Misgivings

by Donn Cortez

  It was strange, Horatio would think later, how inspiration—seeing a connection between two or more things that previously you hadn’t—worked just as well when that connection was made by coincidence instead of analysis. At the same moment Calleigh said “cul-de-sac,” his eye fell on a single word in the report—and suddenly, it all came together.

  “Calleigh, did you notice that Delko found trace amounts of cellulose in the chemical burns on Villanova’s arms?”

  “Sure. The body was found in a swamp—no shortage of plant matter there.”

  “True—but he didn’t find any lignin, which should have also been present if the trace came from natural plant matter. Cellulose on its own suggests something else.”

  She frowned, thinking about it. “Paper?”

  “Not just paper,” he said. “A paper sack.”

  * * *

  “Mrs. Villanova,” Calleigh said as the woman walked into the interview room. “Thank you for coming. This is my boss, Lieutenant Horatio Caine.”

  “Mrs. Villanova, I would like to extend my deepest sympathies,” Horatio said. “I know this process has dragged on, and I apologize for that. I just wanted you to know that we’ve devoted as much time and effort to finding out what happened to your ex-husband as humanly possible.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” Solana Villanova was dressed all in black and had made no attempt to hide the dark circles under her eyes with makeup. “Do you have any answers for me?”

  “I’m afraid we do,” Calleigh said. “Solana, your husband committed suicide.”

  For a second, it didn’t register. She frowned, as if she hadn’t heard her correctly. “What? But the body—there was no head, no hands! The coroner told me explosives had been used, chemicals—”

  “They had,” Horatio said gently. “By Hector himself. He held a crude bomb in his mouth and put paper bags filled with crystalline drain cleaner around his hands, probably several layers thick. When the bomb went off, his body fell into the water. Water plus sodium hydroxide turns into a very strong corrosive base; as a plumber, he was familiar enough with the chemical to know how much to use, enough to eat away his fingerprints first and eventually dissolve the paper bags. He used another bomb with a longer fuse to sink the boat.”

  “But—but why would anyone do such a terrible thing?”

  “That’s what we couldn’t figure out,” Calleigh said. “It looked as if someone had murdered Hector and tried to prevent his body from being identified—but when we investigated, we discovered nothing that would implicate Hector being involved in criminal activities.”

  “Of course not,” Solana said. “He was a good man.”

  “Yes, he was,” Horatio said. “What my team did find was that Hector hadn’t done much since he came to Miami. Despite what he told you, there was no business opportunity. The only significant actions Hector took were to buy a boat . . . and give himself a farewell dinner. He went to a local Brazilian restaurant and had them prepare ceia de natal. According to the staff, he was happy—as if he were celebrating something.”

  “Happy? But surely those are not the actions of one who is planning to kill himself?”

  “Actually, Mrs. Villanova,” Calleigh said, “it’s not uncommon for suicides to display a sudden burst of uncharacteristic cheerfulness. It’s not because their outlook has improved—it’s because they’ve given up. They think they can finally see an end in sight to their pain.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” Solana fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief. “Why? Why would he go to all this trouble?”

  Calleigh glanced at Horatio, and he gave her the slightest of nods. “We think he was trying to erase himself,” Calleigh said. “It’s why he came to Miami. Disappear in a foreign country, make sure your body can’t be identified . . . and sever prior relationships in such a way that no one comes looking.”

  “The argument we had,” Solana said softly. “The fight. Now I understand . . . he wanted to drive me away. To hate him. So I . . .”

  “So you wouldn’t blame yourself,” Horatio said.

  She nodded, her gaze turning distant. “I see. He must have been in pain, such pain. All he wanted was for it to end. But to do so would pass that pain on to me . . . and that, he would not do.”

  “He must have loved you very much,” Calleigh said.

  “I didn’t know the depth of his love,” she said. “Pain makes one selfish, no? But not Hector. It was not enough to give me my freedom; he tried to give me the gift of innocence, too. Of not knowing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Horatio said.

