A Deadly Divide

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  “Yes,” Khattak put in. “That’s more or less what she said at the studio.”

  “But the frenzied shooting in the prayer hall doesn’t fit your profile, Dr. Sandston,” Killiam observed.

  “She would have given the AR-15 to one of her disciples.”

  “In this case, André Martin, who worked for Pascal Richard. He’s admitted to pushing Rachel at the church,” Lemaire added. “As for Isabelle, we knew she was a defense attorney before she came on board as the premier’s press liaison. We knew her firm was involved in Michel Gagnon’s defense—her criminal clientele included members of his gang. I should never have overlooked her. Otherwise, I would have considered what she might have gained in exchange for representing Gagnon. She would have had access to her choice of weapons.”

  He gestured for Dr. Sandston to continue. She gave him a gracious nod.

  “Isabelle carried out the executions. André Martin was just another angry young man who found his voice with a gun—a profile we’re all familiar with. We shouldn’t have missed this, but given that the INSET team was infiltrated by members of the Allegiance, it’s likely that his background check was altered—sanitized for our benefit by someone on the inside. And note how this ties into the fact that other than Inspector Lemaire—who was relentlessly thorough in tracking supremacist infiltration of law enforcement in his province—we haven’t been paying enough attention to the radicalization of white men from relatively privileged groups. They’re being co-opted into identitarian groups, and this is a phenomenon we should be keeping track of.”

  Killiam nodded to herself. “That leaves the lily on Youssef Soufiane’s back.”

  Dr. Sandston took a moment to think this over. Finally, she said, “Isabelle, again. I’m sure the knife will be recovered during a search of either her home or her temporary accommodation in Saint-Isidore. It would be dear to her,” she explained. “As the means by which she left her calling card. As Inspector Khattak advised me, Youssef had asked Chloé to have the tattoo of the fleur-de-lis on her wrist removed. The symbolism is remarkable.”

  Killiam’s gray eyes were sharp and intent.

  Sandston continued, “A Québécois Muslim man of Moroccan ancestry asking a Québécois Catholic woman to literally erase a symbol of her identity to accord with his own religious preference. When Isabelle carved the lily on Youssef’s back, she was taking that on.”

  Killiam sighed. She adjusted her glasses, rubbing the tip of her nose. “Terrible. What about the gun at the lake?”

  Lemaire answered this. “Martin has confessed that Isabelle asked him to plant it at the lake because that was where Chloé’s marriage ceremony took place. It was her way of rejecting the marriage—and of pointing the finger in another direction. Réjeanne says she saw it there the night after the shooting. She waited too long to tell us. She couldn’t tell who was aligned with the Allegiance, because there was no official response to complaints about the acts of vandalism she must have attributed to the Wolves. It says something that in the end Inspector Khattak was the one she decided to trust.”

  A fair enough summary, but Rachel was following her own train of thought. She looked over at Lemaire with a challenge in her eyes, but when she spoke she chose her words with care.

  “I’m wondering if Isabelle did anything to give herself away in your meetings.”

  Lemaire must have spent some time retracing their private conversations.

  “Nothing at all. She elicited my sympathy in fact, by letting me know she was a mouthpiece for the premier, and didn’t have any real power in her hands. She was used to being overlooked. Disrespected, even, as a woman.”

  Khattak nodded his agreement. “That’s also what she did with me. So I wanted to be sure that nothing I said or did gave her the same impression.”

  Martine Killiam grimaced. “Clever. Given how gender politics have been shaking up the force, she disarmed you both at the start.” A small smile edged her lips as she considered Rachel. “And you she probably didn’t like.”

  Rachel grinned. “I tend to have that effect.”

  As Khattak started to demur, Rachel laughed outright, easing the tension in the room.

  Full of restless energy, Lemaire stood up and paced the room. “I confided in her more than I would have done otherwise. To show her that respect. That’s how she was able to leak so much about the case.”

