“MR. KARP, MAY I HAVE A WORD WITH YOU?”
The dark-skinned man stepped away from the wall outside Part 39 and moved suddenly toward Karp, extending his hand. In a flash, Sergeant Cordova moved past his boss and intercepted the man, grabbing him by his wrist and spinning him back toward the wall, where he was pinned.
“Let me go!” the man squealed. “I’m a journalist! Here’s my card.” He waved a business card with two fingers of his captured hand.
“Who are you with?” Cordova demanded.
“Arab World Daily,” the man replied. “I just wanted to ask a question.”
“It’s okay, Mike,” Karp said, placing a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder and plucking the card out of the man’s hand. “What can I do for you, Mr. . . . Mehanna?”
“My readers want to know if you are trying to convict Imam Jabbar because he is Muslim or because he is black.”
“How about because he murdered a young woman who also happened to be black and a Muslim?” Karp replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a killer to prosecute.”
Entering the courtroom, Karp glanced around the gallery. The benches were packed as usual. Many of the faces were the same, but there was a sprinkling of new, eager visages anxious to be able to report later to friends and family that they’d been at the “Macabre Mosque Murder” trial, as it had been labeled by the Post.
Casually, he shifted his gaze to the defense table, where Jabbar and O’Dowd sat with their heads together engaged in animated conversation. At that moment, Jabbar looked back and, seeing him, glared. But the defendant quickly dropped his eyes when his stare was met and returned without wavering.
In the first row behind the defense table, O’Dowd’s three large bodyguards glanced back, looking bored and sleepy from whatever they’d had for lunch. Elijah and the young man with the dreadlocks were also engaged in conversation, but from their smiles and faces, they appeared to be two young men discussing the previous night’s social engagements. The middle-aged woman was missing, but she had come and gone several times during the trial, often returning with papers or even coffee during breaks for O’Dowd and Jabbar.
Turning to the right, Karp caught the eye of Sergeant Mike Cordova, now sitting next to John Jojola in the first row behind the prosecution table. The police officer gave him a slight nod. So far, the threat-assessment reports had been quiet. Other than the same half-dozen protesters outside the Criminal Courts Building, there’d been no real shows of support for Jabbar, certainly no attempts by followers to disrupt the proceedings in the courtroom. And according to his last briefing from Fulton that morning, there had been no threats more credible than the usual closet vigilantes who called radio talk shows and wrote e-mails to the newspapers about the trial being “a waste of taxpayer money” and that “(racial epithet) Jabbar should be strung up.”
However, Nadya Malovo had disappeared off the radar screen, which worried Karp. She wasn’t the type to give up. Tomorrow will be the most dangerous, he thought. That’s when he’d be calling Dean Newbury to the stand and the old bastard would be most vulnerable.
Fulton had said he was chiefly concerned with getting Newbury to and from the courthouse. They knew from hard experience that the Sons of Man had tentacles in the NYPD and, therefore, it could be assumed within the jail, too. So Newbury had been moved to an isolated safe house in Brooklyn instead of the Tombs, because Fulton couldn’t control everything that went on in the jail. NYPD would clear the sidewalks and streets ahead of the motorcade that would deliver the old man to the Franklin Street side of the Criminal Courts Building, where he’d be whisked onto a private elevator normally reserved for the DA and judges making their way to the courts.
By prior arrangement with Jaxon, after Newbury testified, he was to be handed over to the U.S. Marshal’s Office for transport to the maximum-segregation unit at the Varick Federal Detention Center. “I understand that Jen Capers will be heading up the detail,” Fulton had said at lunch. “She’s still recovering from being shot and probably should be on leave. But Espey told me that she’d insisted, and he backed her.”
As he pushed open the gate to enter the well of the courtroom, Karp smiled to himself and put on his game face. He was a competitor who loved the strategy that went into the game as much as winning it. I hope I set this one up right, he thought as court clerk Al Lopez announced the arrival of the judge.
