waving a hand on front of his face.

  “Huh? Yeah,” Rook said. “It’s just…I was thinking about what he said about America needing someone to hate.”

  “Oh, now you’re starting on the theology lessons, too?”

  “It’s not theology. It’s more sociology. Or even just history,” Rook said. “You realize, everything now being said about Muslims in America—that they’re not really American, that they can’t be trusted, that their ideology is inherently dangerous and twisted, that they’re here but their loyalties lie elsewhere—used to be said about Catholics? A hundred years ago, a Catholic couldn’t even be hired as the principal of a local elementary school, because he would supposedly use his position to recruit followers for the pope. It took fifty years for America to realize how ridiculous it was. And even when we elected John F. Kennedy, there were lunatic conspiracy theorists who saw the hand of the Vatican in everything he did.”

  “Yeah, that’s fascinating, Rook,” Heat said. “But you want to tell me what John F. Kennedy has to do with the suspect in there?”

  Rook turned his attention to Heat.

  “Look, I didn’t want to say anything, in case you really did break the guy. You know how much I love watching you work someone other than me over the coals. But—”

  “Out with it, Rook.”

  “I just don’t think this is the guy. While you had me locked up, I made some phone calls. I talked to Jeff Diamant, the First Press religion reporter. He did a big piece about the Muslim community in the New York area a few years back and knows all the players. He said Qawi is known as a progressive voice, pushing for not only a modern reading of the Quran, but also for Muslims in this country to take the lead in the fight against terrorism. He’s been pretty consistent in saying that Muslims have to clean their own house if they’re ever going to be viewed without suspicion.”

  “Which could be a cover,” Heat said. “What better guy to start American ISIS than the one who pretends to be a reformer?”

  “True. Although Diamant also hooked me up with a guy at Rikers. He said they had a problem a few years back with inmates preaching a very literal reading of the Quran, essentially trying to recruit young, impressionable men and indoctrinate them into an extremist mindset. They called Muharib Qawi to set the record straight. He gave a series of sermons about how the Quran calls on Muslims to do good. He kept coming back, leaving literature behind. He even talked to the guards about what to listen for that would indicate they had another bad seed.”

  “Great, we’ll make sure we give Qawi a gold star on his way to life in prison,” Heat said. “That doesn’t change the evidence. There’s no question where that video was shot and where that body was found.”

  “I’m not saying he doesn’t know anything,” Rook said. “I’m saying now that you’ve bad-copped him a little bit, let me good-cop him.”

  Heat made a face like someone had made her favorite drink—grande skim latte, two pumps of sugar-free vanilla—with two pumps of sugar-free sewer water.

  But then a thought that had been buzzing around the back of her mind for the last hour finally worked its way to the front: If Muharib Qawi was really going to found American ISIS, then kidnap a journalist and provoke outrage with a gory decapitation video, then have the audacity to threaten a beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning writer…wouldn’t he perhaps have a slightly better escape plan than trying to blend in to the Traditional Clothing of the Persian/Arabian Gulf Area exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History?

  “You really think you can get something from this guy?” Heat said.

  “I guarantee I can.”

  Heat forced a laugh. “Really?”

  “What do you want to bet?”

  “Your Star Trek posters,” she said. “I want them out of the apartment.”

  “Okay,” he said. “And I think you know what I want.”

  “The same thing you always want? You know I’m going to give that to you anyway.”

  “No, no,” Rook said. “There’s a catch. I’m looking for a little cosplay.”

  “It’s about to get weird in here, isn’t it?” Raley said.

  “Every seven years,” Rook said, ignoring him, “Vulcans lose the logical, rational way of thinking for which their people are famously known. When this happens, the only way for them to return to normal is to take a mate.”

  “Oh, Rook, you’re not serious.”

  “Yes, I am. If I get something out of this suspect, you’re going to make love to me dressed as a sex-crazed Vulcan.”

  Feller clapped his hand on Raley’s shoulder. “I’m afraid we didn’t even pause at weird before we went all the way to freakytown.”

  But Heat was reaching out her right hand.

  “Okay,” she said. “You’re on.”

  With Heat watching from the other side of the glass, Rook walked into Interrogation One, wearing the kind of engaging smile that had won over guarded celebrities, reclusive geniuses, and wary politicians the world over.

  “Mr. Qawi,” he began. “I’m—”

  “Jameson Rook!” Qawi supplied, standing up and returning Heat’s smile, albeit in a more fawning fashion. “I can’t believe it! Jameson Rook, here in front of me! Allah be praised! I am most honored to meet you, sir. Most honored.”

  Qawi had taken his cuffed hands and turned the palms against each other, in a prayerlike gesture, and was bowing slightly. Rook turned toward the glass of the one-way mirror and smirked.

  Unseen by both of them, Heat was rolling her eyes.

  “I am such a huge, huge fan,” Qawi continued, gushing. “I have read all of your work, of course. Your reporting on the Middle East has been some of the most insightful work I have ever read on Islam. And I’m not just talking about American reporters. I praise your work above the Arab publications as well.”

