Web of Fear

by Mike Omer

  Mitchell blinked and yawned again, then nodded.

  Bailey continued. “Hannah, you should talk to either Agent Ward or Agent Mancuso—”

  “Agent Mancuso is probably a better choice,” Hannah said hurriedly.

  “Okay. Update her on our preliminary findings. She isn’t directly in charge of this case, so I assume it’ll take them some time to reach a decision regarding this. For now, we keep investigating it. The body was found less than twelve hours ago; the trail is still reasonably warm. We don’t want to waste time. I’ll try to get authorization for overtime for the lab and the morgue as well. If this case is related to the kidnapping case, it’s crucial we resolve this case as soon as possible.”

  “Sounds good,” Hannah said.

  “I’m so glad you approve of my management skills. Now, Detective Cooper is at the hospital; his daughter’s fever was very high and they had to get her to the emergency room.”

  Hannah tensed. “Is she okay?” she asked, worried.

  “Yeah. Apparently it’s just a bad case of the flu. She isn’t in any danger. But that means one of the detectives in charge is currently not on the case. I want you to temporarily pair with Detective Lonnie on this investigation. You’re the closest to the Lisman case, so your knowledge will be valuable. Bernard and I will help as much as we can.”

  Hannah nodded, relieved that she was back on the kidnapping case, even if temporarily so.

  “Where do we stand on leads?” Bailey asked.

  There was silence in the room. Everyone looked at Mitchell. His eyes were glazed and unfocused.

  “Mitchell!” Hannah snapped.

  “Wha?”

  “Leads,” Bailey repeated. “On this case.”

  “Oh. Uh… we know the guy who called Dispatch to report the body met his dealer nearby.”

  “The dealer could have seen who drove the car to that spot,” Bailey said.

  “Do we know who the dealer is?” Hannah asked. “Mitchell. Mitchell! Do we know who the dealer is?”

  “Not yet,” Mitchell said sleepily.

  “Find the dealer’s name,” Bailey told Hannah. “Interrogate him. Maybe he saw something. And get those lab reports. I want more info on this case before the FBI steals it from under our feet.”

  To Hannah’s surprise, Agent Christine Mancuso suggested meeting in person instead of talking on the phone. She was just visiting the Lisman family, so she was nearby. They agreed to have breakfast at Red’s Pizza.

  Despite being five minutes away, Hannah was late; she was breathing heavily, her pulse racing, by the time she got to Red’s Pizza. Agent Mancuso was already seated at a table nearby and waved her over. She had a small espresso cup in front of her. Hannah sat down and grabbed a menu.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I already ordered,” Mancuso said. “I need to be in Boston in a couple of hours, so I don’t have much time.”

  “Sure, no problem. I’m sorry I was late,” Hannah said, scanning the menu quickly. “I think I’ll just have a muffin and a cup of coffee.”

  Mancuso frowned. “You should inform the waitress. I’m not sure telling me about it is very helpful.”

  “I was just sharing,” Hannah muttered, her face flushing.

  “Okay.”

  Hannah put the menu down. “So… We found out something related to the Lisman case.”

  “What is it?” Mancuso asked.

  “A young man named Glen Haney was found dead—stabbed—in the trunk of his parents’ car on Cypress Street. It’s one of the worst areas in Glenmore Park.”

  “Yeah,” Mancuso nodded. “I know where that is.”

  “Glen Haney lives in Portland. He was one of the Redditors who are trying to find Abigail Lisman.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “We think he was here following a lead. Or he decided to come here to be closer to the case. And then he got killed.”

  Mancuso nodded. The waitress approached them, carrying a huge round tray. Hannah stopped talking as the waitress laid a large pepperoni pizza in front of Mancuso.

  “One pepperoni pizza,” she said cheerfully, and turned to Hannah with a smile. “What can I get you?”

  “Uh…” Hannah stared at the huge steaming pizza tray. “A muffin,” she said, her voice a bit higher than usual. “And coffee?”

  “Sure!” The waitress nodded. “Anything else?” She glanced at the large pizza.

