Michael Hecht was charged with one count of arson and fourteen counts of murder. His state-appointed defense attorney tried to build a case on diminished capacity, but by the time the matter went to trial the attorney knew that he was trying to sell a sympathy verdict in what had become a landmark hate crime case. The jury deliberated for fourteen minutes. Michael Hecht was convicted in a Powell County Kentucky court and sentenced to death. He remains on death row to this day.
IN NEW YORK City, a flaming whiskey bottle was thrown through the front window of the 117th Street mosque during evening prayers. Several congregants suffered minor burns, and only the swift and combined actions of Azada, a teenage girl, and three of her friends, who grabbed fire extinguishers, prevented loss of life.
No one was arrested for the crime; however, witnesses saw a black male, approximately thirty-five, wearing a business suit, running from the scene seconds after they heard the sound of the window breaking.
IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA, four white males and one Hispanic were arrested as they emerged from the Al- Farooq Masjid mosque on Fourteenth Street. The young men had emptied two five-gallon cans of gasoline inside the building and had stopped to light a rock that had been wrapped in a gassoaked rag. Police cruisers, responding to a silent alarm triggered by the break-in, blocked the flight of the youths. All five were taken into custody. Fire department personnel worked with the caretakers of the mosque to clean up the building; however, early estimates were that it would cost forty thousand dollars to remove all traces of the gasoline and replace tapestries, books, and furniture damaged during the intrusion.
When detectives interviewed the boys, one of them admitted to having gotten the idea from the Internet. It was later determined that three of the five regularly followed forums and posts by the Goddess.
A week later the Catholic church attended by two of the boys was firebombed. No suspects have so far been identified.
Over the next month three mosques, two churches, and two synagogues were burned in Georgia.
WITHIN SIX HOURS of the Goddess’s “Fire purifies” post, arson-based hate crimes directed at Muslims rose nearly 4 percent. At the end of six weeks, taking into account retaliatory attacks that included arson, drive-by shootings, rapes, beatings, and bomb scares, the incidence of anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 39 percent. Corresponding hate crimes directed at Jews rose 26 percent, and hate crimes directed at Christians of various colors and denominations rose 24 percent. The total number of victims directly connected to these crimes, according to the Department of Justice, numbered 43 dead, 175 wounded.
The day that CNN broke the story and showed those statistics, the Goddess, using the name Enyo, posted this comment on over sixty social networks:
Chapter Thirteen
Whitechapel, London
December 17, 2:41 P.M. GMT
Benson Childe arranged to provide me with a set of Barrier credentials that would be a master key to all levels of the investigation. He also authorized me to carry my weapon, which was useful, since I was already packing the Beretta 92F.
“A constable will meet you downstairs with the ID cards and other documents, and then he’ll drive you back to the London, where you’ll liaise with Detective Sergeant Rebekkah Owlstone. Her team is coordinating the door- to-door interviews of the neighborhood.”
“Great.”
We were in his office and he poured a cup of tea into a cardboard container and handed it to me. “Temperature’s dropped out there. You’ll need this if you’re going to be pounding on doors.”
I thanked him, and Ghost and I went out into the December blast.
JUST OUTSIDE I spotted three constables standing by the open door of a police car. They all turned toward me and the closest, a beefy guy, asked, “Are you Captain Ledger?”
I began to say “yes” when I heard a metallic sound and then a growl as Ghost suddenly bristled and stopped, his muscles instantly tense.
It took my brain a half second to process the sound I’d heard, because it was incongruous.
The beefy cop smiled at me and pointed a pistol at my face. The sound had been him quietly racking the slide.
He was almost laughing as he said, “Happy Christmas from the Seven—”
I threw the hot tea in his face. If you’re going to ambush someone, don’t make a speech first. It’s a rookie mistake. He screamed as the scalding liquid struck him full in the eyes.
The guy I went for managed to bring his pistol up, but I’d planned for that and bashed his arm aside with my right as I drove the flat of my palm into his forehead. The gun exploded with a flat
I spun off him just as the window beside me exploded. Beef, half-blind and scalded, fired wildly in my direction, the bullets shattering windows and punching through the black paint of the police car. I rushed in and to one side, but he tracked me, probably only seeing shadows out of those eyes, but enough to swing the barrel toward my face. I came up outside his line of fire, took his gun hand in both of mine, and twisted sharply as I pivoted. In the dojo and in the movies the victim of a wristlock does a nice flip through the air. In the real world his wrist turns way too fast to act as a lever for his body, which means that the forearm bones explode inside his arm. His scream rose into the ultrasonic. I kicked Beef in the knee and as he canted sideways I kicked the other knee. He collapsed into a screaming pile of junk.
I tore my coat open and pulled my Beretta even while I dove for the front of the car. There were screams there, too, and the mean growl of a dog in mortal combat. I hit the hood on one hip and skidded across, landing on the far side and bringing the gun down.
“Off! Off!” I yelled, but Ghost was already backing off. His white muzzle was bright red with blood, most of it from the attacker’s throat. Ghost looked at me with eyes that had gone from those of a pet and companion to those of a hunter-killer from ancient times. The primitive killer in me met the eyes of the predator wolf in him, and for a moment there was a shared awareness. Not adversaries. Members of a pack. The level of understanding that passed between us could never be taught.
