Kingdom of Strangers (17 page)

“Good thinking,” Ibrahim said, feeling flustered. “So you think you found the spot where he went?”

“Yes. Talib said that a man arrived in a GMC truck and walked to a lookout where he could see the gravesites. He also said the footprints indicated that he was upset.”

“But you’re not at all sure that this is the
actual
killer,” Daher said.

“Talib was certain that the footprints at the lookout site matched the footprints from the gravesite.”

“I thought the footprints from the gravesite weren’t especially clear,” Daher said.

“They had enough to go on.”

“So let me get this straight: some blind old Bedouin tracker is going to tell us this is our murderer? Those footprints could belong to anyone!”

Ibrahim saw Katya’s face stiffen. “It’s a very remote site,” she said. “There were no other footprints out there.”

“That doesn’t mean that there was
nobody
else out there.”

“The point is that Talib believes the footprints match,” Katya said. “So if it was our killer at the gravesite, then he went to the lookout site six or seven days ago.”

“Next time,” Daher said, “something like that has to be
cleared
with the detective in charge of the case—that’s Zahrani—and it needs to be cleared with Chief Riyadh. You could have messed up the crime scene!”

“I work in forensics.”

“Yes, but you do forensics in the lab, not out in the field. How often have you gone to an actual crime scene? Once? Twice?
There are
rules
, and just because you’ve been to a crime scene doesn’t mean you know how to handle it. Technically, you being there alone means that we can’t use that evidence in court!”

“I wasn’t alone.”

“Fine, the Murrah was there, and that
may
be admissible in court, but it could have ruined everything.”

Ibrahim was, once again, immobilized by these two. If he defended Katya, he risked alienating his best officer; if he didn’t defend her, he risked losing the one person who was in his closest confidence about Sabria—and the person who was approaching the Angel case most creatively.

“And how was
your
Thursday?” Katya asked Daher.

He jerked back, looking offended. “
We
identified one of the other victims.”

Katya turned for the door.

“Do you have a driver?” Ibrahim asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll walk you to the garage.”

“That’s not necessary,” Katya said.

“None of us should be here alone, especially when it’s empty like this. If the killer knows about the gravesite, he knows about us.”

Katya nodded reluctantly.

Once they were out of earshot, Katya said, “Actually, I hoped to find you here. I have the results from the blood sample we found on the carpet outside Sabria’s apartment door.”

“Go ahead.”

She hesitated. “The DNA isn’t yours, but it is from someone related to you.”

“What?” He stopped walking.

“Yes,” she said. “And it’s male.”

A rush of terror and fury and sharp disbelief. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes, I double-checked it. That’s what took me so long.”

“Okay.” He noticed his breath was short. “Okay, I’ll take care of this.”

“You know who it is then?”

“I think so,” he said.

“Do you want to get some DNA from this person?” she asked, pulling a swab out of her pocket.

He shook his head. “No. I’ll just ask.”

“All right.” She seemed uncertain. “I thought you said no one in your family knew about her.”

“Obviously I was wrong.”

Jamila met him at the door with a look of wild excitement. Apparently, they’d already concocted their drama. It came out, as he moved past her into the living room, that she’d pulled off a phenomenal stunt, one not likely to be replicated for another ten years: she had managed to arrange a husband for Hanan, the older of the twins.

“She’s only ten,” Ibrahim said. He glanced in the bedroom, saw it was empty. He was looking for his oldest son, Aqmar. Aqmar’s wife, Constance, had answered the door downstairs and said he was up here.

“It doesn’t matter if she’s ten!” Jamila cried. Farrah stood to the side, looking awkward. “She won’t marry until she’s sixteen anyway. But I’ve arranged it! It only needs your approval.”

“Who is this man?” He pushed past her and went into the women’s sitting room. It was empty too. “Where is Aqmar?”

“The man is named Taha al-Brehm; he’s the son of my cousin Abdullatif, who lives in Riyadh.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“He owns a textile factory and three cell phone stores, and his father has more money than anyone in the whole family.” Jamila clapped her hands.

“Have you told Hanan about this?”

“Not yet.”

“Where is Aqmar?” he asked again.

“I don’t know. What do you think? He’ll make an excellent match for her. He’s very traditional. He likes to ride horses and train falcons, think of that!”