  “Well, thank you—” Rook began, but was cut off again.

  “Do you know my favorite thing you’ve ever written?” Qawi asked.

  “No, please tell me,” Rook said. He cast a glance in the direction of where he guessed Heat was standing and waggled his eyebrows. She rolled her eyes even more.

  “It was just a small sidebar, no more than a few hundred words. Not one of your big investigations. Perhaps you don’t even remember it? It was about the Hittites, a nation of people who vanished from the earth more than a thousand years ago.”

  “It…rings a bell,” Rook said.

  “Oh, it was brilliant. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referenced that piece, especially when talking to young people about the Quran. You quoted passages from both the Bible and the Quran that called on the faithful to smite the Hittites. They were, of course, a very significant threat during the times when both the Bible and the Quran were written. The Hittites came out of Asia Minor with their chariots and their advanced weaponry. But are they a threat today? Well, of course not. Because they no longer exist. My favorite line of the piece was, ‘Hittite leaders could not be reached for comment.’”

  Rook chuckled at his own long-ago joke. “Oh, right. Now I remember. The piece was making the point that passages in religious texts have to be understood as being a product of the time in which they were written, not taken out of that context and crammed into the modern world. The only way they should be read as a call to war is if you’re prepared to do battle with the Hittites.”

  “Exactly,” Qawi said. “Which is what I try to get young people to understand about some of the more violent passages of the Quran. Because, yes, there are some parts that call on believers to cut off the heads of infidels. But those who understand the Quran know that they were really only referring to a very specific time in history, when Muhammad,
peace be upon him, was looking to recruit and rally warriors to his side. That time has passed. The enemies Muhammad was referring to are now just as dead as the Hittites, so we must treat those passages accordingly. It is a tragedy that the Quran has been twisted by those who act otherwise.”

  Rook was nodding his head. He finally took a seat across from Qawi.

  “I must say,” Qawi continued, “I was very distressed to hear your name spoken at the end of that video. Any true believer would understand Jameson Rook has been a friend to Islam. You have helped people in America understand our religion. Muslims everywhere should be in your debt, not making threats against you.”

  “Well, thank you,” Rook said. “And, look, I want you to know, I’ve made some phone calls and…I know where you stand on these kinds of issues.”

  “You talked to Jeff Diamant, didn’t you?” Qawi said.

  Rook nodded.

  “He is a good man, Jeff Diamant. We have had many fascinating conversations. There is a place in Jannah for him, to be sure.”

  “But I have to tell you—” Rook began.

  Qawi finished the thought for him: “That none of this looks very good for me.”

  “Sure doesn’t,” Rook confirmed.

  Qawi’s turban bobbed up and down. “I know. I know. But what I told Captain Heat is true. I really can’t explain how that bloodstain showed up in my mosque. I went up to Boston, it wasn’t there. I came back, there it was.”

  “But you have some idea who might have been behind it, don’t you,” Rook said softly.

  Qawi’s attention went down toward the table.

  “There are some young men in your congregation who have some very disturbing views about Islam, aren’t there?”

  The turban again bobbed, just a little. But it was detectable nevertheless.

  Rook pressed on. “They have come to you with questions, and for as much as you have tried to convince them that Islam is a religion of peace, they’ve been reading some of those foul, virulent Internet sites that say otherwise. They’re on Facebook, friending imams whose messages you disagree with.”

  “I keep telling them,” Qawi said, his voice sounding distant, “that jihad is supposed to be an internal struggle. It is the fight between good and evil that takes place within a person. We do not take jihad outside ourselves. Those who do so misunderstand the entire concept.”

  “But those Internet sites can be so compelling,” Rook said. “The voices they’re listening to are louder and more persuasive. It’s hard to out-shout a call to action when all you have to counter it with is a message of passivity. And these are young men who feel alienated from society. They’re disaffected, angry.”

  “They keep applying for jobs dressed as I dress,” Qawi said, gesturing down toward his clothes. “And they keep getting turned down. I…I actually suggested to them that perhaps they try to wear Western clothes for the interviews. They called me a traitor.”

  “And they kept getting more and more extreme in their viewpoints, coming to you with passages in the Quran that, read a certain way, would seem to urge them to violence against nonbelievers.”

  “I knew it was trouble when they quoted Wahhab,” Qawi said.

  Rook didn’t need to be told that Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was an eighteenth-century religious figure who founded an Islamic sect that called for a return to a strict orthodox reading of the Quran, or that his ideology, Wahhabism, was followed by al-Qaeda and its successor in terror, ISIS.

  “I tried to tell them that this was backward thinking, that they were turning toward a version of Islam that would have us ignore more than a millennium of human progress,” Qawi said.

  “But they were seduced,” Rook said.

  “Sadly. Yes.”

  “You even found out that they started posting things themselves on those Internet sites, not just lurking in the conversations but participating in them, adding to them.”

  Qawi nodded again.

  “And now, even though I know you don’t want to, even though you still think you can turn them back to your way of thinking, you’re going to acknowledge they have gone too far. You’re going to recognize they have done incredible damage to the religion you love. You’re going to become a model of what you talk about when you say Muslims need to take the lead against terrorism. And you’re going to tell me the names of those young men.”

