The Godless One (14 page)

"You threatened an inmate?" Karen said,
a little worried.

"Who else would have known?" Ari
smiled. "I didn't punch him in the abdomen, after all."

"Right," said Karen, blushing. "Here's
the end of the parkway. Regency is just ahead."

Ari gave her Mustafa’s address. She
programmed it into her TomTom.

"So you think the letters came from a
Muslim asshole and not from an American asshole?" she said after
the portable navigator had finished giving directions.

"Succinctly put, but I only give it as
a possibility." He paused. "Can you tell me what a ‘scratching
post’ is?"

"What?" Karen guffawed, turning to gape
at him. "Oh, you’re serious."

"It’s an honest question," said Ari
stiffly.

"Americans use it to trim their nails,"
she said.

"Ah…" said Ari, gravely doubting that
his question had been answered.

They reached Regency Square and turned
off Parham Road. Ari craned his head left and right.

"What are you looking for?"

"I heard about a place near Regency
called the Mediterranean Bakery. They say it has excellent
halal."

"So you
are
religious," Karen
said.

"I like certain types of food," Ari
answered.

He sensed her hesitation and guessed
the next question, but he did not try to preempt her.

"Do you have any kind
of...faith?"

"I have more faith than all of Mankind
put together," said Ari.

"It doesn't show very much," Karen said
sarcastically. "You're joking, right? I mean, about God and all? Or
are you being metaphysical with me? Like 'faith in humanity' or
something?"

"Hardly," Ari scoffed. "However, I now
believe that not all of Mankind is worthless scum worthy of death.
Any humanitarian who might have known me before today would say
that is a very great improvement."

"Oh boy," said Karen.

Suddenly, Ari jumped. "There it is! The
Mediterranean Bakery! To the right!"

"You want to stop?" Karen asked, giving
a hopeful tap to the brakes.

"Ahhhh…" Ari slumped back in his seat.
"No. We must continue."

"We don’t have to ‘must’ anything,"
Karen seethed. But she was also a little startled by Ari’s
behavior, as though he were a little boy forced away from a candy
store.

They were several miles
down Gayton Road when the TomTom intoned: "
Arriving at destination.
"

Ahead and to the right was a vintage
farmhouse painted a glowing white. The road was narrow and there
was nowhere else to pull off except at the house itself. Gravel and
broken seashells munched on the tires as they turned into the
driveway. To the side, a two-car garage stood open and
empty.

"They could be at work," Karen
suggested.

"Pastor Grainger said Mustafa has not
been at work for two weeks."

Karen stopped at the edge of the
sidewalk that ran down from the porch and switched off her engine.
"This is a really nice place," she said. "A lot like the one I grew
up in. I told you I grew up on a farm, right? Maybe this house is
in a little bit better shape, though. That paint’s almost new.
Maybe they slapped it on last fall."

"The other man’s manure is always
greener," said Ari.

"A quote to cherish," Karen
responded.

"He intended to stay," said Ari,
studying the house through the windshield.

They got out and stood in the yard, as
though waiting for Mustafa Zewail to come bounding down the steps
to greet them. The house was a pleasant two stories, with two
windows on each floor that faced the road. The shutters were green.
A porch swing made aching little squeals in the wind. There were no
other houses within sight. Ari began to ascend the porch
steps.

"Don’t forget," cautioned Karen, "I
can’t go inside without a warrant."

"
You
can’t go inside," he
said.

"And
you
shouldn’t even be
here."

But, like a reluctant chaperone, she
followed.

"Don't touch that!" she said loudly
when Ari began to lean close to a note jammed in the screen door.
"If it's one of those letters—"

"No," said Ari, plucking it out of the
gap between the mesh and frame and unfolding it. "It's a note from
Pastor Grainger. 'Mustafa, we are worried about you and Akila.
Please give me a call..." There followed the numbers to the rectory
and Grainger's cell phone.

Karen pressed her face against the
mesh. "I see more letters between the doors. I think the screen is
unlocked..." She opened it and several letters flopped over. She
looked at them for a moment, then knocked on the door.

"I think you can be more forceful than
that," Ari commented.

She knocked harder. Ari shook his
head.

"More."

She gave the door several rousing
bangs. Ari, disgruntled, gently nudged her aside and sent several
crushing blows against the woodwork.

"Hey! Hey!" Karen grabbed his arm.
"You'll break it down! Or is that your intention?"

The wind had tossed a pile of twigs
against the outside wall. Ari took one of them and began stirring
the envelopes on the sill. "All of these look like mail that
dropped out of here..." He nodded at the slot in the door choked
with magazines and junk mail. "No...no, I don't see anything that
might indicate hate letters."

Karen was looking on. "No, I don’t see
anything, either."

"Would it be agreeable to you if we
explored?" Ari asked.

"I guess the minister already did
that..." Her voice trailed off as Ari peered through one window
facing the porch, then the next. He grunted.

"Let's go around to the
side."

But she had already skipped ahead, down
the porch and around a large forsythia. Ari heard an "aw, crap"
from her before catching up. She was trying to jump up high enough
to see through one of the windows facing west. At any other time,
he would have found this amusing.

"You are very petite, Deputy Karen." He
leaned over her head and peered through the window. "I believe this
is the 'living room'." He paused. "Very Western."

He pulled back and went to the next
window. "And this is the 'dining room'..." He squinted through the
gauzy sheers. At first, he could see only the dark outline of a
mahogany table and chairs. Then he thought he saw something on the
wall.

"Come on, let's try the
back."

"Please wait," said Ari, pressing his
face against the glass. A moment later, he sighed. "It is as I
feared."

