Swift Vengeance

26

Taucher made for the closet and I sat at the desk. The two stacks of paper were neat and the glass desktop had been dusted recently. I turned on the lamp and opened the top middle drawer. Pens and pencils, paper clips, a stapler and staples, index cards in a rubber band, a yellow highlighter.

Farther back in the drawer was a faux-leather folder bulging with loose papers. I slid it out and opened it. A complimentary bank calendar with a red stagecoach speeding through a green valley. A paper-clipped batch of printouts and magazine pages related to rock climbing, surfing, and nature photography. A flyer for a public gun range in El Monte — rates and hours. That caught my attention. It looked like the stuff that Ben might have swept off his desktop just before leaving.

From the corner of my eye I saw Taucher’s blurred form at the closet. I could hear the clothes hangers rasping on the wooden rod, Taucher impatient and forceful. I went back to the folder in front of me, listening over my shoulder.

Taucher: “Marah, would you mind reading me a few of Ben’s texts and emails? Just so I can get to know him a little while I’m having a look here?”

A pause that grew longer and longer. The women silent. The hangers no longer scraping on the dowel.

Marah: “I’m sorry. I think I’ve made the wrong call. I don’t feel right about letting you do this.”

I slid the folder back where it had been and quietly closed the middle drawer. Felt our friendly citizen slipping away fast.

I opened the top left drawer, found hanging folders labeled “Bills,” “Surfing,” “Climbing,” “Campgrounds,” “Shooting,” Music,” “Truck,” “Computer.”

All empty.

Marah: “I think I’ve been an idiot. To allow you to go through Ben’s stuff.”

Taucher: “You’ve been smart and fair with us. We’re not here to bust anyone. We’re here to scratch people off our list. To establish Ben’s innocence.”

Marah: “Is innocence in your vocabulary, Agent Taucher?”

Taucher, her voice softer: “Marah, you certainly don’t have to share Ben’s communications with me. I understand your feelings, and I apologize.”

The bottom drawer had no folders at all, just two neat stacks of Surfer and Alpinist magazines reaching nearly to the top of the drawer. I slid it shut and looked at Marah just as Taucher spoke.

“Marah? Has Ben been just a little bit not himself lately?”

Marah’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Not at all. He sounds happier than he’s been since Dad. You heard his text. He wants to get married and buy a home. He’s never talked about settling down before.”

“Have you met the prospective bride?”

“No,” Marah said softly. “Not yet.”

“He’s had serial girlfriends, right? So this Kalima may or may not be serious.”

Back to the desk. In the top right drawer I found a plastic bag containing bars of surfboard wax and a surfboard leash, tightly wound and held fast by its own ankle strap. I wondered if Ben had stopped surfing. And if so, why.

The bottom right drawer was empty. I stood.

“We’re almost done here, Marah,” said Taucher. “And I can’t thank you enough for putting up with my obnoxious attitude and occasional bad manners. It’s obvious to me that your brother Ben has nothing to do with our investigation. As I said, half our job is clearing people. The pleasant half, I might add.”

“Okay. I’m sorry to be suspicious of you.”

“If we could just see that letter from Ben,” said Taucher, “we can finalize this deal.”

“Finalize what deal?”

“We have a sample of the assassin’s writing,” said Taucher. “Handwriting is like fingerprints in that everybody has their own unique signature. Mr. Ford is very familiar with handwriting analysis. Right, Roland?”

Marah looked to me for confirmation.

I nodded, disrespecting myself for manipulating a half-willing ally.

Suspicion clouded her face again. But something else overrode it, and I wondered what. “Handwriting. Okay.”

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” said Taucher.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” said Marah.

“We are not scoundrels,” said Joan. “And believe me, the aforementioned vigilance doesn’t pay much. The hours are long and we make mistakes sometimes.”

“I get a decent salary from Los Angeles County.”

“Great,” said Taucher. “So if you could just show us Ben’s letter, we can let you get on with your day. You mentioned that he sent it just a few weeks ago. So his current Santa Ana address is on it, right?”

“You people are relentless,” said Marah. “You’re enough to make good Americans not want to help you. Which is what we are. Al, Ben, and me. Good Americans.”

“Marah?” asked Taucher. “I couldn’t be more satisfied that none of you have anything to do with the man we’re after. Federal policy requires me to get the handwriting sample and address. Do you have anything to add, Roland?”

“Only thank you.”

Once more, those layers of conflict crossing Marah’s lovely face, like clouds at different elevations. “You’re not FBI, right?”

“I’m a private investigator, as Agent Taucher told you and Alan.”

“Why are you here?”

“I love working Saturdays.”

A smile.

But what better answer than the truth? “The killer we’re looking for is brutal and efficient,” I said. “He’s threatened a good friend of mine, a wonderful woman. She has a beautiful son. I don’t want her to be decapitated.”

