by Allen Kent
“That is long enough,” Ethel announced. “Please turn it back over with your left hand and place it between us, with the handle toward you.” I did as I was told. The sisters bent over the small China bowl.
There were long moments of silence during which the Webbers peered together at the scattering of leaves that remained in the bottom, then up at each other as if exchanging telepathic messages, then back at the leaves. They finally both turned toward me in unison, their faces softening sympathetically. Ethel spoke first.
“You have suffered a terrible loss in your life,” she said quietly. “Part of what you wish to know is if you will ever be able to get over that loss.”
Though I had begun to allow that the sisters may have some powers of clairvoyance, the comment hit me in the gut like a sucker punch. I felt a flush rise on my cheeks and forehead. Could the old women hear my heart? Surely the pounding must be audible. I blinked back moisture from the corners of my eyes and stared self-consciously into the cup.
Edith again touched my arm. “You will never forget, but you will be able to forgive yourself. And there will be new love.”
I steepled my hands with thumbs beneath my chin and tried unsuccessfully to keep the tears in check.
Edith Webber squeezed gently. “She would not wish you to carry this guilt,” she murmured.
I wondered fleetingly if Grace had said something to them but knew she never would. “Thank you,” I sniffled into my hands and felt Ethel touch my other elbow. We sat in silence for two or three moments while I regained composure, with what I can only describe as psychic energy flowing between me and the two women. Removing their hands, they bent again over the cup. I sucked in a deep breath.
“You have also come to ask about this new love,” Edith said, smiling.
“You see two paths before you and are unsure which you should follow,” Ethel continued, with no interruption in the thought. “The leaves only tell us that you face these two paths. They do not show which you will follow. But one thing is clear. You will not need to choose. The decision will be made for you.”
“Made for me?” My heart skipped a beat, triggered by a crushing fear that there would be another disastrous loss. The women again took my elbows and squeezed softly in unison.
“One path joins you together,” Ethel said quietly. “The other, we cannot see its end.”
19
When I sauntered into the department office shortly after 11:00, no one asked where I’d been—which made me immediately suspicious. For the first half of my drive from Webber’s Mountain, I’d fretted over what the sisters meant by, “The decision will be made for you.” By the time I reached Jacob’s Creek, a wide spot in the road with thirty or forty houses scattered along three short cross streets, I’d decided there was nothing to be gained by trying to guess. Neither of the twins had mentioned death or danger. Neither seemed particularly uneasy. What would be, would be.
But I did need to worry about explaining my morning absence. If I knew Marti and Grace as well as I thought I did, though neither would suggest it to the other, both suspected that Mara Joseph had spent the night and extended her stay into the morning. But as I entered, Marti looked up with a relaxed smile. Grace was at her desk and seemed equally unconcerned. I headed in her direction, thinking it would be wise to begin the rest of the day by asking how she was feeling.
“You have someone waiting,” Marti interrupted, nodding toward the fishbowl. Joseph had risen from her chair when I came into the building and now stood watching me through the half-wall window. Ahh. That explained Marti’s good humor. Obviously no rendezvous with Mara Joseph. The state investigator nodded with a slight smile and waved me toward Grace’s desk, seeming to agree that asking after the deputy’s wellbeing was the right place to start.
I sat across from her and said as privately as the open office allowed, “I’m so sorry about how things went out at Marti’s, Grace.”
She looked at me directly, her tightly clasped hands and rigid jaw telling me she was fighting for control.
“I know you had no choice, Tate. You saved us both. Thank you for coming so quickly. And I’m the one who needs to be sorry. Sometimes I can be pretty thick-headed—especially when everybody warned me. Is Larry going to be okay?”
I gave a solemn nod. “I talked to him yesterday. He’ll be fine.”
“I’d like to go see him, but . . .”
“I know he’d appreciate it,” I said. “He doesn’t blame you or anyone else. It’s part of what we do.”
“What about Tammy? I’m not sure I can face her.”
“She was there when I called. She doesn’t blame you either.”
Grace looked down at the desk. “If I’d been smarter, none of this would have happened. Sal would be alive, and you wouldn’t have had to go through this investigation.”
I wanted to say, “You’re right. We all told you,” but said what a kinder, more considerate boss would say. “It probably would have happened with someone else, Grace. We’d have been at someone else’s door, stopping him from breaking in. Then you might have been in Newby’s shoes.”
She looked up again, an expression of resolve masking what I read as embarrassment. “I know you’ll think this is crazy, but I’m going to arrange a graveside service for him. He’s got no family that I know of, and it’s not right for there to be nothing for him. He wasn’t all bad.”
I held her gaze long enough for her to understand I wasn’t completely in agreement, then said, “We’ll help you with it. I’m sure Bill Latimer will be willing to do something.”
“He was Catholic,” Grace murmured.
I leaned back, struggling to remain that considerate boss. “There’s no priest in town, Grace. If you want anybody to be there, you’d better have it here in Crayton. Bill can do a nice job. And do you think it’s going to make any difference to what happens to Sal?” I knew I was edging toward cruel, but I didn’t care.
