The Hunt for Truth

by Sury Patru Viswam

  “Hmm…. Did you circle back to the Moroccan restaurant?” Arya brought the focus back to the last place Samir and Reza were seen.

  “Not that night. I was parked all night in front of Sania’s house,” Carter answered. “I was still reeling from surprise. Never in a million years, I expected all of them dining in the same restaurant.”

  Arya nodded, understanding Carter’s predicament; she had to admit that would have been a surprise for anyone.

  “I realized something was not right when I came to know that Sania had filed a case about her missing husband. It was about the same time Julia called me.”

  Julia nodded. “I told him that Reza never came home.”

  “That is when a bolt of lightning went off in my head. What is the probability of anyone’s husband and her secret lover going missing on the same night?” Carter asked rhetorically.

  “Almost never.” Edgar slightly shook his head.

  “Bingo. Never in my career have I ever seen a case like that. Husband and her lover, both gone, poof!” Carter said dramatically.

  “We can’t be sure that Reza was her lover,” Arya slowly said.

  Edgar looked up. “Seriously?”

  “One more thing,” Carter interrupted. “I have been watching Sania closely from September 11th, and I have noticed her behave strangely.”

  “Strangely? What do you mean?” Arya pulled herself closer to the phone and was clearly intrigued by Carter’s characterization of Sania’s behavior.

  “When I called Sania using Reza’s phone, she answered by addressing the caller as Sam.” Carter emphasized the name Sam in his deep voice.

  “Sam?” Edgar asked rhetorically, feeling surprised.

  “Yes. Sania did. It threw me off for a moment, and I began to wonder if I made a mistake.” Carter went on to describe what he did next. “For a moment, I thought I made a mistake. I disconnected the call to check if I had the right phone.”

  “Reza’s phone?” Edgar asked to confirm.

  “Yes.”

  “Wait. How did you have Reza’s phone in the first place?” Arya narrowed her eyes.

  “Julia gave it to me,” Carter answered.

  As the detectives’ gaze in the room shifted towards Julia, she answered with a steady voice. “Reza left in a hurry after he got the call from Sania on September 10th. When he left, he forgot his cellphone.”

  The implication was quite clear to everyone in the room.

  “I thought Reza’s phone would be useful as part of my investigation, and I got it from Julia,” Carter filled in the rest.

  “Was it useful?” Arya turned the focus back onto Carter’s investigation of Reza’s disappearance.

  “This is where it got strange. I initially thought Sania was confused, given the circumstances.”

  Arya and Edgar nodded, gesturing that similar thoughts entered their minds.

  “Did you call her back?” Edgar wanted to move this along.

  “Yes. Sania still addressed the caller as Sam.”

  “I guess Sania could have acted that way out of shock. I remember talking to her, and she was in a dazed state,” Arya imagined Sania’s state of mind.

  “I would have agreed with you if not for what she did next,” Carter replied curtly.

  Carter’s cryptic reply piqued Edgar and Arya’s interests.

  Carter, after a few seconds of pause, continued. “After the second phone call, I saw Sania storm out of her house in her car.”

  “Where did she go?” Edgar asked.

  “Kelly Drive.” Carter emphasized the name of the place in his deep voice.

  “Kelly Drive?” Edgar whistled in surprise.

  “Exactly. The place where Sania frequently met Reza earlier,” Carter added.

  “Jesus! That is strange.” Edgar took a deep sigh. “Let me get this straight — When Sania got a call from Reza’s phone, she addressed the caller as Sam. Right after your second call, she stormed out of her house to see Reza in her regular meeting place.”

  “Yes.” Carter signaled that Edgar had it right.

  “That is strange.” Edgar shifted his glance towards Arya, who seemed to be curiously silent.

  “Just not that….” Carter was ready to throw another surprise. “Yesterday, she drove all the way to Julia and Eli’s home and knocked on their front door.”

  “What should we call him? Eli or Reza?” Edgar shifted his glance from Arya to Julia.

