The Abbey (8 page)

Rather than get up immediately, I stayed at my desk, considering what would happen if I simply went home. The pros didn’t outweigh the cons, though. I sighed, wadded both notes and threw them in the trash before getting a cup of coffee at our communal coffee maker. It was scorched and stale. That was about how my day had been going.

I tossed my coffee down a nearby drinking fountain and headed to the elevator for a short ride upstairs. Susan’s office was on the fourteenth floor. Unlike me, she had an actual office with walls and a door. Officially, she was the Assistant Prosecutor, the second most powerful law enforcement official in the city. Unofficially, she ran the office while her elected boss explored the possibility of running for governor. He was a schmuck; she was a hard–ass prosecutor who gave defense attorneys the shakes. We usually got along fairly well.

Her secretary let me into her office. It was roughly fifteen–by–fifteen and had a large picture window overlooking a pedestrian park. Bookshelves covered the walls, and files were stacked chest–high on her desk. Susan was on the phone, but she motioned me in with her free hand. I plucked a file from the chair in front of her desk and sat down, waiting for her to finish the call. She did about five minutes later and faced me for a moment without saying anything.

“How are you, Ash?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Unless you’ve heard otherwise.”

She opened a folder on her desk. I couldn’t see its contents.

“I just got a call from Lieutenant Mike Bowers in homicide. He said you were at Nathan and Maria Cutting’s house this afternoon.”

“Detective Rhodes asked me to come over. Robbie Cutting died. He was the suspect in my niece’s death.”

Susan nodded.

“That’s what I’ve heard. How are you handling things?”

I licked my lips.

“I’m handling them,” I said. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine.”

“Lieutenant Bowers suggested I give you some time off. I tend to agree with him.”

Of course Bowers would want me off. He was up to something. I looked out the window. Susan had a nice view; I guess her eighty–hour work week had some perks.

“You can do what you want, but I’m fine.”

She nodded again.

“If I gave you a blood alcohol test right now, what would it tell me?” she asked.

“I’m fine, Susan,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

She waited for another moment as if expecting me to continue. Eventually, she took the hint that I wasn’t.

“I’m taking you off the rotation for the rest of the week. Paid leave. Take a break. You need it.”

“You’re ordering me to take a vacation?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Take your kid to the park, go out to dinner with your wife. Do whatever married people do to relax. I don’t want to see you until next Monday. Is that understood?”

“I don’t have a choice in this?” I asked.

“No,” said Susan, already reading the file in front of her. “Have a nice break.”

Subtlety was not Susan’s strong suit.

I left the building and went to a nearby bar that catered to cops. I wanted to drive home afterwards, so I didn’t have much. Just a beer and some pretzels to soak up some of the liquor already in my stomach.

When I got home, I rinsed off in the shower. I stayed in there for maybe twenty minutes. As the water cascaded over me, my mind flashed to cases I’d rather forget. It did that when I drank sometimes. Liquor usually helped me forget, but occasionally it helped me remember. It was a bitch like that. After my shower, I swished with mouthwash and went to the backyard.

My backyard was my slice of heaven. Hannah and I lived in an old part of the city, and our house had been built when lots were measured in acres rather than in square–feet. We had a covered patio big enough for parties, a swing set for my daughter, and a pair of ancient oak trees that shaded the entire place. I settled into the hammock slung between two patio posts and swayed gently in the afternoon breeze. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was out.

I rarely remember my dreams, and that day was no exception. I woke up sweating and feeling as if a weight were pressing against my chest. That happened sometimes. I probably had a nightmare, and I probably deserved it. I rolled out of my hammock and made a cup of tea in the kitchen.

Hannah and Megan came home while my tea steeped, and we had dusk prayers as a family. Megan was still too young to be required to partake in our formal prayer life, but she usually joined us on her own. When Hannah and I first had her, we decided that we wouldn’t force our religion on Megan; it would be her choice. After everything that had happened to Rachel, though, I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that plan.

