Javier spoke first. “I know you care about what happened to this kid, but you’ve got to have strong evidence to say something like that.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve got a feeling you’ve been investigating this on your own. Maybe you should start talking.”
CHAPTER
25
JAVIER WAITED WITH McBride for Laura to explain. When in the hell had she reached this conclusion? She hadn’t said a word about it to him.
She sat up straighter and looked from him to McBride. “You should know that I won’t divulge my sources, so don’t even ask.”
McBride’s gaze grew hard. “I could subpoena that information under federal law, and the state’s journalism shield law wouldn’t protect you. You’d be forced by the court to divulge your sources or face prison time.”
She nodded. “It wouldn’t do you any good. I’d choose prison.”
The two of them sat in silence, their gazes locked, and Javier knew they both meant what they’d said, the tension between them seeming to fill the room.
It was McBride who blinked. “I don’t want to go that route. Just be sure you don’t impede our investigation or give the wrong information to the wrong person. Then I might not have a choice.”
“I understand.” She excused herself and went to get her notebook from her office, then sat beside Javier again and glanced through what she’d written. “I reviewed all the available documents on Ali Al Zahrani, and I discovered that he could not have made those incriminating Internet searches.”
“Why do you say that?” McBride asked. “They were on his computer. They all originated at his IP address. No other prints were found on his keyboard or his computer.”
“I’m aware of all of that. Just hear me out.” Laura began to explain. “Ali worked at his uncle’s halal grocery store after class every weekday afternoon except Fridays and all day on the weekends. His uncle says he was very dedicated and never missed a day. He also said Ali didn’t leave during his shifts. The Internet searches began abruptly two months ago. They all originated from his home IP address, but here’s the problem. They all occurred during hours when he was known to be at work—never on Fridays when the store is closed and never on weekends when his parents were home.”
That
“Are you sure?” There was a note of doubt in McBride’s voice.
“I went through the documents four times, checked each and every search. But there’s more.” She looked at her notes. “The terrorism-related searches were all saved in a browser under a different user identity on his computer. Investigators probably think that serves to incriminate him because it looks like he was trying to hide his activity from his parents. But what if someone was trying to hide those searches from
“You got any proof of that?” McBride asked.
“No,” she admitted. “But stay with me for a minute, okay?”
“I’m listening.”
As Laura went on, Javier felt himself growing more impressed with her intel abilities. None of the evidence she presented was the obvious sort that would have jumped out at investigators. It required some thought. Like the fact that the kid’s browser had recorded searches pertaining only to explosives, jihad, and terrorism—no T&A, no music, no sports, nothing about Laura or Al-Nassar. And the fact that Ali had visited some of the sites for only a handful of seconds—just long enough for the page to load—before he’d apparently moved on.
“I read fast,” Laura said, “but even I can’t absorb the content of a web page in a single glance.”
McBride was still playing devil’s advocate, but it was clear to Javier that he saw where she was going with this. “Maybe he was downloading the pages to a flash drive that we haven’t found. Or maybe he was printing them. There could easily be a logical explanation.”
“If you find one, let me know.” Laura looked down at her notes again. “As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either his uncle is lying and Ali wasn’t at the store when he was supposed to be, or someone else was using his computer during hours when no one in the family was home, creating an Internet history to make him seem guilty.”
“You’re forgetting that the explosives were found in his car, along with his body,” McBride added.
“True.” She frowned and seemed to mull this over. “What if that setup was just another part of the plot to leave the blame at Ali’s feet? Investigators found no trace of explosives at the Al Zahrani home. If he’d actually built the bomb, wouldn’t they have found
The hair stood up on Javier’s neck, his instincts telling him she was right. “What you’re saying is that the kid might not have had anything to do with this.”
Laura nodded. “When I realized that he couldn’t have been responsible for those Internet searches, I began to wonder. Now that we have Edwards here, I’m almost certain.”
“I don’t often find myself in the position of defending the FBI,” McBride said, “but don’t you think they’ve checked into some of this?”
“I have no idea.” Laura shrugged. “Why would they? A VBIED goes off outside the newspaper near my window a short time after Al-Nassar called on his followers to kill me. A young Muslim man is found in the car, making the blast look like a suicide bombing. The suspect’s computer reveals a browsing history of do-it-yourself bomb and terrorism sites. In other words, investigators found
McBride seemed to consider this.
Laura went on. “They have a dead body, a car packed with explosives, and these Internet searches. But they don’t know where the ANFO was mixed. They can’t find any ties between Ali and any known terrorist elements. They can’t explain why he was shot before the bomb went off or find the man who killed him and detonated the explosives. They’re ignoring the missing and contradictory evidence because the rest of it fits together so nicely.”
Javier’s gaze dropped from Laura to the photo of the man he’d killed yesterday, Laura’s theory opening up all kinds of new possibilities. “Maybe this has nothing to do with Al-Nassar at all.”
For a moment, there was silence.
McBride chuckled. “I can’t wait to see Agent Petras’s face when I go over this with him. I can’t stand that son of a bitch.”
Neither could Javier. “That makes two of us, bro.”
“So you’ll take this to the task force?” Laura asked.
“You’ve painted a compelling picture. I’m impressed. Yesterday’s shooting adds weight to your theory. You bet I’m taking it to the task force.”
“Do you think they’ll listen?”
McBride grinned. “I’m the chief deputy U.S. Marshal for the Colorado territory. They have no choice
THE MEETING WITH Zach had left Laura on edge. It wasn’t just the revelation that a man she’d exposed five years ago had tried to kill Javier and might have been behind the plot to kill her, too. It was also the investigation of Ali Al Zahrani. Her mind kept drifting back to the boy—and the horrible thought that he might have been murdered just to serve as a kind of decoy.
She did her best to focus on her work, answering a few e-mails from Tom and Syd and reviewing her questions for her interview with the regional VA director. The interview itself turned out to be as unrevealing as it was brief. She’d just hung up the phone when Javier came up behind her, his big hands resting on her
