Kingdom of Strangers (5 page)

Halifi had raped her multiple times, but it wasn’t until Sabria became pregnant that he forced her to marry him. They conducted a two-minute ceremony in his living room, and the bastard had actually notified the records office, making it completely official. She had miscarried a week later. In order to divorce him, she would have to find him, and she hadn’t put any energy into that over the past five years.

The fact that she and Ibrahim couldn’t marry didn’t bother her as much as it bothered him, but when he really thought it through, the conclusion ended somewhere with his wife having him killed quietly in his sleep or arranging for him to be ostracized by his family and friends for the rest of his life.

He got up, got dressed, and managed to leave the house without having to talk to Jamila, even though it meant missing breakfast with the twins, who were ten. He sent them each a text telling them he’d see them after dinner and would they please remember that it was Thursday—they had a date for ice cream? They both replied with happy emoticons.

He reached Sabria’s apartment and did another sweep. Still empty. He went back to the neighbors, who said she hadn’t come home the night before. So he returned to her apartment, sat at the kitchen table, and began calling hospitals.

I
t was clear from the chatter that the department was quite proud of not having a specialist in serial killers on hand. It was, in fact, a matter of national pride that they didn’t need one. And there was a certain hunger in the men’s faces knowing that an American was going to enter the room to explain something only an American would know. And they would, ever so politely (Ibrahim could see them planning their deftness), berate America for importing its violence to this virgin country; a country not immune to violence, but certainly one that had never produced a Hannibal Lecter. (He felt certain there were men in the room who didn’t realize Lecter was fictional.) There was an eagerness, too, that said
Very well, we may have produced Osama bin Laden, but you produced a kind of viral Jeffrey Dahmer that has spread around the world, and apparently only you have the vaccine?

He overheard someone whisper “Do you think he’ll talk about Ed Bundy?”

“
Ted
Bundy!” Daher corrected sharply, slapping the officer on the back of the head.

It had been a long weekend. Ibrahim had spent the whole time worrying about Sabria, but now, watching the situation room fill up, he tried to put her in the back of his mind and focus on the case.

A few officers weren’t there, and half of forensics was still out at the gravesites. They had finished removing the bodies, which had all been brought to the examiner’s, but in the past twenty-
four hours forensics had uncovered something else: the killer had buried one of the severed hands near the body it belonged to. This had prompted the forensics and excavation teams to widen the area around each of the bodies in search of more artifacts. They had found another two hands buried near another body, but that was it.

Ibrahim was surprised that he was still in charge of the case. Riyadh had sent him to the desert because he’d been out of practice with Homicide cases for ten years. Now he suddenly found himself sitting on top of what might be the biggest case of the decade. He figured he could expect to hold on to it for another hour at the most. At the back of the room, the department’s other detectives were forming a group: Osama, Abu-Haitham, and the tall, bluff Yasser Mu’tazz, plus two others whose names he couldn’t remember.

As soon as the American appeared, all expectation collapsed. Ibrahim could almost hear the
Shit!
in mental unison followed by an intake of breath when Dr. Charlie Becker walked into the room. Her face was a clean porcelain, her button-down shirt almost a mockery of Saudi manhood: white and loose, but clinging in just the right places. She wasn’t even wearing a headscarf, and her long auburn hair had a springy quality that made it seem alive whenever she moved her head.

She looked momentarily confused, as if she’d walked into the wrong room in the wrong country. She glanced back at her guide, Chief Riyadh, who strode forward, nodding paternally at her before taking up position in front of his men with a careful sternness on his face.

“Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to our FBI specialist in serial killers, Dr. Charlie Becker, who has graciously flown in from a conference in Dubai.” It was clear from Riyadh’s voice that he’d had no idea that Dr. Becker was a woman until she’d arrived at his office. “Dr. Becker does not speak Arabic, but Officer
Kazaz has offered to translate.” Everyone looked at Kazaz as if he were a newly anointed king.