She lowered her eyes again to the desktop, thought for a moment, then said, “No. I guess not. Reverend Latimer will be fine.” When she looked back up, the resolve wasn’t masking anything. “Officer Joseph is waiting. You’d better see what she wants. She didn’t feel like she needed to share it with us.”
I reached across and squeezed her hand. Marti gave me an approving nod as I passed her desk. All was right with the world. At least for the next three minutes.
Joseph waved me around my desk and into my seat as if it were her office. She waited until I was comfortably leaning back, looking at her with what I hoped was an “I’m here. We can do business” kind of look.
“How’s Grace doing?” she asked.
“As well as can be expected. But I didn’t think I’d see you down here this soon. And I’m fairly certain you didn’t come to check on Grace.” The Sal memorial thing burned like iodine on a skinned knee and the words of the Webber sisters kept echoing in my head. “You see two paths before you and are unsure which you should follow.” The path that faced me now was being solicitous, and that added to the burn.
Joseph frowned irritably. “Don’t be small, Tate. Of course, I’m concerned about Grace. But you’re right. That’s not why I’m here.” She glanced over her shoulder at the women working behind her in the main office, then leaned toward me over the desk. “There’s a new Sayegh in town.”
I surged to my feet so forcefully that the desk scraped across the hardwood, drawing alarmed stares from Grace and Marti. “Who the hell’s watching him?” I snapped.
Joseph raised a hand to keep me from bolting for the door. “I have two patrolmen on him. A Qasim Sayegh checked into the Arbor Suites south of the city just before midnight. We’d asked hotels to contact us if anyone with that name registered—or someone on a foreign passport who looked Middle Eastern. The clerk called the patrol. We had someone there within ten minutes.” She chuckled under her breath. “If he’s here to try to get to one of the Haddads, he’s not a very experienced assassin. All the Arbor’s rooms open to
the outside, and there’s only one drive in and out of the parking lot. Easy to watch.”
I dropped back into my chair with Grace and Marti’s eyes locked on me through the glass. “Why didn’t you call as soon as you knew this? I need to warn the families.”
Joseph was unruffled. “He’s an hour and a half from here. That’s plenty of time to get them gathered up and covered if he starts to move. And we saw no reason to trouble you or the Haddads until we did some checking. Plus . . .” She glanced through the glass at my officemates. “. . . I’ve been here for over an hour. Your cell phone is off, and your little team out there didn’t seem to feel any need to tell me where you were.”
I ignored the sarcasm but had forgotten I’d turned the phone off when I reached the Webbers’ cabin. I pulled it out, punching it back to life. “They didn’t know. And a Qasim Sayegh showing up in Springfield? What kind of checking do you think you need to do?”
“I called Rosario immediately. He’s on his way out. In fact, should be getting here about now. He said he’d rent a car and come down. Qasim has an airport rental. A blue Hyundai. The Bureau’s following up on the information he put on the registration. We could all make a pretty embarrassing mistake if we jump the wrong person without cause.”
“Or if we let him kill someone because we didn’t act quickly enough. This can’t just be another coincidence.”
“He could be here looking for his brother.”
“Probably so. And to do what his brother didn’t get done.”
“Like I said, Tate,” she said irritably. “We have two officers watching the hotel and you haven’t exactly been Mister Available this morning.”
“Have they checked the hotel lot for a white Mercedes Sprinter?”
“They have. None there. And they’ve checked registrations at the hotels around for a Jason Anzar—and have checked the lot for other vehicles that don’t belong to employees or registered guests. A blank on both.”
I nervously clicked the button on the top of a ballpoint. “So, what’s the game plan? I don’t like the Haddads not knowing there’s a possible threat. The families could be scattered around and hard to protect.”
Joseph leaned forward and looked at me intently. “Tate, I’ve got both Johansson and Holland close by and ready to assist. You have Grace, Ritter, and D’Amico. The seven of us should be able to round up the Haddads and get them to a safe place before some guy who checked into a hotel with outside doors can find his way to Crayton and hunt them down. I’d guess if it’s one of the Idlib Sayeghs and he’s here to do what Farid didn’t do, he’s come for Yusef.”
Her phone pinged and she glanced at the message. “Rosario’s headed this way. I suggest we save our powder until he gets here, develop our plan, and not run helter-skelter around the county getting people all worked up and tripping over each other.”
She was right, I knew. When we moved on this and got others involved, we needed to know exactly what we were doing. I suspected there were pieces of this already in motion that we didn’t even know about. The missing demolition kits. The role the Talismen might have in this. If this was one of the Sayeghs we’d been watching for, did Anzar and his group of watchmen also know he was here? If they did, how did they find out? Were they tracking him now? I stopped punching the button on the pen and dropped it onto the desk.
“Thank you,” Joseph muttered.
I sat back again and the women in the outer office relaxed. “If you have no objections,” I said testily, “I’d like to call all of my people in for the meeting with Rosario. Deputies Ritter and D’Amico and my night guy, Bobby Lule. I want everyone on board. Any problem with that?”
Joseph smiled thinly, suggesting that she didn’t feel she deserved the biting tone. “No objection from me. And I’d think Agent Rosario would welcome all the help we can give him.”
