by Zoë Ferraris
It would all be making perfect sense to them right now. If you were an adulterer, then why not a murderer as well? His imaginings became so vast that it surprised him to realize, shortly after lunch, that he had absolutely no proof Sabria was dead. That was the problem with fear—it clouded everything. He could never tell if it was the result of something he knew in his gut or if it was simply paranoia, lodging in the same place from which his instincts spoke. He shut his eyes, tried to relax. Impossible. Was she dead, or was he just in a panic?
He smoked two whole packs and was just gearing up to request a third when the door opened. A guard stood in the hallway. Voices were hushed.
His sister Hamida walked in. He had never seen her at a police station before, which now struck him as odd. She was the type who would go anywhere as boldly as she liked.
She was older by twelve years and more like a mother than his own mother had ever been. She spent her winters in Saudi, usually arriving in October and staying until March. Hamida had married a Palestinian man, who had fathered six children before running off with a younger woman, leaving her to rely on the generosity of her family. So she did, migrating every winter among two dozen homes, staying in each for a week and minding her own business. By imposing herself in short, innocuous doses she had managed to vaccinate everyone against her presence and extend the family’s charity for nearly twenty years.
Whenever Hamida stayed at Ibrahim’s house, Jamila found something to complain about. But Ibrahim loved her. She was the only woman he knew who didn’t give a crap about men or burqas or prayer times or propriety. “I don’t care which direction Mecca is in,” she would say. “We live on a globe. No matter where I put my head, I’m facing Mecca!”
He stood to greet her, too emotional to speak.
She looked at him with a hint of scorn and said: “They’re letting you go home. You’ll be under house arrest, but at least you won’t be stuck here. Omar arranged it.”
He knew that, no matter what happened, Hamida was the one person in the world who would always be on his side. He felt tears in his eyes.
“I told them I’d drive you home,” she said.
He choked out a laugh and hugged her so that she wouldn’t see him cry.
The guard came in and made him sign for his belongings, which were only his cell phone and his wallet. They’d taken away his badge back at the station. The guard escorted them out by the route least likely to bring them into contact with anyone else.
Hamida pretended not to notice his tears.
“I thought you were in Gaza,” he said.
“I just got back today.”
“You’re staying with us, yes?”
“Omar first,” she said. “You know how he gets.”
It hadn’t surprised him that Omar had arranged his release, but a knot of dread was forming. He couldn’t see how Omar would remain unaffected by all of this. In fact, it seemed possible that the scandal would cost him his job—or at least his position in Undercover. Balancing loyalty to his brother with the need to uphold the standards of virtue in a department increasingly controlled by men like Ubaid would be nearly impossible.
An unmarked patrol car was waiting by the curb at the front of the building. They climbed into the back. Two uniformed officers sat in the front and refused to look at him.
“Take us to Kilo Seven,” Hamida said haughtily. He almost kissed her.
He didn’t dare think of what was waiting for him at home; he simply thanked God for his sister. When her husband left her, she had embarked on the nomad’s liberated life. It was sloppy and unstable but enormously satisfying for everyone in the family. If they ran out of things to talk about, there was always Hamida. Who was she staying with now? Did they give her and the children beds or mats? Were they feeding her? Why on earth did she go back to Palestine? She had a cottage in Gaza on a sprawling orchard, although when they asked her about it, she said she never actually slept in the house. She preferred to unroll a mat beneath the lemon trees. It was safer that way. (“Who ever heard of an Israeli bombing a tree?”)
The house was a large part of Hamida’s mystique. Any woman who could retain a home in Palestine and manage to live there was automatically ennobled. Every time she went back to Gaza, the women’s chatter went wild: Allah, she’ll die! She’ll get shot and die! They’ll be bombing trees next, you just watch! Pity and concern were the perfect balms to the inadmissible fact that they envied her like hell. That Hamida, they’d say, always moving about. Rootless! And now that her sons are grown, she doesn’t even have a man in the house; mash’allah, she must be lonely! Yet the life pleased Hamida most of all. Ibrahim could think of no better shield to protect him from his family than her shining, thunderous dignity.
Daher was not in the situation room. He didn’t have an office, only an informal desk in one of the side rooms behind the whiteboards. The desk was empty when Katya peeked in. It was nine in the morning; the place should have been teeming with meetings and rearrangements now that Mu’tazz had taken charge, but only two young officers sat in a cubicle, toying with their cell phones and looking glum. They ignored her.
She went back to the lab and found Charlie Becker waiting outside the door.
“I heard all about what happened,” Charlie said. “Chief Riyadh just pulled me into his office and explained that Mu’tazz is in charge of the investigation now.”
“I need to speak to Daher,” Katya said. “Have you seen him? It’s about Inspector Zahrani.”
“No,” Charlie said. “But I’ll help you find him.”
Charlie led her back downstairs to Chief Riyadh’s office. She poked her head around the door, and the chief looked up from his desk. “Yes, Dr. Becker.” His voice sounded pinched.