Ibrahim caught sight of the old Murrah grandfather Talib al-Shafi who had been responsible for most of the tracking at the gravesites. He was standing by the door, a slight man, his thick gray hair braided and tucked up beneath his headscarf. As Charlie walked into the room, he studied her walk, looked at her feet, seemed to find them acceptable, then turned and left.

“Thank you so much for having me,” Charlie said, surprising everyone. She could not have known that the crisp, high notes of her voice broke against walls that had not rebounded a female sound for years. She noticed the effect of her words on the men’s faces and blushed ever so slightly before pressing on. “I’m a psychiatrist by training but I got involved with the FBI as a specialist in certain kinds of deviant behavior, and now I focus exclusively on serial killers. I understand you have one on your hands right now.”

A few men nodded, but the rest were dumbstruck by her manner, both vulnerable and confident, by the fact that her hair announced its presence by glittering in the fluorescent lights. Most men in the room had a good enough grasp of English to understand what she was saying. The translation was merely a backup. Ibrahim stepped forward.

“Dr. Becker,” he said, “thank you for coming. I’m Inspector Ibrahim Zahrani and I’m in charge of this case. We do appear to have a serial killer and we’d appreciate anything you could tell us.”

“I understand you’ve never had one before?”

This triggered a discussion once it had been translated. “Of course we’ve had serial killers before,” Daher remarked in Arabic. “Does she think that we’re completely backward?”

“Tell her about Yanbu,” someone else said.

“She already knows about that,” the translator replied. “She’s asking about this department specifically. Has anyone in this room ever dealt with a serial killer before?”

“Sure,” Osama said from the back of the room. “The warehouse killer.”

Kazaz translated this.

“That’s a spree killer,” Charlie said, promptly ending the discussion. “Spree killers are different. They get carried away with bloodlust. A serial killer is someone much more thorough, and generally more careful.”

Ibrahim noticed Katya Hijazi slip into the room. She stood just inside the doorway and tried to look as if she belonged there. Charlie noticed too, smiled at her, and fumbled whatever she was saying, causing the rest of the room to turn and stare at Katya. Finally Charlie gave up and said “Hello” with a vague expression of pity on her face. Katya looked as if she wanted to slap her.

“Anyway,” Charlie went on, “the most important step in these types of investigations is to identify what you’re dealing with. And you’re halfway there. You already know he’s a serial killer. Until you start identifying some of the victims, there’s not much anyone’s going to be able to tell you about your killer specifically—such as where he might have met these women, what sort of neighborhood he lives in, what sort of job or family or other public façade he might have. So I’ll tell you what we know about serial killers, and then I’ll speak generally about yours, given what we do know about the patterns of his killings.”

Once the translator had finished, the only sound in the room was the low whir of air coming through the air-conditioning vents.

“For most serial killers, it starts with a fantasy,” Charlie said. Someone had offered her a bottle of water, and she cracked it open, took a sip. “Everyone has them, right? You fantasize about being the boss at work, about your wife loving you more than anyone else in the world. Whatever it is, it’s probably normal.”

Somewhere beside him, Ibrahim heard a long, low whispered
“Ayyyyyyyywa.”
Yeeeees. He suspected Daher.

“Most killers kill for obvious and intelligible reasons—greed, anger, revenge—but for serial killers, the reasons are personal, internal, and not fully comprehensible. They are more like compulsions. Their murders satisfy a deep inner need, the playing out of some fantasy that they’ve nurtured, usually for a very long time. Since childhood. Their fantasies are brutal. They commonly involve sadistic sexual violence and disfigurement. You’ve seen disfigurement here.” She glanced at the whiteboard, where photos of the nineteen shattered faces hung in neat rows. “But the important thing to know about the fantasies is that they’re like addictions. I know you don’t have a whole lot of gambling or alcohol or even drugs here. But you do know about them, and I’m sure you’ve seen them.

“Typically, alcohol medicates a problem or a pain, and so does fantasy. So the killer is relying on his fantasies to make himself feel better. He’ll nurture his fantasies for many years, and like all addictions, it gets to the point where he needs more in order to sustain the buzz. One beer doesn’t get a man drunk, so an alcoholic will start to need ten, or twenty. For the killer, he reaches a point where he needs to make his fantasy real.”

