I do not own the characters of the tv show Criminal Minds
The poem is a quote of "The Prophet" by Kalhil Gibran, I do not own anything
Again thank you so much for reading, reviews and comments are always very welcome and precious to me :)
Chapter 3
When they entered the police station Emily needed some time to remember she was still in Washington and not in the wild Far-West. The chaos was reigning there, people running and shouting, telephones ringing with nobody bothered to answer, messy piles of paperwork precariously leaning on the few desks.
"That's it?" she raised an eyebrow staring at Mohannad "Where are all the officers and the detectives?"
"Cuts in the balance" said an annoyingly acute voice at her shoulders "Detective Bronco" he introduced himself.
A man looking like everything but Rambo, stopped a few steps from the profiler, he barely equaled her in height, he was thin like a nail, hollow eyes and a grayish complexion that not even his big mustaches could revive. His holsters was holding a gun definitely too big for him, Emily doubted he would have actually been able to extract it and point it at somebody. "They downsized us drastically during the last year. I do what I can with the last few men left here" he explained full of himself.
Emily imagined him with a cowboy hat, a tartan shirt and a star on his chest, Sheriff Bronco. She exchanged a doubtful glance with Mohannad, hoping this was a bad joke.
"Come with me" Bronco went on "I'll take you too the prisoner"
Prentiss frowned incredulous 'the prisoner'? Did anybody tell him that this is not Guantanamo? wondered with growing concern while they were following that miserable beanpole. One thing was laughing at the comical picture of this little man who thought to be a sort of dark avenger, one other was to realize that such a jerk had a gun and the authority to rise a wave of panic among the people he was supposed to protect.
The interrogation room was unbearably hot and smelled like sweat, the dim light left half room in the darkness. 'The prisoner' was sitting on a chair half conscious, his head reclined on his chest, his hands cuffed, in front of him a bottle of water, empty. Emily turned at Bronco who had entered the room with her, "I am conducting the interview alone" she said trying to keep her temper.
Bronco looked disappointed "I must point out Miss Prentiss that in this way I won't be able to protect you" he patted his hand on the oversized gun with a grin on his face.
"It's Agent Prentiss and we don't need handcuffs, do we detective?" she replied dryly.
The man reluctantly freed the suspect and sarcastically asked "Anything else, agent?"
"Yes, a bottle of fresh water and a glass, please" was her answer.
Saed barely raised his eyes when she sat in front of him. He was exhausted.
"Good morning or good evening, I don't know…" he mumbled.
"Mr Qasem, my name is Emily Prentiss, I am with the FBI. I am here to ask you a few questions" she said with her delicate but firm tone, the one which always gained her the trust of the people she was talking to.
Qasem chuckled "The DC police, the anti-terrorism and now the FBI, what's next? Rambo?" he finally lifted his face and gave her a look full of sarcasm.
Nope dude, Rambo is already here, watching us from behind the glass… she answered mentally. Her sense of humor suddenly vanished though, as soon as she saw Saed's face in full light, the dark shadows under his eyes and the big bruise on his temporal lobe. Someone has been busy in keeping you awake during the past nights her thought while she was taking a deep breath.
"Mr Qasem, do you know why you are held here?" asked Emily regaining her composure.
"Because they think I am responsible for the bomb at the school and for the letter" he answered trying to sit straight on his chair and brushing his eyes in the attempt to wake up.
"Are you?"
Saed stared at her for a few seconds, trying to detect the prejudice in her eyes, when he realized that the profiler was unbiased and genuinely trying to understand the truth he answered "Agent Prentiss, I wake up every morning at 6.30, help my father to open his greengrocery, then I come back home to have my breakfast and take my little sister to school, then I go to university. I have classes and lectures everyday, I never miss, when I am not in class I am editing some pieces for the journal, I come back home at 6,30 pm. Four nights a week I work at the Babanoushka, a Lebanese restaurant few blocks away from my apartment, I finish at midnight, I go back home and drag myself to bed, the nights I don't work either I go to have dinner to my family's either I go out with my friends or my girlfriend. Even if I wanted, which is not the case, I wouldn't have the time to build bomb. I guess you know that my subject of study is international cooperation, my family came to the States to give me and my sister a life without war and violence, I am a pacifist, I don't believe in terror" he had talked calmly, keeping his voice stable and low despite the tiredness. He coughed lightly, a grimace of pain.
