“Alizah,” she whispered, shaken by a surge of joy. Sometimes the past was less like a weapon that wounded you and more a harbor from pain.
She wasn’t alone in feeling it. Alizah reached out and hugged her tightly. Then both women turned at the sound of Khattak’s voice.
“Alizah,” he echoed softly.
Alizah stood still, her arms dropping to her sides.
She tilted up her chin, eyeing Khattak with an expression Rachel couldn’t interpret. Until she spoke, her voice rich with undertones of regret.
“I’ve missed you,” she said to Khattak, as if the admission surprised her.
Khattak regarded her gravely, his green eyes steady on hers.
With a sigh of defeat, he said, “Not as much as I’ve missed you.”
Then he seemed to remember where he was. “Give us a few moments,” he said. “We’re in the middle of something.” He gestured at the reception desk and reluctantly she moved away.
When he would have headed off to Amadou Duchon’s room, Lemaire stepped into his path. Rachel’s eyes widened at Lemaire’s confrontational air.
“How do you know her?” he asked.
Something in Khattak’s face softened.
“From a case some time ago in Waverley. From the murder of Miraj Siddiqui.”
From his expression, it was clear Lemaire was familiar with the case. A young woman had been found murdered on the pier in the Ontario township of Waverley—a case that had made the national news as the first in a string of so-called honor killings.
Lemaire swore loudly in French. “You worked that case? Meaning you have a prior relationship?”
Khattak’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I didn’t know she was here. I haven’t spoken to her in some time. How do you know her, Lemaire?”
“She’s been a goddamned thorn in my side since the day she moved to this town. She’s a graduate student at the Université Marchand. A journalism student. You watch her, Khattak. And I don’t care what your relationship with her is, you don’t tell her anything about Amadou Duchon.”
He glanced back at the reception desk and groaned. Next to Alizah, a smartly dressed blond woman was waving to Lemaire from the other side of the corridor. He raised a hand in halfhearted greeting.
“Merde. She’s already here.”
The woman was so attractive that Rachel was taken aback by Lemaire’s reaction.
“Who is she?”
“Isabelle Clément. Press liaison for the premier. He sends her to represent the province when matters like this occur. I’ll need to speak to her.” His eyes moved to Rachel’s face. “Let me speak to her first; then I’ll introduce you.”
It would have been good to know how the premier of Québec was planning to spin this tragedy—as a premeditated hate crime or the act of a deranged lone wolf? But the players were just beginning to assemble, so Rachel agreed to wait.
7
Khattak didn’t view Lemaire as a problem. Lemaire’s posturing was standard; officers of different jurisdictions usually had different priorities when they were thrown together and expected to make it work. This was just the process of working out the kinks. Any judgment Khattak passed on Lemaire wouldn’t happen until they’d mapped out preliminary work on the shooting—then the boundaries would be clear, along with any lines Lemaire was prepared to cross.
Until that happened, Khattak was trying to treat the crime scene like any other, though if he’d understood Lemaire correctly, the total number of dead would make the shooting the deadliest of its kind in the nation’s history. And that it had happened inside a mosque by a man shouting, “God is greatest!” made no sense at all. The province of Québec had a unique relationship with its minority populations, a status enhanced by the province’s distinctive cultural and linguistic heritage. And he knew whatever else happened during the course of their secondment to INSET, he and Rachel would be unraveling that relationship piece by piece.
Beginning with what had happened to Amadou Duchon.
* * *
Having seen him with Lemaire, the guards outside the room were prepared to wave Khattak through. Khattak showed them his ID; he wanted to be sure they checked that anyone who sought access to the room had the appropriate credentials. There were journalists waiting in the hospital concourse, and there might be a shooter at large who had specifically targeted worshipers at the mosque.
When he entered the room, Amadou was sitting propped up in his bed. He was dressed in a hospital gown that flapped loosely against his deep brown skin under an air-conditioning vent. His clothes were not in the room; one of his arms was handcuffed to the bed rail. At first he didn’t appear to be injured, but when he shifted forward under the fluorescent lighting Khattak noticed the swelling along one cheekbone.
When he saw Khattak, he sat up straighter, brushing his free hand over his hair in a reflexive gesture.
“Alhamdulillah,” he breathed. “You’ve come.”
Khattak hooked a chair closer to the bed. One eyebrow raised, he asked, “You were expecting me? Does that mean you know who I am?”
“Alizah and I are friends; she told me you would come. She told me she knew you well. And I’ve been watching you on the news. We all have.”
His eyes were fixed on Khattak, warm and liquid dark. He spoke with a Québécois accent tinged with West African overtones, his voice melodic and rich. Khattak couldn’t pinpoint it, but he thought the young man’s first name suggested a link to Gambia or Cameroon.
There was a glint of hope in his eyes, his wariness replaced by a frank expression of trust. And if Amadou Duchon trusted him before he’d begun his interview, it said a great deal about what Alizah must have told him about their past relationship. He wished he could extend that same trust in return, but he’d have to clear the ground first.
“Were you expecting an attack on the mosque, Amadou?”
