Afraid of the Dark

by James Grippando

  “Your brother?” asked Jack.

  “No,” said Maryam.

  “I am the brother of Abukar,” said Hassan. “Abukar is Jamal’s father.”

  The terrorist recruiter, thought Jack—and then he immediately chided himself about the whole guilt-by-association thing.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Neil, seeming to recognize that Jack was momentarily tongue-tied.

  Maryam led them into the seating area and took the armchair. Jack and Neil sat on the couch facing her. Jamal’s uncle sat away from them on a barstool at the kitchen counter. He read in silence from the Koran, seeming to ignore the company.

  “It wasn’t my plan to call you,” said Maryam. “But Detective Burton from MDPD came to see me this afternoon. He told me about a lead they were pursuing. A message of some sort that was written on a cocktail napkin from that club he went to.”

  Jamal’s uncle looked up from his Koran. The mere mention of a cocktail napkin from a club on South Beach did not sit well with him.

  “What kind of message?” asked Jack.

  She opened her purse and handed Jack a paper. “Here, I wrote it down exactly as the detective described it.”

  Jack inspected it, and immediately felt chills. “Are you afraid of The Dark?” Jack said for Neil’s benefit. “It’s identical to the one I got on the night Ethan Chang was murdered. Right down to the capital T and capital D. Also written on a napkin.”

  “I know,” said Maryam. “Detective Burton seems unwilling to share his theories as to who wrote them. I wanted to hear yours.”

  Jack again caught a glimpse of Uncle Hassan. He was clearly listening from across the room, and it bothered Jack that he was pretending not to.

  “I honestly don’t have any ideas,” said Jack.

  “Detective Burton also told me about the phone call you received.”

  Jack had, of course, reported it to the police. “What did he tell you?”

  “Everything,” she said. “Except where it came from.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Yes. He said he was not at liberty to say.”

  Jack had heard of detectives keeping certain facts secret in an ongoing investigation, but he had another theory here.

  “Were you alone when you met with Detective Burton?

  “No. Hassan was with me.”

  Jack wondered if Hassan’s presence had caused the detective to hold back—if Burton had given in to the same guilt-by-association prejudice that Jack was fighting now.

  Maryam slid to the edge of her chair, her dark eyes like lasers aimed right at Jack. “I need to know where that call came from.”

  Jack looked back at her, then shifted his gaze toward Hassan. It was purely instinct, but Jack sensed that Hassan wanted to know as much as she did.

  “At the time, I didn’t know where it was coming from,” said Jack.

  “But surely you’ve checked the number,” said Maryam.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Again Jack glanced across the room at Hassan. Jack could have lied and said he didn’t know, but in the end, the balance tipped in favor of a mother’s right to know.

  “It was from a pay phone,” said Jack. “In London.”

  Maryam froze. Hassan rose and crossed the room, no longer pretending to be an outsider. “Where in London?” he asked.

  “Bethnal Green.”

  Maryam closed her eyes for several seconds, as if to absorb the news. Finally, she opened them.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Jack.

  Hassan spoke up. “That’s where my brother and I parted company. Sixteen years ago.”

  Only then did Jack pick up the hint of a British accent. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” said Hassan. “My brother is the only sympathizer of al-Shabaab in our family, though I suppose that, to you, I look like a terrorist, too.”

  Jack suddenly felt small. “No, uh—not at all.”

  Maryam said, “That area along the Mile End Road between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green underground stations is called Somaal Town. Lots of Somali ex-pats, and also some cool clubs and pubs. I met Hassan’s brother when I was visiting London one summer. He and Hassan were sharing an apartment, but they were never anything alike.”

  “Still aren’t,” said Hassan.

  “Are you saying that Jamal’s father is behind this phone call?”

  “Who knows?” said Maryam.

  “We do know this much,” said Hassan. “That area has changed over the years. It’s what some people would call eclectic, but you still have gangs, more crime. To be blunt about it, there are a lot of dead-end Somali teenage boys, which makes it a fruitful recruiting area for al-Shabaab. And there is one thing we all know about my brother.”

  “He’s a recruiter for al-Shabaab,” said Jack.

  “Exactly.”

  “I still don’t see the connection to a panicked young girl who calls me in the middle of the night to tell me that she knows who killed McKenna Mays.”

  “You haven’t looked,” said Hassan.

  Maryam was suddenly emotional. She’d held herself together well, but it was all too much. Hassan went to her and gave comfort. Tears were in her eyes as she looked at Jack.

  “Someone has to find out what happened to my son.”

  “I’m sure the police . . .” Jack stopped himself. With the resistance he’d faced at every turn—the Department of Justice, the state attorney’s office, the CIA, the private security firms, even his own fiancée—he couldn’t peddle false hope that the police would get to the truth.

  Hassan took her hand, and then looked at Jack. “Our faith teaches that when one dies, everything in this earthly life is left behind. There are no more opportunities to perform acts of righteousness and faith. But the Prophet Muhammad once said that there are three things that may continue to benefit a person after death. Charity given during life, which continues to help others. Knowledge, which grants enduring benefits. And third, a righteous child who prays for him or her.”

