“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.