  Solana dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. “It’s all right. It is your job to find things out. And I’m glad I know—for all his good intentions, Hector never really understood me. It’s not my fault he killed himself; that was his choice. And as for the other things he did . . . well. Who would not be proud to know that someone loved . . . loved them . . . that much—”

  And then Solana Villanova gave her ex-husband the only thing she could—the one gift he’d never wanted.

  Her grief.

  Christmas Day was notoriously slow for news, aside from the usual spate of attacks in the Middle East and the pope’s annual speech from St. Peter’s. So when something newsworthy did occur, it got even more coverage than it usually would.

  Like the daring escape of a kidnap victim from his captors.

  Abdus Sattar Pathan was found, bleeding and battered, wandering along the Tamiami Trail with a handcuff still locked around one wrist. A patrol car found him, picked him up, and took him to a Miami-Dade police station, at which point the FBI was contacted. Someone in the station leaked the story to the media, and the building was soon besieged by reporters.

  Horatio got a call, too.

  He drove over to the Miami FBI field office, where Pathan was being debriefed. Agent Sackheim was the one who’d called him—more out of smugness than any sense of professional courtesy, Horatio thought—and had agreed to let him interview Pathan about his ordeal. On Sackheim’s home turf, of course.

  Horatio endured the multiple checkpoints and security measures stoically. He gave up his gun without complaint and signed his name more than once. He had his fingerprints scanned and he walked through a metal detector. He almost expected them to ask him to remove his shoes.

  Finally, he was ushered into an interview room. Sackheim was already there, sitting across the table from Pathan. Pathan was sipping carefully from a large mug of coffee and looked terrrible; one eye was swollen shut, there was a cut on his lip, and he still wore the bandage on his neck. Horatio nodded to Sackheim. “Dennis.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  Pathan eyed Horatio mildly. Despite his physical condition, he seemed at ease. Horatio thought he knew why.

  “Lieutenant Caine,” Pathan said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Horatio regarded Pathan incuriously, a slight smile on his lips, but said nothing else.

  After a moment of silence, Sackheim cleared his throat. “Mister Pathan has had a most exhausting ordeal. If you have any questions for him—”

  “I don’t have any questions,” Horatio said. “But I do have a request. A very simple request. Its relevance might not be immediately apparent, but if you wouldn’t mind indulging me?”

  Pathan shrugged wearily. “If I can. As I’ve already told the FBI, I learned very little about my captors—”

  “This isn’t about them. This is about you . . .” Horatio reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a short length of rope. He held it in his closed fist, curled fingers up, an end poking out of either side of his hand. “I’d simply like you to do something that almost all magicians have done at some point in their careers. It’s a tradition almost as firmly entrenched as pulling a rabbit out of a hat, or asking someone to pick a card.”

  Pathan’s face broke into an incredulous grin. “You want me to perform a trick? I hate to tell you this, Mister Caine, but
most magic relies on preparation. I can’t just wave my hands and make something disappear.”

  “I don’t want you to perform a trick, Abdus. I want you to demonstrate a very simple physical task. And it’s Lieutenant Caine.”

  Horatio opened his fist. The rope had a knot tied in it.

  “I want you to blow on this,” Horatio said.

  Pathan hesitated for just a second, then his smile grew even broader. “Is that all? A somewhat bizarre request, but for you, Lieutenant—I would be happy to oblige.”

  He began to lean forward—but Horatio drew his hand back.

  “Not so fast. After all, this wouldn’t be a proper scientific test without verification . . .” Horatio reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic film canister. He popped it open and pulled out a single, fragile object.

  A tiny, downy, white feather.

  Horatio stood. He placed the feather carefully on top of the knot.

  “Have you lost your mind, Caine?” Sackheim asked.

  Horatio leaned forward, holding his hand in front of Pathan’s face. “Not at all, Agent Sackheim. I’m simply calling Mister Pathan’s bluff.”

  Pathan’s grin had faded to a smile. His eyes were locked on Horatio’s, but they were no longer filled with amusement.

