Kingdom of Strangers (16 page)

“Excellent,” Ibrahim said. “Why did this take longer than the ID on Cortez?”

“I had to do it the old-fashioned way, compare her prints manually to a bunch of files we received from the consulate for missing housemaids.”

“That had to have been a lot of work,” Daher said.

“I was able to narrow it down based on Adara’s report that May Lozano died about a year ago. She was the second-to-last victim, and the only one for whom we found both hands.”

“Very good,” Ibrahim said. “Was she here as a housemaid?”

“Yes. She lived with a family in Jeddah. It’s in the report.”

Ibrahim went to talk to Lozano’s employers. Like Cortez, Lozano had been recruited in Manila, but she had worked in Jeddah as a housemaid for five years. When she went missing, her employers filed a missing-persons report, and the police followed up. According to the report, friends of hers said that although Lozano missed her family in the Philippines, she’d been happy in Jeddah. The family who employed her had paid the headhunter fee and she received a decent wage. They treated her well.

According to the family, she hadn’t run away from them; she loved them almost like her own family. They had been distraught when she disappeared. It had happened on her birthday—they’d been planning to take her to Jollibee, her favorite restaurant—and they suspected foul play, although they had no idea who would have kidnapped her. She had no enemies, not even in the Philippines. They reported her disappearance to the police and the embassy, but no one could find her.

Ibrahim did find out that Lozano had been noticed missing almost immediately. She had left the house at 5:15 p.m. to head to Jollibee to meet a friend. It was a six-block walk from her employer’s house to the restaurant on al-Khalidiya. She was supposed to have met her friend Mary at 5:30. They were going to talk for a while before the family came to join them at about six o’clock. But when the family reached the restaurant, they found that Lozano wasn’t there. Her friend was sitting at a table, waiting.

Ibrahim and Daher walked the six blocks themselves.

“I guess she didn’t take a taxi,” Daher said.

The restaurant was brightly colored, a variation of McDonald’s, with a large plastic bee and bowl of honey out front.

None of the workers in the building had been there longer
than a few months, but the manager, Arnel, remembered May’s disappearance. He was a clean-cut thirty-something Asian man in a pale blue shirt and black trousers. A red lanyard around his neck carried an ID tag. If he’d taken off the blue baseball cap that seemed to be part of the uniform, he could have been mistaken for a medical intern or some other young professional.

“Yeah,” he said, looking upset at the memory. “The family came in looking for her. Her friend was here, waiting. We knew May. She came here with her family a lot. That was horrible. She wasn’t the type to run away.”

“You thought she ran away?” Ibrahim asked.

“That’s what they always say. These women, sometimes they get abused.”

“Did she look abused?”

He shook his head.

“Tell me, did you notice anything unusual that night? Anything outside, or in the street? Any odd people?”

“Yeah, one thing. I told the police about it back then, but they didn’t seem to think it was important. There was a woman across the street who collapsed. She got carried away in a Red Crescent van. The police said they’d check it out but I never heard back about it.”

“Could that woman have been May?”

Arnel shrugged. “It’s hard to see out of the front windows sometimes, and it was down the block. One of my workers was outside and he saw it. I didn’t get a good look at the woman. I went outside and saw the man putting her into the back of the van. The van drove away pretty quickly after that.”

They thanked him and walked out to the street.

“It’s going to take some time to hunt down this friend of hers,” Daher said, flipping open his notepad. “They said she left the country.”

Ibrahim stared down the street, trying to imagine an ambulance
there. It would have double-parked, stopping traffic in one direction.

“What are you thinking?” Daher asked.

“Our killer could have used a taxi to kidnap his women, but he could also have used an ambulance.”

Daher blew out his cheeks. “Yeah, I guess. But then he’s only getting women who’ve been injured?”

“Maybe he injures them himself,” Ibrahim said. “It wouldn’t be impossible. He comes up behind them, kind of like a mugger. Sticks a gun in their backs, tells them if they make a noise, he’ll shoot. He injects them with something that knocks them out. They collapse into his arms, and he carries them to his van. By the time anybody notices—which is probably when the woman collapses—they don’t think there’s anything wrong with a paramedic carrying a woman to his ambulance. Maybe they’re worried about her, but they’re going to be looking at her, not the killer.”