He turned to Farrah. “Have you seen your brother?”

“He’s on the roof,” she said, glancing guiltily at her mother.

“He’s not on the roof,” Jamila said with irritation, blocking Ibrahim’s passage to the front door. “Now, what do you
think?
”

“I think you must be crazy to believe I’ll approve of letting anyone marry Hanan without her permission. I don’t care if he has more money than the king.” He pushed past her and made for the door before the barrage could start. But indeed the noise followed him up the stairs.

He couldn’t believe she would even try it. He had only agreed to Zaki’s wedding because
Zaki
had agreed—and you would think after that fiasco, she might have shown a little restraint.

Aqmar was sitting on a carpet on the roof, looking like a grim mujahideen. He was wearing khaki pants and an old army-green T-shirt that he hadn’t worn in years. Ibrahim often thought that if he hadn’t put his foot down and refused to let his son run off to Iraq to fight jihad against the West, Aqmar would be dead now. The phase of wanting to be a hero had passed as quickly as it had come, but in a father’s heart, such things never die. The coals on the hookah pipe beside him were nearly expired, and the fragrance of
shisha
still hung between the walls.

Ibrahim and Sabria had been driving back from the private beach one evening a few months before when she had needed to stop at the grocery store. They had stopped. Getting out of the car, he had spotted Aqmar and Constance strolling along the sidewalk, window shopping. Ibrahim had hastily ducked into the car and prevented Sabria from getting out. He had driven off at once.
He couldn’t be sure, but he felt that his son had seen him. They never spoke about it. Aqmar’s behavior toward him hadn’t changed, so Ibrahim told himself he was just imagining the worst.

Now, on the roof, Aqmar saw his father and raised his hand, which was clutching a cell phone.

“Zaki just called to say he’s camping with some friends in the desert this weekend. He wants me to make sure Saffanah has everything she needs. Can you believe this guy?”

Ibrahim sat beside him, leaned his back against the wall, and tried to relax. “Any
shisha
left?”

“No.” Aqmar looked guilty and made to get up. “I’ll make some more.”

“Don’t worry, just sit.”

Aqmar leaned back and threw his phone on the carpet. “I don’t understand why he married her. He knew it was a bad idea. And now he wants to throw the whole problem on us.” By
us
, he meant the two of them.

“Did he tell you about the divorce court?”

“Are you kidding? He wouldn’t shut up about it.”

Ibrahim pressed his back into the wall and tried to breathe. He wanted to take some time, weave his way like a boxer who doesn’t mean to strike a blow, who doesn’t want to be struck but who’s stuck in the ring nonetheless. But any minute Jamila would come trudging up the stairs, or perhaps one of the grandkids.

“Let’s go to the mosque,” he said finally. Aqmar looked resistant, so he added, “It’s Friday.”

The night air was a cool pleasure once they were moving through it. They didn’t talk much but decided to walk all the way to the big mosque on Makkah Street, not to the smaller one they usually went to. The big mosque was a modern structure, square and blunt, its only flourish the minaret, which was ornate with tile work. The inside was so crowded that they had to squeeze into the back with barely enough room to tip their heads in
prostration. After prayers, they left before getting sucked into conversations. They stopped for ice cream at a
boofiya
. It was a tiny one-room establishment with a pair of white plastic chairs by the door. Two men were sitting there, one sipping tea and reading the paper, the other eating what looked like a Sambooli sandwich. It wasn’t until they were heading home that Ibrahim dared to start the conversation.

“An associate of mine from Undercover went missing last week.”

Aqmar looked confused, obviously wondering what this had to do with him.

“Her name was Sabria Gampon.”

His son’s face, unaccustomed to deceit, revealed shock and shame and anxiety, in that order, which Ibrahim took to mean that Aqmar indeed knew who she was and that he was embarrassed about it.

“What happened?” Aqmar asked.

“We’re not sure, but they found someone’s DNA on a nail in the carpet just outside her front door. Someone cut their foot there.”

Aqmar flushed painfully. “I went to your work one day and saw you leaving the building. I thought I’d catch you in traffic but I couldn’t, and then I saw you parking….”

