by Zoë Ferraris
The sunlight hit her face, the heat enveloped her while the comforting sounds of traffic and laughing voices finally shook the last of the dream from her psyche. There was no death here, no blood and no efreet. But there was something else scratching at the edge of her consciousness. Amina al-Fouad. The alley. The dismembered hand. And she saw something plainly. It was irrational, fleeting. She stopped walking, grasped it, and quickly turned back toward the station. She began to hurry. It all became clear because she did not believe that God would let the devil answer her unless the devil had something to say.
One of the reasons he’d left Undercover was that he hated working in a department where nothing ever seemed to get done. In a flurry of activity, you prepared your agents, then you sent them to their assignments and you waited. For weeks. Months. Pushed papers around your desk and kept an eye on situations. But you were the shepherd whose sheep had run off to play with wolves, and so you sang a lonely ballad by your campfire and told yourself everything was under control. You knew nothing, saw nothing, but every once in a while news would trickle back, and you’d celebrate or cry. In the end, it was as depressing as his family.
There were no shepherds in Homicide, only good old-fashioned Bedouins who banded together, formed alliances, and swore to protect one another against the unspeakable harshness of the world. Of course there were rivalries, but death was so close here, and all the paths you followed were designed to stave it off. Cover yourself. Move slowly. Follow the habits of the fathers, the men who died learning so that you could be wise.
Only now he was beginning to feel that there was something stifling in the camaraderie. That it encouraged closeness but not innovation. That the person who was accomplishing most on this case was a woman who stood outside the campfire circle, gazing in with a longing that, if fulfilled, would probably stifle her too.
The crime team was energized. He had only to send out word that they were meeting, and the rumors began to fly. There had been a breakthrough on the case! They could stop their drudgery and do something important! Maybe one of them would even get a shot at nabbing the killer! Dr. Becker could tell them a dozen times that it might take years to catch this one, but no one believed her.
Once again Mu’tazz stood at the back of the room, arms crossed, a sour expression on his face. Ibrahim hated to admit that Mu’tazz made him nervous. Despite feeling that he’d gained the upper hand at the last meeting, every disapproving twitch in the man’s face spoke as loudly to him as someone shouting through a bullhorn.
Dr. Becker showed up wearing a black abaaya over her clothing but still no headscarf. They were cowing her slowly. Ibrahim was relieved that she was still there, although she didn’t look happy.
The whiteboard hadn’t been big enough, so the photographs of the nineteen victims were hanging on the wall. Majdi had put them up, with Katya assisting. She stood now in her favored position by the doorway. Waiting to make an exit, he thought.
Once all the noise had died down, Ibrahim pointed to the photos and said, “I would like you to tell me what you see.”
Everyone turned to the left, or to one another, with confused looks on their faces.
“Go ahead, just tell me,” Ibrahim said. “What do you see?”
“Dead bodies.”
“Yes. And something else? Something hidden perhaps?”
After a long silence, the men began guessing. A pattern in the circle? A sextant? A hexagon?
“There is a pattern,” Ibrahim finally said. He went to the wall and began to write on the photographs. First B, then S, then M. He had barely started the second row when the men recognized what was happening. Wild talking broke out.
“Bism’allah, ar-rahman, ar-rahim,” Shaya said.
Silence fell. Daher’s mouth hung open.
“Miss Hijazi noticed the pattern last night.” Ibrahim motioned toward her. She remained unflustered under the gazes of twenty envious men. “Thank you, Miss Hijazi.”
Another silence fell, a continuation of the previous wave of shock. Mu’tazz looked disgusted, but whether this was because of the message or because Miss Hijazi had found it, Ibrahim couldn’t tell.
“Well, he’s a Muslim,” someone said gravely.
“He may know Islam,” Daher replied, “but he’s not a Muslim.”
Ibrahim stepped in before the argument could become annoying. “I’m sure you’re all wondering how this is going to help us.” He turned to Katya. “Miss Hijazi, why don’t you come up and explain your theory?”
Katya stayed by the doorway. Everyone turned to her again except the few men in the room who couldn’t bring themselves to look.
“I think it’s possible he has repeated this pattern somewhere else,” she said, motioning to the wall. “We suspect that he’s taken Amina al-Fouad, and her hand was posed as well—perhaps as a period marking the end of a sentence.”
Ibrahim gestured to the whiteboard behind him, which held a photograph of the hand. As he did this, he noticed Mu’tazz glowering at Katya.
“It’s possible,” Katya went on, “that she will be the first victim in a new series of attacks and that the killer has altered his style of killing because he’s angry that we found his desert site. But I think it’s equally likely that al-Fouad could be the latest in a series that has been going on without us noticing. Part of a sentence we haven’t read yet.” She seemed to notice Mu’tazz staring at her; her cheeks darkened.
“You mean this killer hasn’t just been burying them in the desert,” Shaya said, “he’s been killing all over the place?”
His tone suggested all of the affronted pride and skepticism that the department was feeling. What do you mean, we didn’t notice?
