I had taken my time picking up my repaired Jeep. I liked the Beemer, and liked Rick getting the big bill for the rental. But when I finally went back to it, I reconsidered the rock in the window. I hadn’t eliminated any of Will’s associates from my suspects list and finding myself back behind the wheel of the Jeep was a stark reminder that I needed to return to that line of inquiry. I pulled over to a quiet street and parked along the curb under the bare branches of an elderly maple tree.
Then I called Will. “Hey Will, we need to talk. In fact, if you could arrange it, I’d like to meet with you, Elif, and Jerrod.”
Will cleared his throat. “I know you’re the professional, but after the scene you created when you came to the center, I don’t think I could get them to meet.”
“That was a huge misfire on my part. I swear to you I was not trying to be disrespectful. I just wanted to get the young men off their guard. It works with…” Shoot. I had talked myself into a corner. White kids? Normal kids? American kids? To say these Muslim kids weren’t American or normal wasn’t going to win me any friends.
“Yeah. I know. It works with most guys, but not here.”
“Is there any way you could get a few people to meet me somewhere else? Maybe my office? If not Jerrod and Elif, then Seda and her mom? Or Seda and her grandma? I want you there, too. We have a situation to discuss that is a little more on point than the bad job I did when I came by. It’s pretty important, in fact.”
“How long do I have to arrange it?”
“The sooner the better, and if you know of an effective apology I could make to smooth things over, please let me know.”
“Silence is golden, Maura. I suggest you never mention it again. I’ll see what I can do about a meeting and call you back.”
He didn’t call back until that night, but he had good news. He had three people ready to talk—and one of them was Berk, our angry young man.
Will brought Berk, Elif, and Seda to my office the next day at noon. I had a few chairs arranged in a circle with the love seat, and both tea and coffee brewing.
“Thank you all for coming. Can I serve you a drink? Coffee, tea?”
All four heads shook no.
Berk sat on the edge of a metal folding chair, his elbows resting on his knees, face grim. Elif and Seda sunk into the sofa.
I held court from my rolling desk chair, the note that had been wrapped around the rock was smoothed out and resting on my knee.
“I found this in my car as I was leaving the center. Does anyone recognize the handwriting?” I slowly lifted the paper.
Seda leaned forward to check it out. Elif looked away.
“What did you call us here for? To accuse us of something?” Berk’s voice was a low growl—a sound much older than he looked.
“No accusations. I’m only searching for information.”
“If we recognized it, why would we tell you?” Berk looked at the girls on the couch with narrowed eyes.
“Because to this point I haven’t shown the police the note, and if I can get some answers, I won’t.”
“Empty threats.” Berk curled his lip in disgust. “You pretended to call the cops after you found your broken window. You didn’t then, and you won’t now.” He crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.
“Oh, I called the police. I just didn’t tell them about the note.”
Elif spoke, “I told you when it happened that I didn’t know anything. I still don’t, but you didn’t mention the note then. How can we be sure it’s real?”
“You can trust Maura.” Will’s voice was confident, but his eyes weren’t.
“You only trust her because your mother is white. You’ve been desensitized to all of this.” Berk gestured at me, though this time I was wearing the most modest clothes I had available in my limited run-away closet. A pair of wide leg slacks, a high-necked T shirt and the baggy sweater I had packed for evening walks on the beach during the retreat—the retreat that seemed so long ago.
“You’re such a jerk.” Seda, the young almost-stepdaughter of Adam Demarcus wasn’t impressed by Berk’s posturing. “My mom is white, too, but that doesn’t make us brainwashed. Maura is a detective. She’s got a job to do. She wouldn’t fake that note. Besides. I know who wrote it.”
My eyebrows flew up. “You do?”
“Yeah.” She scrunched up her face. “I saw her do it. That’s the paper she keeps by the phone.” Seda didn’t volunteer a name, but Elif swallowed.
“Don’t be like that, Seda.” Elif’s voice was quiet. “Don’t throw out accusations.”
