Thirst for Justice

by David R. Boyd

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not authorized to discuss this matter with you beyond what I’ve already said.”

  “Not authorized? Please. Please! Tell me what you’re talking about. Is my husband—” Maria couldn’t bring herself to ask if Michael was alive. “Is he all right?”

  “I’ve said everything I can say. Goodbye.”

  “Wait! Put me through to the ambassador.”

  “He’s not available right now.”

  “Then give me his phone numbers—home, cell, office, satellite, all of them.”

  Quinn complied. When Maria dialed the numbers, she reached voicemails and left a series of urgent messages. Ten minutes later, she called the numbers again. And again. And again.

  The ambassador never answered and never called back.

  At 5:45 a.m., Maria’s house was silently surrounded by a dozen law enforcement vehicles from various federal agencies. There was a SWAT team, crime scene technicians, computer experts, the bomb squad, a hazardous materials team, and, at Stryder’s request, a translator fluent in Arabic. The doorbell rang. When she opened the front door and saw two policemen standing there, Maria almost collapsed, assuming that they were going to inform her that Michael was dead. Instead, they threw Maria up against a wall, cuffed her, and dragged her, kicking and screaming Spanish swearwords, into a squad car with its engine still running.

  Chapter 30

  The landscape would have looked familiar to Michael when the aircraft descended toward McChord Field air base in central Washington State, but he was still wearing a black hood. Although he’d never suffered from claustrophobia, there was something disconcerting about flying blind, not knowing the destination. Nobody had told him a thing. He’d been tossed, half-drowned, into a helicopter, then roughly transferred to an airplane somewhere in Africa, while in a state of shock. Aboard the plane, he slipped in and out of consciousness.

  He came to with a start as the plane landed roughly. Still hooded and handcuffed, he was led down from the airplane to the back of a U.S. Army Humvee. After a brief drive, Michael was pushed out of the Humvee and led toward a low brick building. Muckraking journalists described the Northwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility at Fort Lewis as an Abu Ghraib on American soil. There were allegations of torture, extortion, and prostitution rings involving female guards. The administration denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

  Michael heard orders being grunted and doors opening but could see nothing. His hood was finally removed as he was thrust into a small, dark, windowless cell.

  “I want to—” he shouted.

  The door slammed shut with a metallic click.

  “—make a phone call!” His words echoed in the spartan cell. Illuminated by one bare bulb, it contained a cot, a toilet, and a sink, all metal. The cell was eight feet by ten feet with a high ceiling and a surveillance camera mounted in one of the upper corners, well out of reach. He gripped the sink with both hands, head bowed. The faucet dripped steadily. He tightened both taps but the dripping continued. The irony was not lost on him. Water. Taken for granted by most Americans, even in prison. A pipe dream for many Africans. The essence of life. A tool for torture. The focus of his obsession. And the cause of his downfall.

  After being kidnapped, tortured, and flown halfway around the world, Michael was exhausted and disoriented. Yet he was also relieved to be back on American soil. Despite all the heated political debates in recent years, the Constitution was intact, the unassailable backbone of American democracy. Still, something strange was going on. I know I committed a serious crime, he thought, but what the hell happened to my basic rights?

  He’d seen enough movies and television shows to believe something was amiss. Nobody had said to him, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law.” Nobody had let him make a phone call or speak to an attorney. Nobody had told him what crime he was being charged with. Michael sat down on the cot to wait. Surely it wouldn’t be long.

  As the hours dragged past, Michael’s mind oscillated between flashbacks to his recent torture and his growing guilt about Maria. Did she know yet? Was news of his arrest public? He desperately wished that he could apologize, try to explain, though his thoughts were so jumbled that he was barely making sense to himself.

  Realizing that action could be an antidote to despair, Michael stood up and pounded on the door. Nobody responded. He did sit-ups, push-ups, and every type of exercise he could think of in a desperate effort to avoid sitting there and thinking about what he’d done and what was going to happen next. Eventually he collapsed onto the cot, physically and emotionally drained, all of the shock and adrenaline worn off. He couldn’t sleep but had no way of measuring time.

  Eventually a metal slot at the bottom of the door opened and a plastic tray was pushed in. The food was tepid and gray. Some kind of soup covered in a film of grease. A cold blob that might be meatloaf, along with soggy French fries and canned peas. No utensils. Although the food was unappetizing, Michael was famished and used his fingers to clean every morsel from both plate and bowl. Then he lay back on the cot, feeling the onset of a bad stomachache.

  Without warning, the metallic door clicked and swung open. Two grim-faced men in dark suits looked at Michael like he was something unpleasant on the bottom of their shoes. They stood in the doorway but didn’t enter the cell.

  The larger man, whose nose looked like it had been broken several times, spoke. “Special Agents Moorhouse,” he pointed at himself, “and Chang,” turning a thumb toward his colleague. “Dr. MacDougall, we need to clarify a couple of things.”

  Michael backed up against the rear wall of the cell. Waves of fear and nausea racked his body. He struggled to keep his bladder and bowels under control.

