Marathon

by Brian Freeman

  * * *

  @dawnbasch retweeted @malvileo:

  Is this the marathon bomber? Duluth, have you seen this man?

  #marathon

  #islamismurder

  #noexceptions

  #surprisehesmuslim

  17

  When Stride opened the attached photograph in the retweet from Dawn Basch, he recognized the marathon scene in Canal Park, and he recognized the face of the man heading through the parking lot. They’d met a few hours earlier on a musty set of stairs in a student house near UMD.

  “His name is Khan Rashid,” Stride told Special Agent Maloney. “Agent Durkin and I ran into him at Malik Noon’s apartment. Rashid and Noon are friends. We checked him out. Cab driver, married, one child, lives in the Woodland area. Born in Pakistan, naturalized citizen.”

  “Criminal record?” Maloney asked.

  “Nothing. He’s clean.”

  “What about radical connections?”

  “He’s never been on our radar, but Rashid lied to us today. Durkin asked him directly whether he was at the marathon, and he said no.”

  Maloney’s forehead creased into a deep seam. He’d been angry at the tweet by Dawn Basch, but his anger had already turned to calm again, like the quick passage of a summer storm. The closer he got to a perpetrator, the more his decades of experience took over. He smoothed his gray mustache.

  “Get some uniforms over to Rashid’s house to keep it secure,” Maloney said. “This thing is going viral, and we don’t need any vigilantes popping up among the No Exceptions crowd. And let’s make sure Rashid doesn’t rabbit. Guilty or innocent, as soon as he knows his picture is all over the Web, he may try to bolt.”

  “I’m on it,” Stride said.

  “I’ll get Durkin over there, too, while we wait for a search warrant. What about this @malvileo character who made the underlying tweet? Who is he?”

  “I know him. He was part of a murder investigation a couple of years ago, but he was exonerated. His name’s Michael Malville. He was a spectator at the marathon yesterday, and Maggie talked to him during the evacuation. His story matches what he tweeted. He told her he was with his son on Superior Street during the marathon, and a Muslim man with a backpack bumped into him.”

  “All right, this could be a serious break,” Maloney said.

  Stride reached for his phone to order teams into the Woodland area, but as he did, the phone started ringing. The caller was Haq Al-Masri, and Stride knew why Haq was calling. Word had already spread through the Muslim community about Khan Rashid.

  “Haq,” Stride said. “It’s a bad time.”

  “You know what’s happening on Twitter?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a mistake,” Haq said. “Khan isn’t involved.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know the man. I know his wife and son. There is no violence in him. None.”

  “He’s a friend of Malik Noon. He was at Malik’s apartment.”

  “Of course, he was! They’re friends. Khan was the one who first warned me about Malik. He was concerned that Malik was becoming radicalized. He wanted us to do everything in our power to help him.”

  “Khan was in Canal Park during the marathon,” Stride said.

  “Yes, I know—looking for Malik. We were all trying to find him to make sure no violence occurred.”

  “Khan lied about being there. To me and the FBI.”

  He heard Haq exhale sharply in frustration. “Well, that was foolish of him, but really, what do you expect? If you were a Muslim fifty yards away from where a bomb went off, would you admit it to the police?”

  “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “He’s not your man, Jonathan,” Haq added quickly. “Believe me.”

  “I hope you’re right, but that doesn’t change what we have to do. If you can reach Khan, tell him to come directly to the FBI headquarters at the DECC. We can talk to him, and we can keep him safe. If he’s not involved, we can get the word out and clear his name.”

  Stride hung up.

  He looked for Agent Maloney and saw that the FBI agent and a cluster of his men had gathered around a large-screen television in the conference room. Maloney kept switching channels, from CNN to Fox to ABC to NBC to CBS. On each channel, Stride saw the same thing. Every news show was already broadcasting the photo of Khan Rashid that Michael Malville had tweeted.

  In half an hour, Rashid had become the most wanted man in the country.

  * * *

  Travis Baker held his sister’s hand. Shelly’s eyes were closed. Morphine had kept her mostly asleep since the operation. She wasn’t going to die, but she had the grayness of death. Her plump face looked sunken, and she breathed with a raspy snore. He could see the outline of her body under the white sheet. Below where her knees were, the sheet sank down to the bed. He hadn’t had the courage to look.

  The doctors hadn’t told her yet. They’d asked him if he wanted to do it, but he said no, he just wanted to be there when they broke the news. They’d told him that she might cry, she might scream, she might not believe it. Travis knew Shelly. She’d just close her eyes and say that life gives you a challenge and Jesus gets you through it. He wished he could believe that, but he didn’t.

  It was just the two of them in this world. Their parents had been gone since Travis was fifteen. Car accident. Shelly was eight years older, and she’d been as much a mother to him as a sister ever since then. He hated that he’d been such a disappointment to her. She never yelled at him for his mistakes; she just urged him to do the right thing or to stop doing the wrong thing. He tried, but he couldn’t stay away from the flame. When the Devil came to Duluth, he always looked up his old buddy Travis.

