Khan looked around the empty house, which felt like a prison. It had none of the smells, none of the comforts, of home. He wanted to smell sandalwood and jasmine. He wanted to kiss his wife and go out in the fresh air to drive his cab.
“Patient? How can I be patient? What’s happening to me? Malik, what is going on?”
Malik didn’t answer. He grabbed another bottle of tea from the floor and returned to the living room, where he sat cross-legged in the dust. Khan was too anxious to sit, so he paced back and forth from the curtains to the kitchen doorway. Then he knelt in front of his friend.
“Please, tell me what’s going on.”
“What’s going on is exactly what I warned you about. Since Saturday, they’ve been looking for a Muslim face, and they finally found one. Yours.”
“But how?” Khan asked.
Malik reached into his pocket for his phone and showed Khan a photo. Khan had seen it before. It was the same photo that the man at the market had shoved in his face. “Is this you? Because it sure looks like you.” And it was. The photo showed Khan rushing back to his cab from Canal Park on the day of the marathon. Seconds later, the bomb went off, and he’d reversed his steps to wade into the terrified crowd and help.
“This photo is all over Twitter,” Malik told him. “Dawn Basch called you the bomber. Now everyone thinks it’s true, and they’re all looking for you.”
“So I was there!” Khan protested. “What does that mean? And yes, I was a fool; I lied about it to the police. I was going to go there today and explain it to them.”
Malik gave him a tight smile. “Explain what? That you were really looking for me? Thank you so much, Khan.”
“I’m sorry, but if you did this terrible thing—”
“I didn’t.”
Khan’s eyes narrowed. He tried to decide if Malik was telling the truth. “You weren’t the bomber?”
“No.”
“Malik, I was in your apartment. I found a marathon brochure. And a bit of copper wire, too.”
“You call me for help, and I risk my life for you, and now you interrogate me?”
“I need to know what you did,” Khan replied.
“You already know enough. I told you. It wasn’t me. We talked about the marathon, but that wasn’t the plan.”
“Then what was?”
“Never mind. Everything has changed because of you.”
“If you didn’t do this, I can go to the police,” Khan repeated. “I can explain what really happened. I can clear this all up.”
“It’s too late for that. The photo went viral because a man claims he saw you a few minutes before the bombing with a backpack. In this photo, you don’t have one. Everyone leaped to the obvious conclusion. Your backpack wound up shredded all over the marathon course, along with the body parts of the people you maimed and killed.”
Khan backed up in horror. He put trembling hands over his face. “That is insane! I don’t even own a backpack!”
“Do you think they’ll care about that? How do you prove a negative? Besides, you have other problems now. You killed a police officer in the cemetery. The cops are baying for your blood, my friend.”
“I didn’t kill him! I didn’t have a gun!”
“Witnesses saw you with one,” Malik told him.
“They’re wrong! The man who accosted me at the market had a gun. That was his, not mine.”
Malik got to his feet. He stood in front of Khan, and his face was filled with anger. “Don’t you get it? The truth doesn’t matter! No one cares about the truth! People said you had a gun, and now a cop is dead with a bullet in his head. As far as the world is concerned, you did it.”
Khan’s eyes widened with disbelief. “I can’t believe this. I don’t even know how it happened. It wasn’t me! I didn’t shoot him!”
“Wake up, Khan. You are their bomber. You are their murderer. And once they find you and shoot you, you won’t be able to say anything different.”
“So what do I do?” Khan asked.
“For now, nothing. Read the Qur’an. I have my copy for you. Pray. Ask for guidance from Allah.”
“I can’t just sit here. Ahdia needs me. I need to go to her.”
“I told you, I’m reaching out to friends. I’ll find out where she’s taken refuge. But you can’t go anywhere during the daylight. Hopefully, I can exchange a message with Haq, and he can find a lawyer, and the lawyer can figure out a way to keep you safe. Until then, you have to sit tight, my friend. Stay away from the windows and doors. If someone knocks, don’t answer. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“You’re leaving?” Khan asked. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t take the risk of turning on my phone while we’re together. I don’t know who’s being watched and who’s being tracked, and if they run a search, it will lead the FBI right to you. I parked a car on the other side of the golf course. I’m going to slip over there and stay on the move. Don’t worry, I’ll return when I’m sure it’s safe.”
Malik turned toward the back of the house, but Khan grabbed him and embraced him. “Thank you, my friend. Be careful.”
“I will.”
“I’m sorry that I doubted you,” Khan said.
Malik gave him the strangest of looks and didn’t reply. Then he disappeared into the shadows, and Khan heard the rear door open and close.
25
“I missed,” Agent Durkin told Stride. “I missed twice.”
He thought she wanted him to blame her. To yell. To swear. To tell her that he was going to ask Agent Maloney to call for her gun and her badge. Beating herself up wasn’t enough. She wanted others to do it, too. Durkin was the kind of agent who had a hard time dealing with her own mistakes. He’d felt the same way for a long time.
“It happens, Durkin,” Stride said.
“Not to me. I’m a great shot. I don’t miss.”
