“You will have noticed the presence of Lt. Andrew Page of the Anti-Terrorism Task Force and Lt. Giovanna Maglione of the Hate Crimes Unit. That’s because this brutal and cowardly attack on five women who were walking to a church service is being considered both a hate crime and a terrorist attack. Five men, shouting and yelling and firing weapons and driving one of those big pickup trucks came riding down the street behind unsuspecting women, like the KKK, firing into their backs. All of the victims were shot in the back. The fact that the victims were all Muslims makes it both terrorism and hatred, and the fact that all were shot in the back makes it cowardly. Just about an hour ago, patrol officers from our Department, with assistance from the United States Capitol Police, arrested several suspects. We will not release any information about them until our investigation proceeds and progresses. That is, until we have all the facts. Suffice it to say, however, that we are confident that we have the people who are responsible for tonight’s horrible tragedy. You all know Sgt. Jerome Gregory from the Public Affairs Office. He will provide hourly updates throughout the night, and I’ll hold a formal briefing in my office at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Thank you all for yo—”
“Chief! Please! Just one question: about the KKK reference!”
“Why don’t you read up on that particular group of cowards and then ask your question in the morning?” And with that he stepped down from his step stool to stand close to his two lieutenants.
“We’ve already got a dossier being compiled on these guys, Chief,” the ATTF lieutenant whispered. “We’ve made contact in Indiana where they’re from, and the authorities there are being cooperative. We’ll make damn sure you’re ready for that morning briefing.”
The Chief nodded his thanks, and Andy Page followed his troops as they all piled into their SUV. Page might or might not have heard the questions yelled at him by the reporters but he never looked in their direction. He looked instead at his colleague, Gianna Maglione. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling,” he said to her, moving his eyes from hers to peer at his team.
“I’m still numb from shock, thank goodness, so right now I’m not feeling much of anything. But I know that can’t last forever.”
He stuck out his hand and she shook it, and he climbed into his SUV with his team. She searched out and found her team and she reached out an arm to them while she leaned in to listen to the Chief.
“I don’t have to tell you how sorry I am about Officer Ali.”
“No, sir.”
“I wish I could let you all go home but I can’t.”
“I know, and we don’t want to go home.”
“And I know that,” he said with a sad grin. “Some of you at the hospital and some of you at the office—you decide who—but I want the Hate Crimes and the ATTF offices staffed around the clock until this thing calms down.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and when he was gone she and her team wrapped their arms around each other and stood together in a tight circle for a long while without speaking. Then she let them decide who would join Eric at the hospital and who would stay at the office with her, and she was not surprised that the guys opted to join Eric and the women to stay with her.
She pulled some bills from her pocket and gave the money to Bobby. “The food is pretty good in the hospital cafeteria and it’s open all night, but order out if you’d rather. I want somebody with the Ali family at all times—you all can decide who. And I want constant updates on the woman who’s critical. We’ll meet at the office at eight. I’ll provide breakfast. Then, after the Chief’s press conference and unless something major has occurred, half of you will go home and get some sleep; then you’ll relieve the others. Am I clear? I don’t want to hear any arguments and I don’t want anybody to disobey me.”
They hugged each other then, individually. “Anybody who wants to ride with me can do that. And somebody call the Chinese place and order enough food to last us all night. I’m buying.” Too bad alcohol isn’t allowed in the police station, was her final thought before shifting into what Mimi called “Lieutenant Mode,” because the lieutenant needed a drink. A strong one.
Mimi, who had joined her colleagues to watch the Chief’s press conference on the big-screen television in the newsroom, was feeling the same need. She stood beside Joe Zemekis who she considered a friend and who’d been at the paper as long as she had, though he’d spent several years on the National Desk and therefore out of town more than he was in it. When the paper cut back not only on the number of reporters it employed, but on the nature of the work those who remained would do, Joe came home. He still looked like Tom Hanks, only with more salt than pepper in his hair and beard. They spent a quick moment whining about being on the sidelines while a potentially huge story was developing. They also agreed that they’d never seen or heard the Chief so controlled and so solemn. There was the to-be-expected mumbling and grousing at the announcement that this was to be a statement only, no-questions event, but it was halfhearted at best. The current White House shenanigans notwithstanding, nobody could realistically expect facts in such a short time. The fact that the Chief announced that one of the victims was a D.C. cop and a member of the Hate Crimes Unit stunned the newsroom staff, half of whom snuck surreptitious glances at Mimi to see whether she already knew about Cassandra Ali, but only city editor Tyler Carson knew her well enough to be able to read the truth behind her blank stare: Gianna had already told Mimi. It was the Chief’s stinging rebuke of their colleague, though, that really galvanized the room.
“Holy shit! I knew Carl was aggressive but that’s ridiculous!” Joe said.
She frowned. “That’s not his name, is it? Carl?”
Joe laughed. “No. We just call him that. For Bernstein, you know? ’Cause he thinks he’s such a badass.”