"Stop talking like Lawrence of
Arabia."

"I am not trying to amuse you, Deputy.
Mustafa Zewail and his wife are dead."

Karen caught her breath. "You see their
bodies?"

He shook his head. "There is writing on
the wall."

"What, hate graffiti?"

"The holy words of the Koran. Sura
4:89."

The deputy watched him closely. "Which
says...?"

"’But if they turn renegades, seize
them and slay them wherever you find them.’"

"Shit." Karen began pulling out her
gun.

"There's no need. If you will come
here, the caulking around this window frame is
imperfect."

She gave him a glance of irritation,
but holstered her gun and came close to the window.

"Here," he pointed.

"It's too high."

Without warning, he grabbed her and
lifted her to a small gap between wall and window. Karen began to
squirm. Then she caught a whiff and squirmed harder.

"Shit! Oh shit!"

"Yes," said Ari, lowering her to the
ground. "Two weeks old."

"But we have to check," she said, again
taking out her gun. "That could be an old pot roast rotting on the
kitchen table, but we have reasonable suspicion."

"Very well," Ari nodded, smiling.
"Shall we try the back door?"

At the rear of the house was a small
landing half the width of the front porch. A mini-venetian blind on
the door and heavy curtains on the near windows completely blocked
their view inside. Karen tested the knob.

"We’re going to have to break in," she
said.

Ari grunted.

"You’re big. You’re strong. You almost
killed me. You do the honors."

Ari, feeling a little thuggish, grunted
again as Karen aimed the gun at the door. She was put off her
stance when, instead of kicking the door in, Ari stepped off the
porch and disappeared around the side of the house.

"Hey!"

He returned a minute later with a tire
iron from the garage. "I did not feel like breaking my foot," he
said, then whacked the small pane nearest the knob. Instead of
shattering, the reinforced glass flew off in a single sheet,
clattering inside on the floor. They were immediately greeted by a
foul stench. Reaching through, Karen found the lock and turned it.
Holding her S&W 4006 in front of her, she shoved the door
open.

She stood frozen for several seconds.
She then started to back away towards the edge of the
porch.

"Deputy Karen?" Ari said.
Glancing inside, he saw the headless corpse bound to a ladderback
chair in the middle of the kitchen. He turned back to Karen, as
though to say, ‘
Well
?’

"Close it," she said tightly, backing
down the steps. She was in a half-crouch, pistol still raised in
her right hand, her other hand extended as she flexed her fingers,
frantically signaling Ari to pull back. "Come…come…" She was
performing a nervous tattoo with her right foot, like a child
needing to pee.

"We must find Mrs. Zewail," Ari
protested calmly.

"I’ll call. They’ll find
her."

"But what if she’s in there, still
alive?" His expression said it was a useless kindness to look
further, but one which must nonetheless be performed. "You can
lower your weapon. I don’t think Mustafa is going to attack
you."

"Just close the door and come back
here." With her throat constricted, her words were no more than
peeps. "Hurry! The wind…it’s blowing inside, disturbing the
evidence."

"I’ll close the door," said Ari after a
moment’s hesitation. With that, he stepped inside and closed the
door after him.

"
No
!" Karen shouted. "Get out of
there!"

Ari tilted the blind away from the
broken window. "Do you wish to join me?"

She was shaking badly. Suddenly
realizing the hazard, she lowered her gun to prevent accidentally
squeezing off a round. "I’ll call it in!" she said.

"Yes."

"Don’t touch anything!"

"Certainly not," said Ari, and let the
blind drop. Turning, he looked away from the body for a moment and
studied the linoleum floor for feasible avenues. Blood was tracked
throughout the kitchen. Ari realized there was no way to avoid
adding his own footprints to the scene, but he could at least get
reasonably close to the body without stepping into the pool cast
out from the chair. Mustafa’s head was resting against the sink’s
bottom cabinet.

He had already spotted at least one
inconsistency and experienced the warm glow of revelation. A spray
of blood on the far wall seemed to bear no relation to the
beheading.

This was obviously intended as a
warning to Arabs. The Naskh script used to quote the Koran showed
there had been at least one person with knowledge of the Arabic
alphabet on the scene, and Ari thought it likely that person was
born in the Middle East. He would need to go into the dining room
and study the graffiti, to see if he could determine if it was
written right to left.

There were the tracks of three people
in the blood. Ari spent a moment studying the intricate patterns
left by the killers’ outsoles. The various treads overlapped like
the mandalas in Islamic children’s coloring books. It was up to the
forensics people to separate the Adidas from the Reeboks, but Ari
noted that the tread on one pair was fairly worn and left behind
little fragments of mud. Perhaps it belonged to a serious jogger,
even a marathoner. Another of the killers dragged his leg, as if
injured. All three pairs of athletic shoes would unquestionably
find their way into a dumpster. Mustafa’s feet were bare and
covered with blood. One foot was propped with the heel against the
chair leg, the other slightly stretched, but there were no bloody,
barefoot smears on the floor next to the chair.

I bet they
cheated
, Ari smiled.

The average terrorist was
no expert in decapitation, and even those who attempted the trick
understood the concept of leverage. A victim’s hands were bound and
he would be forced down onto his knees, presenting the killer with
a suitable angle of attack. Mustafa had been bound, but he had been
sitting up when someone took a swing at his neck, like a major
leaguer going after a fastball. Under the best of circumstances, an
executioner would often have to make two or three attempts before
successfully separating the head from the body. There were
specialists who could manage a sitting cut, like the Japanese with
their
shin guntō
swords. But this was a royal mess, skin and gristle spattered
on Mustafa’s shoulders and numerous cut marks around what remained
of the neck.