by Allen Kent
I considered saying something about his “Not exactly who I’d expected to find out here” coastal stereotype, but thought better of it.
“Northwest part of the country,” I said instead. “Central to much of the rebel resistance and to some of the worst atrocities, including the gas attacks. Turkish presence in the area now. Significant Christian population in that part of the country. That’s what our refugee families are.” Rosario arched his forehead. Maybe the “out here” people aren’t as backward as he’d thought.
“Exactly right,” he agreed with an amused grin. “I wish all of our agents were that well informed. Anyway, as a result, it’s been one of the most divided areas in terms of allegiance. Since the uprising began, there have been almost constant battles for control of villages in the area: Salqin, Armanaz, Harem, Sarmin. For the first number of years, it seemed government forces were always a step ahead of the FSA—the Free Syrian Army. One of the senior FSA leaders was a man named Yusef Haddad. Ring a bell?”
Joseph and I exchanged glances. A new piece to our complicated puzzle—and a significant omission by Yusef during my interview.
“The FSA finally figured out that it had a mole,” Rosario continued. “One of the prominent families in Idlib, a family of three brothers named Sayegh who had appeared to be solidly in the rebel camp, turned out to be feeding information to government intelligence. Yusef hunted down the oldest of the brothers, a man named Samir, and executed him. Not too long after that, the politics of the region became so complicated it was hard to tell who was who. We started to pull back and extracted Yusef and his brothers and their families with him. They were sent out here because we feared something like this might happen if they were found.”
Joseph entered the conversation. “You didn’t change their names?”
Rosario chuckled. “I don’t know that part of the world as well as your colleague here. But the way I understand it, these are proud people with centuries of history. They’d rather be discovered than become someone else.”
I nodded my agreement.
“Any idea how they were located?” Joseph asked.
The agent gave a quick, frustrated shake of the head. “The other thing they won’t give up are family ties. There will be an uncle in Minneapolis. A cousin in Phoenix. They call each other. And the divisions in the Syrian community in the US are almost as sharp as in their home country. The Assad government has eyes everywhere. Some cousin talks at a gathering of friends. The wrong people are listening. All our efforts to hide the families goes out the window.”
“How do you think this Farid got into the country?” I asked. “From what Officer Joseph told me, your people didn’t know he was here.”
Rosario sniffed. “I hate to admit it, but we had no idea. I’d guess Canada on a passport from one of the Caribbean islands. St. Kitts or Dominica. Once into Canada, getting into the US undetected is pretty simple. What looks like a legitimate passport under an assumed name. If that doesn’t work, there are thousands of miles of unprotected border that are crisscrossed by logging roads and off-road trails.”
Joseph looked at me questioningly. I shrugged. This was all news to me as well. “St. Kitts?” she asked. “How would someone like that get a passport from St. Kitts?”
Rosario smiled thinly. “For decades, when someone sells property down there, it can be with or without a passport. If you include a passport, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it allows you to boost the price of your land. It’s a little device that’s been used to pad the foreign accounts of island officials. Good deal for everyone, except us. Questionable foreign nationals who have money buy a passport or two, let the land sit idle or hire someone to manage it, and use the passports to travel unchallenged around the world. I’ve heard there’s a pretty lively black market on the islands by people who sublet these homes or condos without the owners even knowing about it.”
More pieces to the puzzle, but some that didn’t help our local picture.
“Are you thinking the Haddads saw the guy and killed him before he got to them?” I asked.
Rosario shrugged. “They may have seen him. May have been tipped off and were waiting. They may not be involved at all. Do you know where Sayegh was staying?”
“We traced him to the Hampton. He was checked in under his own name which he also used to rent a car from Avis. He was seen around the hotel for a couple of days, then disappeared without checking out. He’d left the room and car on a card that was valid. When we took the car back, he still had three more days on the rental. If he was here after the Haddads, it appears he wasn’t sure when he could get to them.”
“I’ll talk to the families,” Rosario said. “But I don’t expect to learn much more than you did. They’re tight-lipped and afraid of nothing. But I may be able to get some feel for how much they knew about his being here, once I inform them we know about Yusef’s role in killing Farid’s brother.”
One of Rosario’s statements had caught my attention. “You say the Haddads may not have been involved at all . . . and you seem to accept that as being as likely as that they were. Farid Sayegh’s death obviously wasn’t an accident. Who else might have been involved?”
Rosario paused, his jaw tightening, studying first me, then Joseph. “Yes. A slip on my part,” he finally admitted. “But since you’re both pretty critical to this investigation, I’ll share this with you. There are a dozen groups of families like the Haddads. People we brought out of Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan for their own protection. People with very personal enemies. Some were local translators, doing what you did, Tate. Interpreting for American forces. Some were informants for us who were found out and we had to get them to safety. Others, like Yusef Haddad, were opposition leaders. Early in our relocation history, we lost a couple of people to just this kind of thing: vendetta killings. But in three cases more recently, we have been called in on killings like Sayegh’s where a man who appears to be an assassin was intercepted and eliminated before he could get to his target.”
I leaned back in my chair, studying the FBI man. “And you don’t know who got to these men?”