  “Does it matter? I don’t care what you call him. He is a fraudster, and she is a whore,” Julia fumed, shaking her head in disgust.

  Arya stared at her with the same disgust. If Reza and Sania were having an affair, Reza should be the person Julia should blame. He was the one who took the vow with her, but, still, Julia was blaming Sania. Arya couldn’t believe it; she thought it was time that wives assign the blame where it rightfully belongs; husband.

  “Okay. Let us ratchet down a bit. Whatever Sania was doing, she definitely lied to you,” Carter said.

  Arya nodded, closing her eyes. That was something that she couldn’t refute. Sania definitely lied about Samir leaving for Los Angeles that night, and she also hid the fact that she was in touch with Reza.

  “I have to talk to Sania,” Arya declared, opening her eyes. “There should be a good reason why she hid these facts.”

  “I agree. But we have a problem in our hands. Sania has been missing from last night. She is not at home, or at the hospital, or any other place she frequents. She seems to have vanished, just like the men in her life.”

  A sudden thought flashed across Arya’s mind. “What about Marrakesh? Did you check back with the restaurant? Maybe the people working in the restaurant know something and can point us in the right direction.”

  “No such luck. I am standing in front of the restaurant, and no one is there. The place is locked.”

  “What do you mean?” Arya couldn’t believe any restaurant would be closed at this time of the day.

  “The place is not closed but locked. Get this, I checked with the store next door, and the store owner said that this restaurant has remained closed after that night.”

  “The place never opened after September 10th?” Edgar asked, wanting to confirm the timeline.

  “Yes. No one has come or gone. It looks like whoever was running the place has been gone since Tuesday.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a loud knock, and Edgar turned around to find a young policeman opening the door.

  There is a protocol that the interview room is off-limits and should not be disturbed unless it is absolutely relevant to the interview.

  Edgar stood up and walked across the room. As he reached the young policeman at the door, he slightly rocked his head to gesture the reason for the interruption.

  The young policeman was holding onto a file in his right hand, and he extended that handout. “This fax just came through, and Ray asked me to get this to you.”

  “Thank you,” Edgar said as he reached out to get the folder from the policeman.

  The young policeman gave an awkward smile before leaving the room.

  Edgar, as he approached the table, was curious about the contents of the folder. Edgar flicked open the envelope to find a sketch that was drawn following the directions provided by the patrol officer who stopped a man on the early morning hours of September 11th driving towards Delaware on a highway.

  As Edgar’s eyes focused closer on the sketch, his feet stopped moving. He stood still. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. The sketch had an uncanny resemblance to someone’s face he had just seen. It was Eli Berg, Julia’s husband.

  36

  “This changes the equation,” Carter declared after Edgar shared the details about the sketch. “If it was Eli, then I never saw …”

  “Samir,” Arya concluded. “In that case, Sania did not lie about Samir. She did not meet him in the restaurant. So, she told the truth.” A sense of relief dawned on Arya, knowing her friend didn’t blatantly lie to
her.

  “Except the part about sleeping with her ex-boyfriend.” Julia made her presence felt.

  “We don’t know that,” Arya frowned, directing her piercing gaze towards Julia. “Let us not assume Sania cheated; we don’t have any conclusive proof. All we can say from these pictures is that Sania met Reza or Eli or whatever he called himself now.” She pointed at the pictures spread across the table.

  “Not once, but many times. Also, Eli lied about his identity,” Julia pointed out.

  “That was Eli’s fault and not Sania’s. Let us put the blame where it belongs.” Arya was sick of always seeing a woman getting blamed for a man’s fault. The tone of Arya’s response stopped the back-and-forth between Julia and her.

  “Okay. Julia, do you share joint accounts with Eli — credit cards and bank accounts?” Edgar asked, turning the attention back to the case.

  “Yes.” Julia nodded. “And I checked — no funds were drawn from our bank account, and there were no transactions on the credit card.”

  “That was the first thing I asked Julia to check,” Carter announced on the phone.

