by Mark Terry
Behind her Kalakar swore and tore after her, his footsteps thudding in the dark.
Malika ran, dodging between trees so close together Kalakar could never follow. Low-hanging branches clawed at her. She felt something catch at her cheek. Pain slashed across her forehead and she was certain she was bleeding.
She kept running, stumbling over roots, through brush, the sounds of Kalakar crashing behind her slowly fading.
Malika stopped running, a stitch in her side, her breath hard in her chest. She strained her ears, listening for sounds of Kalakar. But he had stopped.
His voice then, drifted through the woods. “Malika, I will go back to your parents’ house and hurt your mother if you don’t come out.”
Tears rolled down her face. She believed he might. But she also believed her father would be there. This had something to do with her father, and if Kalakar didn’t have Malika, her father would not help Kalakar.
Slowly, as quietly as possible, she crawled into a clump of shrubs and huddled as close to the ground as she could. In her hand she clutched one of her homework pages, crumpled into a ball.
Waiting.
Kalakar seemed to melt out of the shadows. He caught her with both of his hands and shook her. She let out a scream, struggling, flailing with hands and feet.
“Not again,” he said. “Let’s go.” He gripped her wrist like a handcuff and dragged her back toward the truck.
Malika had been dropping balled up papers with her name on them when she had an opportunity. She prayed to Allah that someone would find one.
CHAPTER 57
Derek studied the dregs at the bottom of his Styrofoam cup. He had gone through three cups of black coffee and, as far as he could tell, it was having no effect on him. Glancing at his watch, he noted that it was closing in on midnight and he was in need of some sleep. He considered saying so to Connelly, but figured the detective was trying to push him into screwing up and admitting to something besides really bad judgment.
Connelly, noting the time-check, mildly said, “Am I boring you?”
“A little bit.”
Connelly’s eyes grew big. “Well, fucking excuse me!”
Derek shrugged. “You asked.” He had been, in his opinion, pretty cooperative. Of course, the LAPD detective wouldn’t see it that way.
Connelly leaned forward and tried to look menacing. Derek thought Connelly should give up on menacing. He wasn’t intimidated by Connelly. He was tired. His mind was on other things. He wondered about O’Reilly. He wondered what Kalakar was up to.
Connelly growled, “I think you’re holding something back. If you don’t cooperate, we’re going to spend the night—”
Derek leaned back in his chair and yawned.
“—going over this.”
Abruptly the door opened and Officer Betty Andine stepped in. “I’ve got five possibles. You guys coming?”
Connelly looked embarrassed. Derek smiled. “Sure.”
Ghazala Seddiqi sat in her living room staring at the TV, which was playing the local news. She wasn’t paying any attention to it. Her ears were tuned to the sound of the telephone, hoping, praying.
Yes, praying, praying constantly, begging Allah to deliver her daughter back to them.
John paced. When he had gotten home, she had lit into him, furious that he had brought this on their family. The argument had been like a brushfire: hot, explosive, and suddenly over. She had clung to him, sobbing into his chest while he patted her shoulder.
It wasn’t completely his fault. He admitted to her that he didn’t know what Kalakar had planned. All Kalakar wanted was the flight route and GPS coordinates along the route of Governor Stark’s plane the next day. He was baffled as to what Kalakar could do with the information. Thinking of September 11 and the jihadists who had used airplanes as weapons, he speculated to Ghazala that maybe Kalakar was going to rent a small plane and crash it into the governor’s plane.
She didn’t know what to make of it either. She had commented that doing that seemed complicated and difficult. Wouldn’t it be easier, she had asked, to just rent a small plane and fly it into the building where the governor was speaking?
John had shrugged.
She wondered if Kalakar had a missile, something he could use to shoot down the plane. John shook his head, saying those antiaircraft missiles were so tightly controlled that Homeland Security would have sent warnings out to ATC and the FAA. He said it was something everybody in the field was afraid of, but nobody believed they were on the loose. It was the most obvious idea, but the least likely, because the difficulties in actually getting hold of an antiaircraft missile seemed insurmountable.
The sound of the phone trilling was like an ice pick straight through her heart. Ghazala had expected Kalakar to call John’s cell phone, not the home phone. John lunged for the phone. “Hello?”
She rushed to be next to him, hands twisting together.
John nodded. He gave Ghazala a glance, a “she’s-okay” look. She clutched his arm, suddenly feeling the weight of the world bearing down on her. Her knees felt weak.
“I want to talk to her, Kalakar. Right now.”
John’s face brightened. “Malika, are you okay? Are you all right?”
Ghazala rushed down the hallway to the bedroom and picked up the extension. She heard her daughter’s voice saying, “I’m really tired.”
“Oh, honey,” she cried. “It’s Mama. I love you. Are you okay?”
