The Hunt for Truth

by Sury Patru Viswam

  “Only a rich trust fund kid would say that,” Edgar made a snarky comment.

  “At least I did something useful and not fuck it up,” Arya said aloud with an attitude as she picked up a stack of passports that were tied with a rubber band.

  A loud buzzing sound echoed in the room, capturing Arya and Edgar’s attention.

  “Sorry, this is from the front,” Robinson said, reading the message on his pager. “The armored services are at the location….”

  “Please take care of it…. Trust us, we won’t take anything from this box.” Arya placed her hand on her heart, and her voice sounded sincere.

  Robinson seemed satisfied with Arya’s response and left the room to attend to armored services, leaving Arya and Edgar alone with the safe deposit box.

  “Nice guy, bless his heart,” Arya said, as she went back to the passport bundle.

  The passport that was on top of the stack belonged to the United States. Arya removed the rubber band and flipped through the passports in her hand. The passports were all issued to different individuals by different countries – the United States, Morocco, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. But they all had one thing in common – a picture of Samir Tariq. He had different names, different looks – facial hair, hairstyle–, and sported various ethnic looks, but, unmistakably, the individual in all those passports was Samir Tariq.

  “What the fuck?” Edgar’s jaw fell to the floor.

  Arya was equally baffled and stunned as Edgar. This was the last thing she expected to find in the safe deposit box.

  Who is Samir Tariq? The same question dawned on Arya and Edgar’s mind.

  “What is that?” Edgar pointed towards a small rectangular brown envelope and reached into the box to pick it up. He reached into the envelope and pulled out a stack of photos. The photos looked like it was taken by a tourist visiting New York City. It was filled with pictures of various prominent landmarks - Empire State Building, Times Square, Penn Station, and several photos of Wall Street.

  “It seemed he was fascinated with Wall Street,” Edgar remarked, looking at the number of pictures taken there.

  Arya tapped on one of the photos and said, “Nafisa.”

  “Yeah! That explains the fascination. She works there,” Edgar remarked.

  “Do you remember from the reports earlier if Aether Solutions had contract work in Wall Street?” Arya asked, connecting the dots.

  “Yeah, I think you are right. I remember seeing something like that.” Edgar closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to remember. “I think they had a contract with the New York Stock Exchange for HVAC maintenance.”

  “Hmm…. It now makes sense why Samir took a job with Aether.” Edgar implied that working together would give Samir and Nafisa more opportunities to hang out without Omar and Sania’s knowledge.

  “What is this for?” Edgar gestured at the mini-DV cassette from the envelope. “Sex tape?”

  Arya made a face, expressing her disgust with Edgar’s implication. “Hopefully not.”

  “Are you still hopeful that there is some kind of an innocent explanation for Samir’s disappearance?”

  Arya shook her head. “No. I hope it is just an affair, and he ran away with Nafisa. But….” She let the sentence hang as her gaze shifted to the stack of passports and cash. “This doesn’t look good. The whole thing doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “It makes sense if you think he was involved in something more sinister,” Edgar touched on a topic that Arya was absolutely dreading.

  Arya dropped the mini-DV cassette on the table and looked straight at Edgar. “What do you think?”

  Edgar’s gaze shifted towards the stack of passports, cash, and photos of New York City. “For your friend’s sake, I hope that Samir was just a regular douchebag cheating on his pregnant wife.”

  30

  When Arya left the bank, she had more questions than answers.

  Why did Samir have that many passports? How did he get them in the first place? It might be easy to forge passports and get them in movies, but Arya knew that was far from the reality on the ground. It was extremely hard to forge a passport, and one would need a skilled forger to do it. A skilled forger is hard to find; it is not like something you can advertise in a newspaper ad. You need to know the right places to visit and the right doors to knock on to find a forger. They live deep underground.

  “You know what this means.” Edgar’s voice jolted Arya back to the present.

  “We need to get a warrant.” Arya turned her attention towards Edgar, who was behind the wheel.

