James Grippando - Afraid of the Dark

“I realize that it cuts both ways.”

“Obsession usually cuts only one way,” said Jack.

“You don’t understand. Before he disappeared, the last conversation I had with my son, he told me he was coming home-back to Minnesota.”

“When was that?”

“I don’t remember the exact date. But it was on his cell, so I’m sure there are phone records.”

Jack made a note to get it. “You’re sure it was before the murder?”

“Of course I’m sure. I called him the next morning to check on his travel plans, but he didn’t answer. I kept calling his cell, his apartment. No answer. I called McKenna’s father at work, Jamal’s friends. No one knew where he was, but his car was still in Miami-still parked outside his apartment. I was hoping he’d bought a bus ticket and just slept on the trip, but it was like he’d vanished. That was when I filed a missing person report, which of course got me nowhere.”

“None of that’s in dispute,” said Jack. “The prosecutor will simply say that the breakup sent him into a reclusive funk. Maybe he drank himself unconscious and slept under a bridge or on the beach for a night or two. He snapped, killed McKenna, and went on the run.”

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Swyteck: How does a nineteen-year-old kid with a warrant out for his arrest get all the way from Miami to Somalia, completely undetected?”

“The same way as any other kid whose father has alleged connections to a Somali terrorist organization.”

She looked away, and Jack could see that the lasting stigma of that relationship cut very deep. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t accusing you or anyone else. I’m just thinking like a prosecutor.”

Her expression was still one of shame-and anger. “I hardly knew Jamal’s father,” she said. “We never married. Jamal did a family tree for one of his eighth-grade projects, and after that, he wanted to know more about his father. He was good with computers-a genius, really-and when Jamal was in high school they developed an online relationship. If I’d known what kind of things he was involved with, I would never have let Jamal communicate with him.”

Her hand was a tight fist, the tissue balled up inside it. Jack sensed she had more to say, so he merely listened.

“My son is not a terrorist.” She drew a breath, as if she resented having to say it. “If he was, the government wouldn’t have failed so miserably at that court hearing you handled in Washington.”

Logic supported her, but so far, logic hadn’t been the test in this case. “You’re right about that,” said Jack.

“I didn’t help my son run from the law,” she said. “I spoke with Jamal only once after McKenna’s death. He was calling from Prague.”

“Tell me about that,” said Jack.

“It was a total surprise. I could hear the fear in his voice. He didn’t have any money or a credit card, so he called collect. He told me how he’d been abducted, drugged, and taken to some kind of interrogation facility. That would have sounded crazy to most parents, except for what was going on in our neighborhood.”

“Meaning what?”

“American boys of Somali descent recuited to fight for al-Shabaab. It’s been all over the news for several years now. There were two boys from Jamal’s high school who ended up dead.”

“Is that what they grilled Jamal about in Prague?”

She hesitated, as if suddenly suspicious. “Jamal must have told you what they grilled him about.”

“I want to know what your son told you when he called from Prague.”

“Are you testing me?”

The woman was no dummy. “No,” said Jack. “I’m testing him.”

Again she paused, as if she didn’t see the difference. “He told me that they wanted to know about his work for McKenna’s father. The encryption stuff. Isn’t that what Jamal told you?”

It was, but Jack didn’t answer. “What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing. That was when I told him about McKenna. The only thing that shocked him more was when I told him he was wanted for her murder.”

“Did he deny killing her?”

She looked up at him, meeting his gaze. “Of course he did. I told him to come home to Minnesota. But he was too scared. I had no idea what he was going to do. Only after you got involved did I find out that he contacted his father, who managed to get him to Somalia under the name Khaled Al-Jawar. You know the rest.”

Jack came around the desk, trying to soften his approach. “Let me play prosecutor again, Ms. Wakefield. How do you know that your son didn’t just make up all that stuff about being abducted and interrogated in Prague?”

“Because I talked to him on the phone. I heard his voice. I know my son, and I know he wasn’t lying.”

“You’re his mother. I want you to try to put that aside.”

“What mother can put that aside?”

“What I’m trying to say is that his mother won’t be a juror at the trial. How do we convince a jury that Jamal didn’t kill McKenna, run off to Prague with help from his father, and then make up a story about a secret interrogation facility just to support an alibi?”

She thought for a moment, trying to put motherhood aside. “Jamal’s father has no connection to Prague. But the man you were supposed to meet at Lincoln Road Mall on Saturday night did.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Just the things I read in the newspaper. But it helped make some sense of the lies the police have told.”

“What lies are you talking about?”

“Many of them-starting with what happened to McKenna’s mother.”

“You mean her suicide?”

“That was no suicide. They never found her body.”

“They found her canoe upside down in the Everglades and an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her car. She drove to her favorite spot in Biscayne National Park and floated off peacefully.”

“Not even the police believe that.”

“How do you know?”

“A homicide investigator came to talk with me.”

Jack did a double take. “When?”

“Several times. In between the time McKenna died and when her mother disappeared.”

“What about?”

“There were e-mails or Internet chat communications or something of that sort that Shada Mays was having. I don’t know specifics, but the detective made it clear enough to me that the police suspected Shada was onto something.”

“What do you mean ‘something’?”

“Chuck Mays wasn’t the only person in that family who knew how to use a computer. Shada was tracking her daughter’s killer on the Internet and got too close to him.”

“The detective told you that?”

“Yes. Because the theory was that Jamal killed McKenna, and that McKenna’s mother was talking with him online, luring him back to the States so that he could be brought to justice.”

“I haven’t heard anything about that.”

“Of course you haven’t. Because it doesn’t wash anymore. The theory was that McKenna’s mother talked Jamal into meeting with her in person, but when she tried to turn him in or get him to turn himself in, Jamal killed her and covered his tracks by making it look like suicide. Now the cops know that Jamal was in Guantanamo when McKenna’s mother was having those online chats with her daughter’s killer. I may be going out on a limb here, but I don’t think enemy combatants at Gitmo had Internet.”

Jack went cold. He’d smelled cover-ups before, but this one had a capital C. “So they can deny that Jamal was in a black site in Prague when McKenna was killed,” said Jack.

“But they can’t deny that he was locked up in Gitmo when McKenna’s mother was talking to McKenna’s killer.”

“Which, of course, leaves the big question,” said Jack. “Who was Shada Mays having those online communications with?”