Killer Reads: A Collection of the Best in Inspirational Suspense

by Luana Ehrlich

  I finished the sentence for her. “—the person who murdered her made that call. Maybe that’s how Bashir found out so quickly his wife had been killed.”

  “That could be it,” Nikki agreed. “If the killer called Bashir immediately after the murder, perhaps Bashir was in on it. Maybe that’s why he left his OU class early.”

  “Or after murdering Farah, the killer called Bashir to taunt him, tell him he was next, and he rushed back home to get out of town quickly.”

  “Either scenario is possible,” she said.

  She looked around the room, trying to analyze the scene. “So, let’s see . . . He comes back here and . . .”

  “He gets out this suitcase,” I said, pointing to the partially filled suitcase we’d seen the day before, “and starts throwing clothes in it.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”

  “But, tell me detective, why did he stop packing? No matter where he was headed, he was going to need clothes when he got there. ”

  Nikki answered slowly, “He could have packed two suitcases and decided at the last minute to take only one of them.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  Warming to this scenario, she quickly added, “He stopped here in the family room, opened this one up, took out some of the clothes he wanted, and then left this suitcase behind.”

  “That makes sense. He decided to travel light. That could mean he wasn’t going very far.”

  She sounded excited. “He could still be in Norman.”

  “What about friends in the area? Where did he eat, buy gas, do his banking?”

  “We’re still working on the friends’ angle. We didn’t find any credit card statements in the house, but we did discover he has a substantial checking and savings account. I’ve subpoenaed those records already.”

  “I can see why you didn’t have any notes about photographs in the house,” I said, pointing around the room. “They must not like pictures of themselves.”

  Nikki corrected me immediately. “Oh, they liked photographing themselves all right, or at least Farah did. It turns out the computer we took from here yesterday belonged to her. Her photographs were about the only interesting items on it.”

  “What about the sites she visited on the internet?”

  “They weren’t much help. She wasn’t a prolific web surfer. Her most recent pages were several days ago when she looked up some English vocabulary words. She didn’t use email or the social networks either.”

  “What kind of photographs did she take?”

  “Campus scenes, statues, flowers, sporting events, those kinds of things. There were the usual photos you might expect of her and her husband.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, there were shots of the two of them in this house or by the oak tree out front. They had photographed each other riding bicycles, cheering at a football game, walking around the campus—nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “What about pictures of their vacations? What places did they frequent?”

  “I don’t recall anything like that. Every photo I saw looked as if it had been taken here in Norman.”

  “What about—”

  “Except,” she said, interrupting me, “I saw a few photographs taken at a hotel in the City.”

  “In Oklahoma City? What hotel?”

  “The Skirvin Hilton. It’s a luxury hotel built back in 1911. It’s right in the middle of the downtown area.”

  “Did it look as if they were staying there or just taking pictures because of its historic significance?”

  “Oh, they were definitely staying in a room at the hotel. I recognized the distinctive décor immediately. There were several pictures of them in one of the hotel’s restaurants too.”

  “Okay, detective. What do you think? Is it possible that’s where he’s gone? It’s not a logical choice for a hideout, but maybe that’s why it’s the perfect choice. If he’s familiar with the surroundings, he would also feel safe there.”

  “I don’t know, Titus.” She chewed on her lower lip for a second. “I guess it’s possible, but—”

  “You’ve put a bulletin out on his car, and nothing’s turned up yet.” I said. “What kind of parking does the hotel have?”

  She looked thoughtful. “I believe there’s an on-site parking garage.”

  “So, if he’s staying there, his car would be off the streets and out of sight.” I grabbed my car keys out of my pocket. “Let’s go check it out.”

  She got off the barstool. However, she made no move toward the door. “I can’t do that, Titus,” she said. “Oklahoma City isn’t my jurisdiction. If something went down while you and I were snooping around, it would jeopardize my case. The proper procedure is for me to call the OKC police department and let them take a look at the hotel.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to happen.

  If Bashir was at the hotel, and they took him in for questioning, I’d never get a chance to interrogate him by myself. I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to be absolutely certain his wife’s death had nothing to do with Ahmed or with me.

  “No, you’re right, Nikki,” I said. “What if we do it this way? I’ll call Danny Jarrar at OSBI and have him meet me at the Skirvin. He’s got all the credentials you need to take a look at this possibility before involving anyone else.”

  As she considered my suggestion, she took her time unsnapping her purse and placing her cell phone and notebook back inside. When she slung her bag over her shoulder, she looked up at me and nodded her consent. However, I could tell she was disturbed that I was going to be looking into Bashir’s whereabouts without her.

  “Okay, that would work,” she replied. “I’m supposed to be over at the Medical Examiner’s office anyway. Farah’s autopsy is scheduled in about an hour.”

  “When you get back to the station, would you mind emailing me a photo of Bashir from Farah’s computer?”

  “Sure. Give me an email address.” She took out her phone and entered my CIS email address into her contacts.

  I headed out the door. “I’ll call you the minute I know anything.”

  “Call me even if you don’t know anything.”

  That was an easy promise to make.