"Mr Qasem?"
"I am sorry, I have a terrible headache" he rubbed his fingers against his forehead
"Have you seen a doctor?" she said indicating the bruise on his face.
"Oh, it's just a scratch, I just need some sleep" he justified with a faint smile.
An officer came in bringing the water she required. Emily poured a glass and handed it to him.
"Shukran*" he replied before drinking at small sips
"Afwan**" she answered, speaking Arabic after such a long time felt nice.
When she thought she gained his trust she asked again "Mr Qasem do you know why you are held here?"
Bronco and Mohannad were standing behind the glass in the adjacent room, so they could barely hear the words Qasem whispered to Emily in Arabic. She remained impassive, then asked "Mr Qasem would you give me your permission to read your diary?"
He frowned and chuckled. Probably it was the first time in a week he was asked something politely.
"S-sure, help yourself" answered opening his arms "I don't have anything to hide".
"I will talk to you soon" she looked at him standing up from her chair, she was sincerely determined to solve that absurd situation as soon as possible.
"Ma'a salaama, fursa sa'ida***" he told her with a smile.
As soon as Emily left the interrogation room her calm wore off, she didn't even leave detective Bronco the time to open his mouth "What happened to his face?" she stormed "and where the hell do you think you are? There are rules, protocols, you cannot hold a civilian with no water in a steaming room, keep him awake, beat him" the purpose of handling the case with cautiousness in order not to screw her career thrown out of the window.
Bronco shrank in front of her sharp tone, he seemed to become a little smaller, his complexion grayer, his eyes completely black like a shark, a pit of hatred and ignorance "I was doing my job, protecting my people" hissed back at her, his lower lip trembling.
Emily would have been happy to give that creepy fanatic an effective and colorful answer, to explain him that playing John Wayne was not his job and that strictly speaking Saed was part of the people he was supposed to protect, that starting a witch-hunt was just a way to spread panic, not to keep order. But she refrained herself, she had been invited there and as much as she hated the situation and Sheriff Bronco's methods she had to be careful, they could dismiss her at any moment and she didn't want to leave before getting to the truth.
"I am aware of that detective" she tried to display the most condescending tone she could "Now I'd like to see Mr Qasem diary and the letter you found with the device".
For some reasons Saed had deeply impressed her, his dignity, his frankness, nothing on him was fitting with the profile of a terrorist.
"How did they even get to him, among all the possible people of Arab origin, why did they pick him?" she asked Mohannad while he was driving her back to her place.
"Everybody knows Saed in the community. He's politically involved, always joins pacific demonstrations, he founded an association for improving the integration of Arab people in the American society, once a week they meet, they talk of Arab culture, whoever is interested can go. A very dangerous individual…" he answered sarcastic.
Still it wasn't enough. Emily went on staring at him waiting for more.
"Ok, do you know how did they find the diary?" he asked cupping his left hand around his cheek, his right hand drumming on the steering wheel. His gaze now was almost amused "He opened his house to them" he finally said "he let the police enter and search his house without a warrant, now you tell me what sort of terrorist would do that? They found his diary on his bedside table, near a copy of the Qu'ran, as if every Arab who reads the Qu'ran and writes a diary is a threat to the nation. No matter if we are model citizens, they find a bomb and we become immediately the target of their fear and blame.."
Emily frowned "They found a letter in Arabic, Mohannad. It was legitimate to look in the Arab community. The question is whether the picked the wrong man or not. I want to read the diary and the letter to be sure, but definitely Saed doesn't fit the profile of a terrorist" she paused a second "this is the reason why I am here, right? To help to understand if Qasem is a suspect or not, regardless of race, culture or religion…"
He turned to her with an interrogative look.
