by David Ellis
The e-mail that Harrick places on McCoy’s desk is one sentence:
Please inform MAB that communication will be sent early next week by mail.
She reads the initials—MAB—and feels a shudder, a knot seizing her stomach.
“Let’s watch the post office, then,” she says easily to Harrick, because she wants to show calm to her partner. He is undoubtedly feeling the pressure as well. Neither of them has ever worked on anything nearly so consequential.
“He’s talking about Muhsin al-Bakhari, isn’t he?” Harrick asks.
“Who knows, Owen? Let’s just do our job.” McCoy takes a piece of paper and writes out a quick to-do list. They will put people at the post offices around the state university. They will have to be ready, starting tomorrow, for a package that Ramadaran Ali Haroon will be sending to his partners overseas.
ONE DAY EARLIER
SATURDAY, APRIL 10
The Pakistani government attributed the bombing at Baluchistan University to an aerial assault by the Soviet Union. The communist-controlled Afghan security service, the KHAD—Khedamat-i-Ettela’at-i-Daulati—had instituted countless air and ground attacks in Pakistan since the country had become the focal point for Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion. The Afghan refugees had pooled in various parts of Pakistan, including the Baluchistan province. Ram Haroon had seen some of the Afghani Pathans in Quetta; they were generally confined to the refugee camps, but they were sometimes seen in the markets. He remembers their bruised, creased faces, their defeated postures. People who had lost their homes, sometimes their families, clinging to little more than life itself.
Ram’s mother, a university professor, and his four-year-old sister accompanying her mother to class were two of the nineteen casualties of the attack. Ram recalls the moment that he heard the news in utter darkness, his eyes squeezed shut as he and his father sat on the floor of their home.
Mother was gone. Beni was gone.
It was the Americans, they said.
Ram listened to them only because he was looking for magic healing words, and it was only afterward that their words registered in any meaningful way.
Three weeks passed. His mother and sister were buried. Ram’s father did not work, could not work. Father would leave at night and not speak to his son about where he went. Ram saw a change in his father but attributed it to grief, when a part of him knew all along it was something else.
Five weeks after the death of his mother and sister, Ram’s father moved Ram and himself from Baluchistan to Peshawar, ground zero in the arming of the mujahedin against the Soviet aggression. “We must put this behind us,” Ram’s father told him. Ram was hardly able to comprehend, still reeling from the loss of his mother and sister. Now Father wanted to leave the only home he had known?
“Some day I will explain it to you,” Father promised.
Ram Haroon wipes the sweat from his face and focuses on his computer in his student dormitory. He types in the name on the e-mail and thinks hard about the words to write.
Please inform MAB that communication will be sent early next week by mail.
Ram types in the web address—pakistudent@interserver. com—hits the “send” button, and the document disappears. He looks at the photographs by his bed: his father, mother, and sister. Beni would be twenty-two years old if she had survived the bombing. She would be a student, like Mother was, probably a future professor, or a doctor, or lawyer. Everything would be different. They never would have moved to Peshawar.
Ram moves over to his small bed and cradles the photographs in his hand. “My time may be coming, too,” he says to them. At least in his case, it will be his choice.
TWO DAYS EARLIER
THURSDAY, APRIL 8
There’s a guy, but you probably wouldn’t approve.” Jessica’s evasive comment to Allison, last December, over dinner.
“Tell me,” Allison prodded.
“You’ll just tell me no.”
Allison drew back. It was true, she had never failed to give her opinion on her daughter’s choice of boyfriends. But she had never forbade her daughter from acting on her own instincts, and certainly had no place doing so now, when Jessica was twenty and living at her college dorm.
She knew Jess, however distant they had grown. Jessica could have avoided the subject, or lied about it. She did neither. She had broached the topic and left it dangling. Jessica wanted her to inquire, Allison figured.
“Tell me,” Allison said again.
Paul Riley shows Allison in to his office. It has a gorgeous view, this corner office, and Paul has plenty of memorabilia to decorate the two walls without windows. Artists’ etchings of his trial work, photos of Paul with prominent officials. Paul Riley, after all, is the lawyer who prosecuted Terry Burgos, the man who killed six girls on a college campus about twenty years ago. Paul was the guy Allison wanted, when suspicion first gathered around her after Sam’s death. Since he begged off representing her, she persuaded him to represent Jessica.
“How are you holding up?” he asks her, and he knows the question is loaded.
“I’m fine, Paul, thanks. You?”
Paul defers as he always does. “Twenty balls in the air,” he says.
“I’m concerned with one particular ball.”
“Sure.” Paul plays with a cufflink on his starched shirt. His shirt is soft blue, matching his eyes.
“She needs to understand the importance of not straying from her testimony, Paul.”
“She knows that, Allison. I know that. There’s only so much I can share with you now, obviously.” He smiles. His loyalty, of course, is now to his client, Jessica.
“She came to my house about eight-thirty that night, the night Sam was killed,” Allison says. “She had been at school all day. I got home close to two in the morning. Jess was asleep on the couch.”
Paul nods but doesn’t speak. He will not share his conversations with Jessica to anyone, not even Jessica’s mother.