Daher nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“But you’re not convinced.”

“Well…”

“Go on.”

“I just think it would be so much easier if he was posing as a cabdriver. He wouldn’t have to risk one of the women screaming for help or somebody noticing him.”

Ibrahim nodded. “Maybe you’re right, but I think we’d better keep the paramedic angle in mind.”

F
riday morning, the building was empty. Everyone would be back to work on Saturday, filling the polished hallways with voices, laughter, the smack of Daher’s hand meeting a younger man’s head. Now the only noise to break the silence was the
clunk
of the central AC kicking into gear, and, in a few hours, the call to prayer. It always clanged through the local mosque’s loudspeakers with a jolt.

Ibrahim slid into the building, clutching a cup of coffee and feeling dead. He had spent the rest of Thursday arranging for copies of the execution files as well as the amputation-for-theft files showing the cutting off of hands and feet. Daher had offered to deliver them this morning, even though it was the day of rest, even though his job didn’t pay him nearly enough to encourage such loyalty. Ibrahim wondered idly if Daher’s home life was as miserable as his.

Farrah was still at the house, waiting for her husband to return. She was a welcome presence in that she and the twins kept Jamila busy, and that kept Jamila’s nagging to a minimum. The problem now was that they were in a concocting mood. Bored, with no more medical drama, they were poised to become the agents of someone’s undoing. Ever since Farrah had visited the exorcist, the household had had an underlying hint of lunacy to it.

At his office, he discovered that Daher had already delivered half the files, probably the night before. He had arranged the boxes in a neat row on the table. Ibrahim set his coffee on the desk, pulled up a chair, and cracked open the first file.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he went through the files anyway, trying to avoid reading too much detail. A man was found guilty of killing his wife and children. A woman was found guilty of killing her mother. Another man: murder of a stranger in a convenience store. He went through most of the files for 2003 and found nothing but murder. That was a little surprising.

He moved up to 2007. Here was a bit more diversity. Most of the executions were for murder, but those that weren’t usually involved multiple crimes. A man from Chad had been sentenced for child abduction, rape, theft, and drug use. He was only twenty-one. There were more executions for drug dealing, and even one for homosexuality.

He heard the slam of a door down the hall, footsteps squeaking on the linoleum. Daher came in carrying two more boxes. Sweat was dripping down his cheek.

“Salaam aleikum,”
he grunted, setting the boxes on the floor by the table. “This is the last of them.”

“Good. Thanks for bringing them in.”

Daher stood by the door, debating with himself. Then he pulled up a chair.

“You don’t have to stay,” Ibrahim said.

“Of course I’ll stay!” Daher said. “We should all be working overtime. This is an important case.” He sat down somewhat awkwardly beside his boss and pulled out a file. “What are we looking for?”

Ibrahim explained what Katya had told him on the phone, being careful to credit the psychologist as well lest Daher’s envy find its focus solely on Katya. Surprisingly, Daher was all business. He even interrupted and said, “And of course this is why he buried nineteen bodies. He fancies himself an agent of Allah.”

“It would appear so.”

“So what exactly are we looking for?” Daher asked again.

“It would be great if we could find someone who was punished for theft and who also had a relative die on the executioner’s block, but seeing as that might be impossible…” Ibrahim shrugged. “Just tell me if anything stands out.”

Daher seemed to sense the futility of the work, but he plunged in anyway. They read in silence for a while.

“What do you think about the nineteen thing?” Daher asked. “Do you think there’s a hidden pattern anywhere in the Quran?”

He was referring to the spectacle of Islamic scholars letting themselves get carried away with conspiracy theories about numbers and the Quran. It was known, for example, that the word
prayer
appeared in the Quran five times (echoing the fact that Islam has five compulsory prayer times each day), that the word
month
appeared exactly twelve times, and that the word
day
appeared exactly three hundred and sixty-five times. But that did not mean that everything was part of a mysterious pattern.

