“Did he see the man’s face?” Zoe asked excitedly.
Joseph shook his head. “It was dark. He said the man was tall—taller than his father.”
“And the truck: did he see the license plate?”
Joseph translated the question into Nyanja. Dominic’s eyes widened and he drew something in the dirt. Zoe stared at the sketch as it materialized. The boy had traced what looked like a misshapen rectangle with an X at the center.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Joseph said. He talked with the child further, and Dominic drew a second rectangle to the right of the X. “He saw something like this beside the license plate. He doesn’t remember anything about the plate itself.”
She tried not to feel disheartened. Dominic was an extraordinary discovery, but his testimony couldn’t be valued on the street. It had to withstand cross-examination.
Joseph pulled a pen and notebook from his jeans. He filled a page with notes and reproduced Dominic’s sketch. Then he and Zoe followed the boy home and had a conversation with his father—a sturdy man with salt-and-pepper hair. Joseph punched his mobile number into the man’s phone and patted the boy on the head.
“Zikomo,” he said. “It is a good thing you have done.”
The child smiled and scampered back to his chiyanto game.
When the sun disappeared behind the corrugated metal horizon, they returned to the alley where Joseph had parked his truck. Zoe glanced at him and saw the disappointment in his eyes. It was obvious he had expected to learn more from an afternoon in Kanyama.
“This is a strange case,” she remarked.
“Every case is different,” he replied.
“Sure, but most of them follow a pattern. The perpetrator is a neighbor or family member. The crime happens near the victim’s home. The suspect covers it up with threats and bribery. This is different in every respect.”
“It’s different in some respects,” he corrected. “The girl could have known the perpetrator.”
“Sure. But why go to the trouble of driving into Kanyama at midnight? It’s as if he wanted her to disappear.”
Joseph nodded. “Or be violated again. The perfect cover for rape is another rape.”
“My God,” she exhaled, acknowledging the horrible symmetry of the idea.
“The question I have,” he went on, “is how he snatched her so late at night?”
“We have to find her family.”
He nodded. “They’ll file a report eventually.”
She was about to ask another question when she heard the squeaking of brakes behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a pickup truck blocking the alleyway—a truck carrying young men in green T-shirts. The driver stepped out of the cab, and Zoe’s heart lurched.
It was the hawkish boy in the green bandana.
The rest of his gang jumped out and surrounded them. Joseph made a move toward his truck, but a brawny kid stepped into his path. Zoe scanned the alley and saw that they were boxed in. The walls were too high to scale, and the neighbors were useless—they would never come to the aid of a stranger. Why are they doing this? she thought. What do they want? Suddenly she knew. They want me.
“Let me handle this,” Joseph said, stepping between Zoe and the bandana-clad leader. He spoke a string of heated words in Nyanja, but the young man just smirked, eyeing Zoe.
“What your name, muzungu?” he asked in heavily accented English.
“Don’t talk to him,” Joseph commanded her. He gave the boy a piercing look. “I’m a police officer. You touch us and I’ll throw you all in jail.”
The gang leader laughed as if Joseph had made a joke. “In Kanyama, police sleep. You sleep with muzungu, police?”
Zoe heard sniggering and glanced around. The gang had closed ranks. A wave of dread surged through her and spawned an equal but opposite wave of anger. She was certain Joseph was unarmed; Zambian police officers were rarely issued firearms. She searched the ground for a weapon but saw only scattered bricks ten feet away.
“Back off,” Joseph said darkly. “You don’t want to make an enemy of me.”
The gang leader looked annoyed. “What you do, police? You fight for muzungu? Rupiah Banda fight for muzungus.” He glanced around at his companions. “Police is friend of MMD.”
The allegation had its intended effect: the gang members began to grumble and curse. Emboldened, the gang leader tried to shove Joseph out of the way, but Joseph backhanded him across the face. The gang leader cried out and threw a wild punch, which Joseph easily ducked. He countered with a swift jab into the kid’s stomach. The gang leader doubled over, and Joseph pivoted on his feet, searching for another target. He managed to land two more punches before three boys took him down.
