The open-air, third-floor landing outside Nasiri’s apartment contained a couple of rusting lawn chairs and some empty cardboard boxes. Vaughan looked out across the alley with its asphalt-shingled garages at the apartment buildings on the other side. In one of them, he could see someone watching them. Somewhere close by Pakistani music was playing.

A large window with its drapes drawn stood next to Nasiri’s back door. “I guess we knock,” offered Davidson.

“Of course we knock. The only time you don’t knock is when you have a no-knock warrant. Besides, I think we may have an audience.”

“Lawyers,” said Davidson, rolling his eyes. “No wonder you haven’t impressed anyone in the Intelligence Division.”

“There’s someone watching us from the building across the alley.”

Davidson turned, but didn’t see anything. “Don’t worry. You’re just paranoid.”

This time, Vaughan didn’t hesitate to give the man the finger.

The Public Vehicles officer knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. “Police. Open up.” There was still no response.

Davidson tried the door handle, but it was locked. “You’re right,” he said, glancing over his shoulder and gesturing across the alley with his chin. “We are being watched. I think it’s a Scumbagasaurus.”

“A what?”

“You know what those are,” he said as he bent closer to the door handle and slipped something from his pocket. “They suck blood and feed on bribes. Normally you don’t see them this far from a government building. Politicus assholus is the correct Latin term, I believe.”

Vaughan knew what the man was doing, but before he could stop him, the lock was picked and the door was open. “That’s breaking and entering.”

“The door was open. In fact, I think I hear someone calling for help,” he replied, closing his mouth and trying to throw his voice like a ventriloquist. “Help me. Help me.”

The Organized Crime cop wasn’t impressed.

“Allah akabar?” Davidson asked.

Vaughan still wasn’t buying it.

“Allah snack bar?”

“Paul, we’re not authorized to-” Vaughan began, when he saw Davidson raise his radio to his mouth, announce his intent to the patrol officers outside, and step into the apartment.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

This wasn’t the first time Vaughan had broken the law, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Nevertheless, he wasn’t proud of himself. Shaking his head, he followed the other cop inside.

It was a dump. They entered through the door into the kitchen. A plate of food sat half-eaten on a folding table covered with a vinyl table cloth.

“Somebody left in a hurry,” said Vaughan. He touched the food to test its temperature and then walked over to the stove and reached for the teapot. Both were cold. He shook his head at Davidson.

The fridge contained very little. There was nothing in the freezer. As they made their way further into the apartment, Davidson pulled his weapon and Vaughan followed suit.

They cleared the bedroom, living room, and bathroom. No one was there. Davidson reholstered his weapon. “Well, seeing as how we’ve already crossed the Rubicon, do you want to take a more in-depth look around?”

Neither the cop nor the lawyer in him wanted to make an already bad, and unquestionably illegal, situation worse by turning Nasiri’s apartment inside out. But it wasn’t the cop or the lawyer inside him that won out.

There was no question that what he was doing was wrong. He couldn’t moralize it, rationalize it, or loophole his way out of it. But he didn’t feel guilty about it.

Mohammed Nasiri had run down a woman and had fled the scene. People from his village then tried to cover up for him. Whether he asked them to or not made no difference. Judging from what he saw in the apartment and what his gut had told him, Nasiri had been tipped that the police were on his trail.

Cops were not bad people. In fact for the most part, cops were one of the best classes of people Vaughan had ever known. They were the good guys. They stood on the side of law and order and civilization. They manned the wall that protected everyday, good, hard-working Americans. They were the sheepdogs, and beyond that wall there were the wolves.

At times, the wolves could be smart; very smart. A few knew just how much rope the people had given their sheepdogs and they operated just beyond it. They were constantly coming up with new ways to stay one step ahead of the law. Luckily enough for the people, the majority of the wolves were stupid. When they were caught, it was not always because of great police work, but because of some colossally stupid mistake.

It bothered John Vaughan that while the wolves were constantly evolving and finding new ways to commit crimes and horrible acts of violence, the sheepdogs remained bound by the same rules of engagement. The courts seemed more disposed to protect the criminals before their victims and that was wrong. But so was breaking into an apartment and searching it without a warrant. Vaughan knew that, but he didn’t care; not right now. In fact, he had been slowly caring less and less the longer he stayed on the job. Did that make him a bad person? Maybe, maybe not. What he knew was that if he had to bend, and sometimes break, the rules to bring the guilty to justice, he was willing to consider it. He’d seen far too much suffering and far too many bad guys escape answering for their crimes to completely ignore the fact that sometimes the ends do justify the means.

“Which room do you want?” asked Davidson, halfway into the bedroom already.

“All of them.”

“All of them?”

“That’s right,” said Vaughan as he pushed past him into the bedroom. “Now watch the back door and make sure we don’t get ambushed.”

He worked quickly and methodically. Nasiri had a lot of books and not much else. Almost all of them were in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. It was a language Vaughan couldn’t read, so he took a picture of the books with his camera phone. He had a friend in Marine Intelligence he could send it to for translation, though he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what he heard back.

His feeling was based on Nasiri’s other books, the ones he had in English. They had all been penned by the same author, Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was the intellectual father of Islamic fundamentalism, and his teachings were at the very core of Muslim justification for violence and jihad in the name of Islam. Two of his biggest fans were Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Vaughan had read an interesting compendium of Qutb’s work while he was in Iraq called The Sayyid Qutb Reader by Albert Bergesen. It was his gateway into the mind of Islamic terrorism, and the fact that Mohammed Nasiri had several titles by Qutb only reinforced the unease he was feeling.

He continued to search the apartment, hoping to find something that would tell him where Nasiri had gone or what he was planning to do. There was nothing. No personal letters, no laptop, no cell phone. The man didn’t even have a landline, but those were growing less and less popular these days.

In short, he and Davidson had taken a huge risk, had broken several laws, and had come up with nothing. Even Nasiri’s shirts, trousers, and jackets were clean. What pocket litter there was, wasn’t helpful. The whole place looked more like a movie set than the apartment of an actual human being.

Vaughan walked back into the kitchen. Davidson was sitting at the table and looked up. “Anything?”

“Nothing,” replied Vaughan.

“Do you mind if I take a look around now that you’re done?”

Vaughan grabbed a towel off the counter and threw it to him. “Go ahead. Just make sure you wipe everything down. I don’t want to leave any prints behind.”