  Taking over from Dr. Sandston, he summarized his operation as concisely as Rachel had, and when he’d finished, Killiam concluded, “Inspector Khattak isn’t the only one to have a target on his back. Your actions will not be popular, I’m afraid.”

  Lemaire shrugged without any attempt at bravado. “This is better for the SQ, better for Québec. Let’s see what happens next.”

  “At least the premier has seen fit to give you a commendation.”

  Lemaire ducked his head, a little embarrassed. “At first, I thought he may have been another plant. Maybe handpicked by Isabelle.”

  “I’m surprised that Richard wasn’t, given all his on-air opinions.”

  “He’s mainly an opportunist. He doesn’t much care how he makes his money.”

  “The swastika on his neck would seem to suggest otherwise,” Killiam cautioned.

  “He used it as an entrée into a select group. But we’ll be going through every utterance on his program. If there’s a way to charge him, we’ll find it.”

  “And this Amadou?” Killiam asked. “And Alizah Siddiqui, whom we ignored for so long? Is there a hit on them?”

  “No. Nothing official. Gagnon’s gang is not involved. This was all Isabelle. But there’s no way of predicting what radicalized young men will do. I should have paid more attention to those incidents she reported. She tried so hard to get them on my radar, but I refused to expand my focus from my operation; I thought I had room to maneuver.”

  A failure shared by them all.

  “What about Maxime Thibault?” Killiam asked. “How will you make sure now that he stays away from Amadou and Alizah?”

  Lemaire spread his hands. “If he’s convicted of inciting hate as the founder of his chapter of the Allegiance, that will keep him away. But if those charges don’t stick, unless he directly threatens them with violence, there’s not much more we can do.”

  “We’ll make them stick,” Killiam said grimly. “But until this dies down, Alizah and Amadou should be keeping a lower profile. As a matter of their own safety.”

  Khattak shook his head, the purple bruise on his forehead standing out in sharp relief against his paler skin. “Alizah won’t be quiet. You should expect more trouble from her in the days to come.”

  Disturbed by this, Killiam said, “Of the kind you suffered? How did Isabelle Clément pull off the attack on you?”

  Khattak looked quickly at Dr. Sandston.

  “She denied it. She also denied sending me the texts.”

  Lemaire leaned against the conference room table. Rachel watched him closely, holding her breath.

  “By the time you were assaulted that night, Isabelle Clément had returned to Montréal.”

  “André Martin, then,” Killiam offered.

  Lemaire shook his head. “He had checked in with Pascal. He was at the studio all night.”

  Killiam frowned. “Then we’ve missed someone else they roped in to do their work. And there will be others who infiltrated the investigation, the ones we still haven’t caught. Keep at it until you find them.”

  “Ma’am,” Rachel said to Killiam. “Mind if I have a private word with Inspector Khattak? Can you finish up here?”

  The superintendent nodded. Rachel turned to wink at Lemaire before she left. He smiled back at her and went on with his report.

  * * *

  Rachel led Khattak down to the cafeteria, where in short order she found herself in possession of an inventive take on what should have been an appetizing serving of poutine. It was garnished with cilantro and lime, and gamely Rachel dug in. Khattak asked for tea, but when it came
he grimaced at its flavor and pushed his paper cup aside.

  In the windowless room in the basement cafeteria, he studied Rachel’s face, reading the concern she no longer bothered to hide.

  “I’m all right,” he told her. And then teasing her, he added, “And you’re more than all right, it would seem.”

  Rachel admonished him between oversized bites of her meal.

  “How does you being stalked add up to feeling all right?”

  She shoved the bowl of poutine at him. He refused it with a show of horror.

  “I get it.” She waved a hand at his face. “You don’t want to mess with the pretty.”

  She felt like she’d scored when he laughed.

  “Your compliments, Rachel.” He was grinning as he shook his head, which made her all the more reluctant to bring up what was on her mind. She took a breath—and a healthy bite of poutine—and plunged in.

  “You leaving me on my own, sir? Heading on to greener pastures like you said?”