  Hannah looked at it as well. Her muffin seemed completely inadequate. “No,” she finally said. “That’s all.”

  The waitress left, and Mancuso grabbed a slice and bit into it. “You can have a slice if you want,” she said, after swallowing.

  Hannah stared at her. “No. Thanks.” The idea of eating pizza first thing in the morning made her queasy.

  “Okay,” Mancuso said. “Dead Redditor.”

  “Right.”

  “Why do you think this has anything to do with the kidnapping?”

  “Well… I think it’s very possible he was on to something, and it got him killed.”

  “Is it?” Mancuso’s eyebrows quirked and she took another huge bite from her slice.

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “Did he post anything illuminating about the case before disappearing?”

  “I don’t think so, but—”

  Mancuso interrupted her. “He didn’t. You want to know how I know that? Because I read all the posts on that subreddit. And they were far from illuminating. Some of them were downright dangerous.”

  “Yeah, but maybe he wanted to be sure before—”

  “One of the most popular posts there fingers a man named Abdul Baasit as a suspect in the kidnapping. Do you know what their proof is?”

  “No,” Hannah said.

  “He’s a Muslim. Truly great minds at work. It has over fifty upvotes.”

  “It’s the internet,” Hannah said. “Of course it draws mindless assholes. But that doesn’t mean that—”

  “Hannah, you know as well as I do that the most likely scenario here is that this Glen fellow drove over here, accused some drug dealer of the kidnapping, and got killed.”

  “Damn it, Mancuso, you can’t just ignore this!”

  Mancuso finished her slice and took another. “I’m not ignoring anything. But I think the FBI has resources that random people on the internet don’t. We have over fifteen agents working on this case, and dozens more involved. Due to its publicity, it rose to the top of the pile. If those Redditors found something, we would have noticed it as well.”

  “That’s classic FBI superiority,” Hannah said sharply. “You just assume you’re better.”

  “We are better,” Mancuso said, leaning forward, her eyes narrowing. “And better funded as well. A man has been killed. That’s terrible. But do you really want resources pulled away from this case because of it?”

  Hannah remained silent, seething.

  The waitress approached them and put a small cup of coffee and a plate with a single muffin in front of Hannah. The muffin plate was completely dwarfed by the huge pizza tray. It looked like a Sesame Street demonstration of “big and small.”

  “Okay, listen,” Mancuso said after she finished chewing. “I’m not the one making the call. Maybe I am being a patronizing Fed, bloated by her own self-perception.” She grinned, and the rage in Hannah’s heart subsided slightly. “I’ll talk to the person in charge. See what he thinks.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said.

  “Who’s in charge of the murder case?” Mancuso asked.

  “Detective Lonnie and I.”

  “Then what are you so angry about?” Mancuso asked, her grin widening. “You’ll catch the killer in no time.” She shoved the rest of the pizza crust into her mouth and chewed contentedly.

  Hannah watched Fin’s eyes as they constantly shifted right and left, as if searching desperately for something. Perhaps his eyes were looking for the next crack rock. Or maybe they were simply searching for some way to escape the two detectives blocking the view.r />
  The noon sun hit the back alley of the burger joint, exposing the numerous cracks in the walls, the uninspired graffiti, the trash-infested ground.

  Fin worked as a dishwasher at the restaurant. Mitchell had joined Hannah, and they’d driven over to interrogate him.

  “We’re not going to arrest anybody,” Hannah said. “We’re just interested in the murder. Your dealer might have seen something.”

  “I have no dealer,” Fin said.

  “Don’t try my patience, Fin. we found two rocks in your pocket,” Mitchell said sharply.

  “That was an illegal search,” Fin mumbled. “You can’t arrest me for that.”

  “Wanna try me?” Mitchell asked.

  “We don’t want to arrest you, Fin,” Hannah said. “Just give us the name of the dealer.”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “Oh?” Mitchell said. “Do you call him Mr. Dealer, then? His nickname is good enough, Fin. Give me something, so I don’t have to haul your ass into jail. It’s hard to get crack inside.”