Dr. Becker looked up. “It’s actually quite normal,” she said. “Police departments all over the world don’t usually notice a serial killer until he has been killing for quite some time. That’s because most serial killers don’t leave a signature, as we call it, and they generally don’t stick to one location. Jeddah is a huge city with many different precincts, so it’s entirely possible he could have been operating within Jeddah all this time.”
“Except,” Daher said, “I think that we might have noticed women being murdered and having their hands cut off long before now, don’t you think?”
“Your man’s signature is the cutting off of hands,” Dr. Becker replied evenly, “but it’s also the posing of the bodies and the shooting through the head. It could be that he’s been killing in the city using any of those signatures—or perhaps none. He’s already proven that he can kill in large numbers. There could be more. The signatures may have developed over time. There could have been victims before that you don’t know about and won’t be able to connect to the case through a signature alone.
“It might be best,” she went on, “to go back to your unsolved cases. He may not have cut off their hands or shot them. Maybe he just posed the bodies. Maybe he just shot them. Look for any points of similarity.”
“That’s going to take forever,” Daher said, looking angry now.
“Well, as I understand it,” Dr. Becker replied without the slightest hint of sarcasm, “the Jeddah police have a ninety percent success rate in capturing murderers, so there shouldn’t be that many files to go through.”
Daher smiled. “With respect, Dr. Becker, you don’t know Arabic. Any of our letters could look like a human body. We could review a hundred old murders and find a whole novel written on the streets! It doesn’t mean there’s a connection.”
“You’re right,” Ibrahim said. “It’s going to mean a lot of work, and some educated guessing, but I think it’s a viable lead and I’m going to assign that work to Miss Hijazi.”
No one protested, not even Daher. Ibrahim had been hoping for that. Once they realized that the most tedious grunt work would be done by a woman, they lost the urge to complain.
“I’ve already spoken to Chief Riyadh and we’re going to cordon off the back section of this room so that Miss Hijazi
and some of the female investigators can set up space for all the files they’re going to look through. I would ask you all to please give them their privacy.”
“Don’t the women have a bigger room upstairs?” Shaya asked.
Ibrahim explained that Miss Hijazi had already offered to look through the execution and amputation records. The boxes were taking up a conspicuous amount of space in the women’s lab. Now with dozens, possibly hundreds, of unsolved-case files to go through, she faced being crowded out of her office altogether.
Everyone seemed to accept this except for Mu’tazz, who shook his head theatrically and marched out of the room. No doubt he was heading straight to Chief Riyadh to complain.
As the rest of the men left, Ibrahim caught sight of Daher’s face and saw that he was angry. So angry, in fact, that Ibrahim thought it wise to keep an eye on him.
The problem is,” Katya said in a low whisper, “that a lot of old cases weren’t… done right.”
She and Charlie were sitting in the women’s section of a Pizza Hut. When Charlie had seen the familiar logo out front, she’d laughed, grabbed Katya’s arm, and said, “My God, you know the way to my heart!”
“Really?”
“I miss home right now. This is perfect.”
Now they were sitting over a large halal pizza with tomatoes and cheese.
“What do you mean, they weren’t done right?” Charlie asked.
“The police need a confession from a killer. Without it, they can’t sentence him.”
“So the confessions were faked?”
Katya sighed. “Sometimes, the suspect is pressured.”
“Torture?”
“Yes, maybe. It depends.”
“So that’s why you have a ninety percent success rate?” Charlie asked.
“Yes, perhaps.”
“I see. So you need to get all of the cases, not just the unsolved ones.”
“Yes. But by asking for those, I am saying that the police did not do their jobs.”
Charlie narrowed her eyes. “Did they give you the files?”
“No, not yet. Inspector Zahrani is trying. It might take some time.”
“Jesus.”
They ate in silence for a while. Katya’s thoughts turned back to the killer.
“It still bothers me,” she said, “that the killer did not treat Amina like the others. She was still alive when he cut off her hand.”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “And I agree with what you said: it’s likely that his new behavior is a reaction to this investigation. Also, Amina is not like his other type. So maybe he only cut off her hand to let you—the police—know that it was him. Otherwise, you might not have made the connection.”
“But why would he do that?” Katya asked in bafflement. “Does he want us to catch him?”
“Sure. It could be that he wants recognition for his crimes. He may even be proud of them. Until now, he has gotten access to women and no one has noticed they’re missing. The thing is, Amina went missing almost a week before the killer went back to the gravesite, so he had already kidnapped her before finding out that the police had discovered the graves. He must have known the moment he kidnapped her that someone would be more likely to notice her missing. She’s a Saudi, not a housemaid.”
“Maybe she was wearing a veil and he didn’t realize she was Saudi?” Katya asked.
Charlie shook her head. “As far as we know, he’s never picked a non-Asian woman before. I think he knows how to figure out what a woman looks like. I really believe he’s taunting you.” Charlie set her pizza down. “As you said, Amina may be the first or the last in a series of city victims. No matter what, I think we have to assume the killer is not done. And we have to find the pattern before he kills Amina, if she isn’t already dead.”
25
Remember the pedophile?” Shaya asked.