  “Yes, but before that, we need to bring LT up to speed.”

  Arya knew that they haven’t updated LT Cooper with case updates. It was not intentional; they had planned to update him last evening, but LT was occupied with JTTF and was away from the station.

  “I am concerned,” Arya turned towards Edgar with a slight hesitation in her voice.

  “For what?” Edgar narrowed his eyes in surprise.

  “He might take the case from us and give it to the FBI or JTTF.” Arya gestured her unhappiness with that prospect by stressing on the acronyms FBI and JTTF.

  “Got to say, my suspicion antenna certainly spiked up when I saw the safe deposit box.” Edgar referred to the multiple passports found in Samir’s safe deposit box.

  “Would you say the same if he was not a Muslim man?” Arya asked.

  “Come on…,” Edgar gestured his unhappiness with Arya’s implication.

  Arya gestured her apology by holding up her right hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. It is just….” Arya searched for the right word to express her feelings.

  “I know. You are thinking about your friend.” Edgar understood her state of mind.

  “If our suspicion turns out to be remotely true, it will destroy Sania,” Arya somberly said.

  Edgar placed his right hand on her shoulder and gently patted her. “Do you want to look into it further before bringing it to LT?”

  Arya shook her head. “No, that would be misconduct, especially after what we found in the safe deposit box. The stakes are too high.”

  Edgar slowly nodded.

  Their conversation came to an abrupt halt as Edgar’s phone rang loudly inside the car. Edgar looked at the caller ID briefly before answering the phone. “Hey Greg, hold on,” he said, as he turned the car into the parking lot of a convenience store.

  Arya gestured Edgar to put his phone on speaker, as she was curious to know what Greg found out about Culver City.

  Edgar mounted his phone on the dashboard and answered, “Hey Greg, I have you on speaker. Arya is with me.”

  “Hey Arya, how are you holding up dealing with this goofball?” Greg let out a big laugh, making fun of Edgar.

  “What can I say! You can’t pick your cards in poker; all you could do is work with them,” Arya chuckled.

  “True, except you picked him,” Greg piled on Edgar.

  The banter went on for another minute before the conversation turned serious.

  “Okay, this is what I got so far about your guy – Samir Tariq,” Greg started. “First, you are right about the apartment. He did rent a place on First and Jackson, a small four hundred square feet apartment, starting from mid-June.”

  “Is he there?” Arya jumped in, not able to resist her curiosity about the occupants of the place.

  “Nah, no one.”

  “What?” Arya was surprised to hear that place was vacated. She had a glimmer of hope that Samir might be using that apartment as his love nest with Nafisa.

  “It was vacated last month,” Greg clarified.

  “Was he staying there with a woman?” Arya asked, trying to find out if Nafisa ever stayed with Samir in that apartment.

  “This is where it got interesting. According to the tenant next door, two young men stayed in the apartment, Khalid Al Mihdar and Nawaf Al Hazmi, and they mostly kept to themselves. When I showed Samir’s picture, the neighbor didn’t recognize him. And
, to your other question, the two men did not have any girlfriends. None of the neighbors ever saw a girl coming to their place.”

  Arya and Edgar exchanged looks as Greg filled them with the description of the two men. They were both in their late twenties or early thirties, both sported a mustache and were Saudi nationals who just landed in the country. They spoke little English, and they had a thick accent. They were both religious as the neighbor heard them praying regularly in their apartment.

  “The men from Kate Halladay’s photos,” Arya said aloud to Edgar, connecting the dots.

  Edgar gestured that he agreed with Arya. It must be the two men whom Samir visited when he earlier traveled to Culver City.

  “One more thing; it seems both the men worked in a convenience store that was part of a gas station.” Greg paused as he flipped through the pages of his notebook. “Damn it! I missed writing down the name of the convenience store.”

  “Greg, did you find anything useful?” Edgar pulled Greg back to the meat of the conversation.

  “Always, have I ever done anything that didn’t turn out to be fruitful?” Greg tooted his own horn. “It seems both of them worked there for little over a month – late July/August – before they quit dramatically.”

