Fatal Convictions (19 page)

52

Alex waited in the foyer as the church members deliberated. Anyone who was not on the current membership roll—including all members of the press—suffered the same fate. When Alex declined to answer questions from the reporters and told them the meeting could last an hour, they decided to leave. Alex promised to call them when he found out the results of the vote.

Despite receiving many accolades about the sermon from the regular church members, Alex was pessimistic about the vote. Harry Dent and his cohorts had invited people to church who hadn’t darkened the doors for two years. They were undoubtedly planning to vote Alex out.

Alex thanked Nara for coming and was surprised when she told him that she was going to wait it out with him. After most of the visitors left, Alex and Nara found a seat on the steps at one end of the foyer.

“You want anything to drink?” Nara asked. “I can run to the store. This meeting might take a while.”

“Democracy at work,” Alex said.

“Only in America do you determine God’s will by majority vote.”

“Good point,” Alex said. He was too emotionally drained to argue. Preaching wasn’t easy when your job was on the line.

“That was a good message,” Nara said. She hesitated, clearly wanting to say something more. “I’ve been pretty pushy—especially in court on Friday.” She turned to him, then added, “I think I might have judged you too swiftly.”

The admission surprised Alex. His mind was still on the proceedings in the sanctuary, but when he looked at Nara, he was struck by the sincerity in her eyes.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “If I was in your shoes and it was my grandmother’s preliminary hearing, I probably would have fired my lawyer on the spot.”

“I can do that?” Nara asked.

Alex smiled. He liked that about Nara—the smart-aleck attitude. “Fortunately for me, you most certainly cannot.”

“I’ll try to behave myself from now on.”

“Promises, promises.”

“No, really.”

Alex turned serious. “For what it’s worth, Nara, you’ve already done a lot to help your father’s case.”

Nara thought about this for a moment, as if weighing how much she should share. She glanced around the foyer to make sure nobody was within earshot. “I know you’re focused on the vote right now, and you should be. But when this is over, we need to sit down with my father and have a very frank discussion. You need to ask him about the Islamic Brotherhood in the United States and who provides their funding.”

Alex looked at her, measuring the earnestness in her eyes.

“It will all go back to Hezbollah, Alex. Beheading women. Terrorizing Americans. These honor killings have Hezbollah fingerprints all over them. I think they’re using the Islamic Brotherhood as a conduit.”

* * *

When Harry Dent came to fetch Alex, the look on his face said the news was glum. Whether it was glum for Alex or glum for Harry, Alex couldn’t tell. Harry led Alex to the front of the church and launched into a little speech about how much everyone in the church appreciated Alex’s ministry. Alex felt like he was listening to his own ministerial eulogy.

“Not one person in this church has anything against you personally,” Harry said, oozing with hypocrisy. “We all think—including anybody who voted against you—that you’ve done an
excellent
job.”

When Harry looked out over the congregation, Ramona was circling her hand—
move it along.
Harry took the hint.

“By a vote of seventy-eight to seventy-six, South Norfolk Community Church has voted to keep you as our pastor.”

There was a smattering of applause, and it surprised Alex when he felt his knees buckle a little. He had expected the worst. Instead, Ramona was beaming.

Alex felt himself choking up. He had made a decision earlier in the week about what to do next, though he was suddenly having second thoughts about it. But he didn’t trust himself to think clearly under these circumstances, so he decided to stick with the original plan.

“That means more to me than I can ever say,” Alex began. “It really does.” He swallowed, and his voice became a little hoarse. “I never meant to hurt this church or have my law practice become a distraction. But I thought it was critical that I allow this vote to proceed so that all of you could define the type of church you want this to be. And I’ve never been more proud of you than I am right now.”

A few folks started clapping, but Alex held up his hand. As he looked around the sanctuary, memories flooded him. The members he had visited in the hospital. The ones he hugged every Sunday morning. Ramona and her friends. His deacons.

“Having said that, I must also say that I believe it’s in the best interest of South Norfolk Community Church for me to step down, at least until this case is over.” He paused, and the gasps were audible. Somebody in the back shouted, “No!”

“If I win this case and prove the innocence of Khalid Mobassar, I hope that you might consider taking me back. The church has already proven that it values grace and forgiveness over legalism, and that may be the most important verdict to come out of this whole mess.”

