“This is it,” Durkin said.
As they approached the back door, a Somali student emerged, pushing a bicycle. He wore a kufi on his head, a paisley shirt, and blue jeans. Stride didn’t need to show a badge. The kid knew the look of cops.
“Does Malik Noon live here?” Stride asked.
“Top of the stairs,” the young man replied, “but he’s not here.”
“When did you last see him?”
“A week ago. Why are you looking for Malik?”
“We just have some questions for him,” Stride said.
The Somali student shrugged and climbed onto his bicycle. He didn’t look at them as he headed down the alley, with his back straight and his arms outstretched to the handlebars. He pedaled fast.
“He knows what questions we want to ask,” Durkin said.
They went inside. A dusty corridor led deeper into the house. On their left, worn stairs climbed at a steep angle toward the attic. The house smelled of dirty laundry. Stride went first, with Durkin behind him. Halfway up the stairs, he froze. Leaning back, he whispered, “Door’s open.”
Stride swept back the flap of his jacket, giving his hand ready access to his gun. “Malik Noon?” he called. “I’m Lieutenant Stride. Duluth Police. I want to talk with you.”
Five seconds of silence passed.
Then someone above them called, “Malik is not here.”
A man appeared in the open doorway at the top of the stairs. He wasn’t a college student; he was older, in his thirties. The man was good-looking, with swept-back black hair, a long face, and a beard that neatly followed the line of his chin. His dark eyes, behind bright silver glasses, were nervous.
“Who are you?” Stride asked.
“My name is Khan Rashid.”
“Do you know Malik Noon?”
The man hesitated. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“Is that your cab outside? Do you drive a taxi?”
“Yes.”
From behind him, Durkin called, “What you are doing here, Mr. Rashid?”
“I was looking for Malik, but he’s gone.”
“Do you know where he went?” she asked.
A trace of belligerence crossed Rashid’s face. “Obviously not, or I would be there.”
“Why are you looking for Malik?” Stride asked.
“I told you. He’s my friend.”
“If you’re his friend, do you know why we’re here?”
“I have no idea,” Rashid replied.
“People in the local Muslim community have been worried about Malik. They say he’s been radicalized. Do you know anything about that?”
“No.”
“And yet you’re his friend?”
Stride watched Rashid hesitate. His eyes flicked to the ceiling, and there was emotion in his face. Stride took another step closer. “Mr. Rashid, if you were worried about Malik, you should talk to us.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Behind him, Durkin murmured, “He’s lying. He knows something.”
“If Malik is in trouble, the best thing would be to tell us where he is,” Stride went on.
“I don’t know. Really, I don’t. I have to go.”
“Do you believe Malik had anything to do with the marathon bombing?” Stride asked.
Rashid hesitated again. He looked to be having a fierce argument with his conscience.
“I’m not a police officer. I don’t know about such things. Please, may I go? I have to get back to my family.”
Stride nodded. “Of course.”
Carefully, step by step, Rashid walked downward, getting closer and closer. Stride watched him with a careful eye. He thought the man was innocent, but he wasn’t prepared to risk his life on it. Rashid watched him, too, with the same fear, as if Stride might suddenly pull a gun and fire.
They were inches away and so very, very far apart.
Rashid squeezed past Stride and then Durkin, but the FBI agent stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. Stride watched her. She was under control. Rashid, on the other hand, looked like a rabbit ready to run.
“Mr. Rashid, were you at the marathon yesterday?” Durkin asked.
His eyes widened. He opened his mouth and closed it again. His agitation and the closeness of the stairway made him sweat.
Then he said, in a voice no louder than a whisper, “No. No, I wasn’t.”
He hurried down the rest of the stairs and disappeared. Stride heard the taxi engine as the cab roared away.
“What do you think?” he asked Durkin.
She didn’t hesitate.
“He was there,” she said.
14
Maggie sized up the two men in the hospital room. Wade Ralston, who was in bed, was wiry and small, with blond hair stretched across a mostly bald skull. He was in his early thirties. Travis Baker, who sat in a chair next to his boss, was younger and built like a gorilla. The two of them watched the television, which was tuned to CNN, but every few seconds, Ralston got impatient and switched channels.
“Mr. Ralston?” she said. “My name is Maggie Bei. I’m a sergeant with the Duluth Police.”
He fixed her with suspicious blue eyes. He wasn’t an attractive man, and his skin had a post-surgery paleness. “Yeah? About time you showed up.”
She couldn’t blame him for being angry. “I heard about your wife, sir. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t tell me how sorry you are,” Ralston snapped. “Tell me you got the guy who did this.”
“There are literally hundreds of law enforcement personnel around the country working twenty-four hours a day to identify and capture whoever was responsible,” she told him, but she knew it didn’t offer any comfort. She’d said the same thing to dozens of witnesses and victims today.
“So in other words, you got nothing,” he concluded.
The television was loud, and Ralston switched it off with the remote control.
“How are you feeling?” Maggie asked him.
“Let’s see, somebody ripped up my stomach with glass and nails, and the docs had to go in and fish it out. They’re feeding me through a tube. So the answer is, I’m feeling like shit, Sergeant.”
