Page 79 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

Mahoney, who was a master at dealing with these kinds of situations, had decided to bring an additional eight FBI agents as well as a drone and a drone pilot. He sent two agents to each of the three wooded sides of the compound. The remaining pair went into the cornfield, which remained uncut.

The pilot launched the drone at the same time Mahoney, Sampson, and I drove off to talk with Sami Abdallah. The drone flew high over the compound, and Mahoney watched the feed on an iPad. He saw the three little Shariff girls and their mother in their yard. One of the girls was on a swing set. The other two were riding tricycles.

At the rear of the compound, a man was raking leaves near the manufactured home. There were two cars and no one visible outside Abdallah’s place.

Mahoney had the drone go to infrared and saw there were three people in Abdallah’s home, one in the Shariffs’, and two in the manufactured home. There were also two people in the barn on the east side, the side closest to the cornfield.

“Full house plus two,” he said, then called the drone pilot on his jaw mic to tell him to keep the eye in the sky circling until we were done.

“Roger that,” the drone pilot said.

The sun was sinking low when Sampson drove us down the gravel road that wound back through trees losing their leaves. A deer bounded past us just before we emerged into the clearing,maybe a hundred feet from where Mrs. Shariff was watching her girls playing tag.

She caught sight of us immediately and called her girls to her side. They hugged her waist as we passed. She clutched her headscarf and watched us, stone-faced, until we pulled up in front of Abdallah’s house, which sat catty-corner from hers.

A slate walkway wound between two large oak trees to stairs and a front deck.

“Hands resting on the grip of your weapons, gentlemen,” Mahoney said and climbed out of the front passenger seat. I kept track of the woman and the girls as Sampson and I exited the car. As Ned had directed, I immediately put my hand beneath my coat and rested it on the grip of my Glock 17.

Before we made it to the front deck, the door opened. Sami Abdallah stepped out and shut the door behind him.

Bearded and wearing a skullcap, he sported a dark sweater over a long white tunic, black pants, and black leather soft-soled shoes. “Yes?” he said. “Who are you?”

“FBI, Mr. Abdallah,” Mahoney said, showing him his badge and identification.

Abdallah smiled. His upper right canine was black. He had a gold cap over the opposite canine. “What can poor Sami do for the FBI?” he asked in thickly accented English.

“For one, you can tell us where you were last Monday night.”

“Easy one,” he said. “Right here with my roommates watchingMonday Night Football,Baltimore Ravens versus San Diego Chargers. Ravens punished!”

Sampson said, “You’re a football fan?”

He flashed the gold tooth and the rotten one again. “Love it. Love the Ravens and the Washington, DC, football club and Tampa Bay.”

I said, “Ravens fan. So you must know Captain Davis.”

The smile faded. “Davis? No.”

“Long snapper,” Sampson said. “Left the NFL to fly for the air force in the Middle East.”

Abdallah shook his head. “No, I do not know this one.”

“He was just in the papers and on the news. We were holding him on suspicion of being involved in the downing of the American Airlines jet.”

The smile was back as he shook his head again. “I have learned not to read or watch the news too often. It affects my mood.”

“But you heard someone machine-gunned that jet as it was landing at Reagan National,” I said.

“It was hard not to hear that,” he said. “But again, why are you here?”

Mahoney said, “Checking out some loose ends.”

“Like?”

“Like your relationship with Leslie Parks back in Iraq.”

Abdallah’s expression hardened. “That relationship was abandoned. When the caravan was attacked and they took me, he could have paid a ransom, but he did not. I spent a year in captivity because of Parks. I hate the man. Where is he?”

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