A Deadly Divide

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  The silent mass was Philippe Benoit. He was bleeding from a wound on his head, his gun missing from its holster. Khattak knelt down beside him, testing for his pulse, his own heart kicking up speed.

  He hit Rachel’s number with his thumb just as a shape loomed out of the darkness and threw itself at him. He dropped his phone and rolled aside. His assailant leapt at him again.

  Khattak stuck out his leg and tripped him. He landed a foot away, cold black metal sliding across the floor. Khattak holstered his own gun swiftly, wrestling with the strong, dark shape. They thrashed across the floor. Khattak gained a little traction and threw his attacker aside. Whoever it was, he landed next to Benoit, knocking himself out when his head thumped hard against the floor. Khattak pinned his body to the floor, wresting his arms behind his back.

  He heard the clink of metal; then a weak voice spoke in his ear. “Would these help?”

  Benoit had managed to raise his head. He was holding his handcuffs in his hand.

  Khattak used them to lock down the suspect.

  He turned the suspect over as Benoit whispered, “I’m sorry. He jumped me when I went to check the lights.”

  Khattak put a finger to his lips. “Can you get up?”

  Benoit shook his head, then groaned. “I don’t think so.”

  Khattak looked down at the suspect he’d just handcuffed.

  He recognized Pascal Richard’s intern, André Martin—the young man who served as a military cadet. The one he’d accused of looking like one of Maxime’s disciples. André Martin was the name Père Étienne had given him.

  “He’s the one who jumped you and took your gun?”

  Benoit nodded. “Yes.”

  Khattak searched for Benoit’s gun. He couldn’t find it. He’d lost it along with his phone.

  “Phone,” he whispered to Benoit.

  Benoit passed his over, and Khattak switched on its light. He swept the floor, the hallway, the corners of the reception area. The gun was ten feet away. He eased over to it and picked it up. He checked it. It was loaded. He gave it back to Benoit.

  Something glinted in the light from Benoit’s phone. Khattak turned to look. The light had silvered across the buckle on André’s belt. Khattak read its engraving to himself.

  FLAYALLTHEPLAYERS

  He recognized the name from a Wolf Allegiance transcript, but it didn’t make sense in light of Rachel’s warning. From Benoit’s expression, he recognized the name as well.

  “Backup will be here any minute,” Esa promised. “Don’t take your eyes off him.”

  Benoit nodded at him wearily. Esa squeezed his shoulder and moved on.

  He’d cleared the area behind him. He was in the passageway between Richard’s office and the door to the studio. The ON AIR sign that should have warned him not to interrupt the broadcast wasn’t on. He put his hand on the handle and considered.

  Was the broadcast actually airing? Or had it been a ruse to draw Alizah and Amadou to the studio? He couldn’t hear Richard’s voice, but the calls coming in were real enough.

  Carefully, he opened the door. When he pushed it wide, he caught sight of Richard in the control booth at the back of the right side of the spacious room. With his headphones on, Richard was carefully screening calls at a soundboard, in lieu of his regular technician. He still had access to a microphone that was presently switched off. Khattak guessed that Richard had wanted to control every aspect of this particular program and would weigh in when he wanted to shift the discussion in a particular direction. The booth was protected by a glass partition, but Richard was clearly visible behind it.

  On the left side of the studio several feet away from the floor-to-ceiling windows, Amadou’s back was to Khattak at the large and durable host’s desk, which had been set up with two microphones. He was answering a call that Richard had directed to him—a disturbingly venomous outpouring, if what Esa could hear was anything to judge by. Alizah was facing Khattak from the opposite desk at a second microphone, a digital clock to the side counting down the time in red.

  Alizah looked up at Esa. Her eyes went wide at the sight of the gun poised in his hand. Esa put a finger to his lips. He motioned to Alizah to drop down behind the desk. The minute she did, he scanned the studio.

  There was no one else in the room. Behind the glass partition, Richard caught sight of him. Shocked, he made a move to pull off his headphones, but Esa stayed him, motioning him down. Richard’s hand moved suddenly, cutting off all sound. The studio was filled with dead air. Uncertain now, Esa moved so that he was between Richard and Amadou, who still hadn’t turned around.

