Finding Nouf (28 page)

"Did I tell you about the marks on the camel's leg?"

"No," she said. With some embarrassment, he explained about the camel. She was walking in front of him, stumbling occasionally when the hill grew too steep.

"I've always thought it was odd," she said, "the idea of giving someone an evil eye. Personally, I think it's ridiculous."

He didn't reply.

"And I think Nouf would have agreed with me," she said. "I didn't actually know her that well, but the few times I talked to her, she seemed very practical. I really don't think she believed in spirits and djinni and all that."

"So who do you think made the sign on the camel?"

She shrugged. "Who was with her in the desert? Who
could
have been with her? Everyone has an alibi. Her whole family was home. Othman tells me that her escort was shopping with his wife. What about Eric?"

"His alibi checks out—I made some calls last night. He was at work the whole day."

She stopped at the bottom of the hill. "The way I see it, there has to be a third man, someone we don't know about yet."

They had reached a circular patch of land that marked the end of an access road, which he guessed led back to the main road. The first thing he noticed was the dark orange color of the dirt. Scraping the ground with his fingers, he felt the hardness of clay.

"You know my uncle ran an analysis of the dirt from Nouf's head wound," he said. "I think this dirt is a match."

Katya bagged a sample. "So she could have been hit here."

Nayir turned to a scrubby row of palms, their branches dense enough to offer a bit of shade. Behind the trees stood a thicket of bushes, overgrown and tangled. It was a sad, forsaken place; the wind didn't even stir the leaves. But the dirt beneath the palm trees showed evidence of activity. He walked to the edge of the clearing and studied the tire tracks.

"Stay off the dirt," he said.

She set her toolbox down near the bushes and looked around. Nayir followed a set of footprints along the road. He tried to view them through Mutlaq's eyes, but there were dozens of tracks and he couldn't keep them apart. It seemed that cars and trucks came down the access road frequently. Footprints led away from the tire tracks in all directions, but he couldn't tell which footprints belonged to which tracks.

One set of tire tracks had stopped in the middle of the clearing. Careful not to disturb them, Nayir followed the tracks to the edge of the access road, where it seemed the car had spun around and headed back past the zoo. And there, at the farthest edge of the clearing, he noticed a metallic glimmer in the bushes. Moving closer, he found a tin can half buried in the dirt. He picked it up, disappointed.

"Nayir?" Miss Hijazi's voice sounded strange. She was kneeling in the dirt, poking gently at something. "I think you should come here." Dropping the can, he went to her and saw that she had brushed the sand away from a crooked pink object. It was a shoe. A stiletto, squashed flat by a car's tire.

"It's her other shoe," he said, kneeling down and helping to pry it out of the dirt. "She must have dropped it."

"But wouldn't she have noticed if she'd dropped it? Wouldn't she have come back for it?"

Nayir nodded. She'd held on to the other one even in the desert, where it was entirely useless. "I don't think she would have left it here on purpose."

"Unless she was trying to leave a clue behind..." Miss Hijazi whispered. "She must have been abducted."

A thrill of potential discovery passed through them both. Nayir wanted to fuel the moment by telling her where they'd found Nouf's body, and about Othman's missing jacket, which implicated somebody from the estate, but he wasn't sure he could bring himself to say it, because it implicated Othman first.

He looked down at the dirt. "Do you see any evidence of blood?" he asked. "She was hit on the head—there must have been a lot of blood."

"Not necessarily," Miss Hijazi replied. "Most of it could have been on her face and her robe. But here"—she pointed to a section of the road—"it looks as if someone wiped the dirt. If there was blood, maybe they tried to clean it up."

"Those look like drag marks," he said. "What if she was hit here?
She would have fallen down. Her kidnapper would have had to pick her up or drag her to the car." He followed the drag marks to the tire tracks. "If that was the case, wouldn't there be some blood along this path?"

"I don't see any," Miss Hijazi said, "but I'll take a few samples and check for traces." She stood up and returned to the toolbox. With great care she placed the shoe in a plastic bag, but instead of putting it into the box, she held it for a moment. "It's strange that she was carrying the shoes," she said.