He thanked the members profusely and walked down the aisle to vigorous applause.

53

Shannon Reese got to work early Monday morning, outlining the questions she intended to ask witnesses during her interviews later that week. Nara could worry about the media, and Alex could worry about the big picture, but Shannon believed that cases were won or lost in the trenches. On the details. And the most important details in every case were the ones surrounding the dollar signs. Follow the money, and you will find the culprit.

After a few hours at the office, Shannon met Khalid Mobassar at the Islamic Learning Center. He introduced her to the mosque’s bookkeeper—an elderly woman named Riham El-Ashi—who had made herself available for a couple of hours of questioning.

Riham was soft-spoken, petite, and no-nonsense—the type of person who would make a credible witness at trial. Shannon talked to Riham in her office, where the bookkeeper sat hunched over her computer, checking her spreadsheets for answers to Shannon’s detailed questions. When she did so, Riham moved her face so close to the screen that Shannon suspected the bookkeeper needed new glasses.

Riham seemed embarrassed by the financial details that had emerged during the investigation. She was unquestionably loyal to Khalid and felt that her own negligence had somehow exacerbated the evidence against him.

Riham explained the concept of zakah, one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith, requiring true believers to give a percentage of their income to the mosque and the poor. Though the Qur’an did not specify an amount, Khalid had always taught that Muslims should give no less than 2.5 percent.

Donations were made through a secure donation box located at the back of the mosque. According to Riham, most of the donations came by check, although about 10 percent came in the form of cash. Each night, one of the imams would place the donations from the box in a small leather zip bag, which was then locked in a safe. Only the imams had access to the donation box. When Shannon asked, Riham also listed the three other leaders in the mosque, including Fatih Mahdi, who had access to the safe.

Each morning, Riham pulled the money from the safe, counted the checks and cash, stamped the back “For deposit only,” and entered the amounts on a ledger for each contributor. The cash and checks would then go back in the safe until Riham made the weekly deposit into the mosque’s operating account.

The mosque typically took in more than $20,000 a week. But during the three weeks prior to the murder of Ja’dah Mahdi, the deposits had been approximately half that amount, and the cash had fallen from more than $2,000 a week to less than a thousand.

After Khalid’s arrest, Riham had discovered that someone had deposited nearly $30,000 over the course of three weeks into the mosque’s building fund, using a deposit stamp for that account. Just before Ja’dah Mahdi’s murder, $20,000 had been wired from that account to an account in Beirut, Lebanon, which had since been closed.

The name of the account holder in Beirut was not familiar to Riham. The wire had been authorized pursuant to an online transaction. The person authorizing the wire had signed in under the user name and password assigned to Khalid Mobassar.

“How many people have online access to the accounts?” Shannon asked.

“Only the three imams. But the bank says that the user sign-in was for Khalid.”

Shannon had already questioned Khalid about the way he stored his passwords. He had them all in a single document on his computer named “FAQs” that was not password protected.

“How did you communicate the user names and passwords to the imams?” Shannon asked.

“By e-mail.”

Shannon liked it. Another possible leak.

“Did anybody have access to Mr. Mobassar’s e-mail or computer?”

“You should probably ask him,” Riham said. “But I do know of one assistant who helps all the imams with their scheduling and other administrative tasks.”

“I talked to him,” Shannon said. “Khalid had not given him access to the computer.”

Still, the commonwealth’s case was not airtight. Somebody could have gone on Khalid’s computer when he wasn’t looking or hacked into his e-mail or even hacked into Riham’s e-mail. Shannon wasn’t trying to blow up the commonwealth’s financial case. She just needed to sow a few seeds of reasonable doubt.

But even if she could poke holes in the financial evidence, there was still the text message ordering the killings. And the return text message from the killer. And the search for the Sandbridge property listings. And the conversation between Khalid and Fatih Mahdi. And the Hezbollah connections.

Shannon was making progress. But in the grand scheme of things, she and Alex were still hoping for a miracle.

Maybe she would find one at her next stop.

* * *

When Shannon pulled up to Fatih Mahdi’s house in the Ghent section of Norfolk, nobody knew she was coming. She had learned from previous cases that surprise visits early in the case could prove profitable, especially if you caught people off guard with questions they didn’t expect.

