Quicksand (28 page)

Burton confirmed, “Arabic is spoken in northern and coastal areas of Somalia. The rest of the country speaks Somali—some Swahili in the south.”

“Basheera said Hafsa was trying to help someone.”

“You think there's a girl involved?”

“According to Basheera there are multiple girls right here in the city, right now, a group. But it was clear from our conversation that Hafsa had some sort of interaction with one of them. At the mosque.”

“And Hafsa's intervention might be what got her killed?”

“Maybe?”

John nodded. “It's as plausible an explanation as any so far.”

“And maybe her body was meant as a lesson? To keep the girls from running away?” Nora's stomach was twisting as she leafed through the pictures again. “John, we have to look at these houses more closely—especially the abandoned ones. We have to get inside. What if there's some kind of brothel prison right under our nose?”

John nodded. “Yes. Yes, we'll take another look. But we need to talk about one more thing. You had said something about drugs?”

Nora inhaled, remembering the flash drive and Jane Doe in her hospital bed. She tried unsuccessfully to still the urgency she felt about finding the young girl Hafsa had tried to help. “Yeah, Basheera said the Somalis were aiming to get more into drugs, somehow use the girls to leverage them in or something.”

Her three colleagues exchanged glances. “You have to have territory to do that,” Ben said.

Burton stood suddenly and began to pace. “Of course. Classic, really. They're playing both groups off against each other. And we've been helping, rounding up all the gangsters from both sides, leaving the playing field open for the new guys.”

The other three sat in silence, soaking this in.

Nora felt a chill take hold of her. “All they would have needed was Kevin Baker's Escalade … What if—” Nora found herself meeting Eric Burton's gaze, and they both seemed to arrive at the same conclusion simultaneously. “If the Somalis gave us Kevin Baker, it would eliminate a huge chunk of the competition.”

“Why didn't they just kill him?” Wansbrough asked.

“So he can lead you to Los Zetas, eliminating them as suppliers as well,” Burton answered, a note of respect entering his tone. “If this gang has their own suppliers then they are positioned to take the whole pie.”

*   *   *

After they left,
she tentatively stood, gripping the bed rails, and found her legs. Slowly, cautiously, she crossed to the small bathroom.

Flicking on the over-bright light, she came to stand at the wide mirror over the sink. She peered at the bruises on her cheeks and jaw. She had never been struck before. She played the whole scene back in her mind, over and over again, until she could hear the
click
of the empty chamber without flinching and recall the way his fist connected with her flesh without recoiling physically. She pulled the hospital gown away from her chest and stared at the marks where the bullets had tried to penetrate the vest—one contusion lay above her right breast, the other nearer her left shoulder. She envisioned the way his finger would have depressed the trigger as he aimed for Basheera, silencing her forever. She constructed his every step, and how the intent to harm them had settled in his mind.

“I'll find you,” she whispered into the mirror, tracing the bruises on her cheek with her fingertips. “I will never stop looking until I find you.”

As she walked back to the bed, her eyes came to rest on one of the pictures now littering her nightstand. She seized it, then pulled a picture out of the file and studied them both intently. Then she grabbed her BlackBerry. “John,” she said urgently as soon as she heard his voice. “Remember when we stopped back at the crime scene—after talking to the hairdresser?”

He replied slowly, “Yes, what?”

“There was an upstairs window in one of the houses that's supposed to be abandoned.”

John was silent, waiting for her point.

“In one of my pictures, the window is broken!” Nora's voice was rising excitedly.

John asked drily, “Isn't that typical for an abandoned home?”

Nora waved the other photo in the air, as though he could see it. “When we went the next day it was boarded up. The next day! Someone's in that house!”

*   *   *

It was barely
two hours later that the call came. “No one's in the house,” John was saying through the phone.

Nora wilted. “Nothing at all?”

“Oh, plenty. But no people. Someone had a home generator up and running. It was hooked up wrong; any longer, and whoever was here could have died of carbon monoxide poisoning. It was also used as a storage facility; dust patterns in the basement show there were a lot of bottles, boxes, that have recently been moved. We have a tech crew trying to pull prints—the place is wiped down, but I'm sure they'll find something. I mean, it's wiped down but these people moved out very, very fast. Someone had to have made a mistake somewhere. Some faucet, some banister.…”

Nora was nodding to herself, clinging to this hope, but devastated all the same. She clutched the phone in silence.

John's voice went on. “We have some powder, too, traces on the bed in one room. Ben is thinking probably some form of heroin.”

Nora had swung her legs over the side of the hospital bed and was listening intently.

John continued, “I think it was just the sort of prison we were worried about. Four bedrooms, and it looked like the dining room was converted for that use, too, there was a mattress on the floor—same goes for the living room. In each area there were hair and bodily fluid traces. And … signs of struggle.”

“Don't let them out of there until they find a solid lead, John. We have to find those girls.”

“Nora—don't worry. We're close. You just get your rest so you can get back out here.”

*   *   *

Everything ached, her
limbs, her soft, secret parts, even her jaw from struggling to keep it closed as he would yank it open to shove in his pills.

She had begged him to leave her alone, but he kept saying she was his now, his property, to do with as he pleased.

And now that he was done, now that he was satisfied, all she could think of was to slip away, to run away, to get away, anywhere, anywhere. He slept on his right side, his back to her. He was snoring deep, ugly snores, and she moved carefully, slowly, slowly, slowly, not breathing, not making a sound,

no sound,

no sound,

no sound …

She dropped her bare feet to the floor, fearing the floor, hating the floor that seemed to be mined with tools and cans and small, creeping bugs. He had constructed a makeshift bedroom in that cold, dark basement. Only the palest filtered light found its way into that tomb. The door to the upper floor seemed beyond reach, for it lay on the other side of the heavy, creaking door; she knew there was someone up there—could hear the footfalls even when her captor was with her below.