  Shelly kept saying that Jesus had a plan for him, but Travis didn’t think that was true. Life wasn’t about plans. Life was about whatever shit happened to you on any given day. Just ask Joni.

  “Hey.”

  He looked at Shelly’s face and saw that her eyes were open. Her fingers squeezed his hand.

  “Hey, Shell.”

  “My legs hurt,” she said. Her voice slurred the words.

  “There’s a button. You can get more morphine.”

  She shook her head back and forth. “Not yet. Want to stay awake.”

  “Okay.”

  “Nurse said it was a bomb.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?” Shelly asked.

  “Yeah. Good as new. Lucky Travis.”

  “Not luck. Nothing is luck.”

  “Aw, Shell, don’t. Not now.” He didn’t want to hear about Jesus. Not when his sister was never going to walk again.

  “People killed?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Her head turned. Her eyes bored into him. “Joni? What about Joni?”

  He’d told himself that he would be strong when he told her, but he wasn’t. His eyes filled with tears. His lower lip quaked like he was a scared dog. Hearing Joni’s name, he could still see her face, so clearly that if he reached out, he was sure he could touch that bottle-blond hair. But she wasn’t there. She’d whispered in his ear at the marathon, and those were the last words she ever spoke. Five seconds later, she was dead on the ground.

  He couldn’t even say the words or shake his head, but Shelly understood.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” she said. “I’m sorry, Travis.”

  “Yeah. It sucks. There’s nothing else to say.”

  “What about Wade?”

  “He needed surgery, but he’ll be okay.”

  “And me?” she asked.

  Travis pasted a smile on his face. “You? What about you?”

  “What happened to me?”

  “Hey, come on, nobody messes with my big sister.”

  “Travis,” she murmured, because she could see right through him.

  “What?”

  “What’s up with my legs?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I ca
n’t move them,” she said.

  “Aw, well, what’s the rush, huh? You got somewhere else to be?”

  “Travis, be strong and tell me the truth.”

  He opened his mouth, but the words stuck in his throat. He shook his head over and over. “Don’t make me, Shell. Don’t make me. I can’t do it.”

  She stared at him silently for a long time. It was as if, without saying anything, he’d said everything. Her face softened. She looked at the ceiling, and she smiled, which made no sense to him at all. Shelly always said when she smiled like that, she was seeing angels.

  “Push the button for me, Travis,” Shelly told him. “It hurts. I want to sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  He did, and he watched his sister close her eyes. Her body relaxed as the drugs worked their magic. In no time, she drifted away. He stayed to make sure she didn’t wake up again, and then he got up and went into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He was right across from the hospital lounge.

  The television was on. A crowd of people watched it.

  Travis went inside, and he saw a picture of a man frozen on the television screen. He knew exactly who that man was. That was the man who had stood right next to him in Canal Park during the marathon. That was the squirrely son of a bitch who ran away right before the bomb went off.

  Before Joni died. Before Shelly lost her legs.

  “That’s the one, huh?” he said to a nurse. “That’s the guy who did it?”

  “Looks that way,” she said.

  Travis walked out of the lounge, because if he’d stayed there, he would have pulled the television off the wall and thrown it through the third-floor window. He was filled with rage in a way he’d never felt in his entire life. If that man had been there, he would have put his fingers around the man’s neck and squeezed until the bastard’s eyes bulged and his skin turned blue and his lungs screamed and his heart gave up and quit beating.

  Travis knew what you had to do to people like that. Every single murdering terrorist.

  You had to exterminate them like bugs.

  18

  Khan parked his yellow cab in front of the Woodland Market, which was half a mile from his home. This was a quiet, small-town neighborhood in the northeast corner of the city. Pak’s favorite pizza restaurant was across the street. There were other small shops nearby, too. A barbershop. A hardware store. A bakery. A gas station. Tall trees ringed the intersection of Woodland and Calvary behind the buildings. In Duluth, no matter where you were, you were never far from the woods.

  Rain assaulted his windshield, making the late evening even darker. He waited to see if the storm would dissipate, but it kept on in torrents, blown by a heavy wind. Finally, he shoved open the cab door and ran for the market. By the time he made it inside, he was soaked, and he stopped to shake off water from his hair and clothes and dry his glasses. The floor was slick where rain had swept inside. The store was cold.

  He saw people in the checkout lines. A nurse in purple scrubs chatted with one of the clerks; a father wrangled two young kids; an overweight, twenty-something man in a wet leather jacket checked his phone; a teenager and his girlfriend bought a six-pack of Pepsi and a large bag of potato chips. Pop music played from overhead speakers.

  Khan wasn’t familiar with the layout of the store. Ahdia typically did the grocery shopping. He spotted a store employee wearing a tie, and he approached him to ask a question.

  “Excuse me.”

  “Yes, sir, how can I help you?” Minnesotans were invariably friendly.

  “I’m looking for shredded coconut. Can you tell me where to find it?”

  “Of course. Aisle four, with the baking supplies.”

  Khan nodded. “Thank you.”

  As he headed past the checkout lines, he noticed the overweight man in the leather jacket staring right at him. Catching his eye, the man looked quickly down at his phone again. And then back at Khan. This happened three more times in rapid succession, and each time he stared at Khan, the man’s face grew more hostile.