“Yes, I understand. Have the doctors told you when you’ll be released?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. They need me back on solid food first. In the meantime, I’m losing money.”
“You own a local extermination business?” she asked.
“Right. It’s mostly commercial rather than residential. I’ve got contracts with dozens of downtown buildings.”
“Was this your first time running the marathon?”
“No, marathons are my thing. I’ve done Chicago twice, Twin Cities twice, and Milwaukee twice, too.”
“That’s impressive,” Maggie said. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary while you were running the marathon route this year? Any odd behavior from spectators, or something that looked unusual?”
Ralston thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, nothing.”
“How about on the last block through Canal Park?”
“I was focused on the finish line, not the crowd. I saw Joni, Shelly, and Travis cheering me on—that’s it. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground.”
Maggie switched her attention to Travis Baker, who dwarfed the chair in which he was sitting. He wore a T-shirt that showed off his physique, which was molded like stone. For women who liked their men big and dumb, Travis was a prime specimen. Maggie had a bit of a weakness for muscle-bound weightlifters. Her boyfriend, Troy, was built the same way.
“Mr. Baker, where were you standing when the bomb went off?” she asked him.
“Right in front of the Duluth Outdoor Company, with Wade’s wife, Joni, and my sister, Shelly.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Maggie told him.
“Yeah, I know it. A tree saved me. It took the brunt of the blast.” Travis looked down at his friend on the hospital bed. “If
I’d known what was going to happen, I would have pulled Joni in front of me. I’m so sorry, man. If I could trade places with her, I would. You know that.”
Ralston didn’t say a word.
“How is your sister, Shelly?” Maggie asked.
Travis’s fists grabbed on to the hard plastic shell of the chair, as if he could lift himself off the ground. “I haven’t been able to talk to her yet. She’s still unconscious. Docs say she’ll pull through, but they had to—shit, they had to take both of her legs below the knees. Can you believe that? My sis ain’t never gonna walk again because of those shithead terrorists.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Maggie said. “Did the three of you go to Canal Park together?”
Travis wiped his nose, which had begun to run. “No, I picked up Joni at Wade’s place. Shelly lives in a Central Hillside apartment, so she walked and met us there. That sucks, huh? She walked. And her apartment is on the fourth floor. No elevator. What’s she going to do when she gets out?”
Maggie could have talked about the magic of prosthetics, but that was for the doctors to do. And it wouldn’t change the long, tough road his sister faced. “Did you spend the entire time in that same spot near the Duluth Outdoor Company?” she asked Travis.
“No, we met Shelly at Starbucks. Joni is—was—a big Frappuccino fan. We hung out at the coffee shop until maybe half an hour before Wade was supposed to be finishing, and then we made our way down the block. Joni knew Wade would be looking for us, so we stayed there until the bomb went off.”
“And you were completely uninjured?”
“I got some cuts on my arms and shoulders,” Travis told her, “and I couldn’t hear too good for a couple hours. I still got this ringing in my ears. Otherwise, I’m fine.”
Maggie felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She excused herself and went into the hospital corridor to take the call. Through the outside windows, she could see that the evening sun was waning.
“Serena,” she said. “How’s the body today?”
“Feels like someone has been hitting me with a hammer,” Serena replied.
“Well, next time, skip the marathon, and I’ll bring the hammer,” Maggie told her.
She was on thin ice making a joke like that, but Serena laughed, anyway. They’d gone a long way in repairing their relationship over the past year. Maggie looked back on the brief months when Stride and Serena had been apart—and the even briefer months when she’d slept with him herself—as a kind of dark winter among the three of them. She didn’t blame Serena for freezing her out after she got back together with Stride. The truth was, Maggie blamed herself for crossing a line with Stride that she’d known would be a mistake. He was better off with Serena and happy being married to her. She liked seeing him happy again.
For as long as Maggie could remember—from her earliest days as a cop—she’d had a crush on Stride. His first wife, Cindy, had known about it. Serena had, too. It had served mainly to give Maggie an excuse not to pursue a real relationship, and every time she did try to get serious with someone, the results were disastrous. If the affair with Stride had done one good thing, it had broken Maggie’s fever. She wasn’t in love with him anymore. She’d found a new boyfriend, and she’d broken her personal record by spending nearly a year with him without the relationship imploding. She and Troy made an odd pair. Troy Grange was a single father who looked a little like Mr. Clean and acted that way, too. She was an overly horny comedian with a bad haircut. They didn’t see each other often—and they’d avoided “the talk” about whether they were in a real relationship—but for the time being, it worked.
“So what’s going on?” Maggie asked Serena.
“Last Tuesday, there was an incident at Duluth Outdoor Company. Do you remember it?”
“Sure, a homeless guy had a fit,” Maggie said. Her memory was near-photographic. “What about it?”
“Did you ID the guy?”
“Yeah, Guppo confirmed it with one of the store clerks. His name’s Gary Eagleton, but his street name is Eagle. That’s what everyone calls him.”
