by Zoë Ferraris
“Actually,” Katya said, “we came here looking for Hakim al-Adnan. We’re with the Jeddah police and we’d like to ask him a few questions.” Yusuf immediately looked stricken. “He may be able to help us with an investigation,” Katya added.
“Mr. al-Adnan is not here,” Yusuf said. “He’s away on business and won’t be back until next week. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Katya replied.
“And you came all this way!” Yusuf said. “Please sit for tea. Please.” He motioned them onto the villa’s front terrace, where a small table and chairs waited in the shade of an arbor. “If you can spare the time, I’d be glad to give you a tour of the gardens, since you drove all the way from Jeddah.”
Once they’d had tea, Katya and Nayir allowed themselves to be led on a tour of the villa and the gardens. Taïf was famous for its rose oils, which were used in luxury perfumes all over the world. With boyish enthusiasm, Yusuf narrated the details of his precious plants and the great war he waged to protect them from a family of malevolent porcupines.
“You know Mr. al-Adnan well?” Katya finally said as they strolled through the garden.
“Yes,” Yusuf said uncertainly. “He is the finest employer I could hope to have. I am lucky to work here doing something I love.”
“You said he was away on business?”
“Yes.”
“Delivering rose oil to the rest of the world?” She smiled and Yusuf returned a grin.
“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “he’s just taken a shipment to Mecca. He goes twice a year—in April and October—to donate attar to the Holy Kaaba.”
It had been a few years since Katya had performed the Hajj, but she remembered that attar was used to perfume the large vertical stone in the southern corner of the Kaaba. According to the Hadith, touching that stone would erase all sins.
“That’s very good of him.” She checked Nayir and saw that he was not impressed by al-Adnan’s apparent generosity.
They had reached the end of the garden. A row of bushes had recently been cleared away, leaving the topsoil exposed. It was a rich, black, loamy earth shaded from the sun by a thin fabric awning tied to a scaffold.
To the far right, three rows of young bushes were reaching for the sun.
Katya was struck with a sudden memory of a dream, of blood and petals and evil efreet burying her body in the earth. The recollection came sharp and fast, and she turned to Nayir, who seemed to understand that something was wrong but had no idea what.
“How long ago were these bushes planted?” she asked.
“Well, we put them in at the beginning of the summer. A few of them aren’t doing so well.”
She went to the ones that seemed to be floundering.
“Please don’t walk too close to them,” Yusuf said.
Katya kept moving.
“Excuse me, sa’eeda,” Yusuf said more snappishly.
“Were these bushes recently dug up and then replanted?”
Yusuf looked annoyed. “No, we didn’t do that.”
“I’ll need a shovel.”
“What?” He marched toward her now. Nayir came after him.
Katya was surprised that her heart was pounding in her ears. She felt a cold panic. Her voice shook as she asked: “Exactly how long ago did the problems start?”
“Sa’eeda, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to step away.”
“Exactly how long ago?” Katya asked.
Yusuf turned and began shouting at the house, calling for the head gardener.
“There may be a body buried under these bushes.”
Yusuf spun back to her in amazement.
The head gardener came striding along the path from the house, followed by two young men. One of them was carrying a shovel. It took fifteen minutes and a lot of discussion before they began to turn the dirt, rolling it gently away from the plants and mounding it carefully at the edge of the plot. They drew the first rosebush out of the ground with the kind of reverence Katya had seen men use in documentaries about archaeology. The Pakistani falconer had been less careful with the injured hawk.
They set the first bush in a wheelbarrow filled with dirt and water and went to work digging deeper. Katya paced. She wanted to get down on her knees and start shoveling dirt with her hands. Was this just a dream, this certainty? A remnant fear seeded in her mind by the devil? Her arms were shaking so she clutched her waist.
The shovel hit an obstacle. Soft but firm. Suddenly two men were down on their knees, pushing away the dirt with their hands. Before she knew what she was doing, she was kneeling beside them. “Be careful. Let me.” The earth was cool and damp, a soil like none she had ever seen, and when her fingers dug into the obstacle, she felt skin and clothing fiber and the stillness of death. She quickly brushed the last of the dirt away. “Ya Allah, na’uzhu bi Allah.”
It was a woman’s foot, her bright red toenails poking up through the dirt.
37
It was just after noon and the Friday dhuhr prayers were finishing. Ibrahim had become so bored with watching TV, so frustrated with Saffanah sitting on the opposite end of the couch watching TV but not really watching and getting up only to pray, that he’d finally turned to her and said, “Where is the father?”
She’d known at once what he was talking about and she didn’t reply. Not even a shrug.
“I’d just like to know how you met him.”
They were alone. Constance was upstairs, acting as their eyes and ears to the situation with Jamila. Aqmar had gone to work and Zaki was still avoiding him.
“Look,” he said, “there’s nothing you can tell me that will shock me. And I promise you it won’t leave this room.”
Saffanah didn’t seem inclined to answer, so he went back to watching TV. After a few minutes, just as the commercial break was beginning, she said, “The doctor’s office.”