"Look," she tried to explain "I can understand your frustration for the pressure this case is creating on the Arab community, and we can have this conversation in front of a cup of coffee once this case is over, but right now I am here to give a profile not to join a political crusade, and neither should you."
"Are you sure agent Prentiss? Because down there you seemed pretty determined to me" he pointed out sharply.
"Determined in finding the truth and protecting an innocent man unfairly prejudiced" she clarified "If you want to use this abuse for your political campaign that's your call, but I have carefully kept a distance between me and politics during all my life and things are not gonna change anytime soon" the discussion was over. Emily left the car promising she would have had a profile ready in few hours, the uncomfortable feeling of being caught in the middle of a political maze, and the more she would do to stay out of it, the more she would find herself trapped.
Entering her house she dropped the keys and her bag on the floor and went directly to her bedroom without even switching on the lights. She realized that moment how the work of the team was important, how precious and irreplaceable each one of them was. That day had drained her. She grabbed the phone from her pocket, a moment of hesitation biting her lips. In the end she dialed.
"The sexy queen of the hackers and supreme goddess of Mount Qantico greets your return to the world of the crime fighters! Welcome back agent Prentiss!" the usual smiling voice able to cheer up the gloomiest day.
"Hi Garcia, it's nice to hear you again. I kinda missed you" Emily said laughing and already feeling better.
"Understandable...Listen a bird told me that you are on a top-secret super-classified mission so I am not gonna ask you anything about that, but if you need some help you just have to ask and Penelope sneaky sneaky will find you everything you need, ok?"
Emily forced herself in keeping the tears from running, she felt exiled, she wanted her family back so badly and she wanted to be over with secrets and dirty games of power.
She took a deep breath to wipe the sadness away from her voice and asked "So how is the team doing?"
"Uhm, as far as I know, they are doing fine. We've seen worse, don't worry" the analyst answered "Do I have to worry, instead?" she continued then tip-toeing on a subject she knew was hard to face for Emily.
"About what?" Emily asked confused
"I don't know, for example about you and a beautiful, hot, amazing god of lust who we happen to work with.."
Emily couldn't help chuckling and not having the force to deny or to object she opted for the passive listening.
"I might be wrong -even though I exclude it- " Penelope went on "but I have noticed a hot'n cold bouncing between you two in the last month. If someone asked me to guess I would probably say that after a brief moment in which you both realized and accepted your reciprocal feelings, the twisted over-rational side of your brains switched on again and started to question everything inside and out and you two blacked out."
Silence on the other side.
"Emily? You there?"
A sigh. "I'm here"
"Mon amour, if you two were computers I would reset you, Ctrl+Alt+Canc, and voila` ready to go again, but I guess you just need to have faith in each other and jump"
What if something is gone, broken? What if I am ready to jump but he is not? She barely kept her sobs. Can you loose something before fully understanding how much it means to you? She couldn't catch her breath at the idea, but she couldn't talk to Garcia about all this, not now, not yet. She ended the conversation on the verge of tears and went for a shower before getting back to her profile.
In the meanwhile the technical analyst got back to work in her little office crowded with monitors and all the possible odds-and-ends, when another call came in.
"Hei baby girl"
Speaking of the devil… she thought, "Morgan I don't have the information on your suspect yet, still working on it" she answered without stopping her hands over the keyboard.
"I know, I am calling to know if you had any words from Emily, the team is wondering how is she doing.."
Penelope reclined on the back of the chair, playing with her fluffy pencil, "The team…" she mocked him, her malicious smile surfacing.
"Uhm, me and the team, why?" was the mumble in return.