The room erupted when the Chief leveled his second salvo at Weasel Boy, the “do they pay you to be stupid” one, the one that brought the executive editor out of his office to glare at metro editor Todd Wassily, Weasel Boy’s mentor and protector. Then it got deathly quiet, first watching the scuffle that quieted their colleague, and then tuning in to the several bombshells dropped by the Chief: that suspects were in custody; that the attack against the women was being treated as both a hate crime and a terrorist act; and his comparing the men who committed the crime to the KKK.
“Holy shit!” Joe exclaimed again and rushed over to his desk.
“You don’t want to miss this,” Mimi called out to him as the executive editor stalked to the front of the room, veins bulging in his forehead.
“What a fucking clusterfuck! Was what’s-his-name, the new guy, our only reporter on the scene? Somebody answer me, goddammit!” And here Mimi had thought the Exec had calmed down in his old age.
“Yeah, Stu, he was,” Wassily managed.
“Who’s at the hospital? Who’s following up on the arrest? Who’s inside that mosque? Who’s following up with Hate Crimes and Anti-Terrorism? Who’s canvassing the neighborhood?” He looked all around as he waited for answers, the vein throbbing and pounding, his eyes wild and bulging. “All editors, my office, now. All reporters, be ready to deploy. And when what’s his name gets back, send him to my office.”
Mimi met Carson’s eyes as he followed the other editors into the Exec’s office, and his look told her to get ready for major action. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to call Gianna though she was certain that neither of them would get home this Friday night. She felt Joe materialize beside her. “Looks like we might get to suit up and play after all,” he said.
“I hope so,” Mimi said. “It would be nice to function like a real newspaper again,” and they both indulged in a back-in-the-day moment.
“Patterson! Zemekis!” They heard their names shouted and followed the sound to see city editor Tyler Carson waving them over, and they sprinted toward him like young reporters, not caring what their assignment would be as long as they had a piece of this story. There was more than enough to go around.
Mike Holton and his son, Samuel, had stopped talking. Had refused to say another word without a lawyer present, and that was all right with the cops who had stopped them, arrested them, and impounded their truck. Ricky Slater was talking. He was talking enough for both the Holtons. In fact, they couldn’t get Ricky Slater to stop talking, and the more he talked, the more bizarre the story he told. Bizarre and unbelievable. Incredible. It seemed that the lawyer Mike Holton was asking for—the “general lawyer” was what he kept saying—was the attorney general. The man thought the attorney general of the United States was a lawyer for hire by citizens—holy shit!!! Wait until Captain Healy heard this! A man of moderate imagination on a normal day—this would crash his internal hard drive.
CHAPTER TWO
Arrests Made in Murders of Muslim Women
Police Call Attacks Terrorist Hate Crimes
By J.J. Zemekis Jr.
Staff Writer
Less than an hour after five Muslim women were mowed down in a hail of bullets while walking to evening service at their midtown mosque, three men were arrested while apparently driving to the White House to see the president. Police Chief Benjamin Jefferson quickly called the attack an act of terrorism as well as a hate crime, and he likened it to the actions of the KKK. “It also is an act of almost unimaginable cowardice,” Chief Jefferson said. “What other kind of person would attack a group of women walking to church from behind? It’s the kind of thing cowards do.”
Police would not release any details of the arrests but did confirm eyewitness accounts that the assailants were driving a silver or gray pickup truck with out-of-state license plates, and that all of the occupants of the truck appeared to be white males. All of the Muslim women were Black. At least two of the women were pronounced dead at University Hospital Trauma Center. A third is in critical condition, while the condition of the other two was withheld in accordance with the wishes of the next of kin.
The alleged assailants were arrested by the SWAT team after their truck was spotted by patrol officers near the Capitol. “Every cop in D.C. was on the lookout for this truck,” said Lt. Andrew Page of the SWAT Unit. When asked why he thought the men were headed to the White House, Chief Jefferson replied, “Why did they do anything they did here this evening?”
Muslim Women’s Walk to Mosque
Act of Defiance and Faith
By M. Montgomery Patterson
Staff Writer
Aisha Ali and her best friends are devout Muslims, but walking to their mosque for evening prayers last night was a departure for them because women traditionally do not attend evening prayers at the mosque. Men do. Women pray in the home. “But we became so distressed at the anti-Muslim language and behavior, especially coming from the highest levels of our government,” she said through her tears. “We spoke to our husbands and told them we wanted to attend evening prayers as a way to protest the hatred directed toward us as much as to practice our religion in public and with pride.”
“They had our support,” said her husband, Jamal Ali, through his own tears. “Our mosque is more progressive than some and we don’t ban women. We welcome them.”
Mr. and Mrs. Ali wept throughout our interview because their 25-year-old daughter, Cassandra, who was walking to the mosque with her mother, died from the wounds she suffered in the attack. But they wanted to talk about her, and they wanted to ask why so many people seem to be so willing to deny them their right to freedom of religion. “We are American-born,” said Jamal Ali, “as are our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.”
“We live our Muslim faith,” Aisha Ali said, “but we have been questioned about our daughter’s name. Cassandra is not a traditional Islamic name.” She had to stop speaking so her husband continued for her.
“Both our mothers are named Cassandra. How unusual is that? So when our daughter was born, it seemed so logical to name her after her grandmothers. Now we must tell them that she is . . .” And he had to stop speaking.