  They were filled with hate.

  “Go ahead,” Horatio said. “One simple exhalation of breath. Surely the Brilliant Batin can complete a ritual performed by thousands of magicians at kids’ birthday parties every year . . .”

  Pathan said nothing.

  “What’s the matter?” Horatio asked. “A second ago you didn’t have a problem—but then, a second ago you could have pretended to blow on it. And now you can’t.”

  “All right, Lieutenant, you’ve made your point,” Sackheim said. “Though I have no idea what you’re trying to prove.”

  “What I’m trying to prove, Agent Sackheim, is that Abdus Sattar Pathan is a liar.” Horatio pulled his hand back, closed his fingers into a fist around the knot again. “And I don’t just mean he’s lying about being kidnapped. I mean his whole life is a lie. You see, the Brilliant Batin isn’t a magician.”

  “I never claimed to be,” Pathan said.

  “No, you didn’t,” Horatio said. “You billed yourself as a master of amazing feats and prestidigitation. You’ve never claimed that what you do is anything more than skillful sleight of hand and clever illusions. Which puts it in the realm of science—not magic.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sackheim interjected, “but I don’t see the relevance—”

  “Bear with me,” Horatio said. “Mister Pathan’s home contains no photographs and no music, only a stereo tuned to a talk-radio station and a TV he probably never watches. He doesn’t drink alcohol. He uses toothpicks instead of a toothbrush. Even the playing cards used in his act aren’t actually playing cards—he has them specially made, with numbers and an abstract design instead of face cards. Why? Because, Agent Sackheim, none of those things are allowed under certain fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. Abdus Sattar Pathan is a Muslim—and a quite devout one. Despite the fact that magic is one of the things expressly forbidden.”

  “And the feather?”

  “It’s the knot that’s important,” Horatio said. “The Quran refers to magicians as ‘the ones who blow on knots.’ Mr. Pathan has spent his whole life constructing the illusion that he’s a magician, but he’s been very careful to follow the rules. Blowing on a knot would break them . . . and jeopardize his very soul.”

  “My soul,” Pathan said, “is forever beyond your reach, Lieutenant Caine.”

  “Your soul isn’t what I’m after, Abdus.”

  Sackheim got to his feet. “Lieutenant, do you have any evidence to offer that Mister Pathan has actually committed a crime, or did you just come here to criticize him for his religious beliefs?”

  “No criticism of his beliefs is intended,” Horatio said. “Only of his actions. I may not be able to prove you faked your own kidnapping, but I’m certain of it—and sooner or later, a jury’s going to agree with me.”

  “Then I suppose,” Pathan said, “that this isn’t over.”

  Horatio dropped the knotted rope on the table in front of him.

  “Mister Pathan,” he said, “I’m just getting started . . .”

  “You,” Agent Sackheim told Horatio flatly, “are done.”

  They were in Sackheim’s office, a space every bit as neat and organized as the man himself. His desk held a lamp, a blotter, and a yellow legal pad with a single sharpened pencil centered exactly above it.

  “I don’t understand you, Horatio. You were the one reading me the riot act for not showing any compassion toward the victim—and now you’re haranguing him for his religion?”

  “I told you, it’s not about that,” Horatio said patiently. “It’s the fact that he kept it hidden.”

  “So what? Not everyone’s comfortable wearing their beliefs on their sleeve. You said yourself that Muslims aren’t supposed to practice magic—no doubt that’s the reason he kept it secret.”

  “That doesn’t add up, and you know it. Hide your faith and flaunt your sin?”

  “Maybe it has something to do with his father.” Sackheim leaned back in his chair. “Family dynamics don’t always make sense from the outside.”

  Horatio paused. He knew firsthand how true that statement was, and just how violent and unstable that dynamic could become; his own relationship with his father had come to an ugly and very final end. “None of this makes sense,” Horatio muttered.

