Jihad

CHAPTER 101

Dean looked at the Conkel house while the marshals circled around the block, cutting off possible escape routes on the chance that Kenan Conkel had decided to hide out in his parents’ house. The raised ranch looked almost exactly like its neighbors, any eccentricities carefully hidden behind the dented aluminum siding. A basketball hoop hung down above the single-bay garage; the rim was bent slightly to one side, though not quite enough to prevent play. The grass had been mowed recently but the edges left untrimmed.

“Units are in place,” said Chris Sabot, the marshal next to him in the car.

Dean cracked open the car door and got out. They’d decided against asking the local police to come for backup. The Art Room thought it unlikely that Conkel was here, and they needed to walk a delicate line, gathering information without inadvertently giving any away. Besides, half a dozen police cars weren’t going to make Conkel or his parents any more likely to talk.

Dean scanned the house and yard as he went up the driveway. His right hand stayed near his hip, ready to grab the Beretta from its holster beneath his jacket if necessary. He jogged up the three steps to the stoop and tapped the buzzer.

The curtain behind the row of windows next to the door moved. A face appeared about chest high. Though beardless, it was so much like Kenan’s that Dean froze. Then he realized it was a girl’s.

“Can I help you?” she asked through the glass.

“I’m here from the U.S. Marshals Service,” Dean said. He held a business card to the window. “I’d like to talk to your parents.”

The girl drew back. A minute later, a woman in her early forties answered the door. Short and slightly stocky, the woman wore thick glasses that emphasized the roundness of her face. She didn’t look like Kenan at all — except for the color of her hair, an almost foxlike shade of golden red.

Dean introduced himself and gave her the card.

“I’d like to come in. I have some questions about your son, Kenan. Is he here?”

“Kenan? Is he in trouble?”

“I’m not sure,” said Dean. “We’re afraid he may have witnessed a murder and gone into hiding. We’re worried about him.”

“Oh, God. Oh, my God. Come in. Frank? Frank!”

Dean nodded to Sabot, and they went inside the house. Sabot went downstairs to check the basement rooms; Dean followed Mrs. Conkel upstairs. The dining room, kitchen, and living room were clustered on his left. The rooms were small and a quick glance showed Kenan wasn’t there.

Mrs. Conkel had gone down the hall to the right. There were two rooms on the right; a bathroom and another room lay on the left. Dean took a few steps down the hall, far enough to see into the first room on the right; there was a sewing machine set up in it, and an exercise bike.

“My husband will be right out. He’s just taking a shower,” said Mrs. Conkel, emerging from the room at the end of the hall on the left. Dean guessed it was the master bedroom.

“Your son isn’t here?” asked Dean.

“No, he’s at school in Detroit.”

“Have you spoken to him today?”

“No.”

“Recently?”

“Well, no. Not very recently. He doesn’t talk much. You know at that age, they don’t.” She smiled awkwardly. “Would you like some coffee?”

Mrs. Conkel started past him toward the kitchen. Dean took a step down the hall, glancing into the room on the left; it was the sister’s, and from the hall looked empty, though of course Kenan could be hiding in the closet. The master bedroom door was closed. Dean turned back and went into the kitchen, temporarily putting off a more thorough search.

The family had only just finished breakfast; a bowl of cereal and a half-eaten piece of toast sat on the table. Dean looked at the glasses and counted three places.

“How do you like your coffee?” asked Mrs. Conkel.

“Black,” he told her.

Sabot came up and stood in the doorway, shaking his head ever so slightly to indicate Kenan hadn’t been downstairs.

“So, you haven’t heard from Kenan recently,” said Dean.

“No.”

“And that’s not unusual.”

“Not with Kenan. God, I do wish he’d call more.” Her voice trembled slightly at the word “God.”

Frank Conkel came into the kitchen wearing a blue work uniform. The logo on the pocket said he worked for Cole Heating & Cooling. He was taller than his son, with dark, ruddy cheeks that hung away from his face, but he had the same overall build, thin and narrow. His hair was still wet from the shower.

“What’s going on?” he asked Dean.

“I’m wondering when the last time was that you saw your son Kenan.”

“Why?”

“He may have seen a murder, Frank,” said his wife.

“Detroit is a cesspool,” said Mr. Conkel. And with that he collapsed into a seat, as if the supports had been knocked out from under him.

“We shouldn’t have let him go to school there.” Mrs. Conkel put the coffee down on the table. “We shouldn’t have.”

“Is he here?” Dean asked Mr. Conkel.

“Here? Look around. Do you see him?” His voice was pained, not angry.

“Have you checked his dorm?” asked Mrs. Conkel.

“He doesn’t seem to be at school a whole lot,” Dean told her. “He hasn’t shown up for his classes all semester.”

“What do you mean?” said Mr. Conkel.

“Daddy, where did you park the car?” asked Kenan’s sister, coming down the hall. “It’s not in the driveway.”