He shook his head. “No idea. If we were pretty certain the Haddads did this, we would probably pull them out immediately and stick them somewhere else. But if someone is getting to vendetta killers before we even know they’re in the country, we aren’t sure we could put them anywhere safe enough that whoever is doing this doesn’t know where they are. Plus, we hope each time this happens, something might lead us to whoever’s doing it.”
I pushed again forward, straightening in the chair. “Let me get this straight. You have three or four cases like this where someone coming into the country to attack one of our protected immigrants has been intercepted and killed. And before he gets to his target.”
“Yes. Just like in this case.”
“Could it be someone inside the Bureau?”
Rosario shook his head. “If it is, they know one hell of a lot more than any of the rest of us. They’d have to have some pretty sophisticated outside sources of information about the movement of these vendetta killers. We don’t track terrorist or unfriendly activity outside of the US. Someone with that kind of intel would probably be involved inside the warring countries and be using their own people to intercept.”
“Someone like Central Intelligence.”
Rosario shrugged skeptically. “We asked. They say no.”
“These killings must have been miles apart. Do you think it’s the same person who’s carrying them out?”
“Maybe not the same person. But the same people. Connected in some way.”
“Why do you say that?”
Rosario pulled a smooth round amulet from his pocket. “Do you know what this is?”
Joseph and I exchanged another quick look, and I nodded grimly. Another piece of the puzzle dropped into place. “A nazar. The evil eye amulet.”
The agent chuckled. “You’re the only local lawman I’ve talked to who had any i
dea what this is. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Well, all of our intercepted assassins didn’t have anything on their bodies that identified them. In fact, because you could read that shoe label, Sheriff, you were the only local people who tied their John Doe to the Middle East.” He held up the amulet, turning the piercing blue eye slowly between his fingers. “But all of the intercepted killers had one of these in his pocket.”
10
I turned the fishbowl over to Special Agent Rosario. Joseph also asked for a space, so we shared the desk set aside for our two night deputies. Joseph used the swivel chair while I worked from a fold-out. Our two night guys rarely come into the office. Larry Newby is a retired security guard from Jack Henry and Associates, a business financial software company up in Monett. Larry is about as reliable on the job as an old Swiss clock: steady, durable, and spot on when you need to check some fact with the man. But he likes to have his days at home. He finishes his shift at 4:00 a.m., sleeps until just after noon, then works in his garden or woodshop until he comes on duty again at 8:00 p.m. If I tried to move him to days, he’d be gone in a heartbeat. He spends all of his duty time in his patrol car, with maybe an hour at the desk if he has a report to write up. As long as we don’t leave the desk cluttered, Larry is fine with giving up the space.
Bobby Lule usually dictates his reports into a little digital recorder he keeps in his cruiser and leaves them for Marti to type up. The night desk doesn’t get much use.
I got to the office just after 7:00 the morning Rosario was expected in Crayton. Marti always has a complaint list waiting, and I was still smarting from her little quip about leaving the rest of the team to take care of all the routine stuff the last time Joseph worked with us. If I could check off a couple of items before the pair arrived from Springfield for our first scheduled team briefing at 11:00, I could quiet some of the office grumbling. Grace was spending the morning visiting the Webber sisters. Frankie would stay up north and patrol. Whatever catch-up work got done before 11:00 depended on me and Rocky. If it required much exertion, it would all be mine.
I hadn’t even reached my new desk before Lule called.
“Tate, better hook the trailer to your Explorer and load up the Gator. And call Chase. We’ve got the damnedest thing up here I’ve ever seen.” Given the fact that Bobby had done two tours in Iraq and been with me when we found the Syrian’s body draped over the limb on Mill Creek, that sounded pretty ominous.
“Where are you, Bobby? And what’s going on?”
“I’m about halfway between Tug Divine’s place and Nick’s Tap Room. Up off Old Quarry Road. You know that stretch of woods that Tug hikes through when he goes to the bar?” It was one of those questions you ask when you know the other person will understand exactly where you’re talking about but needs some orienting. And Tug’s hike to Nick’s Tap Room every afternoon is as much a part of daily routine in Crayton as his old postal route used to be.
Tug had retired early from the postal service with a disability everyone in town knew was the government’s way of saying he was getting too drunk to safely stagger from one house to the next. So they gave him just enough pension to move into a rundown mobile home on Morrison Branch, a spring-fed tributary of Mill Creek. The decrepit single-wide was a half-mile through a stand of Conservation-owned timber from the only bar in town, Nick’s Tap Room. Nick’s bills itself as a microbrewery that sells its own recipes and half-a-dozen others from around the region, plus a limited selection of the harder stuff. Every afternoon since he left the postal service, Tug has weaved his way through the woods for as many shots of Jack Daniels as he can talk Nick into dispensing. When Nick cuts him off or they lock the place up at midnight, it’s back along the beaten path to sleep it off until his next trek to keep the DTs at bay.
“You know how when Tug gets wore out sometimes, trying to make his way home, he’ll hole up in that hollowed out sycamore?” Bobby asked. Another question intended to orient me to the bit of local lore important to whatever had happened during the night.