  CHAPTER 25

  Since I needed to gas up the Range Rover before getting on I-35, I decided to wait until I was at a gas station before calling Danny. I never got the chance, though, because even before I made it to the gas station, he called me.

  He sounded excited. “I think I may have found your guy.”

  “You found Bashir?”

  “No. Sorry. I meant the guy driving the Nissan. Don’t get your hopes up, though. I may be way off base on this. Are you available to meet me?”

  “Sure. I was just about to call and ask you for a favor anyway.”

  “Does that favor have anything to do with a rocket launcher?”

  “Let’s hope not. Besides, I would never ask you for the same favor twice.”

  “Trust me. That’s a favor I would never grant twice.”

  Since Danny said he was finishing up a seminar at Tinker Air Force Base in southeast Oklahoma City, he told me to meet him at Twigs’ Diner at the junction of I-35 and I-240 near an old movie theater.

  As I headed north on I-35 toward our rendezvous, I had the distinct impression something big was about to happen. During a mission, I often had this feeling—Carlton called it my “gut premonition”—that an operation was about to be split wide open. Unfortunately, my gut premonition never foretold if the outcome was going to be very good or very bad.

  Twigs’ Diner desperately needed a paint job on the outside. However, the inside looked clean and well kept—though a bit outdated.

  The floor was covered in large black and white tiles, and all the booths were upholstered in red vinyl, matching the padded chairs at the tables in the center of the room.

  When I entered the diner, I passed by a scruffy teenage boy eating a hamburger at the counter. Then, I took the las
t booth in a row of four booths at the back of the restaurant.

  Except for the boy at the counter and an older couple seated at a table, the place had no other customers. The restaurant was a good choice for a quiet conversation, and I suspected Danny frequented the place for just such conversations.

  I ordered lemonade, and the moment the waitress brought it, Danny also arrived.

  He started harassing me as soon as he slid in the booth.

  “You look well. Did Detective Saxon put that smile on your face?”

  I gave him a drop-dead look, and he chuckled.

  The waitress, who had greeted Danny personally, immediately reappeared with a white mug full of steaming black coffee for him.

  He pointed at my lemonade and asked, “Why are you drinking that stuff? They make the best coffee in the world here.”

  “I need my Vitamin C.”

  “They have this drink called orange juice for that. You drink it in the morning with your toast.”

  He took a sip of his coffee, and then started swiping through some screens on his iPad. The whole time he was doing this, he was telling me why he loved Apple products so much.

  Finally, he got to a screen with some photographs on it, but he didn’t show them to me until he’d placed his order for a Supreme Omelet.

  “You should order some eggs here,” he advised me. “They’re the greatest. That’s how the diner got its name.”

  “What does the name Twigs have to do with someone knowing how to fix a couple of eggs?”

  “Willie, the owner, used to work at another place where a guy used to come in every day and order two eggs with cheese and sausage. It wasn’t long before the customer would simply hold up two fingers and say, ‘Twigs,’ and Frankie knew he meant his two-egg order. Some of the other customers started doing the same thing, so Willie decided to open up his own place and name it Twigs. Eggs are the house specialty.”

  As with most of Danny’s stories, there was no need for me to comment, because, before I could even get a word in, he was on to another subject. However, this time his next subject was the Nissan.

  He told me how he’d cross-referenced my description of the late model black Nissan with my recollection of the driver and the last letter of the license plate. At this point, he swiveled his iPad around and showed me some photographs. They were obviously taken by a long-distance lens.

  “First, I want you to look at these six photographs and see if any of them look like the guy at the wheel of the Nissan.”

  “Give me a minute to study them.”

  I was glad his food arrived so I could concentrate. Otherwise, I would have been tempted to tell him to shut up while I tried to compare my memory to the snapshots.

  There’s something to be said for silence.

  The six photos were all of Arabic-looking men in their twenties or thirties. I filtered out the restaurant’s background music, the fried food smell of the diner, and Danny salting down his omelet. Then, I floated back to the brief glimpse I’d had of the driver at Bashir’s house just moments before I’d opened the door to the Range Rover and started the engine.

  I pointed to a picture of a light-skinned Arab man with thick, dark hair and a trimmed moustache. He was sitting at an outdoor table. “This was the guy.”

  The camera had caught him about to take a drink, his open mouth revealing crooked teeth and a pair of thin lips. His nose had been broken at least once, maybe twice.

  The excitement in Danny’s voice was apparent. “This one?”

  “Yeah, that's him. That’s the guy I saw driving the Nissan past Bashir’s house.”

  “Okay, then we've hit the jackpot. This guy drives a black Nissan and his plates are 407JEK.”

  “Who is he?” I asked impatiently.

  “He's a Palestinian. His name is Shahid al-Nawar. He’s one of about a dozen Arabic men we've had under surveillance for a few months.”

  “Is he affiliated with Hezbollah?”

  “Definitely. He came here on a student visa two years ago. He went back to Jordan last summer, and that’s when the Israelis alerted the FBI about him. Before he returned to the States last fall, he had travelled not only to Pakistan, but also to Iran. The Israelis were even able to pinpoint him at a training camp outside of Tehran a few years ago.”