“I’m looking for Lieutenant Daher,” she said. “He had some information for me.”
“I believe he hasn’t come in yet.”
They went back to the main hallway. Charlie headed for the front entrance. There was a security door there that most people used to enter the building. They stood behind it and waited.
Men came in, casting curious glances at them but politely looking away from Charlie’s uncovered hair. Fifteen minutes later, Daher arrived with two officers.
“Lieutenant Daher,” Charlie said, “we need to speak to you.”
He was surprised. The other men left awkwardly as Charlie touched Daher’s arm. He cast a disparaging glance at her.
“We need your help,” Charlie said. “It’s about Inspector Zahrani.”
“What about him?”
Charlie motioned to Katya to explain in Arabic.
“Zahrani was arrested last night,” Katya said. “He’s being charged with adultery.”
“I know.” Daher’s face went pale. “What do you want?”
Katya waited for the two men to step out of earshot. “I need to get access to the Briman women’s prison,” she whispered. “I need to speak to one of the inmates there. She knows something very important about what happened to the woman Zahrani was supposedly seeing.”
“What?” he said fiercely, stepping a little closer. “How do you know anything about this?”
“Zahrani knew this woman was missing. They worked together in Undercover. He asked me to do some investigating because she’d worked in a women’s mall and he couldn’t go there himself.” She realized suddenly how feeble this sounded. Ibrahim was conducting a secret investigation? While the Angel case was going on? And he hadn’t told his most trusted officer?
“He never said anything about this to me,” Daher said.
“Can you help me get into the Briman prison or not?”
“No,” he said. “And if you’re smart, you’ll go upstairs to your lab and get back to work before Mu’tazz finds you wasting your time down here—or he may just decide to fire you.”
Giving Charlie a stiff nod, he walked away.
The police car pulled up in front of Ibrahim’s building. None of the neighbors were out, but a few veiled w
omen were talking down the street.
He spotted his brother-in-law’s car parked by the front door. It was a large, white four-by-four with red trim and a dented rear fender. Jamila’s brother, Rahman, was a miserable soul whose single purpose in life was upholding the honor of his family—and that included his sister. The sight of the car made Ibrahim realize how stupid he had been to agree to come back here. This was a prize Rahman would treasure: the wicked sinner returning home in disgrace to face his scorned wife. He would probably have been safer staying at the station.
He had no idea what his family had been told. He wanted to ask Hamida but would have been mortified to hear the truth in front of the other men.
Once they’d all climbed out of the car, Hamida put her arm in his and they went into the building. At least the police hadn’t handcuffed him. The officers followed quietly. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find, but halfway up the stairs, his legs began shaking. Hamida stopped beside him.
He couldn’t focus. All he could think of was a single phrase, far too painful to articulate: Do they know? He checked Hamida, but she was looking condescendingly at the officers, who had stopped a few steps beneath them.
Of course they know, he thought. How could they not?
One of the doors opened on the landing above and Aqmar came out. When he saw Ibrahim, his expression said everything.
You’ve disappointed us.
“Auntie,” Aqmar said, giving a smile. “Ahlan wa’sahlan.”
She left Ibrahim then, moved past him to greet Aqmar and give him a meaningful look. Two runners passing a torch. She continued upstairs to Jamila’s lair.
Aqmar couldn’t meet his father’s gaze. “You’ll stay with me,” he said.
“I’d better go up and speak to your mother,” Ibrahim replied.
“Uncle Rahman’s up there,” Aqmar said.
“Then I’ll talk to him too.”
“They’re talking about chopping off your head.”
Their eyes met, and Ibrahim saw his son’s fear.
“All right,” he said, motioning Aqmar into the apartment. “Then we wait.”
33
Verily, We have created all things in proportion.
According to Colonel Sa’ud, that was what the delinquent had written in blood back in 1989. It had been bothering Nayir. Sa’ud had quoted the phrase as being We have created all things in order. But he should have said proportion, because that was what was written in the Quran. Once they left the colonel’s house, Nayir had looked at the photographs from the file the colonel had given them. And indeed, the killer had written order. He had misquoted the Quran, not to mention perverted Islam in general, but he had also shown something crucial about himself.
Order.
Nayir had been having strangely unorthodox thoughts. He told himself that this was no doubt normal for a man deeply stressed by an upcoming wedding. He was thinking about God’s will. The Quran was clear, again and again, that nothing happens that is not a part of God’s will. The obvious question always followed: How could you explain evil? Why would God let a serial killer occur?
In whatever form He will, doth He put thee together.
And the answer most imams would give you was that God had chosen to let some people stray from the path of good.
We broke them up into sections on this earth… some that are righteous and some that are the opposite.
But that wasn’t really an answer. It was simply a logical extension of the idea that God was all-powerful. Why had He chosen to let some people stray? The only answer Nayir could come up with these days was that God had never been interested in creating a perfect world because He preferred its imperfections. It was much more interesting. But how could He let something like this come into being? Why, for that matter, did God put up with the devil?
