Swift Vengeance

25

“Sorry,” she said. “Alan’s, like, really pissed at America for not doing enough in Syria. Yet managing to kill Dad. Dad loved America. That’s why he came here to study and start a family. We’d visit Syria to see our relatives and roots, but he thought America was our future. Alan hated the drones long before Dad was killed. For Alan, it became a point of honor to collect the condolence payment. It was very difficult to get. Interview after interview. Delays. He felt like a suspect in a crime. One of the conditions was that we couldn’t speak in public or to the media about the payment. They didn’t tell us the amount being offered until after we had signed everything. When the check for twelve thousand five hundred dollars came in, Alan just about choked, he was so mad.”

“I might have, too,” I said.

Taucher gave me her battle glance. “It’s war. Things happen in them.”

Marah faced Taucher with a nod and silence.

“Does Alan talk about vengeance for your dad?” I asked.

“Some angry threats at first,” said Marah. “Then nothing. He doesn’t have room for that. He’s a busy father and his wife is pregnant again and his job pays well. They live just one block away.”

“Is he always that hostile to the authorities?” asked Taucher.

“He gets along well with the local police,” said Marah. “He helped operate on an officer in the ER a few years ago and they became friends.”

“So he’s just reacting to my fizzy personality?” asked Taucher.

A small smile from Marah.

“Is your mother still in the U.S.?” Taucher asked.

“She lives in France.”

“Tell us about Ben,” I said.

“The baby,” she said. “He’s twenty-two now. Two years younger than me, and four behind Alan. Ben is our free spirit. Very American. He travels and studies what interests him. Likes art and adventure. Stays in campgrounds. Surfs and climbs rocks. Some college, too. Serial girlfriends until lately. Works but always needs money. Odd jobs, usually in the health-care field. Dad’s doctoring had a big influence on the three of us.”

“Is he political?” I asked.

A pause. “More spiritual than political.”

“Explain ‘spiritual,’” said Taucher.

“He’s a searcher,” said Marah. “We were born into Islam, but when Ben was a teenager he accepted Christ. Then he rejected Christ and became a Jew. Then he came back to Islam.”

“When did he return to Islam?” asked Taucher.

Marah looked out a window, apparently in calculation. “Just over three and a half years ago.”

“When your dad was killed,” said Taucher.

Marah nodded. “Ben changed. He went from outgoing to quiet. From happy and carefree to solemn. Ben had been a lot like our father — energetic and loveable and fun to be around. When Dad died in Syria, the Dad part of Ben went away.”

“That’s very unfortunate,” said Taucher.

A beat from Marah while she ordered her thoughts. “Well, misfortune lies beneath everything that’s happened in Syria. Millions of misfortunes, many of them final. We know the doctors were not the targets. Our State Department said that the doctors ran to help Gourmat, the Islamic State leader, in the time it took the missile to travel from the sky to the ground. So there’s luck involved, too. Bad luck.”

“So, back to Ben,” said Taucher. “Around the time your father was killed, Ben returned to Islam and became withdrawn?”

She nodded. “But a few months after leaving, he began to send emails, and call and text. He even sent me a snail-mail letter just a few weeks ago. He seemed to be moving on.”

Taucher and I traded looks: Ben’s letter.

“After leaving where?” asked Taucher.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Marah. “Leaving here. Ben lived here with me for about a year. That would have been from the middle of 2014 until a couple of months after Dad died. I miss him. We really had some good times. And recently, he’s started to sound more like himself. I think he’s getting okay again.”

“In the calls and texting?” asked Taucher.

“And letter and emails, too. I think he’s healing. Grief can’t last forever, can it?”

“When did you see him last?” I asked.

“The day he left here,” Marah said wistfully. “So, June of 2015. Time zooms right by, doesn’t it?”

I sensed the timing was right to ask a big fat favor of Marah. She was leaning. And I wanted to beat Taucher to the punch before her fizzy personality took over again. “Can we see his room?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Marah, standing.