“It’s not an accusation. Melati didn’t see me. I was in the back of her office calling my mom when she pulled out the paper and wrote the letter. I saw her. First, she was texting, then she wrote that, looking at her texts.”
“How do you know it’s the same letter?” Will asked in a remarkably calm voice.
“Because Melati looked around, not behind her, but out the front of the reception desk before she started writing. She didn’t see me, and was obviously trying to keep it a secret, so I snuck up behind her and read it. I thought it was rude but didn’t know she had left it in Maura’s car.”
“She didn’t.” Elif interrupted with a quiet, regret filled voice. “She called me to the office and asked me to hand the letter to Jerrod. You were still in the office, Seda. I saw you. The letter was folded so I didn’t see what was in it.”
“But when I held it up you recognized her writing.” I said.
“I wouldn’t have said for sure, but yeah, it looked familiar.”
“Jerrod would never do a thing like that.” Now Will sat forward, his posture aggressive.
“I don’t know what Jerrod did with it.” Elif said.
“I suspect he rubber-banded it to a rock and broke my car window with it.”
Elif picked at her thumbnail. “It doesn’t seem like him. He’s such a good guy.”
Seda nodded. “He is as pure as the wind-driven snow, I swear he is.”
“What did he do when you gave him the letter?”
“He shoved it in his pocket and went back into the gym. I didn’t follow him.”
“Did you go back to the gym, Berk?” I asked. “Did you see what happened next?
Berk didn’t move, not even a facial twitch.
“Did he give you the letter?” Will asked.
“No. When I left in anger, I didn’t go back. I needed to walk it off.” He leaned forward again. “There is nothing more important in this world than Allah and to honor him. I don’t like my anger. But I like infidels even less. I walked it off. Whatever Jerrod did with that note it was after I was long gone.”
“Which way did you walk?” Berk may or may not be lying. He wasn’t giving away any tells. If he was honest, he might have seen something on his walk.
“I took the road behind the center up into the neighborhood. The Imam lives there. I went to his house to see if he could talk to me. He wasn’t home, so I wandered around, and then came back. Your car was gone when I got back.”
“My car? How did you know which was mine?”
“Because when I left for my walk, it was the one I didn’t recognize.” He snarled, not defensively but disgusted that I questioned his knowledge.
“Ellie, you handed the letter to Jerrod, are you sure he didn’t say anything? Hasn’t said anything?”
Elif jerked her eyes up from her phone and held it out. “He’s saying something right now. Give me just a second.”
We sat in silence, only the sound of Berk’s metal chair squeaking as he shifted.
“Okay. Here’s the deal.” Elif read from her phone as she spoke. “He took the letter because he was closest to the door when I knocked. When he got back into the room for the group meeting Osman asked him for it, so he gave it to Osman. Then he left.”
“So, Osman smashed my window with a little help from Melati.”
Will was nodding, his eyes sad. “I’ve been worried about him. He hasn’t been around since that day.”
“How high of a radicalization risk was he?”
“Very high.” Berk stood up. “I’ll find him.”
He pushed his chair back and left, his heavy steps echoing down the stairs.
“Berk doesn’t want any more of his friends to die,” Elif said. “He’s lost too many already.”
I glanced at the paper on my knee. To me, this was a case. A paycheck. A way to move forward after my marriage crisis.
To these kids it was life and death. I’d have to tread carefully. I didn’t have to like their religion to want to keep them alive.
Will stood up. “I need to go with him. It’s my job. Are you two okay?”
The girls nodded. “I’ll take Seda home, don’t worry.” Elif held a hand out to Will. He gripped it, his eyes glued to hers, a connection I had been ignoring was suddenly clear. Young people in love in a time of crisis.
Someone should make a movie about it.
Seda stood up, too. “I’m sorry about your car, Maura.”
“I kind of asked for it, I know. I seriously regret it.”
Seda shrugged. “None of us killed Adam. We have enough to worry about on our own.”
Elif also stood, and the girls left.
I pulled out my notebook and recorded our conversation for future reference.