“Mama! Mama! Yes, I’m—”
Ghazala heard shuffling and rustling over the phone and then Kalakar came back on speaking in Urdu. “She will be fine, Ghazala. If your husband does what I ask.”
“She’d better be,” she shrilled into the phone. “You had just better—”
John’s voice cut her off. “Ghazala. Enough. Kalakar and I need to talk. Hang up.”
“Not until he promises me. Promise me. You will not harm my daughter. Vow it. On the Koran. In Allah’s name. You will not harm my daughter.”
There was only silence from the other end of the line. John said, “Ghazala, please.”
“If John does what I ask, your daughter will not be harmed. Whether she stays safe is up to him.”
John said, “Ghazala! Enough.”
She bit her lip, thinking of John’s warning, the one he didn’t say, but was there nonetheless: don’t provoke him, he’s holding a gun to our daughter’s head.
Feeling ill, she gently set down the phone and began to weep.
Derek and Connelly and Betty Andine walked out to Connelly’s car in the parking lot of the PAB. It was 12:15 and Derek had voiced his thoughts: “We’re going to drop in on these people’s homes asking about their daughter this late at night?”
Connelly scowled at him in the harsh glare of the sodium lights. “You’re the one who runs around acting like your hair’s on fire, gotta do whatever you can to stop the next attack. What’s a little door-to-door late at night?”
“We’re going to scare the living shit out of these people.”
Betty Andine stopped and turned to him. Her broad face was serious. “You have another suggestion?”
“No.” He took a sip of the coffee he had brought with him.
Connelly unlocked his car and they climbed in. Derek took the backseat. He said, “I’m impressed with your detective work, Officer Andine, but can you maybe explain it to me?”
Connelly fired up the car and pulled from the lot. Andine turned to face him. “My squad and I try to have a very good, close relationship with schools in the area. I regularly meet the principals and counselors. I keep a database of them. I have their e-mail addresses and their cell phone numbers and their home numbers so I can contact them if I really need to. So we sorted out a list of possible elementary and middle schools in the region, then I got some officers making calls, offering to fax or e-mail the photographs of the girl. I got enough bodies working it that we had some hits.”
Derek put the coffee in the cup holder and nod
ded. “Again, impressive.” He was puzzled as to their motives. Cooperation was undoubtedly good, but he was surprised by it.
Andine seemed to sense his thoughts. She said, “That little girl doesn’t make sense to me. But she’s definitely terrified.”
He nodded. He didn’t know what to say. But finally it occurred to him that there was something he should say. “Thank you.”
Andine smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Ghazala thought her heart might stop when the telephone rang. It was very late. It had to be Kalakar. What would he want now?
From the look on John’s face, he was having the same thoughts. She saw that his hand shook as he picked up the phone. She ran for the other phone to listen in.
“Hello, Mr. Seddiqi?”
“Yes?”
Ghazala thought the voice was familiar, but couldn’t place it right away.
“This is Lawrence Brennan, the principal at your daughter’s school.”
Ghazala put her hand on her chest, listening. What was this all about?
“Yes, Mr. Brennan. It’s rather late.”
Brennan continued on. “Yes, I’m sorry. This is a little unusual. I was contacted a short time ago by a police officer with the LAPD’s Juvenile Crimes Unit. They had a photograph of a girl running away from someone. She looked terrified. They were trying to identify the girl and they had reason to believe she might have attended our school. I thought the girl looked like Malika.”
Ghazala clutched the phone so hard she thought the plastic casing might break. Her brain was a whir of conflicting thoughts: Tried to run away? Terrified? The LAPD was looking for her?
John said, “Well, Mr. Brennan, thanks for calling, but Malika’s just fine. She’s in her bed sleeping right now.”
Ghazala bit down on her hand. She wanted to scream. What did this mean?
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure. But thank you for letting us know. Have a good night.”
The phone clicked off. John appeared at the bedroom door a moment later. His face was twisted with worry. “Throw some things in a bag. We’re leaving right now.”
She stared at him. “No,” she said, shaking her head hard. “No. He’ll call. Kalakar will call. We have to stay here in case he calls.”
“The police might come to check on this. If they take me in for questioning, I won’t be able to go to work. If I can’t do that—”
Fear was like a living thing, a crab that burrowed inside you, lived under your skin, its pincers pinching and clicking and tearing at flesh. “But—”
“I’ll change the message on the machine,” John said. “Kalakar’s got my cell phone number, too. Hurry. We have to get out of here.”
CHAPTER 58
Cassandra O’Reilly pulled her car to a stop and sat there for a moment in the bath of flashing red and blue lights. She felt ill, seriously ill. She knew exhaustion was part of it. Too much travel, no sleep, too much stress, a bullet to her right shoulder. She had been lucky. The round tore a big chunk out of her trapezius, missed the bone, her neck, her carotid artery, her head, and any significant nerve.