  “Doesn’t it? Abdus and his father have a major conflict over religious beliefs. Abdus later converts, but he’s too stubborn to admit it—or accept protection from his family. Somebody finds out how much he’s worth and snatches him. Abdus gets lucky and escapes.”

  “And the convenience-store assault?”

  “You said he was devout. It makes perfect sense that nude pictures of a Middle Eastern woman would make him angry.”

  “So after years of maintaining a perfect illusion, he suddenly throws it all away? I don’t buy it— any of it. Kidnappers who go to elaborate lengths to have me run all over Miami but don’t make any ransom demands. Kidnappers who use an Iraqi land mine to kill a federal officer. Kidnappers who leave a crime scene splashed with blood but no other trace of their presence. Kidnappers who supposedly almost kill their target in the first place— and then let him get away. This case has more contradictions than a mobster’s testimony, Agent Sackheim.”

  “I haven’t forgotten about Hargood,” Sackheim said. “But you’re wrong about there being no cohesive pattern. Khasib Pathan’s wealth and position make him a prime target for terrorists, and that land mine is exactly the kind of weapon they have access to. My people are tracing that mine back to where it came from right now—because, unlike your ‘artificial heart’ theory, the mine is hard physical evidence.”

  Sackheim leaned forward, clasped his hands together, and rested his elbows on his desk. “It’s been a long day, Horatio. Go home. This is the Bureau’s responsibility now—and we take care of our dead.”

  “So do I, Agent Sackheim,” Horatio said. “So do I . . .”

  When Horatio got back to the lab, somehow he wasn’t surprised to find Delko waiting for him.

  “Well,” Horatio said. “Doesn’t anyone around here know the meaning of the word holiday?”

  “Merry Christmas to you, too, H,” Delko said, grinning. “And I’m not staying—my folks’ll shoot me if I’m not back in time for dinner. I just figured I’d give you your present in person.”

  “Oh?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I did a little extra snooping concerning the Afterpartylife nightclub— the one where the land mine went off.”

  “And?”

  “And I looked into the background of the consortium that owns it. Kind of a twisty financial trail, but I finally figured out who owns the controlling interest in the company.”

  “Let me guess . . . K
hasib Pathan?”

  “You got it. Looks like you were right—Abdus was trying to cause trouble for his father, all along. But I found out something else, too.” Delko told Horatio about the phone call Abdus made from the hospital.

  “He called his home phone? And someone answered?”

  “Phone records say yes. Whoever it was, they didn’t talk long.”

  “So the mysterious Francis Buccinelli was in the Brilliant Batin’s house—but we didn’t see any signs that he had a houseguest.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t staying there.”

  Horatio shook his head. “I don’t know, Eric. But whoever Buccinelli really is, he’s the key to all of this. I think everything Pathan’s done was simply to keep our attention focused on him instead of on the initial case. But smart as he is, he made a mistake.”

  “Yeah,” Delko said grimly. “He tried to murder you.”

  “No, Eric. All that means is that whatever Pathan is covering up is serious enough to risk a federal investigation. The mistake he made was in not following through on a ransom demand—it proves that this was never about money.”

  “But we still don’t know what it was about.”

  “Not yet,” Horatio said. “I just came from seeing Abdus himself. I told him I knew he faked the kidnapping and I intended to prove it.”

  Delko frowned. “But, H—I thought you said Buccinelli is the key.”

  Horatio smiled. “He is. But the Brilliant Batin isn’t the only one capable of misdirection . . . and until we find out what’s really going on, I want Pathan to think he’s the focus of our investigation.”

  “And if he tries to kill you again?”

  Horatio smiled. “I suppose,” he said, “I’ll just have to rely on the people around me to keep me safe . . .”

  His phone rang. “Caine.”

  “Merry Christmas, Horatio,” Alexx said. “I just thought I’d call and—well, just to say Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, too, Alexx. I’m glad you called . . .” He gave her the details on the resolution of the Villanova case. Halfway through, Delko tapped his watch and made an apologetic shrug. Horatio nodded and shooed him toward the door silently.