“She and her crew killed Dad?”

“And nine others, including one Islamic State terrorist.”

“I’m sickened by what your friend did to Dad and the others,” said Marah. Her face had flushed. “And I’m sickened by what could happen to your friend, too.”

She took my card and she offered me her hand. Her shake was warm and firm.

“I’m curious,” I said. “Did you three siblings get twelve thousand five hundred dollars each for the death of your father? Or did you split it?”

“We split it evenly between his nine children,” said Marah. “About fourteen hundred bucks apiece. I donated mine back to Doctors Without Borders.”

Coincidences intrigue me. “Nine dead and nine siblings,” I said.

“I saw that, too,” Marah said. “I used to wonder if the repeating nines were a way to understand Dad’s fate or luck. Fate and luck are opposites, as you know. I went to my Qur’an for help. I used to read it to Ben, but I hadn’t picked it up in years. I remembered one of our favorite surahs, about free will and fate, chapter thirteen, Al Ra’ad. I opened to Al Ra’ad, closed my eyes like we used to — so, like, your blindness is fate and your finger is free will — that’s what Ben and I made up, anyway. And I blindly put my finger on the page. The verse was ‘The Messenger has companies of angels successively ranged before him and behind him. They guard him by the command of Allah. Verily, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they first change their ways and their minds.’”

As my pulse hammered, Caliphornia’s elegant calligraphy to Lindsey came crashing back to me: The thunder will come for you.

As did the name of Caliphornia’s knife: Al Ra’ad — the thunder, as handwritten to Kenny Bryce.

And the name of a horse owned by Rasha Samara and ridden by his son? The Thunder.

I looked to Taucher, her face flushed, her eyes sharp and pitiless as an eagle’s.

“What did that passage say to you, Marah?” I managed.

“That Allah is all-powerful, and people are free to change their ways and their minds. Both are true. It made me want to join Doctors Without Borders and go to Syria and continue Dad’s work.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“I was afraid to die.”

“You made the right decision,” said Taucher. “Now, if you can just let us see that letter, we’ll get out of your hair.”

Marah left the room with a loud sigh. I heard her yellow flowered flip-flops slapping on the hallway floor.

“I can get a phone warrant for Ben’s bill stubs and personal papers in an hour,” said Taucher. “The FISA courts still love us. Unless you think you can sweet-talk them out of her.”

“I think we’ve outstayed our welcome,” I said. “Leave them for another day.”

Flip-flops in the hall on their way back. With an almost palpable reluctance, Marah handed her brother’s letter to me. I set it on the desk. The envelope was a good-quality, cream-colored paper, and Marah’s name was written in a hurried-looking printing in black ink. The return address was legible. I pulled the letter out, set the envelope aside, and held the letter open in the good sunlight coming through the window.

Elegant Arabic-styled calligraphy.

Slanting neither backward nor forward, but upright.

Feet and tails raised like candle flames.

Taucher’s hawk eyes unblinking.

Marah broke the silence. “Ben found something,” she said softly. “He was always searching.”

“Who the hell is Adams?” asked Taucher.

“Ben makes up names for himself,” said Marah. “Sometimes I do it back to him. Since being kids. Adams is one of his favorites. And Anderson, and Abraham. Always with an A.”

I thought: Whoever he’s calling himself, he needs money.

“You would have to know him,” said Marah.

“I think I’m beginning to,” said Taucher. “May I photograph this? Better yet, can I take it?”

I watched another dispute play out on Marah’s face. Family versus duty? Love versus fear?

“Take it,” she said. “Go.”

“And that picture you showed us,” said Taucher. “The one of Ben and his dark-haired lady friend? Will you text it to me?”

“When I get a chance.”

“How about now? I’ve got my phone right here. The woman is Kalima, correct? The one he wants to marry? How is it spelled?”

Marah spelled out the name.

“Last name?” Taucher demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Marah. “We’ve never met. But I do know that I’m sorry to have met you.”

We spent the hour’s drive south to Santa Ana in discussion of the brothers Azmeh. I was very interested in Alan’s aggravated assault three years ago — around the time of his father’s death — and his clear and present anger. Family man or not, his anger was real. Was it real enough to take him on a journey to Bakersfield? Taucher thought Alan was a “pissy hothead” and was more intrigued by baby Ben’s several mysteries. Most of all, his sudden silence after his father’s death, his handwriting, and his need of money.

Then miles of silence as we barreled south into Orange County. For a long while I didn’t read the road signs. Didn’t listen to the news. I was chewing on the big question: Whoever he was, one of the Azmeh brothers or not, how to get Caliphornia to come out into the open?

I worked long and hard on it, like a dog on a chew stick.

Kept chewing. That’s what PIs do.