“My worry is that she’ll try to protect me,” Allison explains. “That she might say something crazy.”
Paul’s eyes narrow, divert from Allison. She knows he will not elaborate. For all she knows, Jessica has spoken poorly of her mother to Paul. Paul might be thinking, Oh, Allison, I don’t think you have to worry about Jessica trying to protect you.
But she cannot take the chance. Perjury, obstruction of justice, and perhaps worse could await her daughter. This case is all over the press. If the prosecutors are embarrassed in so public a forum, they might look wherever necessary, including at Jessica, to make things right.
“Was there something in particular you had in mind?” Paul asks. He has chosen this question carefully. Nothing from his end, but if Allison has something to say, this is the way.
“What I have in mind,” Allison answers, “is that Jessica might say she was at Sam’s house that night.”
Paul Riley’s unflappable expression shows the first sign of a break.
“She might say that she killed Sam,” Allison predicts.
Allison remembers it well, that cocktail party two days before Sam was murdered, Thursday, the fifth of February. The Look, she calls it. She remembers Sam, standing across the room, a cocktail in his hand, the look of pure longing as his eyes passed over her, an utter lust that temporarily took hold of him, captivated him as if there were no other person in the room but her.
“Tell me, Jess,” Allison had requested of her daughter, six weeks before that time, last December over lunch. “Tell me about this guy I ‘wouldn’t approve of.’ ”
Paul Riley stares intently at Allison. “And, if I may ask hypothetically,” he tries, “what would be the reason for Jessica being at Sam’s house on that Saturday night?”
“It’s someone at work, Mother, okay? And I’m not going to discuss this.”
She remembers the primitive look in Sam’s eyes at the cocktail party.
She remembers her own position by the bar, having just gotten a drink, seeing
the expression on Sam’s face and stopping short, following Sam’s line of vision to a young intern at Dillon & Becker by the name of Jessica Pagone.
Allison takes Paul’s hand. “I’m counting on you to protect her, Paul,” she tells him.
MARCH
EIGHT DAYS EARLIER
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31
She left that cocktail party immediately, without a word to Sam, without a word to Jessica. She went home and paced her house, did not sleep, as night blurred into early morning. There was no mistaking it. “Someone at work,” her daughter had told her in mid-December, and now she had seen who the “someone at work” was, firsthand. She had seen The Look on Sam’s face.
She showered early Friday morning, February sixth, and drove to his office in the city.
“Where is he?” she demanded. She bypassed the receptionist and hunted him through the halls, looking into each office, calling out his name. But he wasn’t there, they explained. Mr. Dillon was downstate, flew down to the capital this morning for some meetings.
So she went to her Lexus SUV and drove to the capital. He could be at his office or he could be anywhere at the capital, any number of rooms, most of which would be closed to her. No matter. She wouldn’t stop. She would wait, if necessary. She would find his car and sit on it. She would see him today.
First, the office. After two wrong turns, her knuckles white, her eyes clouded by tears, she found the building.
“Where is he?” She ignored the young man who popped out of an office to assist her.
The boy trailed after her, alarmed, no doubt, but she found Sam Dillon in his office and slammed the door behind her.
Sam was on the phone. He was disarmed by Allison’s appearance, the fact that she had traveled down here, the haggard, agitated, hurt expression that Allison knew she couldn’t hide.
Sam made quick work of the phone call and stood up. His lips parted but he didn’t speak. Allison grabbed the first thing she could find—a small pillow, embroidered with the crest of the state Senate, resting on a small love seat in the corner—and hurled it at Sam.
“You prick,” she hissed. “You prick.”
“What are you talking—”
“My daughter?” Allison took a step closer. Her throat caught. She tried to calm herself but she couldn’t control the wave of adrenaline. “You’re the guy at work? The one I ‘wouldn’t approve of’?”
“Allison.” Sam came around the desk. “What the hell?”
“This is your ‘ethical dilemma,’ Sam? You can’t decide whether you want to fuck me or my daughter?”
Sam’s face froze, but he quickly recovered. “Now calm down a minute—”
“How could you make me believe that what we had—”
“Allison, I’m not sleeping with Jessica.” Sam dared to approach her, tentatively reached out and took her shoulders. “I’m not sleeping with your daughter. Not now, not ever.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She was perspiring. She wanted, more than anything in this world, to hear these words, to believe them, but his reaction—including his guilty expression—told her that she hadn’t been far off.
She had seen that same look of guilt on Mat’s face when she had paid him that surprise visit years ago at his office and found the young intern sitting on his desk.
History was repeating itself.
“You tell me everything,” she said calmly, through gritted teeth, removing his hands from her, “and you tell me right now. I saw that look on your face last night. And now I know why my daughter wouldn’t tell me about the ‘guy’ she was interested in at work.”
“Sit.” Sam gestured to a chair, sat on the edge of his desk facing her.
“I’m fine standing,” she said.
“That’s all it was,” Sam explained, followed by an exaggerated sigh. “Jessica was interested in me, yes. Yes, she made overtures. Before I met you, Allison. Before that. She’s been working here for a year. I just met you a couple months ago.”