Her shoulder was packed in gauze and she wore a sling to give it some rest. She was also downing Vicodin, which was alternately making her feel sleepy, high, or nauseated. The doctors had encouraged her to stay the night in the hospital. Her bosses in D.C. had told her to write up her report and come home. The various functionaries who had their fingers in the pie here in L.A. had told her to write up her report, go home, and don’t come back.
Yet here she was, following up on a report that the body of Imam Ibrahim Sheik Muhammad had been found in a turnout in Griffith Park.
An L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy trudged toward her. O’Reilly rolled down the window and held up her identification. The deputy brushed blonde hair out of her eyes and studied the identification. “National Intelligence. I guess you do learn something new every day.”
“I need to talk to the detectives and see the body.”
The deputy, who was probably in her thirties and looked like she was a wannabe actress, entirely too glamorous to be a cop, eyed her for a moment. “If I might say so, Agent, you don’t look so good.”
O’Reilly pushed open her car door, forcing the deputy to step backward. She wished she had a smart comment ready. For a moment, she swayed on her feet. The deputy reached out and braced her arm.
“Whoa, you been drinking?”
“I got shot a couple hours ago. How about you? You having a good day?”
She brushed past the deputy and walked toward the crime scene. Portable lights turned night into harsh, unforgiving day.
The sheriff’s deputies worked the scene. A handful of investigators watched, one from the Sheriff’s Department, two from LAPD. O’Reilly handed over identification and waited for the inevitable skepticism. She was surprised when the LAPD detective, an Asian who introduced himself as Peter Lee, said, “You were chasing this guy when that shootout happened, right?”
She nodded.
“Well, somebody shot him. Looks like point-blank. Any idea who did it?”
“Kalakar,” she said, and explained.
Peter Lee nodded. “Go on and take a look, then.”
He followed her over to where the forensic unit was working the scene. Peter Lee called out, “Hoshi. Got a second?”
A female investigator wearing a jumpsuit looked up from what she was doing and padded over. She looked Korean, young, pretty, her long dark hair pulled back off a face with high cheekbones. “I’m working here, Pete. What?”
Lee introduced O’Reilly to Officer Hoshi Sato. O’Reilly said, “Who found him?”
“LAPD patrol car on a routine drive-by. You want to talk to them?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know what she wanted. “Mind if I look around?”
Sato shrugged. “It happened right here. There was another vehicle, probably a pickup—”
“Probably a Ford F150. Pretty good bet we know who the shooter is. Pakistani terrorist calls himself Kalakar, full name is Miraj Mohammad Khan.”
“Ah. Okay. Thanks.”
“But how do you know?”
“Tire tracks.”
O’Reilly checked the ground. The turnout was dirt and gravel. It wasn’t exactly muddy, but the ground was soft. She asked why the ground was so soft.
“Rained pretty hard a couple days ago. Still drying out here, I guess.”
“So it’s okay if I look around a bit?”
“We’ll tell you when you get in the way.”
I bet you will, O’Reilly thought.
O’Reilly returned to her car and retrieved a flashlight from her Go Pack. Returning to the scene, she walked around the perimeter of the white Cadillac and the crime scene. A crime-scene team and somebody she suspected was with the Medical Examiner’s Office was processing the body of the imam. She tried to keep her distance.
She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly. But the ground was soft enough to reveal footprints, and she was curious to see if she could identify footprints belonging to the little girl, whoever she was. Detective Lee let her wander around, but he was keeping an eye on her.
There had been so many people through the scene that footprints seemed obliterated. She called out. “Officer Sato, did you make casts or photographs of footprints? Were there any?”
Sato, looking frustrated by the interruption, said, “Yes. Besides the two patrol officers’ footprints, we found two others beside the victim’s. One’s a child. The other is an adult.”
“Where did you find them?”
Sato pointed to where a section of the turnout was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. O’Reilly walked over and studied the shuffle of prints in the mud. She reflected that in books and TV the footprints were always nice and neat, not overlapping. In real life, people couldn’t stand still. Their own feet overlapped. They tapped their toes and rocked on their heels and rolled their feet and fidgeted around. That’s what she saw her
e, but by careful study she could differentiate what she thought were three separate pairs of prints, one clearly smaller like a child’s.
She contemplated the footprints, trying to imagine what had happened here. Scanning the ground wider, she moved in wide arcs around the scene. Peter Lee walked over and asked, “What are you doing?”
She shrugged. “Just trying to get a sense of things.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on? I just called the L.A. office here. They’re a little surprised you’re here.”