Reprisal (10 page)

“Unfortunately, no. We don’t have an office here. We can move over to the side of the wall there,” Zehra pointed down the long hall. “To our ‘private’ office.”

“Well, all right.” He waddled along beside them. He wore a shirt that hadn’t been pressed in a long time. His shoes were untied.

Zehra smelled a faint, stale odor near him. She backed off to the usual two arms-lengths.

“This is very embarrassing,” Mr. Anderson said when they stopped. “Do we have to go into the court with all those other people?”

“We have to. There’s no other way.”

“I’ve seen on TV where the lawyer can take the case into the judge’s chambers for privacy.” He jiggled has face from side to side so that the old wire-rimmed glasses he wore, already a little loose on his nose, shook with his face. He implied in his tone that Zehra, as a public defender, wasn’t a good lawyer because she couldn’t “work” the judge.

“Doesn’t work that way here,” she told him.

He sucked in a deep breath. “Well … what should I do?”

Balancing his file on her left arm, she opened it and skimmed over the allegations. “You’re charged with Cruelty to Animals. The allegations are that you got mad at your kids, and to punish them, you took their gerbils and placed each one into an air gun. What’s an ‘air gun’?” She glanced at him.

“It’s harmless. It … it has a large barrel. It propels things with compressed air. Harmless.”

“Well, it says you shot the gerbils across the backyard into the neighbor’s yard. When the neighbor got upset, you retrieved the stunned gerbils, brought them back and drowned them in a pail of water in front of your kids.” She looked up into his small green eyes, waiting to see what he’d say in response.

“Yeah … I guess that’s about what happened. But I never laid a hand on the damn kids. Does it say that in the reports?”

“Uh …” Zehra pretended to read the police report. “Yeah, it doesn’t say that you hit the kids.”

“Isn’t that a defense?”

“No, it’s not a defense. Wanna tell me what happened?”

“Well …” he shrugged beefy shoulders. “That’s about it. They wouldn’t obey me. Thanks to the bitch, their mother, they’re totally undisciplined. I had to get their attention. If you don’t have kids, you wouldn’t understand.” He paused. “What should I do now?”

“If you plead guilty, I’m sure we can keep you out of the workhouse. However, in a case like this, the judge’ll probably want a probation presentence investigation before he orders the conditions of your probation.”

“Probation? For what? Some goddamn, filthy little rats? What the hell’s this country coming to? Naw, naw, I’m not gonna do it. We’ll go all the way with this one. I’ll appeal …”

“Mr. Anderson, calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, lady. This is my life we’re talking about. No one cares about me. About what I’m going through. It’s all about the damn rats!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll set the case for trial. Of course, you’ll have to come back again and sit through two to three days of a trial in front of a jury and listen to all these allegations, I thought you wanted privacy?” She let the words hang around Anderson’s neck.

“Two days, huh? I gotta come back?” His eyes shifted up and down the hall where other lawyers met with their clients. Zehra saw him shudder. “I’d rather if we could wrap this up today.” He raised a finger in the air. “I want a guarantee, though, that I can tell the judge what really happened.”

“Oh, I can guarantee that. I got a feeling the judge may be interested in hearing from you …”

By noon, Jackie and Zehra relaxed in her office over cups of herbal tea.

“Damn. That’s draining,” Jackie laughed. “Can you imagine what my former colleagues would say if they knew what I was doing here?” She pumped both fists up and down. “But this is what I’ve wanted.”

“I don’t know where they find some of those people. Imagine, they’re living all around us.” She dropped her feet from the chair next to her. “Hey, BJ just left me a message. He’s coming in.” Zehra hoped that he finally found something.

“You couldn’t make a reality show about these cases,” Jackie said. “No one would believe ’em—they’re too real. I can’t wait to tell Josh about these. He thinks I’ve got the coolest job in the world.”

BJ walked into the office. “Hey, babes.” He sat in the chair next to Jackie. He tried to keep his lips closed, but a wide grin erupted to expose nice teeth, white against his dark face. “I got something for you. I told you I wasn’t gettin’ anywhere with these Somalis. So, I tried another idea. I’m tight with the security at Richardson High School which has a high Somali population. I checked it out. One of the kids there has a parent who knows El-Amin. And, it gets better.”

“Oh?”

“The friend was willing to talk to me. Got a part-time job in a hospital kitchen. He’s also an imam at the local mosque, over on West Bank, near the murder scene. He’s known our boy for a few months. Not close but sees him. He tells me on the night of the murder, he and El-Amin were chewing
khat
and drinkin’ tea at a mosque.”

Zehra slammed the drawer on her chocolate cupcakes. “What? You think this guy’s legit?”

“Seems to be. The details check out so far.”

“This’s gotta be tight. You know that.”

“Check.”

“Why didn’t he go to the cops?”

“Scared. Plus, they didn’t have the connection I got. They didn’t know about him.”

Zehra leaned back in her chair and ran both hands through her thick hair. For the first time, she felt a familiar tightening in her lower body. Maybe … just maybe, the camel jockey was innocent. In spite of her contempt for him, her competitive instincts as a lawyer rose. And Zehra’s sense of justice, sharpened in her own struggles as a Muslim woman, caused her to look at the case in a different light.

“Damn, we got ourselves an alibi.” Zehra had to act.

Ten

Frustrated to the point he couldn’t sit still, Paul left the office for a long walk. He frequented a Caribou coffee shop on Washington Avenue, across the street from the MacPhail Center for Music. He liked the type of people who hung out there. He knew that Conway’s threat was real. What could he do now?

