Quicksand (15 page)

They poured into the room, her cousin among them, and gave her such a beating that even now she limps from it.

It was easier, after that, to take the pill. It was a mercy, she decided, and the pain and the shame and the disgust eased and her mind could go away,

go home,

and she could walk barefoot along white-hot sand, one hand clutching a long, wobbly fishing pole, and the other a woven basket, as her eyes scanned the sparkling blue-green water for just the right spot, the spot that would offer up enough fish for her and her mother and sisters.

Enough.

She had only ever wanted to have … enough.

And now the heaviness held her still, inhaling, exhaling until his return.

She had not understood that the mercy could come in powdered form as well, that it could be snuffed up the nose

like the water for ablutions.

 

CHAPTER
5

It was just
past nine in the morning when Wansbrough texted her. “Recd miss pers rept.”

Nora ran up the back stairwell and arrived sweaty and panting.

He shook his head. “We do have an elevator.”

She flopped onto her chair, which skittered slightly on its wheels. “That elevator is why you're so slow, old man.”

“Speaking of speed, I read all the reports from last night. Nice going there.”

Nora grinned. “Dewayne has a power track star on staff. I underestimated him.”

“You guys talk to them yet?”

She shook her head. “Both asked for lawyers. And so we wait. But what's this about a missing persons report?”

“Looks like your cappuccino strategy worked. Officer Mike Cook sent this over himself this morning. Usually takes two or three days before they connect the dots that way for us willingly.” He handed over the report. The black-and-white copy of the picture was slightly grainy, but it showed a woman in a paisley headscarf, a quiet smile adorning strong features. Nora peered at it thoughtfully, then scanned the paper. This woman's mother had made the report late last night in what was, according to the report-taker, barely passable English. It was not normal that Hafsa al-Tanukhi, aged twenty-two, slept outside her home. She had not called to check in for over twenty-four hours.

“What do you think?”

Nora lifted her gaze slowly from the thin sheet of paper. “Our corpse's outstanding feature at this point is her hair, and obviously I see no hair here.”

“But the age matches. Background matches. Timing matches,” Wansbrough said.

“To a T.”

“Let's go?”

Nora glanced at the address. “Northeast. You drive.”

He smiled at her, gathering his keys from atop his desk. “I let you drive us once, and you have some kind of fantasy that I might do it again? No, my sister. You just let that pretty Ford keep rotting in the garage downstairs.”

She fell into step next to him, lingered a moment at the door to the stairwell, then followed him to the elevator bank when he ignored her. “What's wrong with my driving?”

“You drive like my crazy grandma,” he said immediately.

“And how is that?”

“You turn all the way around in your seat to check for cars before getting in the next lane. You never turn left when you can make it, only when there are no oncoming cars within a mile radius. And you can't listen to music because it distracts you. These are the characteristics of ninety-year-old women drivers with humps and cataracts.”

Nora punched the “L” button and glared at him, particularly peeved because everything he had said was accurate.

The ride into Northeast Philadelphia was long and tedious. They had gotten off the jammed I-95, only to find that the inside streets were a chaos of repair crews and detours. When they arrived at the al-Tanukhi home, though, they took an extra few moments to talk.

“I don't want anyone to see that body who doesn't have to,” she said. “We have to be absolutely certain. Can we ask them for a hair or something for a DNA test?”

John thought for a moment. “It's a good idea, not bad. If they'll agree.”

“If it is her, though, they're gonna want to take possession of the body immediately. Muslims bury their dead right away. No chemicals.”

John sighed. “We can't do that, and she's already been pumped full of preservatives if I know Watt. So far her body is the only evidence we have.”

“I know,” Nora answered miserably. She stared for a while at the small, squat home. The door was decorated with a wreath of plastic autumn leaves. “We'll have to stall, then.”

It was almost ten thirty when they walked up the path and Wansbrough pushed the doorbell.

It was not long before a man with a full salt-and-pepper beard pulled the door open. John and Nora showed him their badges. The man was of medium build, dressed in a button-down shirt that was starched and pressed but untucked; khaki pants; and Adidas flip-flops. He regarded the badges with a fierce frown, then ushered them in, muttering a perfunctory
welcome
.