After the jury was seated, John Jojola was recalled to the witness stand for O’Dowd’s cross-examination. He settled into the chair, his long black hair pulled back from his wide bronze face and tied behind his head, and surveyed the jury with his deep-set brown eyes.
Direct examination of the witness had taken the entire morning, which Karp had begun by asking Jojola to give a “brief” rundown of his background. That had entailed little more than noting that he was a full-blooded American Indian from the Taos Pueblo, where he’d been raised as a boy and later as an adult had become its police chief.
Purposefully, Karp had only briefly touched on the fact that Jojola had served in the U.S. Army and then moved on. Only slightly more time was used to describe how, as the chief of police, he’d been investigating the abduction and murder of several boys from the reservation, which had led to his current occupation as an agent with a small federal law-enforcement agency.
With Jojola on the witness stand, Karp had delicately worked around the edges of what had brought Jojola to the mosque: his agency had been investigating criminal activities connected to Jabbar at the Al-Aqsa mosque, and during that investigation, his team had been contacted by Miriam Juma Khalifa, who had divulged certain information about these activities.
Karp had to leave out that Miriam had brought Jaxon’s team a videotape made by her husband shortly before he blew himself up in the Third Avenue Synagogue. It was his “last will and testament” but contained enough clues about his association with Jabbar and his cadre of other young jihadis that the attack on the New York Stock Exchange had been thwarted.
It was with considerable more force that Karp had Jojola testify about the night Miriam was murdered. In vivid detail, with only the flintlike hardness in his eyes revealing his emotions, the witness had recalled how the young woman had been dragged into the main basement meeting room wearing a hood and how she’d looked when the hood had been removed.
Throughout it all, Jojola had kept his voice even and unemotional, until he’d reached the moment before the knife was drawn across her throat by Nadya Malovo and Miriam had looked him in the eyes. Then his voice had caught, and he’d had to take a drink of the water Karp had poured for him before he could go on to describe the sight and sound of the brutal execution.
“Why didn’t you attempt to stop it?” Karp had asked as gently as he could.
Jojola had hung his head. The truth was that he’d heard a voice telling him that Miriam didn’t want him to interfere, that her death was necessary to save other lives, and he’d seen that truth in her eyes even as her blood had spurted from her throat. But that would not be part of his testimony. “It would have meant revealing my identity and the failure of my primary mission,” he’d said instead.
“And do you believe the failure of your mission would have placed more lives in danger?” Karp had asked.
Karp had turned to the defense table and looked at Jabbar, who had shaken his head as if he couldn’t believe the lies that were being told about him. “And where was the defendant, Sharif Jabbar, during these events?”
“In the room,” Jojola had replied. “He was organizing the others and making sure the digital movie camera was set up properly.”
“Did he make any attempt to dissuade or stop Malovo?”
“No. In fact, he was leading the other men in demanding her execution.”
“And after Nadya Malovo cut Miriam’s throat, how did the defendant react?”
Jojola had glared at Jabbar, who’d stopped shaking his head and looked down at a legal pad, suddenly remembering that he wanted to make note of something. “He led the celebration, including chanting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ which means . . .” Jojola had paused and taken in a deep breath before releasing it and finishing. “God is great.”
Karp had cut his direct examination short, which seemed to catch O’Dowd by surprise. She’d asked the judge for an early lunch break, “so that I can have a few moments to consider the government’s rather brief examination of this witness.”
O’Dowd walked up to the lectern, eyeing Jojola as if he was some sort of dangerous animal who might jump out of the witness box. She placed her notes on the stand and then shook her head sadly. “That’s a pretty incredible story, Agent Jojola,” she began. “Let’s see if I got this straight. You said you and your partner, this mysterious Mr. Tran, are working for a federal law-enforcement agency investigating alleged criminal activities at the Al-Aqsa mosque when you just happen to be contacted by Miriam Juma Khalifa. Is that correct?”
“It is,” Jojola replied.
“She just found you out of the blue?”
“She’d met another agent, also a young woman, at the mosque and contacted her on her own.”