They were in Ibrahim’s office with Lieutenants Daher, Abdullatif, and Zunedh. Ibrahim was sitting at his desk. He hadn’t called them in here; they had spilled in after the meeting, agitated.
“Which one?” Daher asked disparagingly.
“The one they beheaded. I think it was last year. They caught him in Hail.”
“Yes, yes, I remember.” Daher leaned against the wall.
“Well, I was thinking,” Shaya said. “He was raping young boys and then leaving them out in the desert. He was a serial killer, just like our guy. And he was a Saudi.”
No one replied.
“He was young, that guy,” Shaya went on. “Twenty-two, I think. And one of the foreign papers said he had a psychiatric disorder, but we executed him anyway.”
“And we should have,” Daher said. “So what if he had a disorder? He was killing people. Children! Think about it, man.”
“Think about what?” Abdullatif said. “He wasn’t in control of his own actions. He was crazy. Shaya’s right. They should have figured that out and shown a little mercy.”
“What about the families?” Daher asked. “Their children are dead.”
“Killing the madman isn’t going to bring them back,” Abdullatif said flatly, ending the discussion. They turned to Ibrahim in case he wanted to weigh in. He would have liked to tell them that of course the country had its own serial killers, that all their bellyaching about it only revealed their youth and naïveté, and that there was no good answer to the question of capital punishment.
“So now we know our killer is clever,” Ibrahim said. “He fancies himself a very clever man. Writing messages with dead bodies.”
“And what a message,” Shaya said. “It’s completely sick.”
“But he’s not a total madman,” Daher said. “If he was, he’d be as easy to catch as the Hail killer.”
“That took four years, by the way,” Ibrahim put in.
“Dr. Becker said that killers tend to pick victims from their own ethnic type,” Daher said.
“Tend to is not a law,” Ibrahim said.
“I know,” Daher replied. “And it’s not that I’m upset about it. Shaya’s right. We have our own killers. But we’re trying to profile this guy, right? We ought to be able to figure out where he’s from.”
“Of course,” Ibrahim said, “but in the absence of evidence, we have to keep our minds open.”
“I wonder if they called in an FBI profiler for the Hail case?” Zunedh asked. He was the quietest of the officers, painfully shy. It was a surprise when he spoke. He immediately flushed in embarrassment.
“Yeah, good point,” Daher remarked. “Why do we need one now?”
So that was it—the real source of agitation: Why are women working on this case? Ibrahim had suspected it but had hoped he was wrong.
“Quit moaning,” he said. “We’re lucky to have Dr. Becker here, and we’re lucky that Miss Hijazi noticed the pattern. I expect the same kind of brilliance from all of my team.”
Daher’s anger rose again. He turned pale.
As Ibrahim watched them leave on their assignments, he began to worry. It was only a matter of time before Daher’s wounded ego drove him into the orbit of Abu-Musa and Mu’tazz, men who believed that women should be prohibited from doing police work except where they were absolutely necessary to maintain the standards of segregation: autopsying female corpses, processing female biological samples, and occasionally interrogating female witnesses. Once Daher migrated, the other men would too. Ibrahim thought suddenly of Katya setting up her own campfire in the situation room. Had he been reckless proposing it? Why not let her conduct the work up in her lab? He suspected his own ego at work. He was dragging her into the fight.
Chief Riyadh was sitting at his desk, flanked by large potted ferns and a pair of framed photographs, one of King Abdullah, the other of the minister of the interior, the king’s brother Nayef. The air was cool enough to be painful, although Riyadh, in his magnificent bulk, was sweating anyway, crevices of darkness staining his shirt at the armpits and the folds of his belly.
Across from him, two men were sitt
ing in the heavy wooden chairs. A third chair had been left for Ibrahim. A uniformed officer stood by the door. The moment he walked in, Ibrahim recognized them all from Undercover. He saw his future in a flash: jail sentence, humiliation, death.
Riyadh’s face was relaxed; only his waxy, protuberant mouth looked annoyed.
“You know Inspector Ubaid from Undercover,” he said. Ibrahim nodded and shook Ubaid’s hand.
“They’re here about a missing person who used to work for you in Undercover. I realize you’re busy with a murder investigation, but I told them you’d be glad to answer their questions.”
Ibrahim sat. “Of course.”
“A woman who used to work with you—her name is Sabria Gampon,” Ubaid said.
“Sure. I remember Sabria.”
“She was reported missing yesterday.”
“She no longer works for Undercover,” Ibrahim said, feigning slight confusion.
“In fact, no,” Ubaid said, “but we feel it necessary to investigate anyway. Her neighbors called to report the disappearance—”
“Her neighbors?”
“Yes. Well, the brother of one of them. According to dispatch—they were the ones who traced the call—his name was Mr. Saleh Harbi. The neighbors—two females—were concerned, and Mr. Harbi works for law enforcement, so they turned to him.” So Asma and Iman had grown too worried about Sabria’s disappearance. Ibrahim should have talked to them, come up with an explanation. Now it was too late.
“But of course you know we like to take care of our workers.” Ubaid said this with a chummy smile that made Ibrahim think instantly of how quickly and horribly Undercover had offered the position of assistant chief to Omar, because he was the older brother.