If only she could reach that upper floor, but it was far,

so far,

so far …

She gathered the abaya from the chair and wrapped it around herself as she took each timid, terrified step, not breathing, not making a sound,

no sound,

no sound,

no sound …

Her body ached, how it ached now even more with the effort of walking so carefully, all of her muscles tensed and knotted and coiled in fear. If he hadn't made her swallow the pill she would be steady on her feet, confident that what she saw on the floor was where she saw it. Her pointed toes gingerly explored the freezing cement before taking each step, putting a little weight, just a little, and then more, a little more, and then stepping and feeling out the next step, and the next,

careful …

careful …

But with nothing to hold onto, she could not keep her body from swaying. A false step sent an aluminum container skittering across the floor, and in an instant he had turned, and seen her, and he was on her in two strides, his arm encircling her and slinging her across the room, back onto the bed, sweat-stained, as he cursed her in a furious but hushed tone, cursed the plotting of women, cursed and cursed as he pinned her, forcing open her already-bruised thighs and plunging into her again and again; one rough hand clamped against her lips, as the floorboards creaked overhead.

 

CHAPTER
9

Nora awoke, startled
to find Ahmad staring down at her.

“What is that on your face?”

She put her hand to her cheek, squinting against the light of the desk lamp he'd turned on. “What time is it?” she asked, her voice low to match his.

“Three o'clock. I saw your shoes on the rack, so I knew you were home. I was expecting to find you with a hickey or something, not bruises—”

Forty-eight hours in the hospital had been more than Nora could handle. When her doctor had made his rounds on the second night, she badgered him until she and her internal and external contusions ended up with a prescription for plump ibuprofen and her release papers. Now she sat up, adjusting the pillows behind her, eyes narrowed. “What do you know about hickeys, boy?”

“Enough to know I'd prefer you have one to what you've got there. Tell me Special Agent Colleague didn't do that to you,” he said. His brown eyes were wide and filled with concern.

She smiled. “Special Agent Colleague didn't do that to me.”

“Then what, Nora? Were you even with him?”

“His name is Ben, Ahmad. And no, I wasn't with Ben. I was in the hospital.”

Ahmad clapped his palm to his forehead, his eyes wide, but Nora raised a hand. “It's okay,
habibi
. Really it is.”

“Can you talk about it with me?”

She wanted to more than anything else in the world. She missed talking to Ahmad. It used to be that she told him everything—well, almost everything. He had known more gossip about her four by 400-meter relay team than the team itself. But something had changed. There was too much, now. Where could she start? The details about Hafsa's death? The drive-by and her bruised rib? The leads that brought them to Basheera and her story about the Somalis? Could she really tell him about the exploding window at Manakeesh and Basheera lying dead on Walnut Street? Or how she'd pursued the man on foot, and the sound of that trigger clicking—? She realized with a pang that she really wasn't a rookie anymore. Too much had happened. And she could no longer take her work stories to her little brother for processing. She needed a friend.

She needed Ben.

Nora shrugged. “You know what,
habibi
? It's not a very good story. We were training up in Bucks County, and they were trying to toughen us up. I was riding a zip line, and didn't get out of the way of a tree. It was so humiliating!”

Ahmad stared at her. “Seriously? You want me to believe that you were that stupid?”

She smiled, for the first time grateful that Ahmad avoided looking at anything resembling news on the Internet. “That's my story and I'm sticking to it.”

Her brother frowned. “I think you're not telling me so you don't worry me.”

He'd seen right through her. He always did. “Well, if that were the case, then I guess you'd have to realize I am an
awesome
sister.”

He shook his head, and reached out a hand to gently touch her swollen cheek. “I don't know what I'd do without you, Nora,” he said.

“Look at me,
ya Ahmad
. If you end up having to find that out, I will have failed you altogether, okay?” she said, leaning forward to kiss the top of his head.

He stood to leave, and then Nora remembered she needed to talk to him about Baba.

“Hammudi, there's one more thing.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I'm thinking about moving out. How would you feel about that?”

He sat down again on the edge of her bed. “What happened?”

She swallowed, choosing her words carefully. “Baba is … Well, I don't want to live under Baba's rule anymore. And I think it's time for me to go.”

“What about Baba?”

“Well, he and I just…” She groped for words in the dimness that would express how much she loved her father and how badly he had let her down.

He leaned down, searching her face. “You know, don't you?”

She frowned, alarmed. “What are you talking about?”

“You tell me, then I'll tell you.”

“No, you first,” she insisted, her heart thumping in her chest.

“About Baba and the woman, the dentist or something.”

Nora shifted onto her knees, her breath becoming shallow. “How do you know about this?” she demanded.

Ahmad was laughing. “I've always known. I caught him on the phone with her in the basement of the restaurant—I heard stuff that made me wanna puke. It's like my earliest, clearest memory of Baba.”

“And you didn't tell me?” Nora was furious.

“I didn't want to upset you,
ya Nora, wallahi
. And then Mama got sick, and then when she died, it was like, well, there's no point in bringing it up now…”

Nora shook her head. “I've been going crazy since I found out, not wanting to tell you, but wanting to tell you, and being so angry with Baba that I just didn't know what to do! And you knew all along! That must have been killing you.” She threw her arms around him. “What a terrible thing to have to deal with all alone…”

But he was disentangling himself from her arms and wiping at her tears. “Nora, it was okay, I swear. Easy, easy … come on. It's okay. Plus, you know, I was storing up. I figured I'd play that card one day and at least get a decent car out of it. Maybe a Nissan Xterra, right? But now that you know all about it, I've got no more leverage.” He shook his head in disgust, then added, “Way to mess up my life, Nora.”