A Deadly Divide

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  To a pier in the dead of night where he’d stood over the resting place of a fiercely determined young woman. He was saddened by the memory of her loss.

  But that there was too much death in his life wasn’t the issue. He’d known that would be the case when he’d committed himself to the police.

  What troubled him more deeply than he was able to express was that there was so little justice. He took a turn away from the lake and back into the heart of the town, to quiet streets away from the residential neighborhoods, down a road that led to a series of abandoned lots, derelict and overgrown in the sumptuous summer heat, tiger lilies sprawling in wild, corrosive bunches, tangled with the lacy heads of weeds.

  There were no cafés on this road, nor any indication that Rachel was somewhere nearby. They could have met in the hotel lobby—that she’d chosen such a faraway spot suggested that she’d stumbled onto something too provocative to share with Lemaire.

  Khattak parked on the street, gazing around for some sign of Rachel’s car. The address she’d given him was for a small brown building whose windows were boarded up. The street number was stamped on a listing sign that would soon crash down from the lintel it was loosely attached to. A strong gust of wind would free it—its serrated edge looked dangerous.

  Khattak ducked under it, frowning. There was no sign of Rachel having passed this way.

  Which seemed a little strange in itself.

  He let his hand drop from the door to seek out his phone. He put a call through to Rachel. His frown deepened when he heard the muffled sound of her ringtone from somewhere inside the building. She didn’t answer. He tried again and the phone rang in the silence. His sense of danger sharpened. He reached for his gun only to remember that he’d locked it in the glove box of his car. He’d had a presentiment that if he’d gone to the vigil armed he would be laying the groundwork for a tragic confrontation.

  He had started back to his car when he heard a shuffling sound on the other side of the door followed by a low moan.

  He tried the doorknob and the door parted from its frame with a groan.

  “Rachel? Are you in there?”

  It was utterly dark inside, a blankness that disoriented. He smelled something—sharp, unpleasant—was it blood?

  His hand felt for the flashlight in his pocket, his steps advancing bit by bit. He found the edge of a wall and followed it deeper into the building.

  “Rachel?” he called again.

  Something was wrong.

  He flicked on the flashlight. His wavering steps had led him to a small, dark windowless room. His light flickered into its deepest corners and he was met by a sight that froze him where he stood, motionless and fully alert to danger, and to the recklessness that had made him come this far alone.

  He didn’t have time to reconsider. As his flashlight made another sweep of the room, he was struck on the back of his head.

  * * *

  When he woke again, there was a musty thickness in his mouth—a roll of cloth had been stuffed inside it. Not far enough to cause him to choke. Just enough to keep him quiet.

  Blearily, his eyes opened.

  His flashlight had rolled onto the floor, a short distance away. A small circumference of light spooled out near his feet. After a moment’s blurry reflection, he realized he was sitting in a metal chair, his feet bound to its legs, his hands bound with a plastic tie behind his back. He could feel a stickiness at the back of his neck where blood had dripped into his collar.

  He couldn’t see anyone or hear anything beyond the frenzied beating of his heart.

  Questions filled his mind.

  Where was he? Who had done this? Was Rachel somewhere safe?

  He was bound too tightly to shift his position, but he did his best to turn his head.

  Behind him, someone had made an effort to disperse the gloom by lighting a single candle. He blinked, trying to clear his vision.

  Memory came back in a flash.

  He’d seen this when he’d entered the room.

  A man in a white robe, wearing a wolf head whose giant fangs were dripping blood.

  Black letters were slashed across his chest.

  THE WOLF ALLEGIANCE.

  He’d stumbled onto the headquarters of Saint-Isidore’s neo-Nazi group.

  No, that wasn’t quite right.

  His head aching, he forced himself to think, to remember. He hadn’t stumbled onto it. He’d been lured here by a text sent from Rachel’s phone, and then he’d been attacked.

  By whom? Maxime Thibault? Or someone associated with him?

  Someone who knew that Rachel had returned to the station for an update on security footage from the area around the mosque.

  Pain pounded through his skull. What if Rachel was somewhere nearby? He’d heard her phone ring from inside the building because he’d called it. Twice.

  His breathing became panicked; he began to suffocate under the cloth in his mouth.

  There was a sudden sharp movement from one corner. The candle flame was snuffed out. He heard the snick of a flashlight as the room was plunged into darkness again.

  A presence moved closer to him, taking him by the jaw and jerking up his head. The roll of cloth was yanked from his mouth. The hand at his jaw dropped and the presence withdrew.

  He could hear someone breathing, quick and easy breaths.

  “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  There was no answer. He tugged wildly at the ties that bound his wrists, cutting them, the spill of blood slickening the friction. There was another sharp movement. A hard blow landed just below his shoulder.

  “Thibault? Is that you?”

  A thick and black silence settled in his mouth. He could taste it. He felt his adrenaline spike as fear coursed through his body.

  Again, no one spoke.

  A hand gripped his throat with a fierce and terrible power, squeezing so hard that Esa couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry out. The pressure kept on and on until he passed out again.

