28
Shannon had to park a block away from the Mobassars’ duplex and argue her way through the police working crowd control. Somebody had probably tipped off the media about Khalid’s perp walk. All the local satellite trucks were in place and had no doubt recorded the event. The crews were now busy doing the obligatory neighbor interviews.
Shannon spotted Khalid in the back of a police cruiser and approached the uniformed officer who appeared to be in charge-a tall man in his midforties with gray hair and a thin gray mustache. His name badge identified him as Lt. Shaw. Shannon introduced herself, and Shaw asked for identification. He studied her bar card for a long moment and did a double take.
“You’re his lawyer?” Shaw asked.
“Is that a problem?”
Shaw studied her, perhaps deciding whether to put up a fight. Shannon had seen it all before. When she showed up in court with Alex, most people assumed she was his paralegal. When she told a new acquaintance that she was a lawyer, the most common response was a one word question: “Really?” But every time somebody underestimated her because of her size or Mary Lou Retton looks, it only made her more determined.
“No problem,” Shaw groused.
“Good.” Shannon motioned toward the car. “I’d like to speak with my client now.”
“We need to finish processing him first. As soon as we finish executing the search warrant, we’re taking him down to the station for processing.”
“Let me see your warrant,” Shannon demanded.
Shaw frowned and produced the paper. Shannon examined the document, returned it to Shaw, and thanked him. She turned and headed toward the cruiser.
“What are you doing?” Shaw asked, following behind her.
She ignored him.
“What are you doing?”
Shannon stopped just outside the tinted glass of the cruiser’s backseat window. Khalid was alone in the seat, hands cuffed, looking up at her with fearful eyes. Another officer came over and stood beside Shannon, placing a hand against the door as if Shannon might try to open the door and spring her client.
Shannon ignored the officer and focused on Khalid. “Don’t talk to the cops,” she said loudly. “As soon as they ask you a question, demand your lawyer. Don’t talk to anybody at the jail-especially your cellmate…”
“Ms. Reese, you can talk to him downtown,” Lt. Shaw said sharply, stepping between Shannon and the cruiser.
Shannon looked past Shaw and locked eyes with Khalid. “Got it?” she asked loudly. When he nodded, Shannon turned back to Shaw.
“Try to keep the waterboarding to a minimum,” she said.***
The inside of the duplex was trashed. Shannon complained loudly to Detectives Sanderson and Brown, following them from room to room, commenting sarcastically on their handling of the Mobassars’ stuff. The officers ignored her as they methodically emptied every dresser drawer, pulled all the clothes from the shelves, shook open every book in the library, and confiscated legal pads, journals, credit card receipts, and Khalid’s computer.
After they left, Shannon found Ghaniyah sitting on her bed in the middle of the shambles that had been her bedroom. She was staring at the mess, stunned beyond words at what had just transpired.
Shannon knew she couldn’t leave Ghaniyah alone. The poor woman, still trying to recover from her brain injury, would be overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks. She would never be able to cope with this.
“Why don’t you pack up a few things and spend the night at my place?” Shannon offered. “We can start cleaning up first thing tomorrow.”
Ghaniyah looked at Shannon as if she was surprised to discover that Shannon had entered the room. “What did he do?” Ghaniyah asked. “When will they let him go?”
“I don’t know,” Shannon admitted. She looked at a small pile of Ghaniyah’s bras and panties. Shannon thought about how humiliating it must have been for this conservative Muslim woman to have a man pawing through her stuff.
Then another thought hit Shannon. Ghaniyah would be equally distraught at the notion of Shannon helping reorganize Khalid’s clothes.
“Why don’t you work on the bedroom, and I’ll start downstairs on the study,” Shannon suggested. “After we get things picked up a little, we can talk.”
“Okay,” Ghaniyah mumbled.
Shannon glanced over her shoulder as she left the room. Ghaniyah had not moved an inch from her spot on the bed.
29
Alex finished his hearing in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, packed his briefcase, and headed toward the exit. To his surprise, Taj Deegan was waiting in the back row. With all the events surrounding the honor killings, the sight of the chief deputy for the commonwealth’s attorney made his stomach clench.
She stood. “Got a minute?”
Alex checked his watch, as if the president might be waiting in the hallway. “I don’t have long,” he said.
The two found an empty conference room adjacent to the courtroom. Neither lawyer spoke as they took their seats. Alex noted that Taj didn’t have her briefcase or even a legal pad with her.
Taj had the look of someone you could trust. She wasn’t a flashy dresser-black suit, white blouse, a pair of black flats-and she had a quick smile, showing lots of perfect white teeth. She was slightly overweight with a rounded chin, intense almond eyes, and a pair of small black reading glasses that seemed more like a prop. She looked to be in her late thirties, and Alex knew she was the single mom of a son and daughter who were both in elementary school. He also knew that Taj was always being touted for this judgeship or that one. Politicians were enamored with the story of a young African American woman who had earned her GED, worked her way through college while her mom helped with the kids, and attended law school at night while working for a private security company.
“Alex, I want you to know that we’ve just arrested Khalid Mobassar,” she said, watching him for a reaction.
Alex took the news stoically, though his mind started churning with questions.
“As Mobassar’s attorney, sooner or later you’d be entitled to the disclosures I’m about to make. I thought if I told you about the evidence now, it might help you evaluate whether or not to stay on the case.”
Alex’s suspicions were on high alert. Deegan played fair, but she was known for her take-no-prisoners approach to high-profile cases. To Alex’s knowledge, she had never lost a murder case.
“I’ve checked you out,” Deegan continued, “and I knew your grandfather pretty well. I don’t want to see you get sucked into a case like this without knowing what you’re getting into. There are plenty of lawyers out there who can represent this guy.”
She seemed sincere, but Alex didn’t respond immediately. The possibility that this was some kind of trick crossed his mind, but he dismissed it; he wasn’t exactly known as the top criminal defense attorney in the area. If this was a tactical move, it wasn’t a very smart one.
Deegan shifted in her seat and leaned forward. “What I’m going to tell you is off the record. This conference never happened. If you stay on the case, you’ll get all this information through formal channels. Until then, it’s entirely confidential.”
“Okay.”
“For starters, your man is on the DOJ’s list for foreign nationals with terrorist connections. As a result, his phone and text messages have been tapped and his e-mails monitored under the Patriot Act since he came into the country. It took us forty-eight hours to work through the Feds’ red tape, but we eventually got the messages from your client’s allegedly missing cell phone.”
Khalid’s cell phone was missing? Alex swallowed hard, but he didn’t break eye contact with the prosecutor.
“On June 2, your client sent two text messages to a cell phone purchased a week earlier by a man in northern Virginia using an alias. We used GPS positioning data from the cell phone signals and traced the location of that anonymous cell phone on the night of the murders. It’s the killer’s cell phone, Alex. We traced the man using it from Petersburg to Virginia Beach and then to Sandbridge. Later that night, the cell phone was near the federal preserve where the bodies were buried.”