  Amadou remained oddly still.

  The lights in the studio were dim. But Amadou was staring straight ahead, his gaze fixed at a point on the picture window.

  A single shot shattered the glass. Alizah stifled a scream.

  And then there was another presence in the room.

  71

  “Too little,” she said. “Too little, far too late.”

  “Isabelle.”

  Esa kept his gun trained on her, just as the lethal black weapon in her hand was pointed straight at his heart.

  He recognized the gun. It was a Glock 19, a gun commonly used by law enforcement.

  If she’d fired one round to shatter the window before she’d climbed inside from the terrace, she still had more than enough ammunition. He moved closer to her cautiously. He wanted to shove Amadou behind him, but he still wasn’t sure about Richard.

  “Amadou, get under the desk,” he urged.

  “He moves and he dies,” she warned. “I came here for him, after all.”

  “You can’t get away with this, Isabelle. Lemaire is already here.” He could hear the sirens at a distance. He knew it would soon be true.

  Her tone became lightly mocking. “Not in time to save you, I’m afraid.”

  “Isabelle!” Richard squawked a protest. Esa kept his eye on Alizah, who was far too close to Isabelle’s side of the desk to give him any peace.

  Isabelle glanced behind him at Richard.

  “Pascal.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  She shifted the gun so that it pointed at Richard, for whom the glass partition would provide little protection. Esa inched closer to Amadou.

  “I gave you the key to the city for a reason. But to you, it was only sport. Still, you served your purpose in the end.” She nodded to herself, her blond hair spilling out in waves from under her cap. She yanked it off. She was dressed entirely in black, and she moved with the same controlled litheness as the figure he’d seen on the tape.

  Esa took another step closer to Amadou, who still hadn’t shifted to the side. His hands were clenched on the desk. He wouldn’t be easy to move out of the way if the opportunity came.

  “What purpose?” Khattak asked. His gun was still trained on Isabelle, his arm locked firmly in place.

  “Stirring up the people of this town. Riling up all of Québec. Especially those like André Martin and Maxime Thibault. It was so easy in the end. But you—” The gun now shifted back to Khattak. Her pale eyes glinted with triumph. “You were slow to catch on.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw that Alizah had moved farther under the desk, easing closer to Amadou.

  His tone conversational, Esa responded, “How could I? The texts you sent me were from an encrypted source, and you didn’t say a word when you had me at your mercy.”

  She frowned at him. “What texts? This is the first time I’ve had you at my mercy.”

  He played along. “Then how was I supposed to guess?”

  But Rachel had guessed. Rachel’s sharp mind had put it all together.

  “Who else could have been the leak? Who else do you know who had access to the footage of the woman in the abaya at the scene of the shooting? I didn’t leak it myself—I put in André’s hands. Just as I had Pascal hire him, as a personal favor to me.”

  Wheezing a little, Pascal drew his attention to her, his voice cle
arly audible from behind the glass. “You’re the head of the Allegiance? You’re the one who hit the mosque?”

  Khattak’s free hand moved to Amadou’s shoulder. He pressed hard, letting him know what he wanted.

  “No!” Isabelle said sharply. “He’s the one I want. You won’t be able to save him.”

  “Why, Isabelle? What has Amadou ever done?”

  With a sudden move, she switched her gun to her other hand.

  “Because he nearly saved him,” she said coolly. “That’s why he has to pay.”

  Esa shook his head, miming confusion. His arm had begun to stiffen, but he could hear the sound of police cars speeding into the lot.

  “Saved who, Isabelle? I don’t know who you mean.”

  “Youssef. All my hard work, all my careful planning. He nearly saved Youssef’s life.”

  “Why would that matter?”

  A droplet of sweat formed on his forehead and slid into his eye. He blinked rapidly, trying not to lose sight of where her gun was aimed.

  But he’d pushed her too far. She took three steps forward, pressed her gun to Amadou’s head, and spit the words in his face.