“The range isn’t the same as real life—you know that. All the conditions were against you. It was dark. It was pouring. You had trees between you and Rashid. You’d been running flat-out across the cemetery.”
“I’m not looking for excuses,” she told him.
“Those aren’t excuses. They’re facts.”
“I missed,” she repeated, “and because of that, Rashid had a chance to shoot Officer Kenzie and get away.”
“His death isn’t your fault,” Stride told her.
Durkin was silent. She sat at the end of a small conference table, and Stride sat across from her. For now, they were the only two people in the room. The air-conditioning hummed over their heads. The small meeting room had been loaded up with whiteboards and computers and equipped with videoconferencing. They’d been waiting for Agent Maloney to join them for half an hour.
“I know you don’t like me,” Durkin said, “so why are you trying to be nice to me?”
Stride shrugged. “I’ve been there. We all have things we’d like to take back. It would really be nice if we were superheroes like Mitch Rapp or Jack Reacher, but we’re not.”
“This was the first time I had to fire my gun at an active scene,” Durkin told him. “It’s not what I expected.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Have you?” she asked.
“A few times.”
“Killed anyone?”
“No.”
“I always thought I’d be up to it,” Durkin said. “You do what you have to do, right? Now I wonder if . . .” She stopped.
“What?” Stride asked. He could see a crack in her tough shell.
“I wonder if I missed because, deep down, I was afraid of killing someone.”
“It’s easy to second-guess what happens in a split second. Don’t make it a judgment on what kind of agent you are.”
“An agent has to be able to take a life when it’s necessary,” Durkin said.
“Right, but anyone who says it’s easy . . . Well, I wouldn’t want them on my team.”
Durkin looked as if she wanted to tha
nk him, but at that moment, the door opened, and Special Agent Maloney entered the conference room. He carried a foam cup of coffee, a crisp new legal pad, and two Uni-ball pens. Somewhere in the past day, he’d managed to get a haircut.
At her boss’s entrance, Agent Durkin’s face hardened like concrete, all emotion gone.
“I’ve already been on the phone today with the mayor, the governor, and the president,” Maloney told them as he sat down. “I don’t have any answers for them, and I don’t like being in that situation. Let’s review the status of the local police issues.”
Maloney was all business. Stride liked that about him.
“Have there been any confirmed sightings of Khan Rashid since last night?” Maloney asked.
“We’ve been investigating dozens of calls to the tip line all day,” Stride replied, “but so far, nothing has panned out. We’ve got an intense search going on inside the perimeter we established last night, but there’s a lot of wooded areas and empty land up there. He could have slipped through our roadblocks, and if he did, he could be anywhere now. The good news is, his photo is all over the news and social media. It will be tough for him to move around without being spotted.”
“What about his support network?”
“His wife is his only local adult relative. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t have many close friends.”
“Other than Malik Noon,” Durkin interjected.
Stride nodded. “We’re looking for him, too.”
“Rashid’s wife and kid didn’t disappear on their own,” Durkin added. “They had help. Somebody’s hiding them. Maybe Rashid, too.”
“Lieutenant?” Maloney asked. “Do you agree?”
“Yes, Ahdia Rashid didn’t take her car when she left. I can’t believe she got far on foot with a young boy without help. Particularly at night in the middle of a storm.”
“Did anyone reach out to her before she disappeared?”
“There were no calls in or out of her land line or cell phone yesterday evening. Her cell stopped pinging right around the time of the manhunt for Khan. It hasn’t been on the network since.”
“They could have burners,” Durkin said.
Stride frowned. “Maybe, but that assumes Ahdia was part of the conspiracy.”
“Muslim wives aren’t necessarily innocent little flowers,” Durkin reminded him. “Remember San Bernardino? If they were in this together, they had to know that a moment like this was likely to come. Look at their house—right on the edge of a heavily wooded area. It’s easy to escape to some prearranged meeting point.”
“You could say that about half the homes in Duluth,” Stride said. “So far, there’s no evidence of radicalization with Ahdia Rashid. She works at Cirrus. We checked in there this morning. Her co-workers have nothing but good things to say about her. Same with her neighbors. They describe her as sunny, friendly, outgoing. No arguments, no religious disputes.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Durkin said.
Maloney nodded. “Unfortunately, Agent Durkin is right. Looks can be deceiving. What have we found out about Khan Rashid? Do we know anything more?”
“He’s quiet,” Stride said. “Neighbors say he keeps to himself. His behavior didn’t raise any red flags with them.”
“Religious?” Maloney asked.
“Very, but no indications of extremism. My source insists we’re wrong about Khan.”
Maloney absorbed this information without reacting. He sat up straight in the chair. He never leaned back. He never tapped a finger or a foot.
“The search of the Rashid house this morning revealed nothing of interest,” Maloney told them. “We’re still examining their computer for evidence of radical contacts, but there were no signs of explosives or bomb-making material anywhere on the property.”
“Any weapons?” Stride asked.
“None.”
Stride shook his head. “Khan didn’t even have a concealed-carry permit. I have to say, this couple doesn’t fit the typical terrorist profile.”
