The Wrong Man (38 page)

I probably shouldn’t have said that. We both knew it, anyway, but it made more sense to make her feel like she was doing this of her own free will. It enhanced her cooperative spirit, kept her from going into her corner, and me into mine, before we came out duking.

“Look, Wendy. A guy I’m looking at hard for complicity in murders and maybe something worse shows up dead before I can subpoena him to trial. A murder staged to look like a suicide. So we wouldn’t see it for what it is—more evidence of a cover-up.”

She knew all of this already. I was just trying to crystallize it for her. It was a guilt trip of the highest order. Here was the knockout punch:

“Doesn’t a guy who put his ass on the line for his country, and got totally messed up for doing so—doesn’t the government that sent him there at least owe it to him to take a careful look at the evidence before they put him in prison for life?”

“Okay.” She waved him off. “That’s quite enough. You have a theory, I have mine. I still believe that your guy is the doer. You don’t. Fine. Let’s go to war. If I wasn’t ready for trial, I don’t think your shoulder would be available to cry on.”

“Our jobs are different, and you know it. You have a higher obligation.”

She pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you ever again tell me what my obligation is, Jason. I’m sick of your preaching. I’ve got my guy and I’ve got my case. I’ll let the judge decide about continuances or mistrials. I got you access to this information about the autopsy, and now you have it. I’ve gone over and above. Now do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

She walked off in a huff. I’d never seen her so angry. But it was still time well spent. I didn’t get what I wanted from her, but I knew she would keep thinking about it. However much I was getting under her skin, she was right—she did know her obligation, and it was higher than winning a case. It was about justice. I still held out hope she’d take my side tomorrow morning.

Speaking of. I looked at my watch. It was high noon on Sunday. We’d be back in court in twenty-one hours.

My cell phone buzzed. It was Joel Lightner.

“I’m at the firm,” he said to me. “Where the hell are you?”

I sighed. “Me? I’m at the beauty salon having my eyebrows plucked.”

“Well, get your ass back here, gorgeous,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

I made the twenty-minute drive from the medical examiner’s office on the south side to my law firm. I was trying to focus but it was difficult. I was sleep-deprived. Tori and I had been up most of the night poring over the information taken from Stanley Keane’s house. I think I dozed off somewhere around dawn this morning. So I was the dictionary definition of tired and wired.

When I reached my law firm, Joel Lightner was waiting for me, looking fresh and eager. He called down to Shauna that I was back, which meant it was time for him to break the exciting news to us together. Bradley John joined in and we all took chairs in the conference room, giving Joel the floor.

“Okay,” he, framing his hands. “We know that in June of 2009, Global Harvest International purchased the stock of two companies—Summerset Farms and SK Tool and Supply. We also know that Manning went back on plans to take Global Harvest public that same month.”

“Right.”

“So the question was, what happened in June of 2009?”

“Right,” I said again. “And the answer?”

“The answer,” said Joel, “is nothing happened in June of 2009. But your enterprising private eye extraordinaire—y’know, the one who couldn’t track a bleeding elephant through the snow?”

“I think I apologized for that.”

“But you didn’t seem
sincere. So anyway, the question is what happened in
May
of 2009?”

“Okay,” I said. “What happened in
May
of 2009?”

“In May of 2009, Global Harvest International completed a joint partnership with a company called Verimli Toprak, a Turkish company. Southern Turkey, the… Çukurova? The Çukurova region in southern Turkey is apparently some of the most agriculturally fertile land in the world. So, big company, globalizing, international partnerships, all that. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, then after the deal is cut, and the first shovel goes into the ground and the ribbon-cutting and all that—after that, Randall Manning returns to the United States and leaves his son, Quinn, behind to run the business, the joint venture. Quinn Manning has a wife, Julie, and a daughter, Cailie. Also, Randall Manning’s wife, Bethany, stays there, probably just for a while, to hang with the son and the granddaughter, right?”

“Right.”

“The city where they’re staying is Adana. Adana, Turkey.” He looked at us.

“Oh, Adana.” A gasp escaped Shauna. “The… what did they call it? The Adana Massacre or something?”