“Oh, right.” O’Dowd scoffed. “They met during a friendly social gathering at the mosque, which this other agent and her boss attended, also under pretense of being someone they were not.”
“That’s correct. It was all part of the same investigation.”
“And after this one brief meeting, we’re to believe that Miriam Juma Khalifa developed such trust that she was suddenly willing to divulge deep, dark secrets about her spiritual advisor, friend, and employer Imam Jabbar?”
“That’s what happened.”
“Uh-huh,” O’Dowd said. “I believe it was your testimony that you met Ms. Khalifa several times in secret. Am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“And were any other people present during these meetings?”
“Sometimes. At other times, we were alone.”
“I see. And if I recall from your testimony, you and Ms. Khalifa were ‘pretending’ . . .” O’Dowd used her fingers to sarcastically put the quote marks around the word. “To be lovers in order to throw off any watchers.”
“Yes, that was the idea.”
“Did you, in fact, have sex with Ms. Khalifa?”
Karp saw Jojola stiffen. They’d gone over the likelihood that O’Dowd would try to imply that Jojola had sex with Miriam to gain control over her.
“No, I did not.”
“Then what did you do all this time?”
Karp smiled to himself, recalling how Mahmoud Juma had answered this in his office.
“We talked, and we played chess.”
O’Dowd looked incredulous. “You played chess?”
“Yes.”
“So, I take it this young woman from a fishing village in Kenya was a chess grand master,” O’Dowd said with a smile to show her disbelief.
“No, she was a beginner,” Jojola replied, smiling himself but at the memory of Miriam. “But she was getting the hang of it. She was very smart.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Jojola, but she was also very young and also in this country illegally,” O’Dowd said. “So, I’m asking you, did you lure or badger her into cooperating with you?”
“No, she came to us and then insisted on continuing to help with our investigation.”
“You didn’t threaten to have her and her family deported back to Kenya?”
“No, I did not. She believed that she was doing the right thing.”
“Uh-huh, so you say, but of course, we have to take your word for that, don’t we?” O’Dowd said.
“That’s true,” Jojola answered as Karp rose to object.
“Your honor,” Karp said, “the witness is quite correct, unless, of course, Ms. O’Dowd has independent evidence to rebut it, instead of her flawed, snide innuendos.”
O’Dowd immediately turned away from the witness and stared at Karp. “I resent that disrespectful comment.”
“Just a minute, counsel,” Mason interrupted. “The witness has answered. This colloquy is over. Proceed, Ms. O’Dowd.”
“Mr. Jojola, you snuck into the Al-Aqsa mosque by pretending to be one of these other criminals, correct?”
“Correct. My partner and I assumed the identities of two men my agency had just arrested.”
“Yes, you and this mysterious partner, whom we have yet to hear from to see if his story jibes with yours—though I’m sure it will if you rehearsed it often enough.”
“Objection,” Karp said, rising to his feet again. “Counsel is making argument that is best left for summation.”
“Sustained,” Judge Mason said. “However, I will admonish the jury to remember that what the lawyers say is not evidence. The only evidence you are to consider is from the sworn witnesses and those exhibits admitted into evidence. Proceed.”
“Mr. Jojola, you testified that Miriam Khalifa was afraid of my client?”
“That is true.”
“Then can you explain why she never said anything to anyone else—at least, no one who has testified in this courtroom, including her own father—about being afraid of the man who befriended her after her husband’s untimely death and gave her a job so she could support herself and her child?”
“Objection,” Karp said. “Question assumes facts not in evidence, your honor, and asks for this witness to speculate on the deceased’s state of mind.”
“Overruled. I’ll let the witness answer if he knows.”
“I don’t know what she told anyone else,” Jojola replied. “I know what she told me and other members of my agency.”
“If she was so afraid of Mr. Jabbar, why did she return to her job and act in a friendly manner toward him?” O’Dowd asked.
“She volunteered to help us by reporting on activities by Mr. Jabbar and others at the mosque.”
“So you talked her into helping you.”