  42

  When he came to, slivers of early light leaked beyond the boarded windows to cast a pale opal glow in the room. Light pulsed behind his eyelids. His body ached from its unnatural posture. He was lying on his side, one of his arms pinned beneath his weight.

  He scrambled into a sitting position, a wave of nausea surging in his chest.

  He fought it, spitting out the bile in his mouth.

  Pain shot fiery trails up his arm as it was freed from his weight. He flexed his wrists. He was no longer bound, no longer sitting in a chair, his wrists and ankles freed. But blood was caked at his wrists and thickly matted in his hair. He took stock of his injuries—a throbbing pain in his head and a soreness beneath his left shoulder. Other than that, he hadn’t been hurt. He staggered to his feet, feeling his head spin, colors bursting behind his eyes. It took several long minutes to steady himself, his breath rasping in his chest.

  His mind sorted through the various strands of the case, trying to weave them together, trying to remember. He’d come here … why? What had happened to him?

  He became aware of a buzzing noise. His hand slipped into his pocket to bring out his phone. There were a dozen messages on it—nearly all of them from Rachel. One from Diana, another from Sehr. His vision blurred in and out. He couldn’t read them.

  He stumbled over to a wall and rested his aching head against it, stabbing out numbers on the phone. Rachel answered at once, her words washing over him in a flurry of concern.

  He didn’t know what he was doing in this room or what had happened to him, so he couldn’t tell her. He didn’t know where he was, so he couldn’t give her the address.

  She told him to leave his phone on and she would track it, trying to make sense of his recital.

  “Just wait there,” she said. “Wait there and don’t move a muscle. An ambulance will be there soon.”

  An ambulance? Why would he need an ambulance? Words slurred on his tongue, but Rachel had already hung up.

  He l
urched from the room into an entranceway. He was in some kind of deserted office building, emptied of furniture, in the middle of renovations that had been discontinued abruptly, drywall half-erected, timber and rebar shifted off to one side. By gripping the wall, he was able to make his way to the door, an inexplicable sensation of dread mounting in his chest.

  Something was wrong. Even Rachel’s voice had sounded strangely unfamiliar.

  But outside, it was an ordinary summer day, the breeze moving through the overhanging branches of trees that lined the empty street. He squinted against the light of a pale dawn sky, shivering in the fresh air. He spotted his car in the street and made his way over to it, step by painful step, wondering if he had the keys. His pockets felt strangely light. Something told him he should get inside his car as quickly as he could manage and lock the doors. He should get … he should get …

  He should get his gun.

  But he didn’t know why.

  The car was unlocked. Inside the car, he breathed in great gulps of air; he locked the doors and fumbled for the glove box. It was locked and he couldn’t find the keys. Maybe he’d left them inside. But something told him he shouldn’t go back inside.

  His eyes were dry and gritty, his mouth tasted of something unpleasant, and his wrists were sore and itching under their coating of blood.

  He looked back at the building, trying to remember.

  There had been a sign with a number on it. He’d thought at first of an apartment. There should be a message on his phone from Rachel specifying the address.

  But when he checked back through the log, trying to clear his vision, the message was gone.

  She’d wanted to meet him there.

  He looked at the lintel of the building again.

  There had been footsteps in the dust and a sign above his head.

  Abruptly, Khattak remembered.

  * * *

  He made his way back into the building. He was listening intently, but he knew that the air in the building was different now. It was deserted. He was the only one inside. Nonetheless, he picked up a piece of rebar, holding it up like a weapon.

  He advanced cautiously to the room he’d been in.

  Someone had lured him to this building, knocked him out, and trussed him. A candle had been lit to show him a mural on the wall. The man wearing a wolf’s head, and beneath it the name of Maxime Thibault’s hate group—the Wolf Allegiance.

  He entered the room with the rebar in his hand, ready to strike out.

  But now the room was empty.

  Everything that had been in the room was gone. The chair, the candle, the mural on the wall, even his flashlight. Whoever had struck him had vanished. But how could the mural have vanished? Where was the wolf’s head with its threatening fangs? He moved closer to the wall and touched it. It was an old cement wall with a layer of dust that hadn’t been painted over. There was no trace of stickiness and no chemical scent of paint. Had he imagined it? But how could he have dreamt an image he’d never seen before?

  He thought back to the polo shirts worn by the Wolf Allegiance at the march. The official symbol of the Allegiance was a man wearing a wolf head, but the marchers had worn a restyled flag of Québec, emblazoned with the slogan STOP THE ISLAMIZATION OF QUÉBEC.

  It occurred to him now that the slogan had been written in English and not in French. He drew the obvious conclusion. The intended audience hadn’t been Québec. The Wolf Allegiance had hoped to broadcast its views to the rest of the country.

  He tried to refocus. So it hadn’t been some kind of elided dream. He’d seen the mural in the light thrown up by the candle. He examined the floor near the wall for traces of fallen wax, but the floor was clean, layers of dust indicating that no one had traveled over this patch.

  He realized suddenly that his reentry into the room was contaminating any evidence the forensic team might find. He beat a retreat, his body refusing to move as quickly as his mind commanded. More light was reaching into the room, spreading out from the corners. It was hurting his head, which still throbbed painfully. He needed a wash and a change of clothes, and something to eat to combat his sense of weakness.