After evening prayers, we went to my sister’s house for dinner. There was an empty seat at the table where my niece would have sat. That was hard for Megan to understand, but I felt like it was important that we were there. Hannah offered to do the dishes after dinner, giving me the chance to talk to Rana and Nassir alone. I didn’t want to talk to them about Rachel, but since I was the only investigator still looking into her death, I had to.

We settled into chairs on their covered front porch. I didn’t know what to say for a few minutes, so I stared across the street. I could smell horse shit; evidently my sister was still on her organic gardening kick. Eventually, I cleared my throat and glanced at Rana and Nassir. Rana smiled weakly in response.

“You look like you want to say something,” she said.

I nodded.

“Robbie Cutting died today,” I said, still nodding. “He was Rachel’s boyfriend.”

Nassir stood and spit onto the hedges in front of the porch. He rested his hands on the rail, his back towards me.

“We heard this afternoon,” he said.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“No,” he said, turning around, his arms crossed. “Rachel never told us about him.”

I leaned back in the chair, waiting for the angry glare to leave Nassir’s face. It never did.

“Do you think there were other things she was hiding from you?” I asked.

“Rana and I have answered enough questions today,” he said, putting his hands flat towards me. “We don’t need more.”

My sister reached over and put her hand on her husband’s side. She looked to him before looking back at me.

“Why are you asking about Rachel?” she asked.

“I’ve taken over her case. I want to find out what happened to her before someone else gets hurt.”

Nassir and Rana looked at each other. He exhaled heavily through his nose and looked away. Rana looked back at me, uncertainty etched across her face.

“A man from the police department visited us this afternoon,” she said, her eyebrows pressed together and her forehead furrowed. “He said the case was closed, that Robbie admitted killing Rachel.”

Thank you, Mike Bowers.

“That might be true, but we don’t know for sure,” I said. “We have to be positive so no one else gets hurt.”

Nassir’s throat bobbed. Redness formed around his eyes.

“Do you believe what they said about my daughter?” he asked, his voice cracking. “That she slept with this boy, that they did drugs?”

I ran my hand across my face, thinking my answer through.

“I loved Rachel,” I said, leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees. “She didn’t deserve what happened to her. That’s all I know.”

I don’t know if that was the right thing to say or not, but Nassir started pacing slowly, the muscles of his jaw protruding as he clenched his teeth. His nostrils flared with every exhalation. Rana stared at him for a moment, but then turned towards me.

“I’ll answer your questions,” she said. “Promise me you won’t hurt Rachel. Her memory, I mean. And if you find something bad, we don’t want to know about it.”

I nodded. A big part of me wanted to shut up right there. Interviewing someone after they lose a loved one is worse than pouring salt on old wounds; it’s like dipping them in hydrochloric acid. For what it was worth, I promised that I’d do my best. I paused for a moment, gathering my thoughts and looking at my feet so I wouldn’t have to meet Rana or Nassir’s eyes.

“How were things at home lately?” I asked a moment later. “With Rachel.”

My sister shrugged.

“She was growing up,” she said. “You know how that is.”

“That means a lot of different things for a lot of different people,” I said. “What do you mean?”

Rana looked at Nassir for a moment. He didn’t return the gaze.

“She was a teenager,” she said. “She wanted to go to her friends’ houses, she wanted to stay out later, she wanted us to stay out of her room. Things like that.”

“Did she ever get in trouble?” I asked. “At home or at school?”

Rana shrugged.

“She broke curfew,” she said. “And she got a speeding ticket last year.”

I nodded, hoping Rana would continue. She didn’t.

“Is there anything else?” I asked.

Nassir stopped pacing and leaned against the porch railing, shaking his head. Rana looked at her shoes.

“I was in her room two months ago,” she said. “I found a bag of something when I was putting clothes in her drawers. It was marijuana.”

Nassir’s shoulders dropped. Rana looked at him and then down at her feet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “I thought it’d be better if you didn’t know.”

“You should have told me,” he said, his voice low and soft. “We could have done something together.”

“I didn’t tell you because I knew how you’d react,” said Rana. “You’d want to send her away so she’d marry some boy she’s never even met. That’s not what she wanted.”