“She wanted to help.”
“And you didn’t threaten her and tell her she would be deported if she didn’t.”
“Absolutely not.”
O’Dowd went back over to the lectern to check her notes. Looking back up at Jojola, she then asked, “Did you see Ms. Khalifa in the mosque prior to her murder?”
“Yes, once.”
“How did she react?”
“She obviously recognized us but was a little surprised. However, she carried on as if she didn’t know us.”
“Were you worried that she might identify you?”
“No, we trusted her.”
“You trusted her? Is that because you had her brainwashed or so cowed that she didn’t dare open her mouth?”
“Yes, we trusted her, and no, she wasn’t brainwashed or coerced.”
“So you say,” O’Dowd replied. “But of course, we have only your word for that.”
“Yes, it’s my word against yours.”
For a moment, O’Dowd seemed stunned by the retort. Karp himself winced slightly without showing it. He didn’t want Jojola to get into arguments with O’Dowd where she could try to twist what he said. But when he thought about it, the timing with the judge’s admonition about what the lawyers said was just about perfect.
“So, if my client was to take the stand and say that the deceased had come to him troubled and wanted to talk—”
“Objection!” Karp roared. “If her client is going to take the stand and testify, then let him do so. But counsel can’t testify for him.”
Mason shook his head. “Sustained. Ms. O’Dowd, please, you know better than that.”
“I’m sorry, your honor,” O’Dowd replied facetiously. “I just get a little irate when the government pulls this sort of—”
“Objection!” Karp roared again. “You just admonished her, and she’s ignoring your ruling.”
“Sustained,” the judge said, now scowling at his former compatriot. “Ms. O’Dowd, you will refrain from making another remark on this matter, or on any other matter after I’ve ruled limiting you, as I have here.”
“Yes, your honor,” O’Dowd replied flatly before turning back to Jojola. “Do you know of any living witnesses—other than yourself and this mysterious partner—who could verify that what you’re saying is not one big lie?”
“The defendant, Jabbar,” Jojola said.
“Of course.” O’Dowd scowled, her hands on her hips like a schoolteacher scolding a child. “You had to have someone to blame.”
“And Nadya Malovo. At least, I assume she is still alive.”
O’Dowd smiled and raised a bushy eyebrow. “Ah, yes, another mystery nonwitness. The infamous Nadya Malovo, or I believe you testified that she also goes by the name Ajmaani, is that correct?”
“You’re correct.”
“Where is this dangerous, vicious woman killer?” O’Dowd asked.
“I don’t know,” Jojola replied.
“You don’t know,” O’Dowd repeated. “In fact, isn’t it true that everyone who was supposedly in this room—another dozen men, I believe you testified—is allegedly dead, except as otherwise noted a moment ago?”
“To the best of my knowledge, yes.”
O’Dowd strolled for a moment in front of the witness stand with a puzzled look on her face. “I’m curious. This Nadya Malovo, is she a great big strongwoman?”
“She’s not particularly large. But she is well trained as an assassin and physically fit.”
“And do I understand that you’ve allegedly met her several times, including at the mosque?”
“Yes.”
“But despite all these contacts, you just can’t seem to apprehend her, isn’t that right?”
Karp might have been the only one in the courtroom who saw the muscles of Jojola’s jaw clench. He knew that Jojola had sworn after Miriam’s death that he would hunt Malovo down. But so far, he’d missed in the few chances he’d had or had found the tables turned and was hunted himself.
“Not yet,” Jojola answered.
“Not yet?” O’Dowd scoffed. “Is it because she doesn’t exist?”
“She exists.”
“Really? But all we have is your word for that.”
“Objection, your honor,” Karp said. “Does Ms. O’Dowd really want to open the door on this one and give us the opportunity to establish certain facts about Nadya Malovo?”
“Sustained. Ms. O’Dowd, I’ve warned you before about having a door slammed shut,” the judge said, “that prudence suggests you never should have opened. Since this is a collateral matter and will only serve to distract the jury from its primary focus, I am ordering you to continue on a different subject.”