I was a little behind. It rang a bell, but I’ve had my head up my ass for quite some time now. Some would say a
long
time. Others would say always. “Help me out, someone,” I said.

Joel was glad to oblige, proud of his investigative work. “The first week of May 2009, there’s some kind of European soccer tournament in Adana’s main stadium. French, Spanish, Italians, Germans—all kinds of foreigners flooding to Adana for the tournament. That brings us to May sixth, 2009.

“May sixth, 2009, the Brotherhood of Jihad terrorist group attacks the Sahmeran Adana Hotel. A truck loaded with explosives drives up to the steps of the hotel and detonates. It rocks the building and destabilizes it. A lot of people die inside. But some don’t. Some manage to escape. And—you remember this now? The terrorists are waiting for them outside. They open fire on people trying to escape. They pick them off like it’s a video game. And they have machetes, too. They behead some of them. I mean, it’s fucking medieval.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“More like Allah.” Joel nodded. “Manning’s wife, son, daughter-in-law, and only grandchild are staying there. They all die. Randall Manning’s whole family dies.”

Holy shit. I knew something about losing a wife and daughter. But I had nobody else to blame, except maybe myself.

“Bruce McCabe,” said Joel. “McCabe’s wife worked in international sales for Global Harvest,” he said. “She was only in Adana temporarily. She died, too.”

“Wow,” said Shauna.

“And Stanley Keane?” I asked.

Joel nodded gravely. “His son was some big high school soccer star. He caught on with a Belgium team that was playing in Adana that week. I can’t tell if he was staying at the hotel, but I know he was in the hotel that day. He died, too. And so did his mother, Stanley’s wife.”

Unbelievable. That explained Stanley’s mumblings about how he was sorry he wasn’t there, how much he missed his family. His wife and son, blown up in a building by Islamic terrorists.

“Over three hundred people died that day,” said Joel. “Seventeen were American.”

“So it wasn’t viewed so much as an attack on America.”

“Right. Most of the victims were European. Americans died, but this was an attack on the infidels, the nonbelievers,” said Joel. “Nonbelievers invading their soil.”

Shauna threw up her hands. “So there’s the connection.”

“The connection is that they’re pissed off at our government,” said Joel. He shook his hand, which held the remote for the television and DVD player in our conference room.

He hit Play and the television came to life. “This was very hard to find,” he said.

It took me a moment, but it was Randall Manning, standing before a bank of microphones. He was dressed down and his hair was uncharacteristically messy. His face was contorted in anger.

“Why isn’t our government invading this country?” he said. “Why aren’t we going after the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Jihad? When Al Qaeda bombed the twin towers, we invaded Afghanistan and hit
them where they live. Why not now? We know the Brotherhood of Jihad is in the Sudan, we know it’s in Yemen, and we know it’s here in Turkey. What are we waiting for?

“Three thousand casualties is unacceptable, but seventeen is okay? What amount of American lives is an acceptable level of casualties before this administration will act? I know we’re all very heartened that the administration is ‘gravely concerned’ and ‘investigating diligently.’ But where is the justice?” He looked around at what I assumed were gathering reporters. “Where is our government when the citizens need it most?”

The picture disappeared and the television went black.

Nobody spoke. A part of me agreed with the guy. These guys are attacking us, go attack them.

“So he’s not real happy with our government,” said Lightner. “He organized an online petition and got over a million people to sign it and urge the president to bomb Brotherhood of Jihad facilities in Yemen, Sudan, and Turkey.”

“It’s not that simple,” said Shauna.

Maybe not, but that wouldn’t assuage Randall Manning.

“He’s going to replicate it,” I said. “He’s got explosives and assault weapons. He’s going to bomb those buildings and shoot anyone who tries to flee.”

Randall Manning always closed his eyes when it came to mind, as if that would shut out the imagery. He recoiled from it but pursued it at the same time. He’d promised himself he’d never forget.

The Brotherhood of Jihad had posted the video following the attack at the Sahmeran Adana Hotel. Someone had had the sense to take it down shortly thereafter, but Manning had a copy. He didn’t play it every day. Only once in a while. Like when he was having any second thoughts, any residual doubt, about what he was going to do.