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t make them innocent,” Maloney said. “Rashid was friends with the man your source identified. Malik Noon. If Noon was radicalized, he could have recruited Rashid and possibly his wife, too. It takes a while for people to spot a change in someone’s behavior, especially if they’re trying to hide it.”
Stride knew that was true. He’d known plenty of killers who’d shown a benign face to the world. They had kids. They went to work. They smiled at their friends. And then, in their dark hearts, they planned and executed terrible deeds. He knew all that, but this crime still didn’t make sense.
He thought about what Haq had told him on the phone. “He’s not your man, Jonathan.”
“You look troubled, Lieutenant,” Maloney said.
“I am.”
“Why is that?”
“Honestly?” Stride said. “It’s the coconut.”
Maloney’s mustache wrinkled with puzzlement. “I’m sorry?”
“Rashid went to the market to get a bag of shredded coconut. We found it on the ground outside the store. I know it’s just a little thread, but when you pull on those threads, things start to unravel. Why was Khan Rashid running out to get coconut on the day after he bombed the marathon? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hung out in the dorms after Boston like nothing had happened,” Durkin said. “With all due respect, Stride, you’re being naïve.”
“Durkin,” Maloney murmured, with an admonition in his tone.
“No, it’s okay,” Stride replied. “She may well be right. It looks like Rashid shot Officer Kenzie, and if that’s true, he’s obviously not the man he appeared to be on the outside. I just don’t think we have the whole picture yet.”
“Well, we need to examine every aspect of their lives to see where there may have been radical influences on the Rashids,” Maloney said. “In the meantime, the priority is to find them. Lieutenant, talk to your source again. If someone in the Muslim community is helping them, we need to find out who.”
“I will.”
“What about the death of Officer Kenzie?” Maloney asked. “Has the autopsy been completed?”
Stride nodded. “Yes, the medical examiner recovered the bullet that killed him. Typically, we’d send it to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Saint Paul for analysis, but your people wanted it done at the FBI lab.”
“The bullet and the weapons from the scene are being hand-carried to Quantico by one of our agents,” Durkin added. “It’s top priority. We should have more information tomorrow.”
Maloney nodded. “Good. Is there anything else?”
“I have a question about the marathon photos,” Stride said. “One of my people talked to the witness who first brought Rashid to our attention. Michael Malville. He’s convinced he saw Rashid with a backpack on Superior Street a few minutes before the bombing. I was wondering if we’d located any photo or video evidence to confirm it.”
Maloney shook his head. “No.”
“What about in Canal Park itself? Do we have any photos of Rashid arriving there with a backpack?”
Maloney and Durkin exchanged glances.
“The investigation in Canal Park has been troublesome,” Maloney replied.
“How so?” Stride asked.
“I’m sure you know that the marathon maintains a high-definition camera on the roof of their building that captures images along the street. So we have excellent coverage of the entire area throughout the marathon. We’ve been through it numerous times from the beginning of the day through the bombing and the aftermath. That’s in addition to materials provided by the public.”
“And?”
“And nobody with the right type of backpack went inside the Duluth Outdoor Company shop. Not one. We didn’t know what to make of it until Durkin pointed out something we hadn’t immediately realized.”
“The shop has a back door,” Durkin interjected. “It was open throughout the morning for
people coming in from the alley.”
“There’s no camera coverage back there,” Stride said.
Maloney nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s right. For the moment, our theory is that the bomber brought in the backpack from the alley and left it near the front door. Then he simply walked out into the crowd. It makes suspect identification extremely difficult, which is why the information from Mr. Malville is important. He says Rashid had a backpack.”
“Except we have no photographs of Rashid to confirm it,” Stride pointed out.
“That’s true,” Maloney said, “but we do have this.”
He leafed through the pages of his legal pad and extracted a piece of shiny photo paper. He pushed it across the conference table to Stride.
Stride picked up the photo.
It showed Khan Rashid emerging from the doorway of the Duluth Outdoor Company shop on the morning of the marathon.
26
“Curt Dickes,” Serena said to Cat in exasperation. “Do we really have to talk to Curt Dickes?”
Cat grinned. The open top of Serena’s Mustang swirled her chestnut hair as they headed north on London Road past the Glensheen Historic Estate.
“Hey, I know you don’t like Curt, but he knows the score with all the street people. If anyone has seen Eagle lately, it’s Curt.”
“I don’t like him because he was the one who pimped you out and nearly got you killed,” Serena said. “Remember?”
“Oh, yeah, but he’s still a nice guy.”
Serena shook her head. There was no talking to Cat about Curt Dickes. She kept going back to him like a beautiful bee buzzing around a mangy flower.
Curt wasn’t really dangerous. He was mostly an irrepressible scam artist, and he’d been that way since he was fifteen years old. Every month, he wound up at police headquarters because of a different con game he was running on convention-goers at the DECC. Once it was “Canadian” Viagra made from ground-up Flintstone vitamins. Another time it was half-price tickets to a free folk concert at Amazing Grace. If he’d devoted half the energy toward honest work that he put toward his schemes, he probably would have wound up as a billionaire entrepreneur. However, Curt and honest work never found themselves in the same city at the same time.
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