City of Veils (44 page)

“Would he really go camping in the middle of the week?” he asked.

Just then, Osama’s cell phone gave a jingle. He looked startled, took it out of his pocket, and frowned. He glanced at Nayir before answering.

Mrs. Marx looked at her coffee mug, obviously discomfited by the interruption. Nayir watched her fingers twitch nervously at the mug’s rim. It occurred to him that he had no trouble studying the woman’s face, and could even imagine he understood her expressions. It gave him a heady feeling of power.

Listening intently, Osama stood up from the table and went to the kitchen door. He lingered there, partially turned away from them.

Mrs. Marx didn’t seem to understand what he was saying, but when she heard the words
Miriam Walker
she looked up.

“Is he talking about Miriam?” she asked in a panic.

“Yes.”

“What’s he saying?”

Nayir wasn’t sure. He hadn’t overheard.

Osama laid his hand over the mouthpiece and said in English, “We have reason to think Mrs. Walker may have gone to the desert.”

Mrs. Marx’s face was the very picture of fear. “But how would she get
out
there? You don’t think Jacob took her, do you? He would never do that!”

Osama shrugged. “We have no idea, but it’s a very dangerous journey, even with a companion.”

“You can’t possibly think Jacob or Miriam had anything to do with this girl’s death,” Mrs. Marx said in alarm. “Do you really think that?”

Osama looked at her anxiously but didn’t answer.

“First of all, Miriam was out of the country,” she said. “And Jacob was working. You can call his office if you need to confirm that!”

“Mrs. Marx, we’re not after your husband.” Osama said something into the phone and then turned to them again. “Does the name Mabus mean anything to you?”

“Mabus!” Mrs. Marx hissed. “That horrible friend of Jacob’s!” She was clutching her coffee mug in a death grip. “A horrible man! He’s always doing something secretive. Probably illegal! Is he involved in this?”

Osama grunted, thanked the caller, and closed the phone. “Mabus is one of our primary suspects,” Osama said. “We’ve been looking for him for a couple of days, and we suspect he’s fled to the desert.”

Nayir marveled at the smoothness with which Osama had lied. Mrs. Marx didn’t seem to notice any change at all.

“We have reason to believe that Mabus may be carrying a weapon,” Osama went on, “and that he may be dangerous.”

“Mabus.”
She looked at the floor, her face taking on an expression of deep deliberation.

“Mrs. Marx,” Osama said, “if there’s anything you can tell us that will help us track down your husband and Miriam before they get hurt, it would be enormously useful.”

“He’s a dangerous man, I always said it. Jacob should have known better than to get involved with him.” She looked up at the men, her face showing resolve. “Jacob went to the desert this morning. He’d found out that the police were after Eric, and he knew Eric couldn’t have killed that woman. He had the idea that Eric was hiding out in the desert, but it didn’t make sense!” Her voice rose to a shrieking pitch. “I told him, why would Eric march out to the desert and leave his wife stranded here? Jacob didn’t have an answer. I really don’t think Eric is the type to do something like that, but you just never know. And now Jacob’s gone after him…” She swallowed hard. “What if Mabus is in the desert? You have to go after him. Jacob could be out there!” She stood and took a few steps toward the men.

“Where exactly did your husband go?” Osama asked.

“I don’t know—I —” Her voice cracked again, and she pushed past them. They followed her into the living room. A desk stood against the wall, and she tore open the top drawer, scrabbling furiously through the papers and junk, turning abruptly aside to a wall shelf that held an assortment of baskets. She pulled a basket down, searched through it, tossed it aside, all the while narrating: “Jacob kept a GPS, but he’s probably taken that to the desert. It’s out in the desert somewhere, that’s all I know. It could be anywhere! He had a map here somewhere.” She pulled down a third basket and found the map on top. She snatched it out, fumbled to unfold it, and spread it on the desk. They all bent over it, feeling the frantic energy radiating off her.

“Here!” She pointed to a spot marked in ink. There was no town or landmark, not even a road indicated on the map, just —
Thanks be to Almighty God,
thought Nayir—a pair of coordinates. Nayir took a pen and paper from the desk and copied them.

“Are you sure this is where he went?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “but that’s where he went with Mabus the last time they went out there together. Mabus has some kind of—of
shack
or something. They go camping. They just went a few weeks ago. Oh my God,
Jacob!
”

Nayir eyed Osama, who nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Marx,” he said. “Trust me, we’ll do everything we can to find your husband.”

She gulped, nodded, and watched them leave the room.

O
utside, Osama hustled Nayir into the car, and they drove off. “You know that wasn’t really my office calling,” he said.

Nayir nodded. “How did you manage to call yourself?”

“Actually, that was my wife.”

“Your wife?” Nayir had trouble imagining this. “She was on the phone that whole time?”

“Yes.” Osama looked chagrined. Nayir wondered briefly what his wife had said, although perhaps she was used to such odd behavior from her husband.

“So what are you going to do now?” Nayir asked, trying not to sound too curious.

“I’d better head back to the office and contact the closest police station out there. Have them send someone to check it out. It may be that Eric Walker is hiding out there, and that Jacob has gone after him. It may also be that Mabus is there. Whatever the case, I suspect we’ll find something.”

Nayir nodded, fighting a rising anxiety. “What do you think happened to Mrs. Walker?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Osama said. “We honestly don’t know where she’s gone. But I do want to find Jacob Marx and see if he’s had any luck finding Eric Walker. That’s who we’re really after.”

I
t was all Osama could do not to turn on the sirens and blow through the worst of the rush hour traffic to get back to the station. Chief Riyadh had already tried calling him twice, and there was no doubt he wanted to fulminate about the Nawar case showing up in the paper. Osama also had to coordinate with the police in the desert, which meant that he first had to figure out where the hell the site was and which police to contact for that province. He had the sinking feeling it was somewhere in the Empty Quarter. And while all these worries were preoccupying him, he couldn’t forget the “conversation” he’d had with Nuha.