  Maryam wiped away a tear. “I’ve lost my righteous child,” she said. “My only son.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Jack.

  “For whatever reason, Jamal trusted you. So I trust you. And that is why I’m asking you this favor: Help me find the man who took my child away from me.”

  “I honestly don’t know what I can do.”

  “Please,” she said. “Help me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to. But I’m a lawyer, and the sad fact of the matter is that my client is dead. I’m not a private investigator.”

  “You missed the operative words,” said Hassan. “Jamal trusted you, so we trust you.”

  “Right now,” said Maryam, “we don’t trust a lot of people.”

  Jack wasn’t sure where this was headed, but it would have taken a heart of stone not to at least listen.

  “All right,” he said. “What is it that you want me to do?”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Jack took a seat at the bar in Cy’s Place, where Theo was mixing cocktails for a jazz-loving crowd. Neil had agreed to meet him after work, and Jack wanted to bounce Maryam’s request off him. For once, Jack was the one to arrive early, and he had a little time to kill.

  He ordered a beer and updated his Facebook status again—his fourth update in the two hours that had passed since he’d said good-bye to Maryam Wakefield. He hoped that Andie—wherever she was—would see it and call him. He didn’t want her to worry about his safety, but he felt she should know about the threat against his grandfather.

  “Until you have a wife and children . . .”

  Jack had driven from the hotel with plenty on his mind, but Maryam’s tears had triggered some very serious thoughts . . . about children. Specifically, about the teachings of Muhammad and the short list of things that may be of benefit after death—charity, knowledge, and a child who prays for you. A child. Maybe even more than one. Jack was an only child. Andie
was adopted. Funny how little they’d talked about how those experiences might shape their own family after marriage. The last time—the only time, really—that they had seriously discussed children was right before Andie left for her latest undercover assignment. In fact, it had happened at this very spot in Theo’s bar.

  Now, with the buzz of Cy’s Place in the background, Jack was thinking about how awkward it had been.

  “Do you want kids?”

  The question left Andie coughing on her vodka tonic. “What brought that on?”

  “I sort of sprang the engagement ring on you at my surprise birthday party. You said yes on the spot. But looking back on it, we’ve never had a serious talk about kids.”

  “We’ve been engaged for only three weeks.”

  “Most people discuss it before they even get engaged. Probably we would have, too, if the leap from dating to a marriage proposal hadn’t been so spontaneous. Maybe it’s the reason we still haven’t gotten around to picking a wedding date.”

  Jack hadn’t intended to put a chill on the night, but the awkward silence that gripped their conversation was unlike any Jack had felt with Andie.

  “Do I want kids?” she said, teeing up the question once more. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really? How many?”

  “At least one. Maybe two.”

  “Really?”

  Really. What a word. What a response. I like my coffee black. Really? The Sox are going to the World Series this year. Really? I’d like to saw off your right hand and superglue it to your chin. Really?

  “Yes. Really.”

  Andie’s cell rang. Their conversation ended right there. The call was from the assistant special agent in charge of the Miami Field Office, telling her to pack her bags and report for her assignment. Two minutes later she was out the door, seemingly relieved to leave Jack alone with the seven-pound, eight-ounce elephant in the room.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Neil as he pulled up the stool beside Jack.

  He was actually right on time and had dropped everything at the office to meet Jack on a moment’s notice. Now he was apologizing for having kept Jack waiting. Classic Neil Goderich.

  “No problem,” said Jack.

  Theo came over and wiped down the countertop. “What are you drinking, Mr. Goodwrench?”

  It was just Theo’s way; “Goderich” had been “Goodwrench” as long as Jack could remember.

  “Do you have milk shakes?”

  “Do you have testicles?” said Theo.

  “So . . . yes?” said Neil.

  Jack translated. “Actually, he means ‘no.’ ”

  “Bummer,” said Neil, letting it roll right off his back. “How about hot tea?”

  It was happy hour, but apparently hot tea was something Theo could tolerate at his bar. He headed for the kitchen, and Jack picked up where his voice-mail message to Neil had left off.

  “Maryam Wakefield wants to sue Chuck Mays.”

  “That much I gathered from your message,” said Neil. “What for?”

  “Money. A wrongful-death theory, I presume. She thinks Jamal was set up.”

  “How?”

  Jack emptied the rest of his bottle into his beer glass. “Mays has been working for a few years now on something called Project Round Up.”

  “Yeah, Jamal mentioned that. But he didn’t seem to know much about it.”

  “No one does, except for Chuck. Jamal’s mother thinks it was something illegal, or at the very least not totally on the up-and-up.”

  “All these guys in the data-mining business push the envelope,” said Neil.

  “True. But what makes this situation a little different is that after McKenna was killed and Jamal disappeared, the FBI actually came in and found encrypted messages on Jamal’s computer. Even Andie confirmed that those messages exist, but I can’t get anything more than the fact that they relate in some way to terrorist organizations.”

  “And Mom refuses to believe that her son was in any way connected to terrorists.”

  “Beyond that. She thinks Chuck Mays needed a pawn to venture into a forbidden area of cyberspace as part of the research and development for Project Round Up. That way, if the shit hit the fan and the FBI swooped in with a search warrant, Chuck Mays had his own in-house Muslim to point the terrorist finger at.”