“Why did the FBI come and not the police?” he asked suspiciously.

“We can explain that to you, sir,” John answered, his voice implying that they would need to sit down for such an explanation.

They stood in expectant silence for a moment in the ceramic-tiled foyer, next to a crowded shoe rack. Then Nora looked pointedly at John.

“Shall we remove our shoes?” he asked, and she could tell from the way he said it that he had no desire to do so.

Their host clearly appreciated the question, though, and his frown eased slightly. “Yes, please,” he said. His English was heavily accented, and Nora knew with certainty he was Arab. She guessed Iraqi. She slipped out of her laceless Puma Osu Nms, and watched bemusedly as John unlaced and removed his shoes, then adjusted the tip of his right sock to hide the hole over his big toe.

They entered an immaculate, if airless, sitting room. Nora was very still, taking everything in. Imitation Louis XV furniture, heavy glass coffee table, and handmade doilies … There were no pictures on the walls, only gold-embroidered Qur'anic verses in elaborate frames. A vase full of fake flowers sat on the mantel of a fireplace that was eerily clean.

“I am Omar al-Tanukhi. Hafsa is my daughter.” He sat stiffly on the dainty couch as John and Nora took their places in the regal chairs on either side.

Wansbrough checked his notebook, then said, “The person who made the police report was Hafsa's mother, a Sanaa Faraj. Is she present?”

She was. She had been waiting and listening, apparently, and she walked in as soon as her name was spoken. “I am Sanaa Faraj,” she said, carefully, as though she had plotted out the sounds before shaping the words. She wore a long abaya and a pale peach satin headscarf. She was plump, though not obese. Around her neck was a long gold chain, dangling with charms that bore the phrases, “What God Wills,” and “Thank God,” and the shape of a hand encrusted with slivers of cubic zirconium. Nora had at least fifty of these charms in her jewelry box, gifts from her grandmothers.

Omar al-Tanukhi looked irritated at his wife's sudden entrance, but also looked as though he had surrendered to her tsunamic emotional state. Sanaa Faraj's eyelids were red and swollen, and she looked dangerously close to breaking down as she offered them something to drink.

Both Nora and John declined. As the woman took her seat next to her husband on the gold-edged Louis Seize, Omar al-Tanukhi repeated his question. “My wife called the
police
. Why is the FBI here? Is it because we are Muslims?”

Nora proffered her badge. “I am a police officer, Mr. al-Tanukhi,” she clarified. “We are part of a joint task force between the police, FBI, and local sheriff's offices designed to keep Philadelphia's streets safe.”

Nora heard the father mutter in Arabic, “
Look what they've sent us, a woman and a nigger
.”

Nora leaned forward, eyes narrowed, and said in very precise Arabic, “My partner is the best investigator in the FBI. I expect you will treat him with the respect he deserves, as he is the best chance you have for finding your daughter.”

Omar al-Tanukhi stared at her for a charged moment, then lowered his gaze.

But Nora's Arabic had the effect of unleashing a dam in Hafsa al-Tanukhi's mother, who had clearly been trying to figure out how she was going to communicate important information with her very official guests, all in English. She slid to the end of the couch nearest Nora's chair, seized Nora's hand, and began speaking in rapid, nearly hysterical Arabic. “Something's happened to my daughter, I just know it! Never in all her life has she gone out and not returned. How can she not call me when I am sick with worry!? I have asked everyone she knows, and no one has heard from her. Please, please help me find her! Please assure me she's alright!” As she spoke, tears streamed down her pale cheeks.

Nora grasped her hand and spoke softly. “We will do everything we can, Mrs. Faraj. But what we can do depends on you. Try to calm down a little and help us sort out some things that will clarify everything, God willing.”

She glanced over at John, then, who was patiently waiting for the drama to die down. Nora chose her words carefully. “First, I need to see a picture of Hafsa without her hijab, so I have a better idea of what she looks like.”

