BoneMan's Daughters (4 page)

Ryan found some encouragement in the man’s assessment even though he knew he was being manipulated.

“You are here for a purpose, Kent. You are our poster child and with you we will send a message to the world. To do that we
will need to break you. Because our mission is so critical, we will use any and all means to break you. If you’re as intelligent
as you appear, you know we’ve already begun. Do you know this?”

“Yes.”

“Good. This bunker is thirty feet beneath the ground, too far from any housing for your spies to notice any coming or going.
No one will find you, no one will hear your screams. You should be wishing we’d pointed the RPG at your Humvee instead, yes?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Well then. You can say more than ‘yes.’ Do you mind telling me, Kent, why you are here in my country?”

Ryan hesitated, considering his options. He could clam up and hasten the inevitable smashing of bones or electrocution or
a myriad of other techniques perfected in these deserts. Or he could engage them, hoping to stall them while he looked for
alternatives. He opted for the latter.

“I’m following orders,” he said.

“Yes, I’m sure you are. As am I. In the end does it really matter which of us does a better job? Will lives be saved? Freedom
won?”

“I don’t know.”

The man paced back and forth now, hands still behind his back, like an interrogator from an old World War II movie.

“Then let me help you
know
a few things. Assume for a moment that you are God. That this is really all about you and your children.” He motioned to
the outer wall as he spoke. “Can you think in terms of God, or are you an atheist like so many of your countrymen?”

“Yes.”

“Yes you are an atheist, or yes you believe in God?”

“I believe in God.”

“And you believe he loves his children. All of his children.”

“Yes.”

“Well then, tell me, if you can, how God feels when he looks down and sees this war of yours.”

“Assuming God feels anything, I’m sure war bothers him.”

“If you were God, Kent, how would you feel? Please try to stay in character.”

Ryan glanced around the room. The only way out was through the wood door, but that hardly discouraged him. He was shackled
in place—there would be no escape from this hole. All he had was his mind, and he had to keep it active.

“Focus, please.”

Ryan looked back at his interrogator. “I suppose I would feel disturbed.”

“Why? Why would you feel disturbed? Because your children were being killed?”

“Yes.” But he didn’t feel any emotional connection with the man’s point.

“So then, like me, on at least one level, you are saddened by this war.”

“Yes. But also like you, I’m bound by my duty to those who have my loyalty.”

“Your loyalty is to man, not God?”

“God hasn’t issued any orders lately,” Ryan said.

“And if he did, would you follow them, or would you follow the orders given to you by man?”

Ryan didn’t respond. He knew where the man was headed, but his approach was meaningless because, unlike many Muslims who believed
they were following God in political matters, his own belief in God was far too distant to consider in the same thought.

“In truth, everything that happens here in the desert leads back to God,” Kahlid said. “But I can see you don’t follow God
the way I do. As I thought. So I’m not going to bother manipulating you with an appeal to his will. I’ll have to follow our
original plan and attempt to test your own will. Is that okay with you?”

“Not really, no.”

“You’re honest, I like that. We’re going to find out just how honest you are.” He nodded at the man closest to the door, who
pulled open the latch, spoke quietly to someone outside, and disappeared into a dark hall. A tunnel.

“It may take us a few days, that’s up to you, but eventually you will see the world the way we see it.”

The soldier returned with a camera case and a tripod. He latched the door and began setting it up.

“We’re going to film you so that we can show the world what we have learned here today. I hope you don’t object. It’s the
truth we want, nothing more. We don’t care about your rank and serial number; you’ll gladly give us that before we’re done.
We’re more interested in your heart. In God’s heart, assuming you’re still in character.”

A thin chill snaked down Ryan’s spine. The interrogation was taking a turn that, for all of its similarities to the hundreds
of cases he’d been exposed to during his career, felt profoundly different, beginning with the choice of Kahlid’s language.

He looked at his interrogator, who was now smiling. “You don’t have enough footage of American soldiers condemning the war?”

“We do, yes. And we won’t need any more from you.”

Then what?