"I don't know Derek, it might have something to do with you, for example, and a stunning, sensitive, brilliant multilingual profiler who we happen to work with.." she chuckle excited. She couldn't reset them but she could give them a little help anyway…
Dear Lili,
Some days I feel hopeless. The hatred, the prejudice, the fear are so deeply rooted that I wonder if there is anything we can really do to change the state of things. We all made our mistakes and we now contemplate the results of our unwise actions. The least we can do is trying to put an end to this spiral of violence. I need to know that I am doing something to make this a better place for our children, that the legacy we are leaving them is not just death, intolerance and ignorance. That people can change and learn from their mistakes.. I know you are afraid but you don't have to. Our love is a diamond tower that nothing can scratch and it gives me the strength to never give up. You are my centre, you are my East. To you, to our future I turn my prayers.
Emily stared confused at the diary, the perfect Arabic calligraphy produced by a trained hand. Then she took the letter, the hand that wrote it was uncertain and hesitant, he corrected the position of the dots over the letters many times. The diary was written in an elegant, expert calligraphy, the level of the vocabulary typical of a native with a high cultural level, the letter on the contrary was the work of someone who started studying Arabic relatively recently, someone who had maybe been to Egypt. The differences between the different Arabic dialects were not major, but still easy to recognize to a trained eye like hers. And Saed was from Lebanon. How could they be so sloppy? The translation was inaccurate and incomplete, she could bet this was another result of Bronco's incompetence. That's why the anti-terrorism wasn't focusing on Saed, they knew he wasn't their man. There was no code in the diary, they were just letters addressed to a woman named Lili. She sighed at Bronco's blind inflexible obstinacy and his refusal to admit he had made a mistake. She had to find a way to make him reason before he carried his obduracy to the extreme consequences. She wrote down her final profile.
Then she got back to the diary, Saed had copied fragment of one of her favorite poems.
"Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
A tear ran down her cheek after reading that quote from "The Prophet", Kalhil Gibran had always been one of her favorite authors, his enlightened vision of life had always been an inspiration for her and for many other people believing in peace and tolerance. With this thoughts she fell asleep.
She was in a field of grain, all the plants were dead, burnt black corpses withered to the ground, nothing left alive till the eyes could see. Suddenly threatening clouds came up fast, making everything dark and gloomy and a sudden ring of fire arose from the ground trapping her inside. Derek and behind him the rest of the team, was screaming at her to hurry up, to cross the only fragment still left free from the fire before the flames got there, his hand leaning toward her, desperation in his eyes. She knew this was the chance to reunite with her family, to come back to the man she loved and be happy, but something was keeping her, she knew she had to stay there, something important had to be done before she could rest, something dangerous. The flames closed the circle and lifted up high preventing her to see Morgan or any other of her friends, an acute noise rising behind her. She woke up with a scream, her phone ringing. Mohannad.
She closed her eyes for a moment, swallowed and lit the bedside lamp, then she answered trying to deceive her concern "Mohannad, I am ready with the profile.." she answered then she checked her clock, 3.30 am, and she understood something was wrong.
A hesitation then Mohannad's tired voice finally came up "Saed is dead, Emily"
"No" was her incredulous answer "we left him few hours ago, he was fine, I am reading his diary now, and the letter, he definitely didn't write it, he's innocent" she said in a broken mumble.
"The paramedics said his brain was bleeding, probably it had been bleeding for a while slowly, and when the symptoms finally showed up it was to late. There will be a routine autopsy and then it will be over" Mohannad's voice was totally emotionless, not a hint of rage, not pain or sorrow in his voice.
"Where is he?" Emily asked
"Emily, there is nothing you can do now. I am sorry I put you through all this, but it's over. You don't need to come over tomorrow"
"What does it mean Mohannad? I am a witness, I was there, I have seen how they treated him, I have documented the inaccuracy of their investigation, the criminal inefficiency of that detective." She answered rising her voice.
"Emily, this morning you were concerned for your career and now you want to risk your credibility accusing a cop? Who is going to trust a profiler who attacked a cop?" he stopped her with a condescending tone.
"And you were so concerned about this man to put my career on the line this morning. And now you don't seem to care anymore. So was Saed or your little orchard you were worried about?"
"Emily you are talking random" he said, a note of impatience rising.