“Very well,” O’Dowd growled. “You claim that this horrific crime was recorded on a digital movie camera. Is that correct, Mr. Jojola?”
“I never saw the recording, but yes, they at least went through the motions of filming, and I believe that is what was done.”
“You believe,” O’Dowd repeated. “And you expect these twelve jurors to believe that there was such a recording and that it depicts what you claim happened. So, where is the memory card that contains this recording, Mr. Jojola?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was this memory card found on my client when he was arrested?”
“No.”
“Was it located in any subsequent search of his apartment or the mosque?”
“No.”
“Who would have taken it, Mr. Jojola?”
“I don’t know who removed the memory card,” Jojola replied. “I wasn’t present.”
O’Dowd chuckled as if he’d told a joke. “Uh-huh. But it makes it easy to claim that if the jurors could just see this alleged recording, they would be convinced that a dozen young men, as well as my client, ‘celebrated’ the brutal murder of a beautiful young black Muslim woman at the hands of a mysterious Russian spy whom you just can’t seem to get your hands on?”
“There isn’t anything easy about any of this,” Jojola replied, again surprising O’Dowd but not Karp.
“Yes, keeping lies straight is hard work,” O’Dowd retorted. “And once again, we have only your word that any of this is true. Mr. Jojola, are you lying now?”
“No, I am not.”
“Mr. Jojola, did Miriam Juma Khalifa threaten to reveal your true identities to her spiritual leader, employer, and friend, Imam Jabbar?”
“No.”
“Wasn’t she going to expose your plan and so you silenced her?”
“No.”
“And did you then settle on my client to take the fall, knowing he was an unpopular figure with the government and the media for speaking the truth about the oppression of blacks and Muslims in America?”
As she said this, O’Dowd looked quickly over at Hassan Malik and the other blacks on the jury.
“That’s not true.”
“And did you, in fact, kill Miriam Juma Khalifa?”
“No.”
“Did you and your partner force her down into the basement of the Al-Aqsa mosque, torture her to find out what she might have told her friend, Imam Jabbar . . .”
“No.”
“And then cut her throat to make it look as if she’d been executed, all the while setting up this devious plan to pin it on my client?”
“That is absolutely not true,” Jojola said.
O’Dowd glanced over at Karp as if surprised that he hadn’t objected to her questions. He didn’t react. Stay with the game plan, he reminded himself, though he seethed at the defense lawyer’s low tactics.
“Then why didn’t you try to help her, Mr. Jojola? You told us you have some military experience, and as a police officer, you’ve been trained for violent confrontations.”
“There were too many of them, and I was unarmed,” Jojola responded. “I would have died without completing my mission.” He paused, looking down for a moment before returning his gaze to the jurors, the sadness in his voice unmistakable as he said, “And I couldn’t have saved Miriam.”
“But you could have tried, couldn’t you, Mr. Jojola?”
John Jojola nodded. “I could have tried.”
“Yet you expect the jury to believe that a law-enforcement officer, sworn to protect people, just stood there gawking while one woman nearly cut another woman’s head off!”
“That’s what happened.”
“Are you a coward, Mr. Jojola?” O’Dowd asked. “Or are you a liar?”
Jojola sat still in the witness chair, a dark emotion crossing his face. But with an effort, he held his head up and replied, “Neither.”
O’Dowd smirked. “Of course not.” She turned to the judge. “I have no more questions for this man.”
If O’Dowd had expected Karp to look troubled or worried as he rose from his seat for redirect, she was sorely disappointed. He roiled with anger, but his demeanor displayed righteous indignation writ large.
“Mr. Jojola, you testified that before you became the chief of police of the Taos Pueblo, you served in the military,” Karp began.
“Yes, sir,” Jojola replied. “I served in the United States Army from 1967 to 1971.”
“Were you stationed overseas?”
“I served in Vietnam from June 1967 through August 1971.”
“Did you see combat?”