Zoe screamed as strong hands grabbed her from both sides. She fought back instinctively, torquing her body to escape their grasp and lashing out with her feet. She drove her heel into the jaw of a reed-thin young man, and he collapsed in a heap. She kicked a stocky boy in the stomach and hit him in the side of the head with her backpack. A third gang member wrapped her in a bear hug, and she kneed him in the groin and crushed his nose with her palm.
But she was no match for a joint attack.
Two boys came at her from behind, lifting her off her feet. She kicked violently, screaming at the top of her lungs, as they pushed her into the dirt and held her down. She felt their rough hands yanking at her shirt, at her jeans. Time seemed to fragment like shattered glass. No! Please, God, no! Apparitions danced around her in the dusk. One of the boys sat on her thighs and another straddled her back. She began to lose touch with reality. This can’t be happening! Not again!
Suddenly, she heard a voice rise above the din. “Get away from her!” Joseph screamed. “Get back or I’ll shoot!”
The weight on her thighs relented, as did the pressure on her back. She blinked, squinting through the dust clouding her contact lenses. Joseph was standing over a heap of bodies wielding an AK-47 rifle. At the sight of the roving barrel, the gang members who were still on their feet stepped back, and one of them dropped Zoe’s backpack. Joseph trained the gun on their leader.
“I told you not to make an enemy of me,” he hissed.
In an instant, fear replaced the gang leader’s bravado, and he ran to the pickup truck. His compatriots followed, the injured stumbling behind the able-bodied. As soon as the gang leader keyed the ignition, he floored the accelerator and sped off down the lane, nearly throwing two of his companions out of the flatbed.
When they were gone, Zoe stood slowly, her whole body trembling. She leaned against Joseph’s truck, feeling a relief so overwhelming it found no expression in her conscious thoughts. She watched Joseph as he fought to catch his breath. His clothes were coated with dirt, and he had a large scratch on his neck. At last she managed to speak.
“I didn’t know you had a gun.”
“I keep it in the truck,” he growled. “My brother was in the army.”
Zoe shook her head, struggling not to think about how close she had come to being raped. Then it struck her: the girl at the hospital had walked by this alley less than twenty-four hours ago. A man driving a silver SUV had abducted her, raped her, and abandoned her to the night. No one had come to her rescue. Zoe pictured her sleeping in her hospital bed, Dr. Chulu’s monkey beside her, and heard the doctor’s words: “Now she has you.”
Joseph picked up Zoe’s backpack and dusted it off. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?” he asked, handing her the bag.
She let out a small laugh and felt some of the tension release. “I took self-defense classes in high school. I have a brown belt in tae kwon do.”
He raised an eyebrow and managed a half-smile.
She opened the passenger door of the truck and climbed in slowly. “Can we stop by the hospital on the way back?” she asked when he joined her in the cab.
He gave her a baffled look. “Why?”
“The girl,” she replied. “
I’d like to see her again.”
Chapter 3
On Monday morning, the five members of the CILA response team—Zoe, Joseph, Mariam, Sarge, and Niza—took seats in the conference room alongside Mwila, the director of rehabilitation. It was a few minutes after nine, and the all-staff meeting had just wrapped up. The shades were drawn against the sun, but light filtered in and burnished the scarred wooden table in front of them.
“Before we talk about the case,” Mariam began, looking at Zoe, “I want to say how relieved I am—how relieved we all are—that nothing worse happened to you yesterday.”
“I have Joseph to thank,” Zoe said, glancing at him. The shock of the incident was still raw, but she was determined not to let it affect her.
Mariam nodded. “I’m going to mention it to the Deputy Commissioner.”
“I’d rather you wait until I catch the perpetrators,” Joseph said.
“You’re going after them?” Zoe was surprised.
“When the time is right.”