  “Interesting.” Arya narrowed her eyes. “No transactions. Is it possible that Eli had an account that you didn’t know about?”

  “I would have said no if you had asked a week back, but now, I don’t know.” Julia shrugged her shoulders.

  Their conversation was interrupted as the intercom speaker in the interview room came to life.

  “Call for Detective Arya Martins; report back; inter-department call about a BOLO.”

  The intercom speakers are used inside the precinct to page police officers when they are outside the squad room but are believed to be inside the precinct premises.

  Arya and Edgar immediately recognized the nature of the call. They placed a BOLO (Be on the Lookout) alert earlier for a missing white Ford Transit van, which Samir had rented before his disappearance. Based on their investigation, they learned that Samir had rented this van almost a week ago from Enterprise Rental in Philadelphia and missed his date to return the van. Based on their discussion with the state trooper, they also learned the van was stopped on a freeway leading to Delaware on the night of September 10th. During the traffic stop, the state trooper shared that he remembered seeing the ‘Aether Solutions’ company name and logo on the side of the van. Arya and Edgar had assumed that it was Samir who was driving the van that night, but that theory came tumbling down when the state trooper sketch positively identified the driver of the white Ford Transit van as Eli Berg – Julia Berg’s husband.

  Arya turned towards Edgar. “Must be the BOLO on the Ford Transit.”

  “Is it Eli?” Julia stood up.

  Edgar gestured for Julia to sit as Arya hurried towards the door to take the call.

  “What does it mean - BOLO? They found Eli?” Julia asked, gesturing towards the door that Arya had just exited.

  “No, no.” Edgar shook his head. “We can’t say that.” Edgar went on to explain to Julia about the nature of BOLO alert, and they had to wait for Arya to get back before drawing any conclusions.

  Before Julia could ask her follow-up question, they were abruptly interrupted by a buzzing sound emanating from Julia’s cellphone.

  Julia reached across the table to retrieve her cellphone. “Jason Elam,” she read the name from the caller ID. “He is the business manager who I had reached out to earlier.”

  “Business manager?” Edgar was not sure what that meant.

  “He manages all our finances — personal, business…. To put it plainly, he is our money guy.”

  Edgar quickly nodded before asking, “Is it about your bank activity?”

  Earlier, Julia had mentioned that she reached out to her manager to check for any withdrawals or transactions by her husband, Eli Berg.

  “Could be…. I didn’t share all the details about my suspicions on Eli — like he has gone AWOL. But I did tell him that I have some suspicions on Eli and wanted him to keep an eye out,” Julia explained.

  “Carter, we need to disconnect. Julia had to take this call,” Edgar announced on the phone before disconnecting the call with Carter.

  “Talk,” Edgar mouthed at Julia, as he placed the call from the bank manager on the speakerphone.

  “Julia Berg,” Julia answered the call in a normal-pitched tone, like how she would have answered any other day.

  “Mrs. Berg, this is Jason Elam,” Jason opened the conversation. “I am calling regarding the conversation we had earlier.”

  Julia shifted her glance towards Edgar and slightly nodded. The implication was quite clear; the call was related to Eli Berg.

  “Jason, what happened? Did Eli make any withdrawals?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Edgar was deflated. For a moment, he thought that the call would lead him to Eli Berg.

  “I don’t understand. You mentioned it was regarding our conversation earlier — about Eli,” Julia pressed on.

  “Yes, you are right — it is about Mr. Berg.”

  Edgar lifted his gaze back towards Julia with anticipation.

  “Mr. Berg called me,” Elam calmly said.

  “He called you, called you — like on the phone?” Julia was taken aback to hear that her husband called Elam.

  “Yes, he did — like fifteen minutes back.”

  “Elam, my name is Detective Edgar James.” Edgar jumped on the call and introduced himself as a detective in the Philadelphia Police Department. He further explained that Julia Berg was with him in the Germantown precinct.