“Good,” I said, and went out to ask Marti to call in the full team.
Special Agent Warren Rosario was immediately able to put to bed one of my concerns. I had commandeered the commissioner’s meeting room in the courthouse across the street, and ten of us were gathered around the long walnut conference table. Rosario had agreed to allow Marti to take notes, and both state patrolmen had joined us.
Rosario grinned widely at the assembly, giving no indication of feeling rushed or harried. I decided what seemed like a “once-in-a-career” case to a little county department like mine was probably routine to an agent who spent his life in counterterrorism. But I would have appreciated a little more sense of urgency.
“Looks like the perfect day to try to pull off a major heist somewhere in town,” he joked, adding to my irritation. He saw my jaw tighten and immediately sobered. “But we’ve got some serious work facing us, and I appreciate all the cooperation. First, let me take one thing off your plate. Watching about a month’s worth of video, we were able to determine that a worker at the munitions plant in Iowa was smuggling M183 kits out of the plant by putting a few at a time in a trash bin. They have a dumpster outside the fenced compound so the garbage crews don’t have to bring their trucks onto the secure property. But employees pass through the gate unchecked when they dump trash. Stupid oversight, but that kind of thing happens. The guy was sneaking the kits out to the dumpster, then picking them up at night before the trucks came by.” He paused long enough for questions, but we all sensed he wasn’t through with his story.
“These kits were marketed on the dark web. We were able to convince the employee—a civilian, by the way—to give us his buyer list. One was a survivalist family from up near Stockton, Missouri. It seems Mid-Missouri Water had a project there pretty much like this one. Property obtained through eminent domain, a couple of suits in court that went against the plaintiffs, and some really angry people, including this family.”
I was beginning to see where this was headed and felt a twinge of disappointment. Rosario confirmed my suspicion.
“These people knew that if they tried to get back at Mid-Missouri up in their own area, they’d immediately be suspect. So they hit them down here. The arrests were made this morning and haven’t hit the news yet. But they were your dam-busters. As coincidental as it all was, that body being blown into that tree was just that. Pure coincidence. And a stroke of luck for us.”
“So these people had no connection at all to Farid Sayegh?” Joseph asked.
Rosario shook his head. “We don’t believe so. No connection to Syria, or the Sayeghs, or this part of the state. Just a beef against Mid-Missouri Water.”
Similar disappointment tightened the faces of Grace and Joseph. A connection would mean another avenue to finding Sayegh’s killer. The Bureau’s find left us only Jason Anzar.
I asked what I knew the rest of the team was wondering. “What have you been able to learn about this Qasim Sayegh?”
Rosario pulled a small notebook from a jacket pocket. “Some of this I learned after I got to Springfield,” he said. “Farid does have a brother named Qasim who hasn’t been seen around Idlib for the last three weeks. A Qasim Sayegh entered Canada on a St. Kitts passport a week ago. The information on the Arbor Suites registration gave him a Columbus, Ohio address. There’s a Syrian family at that address that claims him as a visiting uncle. Our contact with them also occurred this morning, so there hasn’t been any time to verify their story. According to the woman at the address, Uncle Qasim is off seeing parts of America he’s always wanted to visit. No specific itinerary. Given the information we have, there are no solid grounds for detaining the man.” Rosario tucked the pad back into his pocket and looked the group over expectantly.
“Did he enter the US legally?” Johansson asked.
“We’re checking with Immigration now. It’s possible he used the St. Kitts passport to enter the US legally. Or had one under another name.”
“He’ll know you’re on to him,” I suggested. “Whoever this is in Columbus will have called him.”
“Probably. But our agents didn’t indicate to the woman t
hat we know where he is.”
I sniffed skeptically. “That just means he’ll try to act fast. He won’t think he has much time. Has anyone been able to find Jason Anzar? Or figure out who these Talismen are?”
The agent’s brow knitted. “Now, that’s been an interesting investigation in its own right. This group seems to exist in cyberspace, but we haven’t been able to work our way into it. We’ve no idea who or what they are. Very professionally encrypted communication. Beyond what you would expect from a group of amateur vigilantes. And Anzar has disappeared. So has the van he was driving.”
Grace entered the conversation. “Without knowing where Anzar is, and without being able to pick up this new Syrian guy right now, what do we do to protect our families?”
As we’d waited for Rosario to arrive, that was the question that had been eating at me. Suppose we stopped Qasim Sayegh. Or what if Anzar got to him first and replaced one killing with another? What would we have accomplished? If the Sayegh family was willing to send two brothers seven thousand miles to avenge a death, what would they do when a second family member didn’t return? The history of the Middle East is one of tribal disputes and family warfare. Were we just bringing an unending chain of honor killings into our county? I decided this was the right time to keep that from happening.
“Protecting the families won’t be enough,” I said firmly. All heads turned in my direction. “If Qasim fails, there will be another try. If he succeeds, I can easily see one of the Haddad brothers feeling the need to defend the honor of the family by going back to Syria and doing the same thing. It will start a never-ending cycle of killing and retribution.”
Rosario studied me for a long moment. “You know the region better than anyone here, Sheriff,” he said finally. “And I understand your concern. But what options do we have?”