  “Because Chloé Villeneuve is my niece. And Soufiane polluted her. He and his mother both—the one who told him to marry her.”

  Amadou gasped at the feel of the gun against his temple. Alizah’s involuntary movement struck a jarring note in the silence.

  “There’s time enough for Alizah.”

  Esa struggled to quash his sense of panic.

  “There isn’t,” he tried to say calmly. “You can’t escape, even if you make it out. Listen to me, Isabelle. You don’t need Alizah or Amadou. You need a high-profile hostage. Keep me and let the others go.”

  She tipped her head to one side, her blond hair obscuring her face.

  “No,” she said quite coolly. “Although you are a high-value target.” She moved her gun from Amadou’s head and pressed it against Esa’s chest. She used it to draw two lines against his chest, and he realized she’d marked him with a cross. “If I killed you because of who you are, it would show the rest of you that none of you are safe. And after you? Diana Shehadeh, perhaps.”

  “Fine,” he said carefully. “I accept your terms. Make your point with me. The others are insignificant. They’ll be forgotten as quickly as the people you killed at the mosque.”

  “Esa, no!”

  Alizah scrambled out from under the desk. Isabelle swung around to point the gun at her, in the process jolting Esa’s arm. His gun was knocked from his hand. Quicker to react than he, Isabelle scooped it up. She held herself out of his reach. With one hand, she cradled her gun to her chest. With the other, she aimed at Alizah.

  His face went white and she laughed.

  “How perfect it would be if I killed her with your gun. How poetic. Just as I killed Youssef with the gun he bought for protection. What a mercy I spared him the AR-15. A beautiful mercy, in fact.”

  “No.” Esa couldn’t breathe. He knew this moment. He’d seen it in his nightmares. He knew when a suspect was poised on the brink of a desperate act. “Isabelle, this isn’t the way.”

  He heard the pounding of footsteps up the stairs, the shouts as Benoit and Martin were discovered. But the sound was hollow in his ears—a lifetime away, a distance he couldn’t bridge. And the last thing he’d said to Alizah was something he’d never be able to retract.

  “It’s the only way.”

  Amadou shouted hoarsely to distract her, but all Esa heard was the shot.

  The sound shattered the night.

  Esa shivered with terror, frozen in place, but absurdly the sound he heard in his mind was the melody in the woods.

  Tinny, haunting, cold.

  As cold as Alizah would be.

  72

  “Sir—are you all right?”

  He felt himself shaken roughly, Rachel’s voice in his ears.

  “Esa!” She shook him again until he focused. He noticed the bits of broken glass on her shirt. Her arm was bleeding from a scratch. She’d hurt herself, somehow.

  He couldn’t look past her—wouldn’t.

  She reached up and murmured in his ear.

  “It was a clean shot; she’ll be okay. Until she ends up in prison.”

  And then he dared to look over at the window, where Alizah was leaning weakly against the wall, Amadou beside her.

  Isabelle Clément had fallen at his feet. Lemaire’s team took over, and he and Rachel were ushered from the room, along with Pascal Richard.

  Lemaire stood in the center of the chaos, pulling it all into order—the role that was usually Khattak’s. Esa grabbed Rachel’s hand.

  “You shot her?”

  With a cocky grin that didn’t fool him, she answered, “From the window. A nice clean shot to the shoulder before she could make up her mind.”

  “How did you know she was here?”

  She jerked her head at Richard. “When our friendly neighborhood Nazi turned off the sound in the studio, he switched on the speakers outside. Lemaire came up the stairs; I made my entrance from the back.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Saved your bacon is what I did. Course that might matter more if bacon was actually your thing.”

  A hoarse laugh sounded from his throat.

  “Believe me, Rachel, it matters.”

  “We’re even now, right?” she said warily. “Me on the ice, you here?”

  Esa shook his head with the ghost of a smile. The inroads Rachel had made into his heart still had the power to surprise him.

  “No,” he said firmly. “You still have the upper hand.”