Mariam smiled. “On to business. There’s a lot we don’t know about what happened to this girl, but here is what we do know. Sometime before midnight on Saturday she was raped by an unknown assailant. Around midnight, he transported her to a remote lane in Kanyama and left her there. The child has Down syndrome and hasn’t spoken since the incident. With counseling, she might be able to help us, but not yet. We have an eyewitness who saw the man abandon her. The only information we have at present is that the man is tall and was driving a silver SUV with something like this near the license plate.”
Mariam held up a piece of paper showing a replica of Dominic’s sketch.
“Reminds me of a railroad crossing sign in the U.S.,” said Niza, leaning forward.
“Perhaps it’s a political sticker,” Sarge offered.
Joseph spoke up: “I called headquarters, but we haven’t received a missing-person report matching the child. Even if a report was filed, it could take days to get entered into the system.”
“Until we find her family,” Mariam said, “we need to arrange for her care.”
Mwila nodded. “I talked to Social Welfare about sending her to St. Francis. I don’t trust anyone else to handle kids with special needs. I also contacted Dr. Mbao at the University of Zambia. I haven’t worked with her before, but Joy Herald recommended her highly. With a referral from Dr. Chulu, she’ll come to St. Francis for the exam.”
“From a legal standpoint,” Sarge said, “we can’t bring a case until we have a suspect and some corroborative evidence. In addition, there is the question of the child’s age. She looks a lot younger than sixteen, but that won’t be enough for the magistrate.”
“The family will tell us when she was born,” Zoe said. “The real problem is corroboration. Even if we find a suspect, we need something linking him to the rape itself, not just to the girl. We need an eyewitness to the act. Or we need DNA.”
“As always, a nice thought,” Niza replied. “But this is Zambia. There’s no lab and no money for it. So says the Ministry of Justice.”
Zoe clenched her teeth. Niza was a first-rate lawyer, but she was also a cynic.
“There’s a lab in Johannesburg,” Zoe said. “And we have the money even if the government claims it doesn’t. Once we have a suspect, all we’ll need is a magistrate to order a blood sample and a profile. They do it all the time in paternity cases.”
Mariam affirmed Zoe’s intuition. “It’s true. We have the evidence from the hospital. This could be the case to press for DNA.”
“We have a long way to go before we can start thinking about that,” Sarge said. “We need the family, we need a suspect in custody, and we need the support of the Director of Public Prosecution. In that order.”
Mariam nodded. “Let’s meet again on Wednesday. Perhaps Joseph will know more.”
Zoe left the table and navigated the maze of corridors to her desk. A converted colonial-era bungalow, the CILA office had a bifurcated layout. The reception and rehabilitation staff occupied the front of the house, and the executive and legal staff occupied the back. Zoe’s desk was situated in the corner of a sunlit space cluttered with legal files, bound registers of Zambian and British law, and scattered pages of case notes—the home of the legal department.
She took her seat and stared at her laptop. She had fifteen minutes to kill before Mwila left for the hospital. She thought of polishing the research memo she had been writing for Sarge but checked her email instead. The first message was from her brother, Trevor. The time stamp read 8:02 a.m.—2:02 a.m. D.C. time. Trevor was an attorney with the K Street law firm representing A Brighter Tomorrow—the private political funding organization, or SuperPAC, supporting Jack Fleming’s campaign. He never seemed to sleep.
Hey, sis, missing you. In case you didn’t catch it on the Internet, Dad’s coming your way in a few days. I don’t expect you to care, but I thought you should know. Off to bed for a few hours at least. Ciao!
Below the message Trevor had copied a Web link to a story in the Washington Post. It read like a press release:
On Wednesday, after campaign stops in North Carolina and Virginia, Senator Jack Fleming, the current frontrunner in the presidential primary race, will travel to Africa with Senator Lindsey O’Toole to examine U.S. foreign assistance programs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Ethiopia. The Senators will also meet with embassy and government officials to discuss issues relating to the war on terror. A spokesperson for Senator Fleming reiterated the Senator’s unwavering campaign commitment to fiscal responsibility. Due to security concerns, the full itinerary will not be released in advance.