“At least she’d be alive,” he snapped. Nassir stopped speaking for a moment. Eventually, he shook his head. His voice was softer when he spoke again. It almost cracked. “She was a child, Rana. She didn’t know what she wanted. We could have protected her.”

“She needed guidance, not our protection,” said Rana. “We couldn’t hide her behind a veil. That isn’t right.”

Neither spoke again for a moment. I felt like a voyeur intruding upon someone else’s private life. I started to stand, but Rana put her hand on my knee, stopping me. She looked at Nassir.

“I’d like to talk to Ashraf by myself,” she said. “Is that okay?”

Nassir hesitated, but then nodded. He walked toward the front door. Before opening it, he looked back.

“You should have told me, Rana. No matter what. You should have told me.”

“I know I should have,” said Rana. “Now please go inside.”

Nassir dropped his head and did as Rana asked, leaving the two of us alone. My sister was a strong woman. She got that from my mother. My family had never faced the sort of discrimination African Americans faced in the deep South, but we weren’t welcomed with open arms by our community, either. Despite having a doctorate in English Literature from Cambridge, my mother couldn’t even get a job teaching High School Composition. To make ends meet, she worked two full–time jobs, one at a dry cleaners and the other at a janitorial service. Rana raised me while my mother was at work. It wasn’t how either of our childhoods should have been.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Rana nodded.

“I will be,” she said. “Now please, ask your questions, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

I took a notebook from my pocket and opened it to the first clean page. I took a deep breath before speaking.

“You found marijuana in her room,” I said eventually. “Did you ever find anything other than that?”

“No,” she said. “She said it wasn’t even hers. Some girl at school had given it to her to hide. The drug tests the school gave her always came back clean, so I believed her.”

“How about her friends? Did they ever get in trouble?”

Rana looked down and shrugged.

“I don’t know who her friends are anymore. That boy Robbie. She never even told us about him.”

“Do you know Alicia Weinstein?” I asked.

Rana looked wistfully at a Tudor–style home across the street.

“We used to be neighbors. She and Rachel played together every day when they were young, but her family moved a few years ago.”

“Do you know if the kids kept in touch?”

“They weren’t close anymore,” she said, shrugging. “At least not like they were. I guess they still saw each other at school, but Alicia hasn’t come over here in years.”

“How about a girl with curly red hair?” I asked. “Rachel had pictures of her in her locker.”

“Her name is Caitlin Long,” said Rana. “She and Rachel played tennis together. They were going to share a dorm in college. They even had the color scheme for their room picked out.”

I leaned forward and took a business card from my wallet. I handed it to Rana.

“Can you give her this?” I asked. “I’d like to talk to her.”

Rana took my card and nodded as I thought my next question through.

“This is going to sound strange, but I am coming from somewhere with this,” I said. “Did Rachel ever talk about vampires? Or a dance club in Plainfield? Or even someone named Azrael?”

Rana looked away from me and shook her head.

“She read those books, the ones Imam Habib talked about.”

Imam Habib was the leader of our mosque and had warned some of the young girls in our community against the Twilight series. I hadn’t read the books, but Hannah had. She liked them, but novels about vampires were definitely not Islam–approved.

“Was there anything more to it than books?”

Rana wrung her hands together, a pained expression on her face.

“You have to understand. I wanted her to fit in,” she said. “You don’t know how hard it is to be a teenage girl in this country, to see your classmates stare at you for being different. I do. I wanted her to find herself and be happy.”

“What did she do?” I asked. Rana paused before speaking.

“She and her friends wore black, they watched bad horror movies. It was nothing. If I had thought she was in trouble, I would have stepped in.”

“And you never got the sense that there was more to it than just black clothes?”

She looked away.

“Looking back, maybe. I don’t know,” she said. She looked at me. “Some of Rachel’s friends changed. Alicia was such a nice girl when she was growing up. She always smiled at me, always said hello. I saw her when I picked up Rachel at school a few months ago. She smiled and said hello, but it was superficial. It made me feel uncomfortable.”