And yet this killer, who took pleasure in ripping away a person’s safety, honor, and, finally, her life in the most grotesque way, was preoccupied with order.
He pulled to the curb in front of the station and saw Katya standing in a thin slice of shade made by the building’s concrete awning. Her face was showing. It looked pained.
She got into the Rover. “Thanks for coming,” she said.
“It’s no problem. Where are we going?”
“You’re not going to like it,” she said. “I need to go to the Briman women’s prison. I can show you how to get there.”
Prison? he thought. Some part of him still insisted on believing that she could be a police officer who sat at a desk, wrote reports, and had coffee with other female officers, without ever leaving the station. He didn’t like the other images that crashed the party: Katya riding in a car with a male officer all day, Katya putting on body armor and loading a gun, Katya sitting across from a brutal killer in an interrogation room. Katya facing down the devil by herself.
Relax, he told himself. They didn’t let female officers own guns or drive cars or even ride bicycles, so what kind of trouble was she really going to get into?
“Is this about the serial-killer case?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s about something else.”
He waited, but she was fishing in her purse.
“You look a little stressed,” he said. She stopped fishing. “Would you like to stop for some coffee?”
She looked at him wearily. “No, thanks.”
Was he being paranoid? Every time he’d seen her, she’d been more and more anxious, and he couldn’t help thinking that it was about the wedding. That perhaps she was having second thoughts.
“How are things going on the case?” he asked.
“They’ve got one suspect in custody.” She looked as if she were going to say more but then stopped herself.
“Did you find out if Mu’tazz was really hiding the information from the chief investigator?”
“Yes, he was.”
Her clipped answers were making him more nervous by the second. “And…?”
She sighed. “It’s hard to explain.”
A few minutes later they arrived at the prison. “Would you mind waiting here?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“Thanks.” And with that, she was out the door.
You’ll have to forgive me, we’re redecorating some of the rooms.” The prison head was a woman named Latifah Matar. She was short, compact, all swift movement, self-assurance, and a sensible, confident manner. She reminded Katya of long-ago grade-school teachers, women as comfortable being punitive as they were exposing their tender sides. There was a large splash of gray paint on Matar’s forearm; it had smeared onto her cloak, and she was now attempting to scrub it clean with a wet paper towel.
“Good enough,” she said, rolling down her sleeve and motioning Katya briskly out the door. “Come with me.”
Once Katya had explained that she worked in Homicide and was there about a minor forensics matter on one of their old cases, she had had no trouble getting permission to speak to one of the prisoners. In fact, Matar had welcomed the opportunity for a prisoner to interact with a woman “who had her life together.” At a security station they encountered a female prison guard whose name tag read WARDA. She was over six feet tall and built square enough to pass as a man. She nodded phlegmatically as Matar led Katya through the gate.
The corridor was full of wonders. On the left was a giant studio littered with easels, palettes, and dirty smocks, walled in by large paintings of flowers, machinery, and strange humanlike forms. There was a reading room there, with books and tables where women could write. On the right they encountered a beauty studio. Through the window in the door Katya saw a row of empty hair dryers and six women painting nails and cutting hair.
“I didn’t know you had a salon,” she said.
Matar seemed to find her reactions vaguely childish. “Yes,” she said. “We believe it’s important to give the women skills they can use when they get released.”
Katya was now doubly impressed.
�
��I tell the ministry all the time that you can’t put a woman back into society unless she can take care of herself,” Matar said. “Most of these women need rehabilitation. They’ve been neglected. They have no education. And frankly, work keeps them out of all kinds of trouble. Aside from the salon, and the literacy and art classes, we run a whole nurses’ training school here as well.”
Suddenly the wail of a baby broke through the air.
“And of course there’s the nursery.” They had stopped at a windowless door. “This is where we’ll find Miss Rizal. I’m going to ask you to wait here.”
Katya nodded mutely.
She wondered if whoever organized this place hadn’t read the sign out front stating that this was a prison.
Shortly, the door opened and Matar came back out. “Miss Rizal will be happy to talk to you,” she said.
“Oh,” Katya said. “Well, that’s very nice of her.”
“Miss Hijazi,” Matar said sharply, “we like to give our women a sense of responsibility. Most of these women have made moral mistakes. They’re not defective, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. If they believe that about themselves, then it’s only because someone else made a mess of their heads. So we try to teach them to respect themselves and others.”
“Yes, sa’eeda,” she said sheepishly. She hadn’t meant the comment to be sarcastic.
“Very good. Now, let me take you to the interview room.”
Mu’tazz would have giggled gleefully to see it: Ibrahim locked in his son’s sitting room with the sounds of his wife’s wailing coming through the ceiling. The imprisonment was just as strict as it had been at the interrogation facility. He was not allowed to use a cell phone. Anyone who came into the house was searched. Poor Constance was so intimidated by the guards at her front and back doors that she refused to leave the apartment. Aqmar, on the other hand, had left and not returned. Ibrahim felt ruined.