Amadou blinked rapidly. “You can’t think that’s what I meant. You may not know what’s been happening in Saint-Isidore, but you must know what it’s been like here in Québec. An attack like this was only a matter of time.”
Giant tears welled up in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks to disappear into the paper-thin neck of his gown. “I didn’t think I’d be in the middle of it.”
Khattak reached for Amadou’s hand and squeezed it. He asked if he understood his rights and whether he wanted a lawyer.
Amadou gripped his hand with surprising force.
“Ya Allah,” he said. “As God is my witness, I don’t need one.”
“But you were there?” Khattak prodded. “You saw the attack take place? Do you feel up to telling me about it?”
Amadou’s head fell back against his pillow. He swallowed back a sob.
“I wasn’t inside when it happened. I’d gone to the mosque to pray; then I planned to head back to campus. I was on my way when I remembered that I’d forgotten to speak to my friend Youssef about a meeting. I heard the sound of gunfire as I made the turn back to the mosque. I’m the one who called the police.”
His breath was coming faster as he spoke. Khattak murmured a consolation to him in Arabic.
“Take your time; there’s no rush.”
“I parked and ran back in after I made the call. Maybe there was something I could do, so I made myself go in. There were so many bodies, so much blood. People were calling out, crying. I didn’t know what to do, where to start; I helped those I could—and then I looked for Youssef.”
“Where was Youssef?”
“In the main hall. Near Abubekr and his son, Adam. It was—they were—it was clear they were dead. Both of them. And Youssef had been shot, too. More than once.” Amadou released Khattak’s hand to gesture at his back. “Here. All over here. I had my kit. I did some preliminary treatment.”
“Your kit?”
Amadou nodded vigorously. “I’m training to be a paramedic. So I worked on Youssef. I told him to hold on.”
“But you weren’t with Youssef when the ambula
nce arrived. Inspector Lemaire told me you were arrested running from the scene of the attack.”
Amadou showed the whites of his eyes.
“My God, they’ll say anything and expect you to believe it.”
Khattak flinched a little and Amadou softened his tone.
“I was the only uninjured person inside the mosque. People were still alive and I didn’t hear any sirens. I ran outside to flag down help. I was calling out to the police, showing them where to go, when one of their officers tackled me. He brought me to the ground.”
He showed Khattak his bruised cheek. “They did this to me while I was calling for help.”
Exactly the scenario Khattak had feared. He leaned forward, watching Amadou intently.
“They said you were running from the scene shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’”
Amadou closed his eyes.
“No, no,” he said. “I cried out, ‘Allahu Alam.’ They just don’t know the difference.”
* * *
Because they couldn’t imagine there was a difference, Khattak thought, any more than they could interpret all the nuances of meaning encompassed by a single phrase. It didn’t make sense that a person would shout, Allahu Akbar! at the scene of a terror attack against a Muslim congregation. The way the phrase had been continually linked to terror was in distinct contrast to its daily importance in the lives of members of Amadou’s faith. It could be used in any context—to witness an act of beauty, to marvel, to praise, to express gratitude or deepest joy. To use it to mark the murder of co-religionists was an act only thinkable to an extremist fringe. For members of the faith like Khattak, there was no phrase that offered more grace.
“Allahu Alam” meant only “God knows best.”
In Amadou’s case, it had served to warn of despair.
* * *
He didn’t leap to Lemaire’s conclusion that Amadou was guilty of mass murder. No weapon had been found on Amadou’s body or in his car. He’d done what he could to help, risking his own life to save the life of his friend.
Khattak studied Amadou’s smooth young face, the earnestness of his expression, the hair he wore closely shorn to the skull. The flimsiness of his hospital gown didn’t diminish the elegance of his strong black body, too often seen as a threat. As witnessed by one simple fact.
Amadou had been roughed up, then handcuffed to a hospital bed, while the priest who had been found with a weapon at the crime scene had been graciously escorted from the mosque.
If word got out to Diana Shehadeh and the civil liberties group that she ran, the investigation would turn on its axis, evolving into something that would end up hindering their work. Yet Khattak knew he would have to speak to her and somehow warn her—try to bring her on board.
While watching out for Amadou.
“Amadou. When you made your way inside the mosque, did you see who opened fire?”
The young man squeezed his eyes shut. “If I had, he would be here instead of me.”
“You didn’t see anyone else enter the mosque after you did? Think carefully.”
Amadou’s eyes shot open. “Why? Who else was there?”
Khattak leaned in closer. “Just tell me.” He was considering the nature of the shooting, the speed with which it had been carried out.
“No, no one.”
“How many entrances are there to the mosque? Do you know it well enough to say?”
His head bobbed rapidly. “Sisters’ entrance at the back. I just fixed the lights out there myself. Main entrance in front of the parking lot. And a small side door that leads to the office. That’s the door the imam uses.”
“Are any of the doors kept locked?”
“Not until late at night, after Isha prayer.”
So the gunman could have come from any of three entrances, though the back entrance was the most likely in terms of how Lemaire had described the order of events. But what if there had been a second assailant? They knew there was another gun, a gun that was missing from the scene. Lemaire’s men were conducting a perimeter search, but the mosque wasn’t far from the lake that bordered the town or from the creek that fed into it. The search would take time, and in the end it might not prove conclusive.