"Mohannad, how can you sleep at night? When did you become this cold, ruthless politician? When people stopped meaning something to you? Did they promise public apology for accusing the Arab community in exchange for your silence?" Emily was starting to understand how deeply she has been manipulated, a puppet in a show she had never had control of. Nobody ever cared of Saed; Bronco wanted to demonstrate he was smart enough to catch a big fish, Mohannad wanted to protect the image of the Arab community. That poor, honest man who was caught in the middle was a justifiable victim in a mean cocks' fight. He died in silence and nobody would have cared of giving him justice.
"Emily I understand you are upset, but bigger interests that you cannot know are on the stake here. In this case a casualty is acceptable for a bigger purpose"
"Where is he?" she hissed back furious
"At the morgue"
She hang up the phone without listening further and she grabbed her badge and gun.
Mohannad entered the morgue with uneasiness, he was used to play his games in way more refined environments, what happened between his decision and the result of it was not his concern. He stopped few steps away from Emily. "I need to talk to you, there are some important developments in the case."
Emily reluctantly turned her face to him, she really didn't care. An innocent's life had been taken uselessly, because of blind obstinacy and political interest. No one had really paid attention to Saed's words, they didn't care, he was the victim of a witch-hunt fueled by fear, panic, hatred, but no pursue of the real truth. The witch had been burnt the village could sleep tightly.
She reached Mohannad waiting outside of the morgue, no affliction on his face, no sorrow. Just a hard expression, when did it happen, when did it turn into that new despicable person?
He barely looked at her, he let the words come out fast, almost casually "they found the terrorist, he called the radio, placed the bomb, wrote the letter…I read your profile, you were right; he spent three years working in Egypt where he learnt some Arabic. He is part of a white supremacy group, they used the Arab letter to derail the investigation. Now everything is over, the Lebanese community reputation is preserved, the bad guy behind bars, you haven't lost your job and no one got hurt. You see some days promise onion and instead in the end they bring honey" he recalled the Arab proverb he had told her that morning, trying to smooth her rage.
He turned to go away, while Emily was silently looking away from him, tear in her eyes, then he changed his mind and stopped asking one last curiosity "What did Saed whisper to you in the interrogation room?"
"He explained me why he was there" she turned to look at him "Makedroush hal homar kedrom hal bardaha"
He put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and smiled embarrassed looking at his shoes "Another Arab proverb: they couldn't beat the donkey so they beat the saddle"
"He knew he was a scapegoat, chosen because of your inability to find the real evil" her voice low, a knot to her throat.
Mohannad turned "Oh, come on Emily don't be sentimental!" he objected opening his arm and lifting his eyes to the sky, "you think you can change things but you can't, you just have to follow the stream and put this story behind your back. You did your job and you did it well. Stop."
She looked at him with all the rage she was capable of.
"What do you want to tell me Emily? Come on let it go…" he asked mocking her.
"Oh, Mohannad, I am not going to tell you anything, I will gather as much information on this case as I can and then I will shape my opinion, just as you taught me" she hissed back, his faced suddenly turned serious. She passed him leaving that desert isle. A black diary carefully hidden under her jacket…
When she got to her place it was pouring, she got soaked walking from her car to the main door. She was walking as a zombie, tired, frustrated, she couldn't help thinking she could have done more, she could have stopped all this and save Saed's life. Only at the last second she noticed someone sitting outside of her door. He was keeping his back against the wall, rubbing his hands against each other, his face worried, he'd been waiting for a while. As soon as he saw her he got up, his eyes dark and serious.
Emily stopped in front of him, not hiding any of her feelings, the weariness, the sadness, the solitude that someway in the last years crept up in her life, leaving her alone with her job and nothing else, and the awareness that she had given up the struggle against this totally wrong, unprofessional, messy, irrational feeling she had for the amazing man standing in front of her.
"Derek" she started uncertain on how to begin.
"Never" he interrupted her.
She gave him back a doubtful gaze.
"I'll never give up on us" he said before taking her in his arms
*thank you
**you're welcome
***goodbye, it was a pleasure to meet you
to be continued...