“Yeah. I know the tree.” It had been hit by lightning decades ago, had managed to survive the trauma, but had a burned-out burrow just above the roots. The warren was just big enough for a man to crawl into when he didn’t think he could make the trailer before losing consciousness.
“Well, it looks like Tug climbed in there last night, was too cold to pass out, and thought he’d warm hisself up by using his lighter on a nest some critter was building in there. Caught the whole damn tree on fire.”
It took a few seconds to process what Bobby was telling me. “Was Tug in there? Did he get out?”
“Nope. At least we think it’s Tug. The Carlsons were driving up Old Quarry Road just about sun-up and saw a curl of smoke out in the woods. Called it in. By the time I got here, the tree was pretty well burned up. Nothing else around it caught fire. Just the old tree and what must be Tug. Too damn charred to tell for sure. I couldn’t get my cruiser back in here, so had to hike in. You’ll need to bring the Gator.”
“On my way,” I said, still struggling to get a picture of the funeral pyre. “I’ll call Chase and have him bring the ambulance or hearse out. Is that tree closer to Nick’s place or Tug’s trailer?”
“I think it’ll be easier to come in from Tug’s end,” Bobby said. “The old guy was only two hundred yards from being home.”
I called Chase Backman, who was already at the funeral home, left a note on the desk for Marti, and drove the Explorer around to the back of the Blockhouse where we’d added a garage to hold the trailer and Gator. Not how I’d expected to begin my first day collaborating with the FBI.
Our first little roundtable gave Special Agent Rosario a good Ozark introduction to a couple of our more colorful characters. As the four of us pulled chairs up around the desk in the fishbowl, the special agent looked from Joseph to Chief Deputy Torres, then over at me with a slight smile that said “This is a damn sight prettier company than I’m used to sitting down with.” I nodded to acknowledge that I was indeed a fortunate member of the law enforcement community, then asked the team to give me a few minutes as Frankie Ritter came into the outer office. Frankie had taken over at Tug’s place when Bobby’s shift ended, letting me work on a couple of items on Marti’s list: a pickup abandoned on the shoulder out near Crawford’s Junction. Reports of a meth lab at the back of the Trammell farm. It turned out Buzz Trammell was cooking moonshine, which isn’t an offense in the state as long as he doesn’t try to sell it—which, of course, he swore he never would.
“Come on in here, Frankie,” I called through the window I’d chosen to leave uncovered. Then, to the group gathered around my desk, “You’ll find this an interesting little side story to our morning. I need Frankie to catch me up on this, if you don’t mind.” While Frankie deposited some folders on Marti’s desk and took a quick side trip to the head, I told them about Tug’s suspected incineration. Frankie made it into the office to fill in the details.
“It was Tug, alright,” he announced. “The fire didn’t get so hot it completely burned him up. He was sitting with his butt in a damp place, and the seat of his britches and his wallet didn’t get burned.”
“I hope he passed out before the flames got him,” Grace murmured. “He was our mailman all the time I was growing up. Nice old guy. Just couldn’t leave the bottle alone.”
“Chase don’t think he’s got no family around,” Frankie offered. “Don’t know who we should notify about this.”
“Call Matt Frazee over at First Christian,” I suggested. “He does funerals for people who don’t have anyone. When the paper runs the story, I think a few of the people on Tug’s old mail route will show up. Matt will give him a good send-off.”
Frankie headed for the door. “And could you cover things for the next few hours?” I asked. “Marti still has a couple of items on her list I didn’t get to.”
“You got it, Boss,” Frankie said. I dropped the curtain on the window as he headed back to the recepti
on desk.
“I don’t want to make light of another’s death,” Rosario said with a chuckle, “but an old guy burning himself up in a tree he’d stopped to sleep in? In all my years with the Bureau, that’s the strangest thing I’ve come across.”
“Maybe not,” I said, turning to Grace. “How was your morning?”
“How long has it been since you were up on Webber’s Mountain, Tate?” she asked as an opener.
I shrugged. “I haven’t been up there since I came back to Crayton. It’s probably been twenty years.”
Grace grinned. “Well, the old house probably looks pretty much the same on the outside. But they’ve painted the inside. That main room where they do their readings? It’s sort of a pale yellow. But they painted all around the furniture that was against the walls. Everything behind it is still plain wood. And they’re both so much older than I remember them. I still can’t tell one from the other, but they’re looking real old.”
I turned to Rosario whose smile was now one of amused curiosity.
“These old twin sisters have lived on a hilltop down in the corner of the county since they were born,” I explained. “I think maybe their grandpappy built the place out of lumber he milled himself. They practically never come into town. When they do, they call Chase Backman who runs the ambulance service. He drives down there, brings them into town for whatever they need, then hauls them back.”
Grace jumped back in, anxious that our Washington visitor not think the sisters to be just a couple of loonies. “But they’re the nicest old women you could ask to meet. They have to heat their water in an old enamel stove and wash in a big metal tub, but they’re always clean and well kept. And aside from the paint job, their house is real tidy. They do readings for people in the county. Tea leaves.”
Rosario nodded skeptically.
“What did they have to say about their reading for Lilia Haddad?” I asked.