"Yes. Why didn't she just leave them in the truck?"

"Maybe she thought they would get damaged by the heat."

"People keep Qurans on their dashboards," he said. "And anyway, she could have parked in the shade." Nayir continued circling the drag marks, looking for blood.

"Maybe she did leave them in the truck," Miss Hijazi said. "It could be that someone dragged her out of the truck and the shoe fell out."

He looked up. "The other shoe—how did they find it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did you see if she had been carrying it in a bag?"

"No. There was no bag."

"Then it must have been in her pocket," he said. "Otherwise they would never have found it with the body. The flood was strong enough to knock off the shoes she was wearing."

"Yes," she said thoughtfully. She set the shoe in the toolbox and wiped the dirt from her cloak. "Let's say Nouf came to the zoo to meet someone she trusted enough to meet alone. How did she get here? The truck. She drove it down here and waited."

"Why wouldn't she park in the lot?" he asked.

"She probably parked here to be discreet. She was a woman, so even if she was wearing a man's robe, someone might have noticed the outline of her body. The person she was going to meet arrived in his car, and they both got out of their cars. Here." She pointed to the footprints around the tire tracks. "All of these footprints are pretty small. It looks like the person she was meeting was relatively small." She took a tape measure from her box and measured the prints.

Nayir wandered around. "You know, these could all be the same prints."

"They're not all the same pattern, but they're similar." She looked up. "All size thirty-six. And they look like men's shoes." He handed her the mangled stiletto and she measured it, looking at him dolefully. "Also thirty-six."

"If she was going to exchange the shoes, they probably didn't fit well."

"Maybe she was lying," Miss Hijazi said.

"I have the shoe she was wearing in the desert," Nayir said. "It's on my boat. I'll measure it tonight. What about the camel? It seems to me that the kidnapper would have brought it—" He stopped, feeling that the rest was obvious: that if the kidnapper had brought the camel, then he had been to the estate, and he knew enough about the grounds to know how to steal a camel and a truck.

Miss Hijazi looked uneasy. "Well, we don't know that the camel was here."

"I doubt that someone would kidnap Nouf and then go back to the estate to steal the camel with her body in the car."

"All right." She snatched a handful of vials from her toolbox and went back to the drag marks. "The truth is, we don't know what sort of relationship Nouf had with the kidnapper. She might have brought the camel herself, as part of some ... arrangement they had. Who knows?" She sounded breathless. Kneeling down in the dirt, she scooped up two samples and sealed the vials. "Maybe she
was
running away and someone was trying to stop her. If she was hit here, she still could have run off on her own after the fight. She might have been mobile but disoriented. It might even explain how she lost the shoe, and then later the camel."

"It's possible," he said, "but it wouldn't explain the missing truck. They still haven't found it. If she drove herself to the desert, the truck should have been near the wadi."

"Someone could have stolen the truck in the desert."

He refrained from pointing out that such a thing was extremely unusual. It was best not to argue about the truck at all, since they had no evidence. He watched her take the dirt samples back to the tool kit. "If someone else met her here and knocked her out, then one car would still be here. Where is it?" he asked.

"Maybe the kidnapper left it here," she said, "and then came back later to get rid of it."

It sounded flimsy, but he let it pass. "How did she even know about this place?"

"Would her escort know? He didn't mention the zoo, did he?"

"No," Nayir said.
But he smelled like manure.
He walked around some more, studying the prints.

She shut her toolbox. "There's evidence that other people were here," she said, "but it's not necessarily connected to Nouf. I think you should go back to Muhammad. He would be able to tell us how she knew about this place and whether she came here more than once. He might also be able to explain the shoes."

"I already asked him about that."

"But think about it—Nouf kept the shoes. Maybe she really was going to exchange them. She would have needed Muhammad to do it, and maybe that's why she brought the shoes here. She was meeting Muhammad." She looked warily at Nayir. "You have to talk to him again. I'll come with you."

"No," he said.

