“I thought so.” That was Linda. So Heather had nodded or shook her head. April had coached her not to elicit yes-or-no answers. Melhaney was putting his hand up. Don’t interrupt, April, his hand was saying.

“Hash, right?”

Why did they always ask the yes-or-no questions? Why?

“I always wondered what he kept in that storage unit,” Linda said.

April nearly lifted off her vinyl van seat. If she had told Linda once she had told her a million times, Do not—do not—be the first to mention the storage unit. She had not wanted the detective even to tell Linda about the storage unit. He was a hot dog. She regretted ever being nice to him.

“Everything,” Heather said.

“Everything? In that storage he had out in Everett?”

“I don’t think there was much in this world that didn’t pass through there.”

“Did you know the Benhadj family?”

Aziz had gotten Ghazi back to Brooks Street. Calmly, Aziz had done it. He was trying, nicely, to make Ghazi see. He had to go slow. The smartest one, it seemed, knew only what he read. He had lived, it turned out, little. His father was in military intelligence, and look at him. For a second he understood Ghazi’s father. Maybe, knowing all he did, he found his son naïve, an overeducated jackass, or— what DRS prided itself on not being—an idealist.

They were both lying on the living room floor, staring at the ceiling. Most of the anger had trickled away. Aziz was smoking a cigarette. Ghazi was drinking a Coke.

“That one shaped like a peanut?” Ghazi said.

“Him. And some others I didn’t know. Well, they went home for leave, and it came back to us: GIA had killed them. They beheaded them. They put one of their heads on a mule’s body. And the mule’s head—”

“—on Benhadj.”

“Yes.”

“I thought they made that up to make the GIA look bad.”

“They did make it up. But it did happen.”

“So—” Ghazi sat up.

“It happened to Benhadj. I saw it with my eyes.”

Ghazi looked stunned. “God help him.”

Aziz tried to look like what happened to Benhadj upset him. It was nothing to what he had seen. Benhadj was a soldier, at least. He was armed. Aziz put on a sad face. He sat up.

“So how was it made up?” Ghazi wanted to know. “You say you saw it.”

“I saw him dead like that. I did not see him killed.”

“But—”

“Even if I saw him killed, I could not say the motive. It could be some irhabi, angry at the people for forsaking jihad. It could be someone who knew that blaming the GIA makes fears higher and elections later.”

“The home country—our government is sick. It—”

“It means a person,” Aziz interrupted. “Another person. Many of them, maybe. But not a thing called ‘the government.’ ”