“Did anyone talk to him?” Serena asked.
“No, we never found him. Guppo figured he was laying low. Tracking him wasn’t a high priority, because he hadn’t done anything wrong. The most we could have done is make sure he was okay.”
“All right.”
“Why are you asking about this? Do you think there’s a connection to the bombing? Eagle doesn’t strike me as a terrorist.”
“I just don’t like the timing,” Serena replied.
“Did you tell the Gherkin?”
Maggie heard Serena laughing on the other end of the phone. “I did. She wasn’t too interested. Then again, neither was Jonny. It’s probably a dead end, but I’d like to find Eagle myself and make sure that’s true.”
“Well, if I wanted info on a homeless guy, you know who I’d talk to first,” Maggie said.
“Cat,” Serena said with a sigh.
“Yeah. Good luck with that.”
Maggie hung up the phone and went back into the hospital room. Wade Ralston and Travis Baker were deep in hushed conversation, but they stopped when Maggie returned.
“Sorry for the interruption,” she told them. “Mr. Baker, I have just a couple more questions. You said you, your sister, and Mrs. Ralston were all outside the Duluth Outdoor Company shop for about half an hour prior to the explosion?”
Travis nodded. “That’s right.”
“Did you see anyone there who aroused your suspicion?”
“Yeah, there was one guy, actually. Wade and I were just talking about it. This guy was standing right near us, but he left a couple minutes before the bomb went off. Seemed like he was in a hurry.”
“What did he look like?” Maggie asked.
“Tall, good-looking guy but built kind of scrawny. Black hair, beard. He was alone, nobody with him. I’ll tell you something else, too. He looked foreign to me.”
“Foreign?”
“Yeah. You know the look. Son of a bitch was Muslim. That figures, huh? If you ask me, you find him, you find your bomber.”
15
“You lied to the police?” Ahdia said in astonishment. “Oh, Khan, what were you thinking?”
Khan mussed his black hair with both hands on top of his head. He’d finally confessed his mistake to his wife, and they were both frantic. “I wasn’t thinking! They took me by surprise. I just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want to be in the middle of it.”
“And now that’s exactly where you are,” his wife told him. “This is what I warned you about!”
Khan stared out the front window of their house. His yellow cab was in the driveway. Long shadows stretched like giants from the woods at the end of the road, and in the distance, he heard a rumble of thunder. Around him, the house still had a delicious smell from the chicken pilau that Ahdia had made for dinner.
“What was I supposed to do?” Khan asked. “I was in Malik’s room! How could I explain that?”
Ahdia leaned her head into his shoulder. “With the truth. He’s your friend. You were worried about him.”
“The truth? The truth is, we’re Muslim. That’s all they see.” Khan shook his head. “Maybe they won’t find out that I was there during the race. They won’t know I lied to them.”
“Sooner or later, they will find out. You know they will.”
He saw the first drops of rain on the window. He wondered if it would be a summer storm, over and done in minutes, or whether it would linger long enough to drown them. Next to him, Ahdia’s face was dark with worry.
“What did you find in Malik’s room?” she asked.
“He left things behind. A brochure about the marathon. A small piece of wire.”
“Could it really be him? Could he have done this?”
“His soul has been poisoned this year. He’s not the same person he was. We all saw it happening.”
“And you were there. The police saw you in his room.”
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Khan nodded. “Yes.”
“I wish you had never gone to the marathon,” she said.
“Malik is my friend. Practically my brother. I was trying to stop him. To save him. To save innocent lives, too.”
“If he did this, he is nothing,” Ahdia hissed. “You owe him nothing.”
“I know that.”
“They will find out you were there, Khan. As soon as they do, you are a suspect. Do you realize that?”
“Yes, of course, I do.”
Ahdia put her arms around him, and he could feel her fear. It was a fear that every innocent Muslim knew. The religion he found beautiful and held sacred, around which he’d built his entire life, could also be a brand: You must be violent, like the others. You are all guilty. You are all terrorists.
“So how do we make this go away?” Ahdia asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s too late for that.”
Ahdia smoothed her dress. She stared at the rain. “No. Here is what you must do, Khan. Tomorrow morning, you will go to the police. You will tell them everything. Your worries about Malik. The efforts that you and the others made to stop him from violence. You will say you lied today because you were scared, and you will give them whatever information they want to know. You will help them find Malik in any way you can.”
Khan thought about the number that he’d memorized. The phone number where he could reach Malik in an emergency. If he gave it to the police, they would find him. They would arrest him, or, more likely than not, they would kill him.
“I’m not sure I can do that,” he murmured.
“You must think of your family first,” Ahdia told him. “You may love Malik as a brother, but he’s not your family. If he killed these people, he is not even Muslim. He is no different from those butchers overseas, building their so-called caliphate.”
Khan closed his eyes as tightly as he could. His world was chaos. He’d only known such turmoil in his life once before, when he’d found the trampled body of his brother in Lahore. Ever since that moment, he’d been running, trying to find peace and shelter. He’d thought that in Duluth, he had finally run far enough, but now he worried that happiness was about to slip through his fingers once again.
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