Fatal Convictions

23

After a weekend of preparing and delivering a sermon, Alex found it hard to get out of bed on Monday mornings. This week it didn’t help that he was facing a mountain of paperwork to review, pleadings to draft, and phone calls to return. He arrived at the office at 9:30, only to find the doors still locked. It could only mean that Sylvia Brunswick had called in sick.

Again.

Alex unlocked the office, turned on the lights, and started a pot of coffee. As he expected, Sylvia had left a message on his voice mail, groaning as she told him about her incredibly painful migraine. She promised to try and come in tomorrow but said there was nothing she could do about it today.

She couldn’t have picked a worse day to stay home. Alex had pleadings to file, including some answers to requests for admissions that absolutely had to be served that day. He would normally dictate the answers and let Sylvia worry about the details of typing them up and hand-delivering them to the other side. Now, that wasn’t an option.

For the next hour and a half, Alex ignored his phone calls, resisted the urge to look at his e-mails, and typed away on his computer. When he finished and tried to print out the pleading, he discovered that the printer was low on toner. Just like Sylvia not to change the cartridge before she left Friday.

Alex replaced the toner, printed out the document, made some corrections, printed it again, and tried to run off duplicate copies. The copy machine jammed, and Alex spent ten minutes trying to get it back online. Eventually, he conceded defeat and resorted to copying each page on a small copier without an automatic feeder. A five-page pleading. Four copies. Twelve minutes.

He called Shannon’s cell phone as he ran the copies one at a time, placing each page facedown on the glass.

“Sylvia called in sick,” he told Shannon.

“I know. Migraine.”

“Where are you?”

“Our branch office.”

“Which is?”

“In my car on North Landing Road, near the site of the accident. I’m coming out here every morning I can this week, just to see if a truck fitting the description Ghaniyah gave us makes routine deliveries on this route.”

Alex was stacking and stapling documents. The idea of a stakeout sounded like a long shot to him, a needle in a haystack. Even for Shannon, who sweated over every detail of a case, this was a little obsessive.

“So let me get this straight,” Alex said. “You’re sitting out there on North Landing Road, waiting for a white produce truck with a red cab to come along so you can follow it to wherever and question the driver about a hit-and-run accident?”

“I’m not really going to question anyone,” Shannon said without sounding the least bit defensive. “I’m just going to take a few pictures and copy down the license plate.”

Alex’s BlackBerry buzzed with a different call. He didn’t recognize the number and ignored it.

“I’ll show the pictures to Ghaniyah,” Shannon continued. “If that doesn’t trigger anything, I’ll subpoena the manifests from the truck company after we file our John Doe lawsuit. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some deliveries that would place the truck on North Landing Road at the time of Ghaniyah’s accident.”

“To be honest, it seems like a waste of time to me,” said Alex, though he actually hoped she would prove him wrong. “Can’t we hire somebody to do that?”

“One, we don’t have the money. And two, I’m working on other files and making phone calls while I’m out here. I’ll probably bill more than you today.”

On that point, Alex couldn’t argue. He talked to Shannon for a few more minutes while he assembled the pleadings. After ending the call, he tried to find labels that would work on manila envelopes. He searched his desk drawers, then Sylvia’s. There were labels for file folders but no labels for large manila envelopes. He wanted to punch something. He had been working for nearly two hours on a simple task that should have taken thirty minutes. Sylvia’s migraine was spreading.

Alex’s BlackBerry buzzed again-the same unknown number as before. It had to be some kind of crisis. Reluctantly, he picked it up.

“Alex Madison.”

“Mr. Madison, this is Khalid Mobassar. Thank you for answering my call.”

“No problem,” Alex said, still searching for the labels. The imam sounded a little tense. Maybe something had happened to Ghaniyah.

“There are two detectives from the Virginia Beach Police Department at my front door,” Khalid said, his voice nearly a whisper. “They want to question me about a woman in our mosque who disappeared over the weekend. I told them I needed to call my lawyer first.”

Alex stopped searching and focused on the phone call. It always made him nervous when the police wanted to question a client. “What do you know about this woman?”

“Her name is Ja’dah Fatima Mahdi. She is the wife of one of our leaders at the Islamic Learning Center. She has been missing since Saturday night.”

“Are you a suspect or a person of interest?”

“I do not know.”

Alex looked at his envelopes and second-guessed his decision to pick up the phone. It would probably be fine for Khalid to talk with the detectives. They probably just wanted information about the victim’s family. But what if there was more to it? What if Khalid was a person of interest?

“Do you know anything about why she’s missing?” Alex asked.

Khalid hesitated for a moment. “Not really.” His voice became softer. “Nothing other than what I might have learned in confidence from Ja’dah or her husband.”

“Which is what?”

“As their spiritual advisor, should I not keep that confidential?” Khalid asked.

Now it was getting complicated. “Maybe,” Alex said. “Would it help them locate the woman?”

Khalid hesitated again. “I don’t think so. But I don’t actually know.”

Alex sighed into the phone. This was not what he needed. Khalid might have information that would help the police. But there were issues of priest-penitent privilege involved, or whatever you call that privilege when it’s a Muslim imam. And those issues tended to get messy. “Tell them you can’t speak to them without your attorney present. Ask them to wait outside until I get there.”

The next call, which came less than three minutes later, was not from Khalid but from a man who identified himself as Detective Sanderson. “Is this Mr. Madison?”

“Yes.”

“Do you represent Mr. Mobassar?”

Not really, Alex thought. But this was no time for technicalities. “Yes.”

“Good,” Sanderson said, as if that would solve everything. “We’re in the critical first forty-eight hours of a missing person investigation. We have reason to believe that the potential victim was taken against her will. And we think your client might have valuable information to help us find her kidnapper, but he says he can’t talk to us-”

“Is he a person of interest?” Alex interrupted.

“At this stage, Mr. Madison, most everyone who knows the victim is a person of interest. But we’d like the opportunity to clear your client. And more importantly, we think he can help us find her before it’s too late.”

Alex thought about this for a moment. The line about clearing Khalid was something the cops said every time… just before they finagled a confession and slapped on the cuffs. But the part about helping them find this woman might be legit. Could he really sit by and tell his client to withhold information that would help the police find a kidnapped woman?

“I’ll be there in half an hour,” Alex said. “I’ll want to talk with my client first. And I’ll stop the questioning if I sense that you’re trying to set him up.”

“Time is of the essence, Mr. Madison. We really need to talk with him right away.”

“What do you want to ask him?”

“I’d rather not say over the phone.”

“Half an hour, then,” Alex said. “It’s the best I can do. And wait outside. I don’t want you talking to him until I get there.”

“We’ll be in our squad car.”

Alex pulled a pen out of his desk drawer and addressed the manila envelopes by hand. He would leave the documents on Sylvia’s desk and call a courier service on his way to Khalid’s house. He had a bad feeling about Khalid’s “interview.” In a kidnapping, the cops didn’t usually question a family’s spiritual advisor. They had something. And there was only one way to find out what it was.