“Pardon me?”
“I met him at the doctor’s office. He worked there.”
Ibrahim tried not to look at her. He was certain she would clam up if he did. “What were you doing at the doctor’s office?”
“Getting checked for marriage.”
He took that to mean that her mother had dragged her to the gynecologist to be sure that her hymen was still intact. As if Zaki would have cared one whit whether or not his wife bled on the honeymoon sheets.
“Was he a doctor?” Ibrahim asked.
“No. A secretary.”
“Does he know about your situation now?”
She shook her head and went back to watching TV, lifting the tail of her headscarf and wrapping it over her nose and mouth. It was a casual gesture he’d seen her do often, but now it made her look scared.
So she’d fallen for a boy at the doctor’s office and somehow they’d had sex. He thought it was interesting that it had happened after she’d agreed to marry Zaki.
“Where did you…?” The minute he said it, he could tell he’d gone too far. She froze and sat there as unmoving as the wall behind her.
The news was still covering the recent story of another abused housemaid, this one in Dubai. He tried not to think about Sabria and how much stories like this angered her. When the news report showed the housemaid’s photo, he stood up and went onto the balcony for a cigarette.
When he returned, they watched the news for another half hour before Saffanah said in a small voice, “At the mall. In a bathroom.”
He turned to her. “The men’s bathroom?”
She nodded.
“Did he make any promises?”
She didn’t reply, but the rest unfurled in his mind like a giant tapestry woven with scenes of the lives of young women who dared to stray from the path of virtue. The heart-stopping excitement of talking to a boy. The fear and nervousness of lying to your mother and stealing off to the mall. The excitement of following him into the boys’ restroom, into a stall. And then, after so many years of covering up, the terror of being uncovered, mixed with the agony of
being a teenager and being half naked with a stranger who was probably clumsy and thoughtless and urgent to satisfy no one but himself.
“He said he was going to marry me,” she said.
Ibrahim found that he was holding his breath. “And then?”
She was staring at the television now, her hands tucked deep into her lap. “We had another date. But he didn’t show up.”
He sat back against the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. There was nothing to say. She already knew that people were cruel. That there was no hope of getting this guy to take responsibility.
“You know you were lucky in one regard,” he said. “Don’t hate me for saying this, but at least you didn’t get stuck with the guy.”
Now her determined chin said that the conversation was over.
It hit him suddenly: she was at least four months pregnant. He couldn’t tell from looking at her. Even in the house she wore the long black abaaya that obscured her figure. It had been almost a month since he’d found out. She must have been at least three months pregnant then because she’d had sex with the baby’s father before she’d married Zaki. He realized what should have been obvious before: it was too late. She couldn’t pretend anymore that this baby was Zaki’s.
He thought about Sabria but could not see anything lucky in her leaving.
Ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door and it swung open. Omar came in and shut the door behind him. Ibrahim stood up. He saw at once that something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Sit down,” Omar said. “We need to talk.”
“What’s going on?”
“Sit down.”
Ibrahim refused. On the sofa, Saffanah sat up straighter.
Omar let out a heavy sigh. “They found her.”
“Who?”
“Sabria.”
“Oh my God. Where is she?”
Omar’s face said it all. Ibrahim dropped to the couch. Saffanah turned to him.
“Oh God, no,” Ibrahim said.
“I’m sorry,” Omar said.
Ibrahim felt a great violent rip, as if everything inside him were being turned inside out. The next half hour was a dream. His consciousness registered things in snapshots: him clutching his knees, having trouble breathing. Blackness, muffled voices. Saffanah leaning over him, holding his hand. Omar on the telephone. Constance crying, her thin white hand held over her mouth. And through it all, the great, wide knowledge that Sabria was dead, that although it had been building in the night sky for weeks, the supernova had finally exploded. She was never coming back, and everything he’d loved and sacrificed for, everything that had ever given him hope, had come to an end.
38
Katya lifted her earmuffs long enough to ask, “Whose gun is this?”
“Ubaid’s police weapon,” Majdi said.
Katya watched him point the gun into the clearing box and pull off three careful rounds. On the other side of the box, Inspector Osama Ibrahim stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking as if he’d had a very bad weekend.
“Surely he isn’t stupid enough to have used his police weapon,” she said.
“You never know,” Osama said.
“You can hear me through your earmuffs?”
He nodded.
“I must be getting old,” she muttered. She replaced her muffs while Majdi tested the second gun. There were four guns on the table. The first belonged to Ubaid; the other three came from Hakim al-Adnan’s bodyguards.
“Have you talked to al-Adnan yet?” Katya asked.
“No,” Osama said. “It’s best to do this first.”
They had found al-Adnan in Mecca, making a circumambulation of the Kaaba. The police had waited respectfully until he’d finished and then approached him, saying they’d like to ask him some questions. He was in the interrogation room now.
His three bodyguards were also being held. They were the only ones close to al-Adnan who carried weapons. Adara had pulled a bullet from Sabria’s chest, and Katya had found two shell casings at the rose farm in the same area that Sabria was buried. She’d been killed at close range by a .22 handgun. One shot to the head, one to the heart.
