“If they had a lock of her hair, they had her,” her brother interrupts.
“Maybe they did,” I grant, then give Roberta and Daryl a look.“But as we debated while reviewing the bloody towels at Sabera’s resort hideout—maybe one hammer later, they didn’t.”
Aliah appears horrified, Roberta impressed.
“They tried to squeeze her for this mystery information,” Detective Marc fills in skeptically.“But somehow a twenty-three-year-old, slightly built female got the upper hand, killed both her captors, then made her escape?”
Roberta punches him again.“Give me a hammer right now and I’ll show you how it can be done.”
Wisely, her brother doesn’t take her up on that offer.
“Tracks with everything we saw at the resort,” Daryl agrees with me.“The bloody scarf—we wondered if she was the victim or the perpetrator.Maybe she was both.Kidnapped and assaulted, but able to escape.She couldn’t very well return home, though—not with people looking for her.”
“But she could reach out to her husband.Have you had a chance to subpoena Sabera’s phone records yet?”I ask Detective Marc.“To see who she’s called since she’s gone missing?”
“You mean in the eight hours since we last spoke?Uh, no.Courts, not to mention due process, take a more leisurely approach to these things.However”—he skewers me with a look—“we could access Isaad Ahmadi’s phone.As you imagine, there are dozens of calls from him to her, mostly short, just enough time to leave a message.”
“Him trying to contact Sabera,” Daryl grunts.“Get her to come home.”
“Maybe.”Detective Marc eyes us thoughtfully.“I’ve onlyhad a moment to glance at the call logs—” His voice breaks off abruptly.“Shit, you might be right about something.”He pulls out his cell phone, quickly scrolls through a few screens, nods slightly.
“All right.”The detective’s found what he was looking for.“It’s not the number as much as the pattern.Sabera has been missing approximately three weeks, yes?Looking at that timeline, first couple of days, there’s a flurry of calls from Isaad’s phone to hers.Say, a husband desperately trying to reach his wife.But then the activity suddenly drops to two calls a day, almost like clockwork.You could argue, a routine check-in.”
“He found Sabera.”Roberta does the honors.“Knew she was safe enough.”
“Until three days ago, when suddenly, the call activity spikes again, reaching a near frantic level during the thirty-six hours before Isaad receives the mystery package and takes off.”Detective Marc glances.“One interpretation could be that within that timeframe, things went south—he could no longer reach Sabera.Hence his renewed intensity.Then the box arrives with her hair plus the mystery note, and off he goes to meet with whomever sent the message.”
“She was discovered,” Aliah breathes.“Sabera had hidden away to stay safe.But they found her, these men who want what she has.They took her.But then…” Aliah frowns.“She must not have given them what they needed?So they lured out Isaad instead?Because he might know something?”
“Or,” Detective Marc considers out loud, “to up the stakes.If you can’t make someone talk by hurting them, next best option is to hurt someone they love.”
Aliah shivers, the rest of the room falling silent.
I’m frowning.I can both see and not see all of this.“It feels to me we’re getting somewhere,” I allow slowly.“First off, we can be pretty sure Sabera holds the secret to gaining something extremely valuable.Other people clearly know and somehow followed her to Tucson.”I eye Aliah.“A city they didn’t even know would be their future home?”
She shrugs.
I decide to let that go for now.“Let’s just fast-forward to she was discovered.But she must’ve seen something first—or someone—that spooked her enough to go into hiding.Unfortunately, she was found out.The two men, who we know are from Afghanistan…”
Nods around the room.
“Tried to get the secret out of her.Failing that, they lured out Isaad.And then… somehow those two guys end up dead.Sabera not only walks away, but also makes it all the way back to the resort.While Isaad doesn’t?He gets left behind to now be tortured by… other Afghan men, South African men, evil men?This… this is where it starts to fall apart for me again.”
Detective Marc nods.“Yeah, that scenario gets messy fast.Unless there’s a third party we have yet to identify.Which at this stage of the game, why not?It’s gonna take some time to thoroughly analyze Isaad’s call logs.He was a busy guy.Tons of calls, dozens of recurring numbers to reverse search, including ones in DC and Texas.Hadn’t this family just gotten here?Because Isaad seems well networked for a newbie.”
“They had only recently arrived in Tucson,” Aliah corrects.“They have been in the US for nearly a year, the past eight months at a base in Texas.Which may explain many of the Texas numbers.”
“There’s another key time period to analyze as well.”I gesture to Aliah.“Sabera disappeared once before, for three days, right?I’d be curious who Isaad was calling then, and are there any correlations between those numbers and the ones he’s been dialing for the past few weeks.”
“Sabera vanished once before?”Detective Marc gives us a look.
“It was nothing.”Aliah waves a hand.“She returned; all was well.”Then as the detective continues to glower, she adds, “I will get you the dates.”
“All right.”I try to pull this together in my head.“Sabera is the key.Certain people with violent tendencies are clearly willing to do most anything to get their hands on her.”
This earns me a round of nods.I warm to my subject.
“But just to be interesting, Sabera is also searching.Reaching out to retired military veterans with contacts in Afghanistan.Her two afternoons a week when she takes off on some unknown errand.Her absence after seeing you that afternoon, Aliah, when she came to your store all upset.If she’s the one who’s supposedly in the know, what’s she looking for?”