  “I just saw this guy, and I knew he sometimes sold crack, so I bought some. I don’t know his name, I swear!”

  “I believe you,” Hannah said softly. “But we need to find him. He might have been a witness to the murder. He won’t even know you’re the one who told us. We’ll tell him we saw it on a security camera.”

  “There are no security cameras on Cypress Street,” Fin said. “People make sure of that.”

  “What people?” Mitchell asked.

  “I don’t know. I just heard what people told me.”

  “Okay, I’m losing my patience,” Mitchell said to Hannah. “This guy isn’t talking. You know what? I think he killed that boy for his money. Let’s arrest him for murder. Boom, case closed, we can go home.”

  “I didn’t kill that boy!” Fin said, panicking.

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Hannah said, her eyes sad. It wasn’t an act. He was pitiful, his fingers trembling, lips blistered beyond repair, teeth rotting, clothing tattered. He couldn’t be older than thirty, but he looked as if he was sixty. She sighed heavily. “But we really need to catch the guy who did this. So just give us the—”

  “You know what?” Fin said, his voice rising high. “You want to take me to jail? Do it. Because I’d rather spend the next twenty years in prison, than have my throat cut tonight.”

  There was a moment of silence in the alley. The noise of a truck rumbled in the distance. Fin’s eyes stopped shifting for a second as he looked at them both, his jaw clenched tight.

  “Let’s try this again,” Mitchell said. “Last night you bought some crack on Cypress Street. What was your dealer’s name?”

  “Damn it,” Hannah muttered as they got back in the car. “I thought he’d give the name up eventually.”

  Mitchell shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it. Let’s go back to the station. We can start checking out the Reddit page, search Glen’s social networks, see if there are any leads there.”

  Hannah glanced at him. This was Mitchell’s favorite approach: go online, find leads there. It often led to good results; he was very good at ferreting out connections and interesting details from the internet.

  But Hannah preferred physical leads. It was what had attracted her to this line of work in the first place. She definitely hadn’t expected to spend so much time behind a desk.

  “Hang on,” she said. “Let’s think about it for a second. The dealer was hanging around Cypress Street. Who controls that area?”

  “The Hasidic Panthers dominate the drug business on the entire southern side of town,” Mitchell said. “So, I guess we’re talking about Rabbi Friedman.”

  “Why don’t we talk to him?”

  Mitchell stared at her. “You want us to ask Rabbi Friedman to finger the dealer who worked that night? Do you think he’ll just take a look at the roster for that evening, and tell us the name of the employee in question?”

  “It’s all theoretical. We just want to find Abigail. We aren’t looking to arrest anyone for selling drugs.”

  “Hannah, we’re talking about crack,” Mitchell said sharply. “This isn’t marijuana; we can’t just look the other way.”

  “Well, there’s no harm in talking to him,” she said.

  “I think you’re actually the first person to ever say there’s no harm in talking to Rabbi Friedman.”

  “After that we’ll go do your thing with the computer.”

  “My thing?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Fine,” Mitchell grumbled as he started the engine. “Don’t blame me if we’ll find ourselves on the bottom of the ocean with lead dreidels chained to our ankles.”

  Hannah bit her lip as they drove, occasionally glancing at Mitchell. Whenever they were together lately, she was unusually tense and on edge. She realized the car smelled of Mitchell. Probably even more so after his trip to Portland and back.

  She liked his smell; it was sweet and fresh, and made her feel warm all over. Had his smell affected her like that a year ago? She doubted it. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever even noticed his smell a year ago.

  She should call Clint. She liked him, and the fact that they didn’t work together anymore only made a relationship more feasible. He hadn’t called her since Friday. Was he mad about Jurgen’s interrogation? Probably, just a bit. Hannah hoped he’d get over it. Clint didn’t strike her as a guy who could hang on to a grudge for long.

  “Here we are,” Mitchell said, parking the car.