"Yes."

"
No."
From the look in her eyes, he could tell he was only making matters worse. "It would be better if I went alone," he said, his voice softening. "He trusts me, and I have the feeling he'll open up again, which he won't do if you're there."

Grudgingly, she agreed. For a moment they stood facing each other, too hot or too tired to speak. The sun bore down on their heads, and the air was heavy with dust. In the distance they heard a bird's angry screech. Nayir realized that he was staring at her
burqa.
He didn't feel like avoiding her gaze just then. It felt all right to study her eyes, to watch her hands move, and to notice the outline of her body through her cloak. The fabric was thin, and in the sunlight he could almost see through it. She had shapely arms and a narrow waist. For a very brief moment he indulged in a fantasy that she wasn't Othman's fiancée, she was just a woman he'd met. He wondered if she had fantasies about him, and he looked at her eyes for a clue, but she was studying his face with suspicion.

"I'll have to tell Othman about this," she said.

He felt an unpleasant jolt. "What?"

"About the shoe."

He nearly exploded with relief.
Allah forgive me for my sinful thoughts.

"It's not the kind of thing we can hide," she added.

"I'll tell him if you like."

She turned and squinted into the sunlight. "That might be better. Why don't you just tell him it was your idea? In fact, don't mention me at all."

"I can't do that."

She turned back to him. "No, you're right. I don't want you to lie." She rubbed her forehead. "I appreciate your coming out here. I hope this doesn't make things awkward for you with Othman. I don't want to cause any trouble between you."

Too late,
he thought. "Don't worry."

"You know he talks about you a lot. You're like a hero to him."

He didn't know what to say.

"Maybe it would be best," she said, "if we both told Othman what we found here today. It might make a difference if he hears it from you too."

He nodded. With a tired sigh, Miss Hijazi shut the toolbox, stood up, and turned toward the hill. "I have another hour and a half before I have to be at work. We should talk about what we're going to say. Ahmad has to leave soon. Would you escort me to lunch?"

He could think of ten reasons to say no, but he couldn't force down the eagerness rising in his chest. However, as a matter of principle, he frowned. "I don't see how that's possible."

"I know a place," she said. "Just follow me."

N
AYIR CLIMBED OUT
of the Jeep into a heat that felt dangerous. The humid air gagged him with its industrial stench. They had parked in the last two spots in a tiny lot near al-Balad. The lot, surrounded by tall apartment buildings, was half in shade, but it hardly made a difference. The afternoon sun warped everything like a desert mirage—the cars, the pavement, the billboards overhead. A lone, dry fountain at the head of an alley seemed to be dripping with waves of heat. Only the buildings were immune, sturdy limestone structures heavy with casements and lattice screens that kept out the heat.

A woman scurried by, darting across the lot into the entrance of an alley, glancing around to make sure no one was following her. Nayir felt a familiar twinge of alarm at seeing a woman alone in the street. How did they do it, he wondered—walk so quickly with their faces covered? She slipped into the alley and slowed her pace. Perhaps she was hurrying only because of the heat.

He crossed the lot to Miss Hijazi's car, and by the time he reached it his shirt was soaked and his pant legs were sticking to his ankles. He wished he'd worn a robe.

She was taking her toolbox from the trunk and saying goodbye to Ahmad. The driver gave Nayir a stern look before climbing back into the car. The look was half a warning to treat her with respect, half an acknowledgment of solidarity.

"I'll carry that," Nayir said, motioning to the toolbox.

"I'm fine." She took off, heading down an alley. He followed awkwardly. Walking behind her made him feel like a child, but she was leading, so he couldn't very well walk in front. He would have to walk beside her, although that didn't feel right either. He imagined Othman seeing them together. Even husbands and wives didn't walk side by side; the woman walked in back as a sign of respect.

He drew up beside her just as they left the alley. She turned right and slowed, gazing around, her head swiveling with every turn since the
burqa
clipped her vision. "It's here somewhere," she said.

"Where are we going?"

"It's one of these family buffets where you can take an unmarried woman to lunch."