He looked back at Kiley. “My wife and I shared the in-law suite with Firuzeh.”
His wife passed them, her jasmine perfume lingering as she quickly climbed the stairs. He started up slowly, as if lifting his sneaker-clad feet took too much effort.
In the large room at the top landing he pointed at blue-and-red-striped curtains running the width of the space. “We have the bedroom, and we curtained off a section for Firuzeh in the main area.”
“May I ask why she didn’t have her own room?” Mack asked.
“She would have to share with our younger sisters, and Firuzeh felt too grown up for that.” He shook his head. “She was too grown up for sharing since she was a teenager. Such a serious girl, she was, and so passionate.”
“Is there anything you might have overheard out here? Like a phone call maybe?” Mack asked before Kiley could ask the same question.
“No,” Raheem answered. “I have told you everything I know. There is nothing more. Please, look at her things. I am going to wake my sisters and get them packing, then help my wife.”
He plodded away, his shoulders slumped. Kiley’s heart broke for him and his family, and she headed for the curtain. She loved her job and wouldn’t want to do anything else, but some days she hated it, and today was one of those days.
She stepped behind the curtain and caught a whiff of Firuzeh’s flowery perfume, bringing fresh tears to Kiley’s eyes. She forced herself to focus on Firuzeh’s meager furnishings. A neatly made twin bed with a purple-and-gold bedspread. A nightstand with burnished bronze lamp. A tiny scarred desk, along with a small dresser and a clothes rack.
Mack headed straight for the desk. “She didn’t have much.”
“Sounds like she didn’t need much.” Kiley joined him and slid Firuzeh’s laptop to the corner. “I’ll take an image of her hard drive while we’re here. Be sure to look for any hidden flash drives.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Idoknow how to search a place, you know.”
“Yeah, sorry. I just know this will be our only chance to access Firuzeh’s space before Lancaster takes over, and I don’t want to miss a thing.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
She grabbed her backpack and pulled out an external drive and her laptop to connect to Firuzeh’s computer. Due to the limited memory on Firuzeh’s machine, the drive would finish quickly. Kiley left the image running and moved to the nightstand. The top drawer held assorted pens and a notepad.
Kiley switched on the lamp and angled the paper under the bulb’s warm glow. “There are indentations on this pad. I’ll take it for forensics to process. Hopefully they can figure out what she’d last written.”
Mack looked up. “Lancaster won’t like that.”
“I know, but a local lab might not have the tools needed to process it. Our lab will.” Kiley grabbed an evidence bag from her backpack and dropped the notepad inside.
They continued through Firuzeh’s belongings, working in silence for nearly an hour, searching under the mattress, through her bedding, and all the while Kiley searched for sense in this tragedy. Questioning where God was in all of it.Wondering if she’d chosen the right words in breaking the news to the Abeds.
Right words. Hah! Like there was anything right about this situation or any words to make it better. Therewerewords to make it worse. She knew that firsthand. She’d heard them when her father had died.
She’d grown up in Buffalo, New York, and her dad worked in the steel mill until it went out of business in the early eighties. He struggled to find gainful employment for years, doing odd jobs and losing them as he developed a drinking problem. When she was born years later, he had regular work, but he still drank heavily. The night he died, he’d slammed into a family of five, killing himself and the entire family.
When the officer came to tell her mother, Kiley was in the hallway listening. She would never forget each harsh word the officer had uttered about her dad. A drunk. Monster. Killer. The pointed barbs cut through her with razor-sharp anguish both then and now. He was much more than that, but the horrible accident was now his legacy.
Frustrated from sinking into the pain of old memories at her age, she dropped to the floor and looked under the bed. She couldn’t continue to let the past impact her life and decisions. She had to get beyond it. Let it go once and for all. She just didn’t know how to do it without confronting her mother and hashing out the past. Not something she was ready to do. Especially when she didn’t think her mother would take her seriously. She never had before.
Kiley banished her thoughts and pulled out two soft-sided suitcases. She jerked hard on the zippers but found both suitcases empty and shoved them in the dark recesses more forcefully than needed to ease out her frustration. She drew Mack’s study, but she didn’t care. It had felt good and alleviated a bit of her anguish.
She inserted Firuzeh’s backpack in an oversized evidence bagand set it by the curtain without looking inside. Kiley wanted to give the pack a thorough look when she had plenty of time to review each item. “Lancaster has likely recovered Firuzeh’s phone. I’ll have to get her records from her telecom.”
Mack frowned. “With no standing in this investigation, getting a warrant for her phone will be problematic.”
She didn’t want to admit he was right, but he was. No judge would approve a warrant for an investigation not under their jurisdiction. She would have to find another way to get the call logs. At the moment, Kiley didn’t know how she would accomplish it. At least she couldn’t think of a legal way to obtain the records. She could hack the telecom. She wouldn’t, though. As Mack said, she operated by the book, and it would take extreme circumstances for her to hack a legitimate business.
Kiley looked at Mack where he squatted by the bottom dresser drawer. “Firuzeh said millions of lives were at stake. I haven’t really had time to give that much thought, but what could threaten a million or more lives?”
His hand stilled over the drawer. “Off the top of my head? A weaponized toxin. Chemical plants. Liquid natural gas. Could be any of them and more.”
Frustrated, Kiley planted her hands on her hips and looked around the space. “There has to be some clue here.”