And something else was bothering Khattak. He wondered if Rachel had caught it, too.
“When did you fix the lights at the sisters’ entrance?”
Amadou turned his head. He was looking for something on the nightstand beside his bed. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there.
“They took my phone? I could tell you from my calendar if you need an exact time, but it was sometime last night. Sometime after maghrib.” His voice choked a little. “Almost the same time as … tonight.”
No one was feeling the weight of it yet, Khattak knew. They were still in shock and would remain that way for some time—investigators, medical staff, family members … witnesses. He’d examined the scene thoroughly, seen the blood marks that desecrated a house of worship—a place of sanctuary—but he’d done so as a trained investigator, shutting everything else away. When he would pray, when he could pray, he’d think of what this meant.
Amadou was still speaking. “Alizah mentioned it two days ago, so I came prepared to fix the lights. I handle these kinds of jobs at the mosque.”
“Officially?”
Amadou’s smile was gentle. “Non, Inspector. Just as an act of service. I thought the lights needed to be changed because they’d gone out.”
That prickle of warning stirred along Khattak’s spine. “They hadn’t?”
“They were smashed. That’s when I realized why Alizah was worried.”
* * *
Khattak left the young man with a few additional words of caution. Amadou needed a lawyer without further delay and shouldn’t speak to the police again without one present. He was back to navigating a familiar set of tensions that came with the job he’d taken on, but in this case he didn’t hesitate. He was disturbed by the instant focus on Amadou when there were other, more logical avenues to pursue. He hadn’t ruled Amadou out as a suspect, but he was wary of a rush to judgment. He’d speak to Diana Shehadeh to ensure Amadou received fair treatment.
The entire team would be working around the clock for the next few days, following every lead, reconstructing the moments of the attack—everything that had led up to it and everything that followed now. It was time for him to deal with what he’d been sent here to do.
He found Rachel in the hallway leaning against the wall as Lemaire spoke with the press liaison he had mentioned earlier. Rachel was watching them, but her presence wasn’t intrusive. Her hair was combed into a ponytail, and her clothes were a mix of everyday and professional that let her melt into the background.
“Anything?” she asked at once.
Khattak shook his head. “It’s not him.”
“Sir.” Her tone was chiding.
Khattak tried not to smile. He knew what she was warning him of, what she never failed to warn him of.
“Fine. I don’t think Amadou Duchon is our man.”
He summarized what he’d learned from Amadou, and Rachel’s thick eyebrows climbed halfway up her forehead. She’d dumped her blazer on a nearby hospital bed, and now she rubbed her arms as she thought. Her ponytail swung over her shoulder as she flashed Lemaire a quick look. He was too far away to hear them.
Lowering her voice, she said, “Lends credence to the idea that the shooter entered from the back. The broken lights suggest recon to me. Someone knew they’d be entering the mosque from the back, so they knocked out the lights.”
Khattak had considered this. “Amadou replaced them before the attack.”
Rachel shrugged. “So they didn’t have a chance to come back and do it again. But there’s something else, sir. Something strange. Don’t know if these guys have caught it yet, but if Amadou reentered the mosque to help the victims, that’s who he sees inside, right?”
“Go on.”
“Then he’s back outside and he gets tackled to
the ground. But even then, there’s someone he doesn’t see. Either inside or outside in the parking lot.”
Khattak had known she would get there. The strange thing was that Lemaire hadn’t. Or maybe there just hadn’t been enough time for Lemaire to have told them everything he’d picked up. Lemaire had made a fair offer: withholding judgment at the outset of an investigation was necessary in any case.
He put a hand on Rachel’s arm to silence her. Lemaire and the premier’s press liaison were headed in their direction.
“Sir,” Rachel whispered. “We need to figure out the timing of events here. When exactly Amadou went outside to flag down help, when he went back in, and so on.”
“Why, specifically?”
“Because Amadou didn’t mention seeing Étienne Roy. And if Amadou didn’t see him, we need to know where Roy was when the shooting was taking place.”
8
Isabelle Clément possessed the understated glamor and effortless chic that Rachel associated with Frenchwomen. She wore a dark plum dress that flattered her pale complexion and a pair of black heels that would have crippled Rachel in her job. She showed no sign of finding them difficult to manage. Her makeup was discreet, her ash-fair hair swept up neatly in a low chignon. Instead of a briefcase or a purse, she carried an electronic tablet. She was petite and very beautiful, with a mildly critical manner.
Lemaire introduced them, a glint of sardonic amusement in his eyes as he watched Rachel give the press liaison the once-over, smoothing a hand over her own blouse. Rachel ignored him. Another woman on the scene wasn’t competition—she was a colleague of sorts.
And if it came to it, what the hell did Lemaire think she was in competition for? There was a crowing masculinity about the man that set Rachel’s teeth on edge. She had found something like it in nearly all the men she had trained with, until she’d come to work for Khattak. Her instincts told her that Lemaire was a brute of a cop compared to Khattak, with his restraint, but she was annoyed with herself for wasting even a little of her time rising to his bait.
A Deadly Divide Page 3