These kids seemed to be hanging on by a thread—the passions of young adulthood under the fire of international religious crisis. But that didn’t mean someone from the center hadn’t killed Adam.
I could eliminate no one.
I hadn’t heard from Gina or her family in a little while, and the precarious position of the kids at the community center reminded me of her, and her literally precarious grip on life. I didn’t want to bother her grandparents, who were plenty worried without me getting in their hair, and I didn’t want to call her step-mom who might care too little and make me angry, so I hit up Facebook, to see if our amnesiac had been doing any poetry writing.
I was in luck.
Things I will forget
Things I will never forget
And in between: this.
Things I have not seen
Things I do not remember
But not forgotten
A crash. A hit. A pain
But not knowing who it was
I will not forget
I missed you that day
But the car did not miss me
I did not forget.
I scrolled through John Deere’s recent updates. The message was clear—a little too clear, in fact. If the hit and run was to keep her from talking to me, then she was in danger again, because she had outed herself as faking amnesia, and made it clear she still wanted to tell me what she saw. I messaged the account immediately. “Message received. Delete haikus. If hit and run was no accident, then they put you in danger.”
John Deere didn’t respond to my message, but by that night the poems were down. I messaged again. “I am coming to your house to see you. I will be there in an hour. Please stay safe.”
I got in my car and headed to Larch Mountain to see if I could protect at least one young person.
The night was dark, and slimy with rain. The kind of rain that clung to the air like plastic wrap, just a thin sheet of water sticking to everything. The windshield wipers were ineffective against the constancy of the water, and I leaned forward to peer into the darkness of the hilly roads. If there had been a girl on a bike right now, I would have hit her, too. But unlike our hit and run driver, I wouldn’t have left the scene.
That Gina was hit on her way to talk to me was no coincidence, though ponder as hard as I could, I couldn’t see how our killer would have known about the meeting. Not from my end, anyway. Tonight’s journey was about more than just learning exactly what Gina had seen. I needed to find out who she was connected to on the committee. If she had no connections at all, it cleared the names of Adam’s friends, and narrowed our search down to connections a teenage girl in a rural town on the far edges of a Portland suburb had.
That would be a great move forward in the case.
Gina met me in the living room. She was wrapped in a colorful afghan, facing a cast iron wood stove. It was too warm for my coat, so I hung it on a hook by the back door. Her grandparents were in the kitchen, watching us through the pass through. They didn’t recognize me as the lady in the waiting room, but they did know I had called them to tell them about their granddaughter’s accident. Esther held her hand out to me. “I’m sorry our son and Jenny aren’t here tonight. They have a meeting at his store. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you. I just need to talk with Gina.”
“I should say you do.” Grandma came out of the kitchen with a SoulCycle mug and set it next to Gina. “But I hope you understand why we don’t want to leave her alone.”
“Of course.” It was as I had expected. Gina was a minor and had no more business meeting me than meeting the president, but that didn’t mean I liked having a chaperone.
“I think I saw a murder.” Gina jumped right in, putting to rest my worry that she wouldn’t talk in front of her grandparents.
Her grandma patted her knee. “Tell us about it sweetheart. What did you see?”
“I was on the tractor with Maddox, we were just taking a ride. It was dumb. I’m sorry, Gramps.”
Gramps shook his head. “Don’t do it again.”
“Of course not. Anyway, we wanted to go up to Vista House and look at the stars, but when we got there, there was something weird going on. The doctors say I have amnesia, but I will never, ever forget this.”
Her grandmother wrapped both hands around Gina’s small, tan hand.
“See, we were going to pull in when a bright light flashed. Maddox idled at the entrance, and we watched. The light flashed again and again, at least ten times. It was so bright that at first, I couldn’t figure out how far away it was, but it was way out back by the concrete rail. It flashed and flashed and flashed. I saw a man standing, in one of the flashes, but then, in the next one he was gone. And I saw a car, in one of the flashes. The bumper of a nice car, kind of pointy like a Jag, but it could have been something else. I don’t know for sure. But it was there, and I saw it in one flash. And it kept flashing. Maddox freaked out and drove past the Vista House, but you know, the tractor was loud, the only noise there, and I’m sure whoever was flashing the light heard us. The next morning the cops came and asked about a body. I was asleep still, but they talked to Jenny. She told me about it over breakfast.”