Mr. al-Tanukhi tensed. “There's nowhere she would go without her hijab,” he said. “You don't need that.”

“If, God forbid, Hafsa is hurt, she won't be in a hospital wearing a headscarf. Please, Mr. al-Tanukhi.”

But Sanaa Faraj had already bustled out of the room. We heard her opening and shutting drawers in an adjacent room, and she returned with a snapshot. The picture was of a high school–aged girl with a wide smile and a tumble of curly black hair. The corpse on B-level had no eyes, and Nora found her gaze lingering on a pair of dancing, cocoa-colored eyes. She looked at the photo perhaps too long, then seemed to awaken, knowing that if she showed it to John at this point, Mr. al-Tanukhi would balk.

“May I keep this?” Nora asked.

Mrs. Faraj hesitated, then nodded.

Nora said, “This picture is of a teenager. Your report to the police stated that Hafsa was twenty-two. Don't you have a more recent picture?”

Mrs.. Faraj shook her head, retaking her seat on the couch. “She has worn hijab since she was fourteen. She no longer has her picture taken without it.” The mother was silent a moment, then new tears began sliding down her cheeks. “She is such a good girl…”

Nora shifted in her seat, going over her options. She had a thought, and she patted Sanaa Faraj gently on the knee. “Do you have any mint tea? It would calm everyone down, don't you think?” It was an appalling breach of etiquette, asking for the tea instead of waiting to be asked again, but Nora took a chance. She wanted to get the woman alone and let John get Mr. al-Tanukhi's story.

Mrs. Faraj was slowly nodding and swiping at her wet cheeks with the edge of her scarf. “Of course, where are my manners?” she said slowly, starting to rise.

“Let me help you,” Nora said.

“No, dear, don't trouble yourself,” the woman answered, squeezing Nora's hand.

“I insist,” Nora said, and they walked together toward the kitchen. “We're going to make some tea,” she said to John as they passed. She ignored Omar al-Tanukhi's suspicious look.

She heard him ask, “Is she Egyptian? She speak with Egyptian accent.” John, who knew perfectly well, said, “I'm not sure…”

Sanaa Faraj was filling a stainless steel kettle with tap water. If she had questions about Nora's origins, they were obscured by her worry for her daughter. “I just can't imagine where she would be. We sent her brother out looking all last night and the night before, and he did not find her anywhere…”

Nora sat at the small, round kitchen table. “How old is Hafsa's brother?”

“Twenty, may God protect him,” she replied, pulling glass teacups out of a neatly arranged cupboard. She set them before Nora. “He's going to be an engineer,
in sha Allah
.” God willing.

“Where did you send him to look, Mrs. Faraj?”

Mrs. Faraj sighed, thinking. “The mosque where we pray the Friday prayer. The homes of her friends. And the mosque where she volunteers sometimes.”

Nora didn't want to scare her off by writing anything official-looking on a notepad, so she took very specific mental notes, a trick she'd learned in training; she imagined what these things would look like written down on a notepad, whether she wrote in cursive or block letters, and what words she would have underlined. She even picked blue ink.

“Can you tell me a little about her friends, and share with me some of their names so I can visit with them?” She asked this as she held out her hand for the canister of tea bags, smiling at her hostess who reluctantly gave them to her as she considered her request.

“I suppose…” Sanaa looked worried, and Nora sensed she didn't want to scare Hafsa's friends by having a police officer, even a female one, show up at their houses.

“When we've finished our tea,” Nora said, trying to put her at ease.

Sanaa nodded. “Of course.”

Nora placed a bag in each waiting glass mug, as she asked, “Where was she volunteering?”

Mrs. Faraj made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue. “At a mosque all the way across town. In the black section.”

“And what does she do there?”

Sanaa shrugged as she placed a few mint leaves in each glass. “Whatever she can. She went because she wants to teach immigrant women to read and write English. She has a friend there, they are close, so she is often there, but it takes up far too much of her time, if you ask me.”

“What kind of immigrants is she teaching??” Nora pressed.