“Pretty much from the time I got there until the time I left. I belonged to a special unit known as a LURP, a long-range reconnaissance patrol.”
“Objection,” O’Dowd said, scowling as she stood. “Counsel already ascertained that Mr. Jojola was in the army. Of what relevance is all of this additional detail regarding this man’s participation in an immoral war?”
“Well, your honor, perhaps for Ms. O’Dowd there are no moral wars,” Karp retorted. “Only acquiescence to bullies, dictators, mass murderers, and terrorists. But that’s hardly on point with what this trial is about. I am merely responding to counsel’s attack on this good man’s reputation, which is entirely proper rehabilitation permitted during redirect examination.”
As he spoke, Karp looked at the jury to see how they were absorbing all of this. He noted in particular that Malik was sitting on the edge of his chair, his eyes narrowed as he glanced at O’Dowd. Katz had been right about one combat veteran’s reaction to an attack on the courage of another combat veteran.
“Overruled, Ms. O’Dowd,” Mason said. “But Mr. Karp, you will keep this brief.”
“Yes, your honor,” Karp replied, turning to face Jojola. “Would you ‘briefly’ explain what duties you performed as a LURP?”
“We worked as two-man teams, operating for long periods of time away from the base camp to intercept and disrupt enemy activity.”
“When you were alone, deep in enemy territory, was death a constant possibility?”
“Yes, in fact, my partner—a childhood friend—was killed while we were on patrol.”
“Were you ever wounded in combat?”
“I suffered combat-related wounds on three separate occasions.”
“Did you receive any sort of commendations in relation to these wounds?”
“I received the Purple Heart for the first incident and two oak-leaf clusters for the subsequent wounds.”
“Did you receive any other commendations while in the service of your country?”
“Yes, sir. I was awarded the Silver Star . . .”
“The Silver Star is for gallantry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any other medals or commendations?”
“I also was awarded the Bronze Star.”
“For bravery. Any others?”
Jojola smiled. “Well, when I got back stateside, they handed me a Good Conduct Medal, which I call the ‘no discovered criminal activities medal.’”
The spectators in the gallery and the jurors laughed. Even Malik, Karp noted with satisfaction.
Through questioning, he now established that Jojola had achieved the rank of sergeant before being honorably discharged from the army and returning to the Taos Pueblo.
“As the chief of police at the Taos Pueblo, were you ever in physical danger?”
“Quite often,” Jojola responded.
“Did you ever testify at trials on behalf of the prosecution?”
“Frequently.”
“Were you ever accused of lying?”
Jojola chuckled. “Whenever the defense attorney had nothing else to use.”
For a moment, the courtroom remained in stunned silence. Then O’Dowd rumbled to her feet and shouted, “Objection! Who is this agent provocateur to besmirch me?”
Karp thundered right back. “Defense counsel, without evidence to the contrary, labeled this man a coward and a liar! I expect that if she has proof of this—whether in this trial or in previous trials Mr. Jojola has testified at—she had better present it during the defense case, or the jury will know who the liar is in this courtroom!”
O’Dowd made a sound as if she was about to explode, but Mason rapped his gavel until she and Karp were both silent. “Enough! Ms. O’Dowd, you did attack the witness’s credibility and should expect that he might shoot back. Your objection is overruled. But Mr. Karp, we are near the end on this line of questioning.”
“Yes, your honor,” Karp replied amiably as if he’d just been complimented. “Mr. Jojola, why didn’t you help Miriam Juma Khalifa?”
Jojola’s head fell forward for a moment, and he sighed. “I had to weigh the outcome. I couldn’t have saved her, and many others would have died if I had tried.”
“Mr. Jojola, you were asked this once by defense counsel, but I’m going to ask you again. Did you kill Miriam Juma Khalifa?”
“I did not.”
“Who did?”
Jojola turned in his seat so that he was facing the defense table. “Nadya Malovo cut her throat, while that man”—he pointed at Jabbar, whose eyes grew large before he ducked his head—“planned, encouraged, and celebrated her death.”