“Didn’t think so,” Kayden said. “A pen register is an electronic device that records all numbers dialed from a particular telephone line. Law enforcement used the devices for decades to find out what numbers somebody was calling. They could get court orders for a pen register easier than they could to tap phone lines because with a pen register, they were only getting phone numbers called and not the actual content of the conversations.”
“And this is relevant why?” Shannon asked.
“I’m getting there,” Kayden admonished her. “Section 216 of the Patriot Act expanded the definition of a pen register to include devices or programs that provide the same kind of function with regard to Internet communications. In other words, under the Patriot Act, the government can find out all the Web sites visited by a specific computer or by a router at somebody’s home if they meet the same criteria they would need for a pen register on a phone line. Here’s where it gets interesting.”
It better get interesting fast, Alex thought.
Kayden stopped pacing and leaned forward on the table. “When you guys subpoenaed the information that the federal government had on Mr. Mobassar under the Patriot Act, you asked for copies of all phone calls, text messages, and e-mails the government had monitored. But your subpoena didn’t ask for the pen register information. Am I right?”
Alex didn’t have the foggiest idea.
“I drafted the subpoena,” Shannon said. “I didn’t even know about pen registers, so I’m sure I didn’t include that in the request.”
“Well, in the civil case, Max Strobel did,” Kayden said. “And he turned that information over to Taj Deegan this weekend. And, well, I’ve been wrestlin’ all weekend with whether I should tell y’all what’s in there.”
This sounded to Alex like it was going to be more bad news. He wasn’t sure he could take anything else right now.
“I finally decided to stop by and tell you on one condition.” Kayden looked directly at Shannon. “You can’t say where you got this information.”
Shannon looked at Alex, and they both shrugged. After this big buildup, they had to know what he had. “Agreed,” Shannon said.
“When I tell you about this evidence, you’re gonna wanna dismiss your civil case against my client and Country-Fresh, Inc. But I didn’t think it was fair to have Mr. Mobassar spend the rest of his life in jail just because you got ambushed by this.”
Kayden turned back to Alex. “You are puttin’ your client on the stand tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t decided for sure,” Alex answered. He still didn’t trust this guy.
“You may not want to after you hear this.” Kayden reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded the paper and spread it on the table in front of him. “The commonwealth confiscated the computers at your client’s home, searched the hard drives, and gave you a copy of what they found. Am I right?”
“That’s right,” said Alex.
“But that only gives you the Internet search history and downloads for the computers that were actually found in your client’s home. The pen register information under the Patriot Act gives you the Internet searches for any computer using the wireless router there. So if your client buys another computer for the sole purpose of conducting searches that he doesn’t want the authorities to later find out about, those searches will still show up on the pen register information even if your client tosses that computer. Do you follow me?”
Alex nodded and braced himself for the bombshell. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Kayden tapped the paper in front of him. “This here’s a list of searches and Web sites visited during the two months prior to Ghaniyah Mobassar’s accident. I didn’t copy all of them, but I did put down all the searches and sites relating to-” he looked up at Alex and Shannon and said the next words slowly-“closed… head… injuries.”
Alex was so stunned he couldn’t speak. The color drained from Shannon’s face. “You mean…?” she managed.
“That’s right.” Kayden slid the paper across the table to Shannon. “Mr. and Mrs. Mobassar were researching closed head injuries in the two months before she had her accident. They must have bought a new computer specifically for that purpose and disposed of it afterward, because those searches don’t show up on the hard drives of the computers seized by the commonwealth. Unfortunately for the Mobassars, they didn’t know that every Internet site they visited and every search they conducted was being recorded on a pen register pursuant to the Patriot Act.”
Alex thought about the evidence in the civil case. There was no brain damage shown on the MRIs or the CT scans. Ghaniyah had definitely run the car head-on into a tree, but the major damage had been to the passenger side. She did have a nasty bump on her head and some swelling around her eyes. But was it possible she did that to herself? Could she be faking the head injuries? Had Khalid and Ghaniyah been scamming everybody?
“Taj Deegan now has this information,” Kayden said to Alex. “She didn’t have to give it to you because it’s not exculpatory. But if you put your client on the stand tomorrow, she’ll shred him with it.”
Shannon had been studying the list. She typed some of the sites into her computer and pulled them up. From the look on her face, it must have been bad.
“Why did you bring this to us?” Alex asked.
“Because the evidence won’t go away just because you now have it. I can still use it in the civil case if you decide to keep going forward. But I’ve been following Mr. Mobassar’s case the last couple of days, and even though your client might be a liar and even though he tried to rip off the insurance company, I don’t think that makes him a killer.”
“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” Alex said.
His own view of Khalid had just taken a serious hit. Alex thought about how much he had put on the line for this client. He had resigned from his church. He had staked his reputation on this case. In Alex’s mind, he had been Atticus Finch defending an innocent man whom the rest of the world wanted to lynch. And he had been winning the admiration of his client’s beautiful daughter in the process.
But in a few short minutes, Kayden Dendy had blown that storybook fantasy into tiny little pieces. Instead, it now seemed that Khalid Mobassar was a con artist willing to risk serious injury to his wife in order to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kayden was right; that didn’t make him a murderer. But it sure made Alex feel dirty representing the man.
Alex looked at Shannon, who simply shook her head.
“Whose idea was it to take this case?” Alex asked.
92
There were ways for Hassan to abduct Nara Mobassar from her hotel room, but that would have required a little luck and could have gotten messy. His orders on this one were very specific. It would be the hardest assignment of Hassan Ibn Talib’s violence-ridden life.
He prayed to Allah for courage, favor, and faithfulness. Those prayers were rewarded on Sunday night, when Nara paid a visit to her father at the Virginia Beach City Jail. Hassan used a slim jim to unlock her car and then waited in the backseat, shivering in the cold. He blocked out thoughts of his childhood as he prayed to Allah and recited the portions of the Qur’an that he had committed to memory. He murmured the hadiths.
He waited two hours for Nara to return. When she did, she climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door. She started the car but hesitated before buckling her seat belt. She stared straight ahead and began to sob quietly, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Hassan steeled himself to act before he lost his nerve.
He leaned over the seat and pulled a cloth tight across her face, stifling her screams and causing her to inhale the chloroform. She resisted and pushed the horn with a free hand, but Hassan quickly chopped across her forearm and pinned her arms to her sides with his left arm while he pulled the cloth tight with his right. She was stronger than he anticipated. Fortunately, there was nobody around them in the parking lot. After a few seconds, she lost the will to fight. Within a minute, she went limp.