Charlie looked out over the room. She was more confident now, no traces of self-consciousness. She noticed Daher, something in his face, and said: “You have a question?”

He shook his head.

“No, go ahead,” she said. “Mr….?”

“Daher.” He cleared his throat. “Waseem Daher.” It was funny to see him so uncomfortable. “I was just wondering. He’s crazy, right? He thinks it’s okay to kill someone for his sick fantasy. Why is that?”

“Good question. Psychologists used to call these people psychopaths or sociopaths, depending on certain factors. But it’s more common these days to think of them as having what we call antisocial personality disorder, or ASPD. Briefly, it means that
they don’t have a conscience like you or me. They are often incapable of love, which means they don’t develop lasting relationships unless there’s an obvious cause for it, like sex or money. They are impulsive and aggressive. But the most defining aspect really is that they have absolutely no sense of guilt.”

“So they don’t understand how to treat people?”

“We-e-e-ll,” she said, “they don’t feel what normal people feel, but they do understand people to an amazing degree. They are capable of deceiving even those who are closest to them—family members, coworkers—and they can do that precisely because they understand them. They’re usually very good liars. And highly intelligent.”

Daher nodded uncomfortably.

“Should we be looking at old criminal files for our killer?” Ibrahim asked.

“Yes,” Charlie said, “you should absolutely check, but you may not find anything. In some cases, serial killers have a history of violent crime, but it’s more true to say that they’re very, very good at not getting caught. And if you do look at criminals, look for pyromaniacs and stalkers. Those are the most common early crimes for this type of individual.”

Ibrahim nodded.

“Specialists talk about six phases of killing,” Charlie went on. “These are psychological phases that were identified back in the eighties that most serial killers go through. The killer begins with a fantasy. Phase one. He withdraws into his inner world and develops the fantasy. Phase two begins when he starts actively looking for a victim. Most killers will start in a place that’s familiar to them, somewhere they’re comfortable. Their favorite street, a neighborhood café. This could take weeks or months. The victim has to match the fantasy.

“The next few phases can happen very quickly. Phase three, the killer tries to win the victim’s trust. Four, the killer captures
the victim and reveals who he is. Five, he murders her. Six, he crashes from the high of living out his fantasy. So let’s make up an example: a killer sits next to a woman at a bar.”

Daher shook his head with a frown.

“Oh, right,” Charlie said, “not a bar. You don’t have them. Maybe a restaurant then.”

Daher shook his head again.

“Yes, Mr. Daher?”

“That’s unlikely to happen here. Men and women sit in different parts of restaurants.”

Charlie nodded. “Okay. How could a man encounter a woman here? In public.”

The men looked at one another. Did this woman not understand anything about Saudi Arabia?

“He could talk to her on the street,” a voice said. It was Katya, still near the doorway. Everyone turned to look. “But that doesn’t mean she would talk back. She probably wouldn’t.”

“Under what circumstances would she talk back?” Charlie asked.

“If she knew him.”

“Most likely, she wouldn’t know him. The killer would want her to be a stranger.”

“Okay,” Katya said. “She wouldn’t talk to him unless, perhaps, he needed her help.”

Daher, who had been watching this exchange with a dark look on his face, put in: “Like Ted Bundy.”

“Good point,” Charlie said, still looking at Katya. “So maybe he lured her with a false vulnerability. Where else could he find a woman?”

“Well, she could have been his housemaid,” Daher said.

“She probably wouldn’t have been,” Charlie said, “at least not consistently. In phase two, when he’s trolling for the perfect victim, he’s looking from afar. He’s studying the victim for signs that
she’ll be like the woman in his fantasy—and the more you get to know someone, the less like fantasy they become. So the killer looks for superficial things, usually physical characteristics. For example, Ted Bundy preferred women with their hair parted in the middle.”

“Well,” Daher said with a dry laugh, “our killer won’t be looking for a particular hairstyle.”

Charlie gave him a wry smile and turned back to Katya. “Right. He might be looking for facial features, then?”