An unnerving quiet settled over them as the soldier with the camera carefully set up the tripod, mounted the Panasonic, inserted
a tape, and plugged the unit into an extension cord.

“We have enough gasoline to run the generator for three days. If it takes longer, we will refill the tanks. But it’s not gasoline
that I’m concerned with running out of.” He glanced at the cameraman, who was looking through the lens. “Are we set?”

The man nodded.

“Turn it on.”

A red light was the only indicator that the camera was live.

Kahlid crossed to the table, scooped up a stack of papers and a handful of tacks, and then stepped over to the corkboard.
He began to pin 8 1/2 × 11 inch sheets of photocopied images up on the board in a neat row.

Pictures of collapsed buildings, chunks of concrete immediately recognizable as the handiwork of explosives. The photographs
had been taken on the ground, some slightly blurred, as if the photographer had taken them in haste.

He’d seen volumes of war images, enough to deaden his mind to all but the worst. But there was something about the presentation
of these pictures that he found disturbing.

Then he saw it: hardly distinguishable from the chunks of rubble, broken and twisted limbs. The evidence of bodies that had
been trapped and crushed under the weight of the crumbling building.

Kahlid went calmly about the business of pinning more photographs on the wall, one at a time, until he had twelve of them
in two rows of six each. The last eight were close-ups, showing a dusty arm thrust out from the space between several large
blocks. A very thin, small hand that was attached to a boy or girl younger than ten, hidden under tons of stone. Three different
pictures of this arm, broken above the child’s elbow, hanging limp, dusty but not bloody.

Ryan now saw limbs between the cracks in the rubble. All children, noticed only upon a second look, then noticed singularly,
as if the mounds of broken building didn’t even exist. His stomach turned.

Kahlid turned around and stepped aside. “Do you recognize these, Kent?”

Did he? No, he didn’t think so.

“Mr. Kent?”

“Umm… no. No, I don’t.”

“Of course you don’t. Your pictures come from high in the sky, where your collateral damage is safely hidden from the public
eye.”

Kahlid took a deep breath. His lip quivered.

“I, on the other hand, do recognize these photographs because I took them. If you look carefully you will see my daughter’s
arm in the third photograph from the left at the bottom. The next two are also Sophie. And the next one is of my son’s leg.”

The man’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, then he stepped to his right. “They were seven and nine when your bombs fell
from the sky and crushed the apartment next to the one I’d sent my wife and four children to for safekeeping. They all died
that day. Their bones were broken and crushed. It is hard for me to imagine the pain they must have felt.”

Ryan didn’t know how to respond to this man’s obvious heartache.

“I’m going to leave you with these pictures for a while, Kent. I want you to stare at my children. At God’s children, lying
broken on the ground, and I want you to feel their pain… the way God feels pain. And when you have done that, I will
return and we can go to the next step. Fair enough?”

For the first time since waking, Ryan felt completely out of his element.

Kahlid dipped his head and left the room, followed by the others. Ryan sat alone under the steady gaze of the camera’s red
blinking light and the handiwork of collateral damage.

RICKI VALENTINE SAT with her right leg crossed over her left, slowly swinging her foot as she studied Mort Kracker’s brooding
gray eyes. A crew cut topped the Assistant Director in Charge’s large square head, giving him the appearance of a softer,
kinder version of Frankenstein, sans scars.

The conversation in the room had stalled. If the defense attorney’s latest filing with the court bore up under judicial scrutiny,
Phil Switzer, aka BoneMan, could very well be walking the streets two weeks from now and all eyes would be on the DA who’d
put him behind bars.

Burton Welsh, the man who now served as Austin’s district attorney in large part
because
of his highly touted prosecution of BoneMan two years prior, stared at them from his perch against the windowsill, one hand
across his waist, the other stroking up his chin, as though scratching at a thought.

Welsh might be on the bubble here, but Ricki had been the FBI’s lead investigator in the case. She, more than the DA, had
been responsible for BoneMan’s capture and conviction. There would be more than enough scrutiny to go around if the folder
on the chief’s desk contained the truth.