  His grin faded. He reached for his tea but didn’t drink it. A long silence fell, during which Rachel could hear herself chewing. But the poutine had lost its greasy appeal; she pushed it aside, depressed.

  When he still didn’t speak, she said on a sigh, “You don’t have to apologize.” She waved her plastic fork, meaning to indicate all of Saint-Isidore. “After what happened here, I get it. I mean, I get what I can never get—God, I’m not making any sense.” She cleared her throat and tried again, liking the way his eyes warmed up at her efforts. “I’m not you; I can’t walk in your shoes. I don’t know what it’s like to sit in a room full of senior officers and hear them talk about ‘anti-Muslim activists.’ Would we say ‘anti-Jewish activists’ and think that was okay? Or ‘anti-Québécois’?” She shook her head wisely. “We’d never say that—we’d think it was a crime.” Her fork clattered to the table. “So I get why you have to go. You have bigger battles to fight.”

  She blinked back sudden tears. “I’ll just miss you, is all.” And then more brashly, to make up for her tears, “Here’s a compliment for you, sir: I can’t say you slowed me down.”

  He laughed again, the sound gentler, warmer. Then he reached across the table for one of her hands. He cupped his hand around hers and Rachel swallowed.

  “You do deserve a promotion,” he said, “but it won’t be at my expense. Superintendent Killiam has decided to expand my role, to allow me greater latitude in investigations like these. I won’t be as constrained, and I will be allowed to say whatever is on my mind. I’ll be acting as an advisor on the threat posed by groups like the Wolf Allegiance. But my bread and butter—my first love—” he said with the warmest smile and a quick squeeze of her hand, “will still be working with you. If you won’t mind those times you find me slow to catch on.”

  She gripped his hand with hers, grinning at him like a fool.

  In an offhand voice, she said, “I’ll do what I can, sir. One of these days, you’ll catch up.”

  They smiled at each other like the old and steadfast friends that they were. Then Khattak reached into his pocket and drew out the envelope Rachel had given him.

  He passed the envelope back to her. She nodded, knowing where this was going.

  “Tom Paley,” she said. “We weren’t able to sort out why his photograph was included with the rest. And if this isn’t about Isabelle and everything that happened here, we need to take another look at how Paley died, and whether there’s something more to it.”

  Khattak nodded, too. “Yes, agreed. But there’s something else as well.”

  Rachel sifted through the photographs again, concentrating. “What’s that, sir?”

  His long fingers drew out the photograph that still embarrassed Rachel. The photograph from Algonquin, where she’d lain on the ice in his arms.

  “I want you to keep this photograph of us.”

  She looked up at him with a blush, but his gaze was steady and sure.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “With everything that’s happened—everything that could happen—I want you to remember. I want you to know that every moment was worth it.”

  This time when her tears fell, Rachel really didn’t give a damn. She didn’t even bother to wipe her tears away.

  She looked at him and said, “You need to know something, too.”

  He waited, watching her with that look—amazement, appreciation, gratitude—the way no one else had ever looked at her.

  She slipped the photograph into her pocket and leaned closer to kiss him on the cheek.

  She murmured into his ear, “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  Epilogue

  Sehr reached out to snag the envelope that was wedged under the screen door of her home in Toronto. It was handstitched on exquisitely marbled paper, her name typed on its surface in a sophisticated font. She took it inside and placed it on the writing desk in the hallway. The envelope was so delicate, it couldn’t be torn across. She used a letter opener to slice it at the seam instead.

  At first she thought the envelope was empty, but when she shook it lightly a photograph came loose. It fell onto her desk. Curious, she flipped it over.

  The photograph was of Esa.

  Alizah was wrapped in his arms, her face half-hidden in his chest.

  His face was turned toward the camera, and on it was an expression that Sehr had never seen. A fierce kind of tenderness, and something deeper still.

  For a moment, she clutched at the desk.

  She still hadn’t gathered herself when a hand knocked at her door. She could see Esa’s silhouette through the glass, but she couldn’t force herself to move.

  “Sehr?”

