Susan just stared at the blank computer screen in her cubicle. “And you think he might be right?”
Casey told Susan about Giordano’s theory after they were back at the office. Despite Susan’s repeated pleas, he refrained from telling her anything on the subway ride home. “I think it makes sense,” Casey said from the chair next to Susan.
After what happened on Friday morning, Susan had blocked out the part where Mari said someone tried to kill her back in Washington. She had focused so much on her own past with Mari and the professional sabotage Mari was facing at work that Susan neglected to acknowledge the most important consequence of that sabotage. Now that Mari was dead, Susan was confronted with the possibility that her friend wasn’t just an accidental victim, but that the people who wanted to kill Mariam Fahda had finally succeeded.
“Do you think someone would actually do that?” Susan asked, swiveling her chair to face Casey.
“I don’t know,” Casey said. “According to Detective Giordano, our government’s done stuff like this before.”
“When, Casey? When has the United States killed hundreds of its own citizens to cover up a murder?”
“I think he was talking about the ‘justifying a war’ part when he said that. He was just saying it’s no surprise the government would spin the bombing for their own purposes whether they had anything to do with it or not—like the USS Maine.” Casey could tell Susan wasn’t buying it. “Look, I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, but Giordano is a cop. He thinks the possibility of Mari being a target in the bombing is something we should look into, and I’m willing to trust his experience on this one,” Casey said.
“You trust him?” Susan asked. “Do you even know anything about him?”
“I know his son was killed because of that blast,” Casey said.
“And don’t you think that may be clouding his judgment?” Susan asked.
“By keeping all possible scenarios on the table?”
“By keeping absurd scenarios on the table,” Susan answered.
“You think it’s absurd, because you don’t want to believe it,” Casey said.
“You’re right, Casey, I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe that Mari was intentionally killed in that bombing,” Susan said. “It’s easier to think that she was an innocent victim. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t.”
“Which is why finding out who wanted her dead in the first place is so important. Chances are, Mari being at the deli that morning had nothing to do with Soren’s being bombed,” Casey said. “But what if it did?”
“Listen to yourself,” Susan said. “You’re so goddamn convinced your conspiracy theory is right, that you’ll believe anything that vaguely supports it.”
“Bullshit,” Casey said. “Even if Mari wasn’t targeted, we’d still be in the middle of a proxy war with Iran. Mari’s death is immaterial.”
“You’re an asshole,” Susan said quietly.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Casey said. He started to rethink his decision to tell Susan anything about Giordano’s hypothesis. It was clear to him that she was uncomfortable with the whole idea. “Look, Susan. I’m sorry your friend is dead. I really am. But don’t you want to know the truth? Don’t you want to know if she was murdered?”
“What does it matter?” Susan asked, leaning forward and massaging her temples. “I mean, really? We’re not the police. Let them do their jobs, and we’ll read about it in the news.”
Casey saw that Susan didn’t even want to think about the issue anymore, but he wanted her on his side. He needed her on his side. Casey could only think of one way to persuade her. “The police aren’t looking for the bombers,” he said.
Susan looked up at Casey. “What?” she asked.
“Giordano told me the cops are busy chasing down Muslim terrorists,” Casey said. “They don’t even want to hear anything that doesn’t lead to an Arab.”
Susan didn’t know whether to believe Casey or not. She half-suspected he was blindly following whatever the detective told him. “And whatever Giordano says has to be true,” she said mockingly.
“What’s your problem?” Casey asked. “Giordano’s just trying to figure out who killed his kid.”
“Well, even if it wasn’t al Houthi, it could still be al Qa’ida. That’s why they’re looking for Arabs,” Susan said. “They hit New York ten years ago, remember?”
“But we didn’t see any Arab set off that bomb at Soren’s,” Casey said. “It was a scruffy white dude.”
Susan felt a chill creep up her spine. The confidence of Casey’s words frightened her. “You saw the bomber?” she asked.
Casey realized he never told Susan about the man with the satchel. The fact that Giordano knew about the guy made Casey forget that they were the only two people with this piece of evidence. “Yes,” Casey said. “Just before the explosion.”
“You said we. Do you mean Giordano saw the guy, too?”
“Yes,” Casey answered. “That’s part of the reason he agreed to check out the names on Mari’s list—which came to nothing, by the way. Giordano reported what he saw, but he said he was shut down. The FBI and NYPD are laser-focused on the Middle East, apparently.”
Since she met Casey, Susan had come to admire his ability to string together seemingly unrelated events and come up with plausible, if sometimes unbelievable conclusions about things that were happening on and behind the world stage. In that year, Casey had been right more times than he’d been wrong, which was why she was willing to support his theory of a secret war against Iran. She knew that she only questioned the idea of Mari being targeted because it was so personal to her. But Casey saw the bomber.
“So he’s working on this alone?” she asked.
“Well, I’m sort of helping. But I don’t know how much help I can actually give him,” Casey said. “Not without you, anyway.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“But you know Mari,” Casey said. “And besides two witnesses no one’s going to listen to, all we have is Mari and her thumb drive.”