  “What do you mean by dramatically?” Arya’s eyes narrowed as she curiously asked that over the phone.

  “It seemed both the men were quite boastful when they quit. They claimed that they were going to be famous very soon, and everyone in the country would know their faces shortly.”

  “Jesus! That is some serious attitude for a guy working in a convenience store.”

  “Tell me about it! I wish I could do that sometimes,” Greg laughed.

  “One more thing – I almost forgot; I showed the photo you had sent me earlier to the neighbor.”

  “Yeah, you told that before. The neighbor didn’t recognize Samir,” Edgar said with a resigned voice.

  “That is true.” Greg cleared his throat. “However, I forgot to tell you that he recognized the other guy in the picture.”

  “A guy? There was only his wife in the picture.” Edgar was baffled.

  “No, not that one. The one in LAX airport,” Greg said, pointing Edgar to the photos that he had faxed last night.

  “Kate’s photos.” Arya quickly flipped through Kate’s folder and gestured Edgar to point out the photo that he had faxed.

  “This one.” Edgar tapped on a photo which showed Samir approaching a taxicab in the LAX airport.

  Edgar and Arya’s eyes narrowed as they studied the picture keenly. They exchanged looks, as they didn’t see anyone else next to Samir.

  Edgar turned his attention back at Greg. “Are you talking about the airport picture?”

  “Yes, the taxicab one in LAX.”

  “The taxi driver?” All they could see was a faint outline of a man’s face. They didn’t recognize him.

  “No, not the taxi driver. Look at the exit door.”

  Arya and Edgar’s eyes shifted towards the right edge of the photo, which showed a man walking through the exit door.

  “Shit!” Arya gasped in disbelief.

  “Is that Omar?” Edgar squinted, trying to look closer at the man’s face.

  “Definitely. How the fuck did we miss that?” Arya gestured her frustration by placing her hand on her forehead.

  “I guess you guys know the guy,” Greg’s voice came over the speakerphone.

  “Yeah, we know of him.” Edgar paused. A sudden thought rushed to his mind. They really didn’t know the man; they didn’t even have a name for him. Omar Raqqa, the name they got from Sania, had turned out to be a bogus one. Samir had provided a false name to Sania for her to believe that he was hanging out with his boss from Aries Financials. As it stood, all they had were questions with little to no answers. What is Omar Raqqa’s real name? What did Samir and the fake Omar steal from Marisomo, and what were they planning to do with it? Is the fake Omar really married to Nafisa? Did the fake Omar know that Nafisa and Samir were having an affair? What was the connection between Samir, fake Omar, and the two Middle Eastern men? Where is everyone now? It looks like everyone had disappeared from the face of the earth – Nafisa, two Middle Eastern men, fake Omar, and Samir. All of them have vanished.

  “Did the neighbor know the name of the man?” Arya pounced, sniffing that this might be the first clue to the identity of the mystery man.

  “Yeah, his name is Omar Al….” Greg let the name hang for a moment as he turned the pages of his pocketbook. “Here it is… Omar Al-Farooq.”

  Arya and Edgar exchanged glances. There was a sense of excitement in the air. This could be the break they had hoped for.

  “Omar Al-Farooq,” Edgar whistled. “So, his real name is actually Omar.”

  “I guess he just switched his last name,” Arya reflected.

  “So, you guys know this man?” Greg asked, hearing the back-and-forth between Arya and Edgar.

  “We know some details about him. But to be honest, we don’t know what is true and what is fiction.” Edgar sighed.

  “I know the feeling.” Greg signaled the emotion that every cop has, one time or the other. There comes the point in every case where the case turns into a maze. The only way forward is for the detectives to solve the riddle to crack open the case. Unfortunately, most people don’t know that, and you can blame the TV shows for it. Every channel now has a cop show where the detective solves a case in less than an hour with the help of forensics from the crime scene – DNA, fiber, blood spatter, fingerprints, etc. In reality, the truth is far from fiction, and there are no magic fibers that solve a case. It usually takes a cop hitting the road, meticulously collecting leads, and using their imagination to see the forest from the trees to crack open a case. This case was certainly one of those cases where the trees were too small, and the forest was enormous.