“Did you ever tell the cops what you saw?”
She shook her head.
“Did Maddox?”
“He says he didn’t.”
“Did you talk about it at all to anyone? Friends? Family? Cousins?”
“No. It was eating me up though. That’s why I started the John Deere account. I just couldn’t deal with knowing. I needed someone else to know I knew. Maddox needed to talk about it, but wouldn’t.”
“Tell me more about Maddox. What has he been doing?”
“He decided to go to his Dad’s for a little while. Up in Alaska.”
“Alaska?”
“But what about school?” Grandma asked.
“I think it was a bad choice, too. He was almost done with this quarter at Mt. Hood Community College. I don’t know what they will say to him when he comes back. He’s going to miss finals and everything.”
“Do you think he might have been scared away? Is there any way the killer could have seen you as he flashed the lights?” Grandma wasn’t the only one with questions. And were we sure Maddox made it to Alaska?
“He heard us. He had to, but we were in the dark the whole time. The killer was in the dark, too. I think he must have been, at least. Because I saw the one man standing, facing us, but never the other guy.
“You saw his face? Could you identify him?” If she had seen a face that wasn’t Adam’s, then she had absolutely seen the killer.
“No, he was too far away. I saw a pale face, so I know it was a white guy, and that he was tall, and that it wasn’t the back of his head, or anything, but I couldn’t see clearly enough to see his features.”
“Oh, you poor baby. You need to call the police, right away.” Grandma stroked Gina’s hand. In the background, I heard the distinct and familiar sound of a landline being dialed. Grandpa calling the cops, I suspected.
Gina just nodded. “I told them what I knew while I was in the hospital.”
“What about the amnesia?” I asked.
“I should know exactly who hit me, don’t you think? It was dawn, the day was gray but clear. I could see the road in front of me, and the trees. I was headed to meet you, and then I woke up in the hospital. I swear I am not making that part up. I can’t remember a single thing about the car that hit me, or even where I was when I got hit, or how it felt, or anything. Complete amnesia. Dad says it’s my brain protecting me from the trauma.”
“He’s probably right,” I said. She looked as disappointed as I was that she had no idea who had run her down. “The question we ask now is this: Who knew you would be on your bike that morning, coming to meet me?”
“Maddox, did, but he was already in Seattle on his way to Ketchikan, so it wasn’t him.”
“Who could Maddox have told? Who could have overheard you telling him?”
“I just texted him. I didn’t say it out loud.” An adolescent pitch of defensiveness broke her voice, as though she thought I was insulting her by saying she might have used a phone to make an actual call.
“Who could have read the text? On either end? A school friend? A teacher? Someone at the college?”
“No one can see my phone. I don’t text in class and the girls don’t hang over my shoulders while I use it. We’re not in middle school.”
“What about Maddox?”
“He was in Seattle when I told him, so who could have seen it?”
“That’s a fair point. You’re positive that you never left your phone lying around where someone could see it?”
“Yes.” Gina narrowed her eyes at me. “What about you? I was alone when we made our plans. The whole house was empty, out here in the woods, and if I wasn’t alone, Roger would have let me know.” She patted the rump of her basset hound. “But, where were you? Who could have heard your end of the conversation?”
“That’s a fair question.” And I had to give her points for thinking of it. “I was alone in my office, and I have taken measures to make sure that space is soundproof and private. It’s my business. I have to.” And yet, even as I promised her my top level of security, she had hit home. No one overheard her from her end of our conversation, and no one saw the texts to her boyfriend. So, the person who got the information needed to run her down had to have gotten it from me. Where had my notes been between the phone call and our meeting? And who did I know who could read shorthand?