Technically, Undercover had been in charge of the case. Now that they had a body it was a Homicide investigation. Chief Riyadh had turned it over to Osama.
It seemed obvious that one of al-Adnan’s men had killed Sabria. She was found on his property. Majdi finished test-firing the fourth gun and then took off his goggles and earmuffs. “I’ll analyze the shell casings now,” he said.
“When will you have an answer?” Osama asked.
“Give me half an hour.”
Carmelita Rizal had already cried; now she was wet-faced and shaky with a pile of tissues on her lap and the gaudy tissue box sitting on the sofa beside her. Katya felt the simmering discomfort that she imagined most cops felt watching people fall to pieces over the death of a loved one. She wondered what Nayir’s reaction would be if someone came to him to break the news of her death. She couldn’t imagine him crying. His pain, like so many other things about him, would get bundled up and shoved deep inside.
Katya had explained that Majdi had matched bullets fired from the gun of one of al-Adnan’s bodyguards to the shell casings found with Sabria’s body. So al-Adnan’s bodyguard had killed her. She told Rizal about the rose farm and her disturbing intuition that Sabria might be buried in the garden. It still felt odd to remember the cold sweat and inexplicable sense of urgency. The worst part had been explaining Jessica’s involvement, however unwitting it was. Katya suspected that it had effectively robbed Rizal of two good friends in one swoop.
“I know one thing,” Rizal said now, wiping her face. “When I get out of here, I’m going back to the Philippines. Even if I starve. I have no one here except my son.”
“If you need help getting an exit visa, let me know.”
“Yes, thanks. I think I might need that,” Rizal said. “You know, one of the things Sabria did was procure fake exit visas. I probably shouldn’t be telling you that either, but it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
Katya shook her head.
“I can’t help feeling that everything she was doing was so brave and stupid. It was not the answer. I think for her, it was exciting. She felt like a heroine. But it was only ever going to be a temporary solution. Things are never going to change entirely until the law changes. They say they don’t have to protect us, we’re not Saudis, but there are as many of us as there are Saudis and we do more work.” She was quiet for a moment, folding up a wet tissue. “So I’m going to leave. I don’t care if I starve to death in Manila. At least I’ll starve at home.”
39
Sunday at noon, Katya was sitting at her computer when the door opened and Charlie Becker poked her head in. Seeing Katya, she smiled.
“Glad you’re here,” she said. She came in carrying two paper bags full of folders. Katya stood up in surprise. “I finally managed to convince Riyadh that we still had work to do. These are all their unsolved cases with female victims from the past five years—with photographs!”
Katya was amazed. “Does Mu’tazz know about this?”
“I have no idea and I don’t care,” Charlie said briskly. “I keep telling these guys that they should be looking for patterns because this killer is obviously in love with his little structures and secret messages, but you know what?” She looked up, her face red from the effort of carrying so many files. “I don’t think they really want to hear what I have to say. So I say screw it, we can do this ourselves.”
Katya smiled at her stubbornness. “I’m glad you’re here. Sit down.”
Charlie pulled up a swivel chair and sat at the side of Katya’s desk. The other women in the office cast a few curious glances their way, but Katya ignored them.
Charlie was right: all of the files contained photographs. The problem now was that there were so many of them, and each one could be viewed as one letter of the alphabet or an
other.
An hour later, Katya opened her file drawer and took out the familiar bagged lunch. Charlie laughed. “Let me guess—hummus, carrots, pretzels, and cheese sticks?”
Katya laid the bag’s contents on the desk with a certain defensive pride.
“And don’t forget the apple and the Diet Coke,” Charlie said.
Katya handed her the apple. “Since we never share it, I want you to eat it today.”
“I can’t, remember? I feel guilty that you’re not eating it.”
“Oh yes, I forgot.”
So the apple sat between them and they split the rest.
The desk was too small and cluttered for Katya to lay out the maps of the crime scenes, so she had taped them to the side of her computer and to the narrow slice of wall space just beside it. The city map showed the location of the body parts from the Osiris case. The desert map showing the mass gravesite was a simple hexagon near a road in the wilderness. She had drawn a third hexagon on a transparency and placed it over another city map with a giant question mark printed on top. The only mark on it belonged to Amina al-Fouad’s hand.
“I wonder what the men really think of this,” Katya said, motioning to the folders that were open on the desk.
“They’re probably glad we’re doing all the grunt work,” Charlie replied; then, more seriously: “I get the feeling they think it’s possible that Amina is part of a bigger series of murders but they don’t think it’s likely, so they can’t afford to waste their time on it right now.”
“Amina al-Fouad has to be connected.”
“Now, don’t lose faith yourself,” Charlie said. “Riyadh isn’t saying that she’s not connected. The severed hands make that obvious. He’s just saying that she was a one-off, you know? He thinks there’s no bigger pattern.” Charlie motioned to the maps. “But I think you may be right, and that’s why I’m here, helping you look for that third apple.” She motioned to the maps.