  “You poisoned Seattle’s water?” Moorhouse asked.

  Michael nodded.

  “Part of a plot to blackmail the president?”

  A half nod.

  “New York is next?”

  Michael hesitated, trying to determine what they wanted him to say but unsure of the right answer.

  Chang stepped into the cell. Chang wasn’t large, but he moved with a threatening grace, like a mountain lion capable of pouncing at any moment.

  Michael threw up the meal he’d just eaten. Chunky gray muck gurgled out of his mouth as he tried to choke it back. His eyes watered, his throat burned, and he shrank further into the corner of the cell, squeezing between the toilet and the wall, sphincter clenched. “Stay away.” His voice was tremulous and an octave higher than normal.

  “New York’s next, yes or no?” Moorhouse said.

  Michael went with the truth, and shook his head.

  “Plans to attack any other cities?”

  “No.” Michael scarcely recognized his own voice.

  “Have you been acting alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Moorhouse smiled. This was no consolation to Michael, who recalled the psychopath who had tortured him in Africa. “Here’s a bonus question. Who are Dave Fleming, Erik Hanson, and Chris Bosio?”

  “Seattle Mariners. Starting pitchers. When I was a kid.”

  “You know any of them personally?”

  “No.”

  “Bingo. You win the prize. An all-expenses-paid trip for one to the penitentiary of our choice for the rest of your life.”

  Michael wiped a dangling thread of vomit from his chin with the back of his hand.

  “Unless, of course,” Moorhouse paused, “the judge prefers to reward you with a one-way trip to hell via lethal injection.”

  Chang laughed and they left. The door clanged shut with an intimation of finality. Michael washed his face and rinsed out his mouth. Then he lay down on the cot and wept. At some point the light overhead went out. Michael lay awake in the dark for hours before falling into a fitful, nightmare-plagued sl
eep.

  When he awoke it was pitch black and it took a few seconds to remember where he was. He was in jail, and he might spend the rest of his life in a cell like this, never again walking free, never again riding his bike through the North Cascades, never again saving a patient’s life, never again making love to Maria. There definitely would be no child now. He’d given up everything that he loved. And for what? There would be no $100 billion for Africa. The game was over and he’d lost.

  The light in the ceiling came on. Michael assumed that it indicated daytime. He got up, relieved himself, and did a few cursory stretches. He rubbed his scalp, which still tingled from where the man had held his hair. There was light bruising on his wrists and ankles from the handcuffs and the rope that tied him to the chair. Otherwise there was no physical evidence to suggest that he’d been tortured. The bruises would disappear in twenty-four to forty-eight hours and only the psychological scars would remain.

  The door clicked and swung open again.

  “Put these on,” a soldier said as he threw a bundle of clothes at Michael. Michael was still wearing his tattered and filthy operating scrubs. They’d taken his running shoes away in Africa and he’d been barefoot ever since. Not that he’d noticed.

  “Now,” the soldier said.

  Michael turned his back on the soldier, stripped off his dirty clothes, and put on the sweatshirt, sweatpants, and flip-flops.

  “Let’s go.” The soldier nodded at the door.

  “Where to?” asked Michael.

  “You’ll see when you get there.”

  Michael was marched out of the building and into a small truck. There were metal benches in the back, welded onto the sides. Michael’s right hand was cuffed to a ring attached to the bench. A black hood was again placed over his head and cinched around his neck. Not tight enough to hurt, just enough to cause discomfort. He wondered why, since there were no windows in the rear of the truck. Again, two military policemen rode in the back with him. Michael almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of being treated like a dangerous, violent criminal, but realized that to these people that’s exactly what he was.

  It was a quick trip, at first on a highway, then stop-and-go traffic punctuated by blaring horns that could only mean a big city. After less than half an hour, the truck stopped. The handcuffs were detached from the ring but quickly reattached, joining Michael’s hands behind his back. A soldier yanked Michael down from the back of the truck, where he stumbled, struggling to regain his balance. When his hood came off, Michael looked around, half curious, half afraid. They were in an underground parking lot. It was nondescript, except for an unusual absence of graffiti.

  One of the men swiped a card through a sensor that beeped and a door swung open, revealing a drab institutional corridor. Michael was steered down the hallway into a waiting room where other men were shackled, mainly in handcuffs but some wearing leg-irons as well.

  “Welcome home,” said the younger soldier, smiling for the first time.

  “Where are we?” asked Michael.

  “SeaTac Federal Detention Center.”

  “SeaTac?” Michael was astonished to be so close to home.

  The older soldier ran his finger across his lips, indicating that the talkative private should zip up. The SeaTac Federal Detention Center was the only federal correctional institute for civilian inmates in the state of Washington. It looked more like a hospital than a prison, but the appearance was deceiving. SeaTac was designed to hold inmates in all security categories, from white-collar crooks to extremely dangerous, violent, or escape-prone inmates.

  Michael was photographed, fingerprinted, and strip-searched, each step more humiliating and demeaning than the last. The prison system was just getting warmed up.