  “Is everything alright, Mrs. Berg? Do you need a lawyer?” Elam addressed Julia like a man whose foremost responsibility was to protect his client.

  “I am fine, Jason. Thanks,” Julia’s voice came on the phone. “I am here because of Eli; he has gone missing.”

  “Missing!” Elam exclaimed.

  “Yes. After the night of September 10th, he hasn’t come home. No one has spoken to him until now,” Julia explained. “When I came to see you, I should have told you….”

  “No need… I am sure you have your reasons, Mrs. Berg,” Elam replied. “What do you need me to do now?”

  “Detective James has been handling the case, and I need you to answer any questions he has for you.” Julia lifted her gaze from the phone towards Edgar.

  “Sure, definitely,” Elam retorted. “What do you need to know, Detective?”

  “What did Eli Berg say when he called?” Edgar leaned closer to the phone and addressed Elam.

  “He said that he was in an accident, and he is calling from a hospital.”

  “Accident? What happened?” Julia jumped in before Edgar could ask.

  “Mrs. Berg, I believe he is okay,” Elam reassured Julia that Eli sounded not like he was impaired or seriously wounded. “He didn’t mention how he got into an accident, but he sounded okay to me.”

  “Where did he call from?” Edgar turned the focus to Eli’s location.

  “Bay Memorial Hospital.”

  “Near Delaware?” Edgar asked. Edgar remembered that Bay Memorial was the name of the hospital he visited last year. Edgar’s friend had a terrible accident on his way to Delaware, and the paramedics had taken him to this hospital, which was located on the border of Delaware and Pennsylvania.

  “Yes, I believe so,” Elam confirmed. “He mentioned that he lost his wallet in an accident, and he didn’t have access to his insurance information.”

  “So… he called for insurance details?” Edgar was surprised. Of all the reasons in the world, Edgar never imagined this would be the reason for the call.

  “Yes. I did fax a copy of Mr. Berg’s driving license and his insurance information to the hospital.”

  Edgar shook his head. Unbelievable.

  “What else?” Edgar wanted to hear more about Eli’s conversation with Elam.

  “Not much. Mr. Berg didn’t ask for anything else.”

  “No money?” Julia asked.

  “No,” Elam replied quickly. “T
hat was the strange part….” Elam paused, making the moment more dramatic. “When I asked him if he needed help — you know because he lost his wallet and I thought he would need assistance to get back to the city — he didn’t take upon my request. He said that he is good.”

  “Did he explain further?”

  “No. He didn’t.” Elam revealed that it was the end of their conversation. “After I hung up, I remembered Mrs. Berg asking me to keep an eye out…. So, I called.”

  After a few more follow up questions to Elam, Edgar was convinced that he was not going to learn anything more from Elam. Edgar proceeded to give his direct number to Elam, asking him to give a call if he heard again from Eli.

  Elam noted down Edgar’s number and assured him that he would do the needful.

  Elam hung up after a quick exchange with Julia in which he expressed his concern about Eli’s situation. During the exchange, Julia had asked Elam not to share about Eli’s situation with her dad, as she would like to be the person to break the news to him. Elam readily agreed.

  “Accident,” Julia muttered. “Do you think I had it all wrong about Eli?”

  Edgar ran his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes as if he was in deep thought.

  “It is too soon to tell.” Edgar opened his eyes and stared right at Julia. “There are too many things that don’t add up.”

  As Julia looked on intently, Edgar continued. “Now we know that on the night of September 10th, your husband was driving Samir’s van. If we assumed that he was telling the truth to Elam, still, it does not explain why he was driving Samir’s van and why he was out of anyone’s reach till now.”

  “He could have called me from the hospital,” Julia relayed her thoughts loudly.

  “True.” Edgar nodded. “Any husband would call his wife in this situation, but Eli didn’t.”

  Edgar gestured towards the phone. “I should call the hospital to find out if he is still there.”

  Edgar lifted his cellphone and dialed the number that Elam had given for the hospital. As the phone started ringing, Julia looked on anxiously.