  He needed to return Sehr’s call. He was swept by dizziness again. Dropping the steel bar, he grasped blindly for the wall, his hand landing on the boarded window. He braced himself for long minutes, breathing in deep gulps of air. Close by, he heard a rustle. When the spots in his vision cleared, he realized that something was caught between the boards. A thick brown envelope—handcrafted, he realized, assembled from pieces of marbled paper. His first name was typed on the outside of the envelope in a sloping Italianate font.

  He left it where it was though an urgent need to take hold of it possessed him.

  He could hear the sounds of the ambulance, so he made his way back outside to wait.

  Rachel jumped out, ahead of the paramedic. Her face paled at the sight of him—he must look worse than he felt. A van pulled up, dislodging members of the crime scene unit he recognized from the mosque.

  He gave them a series of muddled instructions as the paramedic urged him onto a stretcher. He chafed at the interval while his vitals were taken and a painkiller was administered. The cuts at his wrists were bandaged as Rachel photographed his wrists.

  Khattak frowned at the sight of her phone.

  “Is that yours?” he asked, remembering now what had drawn him inside the building. He told her quickly, and she listened, appalled.

  “I’d left my phone at the station. I picked it up earlier this morning.”

  “Same phone?”

  She checked it over, going through her camera roll to make certain.

  “Yes, it’s my phone, sir. Why?”

  Khattak struggled to answer, feeling a strange lethargy steal over his limbs. He was finding it hard to focus. He looked at the paramedic and asked him in labored French, “What did you give me?”

  “A sedative. You need it.”

  Alarm widening his eyes, he struggled to make Rachel understand. About her phone. About the mural. About the envelope pinned to the window.

  She tried to hush him, to urge him to lie down, but there was something he needed to tell her. He could only manage one word. “Sehr.”

  He didn’t know if he’d made himself understood before he was claimed by sleep.

  * * *

  When he woke, he wasn’t at the hospital. He was back in his hotel room lying under the covers on his bed. The curtains on his window were open—it was late in the day; a sleepy twilight had settled over the lake, the clouds tumbling in low dark clusters reflected in the water.

  A beautiful, heartbreaking view. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here. When he tried to sit up, the pain at the back of his head made itself known—a sharp-edged block that weighed him down.

  “Esa, please don’t move.”

  It was Sehr’s voice, the desperate concern in it a balm for his troubled thoughts. She was still in Saint-Isidore. He’d been afraid that she’d left—frightened off by the Wolf Allegiance or angry at him for having given her so little of his time.

  She knelt beside him on the bed, helping to raise him up. She held a glass of water to his lips and urged him gently to drink. Her soft russet hair fell against his face and he took a startled breath, inhaling the subtle scent of her, feeling pleasure break over him in waves.

  Her voice shaky, she said, “Your mother is terribly worried.”

  His eyes sought hers, a question in them.

  “I didn’t tell her. Someone leaked it to the press, so I called to reassure her. Ruksh flew in to make sure their doctors knew what they were doing.”

  Trying to inject a note of humor into the situation, he asked, “And did they?”

  “You’ll be fine,” Sehr told him. “But this is your second concussion, so you’ll need to take things easy for a while. It’s time to let Rachel take the lead.”

  She was still sitting very close to him, her scent all around him, her skin soft and cool whe
re she was holding his hand. He set the glass aside and kissed her, measuring her ardent response.

  She drew back after a moment. “None of that, either. I told you, you’re supposed to rest.”

  When she made to move off the bed, he caught her wrist. He didn’t want to waste another moment, no matter what the circumstances were. If he stayed at Community Policing, his work would always be between them. Sehr had been holding back, giving him time to make certain that this was what he wanted. He hadn’t known how to convince her of his desire to move forward, given their time apart. Now he knew he needed to be bolder. His willingness to be patient had only deepened her doubts.

  He kissed her again lightly. “Marry me, Sehr,” he urged her now. “Don’t leave me again.”

  She freed herself from his hold, going to stand at the window and looking out.

  “Ruksh is here. And Rachel. They’re waiting in the lobby.”

  “They’re not you, Sehr. Don’t you know the difference?”

  She smiled at him over her shoulder, and the sweetness of the smile made the tension in his head subside. She wasn’t going to leave. She’d come to Saint-Isidore to stay.

  “Do you have an answer for me?” A hopeful note entered his voice.

  She swung around to face him.

  “Do you have a ring for me?” she teased.

  Elation lit his eyes, transforming the bleakness of his expression. His self-restraint vanished.

  “Come here, Sehr.”

  She acquiesced, letting him take her in his arms, reaching up to hold him close, her fingertips delicately exploring the contours of his skull. But when she heard the rasp of his breath, she slid through his arms like silk, pulling a chair up to the bed.

  “I’m not an invalid,” he warned.

  “I can see that.” That teasing note was still in her voice, sending tremors of delight through his veins.

  “Then come back to me.”

  “I shouldn’t be with you in your room.”

  It was the only thing she could have said to reawaken his sense of propriety—of boundaries they both observed. She laughed a little when he groaned, and an answering smile lit his eyes.