  Chapter 31

  Maria had been whisked downtown and was being interrogated at the FBI’s Seattle field office. Cassie watched from behind a one-way mirror. Maria was seated at a wooden table across from Special Agent Moorhouse, while Special Agent Chang leaned against the wall, watching. In DC, FBI Director Randall Tierney was watching on a live video feed with two-way audio.

  Moorhouse and Chang, just back from Fort Lewis, began by double-checking her identity, confirming that she was still married to Dr. Michael MacDougall, and giving her the standard Miranda spiel about her rights. Then, without any context or explanation, Moorhouse dove right in. “Did you help your husband poison the city of Seattle’s drinking water?”

  Maria reacted like she’d been slapped in the face. “What?”

  “Did you help your husband poison the city of Seattle’s drinking water?” Moorhouse patiently repeated the question.

  Maria struggled to understand what was being asked. “Of course not! My husband has been kidnapped, and—” Maria made the connection, as improbable as it seemed. “Did you kidnap him! Hijo de puta! Where is he? Where is Michael?” She stood up, anguish written all over her face.

  “Sit down.”

  “No.” Maria stood glaring at them. “I know my rights.”

  “Sit. Down. Now.” Moorhouse spoke slowly and nodded to Chang who began moving toward Maria. She looked around wildly, then sat down before he reached her.

  “Were you aware that your husband poisoned Seattle’s water supply?”

  “That’s crazy! Michael’s a doctor. He wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “Ma’am, we have physical evidence from your residence and the Chester Morse Reservoir,” Moorhouse said, placing photo­graphs of the garage, Michael’s bicycle, the pair of five-liter percholorethylene containers, and a topographic map of the Cedar River watershed on the table. “We have files obtained from the hard drive of a computer seized at your residence. And . . . we have a confession from your husband.”

  Maria looked at the photos in horror, lapsing into her mother tongue. “No lo creo. Es impossible. Tiene que ser un error.”

  “We don’t make mistakes, ma’am. What we need to ascertain at this time is the extent of your involvement in these crimes.”

  Maria’s head snapped up again. “I had nothing to do with any of this. And despite what you say, I doubt that Michael did either.” The photographs could be faked. The evidence planted. The confession coerced. Michael could still be innocent.

  “Are you close to your husband?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And it’s none of your business, anyway.”

  “You expect us to believe that your husband plotted and conducted one of the most complex terrorist attacks in American history and never mentioned it to his wife?”

  Maria shook her head but wondered about Michael’s increasingly odd behavior in the weeks before he left for Africa. Could these crazy accusations possibly be true? Could Michael really have been involved in the attack on Seattle? “I want to talk to my husband.”

  “I’m sorry but that’s not possible.”

  Maria felt like the bones in her body melted, and she had to fight not to slither out of her chair onto the floor. The wind was knocked from her lungs in an exhalation that was half choked cry. Michael was dead. She put her head on the table and sobbed.

  “Ma’am?”

  No response.

  “Ms. Morales? We need you to answer some more questions.”

  Maria didn’t even raise her head.

  Cassie shook her head. Amateur hour. Where did these clowns learn to question a person of interest? Infuriated, she strode over to the door and knocked sharply. This was out of her jurisdiction, but she didn’t care. She’d earned the right to break a few rules.

  Chang opened the door and was surprised to see Cassie standing there.

  “We’re in the middle of a priority one interrogation here—”

  “Thanks for the news flash. Get out and give me a minute alone with her.”

  Chang frowned. “No way. That’s
not Bureau procedure and—”

  “Do it.” The voice was unmistakable. Randall Tierney’s baritone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Moorhouse and Chang skulked out of the room.

  Cassie pulled a chair around the table so that she could sit close to Maria, and put a hand on her back. Maria flinched but did not look up, continuing to sob.

  “Ms. Morales, my name is Cassie Harden-Hernandez. I am the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and I need you to listen to me. Your husband is not dead. He’s not dead, he’s in custody, and physically, he’s fine.”

  Maria lifted her head and turned to look at Cassie, wide eyes beseeching her to explain that this was all some kind of terrible mistake.

  “However, I’m afraid it’s true that your husband is the prime suspect in the poisoning of Seattle’s drinking water. He was arrested in Africa yesterday, confessed to an American intelligence agent, and is in transit right now. That’s why you can’t see him.”

  Maria reeled.

  “You had no idea about any of this, did you?”

  Maria shook her head and started sobbing anew.

  * * *

  The president kicked off the conversation at the teleconference later that day. “Nice job with the press, Cassie.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You’ve done such a marvelous job throughout this investigation that I’d like you to continue to act as the administration’s public face on this case as it moves forward. I’ve spoken to the attorney general and he concurs. I want our legal people to focus on the trial without being distracted by the media. Second, I want to downgrade the terror alert from Red to Orange. Roger?”

  “Yes, sir.” Roger Osborne was not going to disagree today.

  Cassie didn’t hear a single grumble of dissent. For once, the hawks weren’t fear-mongering, though it was unlikely that they were feeling contrite. More likely they’d had their knuckles rapped by a president who realized how he’d been misled by their blundering.