The phone call had been a kind of torture. He couldn’t talk to her, of course, not while pretending she was someone else. So he was forced to listen to her. She’d paid no attention to his charade; if anything, she’d assumed he was ignoring her again. But it hadn’t mattered, because she had his ear. And what she’d said had murdered him: That she was sorry, so sorry she’d lied for so long, but that there were things she had wanted to tell him that she could never bring herself to say. That she was overwhelmed. That she couldn’t find it in herself to be a mother and a journalist and a wife and a lover and a daughter and a friend, cousin, aunt, sister, and all the other things she was every day, because it was just too much. She was tired of pretending that she had what it took to impress everyone all the time. She was exhausted. And the funny thing was, she had thought that Osama wanted her to be this way. She knew from the beginning that he wanted her to work, wanted the second income, wanted to be able to tell his friends that his wife did something important, that they were a modern couple and perfectly successful. But now she realized that she had failed him because she had lied. And here was the truth: what she really wanted was to have no more family bearing down on her. No more responsibilities. Osama had fought hard not to reply, not to break the pantomime and reach out to her and say anything to stop her tears. He could hardly remember why he’d been angry at her. He only knew that he wanted to get home and hold her in his arms and apologize for his coldness.

But he couldn’t talk to her now. Nayir was still in the car with him, and Osama’s phone was ringing again. He listened to what Majdi had to say. When he got off, he turned to Nayir.

“They cracked the password on the memory card from Miriam’s purse. Majdi said it was pretty straightforward. The card contained a file of Quranic documents that belonged to an excavation in Yemen. Supposedly, it’s the earliest version of the Quran that’s ever been found. For some reason the Yemeni authorities won’t release the documents to the public, so these are stolen copies.”

“Did Majdi have a chance to look at them?”

“Not in depth, but there was a file on the memory card that explained the documents. Do you want to see them?”

Nayir shook his head. He looked tired and hungry.

Osama dropped him off at the marina and went back to the station. It was getting dark. He went looking for Chief Riyadh, who apparently had left early for a cousin’s wedding. Relieved, Osama stopped in the second-floor hallway beneath a flickering fluorescent light and called Nuha. She didn’t answer her cell, so he called their home number. The phone rang seven times. He began to feel panicked. She answered on the eighth ring.

“Hello?”

“Nuha…”

She had been crying, he could hear it in her voice.

“I’m sorry I’m not there,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I still have a few more things to do here.”

“But you’re coming home?” she asked. He heard the touch of anger in her voice but didn’t feel like chasing it.

“Yes, I’ll be home later. Nuha, I’m sorry.”

When he hung up his whole body trembled, and for a moment he thought he would fall. He braced his hand against the wall, surprised that he’d been so upset, that he’d spent four days not speaking to his wife, and that his will to silence hadn’t cracked before now.

Katya’s lab was two doors down, and he tapped gently on the glass before entering. She was in the corner, standing on a chair and gazing through a high, narrow window to the street below. Half the room was in darkness. A large machine was glowing with a blue light. She didn’t see him at first.

“Miss Hijazi,” he said. She spun around with such a start that she nearly fell off the chair. He went lurching ineffectually forward; there was no way he could have caught her if she’d fallen.

Looking flustered, she climbed down and adjusted her headscarf. “Sorry,” she said, pushing the chair back under the desk. “I was just watching for rain.”

“You’re not married,” he said.

She froze.

“When I referred to you as Nayir’s wife today, he didn’t contradict me,” Osama said.

“Well,” she replied in a tremulous voice, “he’s a taciturn man, but no, I’m not married.” She slid her hand into her sleeve. “I’m sorry I lied.”

He was angry, but the emotion was blunted by the events of the past few hours. “I suppose you didn’t have much of a choice,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. “Do you want me to leave?”

Grudgingly, he shook his head. “For now,” he said, “this is between you and me. I won’t tell anyone. And if anyone asks, you’re married. Is that clear?”

She nodded, obviously relieved. Still frustrated, he turned to go. “And tell Nayir he’s not your husband.”

She looked as if she dreaded that conversation most of all.

N
ayir walked down the pier in a restless frame of mind that only got worse as the minutes passed. By the time he reached his boat, he was distracted enough to stumble on a pile of rope. It was only nine o’clock, but it felt as if he’d lived through several days’ worth of activity. Spending an entire day with the police had been a prolonged exercise in amazement. The littlest things stood out. The way he’d grabbed the woman’s arm when she’d tried to stab him. The way he’d gazed unreservedly at Patty’s face. Above it all, Osama towered like a fortress against a relentlessly crashing sea.

Nayir had considered becoming a religious policeman once, but the thought of spending his days reminding people to pray, to cover themselves, to act modestly and decently, seemed like the most depressing occupation in the world. It would be a constant reminder that people were full of immodesty and vice. The events of the day had made him aware that decency was the least of society’s worries when people were killing, assaulting, shrieking, and stabbing one another every day.

He was exhausted but perversely full of a wriggling, twitching energy. He tried calling Miriam again, but this time her phone didn’t ring at all. The line simply went dead, an ominous sign. He called Samir to ask about Miriam, but she hadn’t shown up there either. He knew he’d never sleep, so he went to the kitchenette and ate a quick meal of hummus and pita, staring at the cabin walls and trying not to think.

He kept having to remind himself that Miriam had left the house freely. She had probably panicked and decided not to talk to the police after all. The thought stung him; he wouldn’t have forced her to go. But there was always the possibility that something worse had happened. A small voice insisted that she might really have gone out to the desert.