  “What’s he doing here in the States?”

  “That's just it. We don’t know. He mostly hangs out with the other Arab students and goes to class occasionally. Of course, we can’t keep him under constant surveillance; there’s not enough manpower for that. This photo was taken of him after the Israelis notified us of his travels. Now we treat him like the rest of these guys and run a forty-eight hour stakeout on him every two weeks or so.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “He rents a house off Peters Avenue in Norman. Two of these guys,” he pointed to photos of two other men, “live with him.”

  I studied the faces of his roommates again. They looked slightly familiar, but I wasn’t sure why.

  Danny pointed to Shahid’s photo and asked, “Do you think your detective has any evidence tying him to Farah Karimi’s murder?”

  I ignored the reference to Nikki being my detective and said, “They’re still processing the forensics, but I know they didn’t find the weapon that killed her. Right now, other than the fact I saw his car in the parking lot before she was killed, there’s nothing to link him to her murder.”

  “Could Ahmed Al-Amin have hooked up with Shahid?”

  “Since Wassermann said Ahmed entered the States with another Hezbollah group, that’s certainly a possibility.”

  We stopped talking as the waitress refilled Danny’s coffee.

  When she left, Danny took out his cell phone. “I’m going to set up some surveillance on Shahid.”

  After he’d called his office, I brought up the subject of Bashir. I told him I had a hunch Bashir might not have left town but had simply gone to ground somewhere in the area. When I mentioned the Skirvin Hotel, and why I thought he might have gone there, Danny was eager to go with me to see if we could find him.

  We decided to take his car and leave my Range Rover parked at Twigs’ Diner. Danny assured me Willie would take good care of it.

  I wanted to believe him, but I had to wonder about a man who thought Twigs was a good name for an eating establishment.

  On the way over to the hotel, I pulled up the two photos of Bashir, which Nikki had sent to my email. When Danny parked the car, I handed him my iPhone and asked him if recognized Bashir Karimi.

  He studied the photos for a minute. “No, I’ve never seen him before; but you’re right, he definitely looks Persian.”

  Since Danny could legitimately flash his badge and question anyone inside the hotel, we agreed I’d be his silent partner unless we found Bashir inside the hotel. In that case, our roles would be reversed, and Danny would be an observer while I questioned Bashir.

  Danny had already given me a history lesson on the Skirvin Hotel in the car, but I wasn’t prepared for the luxurious and elegant feel of the place. It looked as if it belonged to a bygone era of oil barons and wealthy cattlemen.

  When we walked up to the reception desk, Danny used the straightforward approach.

  He flashed his creds at the young female desk clerk, showed her the photos of Bashir, and asked if he was registered. The clerk called the hotel manager, who looked as if he too belonged to a bygone era.

  However, he proved to be exceptionally cooperative, and, within a few minutes, he was able to tell us no one was registered at the hotel under Bashir’s name. That didn’t surprise us.

  Still trying to be helpful, the manager invited us to wait in his office while he took the photographs of Bashir and went to make further inquiries from his hotel staff.

  As soon as we were alone, I said, “Look, Danny, if we find Bashir is hunkered down here, we have no way of telling how he’s going to react to a confrontation. I mean, if he’s innocent of her murder, he’s going to be g
rieving over his wife’s death. On the other hand, if he killed his wife, he could be violent. You don’t really need to be involved in this. Let me go and—”

  “Titus, stop,” Danny said sharply. “Don’t keep blaming yourself for the hit on Wassermann. There was absolutely nothing you could have done about that.”

  He jabbed his finger in my chest, emphasizing each word. “We’re doing this together. End of story.”

  I stared down at him for a few seconds. “Okay. End of story.”

  The manager returned and announced they had a guest named Motaz Asadi, who appeared to be Bashir Karimi. He was staying in one of their mini-suites, Room 426.

  “Call Mr. Asadi,” Danny said to the manager, “tell him he failed to sign the registration form when he checked in. Say you’re bringing it up now. Give us a few minutes to get up to the fourth floor before you make that call.”

  A few minutes later, Danny and I were positioned along the wall outside Room 426. On the floor to our left was a room service tray with the remains of what appeared to be a chicken sandwich.

  Less than a minute went by, and then we heard the telephone ring inside the room.

  It rang twice before someone picked it up.

  Both Danny and I had our guns out, ready to stop Bashir if he got spooked by the phone call and decided to flee the room.

  The door remained closed.

  Approximately three minutes after the manager made the call, Danny knocked on the door.

  “Mr. Asadi, it’s Stephen Coleman, the hotel manager.”

  When Danny faced the peephole, I saw him trying to hide his facial features by scratching his forehead, just in case the occupant of the room was expecting an older man to match the voice he’d heard over the telephone.

  The locks on the door were disengaged within a couple of seconds, and, when the door swung open, we both rushed in.

  A startled Bashir brandished a knife from behind his back when he saw us.

  Danny shouted, “Drop it. We’re not here to hurt you.”

  Bashir calmly pointed the weapon at Danny, and then, for the first time, focused his attention on me.