Zoe tried to steady her breathing. A trip to the Congo and Ethiopia she could understand. But Zambia? He had to be coming for her. She scanned the remainder of her inbox. Sure enough, it was there—a message from her father. She glanced around the office, worried that someone might discover her secret. Other than Mariam and a few CILA executives in London, no one knew that she was Jack Fleming’s daughter. After a moment, she realized how absurd she was being. No one was paying any attention to her. She steadied herself and opened the email.
Zoe, my dear, I hope this finds you well. I’m planning a last-minute trip to the continent and will be in Lusaka on Friday. Would you care to meet for dinner? I was thinking the other day how long it has been since we spent time together, just the two of us. What do you say?
Zoe read the message twice and then closed the mail application. Grabbing her backpack, she walked to the nearest exit, desperate for fresh air. She found a place in the sun beneath the red blooms of a lemon bottlebrush tree and closed her eyes.
The last time she had been alone with her father was at her Yale Law School graduation. It had not gone well. After dinner at the Union League Café, they had taken a stroll across New Haven Green, and Trevor and Sylvia, her father’s second wife, had lagged behind, locked in a discussion about social media in political campaigns. Zoe had tried to be civil toward her father, but the ground of their relationship was littered with landmines and he had stepped on one.
“Writing for the Yale Law Journal,” he had said, “graduating near the top of your class, I’m proud of you, Zoe.”
Pulling her sweater around her shoulders, she had glanced at him in the lamplight, daring to hope that his praise would be unadulterated. She was soon disappointed.
“You know, I spoke to Judge Anders,” he went on. “One of his clerks backed out for health reasons and he’s looking for a replacement. He’d love to have you.”
The Honorable Jeremiah Anders was the Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and one of the most respected jurists in the United States. Many considered him the next Supreme Court nominee. Zoe, however, had already made up her mind. Her heart was in Africa.
“I’m going to Johannesburg,” she said. “I gave Judge van der Merwe my word.”
“In a year you could be clerking for the Supreme Court,” he replied, as if he hadn’t heard h
er. “After that, you can have your pick of any legal job in the world.”
“It’s an honor someone else can have. Judge van der Merwe is an international expert on human rights. He’s never taken an American clerk before.”
The Senator sighed in exasperation. “All doors open to you and you pick the Constitutional Court of South Africa. This country has never been big enough for you.”
“I love America,” she disagreed, stopping in front of Center Church, its great spire cloaked in night. “I just don’t like being confined to it.”
Zoe opened her eyes and saw Mwila standing in front of her, her face darkened by concern.
“Are you all right?” Mwila asked. “You were standing so still.”
Zoe blinked, momentarily trapped by the past. She took a breath. “Are you ready?”
Mwila gestured toward a Toyota Prado idling in the driveway. “Maurice is waiting.”
They climbed into the SUV, and the guard opened the steel gate. Maurice pulled out onto the street and accelerated to make the light at Church and Independence. The trip to the pediatric center was brief. When they approached the lobby doors, Zoe saw Joy Herald standing beside a pair of African women with notebooks—the Social Welfare contingent.
“We’ve taken care of the formalities,” Joy said, greeting Zoe and Mwila, “but the girl has been a bit of a challenge this morning. I meant to bring my iPod, but one of my kids must have taken it out of my purse. I hope you have yours.”
“I made her a mix this morning,” Zoe said, following Joy into the outpatient center.
She heard the child before she saw her. The high-pitched sound—somewhere between a warble and a bleat—sliced through her. When she entered the admissions ward, she saw the girl rocking violently in her bed, a trio of nurses attempting to quiet her down.
“Where is Dr. Chulu?” Zoe asked. He promised this wouldn’t happen.
The Garden of Burning Sand Page 4