“Which may have nothing to do with the bombing,” Susan said.
“Right,” Casey conceded. “But we shouldn’t rule anything out until we’ve looked into it.”
“Because no one else will,” Susan said.
Casey shook his head. “Like I said, they’re busy chasing ghosts.”
Susan could tell Casey was committed. She’d seen it before. Occasionally he chased an idea that made perfect sense in his own mind despite conflicting evidence that was right in front of him—ignoring the obvious to prove the incredible. This time, though, it was the police who were ignoring evidence, and Casey apparently wasn’t going to wait for them to figure out they were looking in the wrong place. Susan had to remind herself that Casey was also at the deli on Friday. He had a personal stake in this, too.
“Where do we start?” Susan asked.
Casey smiled, relieved that Susan was onboard. “Well, if we go with the assumption that Mari’s report was changed to provide justification for the Yemen attacks, and that person wanted her dead to keep her quiet, then the next move is to figure out who had it changed. For that, we have to start with what information we do have. We need the rest of the files on that thumb drive.”
“Here,” Andie Jackson said as she handed Casey the memory stick, surprising the cubicle’s two occupants.
“Thanks,” Casey said, pushing past Susan to plug the thumb drive into an open port on her computer.
“How long have you been standing there?” Susan asked.
“Long enough to know y’all aren’t just looking into Yemen anymore,” Andie answered.
Susan stood up to make room for Casey who took over her seat without a word, maneuvering the mouse around the screen to find what Andie’s friend had unlocked. She leaned on the edge of the desk and looked at Andie. She quickly glanced at Andie’s shoes, disappointed they weren’t ratty sneakers. Every species in the animal kingdom
had its own way of judging where in the social hierarchy each member belonged. For the female human, shoes were the first thing to be scrutinized.
Andie noticed the not-so-subtle appraisal and smiled. “They were on sale,” she said.
Susan blushed, embarrassed for being caught. “They’re nice,” she said.
“They’re e-mails,” Casey announced, unwittingly saving his friend from any more awkward chit-chat.
Susan and Andie moved closer to Casey and watched over his shoulder as he opened the first file. “It’s from her work e-mail,” Susan observed.
“They all are,” Andie said.
“You read them already?” Susan asked.
“No,” Andie said. “Kevin told me when I picked up the thumb drive. He didn’t tell me any more than that, though.”
“It looks like Mari was telling the truth when she told us she protested the changes to her report,” Casey said. He was on the third e-mail in the folder—a series of back-and-forth replies between Mari and her supervisor. “It also looks like her boss wasn’t interested in hearing her whine.”
“Wait,” Susan said. “What senator is he talking about?”
“What are you talking about?” Casey asked.
“Right there.” Susan put her finger on the monitor screen, indicating the last line of the e-mail. “It says ‘the senator’s office has already acknowledged receipt and used the information in the FR hearing last week.’”
Casey apparently wasn’t as fast as Susan, and he skipped a paragraph to read for himself what Susan just read for him. “I’m guessing F-R is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?” Casey asked.
“Probably,” Andie said. “I can check what was on the committee’s schedule for that week and see if there was anything about Yemen or al Houthi. If the hearing wasn’t classified, I should be able to get a transcript, and that’ll tell us who used the information from the report.”
“And I bet that person’s the one who had Mari’s report changed,” Susan said.
“How soon can you get it?” Casey asked.
Andie checked the digital clock on Susan’s desk and said, “If I come up with anything, you’ll have it before three.”
“My money’s on Cogburn,” Casey said to Susan as Andie turned to leave.
Andie stopped at the cubicle entrance and turned back. “I’ll take that bet.”
Susan and Casey looked at Andie. Casey stood up and offered his hand to Andie. After all of Cogburn’s public statements about the evil Houthi terrorists, he was sure the senator from New York was behind the report manipulation. “You’re on,” he said, and they shook on it.
“Why don’t you think Cogburn’s the one who used the report?” Susan asked.
Andie smiled. “He’s not on the Foreign Relations Committee.”
Chapter 21
Casey rounded the corner to his apartment building just as the street lamps came to life, confirming the onset of darkness. There was no traffic on the road, and pedestrians were generally not found wandering Casey’s part of town after dark. That made it easy to identify Greg Clawson walking in the other direction. Casey would have called out to his neighbor if not for the presence of Greg’s companion. He got the impression from their first run-in, that Greg’s giant, scar-faced friend wasn’t interested in anything Casey had to say, so he decided to ignore the two men.
Casey put his backpack on the table when he got up to his apartment and went in search of food. He settled on a bag of pretzels and water—not that he had much of a choice—and opened the web browser on his computer. Though no longer at work, Casey still had work to do.
Andie was able to confirm that there was a hearing on the deteriorating situation in Yemen, but the transcript of the session wasn’t published. Andie explained that if even portions of the discussion were classified, the government had the right to keep the proceedings from the public as an exception to the Freedom of Information Act. Casey figured the senators must have talked about the Tomahawk option, and he was sure the CRS report was offered as reference.