“So?” Welsh demanded.

“So”—Kracker glanced between them—“we have us a problem.”

Although not directly responsible for the investigation, Mort Kracker’s oversight of the case wouldn’t be dismissed. Not to
mention the well-known fact that Kracker had essentially fed the case to Burt Welsh, whose relationship with him extended
all the way back to UT School of Law.

Here, in this room, sat the three law enforcement professionals who may very well have put an innocent man behind bars; even
worse, they had possibly left a serial killer to take more victims, always careful to cover his tracks.

“You’re not actually suggesting you believe this load of crap,” Welsh said, shoving a thick finger at the wall. “That man
is as guilty as a pregnant nun. That’s why we prosecuted; that’s why he’s serving time.”

He crossed the room and towered over Ricki. “You led the investigation; the file on him is a foot thick.”

Uncomfortable under his shadow, Ricki stood. Welsh wore a tailored blue suit that hid his muscled frame well, but at six foot
three, there was no hiding his power. Standing a mere five feet two if she stretched, Ricki felt like a mouse next to him.

She walked toward the window he’d vacated. “And you know as well as I do that the blood samples from the last victim connected
the evidence and sealed the case.”

Kracker put his elbows on his desk. “Which they say was contrived. Defense says that they can prove it came from the same
sample taken to run him through VICAP, and that we broke the chain of evidence. Like I said, we have a problem.”

“Assuming this evidence of theirs pans out,” Welsh said. He took a seat in the chair Ricki had left. “Either way, Switzer’s
as guilty as sin.”

Ricki nodded. “Probably. But that doesn’t help us in appellate court. Double jeopardy—he can’t be tried for the same crime
twice. Unless and
until
we find another victim to link to the case, we’re stuck.”

“I understand the legal problem,” Welsh shot back. “But if you think I’m just going to sit by and wait for him to take another
victim before I do anything, you don’t know me. When news of this leaks, the city will go nuts.”

TheBoneMan, so dubbed by Ricki for his MO of killing his victims by breaking their bones without breaking their skin, had
left a total of seven victims behind, all in plain sight, all in quiet Texas neighborhoods, from El Paso to Austin, where
he’d taken his last two before being caught.

Assuming the man they’d put away really
was
BoneMan.

“I’m not saying we have the wrong man,” Ricki said. “I’m simply pointing out the challenge we’re facing.”

Welsh exposed his true concern. “I don’t need to restate what this means to me, Mort. Personally.”

“We all have both professional and personal stakes in this case,” Mort returned. “That doesn’t change the challenge Ricki’s
addressing.”

“Don’t patronize me.” He took a breath. “There’s more at stake here than BoneMan and his victims. I’m trying to run a city.
The last thing the city needs is more fear-mongering over a case like this. The media will sensationalize and speculate for
millions of people who don’t think for themselves. Next thing you know, schools will close and people will be hiding in their
homes. Like happened in DC, with the sniper.”

“I thought the mayor ran the city,” Ricki said. “Does he know yet?”

The man shot her an angry glare.

Easy, Ricki
.

“Of course he knows. I have his full support.”

“Support for what?”

“Don’t be so naïve. We have to shut this down. For all of our sakes, for the sake of the city, for the sake of justice on
behalf of millions, not just one man.”

Ricki wasn’t sure she understood him correctly. She’d always thought of Welsh as a bull, stomping to run over anyone who stepped
into his ring, but she’d never pegged him as one to subvert the laws he’d been elected to uphold.

Her boss leaned back in his chair and cast a furtive glance at her. “I don’t think any of us disagree that we need to deal
with this in an appropriate manner,” he said carefully. “We have over two thousand man-hours logged on a case to bring a criminal
to justice; no one’s suggesting we just let him walk. But we’re facing evidence here that undermines our position. We can’t
just ignore it.”

Welsh slammed his palm on the chair’s arm. “Then find me
more
evidence!”

Ricki thought about asking him what he meant by
find
. But she held her tongue.