Violent History of the KKK
By J.J. Zemekis Jr.
Staff Writer
The letters stand for Ku Klux Klan and they were once as well-known as other groupings of three letters, like FBI or CIA. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the KKK the oldest American hate group. It was formed in 1865 specifically to harass, intimidate, and lynch freed slaves primarily in the South, but it quickly spread throughout the country, and its hate tactics expanded to include Jews, homosexuals, and even Catholics. They were also called night riders because of their habit of galloping their horses in the dead of night to the homes of rural Blacks. The Klansmen wore hoods that covered their faces and often carried fiery torches that they threw into the homes of their targets. They would also shoot into the homes of targets, or fire at them as they ran.
“That’s what that big pickup truck reminded me of,” said 89-year old Arthur Crawford, an eyewitness to the attack on the Muslim women. “I grew up down South and I remember seeing them as a boy, but mostly I remember my parents telling me how they’d ride up on their horses, whooping and hollering their rebel yells, shooting people in the back as they tried to escape. I thought I’d seen the last of that kind of thing.”
They weren’t just cops; they were elite cops, among the best of the best, so of course they were at work. All of them—except the one who’d been so brutally and stupidly murdered the previous day. They were in their private place, their sanctuary—the Think Tank they called it—where they would usually sift and sort and talk through the information and evidence that would lead them to the perpetrator of the hate crime they were charged with investigating. But they knew who’d murdered the absent member of the Hate Crimes Unit. Other cops had caught them and arrested them and charged them with the murder of Cassandra Ali and two other women. Charged them with committing a hate crime and a terrorist act. But that knowledge did nothing to soothe or comfort the remaining members of the Hate Crimes Unit of the D.C. Police Department: Lt. Gianna Maglione, the boss; Sgt. Eric Ashby, her second in command; detectives Alice Long, Bobby Gilliam, and Kenny Chang; and officers Linda Lopez and Tim McCreedy. No more Officer Cassandra Ali.
Everybody had a newspaper and had read the articles about the men who had murdered their Cassie, and their disgust at the hatred that had bred and fostered the level of stupidity that led five men to leave their homes and drive across four states to attempt the murder of five women, knew no bounds. But it was the story written by M. Montgomery Patterson that captured them. After reading almost every one of her stories they always asked the Boss, “How does she know the stuff she knows?!” and the reply always was, “Reporters have sources, too, just like cops do.” They asked the Boss because the reporter was Mimi Patterson, the Boss’s partner in life and love, and they never quite believed that Patterson the journalist didn’t get at least some of her information from Maglione the lover. But if they really believed that, they’d have to believe the Boss was lying when she always denied advance knowledge of Patterson’s stories—and the Boss didn’t lie.
“That was really interesting, about how Cassie got her name,” Bobby Gilliam said sadly. “I used to wonder—” he began, but the sadness overcame him and he couldn’t finish.
“People must really trust her to tell her the things they do,” Linda Lopez said. “I mean, I bet they’ve never told anyone else how Cassie got her name.”
“You’re probably right,” Gianna said, “but don’t look at me for answers. I was here with you guys all night. Ask Eric—he was at the hospital with her.” And all eyes turned to their sergeant. He shrugged and yawned and was about to ask his boss if she was certain that she ordered breakfast when there was a knock at the door and it opened before anyone could respond. The food had arrived—three carts’ full—accompanied by two of the staff of the Phillips Family Diner and followed by Delores and Darlene Phillips. The spirits inside the Think Tank almost lifted.
Gianna stood up to greet the Phillips sisters and was surprised and pleased to receive hugs
from both of them, along with their condolences. They had met several months ago when the women’s bar the sisters owned had been targeted by right-wing religious extremists, with the cooperation of a cadre of anti-gay cops. To Gianna’s everlasting dismay, the Phillips sisters had never heard of the Hate Crimes Unit, had no idea that there were cops whose job it was to protect them, and Officer Cassandra Ali was one of the first HCU cops they encountered. Since then, Mimi and Gianna had visited the club, called the Snatch, and not only had Cassie become a regular but she’d also become good friends with Darlene Phillips, whose red-rimmed eyes testified to how deeply she was feeling the loss of her newfound friend.
“Thank you both for coming,” Gianna said.
Dee Phillips shook her head. She was the younger of the sisters, but was the face of their business. Impeccably dressed as always, businesslike as always, she made it clear that no thanks was necessary. “We will always be grateful to you, Lieutenant, for standing by us, for standing with us, for standing up for us when no one else would.”
“We were just doing our jobs, Ms. Phillips. You know that.”
“You did more than just your job, Lieutenant, and you know that,” Dee said. “You and your people gave hatred a hard kick in the ass. You let people know that they couldn’t treat us like we were less than nothing. And now for that same kind of stupid, ugly shit to take the life of Officer Ali—that sweet, kind young woman—it makes me mad as hell, Lieutenant!”
Dee had raised her voice and everybody stopped eating and looked their way, ready to spring to the defense of their boss if necessary. They were on edge. It would take very little to tip them over. “I’m just glad we’re not the ones who had to find the killers. I couldn’t be responsible,” Gianna said.
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