Fatal Convictions

58

The ringing of his BlackBerry woke Alex out of a sound sleep Sunday morning. Without opening his eyes, he patted the nightstand to locate his phone. Success. He cracked open an eyelid and looked at the caller ID. Why was Shannon calling at 7:30 a.m.?

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” Alex said when he answered the phone. His voice was hoarse and gruff. “Tell me you’re not calling about work.”

“What were you thinking?” Shannon asked, her voice in midday form. And the energy… It sounded like she’d already chugged three cups of coffee.

“About what?”

“Have you been on the Internet?”

Alex dropped his legs over the side of the bed and ran his hand across his face. “I was sleeping,” he said.

“Alone?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was waking up now and getting a little perturbed.

“There’s a picture of you and Nara on the Internet.” Shannon’s voice was cold. “Lots of bare skin. Doesn’t look like it’s been Photoshopped. You’re definitely in some kind of embrace.”

Alex grunted. “We went paddleboarding yesterday. That photo was probably taken at the end of the day-late afternoon. She gave me a sympathy hug after rejecting my dinner invitation.”

“ She gave you a hug?” Shannon said, as if she was certain that Alex had mauled Nara instead. “She’s the daughter of a Muslim cleric, and she gave you a hug?”

“Come on, Shannon. I already told you it was just a friendly hug.

… She felt sorry for me after standing me up for dinner.”

“That’s not the way the press is playing it.”

“I’m sure it isn’t.” Alex was ready to get off the line. Go back to sleep. Crisis averted. “I’ve hugged women before, Shannon. I might’ve even hugged you a time or two.”

Shannon let out an exasperated sigh. She launched into a rapid-fire lecture about fraternizing with a client or a client’s daughter. She even referenced his grandfather’s list. Alex put the BlackBerry on speaker, placed it on the bed next to him, and crawled back under the sheets.

“Do you know why an honor killing is typically a beheading?” Shannon asked.

Where did that come from? “Some verse in the Qur’an, I guess,” Alex replied.

“Not really,” Shannon said. “Beheadings invoke terror. Honor killings are terrorist acts, Alex. They don’t just kill women; they decapitate them. They want to strike the fear of God into anyone thinking about leaving the Islamic faith. And, Alex, they don’t just kill the women, either. The men die too.”

Alex stared at the phone for a second. Maybe Shannon had a point. The last thing Alex wanted to do was put Nara in danger. “I’m sorry,” he said, though it came out grudgingly. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“I’ve noticed that about men,” Shannon said. “Their brains shrink in direct proportion to the size of the bikini.”

If Alex hadn’t been so tired, he might have thought of a good comeback. Instead, all he could mumble was that it wasn’t a bikini.

He promised Shannon he would be more careful, hung up the phone, got out of bed, and surfed the Net. The picture was everywhere.

“Forbidden Romance?” one of the sites asked.

The caption on another was even more demeaning.

“All in a Day’s Work,” it read.***

As if on cue, the next honor killing occurred four days later in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. A young Muslim woman had disappeared along with her alleged American boyfriend. The police manhunt concluded after forty-eight hours, when the bodies were discovered in a shallow grave not far from an evangelical church the two had been attending. As in the other killings, the woman had been beheaded. The man’s body was badly charred. The authorities grimly concluded that he had been burned alive.

The experts speculated with abandon about the religious symbolism. In the first honor killing, Martin Burns had been buried alive. Was this a mockery of the Resurrection? The second killing involved baptism. And the man in the third had been burned alive-probably an allusion to the fires of hell.

The nation was terrified-and angry. The hate mail to Madison and Associates quadrupled.