  * * *

  Alizah was perched on a desk in the hallway. A female officer took her statement while Amadou hovered close by. Esa stopped to speak to him, console him, but in the end it was Amadou who had wisdom to share. Perhaps wisdom he’d gained through the process of losing his brother.

  “He watches over you,” he said. “He watches over me. And even if I had found myself with Youssef, I would only be closer to Him.”

  Amadou was taken aside by the officer waiting to debrief him.

  When Esa reached Alizah, she had finished giving her statement. She looked up at him, shivering, a question in her eyes.

  He gathered her up from the desk and hugged her as fiercely as he could.

  “What I said to you was unforgivable. It would have been the last thing you remembered.”

  She pulled back a little and smiled at him through her tears.

  “No,” she contradicted him. “What I would have remembered is the way you begged Isabelle to take your life instead of mine.”

  He swallowed. Knowing what she would say.

  “Alizah—”

  “I love you, Esa. I have for a long time now.”

  He couldn’t think of an answer, but after a moment he said, “You know I’m marrying Sehr. All I have to give you is this.”

  He knew she’d understand even if he didn’t have the words.

  With a faint smile of surprise she whispered, “Anything you give me is enough.”

  73

  They had gathered to brief Superintendent Killiam on the arrest of Isabelle Clément.

  Khattak had appropriately given Rachel the credit for the break in the case, and following his lead, Lemaire had ceded the floor.

  The nature of Rachel and Khattak’s partnership became clear. Rachel spoke freely, occasionally checking with Khattak, who either nodded or added a few words of his own. He didn’t interrupt unless Rachel asked for his thoughts.

  “It was Sergeant Gaffney who spotted it,” Rachel was saying modestly. “He brought me the transcript, and when I translated it back into French I realized that ABeautifulMercy was an unimaginative restyling of Isabelle Clément’s name. Clément: ‘merciful,’ Belle: ‘beautiful.’ And if ABM and ABeautifulMercy were the same anonymous commenter, they were both preoccupied with the daughters of Québec. Each of them pushed for action. I mean, plenty of others did as well, but when Gaff ran his c
heck Isabelle was in Montréal on the days she posted her comments on the Montréal blog.”

  “She’s a white supremacist?” Killiam clarified.

  “The worst kind of Québec nationalist.” Rachel glanced over at Lemaire, blushing at the reminder of her mistake.

  “And her name was how you made the connection?”

  “Well, that, and I knocked my can of pop over on Clément’s desk. There was a photograph on her desk, I cleaned up the frame but didn’t really notice it at first. But after I made the connection, I looked again. That’s when I noticed that Chloé Villeneuve was in it.”

  “And Chloé Villeneuve is her niece.”

  Almost apologetically, Rachel said, “Inspector Lemaire did tell us almost right from the beginning that the reason Isabelle came to Saint-Isidore so often was because she had family here. As for the rest—” Rachel nodded politely at Dr. Sandston. She reached behind her and snagged the remote for the blinds, using it to let a little light into the room.

  “Dr. Sandston is better equipped than I am to fill you in on the rest.”

  Marlyse Sandston edged forward in her seat, the light gilding the warm, dark tones of her skin and glossing over her cheekbones.

  “There were two shooters at the mosque; that much was clear to me when I crafted the profile. Just as it was clear that one mind directed the shooting—and most likely directed the activities of the Wolf Allegiance. The motive was simply rage: rage that Soufiane’s family had rejected her niece Chloé—a pure laine Québécois girl.” Her deeply black eyes were knowing when she added, “It’s funny, isn’t it, when the shoe is on the other foot? When the despised group disapproves of members of the comfortable majority.” She drew a steady breath. “Then, Youssef Soufiane’s biological mother did approve of Youssef and Chloé’s match. Along with Père Étienne, she took part in their marriage ceremony. This was a bridge too far for someone of Isabelle’s convictions. She wanted to punish Youssef for daring to cross that divide. No doubt she had his gun stolen from campus by a member of the Allegiance. Chloé may have told her that he’d bought a gun for protection. And Isabelle might have thought it was poetic to kill Youssef with his own gun—a cold, clear execution.”