TIME
Jack pulled up in front of the bungalow on Edinburgh Avenue just north of Melrose. Like all the houses on the street, this one was well-tended. The front yard was small, but the porch light revealed a well-cut lawn and a flower-lined walkway that serpentined through the grass up to the porch. The door itself was a massive slab of well-varnished oak. Jack rapped on it with his knuckles.
Lights were already on inside, shining through the curtained windows to the left of the door. Jack saw one of the curtains draw back for a moment, then fall into place. Beyond the thick door something rattled, then the door opened a bit, and a tall, thin man stared out at him uncertainly.
“Yes?”
Jack held up his identification. “Mr. Ghulam Meraj Khalid? My name is Jack Bauer. I’m with the State Department. Can I have a word with you?”
Khalid managed to look frightened, annoyed, and accommodating all at once. He stepped back and pulled the door open wide. “Um, State Department, of course, come in, come in.”
Jack smiled and entered onto hardwood floors as well-maintained as the yard out front. There was not much in the way of furniture — a simple couch, a chair, a wooden dining table with a clean-lined credenza beside it. A flat-screen television hung on the wall across from the couch and the chair. It was on, broadcasting a rerun of
“Please, sit,” Khalid said, indicating the couch. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thanks,” Jack said, though he did sit down. He looked at Ghulam Meraj Khalid as the other man lowered himself into the chair. Khalid was lean, the kind of lean that was always genetic. His nose was hooked, and his hair was thinning. He reminded Jack vaguely of the Goon from an old
“This is about Abu Mousa,” Khalid said.
“What makes you say that?” Jack asked.
Khalid laughed. “I hope it’s about that! What else have I done?”
“You tell me,” Jack said casually.
Khalid laughed again, nervously. “Nothing. It’s just you’re the third or fourth police officer or whatever to talk to me about this. At least this time I get to answer questions here. Or…?” Khalid looked toward the door as though other men might appear to escort him out.
“Here’s fine,” Jack said. His demeanor was casual, almost bored, but he was assessing the other man carefully. Khalid was appropriately nervous, but no more than one could expect from a man being questioned by the Federal government. “So first, your full name is Ghulam Meraj Khalid, yes?”
The man nodded. “You can call me Gary.”
“And how are you involved with Abu Mousa?”
Gary said, “I’m not. Involved with him, I mean. I know all three of those guys a little, but only through my job.”
“You work with them?” Jack asked.
Gary looked confused. “No. I’m a mailman. I
mean, mail carrier, that’s what they tell us to say these days. A U.S. postal worker. I figured you’d know that already.”
Jack did. He’d read Khalid’s file. But the simplest way to trip someone up was to play dumb and ask every question under the sun.
“They are on my route,” Gary continued. “I pretty much know them as much as I know anyone on my route.”
Jack smiled charmingly. “So we’ll find your fingerprints in everyone’s house?”
Khalid blushed. Jack wondered if he might find Khalid’s prints in the homes of a housewife or two. “Well, I don’t really know them that well. But they’re Muslims, too, you know? I pray five times a day, and sometimes they invited me in to pray in their house. It’s a little more convenient than the back of the truck.”
“How often did you pray with them?”
Khalid shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Once or twice a month, I guess. You know, if they’re home, if they see me, if they invite me in, I say yes. It didn’t happen all that much.”
“But they were home sometimes during the day. What do they do for a living?”
Gary the mailman shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard one of them, not Mousa, one of the other guys, talking about computers once, but mostly we just prayed, talked a little, then I went on my route.”
“You knew Mousa the best,” Jack said.
Gary tilted his chin. “I don’t… I guess. Why?”
“You just said, ‘not Mousa, one of the others.’ You sound familiar with him.”
Gary nodded. “I guess so. He was the most talkative. The friendliest.”
“How long have you been a mailman?”
“Seven years. I’ve been in the U.S. for almost twelve,” he added with a smile. “Like I said, I’ve had this conversation three or four times already. I figured that was your next question.”
“You’re like an expert,” Jack agreed. “What are your politics?”
Gary looked confused. “My politics? I… hmm, what do you mean? Are you asking me how I vote? Does that matter here?”
Jack reassured him. “No, not really. I don’t mean your politics here. I mean your politics back home. Pakistan.”
Gary calmed noticeably. “Oh, that. Yeah, I left because of politics. Look, I don’t know if this gets me into trouble or not, but I came here because I didn’t like what was happening in Pakistan back then. Benazir Bhutto got elected. They made her Prime Minister! I didn’t want to be in that country.”
“Was it Bhutto herself? Or the fact that she was a woman? You don’t like women?”
Gary grinned. He did have an infectious smile. “Oh, I like women well enough, you know? But there’s a place for everything. I’m not sure a woman’s place is in charge.”
Jack laughed. “So you came here? Women here have more freedom than—”
Gary interrupted. “No, yeah, that’s what they say here. I mean, that’s part of the propaganda, right? But no one here’s dumb enough to elect a woman.”
Jack’s mobile phone rang, and he saw Driscoll’s number appear on the screen. “Sorry,” he said, and answered.
“Bauer, it’s Harry,” Driscoll said. “This case is getting stranger all the time. I got a lead on the plastic explosives. Coming?”
“Yes,” Jack said. He stood up and shook Gary Khalid’s hand. “Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
The sirens had faded. Carianne had gone in the ambulance as it rushed Aaron to the hospital. They were going to try to save him. Don had said he would follow behind in the car. But first, he had a quick chore to do.
Don Biehn, police officer and caretaker of his household, owned several guns but kept them secured in a gun safe. Only he knew the combination. If he’d opened it, he would have found inside a Heckler & Koch.40 caliber semi-automatic, a Kimber Custom II.45 caliber, and a Smith & Wesson.38 caliber six-shot revolver. All of them were fine weapons that had seen a lot of use in his practice shooting.
But Don didn’t go to that safe. Instead, he went to the garage and got his ladder. Dragging it over to the tall, do-it-yourself white cabinets he had built, he climbed the ladder so that he could reach the top of the shelves. There was dust everywhere, on and around old boxes they had never opened from their last move, laid thickly over two antique-looking blue lamps that Carianne insisted on keeping, and a box containing a fondue set they had received as a wedding gift nineteen years ago, but never opened.
Don pushed these useless artifacts aside until he found a small box with the words “Old Lecture Notes” scribbled in black marker. He pulled it out, sneezing at the dust, and rested it on the flat top of the ladder. The box top slid off easily enough. Don dug through the piles of bent and yellowed paper from his days at Cal State University Northridge. Beneath them lay a rolled-up piece of canvas — right where he’d stashed it seven or eight years earlier. Dan unrolled the canvas, and a Taurus 92F semiautomatic fell into his hand.