A short hallway, bath on the right, scent of soap and shampoo on my way past. On the left a closed door that Marah opened for us. I followed Taucher in. Small and square, a mattress on the floor, a blue sleeping bag for a bedspread, one pillow. The light fixture in the middle of the ceiling was covered in a Japanese-style paper dome, orange. The floor rug was thick underfoot and brightly colored, a budget Persian-themed knockoff. Posters on the walls, neatly tacked: Yosemite’s Half Dome at sunrise, two Hapkido fighters, the Great Mosque of Damascus, Beyoncé onstage, waves lined up at Rincon, hillsides covered in what looked like California golden poppies. A wooden desk sat before the room’s one window, through which a grape-stake fence half covered in ivy was visible. No electronics on the desk — rather, two stacks of paper, one white and one colored. A small brass incense holder with a fresh stick. Faint smell of sage. A Rastafarian-colored beanbag humped in the corner by the closet.

“So he left in April of 2015, after your father’s death?” asked Taucher.

“Not until June,” said Marah.

“Is there a picture of him?”

“Just a second,” she said, heading down the hall. She came back with her phone, tapped up the photos, and held the screen so Taucher and I could see. Ben’s face looked like his siblings’ and father’s. Same sharp face and expressive eyes. His long black hair was spiraled and coppered — a surfer’s sun-bleached dreads. Ben smiling next to a pretty dark-haired woman. Then a blonde. Ben in a martial-arts gi, getting into a small gold-colored pickup truck. Ben with a surfboard under his arm. Ben at the desk in this room, turned to face the camera, pen in hand.

As Marah swiped from image to image, I pictured that face, recessed in the dark interior of the 4Runner that night at the mall in Del Mar. And in the grainy Bakersfield video that Joan Taucher had shared with me at her professional peril. Very possibly the same man. Nothing stood out as fundamentally different. But nothing stood out as identical, either. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Or must you?

Taucher’s look said maybe, too.

“Here,” said Marah. “This is Ben’s latest Telegram text, from three days ago. ‘Chillin’ here, sister. Need money for wedding and down payment on a house. Want to marry Kalima and have us a baby! You’ll love her. Let me know if you have fifty thousand dollars for me! We have a small humble home in Riverside County in our sights. Will pay you back! A rich private lender would be better, if you know such a person. My credit is bad and Kalima’s is worse.’ That is so Ben. They met on Facebook.”

“Sounds like a cool guy,” said Taucher. “Can I see that?”

Marah held the screen up and Taucher read through the message again. I knew what Taucher was doing, but Marah apparently didn’t.

“How much money have you given him?” asked Taucher.

“Maybe six hundred dollars over the last few years.”

“Where are you going to get that fifty grand?” Taucher asked with a dry smile.

Marah rolled her eyes.

“What kind of car does he drive?” I asked.

“A small gold pickup truck,” said Marah. “I don’t know the maker. It’s old. You know, it’s fine that you’re so interested in Ben, but whoever this terrible assassin is, it can’t be Ben.”

“Why can’t it?” asked Taucher, her combat face back on.

Marah’s eyebrows rose in a mask of pleading disappointment. “He’s the baby. He’s golden Ben and he’s never hurt a living thing in his life. He hasn’t eaten an animal since he was fifteen. I understand it’s your job to be suspicious, but you want to be correct, too. Right?”

“We have to be correct,” said Taucher. “And we appreciate your efforts to help us be correct. So, with your permission, we would like to look through this room. Desk, closet. All of it.”

The disappointment on Marah’s face now deepened. I watched her will it away. A strong young woman wrestling with a weighty opponent — herself. Stoic acceptance then, and a flash of anger in her dark eyes. “I’d have to be present,” she said.

“Of course,” said Taucher. “You’ve done the right thing, Marah.”

“Alan would kill me.”

“Alan has issues that help no one,” said Taucher.

Alan’s issues struck me as more dangerous than that.