  Rabbi Friedman lived in a large, two-story house with a generous front yard, complete with a wide white table, four chairs surrounding it, and a plastic tanning bed. Hannah tried to imagine the rabbi or his wife on the bed, and her mind rebelled against the impossible images. No one ever used the tanning bed, she decided.

  It felt strange, approaching the door of the Friedman mansion without any cover, without a warrant or a plan. Though Hannah had been to the house four times before, this was the first time she’d come just to talk. She hesitated before pressing the doorbell.

  After a moment, a voice called from behind the door. “Yes?”

  “Detectives Shor and Lonnie to see Rabbi Friedman,” Hannah said.

  There was a moment of silence, and then the voice said. “Do you have an appointment?” This was where Hannah would normally brandish a warrant, or threaten to break down the door.

  “No,” she said. “But we really need to talk to him. It’s important.”

  “Hang on,” the voice said.

  They waited.

  “This was a bad idea,” Mitchell said. Hannah didn’t answer.

  The door finally opened. A woman in a long dress stood in the entrance, wearing a scarf around her head.

  “Please,” she said. “Come in.”

  She led them inside and down a large hallway into a lavishly furnished room. “The rabbi will soon join you,” she said, gesturing at a cream colored sofa, then left.

  Mitchell and Hannah sat down, exchanging looks. They waited in silence for several minutes until the man of the house came in.

  Rabbi Friedman was a wide man, though his body hinted at a deep muscular frame. His blue eyes were large and cold, overshadowed by two incredibly thick eyebrows. His black beard was very rich as well, and even as he sat in front of them he was already stroking it. It was a strange mannerism of his; he would constantly touch his beard, as if trying to verify it was still there, and would occasionally yank it when irritated.

  “Detective Shor,” he said in a deep, vibrating voice. He glanced at Mitchell. “And the pisher. Visiting me on a Sunday. Isn’t this the police’s day off?”

  “Hello, Rabbi,” Hannah said. “We were hoping you could help us with a case.”

  “Really?” His eyes went wide. “Help you? That’s a first.”

  Hannah cleared her throat. “A young man was found dead on Cypress Street. The man who found the body was meeting his drug dealer there.”

  The rabbi ca
ressed his beard. “Terrible business. How does that relate to me?”

  “We were hoping the drug dealer saw the killer,” Mitchell said.

  “Nu? What am I supposed to do about it? You’re the detectives, go and ask him!”

  “We don’t know who the drug dealer is,” Hannah said.

  “Ah,” the rabbi said, the tugging of his beard becoming more pronounced. “And you came here to ask for my guidance? Perhaps hoping I’ll throw in a good word with Hashem up above?”

  “We… What?” Mitchell looked at him confused.

  “Because I can’t see any other reason for you nudnikim to show up at my door! Why would I know anything about a drug—”

  The door suddenly opened, and an old frail woman of maybe eighty years poked her head inside. Her entire face was an impossible network of crinkles and liver spots, except for her eyes, which were blue and penetrating, almost identical to the rabbi’s.

  “Baruch!” she said in a sharp voice. “Yemima made pasta again. Pasta!”

  The rabbi’s hand left his beard, and his face transformed into a mask of horror. “Momma,” he said. “I am busy right now, and—”

  “I told you to talk to her. All this pasta is making me constipated! I told her, but the balabusta will not listen to me!”

  “Yes, Momma, I will talk to her—”

  “And it tastes like drek. I can’t eat this food. If she would let me cook, I could make my chicken soup.”

  At the mention of the chicken soup, the rabbi’s face became deathly pale. He stood up quickly. “No need!” he said. “You should rest. I will talk to Yemima. She will make very good food, no more pasta.”

  “Something with prunes!” his mother quacked at him. “For my constipation.”

  “Yes Momma, of course, Momma.” He ushered her out of the room and slammed the door behind her. Sweating profusely, he fumbled in his pockets until he located a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

  “This season,” he muttered, glancing at Hannah. “Every year, a month before Pesach, my mother comes here to stay with us. It’s enough to drive a man mad! Do you celebrate Pesach with your family?”