Although the temperatures had spiked unusually high throughout the month, this morning opened crisp and cool. Paul walked the few blocks, drawing in the pungent aroma of damp air. It refreshed him.

He took a small dark roast coffee and sat in the corner where he could look out at the traffic on Washington Avenue, both cars and humans.

Conway was a good man but burned out. At the beginning of the crisis, when the young men started disappearing, Conway worked his best—providing leadership and organization. He’d mastered the complexities in the political jungle of over-lapping law enforcement people. Navigating the multiplicity of egos and ambitions caused more trouble than actually solving the crimes.

The cases forced federal agents and terrorism experts to rethink their assumptions about the vulnerability of Muslim immigrants in the United States to terrorist recruiting. Even the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, had told the press this may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since 9/11. That unleashed all the pressure on Paul’s office to produce an answer.

Paul respected Conway for his management. But once the case was “solved” with the discovery of the terrorists in Somali who’d left the Twin Cities, everyone agreed the disappearances were simply recruiters, working to fill the ranks of the militia, Shabaab.

The case had taken months. The pressure to solve it, intense. The human pain and sorrow, incalculable. When an “answer” was provided, naturally everyone breathed a sigh of relief, happy to take a break from the case. That relief rippled up the line to the Director in Washington and fanned out to other concerned people in Congress and the agencies.

It wasn’t that Paul disagreed.

He worried the answer was too simple. Why did the Ahmed boy return to Minneapolis? If he had volunteered to be a freedom fighter in Somalia, why would he be killed for that? The teacher who’d called the FBI tip line a few years ago predated the reason for the recruiting—the invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopians that gave rise to the Shabaab militia. What were they doing in the high schools that long ago? Was it even connected to the murder? Were they still in the high schools?

The murder case had given Conway another reason to bow out. Now it was a local police matter, not FBI, although the turf wars still went on. The killer had been charged and awaited trial. Let them take care of the case from now on was Conway’s attitude. Luckily, Zehra Hassan had been appointed to represent El-Amin. Paul could use his friendship with her to follow the case and help open the door to more information.

Was the murder connected to anything that threatened national security? He wondered.

He thought back to all the federal agencies in touch with Conway. Homeland Security covered so many different threats. Customs and Border Protection, Coast Guard, Army Medical Research, Immigration, and Customs Enforcement … He made a note to check on the medical research agency. What the hell did they do?

He had a friend in ICE, in the investigation arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, named Joan Cortez. They met while attending cross-training on security in Washington. He remembered Conway’s order prohibiting cooperation with ICE, but if Joan could help him trace the background of El-Amin, it might be worth the risk. ICE may have far reaching information, unavailable to the other law enforcement. Paul waited for Joan to return his call.

He pictured her in his mind. Fun, attractive, tough and extremely ambitious. It’d be hard to get much help from her.

The soft
whir
of the coffee grinders and rich aromas lulled him to relax. Outside, people walked by with renewed vigor. Spring in Minnesota always brought out crazy behavior. After so many months of frigid gloom and gray, the arrival of warm weather released the manic side of everyone.

Paul had worn a sport coat earlier. As the morning heated up, he took it off. Outside the window, he saw a young man in a hooded gold sweatshirt with maroon lettering that said University of Minnesota on the front. He wore a baggy pair of shorts and running shoes.

At the thought of his boss, Paul jerked back to his problems. If Conway discovered Paul’s continuing investigation, he would be fired.

All the years he’d worked to get into the Bureau, all the sacrifices he’d made, and the effort to make up for the case that almost ruined his career years ago, would be lost. That case still haunted him. Paul had to admit the bitter memory drove him now as much as his fear for the safety of his family and friends. The government always talked about “national security” but to Paul, that concept was too amorphous. He had to think of the people close to him to make sense of all the hard work he did.

Reluctantly, Paul stood, dropped his cup in the waste receptacle, and left the peace of the coffee shop.

He took his time strolling back to the office. A spring breeze blew up the street between high-rise office buildings. Women, free of heavy winter coats, walked by in short skirts and tight blouses. In response to the hot weather, trees had budded earlier than usual, sporting light green dots.

Paul rode the elevator up to his office. Apparently, no one had told the computer running the heating system it was spring. Hot, stale air punched him in the chest as he turned into the office suite.

Looking out the window, he sat at his desk. Paul was scared and confused. Maybe he should just drop his crazy ideas. The rest of his colleagues might be right. What if he got himself into another mess like before, and was fired? What would his family think? What would he do?

His cell phone rang.

Paul didn’t recognize the number but decided to answer anyway. “Paul Schmidt, special agent, FBI.”

“Sounds impressive,” Joan Cortez chuckled. “Special … huh?”

“Aw … doesn’t mean much. The government gives titles instead of more money.”

“And you fell for it?”

“Yup.”

“Listen, I got some … well, I guess you could say it’s good news.”

Paul sat up straight in his chair. “Yeah?”

“Good for you, not so good for the local guys.”

“About El-Amin?”

“Right. We can’t find any criminal background on him in the U.S. Not even a parking ticket. But if we go international, well, you get a little more.”

“What?”

“He’s dirty.” Joan cleared her throat. “He’s well funded and linked into an international criminal net.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“You must know of these criminal organizations, networks, which operate in all kinds of shit that’s illegal? One day it’s drugs, the next day financial thefts, a little terrorism and weapon smuggling thrown in.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, in addition to these disappearing young men, we—ICE—think there’s a lot more going on. We don’t know what, but a guy like El-Amin is intriguing.”

“Where can I find out more?”

“Can you meet me tomorrow, in private?”