  Esa called to her. She knew he could see her. When she didn’t speak, he said her name again, this time his voice grave and deep. Puzzled. And a little afraid.

  But Sehr didn’t answer. She left him waiting at the door.

  * * *

  Esa took out his phone to call her. A message appeared on the screen, accompanied by a photograph of him standing at Sehr’s door. He flattened himself against the door, his sharp eyes canvasing the street. The leafy Toronto neighborhood was quiet, but the menace that had begun in Saint-Isidore had reached out to touch him again.

  Someone was still following him, close enough to observe his every action. Close enough to take out a camera and point it at him like a gun.

  He skipped over the photograph to read the message again, the sour taste of fear in his mouth.

  I hope you enjoyed the first Act.

  Author’s Note

  On January 29, 2017, a young man by the name of Alexandre Bissonnette opened fire after evening prayers inside a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighborhood of Québec City in Québec. He killed six people and injured nineteen more. He was later charged with six counts of first-degree murder and would eventually plead guilty on all counts.

  Though in initial statements the prime minister of Canada and the premier of Québec both called the shooting a terrorist incident, Bissonnette was not charged with a terrorism offense. Under the Canadian Criminal Code, terrorism is defined as an act committed “for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause” that has “the intention of intimidating the public, or a segment of the public, with regard to its security.” To charge Bissonnette with an act of terrorism, prosecutors would have had to prove these elements beyond a reasonable doubt when it came to the motive for Bissonnette’s attack on the worshipers at the mosque. They would also have had to establish the participation or support of a terrorist group, rather than the act of a person acting alone or simply “inspired” by terrorist materials.

  Yet in discussions with interrogators, several critical factors about Bissonnette’s views came to light. He was fascinated by mass shootings, and he had a distinct anti-feminist, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant animus. A friend described his ideology as that of the “extreme far right.” He was obsessed with President Trump’s iterations of the
Muslim ban, particularly in the days leading up to the shooting. Though not explicitly linked to far-right groups, Bissonnette paid close attention to positions taken by the far right on immigration and on Muslims in Québec. In the weeks prior to the attack, he consulted this material more frequently, particularly as espoused by conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists. American commentators also held a unique fascination for Bissonnette. Among the Twitter accounts he searched along with President Trump’s were those of Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Alex Jones of InfoWars, and Richard Spencer, the notorious white nationalist. In the month before the shooting, Bissonnette checked the Twitter account of Ben Shapiro, editor of the conservative Daily Wire, ninety-three times.

  In the aftermath of the shooting, Bissonnette would tell interrogators that he snapped on January 29, 2017, after reading Prime Minister Trudeau’s statement welcoming refugees to Canada. Bissonnette decided to act against the threat he perceived, a perception stoked by his online consumption of radical white nationalist views, the target his local Muslim neighbors. Later he would tell a social worker that he wished he had killed more people at the mosque that night, as they would be going to heaven, while he was living through hell. Yet when he chose to plead guilty to his crimes, he said this in his Statement of Guilt: “I do not know why I committed such a senseless act. And to this day, I have a hard time believing it. In spite of what has been said about me, I am not a terrorist, nor an Islamophobe, rather a person who was carried away by fear, negative thoughts and a horrible form of despair.”

  Researching this book, I considered the process of radicalization Bissonnette had undergone—the American and Canadian sources he’d relied upon to form his world view, the targets he’d chosen to blame rather than exploring the appropriate means to cope with his serious personal issues. My research pointed to two troubling conclusions. There has been a surge in the participation of white men in white nationalist movements, alongside a growth in the number of these movements, whose radical and violent agendas are currently understudied. Some of these groups specifically identify Muslims and Muslim communities as a threat that must be confronted with violence, though their speech and manifestos additionally target communities of color, women, Jews, and other marginalized groups, including all points of intersection. Writing this book, I considered whether these ideologies were gaining traction and whether these activities were on the rise mainly as a matter of coincidence or whether they reflected the populist, reactionary politics currently sweeping the West.