Allison found that she was holding her breath.
“Nothing happened, Allison. Nothing. But yes, she—she showed interest. And I was flattered. Okay? I’m a middle-aged, divorced man and a beautiful twenty-year-old is interested in me. Sure, it boosted my ego. Sure, I probably didn’t discourage it. It was the kind of harmless, flirtatious stuff that happens. But then one night—this is probably, I don’t know, I didn’t exactly mark my calendar—maybe November of last year, she said she wanted to see me outside the office. So I make a joke, right—how about I go into the parking lot?—but she’s serious, she wants to start dating me. I said no, Ally. I said it was inappropriate for more than one reason, and it had nothing to do with you—I didn’t even know you yet. It was inappropriate because she was Mat’s daughter, because I’m almost thirty years older than her, and because she worked for me.”
“And what did she say?” Allison asked, her voice trembling.
“She said—” Sam raised his head, as if to recount the events. “Oh, she said, she couldn’t control two of those three, but she could quit her internship.”
Allison raised her eyebrows, to show she was not finished listening.
“I said no, Allison. Christ Almighty, I said no.”
Allison sat down in her chair, feeling her physical exhaustion for the first time.
“And what’s this,” Sam asked, “about the ‘look on my face’ last night?”
Allison chewed on her lips, cast her eyes downward. “I saw you looking at her at the party,” she answered. “I saw that look on your face.”
Allison types on her laptop, a present from Mat, since the county prosecutors seized her last computer and seem to be in no hurry to return it.
She always loved the theater best. A Doll’s House, Ibsen’s play, was her favorite. She played the lead, Nora Helmer, the underappreciated mother, the wife to Torvald, in an amateur production one time. She remembers moving about the house in the final scene, when Nora left Torvald, left him devastated and confused, Nora finally empowered and taking control.
Plays are so hard, though, because so much of it is language. Dialogue can be so trying, so difficult to write exactly how people talk. But at least she knows the subjects well.
ALLISON: I don’t want Jessica to think I’m innocent.
MAT: Why not?
ALLISON: Because if she thinks I’m innocent, she’ll think that her testimony put me in jail. If she knows I’m guilty, it will be easier for her to accept.
(Mat seems uneasy with this. It is putting a lot on him, forcing him into a difficult conversation about their daughter.)
MAT (Sheepishly): What—what should I tell her? How could I possibly convince her that you’re guilty of murdering Sam?
ALLISON (pondering): Tell her that I buried the trophy at the base of a fence, near a yellow post, behind the Countryside Grocery Store on Apple and Riordan.
Allison reads it over and frowns. She hits the backspace button on the laptop and watches the cursor gobble up word after word, until this passage is wiped out.
“Needs more work, Ally,” she says to herself. She has time.
ONE DAY EARLIER
TUESDAY, MARCH 30
Peshawar was like another country. The terrain was not dissimilar but the people were. Other than the Afghan refugees, Ram had met very few people who were not natives in Baluchistan. Peshawar was different, a dusty town on the western border. Dozens of languages spoken on the street, different accents speaking each language. The contrasts were staggering. Exquisite Islamic architecture in one direction, an Afghani refugee camp teeming with women and children, sick and deprived, in the other. Men of all ages moved through the streets with assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
Father had said that he would sell carpets in Peshawar, that commerce was good there, better than in Quetta, and Ram knew that this was owing to the overflow of refugees and freedom fighters, and Americans and British there to help them fight the Soviets. Peshawar, near the Khyber Pass, was the pri
ncipal gateway for the mujahedin into Afghanistan, and this had made Peshawar an international city in the most notorious sense of that word.
They lived with Father’s cousin in a small house. Ram and his father shared a bedroom, slept nestled together every night. Father would always wait for Ram to fall asleep, caressing his hair, singing to him. They clung to each other, Ram believed, out of utter fear of losing the last remnant of their family.
But sometimes Father would leave the bed after he thought his son was asleep. Ram, as he was now called—he would never again be addressed as Zulfikar or Zulfi—would sometimes rise from the bed and listen in on conversations taking place between his father and the men who would come to visit.
They would talk about weapons. They would talk about jihad.
Ram saw changes. There had been enough upheaval already for him, the loss of his mother and sister, the move to a new village, but the single constant in his life, his father, began to change as well. There was something to the look in his eyes, something Ram had never seen previously—a sadness, an anger, a sense of purpose. And soon enough, in less than a year from the time they landed in Peshawar, they moved again, to their own home. Father was doing well in the carpet business, he told Ram; things were better financially than they had ever been before, and they would stay that way. Ram was glad, for his father more than himself. Ram just wanted what he had in Quetta. But there was no turning back, of course. So he did what his father told him to do, did not discuss politics and concentrated on schoolwork, which his mother would have wanted.
It was not until Ram was thirteen, after the Soviets had been repelled from Afghanistan, after the American CIA largely left Peshawar behind along with thousands of armed militants, after the United States reimposed economic and military sanctions on Pakistan for its development of nuclear technology, that Ram’s father finally told him.