Theories about the importance of the number nineteen seemed to dominate the conspiracy thinking. Nineteen was the number of verses that the archangel Gabriel gave to the Prophet Mohammed in his first two visits to the cave. Nineteen was also the number of letters in the first verse of the first chapter of the Quran, a verse that was repeated fifty-four times throughout the holy book. To compound matters, the only chapter where the word
nineteen
appeared was entitled “The Hidden Secret.”

“I think there’s no special significance to the number nineteen,” Ibrahim replied, “except maybe to our killer.”

They read. Daher became serious and quiet in a way Ibrahim had never seen before. For a moment, Ibrahim could imagine him becoming chief someday.

“Maybe Dr. Becker’s idea is right,” Daher said. “Who has experience cutting off hands? An executioner, right? Has anyone thought that maybe he’s our guy?”

“As far as I know, you’ve just originated the theory.”

“Whatever this guy is, he’s getting a thrill from doing this. At least that’s the word from Charlie Angel.”

“I find it disturbing that Dr. Becker has unwittingly taken on the nickname Angel, just like our psychopathic killer.”

“Well,” Daher replied, “he’s not an angel, he’s an angel
killer
.”

“Ah.”

“And they’re both American,” Daher added.

“You’re going to have to toss that idea out of your head. I’ve read through five years of executions already, and do you know what I see? A whole bunch of Saudi killers. If killing is a virus, then we’re overdue for a mutation.”

Daher gave this idea the polite room it deserved, then said: “Honestly, I think it’s fitting that we’ve got two angels in this case. One is good, one is bad.”

“Very well,” Ibrahim said. “And you’re right, the executioner would have the tools for the job, including possibly enjoying it.”

“But you’ve seen the executions,” Daher said. “You see how the minute he cuts off a head, the police pull the executioner away. They’re standing there waiting to pull him away because they’re afraid he’ll get the bloodlust and start hurting other people. Right there in the square! In front of hundreds of people! But bloodlust is real. They always have to pull him away.”

Ibrahim had seen executions as an officer, right up close. “That’s true, but it’s also the tradition. Does he ever look like he needs to be pulled away?”

“Sometimes, yes!”

Ibrahim tried to square the image that was forming in his mind of their serial killer with his impression of the one executioner he’d met. On many counts, Daher was right, but Ibrahim’s gut was already organizing a protest.

“I talked to an executioner once,” Ibrahim said. “You know what he said about his job? He was
raising awareness
.”

Daher let out a laugh.

“That’s just how he described it,” Ibrahim went on. “Raising awareness of the horror of murder and trying to encourage people not to make mistakes in five minutes of rage that will ruin their whole lives.”

Daher was grinning. “That’s funny. I guess he thinks that most killers have no self-control. Is that true?”

Ibrahim shrugged. “Most people who kill lose their self-control, if only for a moment.”

“But not the Angel killer,” Daher said. “He’s
planning
this stuff.”

They heard footsteps in the hall and Daher sprang from his chair. In the split second before his body launched toward the doorway, his right arm swung to his hip. He was reaching for a gun he didn’t carry on Fridays to an empty office building. Ibrahim was startled by this.

Daher spun around with a look of disgust. “Miss Hijazi is here,” he said.

Katya stopped at the office door. She was holding two files.

“Ahlan,”
Ibrahim said, standing. “This is a nice surprise, Miss Hijazi. Please come in.”

“Ahlan biik,”
she replied. “I was just here picking up some files.”

“Why are you working?” Daher asked with barely concealed disapproval. “It’s Friday!”

“It’s not Friday for you too?” she asked, walking past him into the office. To Ibrahim she said: “I took a trip to the desert yesterday. I went out to the site.”

“You went by yourself?” Daher asked.

“No, I went with the Murrah. Talib al-Shafi and his nephews accompanied me and my husband.”

“Did you have permission to do this?” Daher asked, looking at Ibrahim. “I didn’t hear anything about it.”

“We didn’t spend much time at the site.” She was still speaking
directly to Ibrahim. “We went west and were able to find the place that we believe the killer went back to. I guessed he had to have gone back, otherwise how did he know that we found the bodies? And we’re assuming that he knows that, because of Amina’s hand.”