  “A real maze is what we have in front of us,” Edgar echoed the sentiment.

  “You said that the neighbor recognized Omar Al….” Arya struggled with Omar’s last name and most certainly butchered it.

  “Yeah, he certainly did,” Greg said flatly.

  “How did the neighbor know? Did Omar introduce himself?” Arya asked, focusing on Omar’s identity.

  “Kinda….” Greg paused, as a loud sound downed their voices.

  “Where are you? It sounded like a truck,” Edgar asked, as the rattling sound died down.

  “Yeah, it was a truck. I just left a diner,” Greg said as he opened the car door.

  “Okay, where was I?” Greg asked rhetorically as he made himself comfortable on the driver’s side of the car.

  “You were saying that the neighbor never met this Omar…,” Edgar recapped the point of their conversation before they went on a tangent.

  “Yes, I remember. The neighbor never met the guy. This is his story. The neighbor is like in his fifties, is married, and has two kids. He has been living in this town for close to twenty years. He is an immigrant; he came to this country like twenty years back from Egypt. I checked his record, and it looks clean.”

  “Okay, looks like a decent fellow. What did he say?”

  “Did I say he is religious? He prays five times a day and goes to a mosque down the street.”

  “Uh-huh, is that how he met Omar?” Arya jumped in, sounding eager to get to the point soon.

  “Yeah. Like a couple of weeks back, the neighbor was at his neighborhood mosque for one of the prayer sessions. When he was getting ready to pray, he spotted Mihdar and Hazmi kneeling down, getting ready to pray. After the prayers, the neighbor decided to go over and greet those two young men. Just a casual neighborly thing to do. As he was approaching, he noticed that they were engaged in a spirited conversation with another fellow.”

  “Omar,” Edgar guessed the obvious.

  “Yeah. Mihdar introduced him as Omar Al-Farooq,” Greg said evenly.

  “What more did he say about Omar – his description?” Arya wanted to compare descriptions fr
om Sania and Greg and see if they match.

  “He said Omar was average height – around five feet seven inches –, broad shoulders, black hair, brown eyes, and respectful.”

  “Was he an American?”

  “The neighbor assumed he was an immigrant, but he never asked his nationality. When I asked him to take a guess, he said that he could be a Saudi.”

  “Because of Mihdar and Hazmi?” Arya asked, presuming the neighbor guessed because of their nationality.

  “Sorry, I didn’t ask him,” Greg quickly responded. “However, when I asked him if he knew what Omar did for a living, the neighbor said that Omar could be a soldier.”

  “Soldier!” Edgar and Arya exchanged looks, feeling puzzled with this development. “What makes him say that? Did Omar say that he was a vet?”

  “No, Omar never said what he did. When I pressed the neighbor about it, he just said that it was his gut feeling with the way he talked and conducted himself. It seems the neighbor comes from an army family, and, growing up, he was surrounded by vets. He was just using that as a reference point to guess Omar’s profession.”

  “Interesting.” Arya made a mental note to check with the State Department for Omar’s records. If he ever served in the military, the State Department would have it in their files when he applied for a visa.

  “What did he say that he did?” Edgar asked, wondering how Omar introduced himself.

  “It seems like the topic of Omar’s profession never came up during their discussion. The neighbor said that their chat was cut short when Omar’s phone buzzed, and he excused himself to go outside to take the call. The neighbor stayed in the mosque for another five minutes, doing small talk before he left to take care of his shop.”

  “Did he…?” Before Edgar could finish his question, Greg responded. “The neighbor never saw Omar after that run-in at the mosque. The only reason he even remembered meeting Omar was that it was the last time he recalled seeing Hazmi and Mihdar.”

  “What do you mean? They left with Omar?”