  “Chuck used him as the fall guy.”

  “That’s the theory.”

  Theo was back. “One hot tea,” he said as he placed the cup in front of Neil.

  Jack’s cell rang. The display read PRIVATE. “This could be Andie,” he said.

  “Go ahead and take it,” said Neil.

  Jack answered with anticipation, but it wasn’t Andie. It was Dr. Spigelman.

  “I’m sorry, who?”

  “The doctor who gave CPR to Ethan Chang at Lincoln Road Mall. Do you have a minute?”

  Jack glanced at Neil, who was multitasking between the list of tapas on the bar menu and the e-mails on his BlackBerry.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Jack told the doctor.

  “I’ve been following your case for Jamal Wakefield in the newspaper, and I know that the police have been looking into a possible connection to Mr. Chang’s death. Anyway, you may or may not know this, but the medical examiner’s office just released the toxicology report a few hours ago.”

  “I did not know that,” said Jack. “What did it show?”

  “That’s the reason for my call. It’s extremely vague.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I also wanted to let you know that I’ve been following this toxicology issue very closely. For reasons of my own safety.”

  Jack was reaching for his beer, but that halted him. “What kind of danger are you in?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I’ve been thinking a great deal about that night on Lincoln Road Mall. Something wasn’t quite right—from a medical standpoint, I mean. There’s no doubt that Mr. Chang went into cardiac arrest, but the medical examiner states that it was induced by asphyxiation. Suffocation, in layman’s terms.”

  “Someone strangled him?”

  “No. Suffocation induced by a toxin.”

  “What kind of toxin?”

  “The toxicology report says it cannot be identified.”

  “That sounds weird.”

  “To say the least. And I have a theory for that. Have you seen the mall’s security tape where Chang has that brief encounter with someone who’s probably just pretending to be blind?”

  “I haven’t seen it, but I heard about it.”

  “Action News loaded the key frames on their Web site about an hour ago. I’m sure all the networks have it up by now. Check it out. Chang clearly gets stuck in the leg with the white mobility cane. An hour a later he was in convulsions and dropped dead. I believe that something was administered at that point of contact.”

  “But the initial autopsy showed no sign of injection.”

  “That’s what has me so worried. It must have been a toxin that’s lethal even if just a small amount comes in contact with the skin. Possibly a synthetic, like VX, or—”

  “Nerve gas?”

  “In liquid form, yes. A ten-milligram drop of VX can kill you. A raindrop is eighty milligrams.”

  “But it doesn’t just fall from the sky like rain.”

  “Look, I know I must sound paranoid, but I researched this. Terrorists in Japan used sarin to kill commuters on the Tokyo subway back in the 1990s. VX is even more deadly, but there are ways to get it. You steal it. You buy it from some Russian mobster who smuggled it out of the former Soviet Union. Whatever.”

  Jack paused, as the conversation was getting a little flaky. “Did you say you researched this?”

  “Yes, don’t you see what’s going on? Surely the medical examiner knows what kind of toxin was involved. This report is a cover-up. Maybe the government doesn’t want to send the public into a panic over fears of chemical and biological warfare.”

/>   A retiree with time enough to dream up conspiracy theories. Great.

  “Doctor, I’m not saying you’re paranoid, but—”

  “Please, I need help. I don’t know why the medical examiner won’t say what killed Ethan Chang. The point is that if I came in contact with the same toxin when I was helping that man—or even if I just breathed in the fumes—I need to start on an antidote.”

  His voice was becoming increasingly urgent, and Jack needed to reel him in. “Okay, I hear your concern. But let’s think about this for a second. If you were exposed, wouldn’t you be dead already, or at least showing some kind of symptoms?”

  “Not necessarily. Chang got a direct application and died in an hour. Depending on how much I got and how it got into my system, it could take weeks to see the effects.”

  “All right,” said Jack, trying to keep him calm. “Let’s look at this another way. What would be the downside of starting yourself on a nerve-gas antidote as a precaution?”

  “For some of these synthetics the antidote is itself a toxin. I can’t just be self-prescribing willy-nilly. I need to know exactly what kind of toxin was involved.”

  “What have you done so far?”

  “I’ve plied every professional contact I’ve made over the past forty years, and I can’t get anywhere. I’ll be honest, I’m no fan of lawyers, but I know when I need one. You seemed like the logical choice. You’re plugged into this already with the work you’ve done for Jamal Wakefield.”

  It still sounded flaky to Jack. “So you want a lawyer to go into court and get a judge to force the medical examiner to reveal the toxin that killed Ethan Chang. Is that what you’re asking?”

  “Bingo. If the son of a former governor can’t cut through red tape, who can?”

  Jack glanced at Neil, who was finishing his tea and trying to get Theo’s attention.

  “Mr. Swyteck?”

  Jack heard the doctor’s voice, but he was thinking. It had all started with a Gitmo detainee who spoke no English. Several bodies later, Jack was now discussing nerve gas with the second potential client of the day who was—in someone’s eyes—nothing more than collateral damage in one hell of a cover-up.