Casey was disappointed that Cogburn wouldn’t have been a part of that discussion because he wasn’t on the committee. He didn’t know the man personally, but after hearing Senator Cogburn at the memorial that morning, it wouldn’t have surprised Casey if the bastard was somehow involved in manipulating Mari’s report and potentially an accessory to her murder. Andie was trying to at least get the roll-call of the Yemen hearing attendees so they would have something to go on, but she said she might not get the list until the following day. Casey hoped they could make a connection between someone on the committee and Cogburn that went deeper than their business addresses. He just had a bad feeling about the New York senator.
On the way back from IWG, Casey decided to do his own digging when he got home. Finding a list of the senators on the Foreign Relations Committee was easy enough, but that didn’t guarantee their attendance at the hearing in question. He printed a screenshot for easy reference as he looked into each member’s bio. He started at the top of the list and took notes on the print-out when he read something that might be relevant to his search.
A half-hour later, Casey finished the first column and looked at what he had written down. The only connection that stood out was the other senator from New York, but Casey didn’t give it much credence as Tom Copeland was a Democrat, and Bill Cogburn was about as far from being a Democrat as one could get. Before he moved to the next person on the list, the phone rang. Casey picked up the handset on his desk and answered. “Hello?”
“Are you watching the news?”
“Hold on,” Casey told Susan and turned on his television. It was tuned to BBC—the last channel Casey watched before going to work that morning. It was an update on the latest cricket matches. “What channel?” he asked.
“I’m watching CNN,” Susan said.
Casey changed the channel and turned up the volume. The grainy passport picture of a young Arab man filled the screen as a woman’s voice reported in the background.
“...just released. FBI officials say Yahia Abdulsalam was in the United States on a student visa under the name Mohammed Fahd al Fakeeh. He was believed to be a member of the Houthi tribe, a rebel group in Yemen with strong ties to al Qa’ida.” Images of the Friday morning bombings replaced Abdulsalam/Fakeeh’s picture on the screen.
“Holy shit,” Casey said. “Are they saying this guy was one of the bombers?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “They pinned him to the bomb that went off at the synagogue. They also said they found the body of one of the other bombers—or what was left of him.”
“St. Patrick’s?” Casey asked.
“No, the deli,” Susan said. “He was also from Yemen. His name was Saleh al Fishi.”
Casey stared at the TV. He didn’t hear anything else the reporter was saying as his brain tried to register the new information. Everything he’d believed, every bit of evidence and conjecture he’d been chasing was shitcanned with the announcement that two Houthi bodies were found. Cogburn’s accusations were proven, and the attacks on Yemen were justified. And Casey was wrong.
“Casey?”
“I’m still here,” Casey said. “I don’t believe it. I mean, I can’t believe it.” Casey sat down and muted the television, watching the images while he talked. “What about the dude me and Giordano saw outside? I was damn sure he was the guy with the bomb. I fuckin’ saw him, man.”
“I know you did,” Susan said. She could hear the frustration in her friend’s voice. “And I think you still might be right.”
Casey tuned out the pictures in front of him and concentrated on the phone. “What?”
“I think the person you saw probably did have something to do with the bomb,” Susan said.
“But you just said they found....”
“The names were on the list,” Susan said before Casey could finish.
“Say that again?”
“Mari’s list,” Susan said. “Both of the nam
es of the bombers they identified are on the list from Mari’s thumb drive.”
“You’re shittin’ me,” Casey said.
“What do you think it means?” Susan asked.
“Just a second,” Casey said. He opened his backpack and began frantically digging to find his own copy of the list. “What were the names, again?” he asked when he had the paper. He went down the page and marked the two names with a pen as Susan read them. “What about the alias?”
“What alias?” Susan asked.
“The one the synagogue bomber used on his passport.”
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I didn’t recognize it. But when they said the others, I knew I had heard those names before. I’ve read that damn list so many times since yesterday trying to figure out who they were, that I almost choked on my dinner when they said Yahia Abdulsalam was identified as one of the terrorists.”
Casey stared at the two names, and Susan’s question played back in his head. What do you think it means? Casey wasn’t sure of the significance of Mariam Fahda having a list of names that included the man accused of detonating the bomb that ultimately took her life. He also didn’t know what to think about the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified the bomber after refusing to consider the eyewitness report of a fellow cop. Or maybe Casey and Giordano were wrong, and the man they saw had nothing to do with the bombing.
Casey put the paper down and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. He sighed audibly. “I don’t know, Susan. None of this makes sense to me,” he said. “It feels like we’re in a maze and keep hitting dead ends.”
“What do you mean?” Susan asked.
“I mean, first we learn that Cogburn probably has nothing to do with the bullshit Houthi report, then we find out the bombers really were Houthi terrorists. Hell, for all we know, our own assessment of al Houthi was completely wrong,” Casey said. “I haven’t been to Yemen in a while to check on what things are like on the ground...oh wait, I’ve never been to Yemen. In fact, the only thing I know about the Houthi tribe is from those CRS reports.”
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