Like today, when he got this text message on his prepaid cell phone:
The FBI was looking for you this morning.

He had to admit it had crossed his mind to abort the plan. He was only human. Bruce McCabe had harbored similar thoughts. But the feeling had been fleeting. All Manning had to do was hit Play on the computer and watch that video for five seconds.

Chunks of the building falling to the ground. The torso of the building buckling as it struggled to remain standing. Innocent people jumping from windows or scrambling out from the lobby. Terrorists shooting at them, chasing them with machetes, which they swung without mercy, without regard to man, woman, or child.

He remembered the bodies coming back from Turkey on a military plane. He remembered the inconceivable sense of loss. He remembered asking the funeral director, an old family friend, if it was possible to
reattach his son Quinn’s head to his body for the visitation, and bursting into tears when the answer was no.

He remembered the image of Jawhar Al-Asmari, the leader of the Brotherhood of Jihad, speaking into the camera, a white mural behind him, hiding like a coward from an undisclosed location, praising the attack on the Sahmeran Adana Hotel and vowing more of the same.

He remembered a president with nothing but words. Diplomacy and justice didn’t belong in the same sentence.

He remembered the runaround from the Department of State, a lot of political doubletalk about a complicated menagerie of interests and considerations in the Middle East.

He remembered how desperately he wanted the head of Jawhar Al-Asmari, and how desperately he wanted his government to want the same thing.

He remembered promising his wife, Bethany, his son, Quinn, his daughter-in-law, and their only granddaughter—he remembered promising them, as he stood over their dead bodies, that he would never forget.

He’d met Bruce McCabe and Stanley Keane on the military plane on the way to Turkey. They lived close enough together that they shared the same government transport. They were all shell-shocked, wounded and numb and completely at a loss. They spoke then in only general concepts—this can’t go unanswered, our government has to respond, someone has to pay. They’d traded phone numbers and agreed to keep in touch.

It didn’t have to come to this. But the goddamn government was so sensitive about anything concerning Islam, more concerned about the rippling effects of international action, than they were about making it clear what happened to you if you killed Americans. The president didn’t face much political pressure at home on this. It didn’t happen in America, it wasn’t aimed at Americans, and few American casualties resulted. Seventeen Americans, in the scheme of things? Not a big deal. Shake your head, make an off-color remark about Muslims, and flip over to the latest reality television show.

He remembered his old fraternity brother from the Ivy League days, now a defense contractor with good ties to the CIA, who put Manning together with someone who could help. He remembered the agent who agreed to give him the straight scoop—for a fee, of course. Costigan was
his name, a man with loads of information and twin girls who wanted the same expensive Ivy League education Randall Manning had received.

He remembered what Costigan had told him, two weeks later. He’d always remember every single word that Costigan told him.

He remembered several weeks after the bombing, calling Bruce McCabe and Stanley Keane. Manning was firmly committed to the idea, but he danced around it initially with the two of them. He didn’t know if they’d go along, if they’d need some coercing, or if they’d simply say no. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if they’d said no outright.

But they didn’t. They said yes.

Manning always described it to them as something they could pull off without detection. A large, international company like GHI and a smaller industrial supply company like SK could separately sell bomb components to a front company, a farm, that could justify purchases of both fertilizer and nitromethane for pesticide. Nobody would be expecting it. And nobody would suspect it afterward, if the bombings were carried out correctly. The trucks could be rented in a way that didn’t lead back to them; the bomb components wouldn’t be traceable; and the individuals actually carrying out the attacks wouldn’t survive and wouldn’t be traceable back to them, in any event.

But the truth was, Manning never really believed he’d get away with this. The federal government had ways he couldn’t fathom of gathering evidence and chasing down leads. They would catch him. But maybe not Stanley, a small-business owner who would be guilty of nothing more than selling a legal product to a farm. And maybe not Bruce McCabe, guilty of nothing more than practicing law, working the financial deals that allowed GHI to purchase Summerset Farms and Stanley’s company.