Mahdi lived in one of downtown Norfolk’s nicer neighborhoods. The homes were a mixture of stone and brick fortresses nestled on small lots. The lawns were manicured, and Shannon saw a fair number of Lexus and Mercedes cars in the driveways. She wondered what the neighbors thought about having a fundamentalist Muslim living on their street.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon and unmercifully hot and humid. Shannon wore a modest dress and two-inch heels so she would seem taller. She stared at the house for a few seconds from inside her air-conditioned car and felt sweat forming on the back of her neck. She knew that in any honor killing, the husband would always be one of the first suspects. She also believed that Fatih had lied in court about his conversation with her client. Could Fatih be the one who had orchestrated his own wife’s death? The thought of going face-to-face with someone like that both infuriated her and scared her. She thought about Ja’dah and ratcheted up her courage.

She walked confidently to the front porch, knocked, and waited. After a few seconds, she noticed the doorbell and rang it. The front door opened slowly, and Shannon found herself a few feet away from Fatih Mahdi.

She had seen him in court, but he had looked less intimidating in his traditional Muslim garb. He stood before her now in jeans and a white T-shirt, powerfully built with a barrel chest. Like everyone else, he towered over her. His hair was unkempt. He eyed her up and down for a second before speaking.

“What do you want?”

“I’d like to ask a few questions about your wife’s murder.”

Mahdi’s eyes betrayed his sadness—not the reaction Shannon expected. She had steeled herself for anger. Instead, he gave her a look of fatigue and resignation. “I have talked to the police and to the commonwealth’s attorney. I can only hope that my friend Khalid had nothing to do with Ja’dah’s death.”

“It would help Khalid Mobassar a lot if you’d let me ask you a few questions,” Shannon responded. “We both want the same thing—the person or persons who are responsible for Ja’dah’s death brought to justice.”

Mahdi looked down for a second, considering Shannon’s request. When he faced her again, he seemed more resolute. “The news reports say that you will be filing motions to keep the text messages out of evidence based on technicalities. Is this true?”

“We’ll be filing a motion to suppress the wiretap evidence because it violated our client’s constitutional rights—hardly a ‘technicality.’”

“Nevertheless,” said Mahdi, “a strange way to get at the truth about who killed Ja’dah. A strange way to bring the killer to justice.”

“My job is to defend my client,” Shannon said, trying not to be argumentative. “And just because he happens to be an imam whose mosque in Lebanon used to support Hezbollah’s relief work does not mean the government should be allowed to tap his phone.”

“I’m sorry,” Mahdi said. “But I know how the American system works. The best way for you to try to prove Khalid’s innocence is to build a case against me.”

Shannon sensed that Mahdi could cut through any pretense. She decided to play it straight. “That’s one way. But if somebody else ordered the killing of your wife, we would have a better chance to catch him if we worked together.”

“What evidence do you have that my wife’s murder was ordered by someone other than Khalid?”

The sun was beating down on Shannon’s back, but a slight breeze floated out from the air-conditioned house. Lawyers liked to ask questions, not answer them. She needed to get inside with Mahdi and become the interrogator again. “May I please come in and ask you a few questions? It would only take about thirty minutes.”

“As I thought,” Mahdi said sadly. “Your only defense is to blame the husband. And you expect me to help you dig my own grave?”

“It’s not like that,” Shannon said quickly. Too quickly.

“For me,” said Mahdi, “it is precisely like that. If you find real evidence that points to someone other than Khalid, I would love to talk. Until then, it appears to me that our conversation would only help my wife’s killer finesse his freedom.”

Mahdi started to close the door and paused for a second. “I hope you are right about Khalid,” he said. “The thought that my imam and good friend ordered the death of my wife has made this ordeal unbearable.” With that, he politely dismissed Shannon and closed the door.

The whole encounter left her with an unsettled feeling. She hadn’t really expected him to answer her questions. But she thought the man would be angry and condescending. Instead, he acted like he was still mourning. And to be honest, he didn’t seem like the type of man who would order the beheading of his own wife.

Was Mahdi also a victim? Was there someone else out there pulling all the strings so that Mahdi would suspect Khalid and Khalid would suspect Mahdi? If so, what could be his motive?

Though Shannon hadn’t thought this visit would provide a lot of answers, neither had she expected it to generate so many questions. She left with her stomach in turmoil. It would be harder to point the finger at Fatih Mahdi than she originally thought.