Mr. Conkel went down the steps to the front door, pushing open the screen and stepping onto the stoop in his socks. Mrs. Conkel followed. If they were acting, thought Dean, it was an Academy Award performance.

Kenan got to Indianapolis a little after nine A.M. and managed to find the airport without having to ask directions. Worried that his parents might report the car stolen, he decided it was better not to park it at the airport, since if it were found there it might help them trace him. So he got back on the highway and drove east a few miles. He found an apartment complex, left the car in an open slot marked “guests,” then trudged back in the direction he’d come. He was way ahead of schedule — the bus wasn’t supposed to arrive until three in the afternoon — but he kept as brisk a pace as he could, constantly shifting his small suitcase back and forth. The bag had only a pair of pants and a sweater in it, but grew heavier and heavier as he walked.

There’d been nothing on the radio about the mosque or the sheik. The more time passed, the more it seemed as if it hadn’t really happened — as if all the police cars were just part of his imagination. Kenan almost believed that if he drove back to Detroit, he’d find the sheik waiting for him at the motel, probably concerned that he had missed praying with him before sunrise.

A car buzzed by the shoulder of the highway, so close that the wind spun Kenan off his feet. Fear seized him; he did not want to die before he fulfilled his God-given mission. But it was hard to get up. He hadn’t eaten since last night, nor had he slept. Finally, he managed to push himself upright and, watching the traffic more closely, walked the rest of the way to the airport.

Charlie Dean sat on the narrow bed, staring at the posters of players from the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings, interspersed with smaller pictures of rap stars and musical groups. Change the uniforms and faces, and Kenan’s room would look like a lot of boys’ bedrooms across the U.S.

Date the posters a bit, replace the rap stars with Hendrix, and maybe it would have looked like the one Dean shared with his brother when he was a kid.

“He was always a good student,” Mrs. Conkel told him, continuing to describe her only son. “But he drifted. It was like he wasn’t challenged much in school. Things came too easy at first, and then when they didn’t, he didn’t want to bother. You know what I mean?”

“Sure,” said Dean.

He and Sabot had searched the house; Kenan wasn’t there. He wasn’t here in a larger sense, either — everything in his room appeared to date from high school.

His parents bounced back and forth between denial and an almost unworldly numbness. Mrs. Conkel had mentioned twice that Kenan didn’t have a license and therefore couldn’t have taken the family car. Her husband wondered aloud whether he should find a lawyer, but made no move to do so.

“Are either of you Muslim?” Dean asked Kenan’s parents.

“Of course not,” said Mr. Conkel.

“Were you surprised that Kenan converted?”

“He didn’t convert. That nonsense ended two or three years ago.”

“Why do you say that?” Dean asked.

“Because Kenan stopped talking about it, that’s why. We’re Catholic, not Muslim.”

“What does being Muslim have to do with anything?” asked Mrs. Conkel.

“The man who was killed was Muslim, and he had been at a mosque just before the murder,” said Dean. “Kenan seems to have been there, too.”

“I doubt it,” said Mr. Conkel.

“Kenan went through a phase,” said Mrs. Conkel. “He was looking for something.”

“We go to church every Sunday,” said Mr. Conkel, his voice insistent. “When he’s home, he comes with us.”

Mrs. Conkel nodded. There was no point arguing with them, so Dean changed the subject.

“Why do you think he would take the car without telling you?” asked Dean.

“He wouldn’t. He doesn’t have a license.” Mrs. Conkel turned away, but not before Dean saw the tears she was trying to hide.

“Do you know where he would go?”

She shook her head. Her husband shrugged.

“Relatives?”

“We don’t have any nearby, and Kenan wasn’t close to any of them,” said Mr. Conkel. “These people — would they threaten my son?”

“It could be,” said Dean. “We don’t know who they are.”

“Is this some sort of radical group?”

“Possibly,” said Dean.

That wasn’t the answer Mr. Conkel had hoped for. The expression on his face, which had mixed anger and pain and disbelief in roughly equal portions, turned entirely to anguish.

“Kenan would never hurt someone. Never,” said his mother, tears flowing from her reddened eyes. “He wouldn’t kill this man. He’s not a murderer. He’s not.”

“All right, calm down, Vic. Let’s just calm down.” Mr. Conkel glanced at his watch. “How long is this going to be?” he asked Dean. “I gotta get to work. I work six days a week, just to send him to college. You know? It ain’t easy.”

Dean took another of the Marshals Service cards from his pocket. The number would be answered by the Art Room.

“If you remember anything, please let me know,” he said, handing it to Mr. Conkel. “You should report the car stolen with the local police department.”

“It’s not stolen if my son has it,” said Mr. Conkel. “Right?”

“It is if you didn’t tell him he could take it.”

“They’ll arrest him and throw him in jail,” said Mrs. Conkel between sobs.

“That may be best thing that ever happened to him,” said Dean.