Qasim only gave me a sad look, as though I had personally disappointed him, and had failed in raising my daughter, somehow. Inside the mosque, the last call to prayer rose, and he turned to go, but I wouldn’t let him. “Tell me,” I said, holding him back by the wrist. He didn’t want to argue, and perhaps my hold on him was too strong, because he gave a whimper.
An old man I hadn’t noticed before appeared suddenly before me. It was the imam. He had dark hair, a carefully trimmed beard, the same green eyes as Qasim. He started quoting the Qur’an to me. (“Tell the believing women not to reveal their adornment except for that which is apparent.”) I counter-quoted. (“Tell the believing men to avert their gaze.”) He claimed veiling was required by tradition; I insisted that tradition tells us only the Prophet’s wives covered. He warned that women ought not to tempt men in the mosque; I mocked the men who would be so easily distracted from their worship. Finally, he said he had to go inside, that we could discuss this some other time, because right now he had a prayer to lead.
I lit a fresh cigarette and waited until Maryam and the girls came out. In the car on the way back, I told my wife what happened, but instead of taking my side, she complained that I had embarrassed her in front of the congregation. I was stunned. “But you don’t even know these people,” I said. “And I’m your husband.”
“I know Mrs. Hammadi, but you just had to start—”
“Okay, but that’s it. You don’t know anyone else.”
“—arguing with the imam like you know better than him.”
“Of course, I know better. I don’t need him to tell me right from wrong.”
“That skirt was too sheer, I told Nora before we—”
“Oh, no, no, no. Don’t make this to be her fault. You’re the one who—”
“—left the house. Why doesn’t she ever listen to me?”
“—dragged us all out here. And for what?”
In the backseat, Nora put on her headphones and stared out of the window. My wife and I continued bickering for a while, dredging up old arguments and using them against each other, but when I turned onto the 62, I was struck silent by the view. It was a cold, clear day in December, and there was snow on the peaks of the Little San Bernardino Mountains. The valley was a blanket of high grass and mesquite and yucca, slowly warming up under the morning sun, and after the road dipped and rose and turned, we reached the first grove of Joshua trees. How hard the believers make it to get into heaven, I thought, when they have all this right here.
Coleman
I remember this case well. It was the first homicide I investigated after I transferred here from Washington, D.C., in the spring of 2014. I’m from New York, originally, but D.C. is where I grew up, where I went to school, and where I worked for fifteen years, so it was a difficult move for me. Even more so for Miles. I could see it in his eyes when we asked him about his day while we ate dinner. He’d jab at his potatoes with a fork, answer our questions with yes or no, or sometimes just a shrug, then lock himself in his room to play video games. Miles used to be a sweet kid, you could even say a mama’s boy, but he wouldn’t let me kiss him good night anymore. Moving away from home is hard on a kid, I knew that, but it’s not as if it didn’t happen every day in this country. Hell, in the world. How did other people do it? That’s what I wanted to know.
It wasn’t even my idea to move out here, to the middle of the desert. It was Ray’s, after he was offered district manager at Enterprise in Palm Springs. He’d waited so long for a promotion, watched so many others with less experience get ahead, that he knew if he didn’t take this offer, another one might not come along. And it worked out well for him—he made more money, we could afford a bigger house, there was no snow to shovel in the winter, he could root for the Lakers. You would think he would’ve taken it a little easy, being manager and all, but he worked even harder. Every night, he studied his sales statements, going down each column with a little ruler so he wouldn’t miss a zero or a comma. Ray has always been comfortable with numbers; they’ve never disappointed him, never held any mystery or complication. Sometimes, going through his sales, he talked to himself.
Meanwhile, Miles was in his room, sulking.
So my work came as a relief to me. I don’t mean that it was pleasant. Having to witness a family’s grief is never pleasant, but I had some experience with it. I could compartmentalize it. I could try to solve the case, give the family some closure, even if I didn’t have much to work with at first. No usable tire marks. No debris from the vehicle. No surveillance cameras anywhere near that intersection. The only witness a jogger who found the body after the impact. Autopsy didn’t turn up any drugs or alcohol. The victim had no money troubles or history of gambling, so he seemed like a pretty boring guy—at least, until I went through some of the texts on his cell phone, but even those didn’t add up to a lead. My hopes were pinned on three microscopic paint chips that CSU recovered from the victim’s clothing. That’s it. That’s all I had.
Which meant I had to talk to Murphy. I didn’t have any complaints about his work, not exactly, it’s just that the way he went about it made me a little uncomfortable. He was used to doing things a certain way. He’d been in the Crime Lab for something like forty years. He could’ve retired if he wanted to, but instead there he was, week in, week out, in a white lab coat with his name embroidered on the breast pocket like a real doctor. And I couldn’t say anything about it because I knew how it would play with the sergeant—like I couldn’t take the heat or like I was asking for special treatment. I was still new at the station. Murphy’s been here since Noah built his ark.
Anyway, I went to see Murphy about the paint chips. His office had a huge window, so he got a lot of natural light for his cactuses. Or cacti, Murphy called them. The potted plants sat on opposite ends of a polished wood shelf, and in between there was a stereo system that played classical music at low volume. Framed art posters hung on the far wall. In the corner, he had a little coffee station, with an espresso machine, cups, saucers, napkins. And he also had a hot plate, which of course was a fire hazard, but, like I said, he’s been here forty years. Really, he treated the place more like a living room than an office. The door was open, but I gave a little knock. “Murphy. You got an update for me?”
“Erica!” he said with a smile. He always called me by my first name, which I wasn’t used to, and which made me pause.
“Anything on those paint chips you sent out to San Bernardino?”
“They usually take a few days. Would you like some coffee?”
“I just had some, thanks. Can you just check if they’re back?”
“Red is a great color on you,” he said with a glance at my chest. Immediately, I regretted leaving my jacket at my desk.
“Can you check?”
“Remind me the name?”
“Guerraoui. Hit-and-run on April 28.”
He finally turned back to his computer and looked for the report. “You’re in luck,” he said. “They just posted it in this morning. FTIR says the paint is actually silver.”
“Silver?”
“Silver. Looks like it came from a vehicle manufactured by Ford between 1992 and 1998.”
“Any idea on the model?”
“Taurus, Crown Vic, Mustang, Explorer. Take your pick.” The printer on his desk whirred as the report came out. He handed it to me. “They used it all over the place.”
“I thought you said I was in luck.”
“Could be worse.”
I didn’t see how. The day before, I’d asked Sergeant Vasco for a recanvass, but he said he couldn’t spare any deputies at the moment. This isn’t Metro P.D., he said, we don’t have the same resources here. It was like he was testing me, trying to see if I could close this case without help from his uniforms, and the strange thing is that the hurdles he put up made me even more committed. I didn’t have to prove myself to someone like him, not with my record at Metro, and yet that’s exactly what I found myself doing.