Free Ahmed's Revenge by Richard Wiley Page B

details of your plan.”
    That was all, and there wasn’t any Mozart at the end. I got the feeling that the intruders had wanted to say more on the tape, that they’d intended more, but that we had interrupted them by our arrival at the farm. I also knew what I had done. Though I hadn’t even heard the demand they had made, I had immediately acquiesced to it, putting my father on that bench the way I had. But for a time I could barely register the fact that he was gone.
    â€œDo you have firearms in the house?” Detective Mubia asked. “Are your husband’s rifles still here?”
    I was sure they would not be, but when I went into our office to look I discovered that the office was intact, that nothing in there had been turned over or moved. I’d been right, then, in my assumption—we had arrived when these men were in the middle of their search. Jules’s second hunting rifle was on the wall, and it was loaded. The first rifle, the one Kamau had shot Jules with, was not in the office, and I couldn’t remember what had happened to it on the night of the attack. In the desk drawer I found our .380 automatic pistol, plus an eight-shot clip and a box of bullets. Jules’s filing cabinet was locked against the wall and his photographs hung above it in an un-crooked way.
    I called the detective, asking him to come in and see for himself, and when he didn’t respond, I took the automatic pistol from its drawer and the rifle down from its place on the wall. I unloaded the rifle and pushed it down under Jules’s desk, putting its cartridges in my pocket. After that I shoved the pistol clip home.
    I was about to call again, but the image of myself, as vulnerable in our office as my poor father had been on that bench outside, made me listen and wait awhile. When I finally stepped into the hall again, however, the .380 ready, I could see the police detective right away. He was sitting on our couch, his own revolver still in his hand. He seemed to be staring out the front door.
    â€œDetective?” I whispered.
    He didn’t look toward me as I came down the hall, but pretty soon he said, “My specialty is city crime, city crime is what I know, and it is my great misfortune that I also know the voice on your tape recorder too well. I do not agree that a city crime and a country crime should be connected in this way. A city policeman should never allow circumstances to bring him out of town. It would be best for a city policeman if he were to leave country crime alone.”
    He was quite oddly miserable, sorry instead of glad that he recognized the voice. And something about his sorrow kept me from asking him right away who the voice belonged to. It also seemed to be keeping me from worrying about my father. When I told him that our office was untouched, however, he immediately revived, just as I had on the ground outside.
    â€œSo number one is that we interrupted these heinous men in their crime and number two is we seem to have given them your father without even knowing that is what they desired.”
    â€œYes,” I said, “and number three is they’ve taken my father away. Do you think they’ll hurt him? You don’t, do you? He is too old for this. He’s just arrived from England and he’s too tired.”
    The detective nodded, but instead of answering my question he said, “Number four is as follows: Your enemy is clever and he knows that you are vulnerable because sooner or later you must dig your husband’s grave.”
    That didn’t seem like number four to me, and I said so. “I think that if he had wanted to harm us he could have done it earlier, when we arrived. He only wants my father, who’s involved in everything somehow. He tried to say as much earlier, he tried to tell me about it at the church, but I wouldn’t listen.”
    The detective looked at me with an expression on his face that I couldn’t