  Rook had established such a mesmerizing rhythm Heat expected Qawi to blurt out the names. But the imam paused.

  “If I…if I give you the names, your captain Heat, she will…She will continue to investigate, yes? There will not be a rush to judgment simply because they are Muslim. They will be treated with fairness?”

  “I have had the pleasure of Captain Heat’s company for many years now,” Rook said. “The one thing I can assure you about her is that when it comes to her investigations, she is blind to race, ethnicity, creed, sexual orientation, or any other form of intolerance you might be able to think of. The only ethic that matters to Nikki Heat is the truth.”

  Qawi studied Rook. Heat could hear his chair creaking through the microphone as he shifted in his seat.

  “Very well,” he said. “Their names are Hassan El-Bashir and Tariq Al-Aman. I might be wrong. I certainly hope I am. But I think it might be them in that video.”

  With one hand, Rook reached toward Qawi. He grabbed the imam’s shackled wrists, as if he was trying to inject human warmth into the cold steel of the handcuffs.

  “You’ve done the right thing, Muharib,” Rook said.

  With the other hand, Rook reached behind his back and, in full view of detectives in the observation room, formed his fingers into the Vulcan salute.

  Over the next half hour, Heat watched as Rook continued working Qawi for details about the new suspects.

  Hassan El-Bashir had been born in Harlem; Tariq Al-Aman, in the Bronx. While not related, they shared similar stories. Each had a grandparent who started out Christian but renounced their “slave name”—Smith, Jones, whatever it had been—and had taken a new name when they joined the Nation of Islam.

  That movement, founded in the crucible of the sixties, had lost steam. Their families’ devotion to the religion did not. The next generation had been raised Muslim. That generation did the same with their children.

  El-Bashir and Al-Aman were those children. Qawi said they first came to Masjid al-Jannah a few years earlier. Being of similar age and disposition, they gravitated toward each other, becoming friends first, then roommates who shared a cold-water flat in Harlem.

  Qawi couldn’t explain what led them to become radicalized, beyond what Rook had already theorized. It was a combination of disillusionment with an American Dream that didn’t seem to include them and a series of Internet sites that presented a very different reading of the Quran than Qawi favored.

  As Rook and Qawi talked, the detectives of the Twentieth Precinct were fleshing out other details of their new suspects’ lives.

  El-Bashir and Al-Aman were not unknown to the NYPD. El-Bashir had been caught with a few marijuana cigarettes during a stop-and-frisk a few years earlier, resulting in a misdemeanor possession charge. Al-Aman had several nebulous charges for loitering and disturbing the peace, though he sounded more like an annoyance to law enforcement than an actual threat. None of his priors were violent.

  Rhymer had produced their mug shots for Heat. El-Bashir’s was several years old. In it, he looked like any other scowling teenager, with a smooth face and short-cropped hair. He wore no headdress, nor any other clothing to indicate his religious affiliation.

  Al-Aman’s picture was more recent and more fitting for a young Muslim. His head was wrapped in a turban. His beard, which appeared to have been dyed red, was kept long.

  But it was Raley, the king of all surveillance media, who got the big hit.

  “Captain,” he said as he entered the observation room, “I’ve got something you’re going to want to see.”

  Heat glanced toward Rook and Qawi, w
ho were now deep in conversation about the similarities between the messaging in the Bible and the Quran. Deciding she wasn’t going to miss anything pertinent to her investigation, Heat followed Raley back into the bull pen.

  “I finally got tapes from a camera across the street from Masjid al-Jannah,” Raley said, sitting in front of the large screen. “This is a few minutes before eleven o’clock Saturday night.”

  He pressed play. Two young men in thobes and turbans were walking east, up 73rd Street. Taking the most direct path, they climbed the front steps and entered the mosque.

  They moved with urgency, a pair of men with somewhere to be. One of them, the one on the right, gave a furtive glance up the street before entering.

  “Awfully late at night to be going to mosque, wouldn’t you say?” Heat said.

  “My thought exactly.”

  “How long did they stay in there?” Heat asked.

  “A little more than two hours. I got them coming out here. Actual time: 1:07 A.M.”

  Raley played the clip. It showed the same two young men exiting the front door. They walked back west, down 73rd Street, in the direction they had originally come from.

  There was the same sense of urgency in their steps. If anything, they were in even more of a hurry.

  “Anyone else go in or out during that time?” Heat asked.

  “Nope. And not for several hours before or after, either.”

  “So we’ve just put two men who had become increasingly radicalized in their adherence to Islam at our crime scene during the window that Lauren gave us for time of death.”

  “If it’s them, yeah. I’ve been looking at it for a while and…I can’t really say for sure.”

  “Go back to the first video,” Heat said, walking over to the murder board and grabbing El-Bashir’s and Al-Aman’s mug shots so she could bring them close to the screen and see if they were a match.

  Raley did as he was told, and Heat watched the brief clip again.