It was a truism that police wisdom—the ability to spot liars, to see emotions in a glance, to tease out vulnerability and thus the most deeply buried secrets—disappeared when the subject was someone you loved. It panicked him to realize that he couldn’t tell if his son was lying.

“So you were there?” Ibrahim asked.

Aqmar nodded. He lifted up the strap of his sandal to show where the cut had been. It was smoothing over but still red.

“I figured you were visiting a friend.” Aqmar’s voice was pinched.
I thought I found you cheating. Tell me she was a friend
.

Ibrahim saw his entire life as a father opening up into a giant precipice at his feet, and he stood perfectly poised between the impulse to tell the absolute truth and the knowledge that the truth can be the most destructive force in any relationship.

“We were finishing up a final assignment,” he said. “Did it surprise you that we have women in Undercover?”

He hated himself.

“No. You’ve said that before.” Aqmar still looked embarrassed. “You said one time that most of the theft in Jeddah was committed by women.”

“Or men dressed like women.”

A dozen questions were driving nails against the inside of his skull.
Did you knock? Did she answer? Was I in the shower? Did you stand there listening?
He tried to remember if Sabria had seemed different. If she’d known Aqmar had come, if she’d answered the door.

“Do you remember where you were Wednesday two weeks ago?”

Aqmar gave a grim half smile. “Am I being interrogated?” When Ibrahim didn’t reply, he said, “I work every Wednesday night until ten. You know. That’s my fourteen-hour shift. You can call my boss.”

“When were you at the apartment?” Ibrahim asked.

“About three weeks ago.”

“Do you remember which day exactly?”

“Um, yeah… it was a Sunday. I wasn’t working that day.” Aqmar slowed to cross the street. “I probably should have knocked, but I figured you were working and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

And there it was, the real punishment for his lying: his son could have been lying right back. Maybe what Aqmar wanted to say was
I guessed you had a mistress and I was horrified and I ran away and stabbed my foot on a nail
.

Ibrahim saw him struggling with darker things: anger on behalf of his mother; disappointment at his father’s lying; desire
for his father’s happiness and an understanding of why he might have chosen this route to it; a feeling of shame at the whole situation.

“We have women in Homicide too,” Ibrahim said, “but we rarely see them.”

Aqmar nodded. “I hope your friend is okay.”

They walked the rest of the way home in silence.

Back at the house, Aqmar said good night and went into his apartment, where a very patient wife had been waiting for three hours. Ibrahim heard Jamila upstairs on the phone, complaining loudly to a friend about his irrational behavior: not letting Hanan get engaged to a wealthy cousin! It was his cue to give a soft tap on Zaki’s door, just across the hall from Aqmar’s.

Saffanah answered with only one eye exposed. It was red and bloodshot. She stood back and let him in.

He walked into the foyer, where she stood clutching her waist, looking miserable.

“How are you feeling?”

She shrugged.

“How is it with Zaki?”

She shook her head. “He won’t,” she said, clutching herself even more tightly. He could tell from the way her shoulders trembled that she was trying not to cry. It was a fight she lost almost immediately.

“Let’s go out,” he said. He couldn’t stand to see her cry. “Do you need groceries?”

She nodded.

They went to a medium-size market. She made him wait at the entrance until the only other shopper—a man—had finished his purchases and left. The store was just closing but the owner waited graciously while Saffanah patrolled the aisles with her basket,
keeping a vigilant eye on the door in case another man should come in and cut her shopping short. She still didn’t lift her burqa, and this time he guessed it was because her eyes were red and swollen. Maybe they had been all along.

When she came to the counter, Ibrahim paid for the groceries and helped the owner bag them. As soon as they were back in the car, he said: “Zaki is out of town this weekend, and I know you don’t like to spend evenings with my wife, so why don’t we go and sit with Aqmar and Constance and bake those brownies?”

She looked down into the shopping bag and shook her head.

Once he’d carried the groceries inside, he crept upstairs to his own apartment. Jamila was still on the telephone but fortunately the front door was shut, so her complaints were only a muffled noise. He ducked into the men’s sitting room, grabbed a few pillows, and carried them to the roof. There he laid a little bed for himself near the hookah pipe and fell asleep gazing up at the starlight, wondering what his son was thinking of him now.