I felt Miranda move—was it a sob, or a chuckle?—and heard her snuffle, and I went on. “But hours passed, and she didn’t do it. I knew it was still coming, and the suspense was killing me. So finally, just before bedtime, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I found the biggest bar of Ivory soap we had, and I crammed it into my mouth and I rubbed it all over my tongue and the roof of my mouth, and I scraped it back and forth across all my teeth. By the time I was done, I’d whittled about half of that bar into my mouth, and I was gagging from the taste.”
“Good story,” Miranda said, disengaging and stepping back so she could look at me. “And there’s a point, too, I’m guessing?”
“Two weeks later, one of my older cousins was visiting, and said the f-word. My mother washed out his mouth on the spot, but all she did was rub the soap back and forth across his lips a couple times, like ChapStick. My point is, don’t go overboard on the self-punishment. Quitting would be the worst thing you could do. Just . . . go and sin no more.”
Smiling through her tears, Miranda pressed her hands together, as if in prayer, and gave the slightest, sweetest bow of her head. “No more,” she said. “Never, never, never.”
I believed she was telling the truth.
For both our sakes, I hoped she was.
CHAPTER 29
“SOMEONE’S ON LINE ONE FOR YOU,” PEGGY ANNOUNCED curtly when I picked up the phone. “Says it’s important, but he won’t give his name.”
I felt a bloom of sweat on my scalp, and my mental alarms went nuts, all of them shrieking at two hundred decibels. “Does it sound like Satterfield?”
“How would I know what he sounds like? I’ve never talked to him. Never heard him interviewed.”
“Sorry. Stupid question.”
“But just guessing? I’d say he sounds young and scared, not middle-aged and murderous.”
“Okay, I’ll take it. And Peggy?”
“Yes?”
“I know I’ve been acting strange. I’m really sorry. Please try”—I almost said “not to take it personally,” but that seemed like a surefire prelude to an epic case of foot-in-mouth disease—“to bear with me a little longer. Till this Satterfield storm blows over.”
There was a pause. “I’ve borne with you for nearly twenty-five years now,” she said. “I’d say that’s a pretty good testament to my patience.”
“Touché,” I said, feeling the unaccustomed sensation of a smile twitching at my lips.
I pressed the blinking button for line 1. “Hello, this is Dr. Bill Brockton. How can I help you?”
“Dr. Brockton?” Peggy was right, though if anything, she’d erred on the side of understatement. My caller sounded very young—the age of my grandsons, perhaps—and extremely scared. “The Dr. Brockton who’s the head of the Body Farm?”
“That’s me,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“My name is Hassim,” he said. “I met you the other day? When you came to the mosque?”
My nervousness vanished, replaced by a sort of electric hum of hope. “Hello, Hassim. Nice to hear from you. I hope I didn’t cause any trouble by showing up uninvited.”
“No, sir. I mean, people are pretty nervous these days, with all the terrible things being said about Muslims.” His voice—no discernible accent, so perhaps, like Mona, he, too, was the American-born child of immigrant parents—sounded less fearful now; more weary, perhaps, with a hint of bitterness.
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “I’d be nervous, too. Not everyone feels that way. I certainly don’t.”
“No, sir, I didn’t think you did. I remembered you when you came to the mosque. You talked at our high school last year. The STEM Academy. The new magnet school in the old L&N train depot.”
“Y’all were a good group,” I said, although the truth was, I didn’t actually remember them. School groups tend to blur together, at least if you talk to a hundred a year. But I did remember liking the setting: a magnificent old railway station, converted into a school for science nerds. “What’s on your mind, Hassim?”
“I’m not supposed to be calling you. The imam said we should keep the community’s business to ourselves. But it doesn’t seem right, not to help . . .” He trailed off.
“Not to help identify someone who was killed?” I said it as gently as I could. “So his family won’t have to keep wondering what happened to him? Never knowing, always wondering?”
“Yes, sir. I started thinking about my parents, and how upset they’d be if I disappeared. And what it would be like for them, if they never knew . . . that I . . .”
“Who do you think it might be, Hassim? And how do I find his parents?”
“His name is Shafiq. Shafiq Mustafah. His parents are in Egypt. Cairo, I think. He was here on a student visa, studying at UT. Engineering or computer science—I’m not sure which. But he had a problem with his passport.”
“What kind of problem, Hassim?”
“His parents were dissidents—they were part of the pro-democracy protests a few years ago, in the Arab Spring—and when the military took control, they got arrested, and Shafiq’s passport got canceled.”
I thought—or hoped—I was following him. “You’re saying his passport got revoked, or canceled, by the Egyptian government? Because his parents were pro-democracy dissidents?”
“Yes, sir. At least, that’s what I think happened.”