  Khan ignored him. He made his way through the market. Despite his many years in this country, the sheer abundance of items in American grocery stores always amazed him. Whenever he passed overflowing displays of fruits and vegetables, he remembered the want of his childhood, and he counted himself lucky that he’d found his way here. And this was just a small neighborhood market compared to others in the city.

  In aisle four, he passed a young mother with a baby boy in her cart. She smiled at him; he smiled at her. Khan made a silly face at the baby and wiggled a finger to say hello. The child kicked his legs happily.

  “How old is your son?” he asked the woman.

  “Five months,” she replied.

  “He’s a beautiful boy. What’s his name?”

  “Thomas.”

  “That’s a good name,” Khan said.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  Mothers liked it when you complimented their children.

  He continued to the far end of the aisle. The market’s baking supplies included hundreds of products. All kinds of flour and sugar. Chocolate chips. Molasses. He hunted until he found coconut on the lowest shelf, and he squatted to examine the brands and compare the prices. He had no idea what Ahdia usually bought, and he hoped he wasn’t making a mistake by picking the cheapest package to save a few pennies.

  As he got up with a plastic bag of shredded coconut in his hand, he glanced at the other end of the aisle. The man in the leather jacket was standing there. He had been in the checkout line; now he was back in aisle four.

  The woman with her baby was gone.

  When Khan looked his way, the man shifted his gaze, as if to examine cake mixes on the shelf. Khan had a chance to study him more closely. He was short and heavy, with a thinning crown of curly brown hair. He needed a shave. His hands were large. He wore a Timberwolves T-shirt under his jacket and loose-fitting gray sweatpants. When the man saw Khan watching him, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and strolled away.

  Strange.

  The whole thing gave Khan an odd feeling.

  He took his coconut and marched back up the aisle, but he didn’t spot the man in the leather jacket hovering nearby. In fact, he didn’t see anyone at all. As he passed each aisle, he noticed that they were empty. No one was at the deli or meat counters. He checked his watch to make sure that he hadn’t stayed past the store’s closing time, but he was certain the market typically stayed open for at least another hour.

  When he returned to the checkout area, he noticed that every aisle was now closed except one, and the only employee in sight was the manager with the tie he’d approached when he first arrived at the store. The man’s Minnesota smile was still fixed in place, but Khan noticed that he was sweating, even in the cool air-conditioning of the market.

  “Hello!” the manager greeted him with an unusually loud voice. “So, did you find the coconut you were looking for?”

  Khan nodded. “Yes.”

  “That’s good. Is that all you need? Is there anything else?”

  “No, that’s all. Where is everybody?”

  The man shrugged. “It’s like this every night. Crowds go up and down.”

  “Oh.”

  Khan took out his wallet and peeled off a five-dollar bill. The manager had the coconut in his hand, but he hadn’t scanned the price yet.

  “So what are you baking?” the man asked.

  “My wife is making a dessert to bring to the office tomorrow.”

  “That’s nice. Me, I love coconut dishes. Have you ever tried magic bars? Chocolate chips, butterscotch, sweetened condensed milk, and coconut on a graham-cracker crust. They’re so good. My wife makes them for the kids, but to tell you the truth, I eat more of them than they do.”

  Khan checked his watch. “I’ll have to try them.”

  “You won’t be sorry.” The man twisted his body and looked outside at the rain. “Whoo, it’s still coming down out there.”

/>   “Yes.”

  “Summer in Minnesota, huh?”

  Khan’s brow wrinkled with mild confusion and annoyance. “Yes. How much for the coconut?”

  “Oh, well, let me run it through.” He scanned the plastic bag and announced the price and then said again, “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Any coupons?”

  “No.” Khan handed him the five-dollar bill.

  The manager opened the cash register and counted out Khan’s change, but he stopped to open a new roll of nickels, even though it looked as if he had plenty of nickels in the drawer. He counted out the change slowly.

  “There you go,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you want a bag for that?”

  Khan shook his head. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Come back and see us again.”

  “Yes, I will,” Khan said.

  He headed for the automatic doors of the grocery store. The doors slid open, and Khan walked outside into the rain, but he stopped when he found the fat man in the leather jacket blocking his way. The man still had his hands in his jacket pockets.

  “Excuse me,” Khan said, but when he tried to change direction, the man stepped in front of him.

  “Excuse me,” Khan said again.

  The man didn’t move. “Is that your cab over there?”

  “It is, but I’m sorry, I’m not taking fares right now.”

  Khan looked past the man into the store parking lot. Half the cars had vanished. Among those that remained, he spotted people inside, peering at the two of them through the windows. He could see others on the street corner, backing away. The mother he’d seen in the baking aisle was running across the street against the light with her baby clutched in her arms.

  The rain poured down.

  “Excuse me, I have to leave,” Khan said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” the man replied.

  “What?”

  “You’re staying right here.”

  Khan began to push past him, but the man grabbed his wrist.

  “Let me go!” Khan called. “Get your hands off me!”

  The man dug a phone out of his pocket. “I’ve got a question for you, buddy. Is this you?”