The Garden of Burning Sand (6 page)

Zoe saw an electric piano on the floor beside a stuffed bear. She found the power switch and hit one of the keys. The piano began to play “Fur Elise.” A smile blossomed slowly on the girl’s face, and she made a sound reminiscent of air being released from a balloon. She touched one of the keys, then another. While she was occupied, Sister Irina took Zoe aside.

“This is very unusual for us,” she said. “All our children are orphans. If she has a family, we don’t want her to get too attached.”

“We’re doing our best to locate them,” Zoe assured her.

The nun looked toward the acacia tree, its limbs framed by the cobalt
sky. “The things men do to children. Our rule teaches us to be merciful. But this … I tremble to say it, but I feel wrath. You must find the man who did this and put him in prison.”

Zoe met her eyes. “We’ll get him,” she promised.

After returning to the CILA office, Zoe spent the afternoon pretending to research a point of British evidentiary law on which the Zambian courts had yet to rule. In fact she was thoroughly preoccupied by her father’s email. She was trapped and she knew it. She could neither avoid a response nor deny his request—to do so would dissolve the goodwill she had succeeded in rebuilding when he and Sylvia had met her for dinner in South Africa at the end of her clerkship.

She sat by the window, pondering the contradictions in their relationship. Eleven years ago he had betrayed her with a kiss and she had run from him, until she realized she was a kite on a string, beholden to him still. Her charitable trust—a creation of her mother’s will—was not yet hers, and the man who managed it was her father’s puppet. Atticus Spelling, an octogenarian curmudgeon in New York, had vetoed many of her donations over the years, citing concerns about the fiscal discipline of the charities she favored. If not for her father’s intervention, Spelling would have withheld funding from half a dozen small nonprofits doing life-saving work in southern Africa, including Special Child Advocates and St. Francis. Zoe hated the subterfuge, but she was bound to it until her thirtieth birthday.

When five o’clock came, she finally sent an email accepting her father’s invitation. Then she left the office and climbed into her Land Rover, sitting for a moment before starting the engine. She watched the lavender jacaranda blooms dance in the wind and tried not to think about Friday night. After a while, she started the SUV and pulled into traffic, taking Independence Avenue toward Kabulonga.

When she arrived at her apartment complex, she greeted the guard at the gate and parked beside a hedge of bird of paradise. Entering her apartment, she threw her backpack on the couch and went to her bedroom to change into her swimsuit. The air was cool in the falling light, and the pool would be frigid, but she didn’t care. She had grown up swimming in the North Atlantic.

The gardens were deserted when she arrived. The pool had an emerald tint and its surface was dotted with wind-blown jacaranda blossoms. She set her iPhone on a lounge chair and took off her T-shirt and shorts. Putting on her goggles, she entered the water with a shallow dive. The cold enveloped her, hammering her nerves and stealing her breath, but she turned discomfort into speed, churning the water with a power that had qualified her to compete in the NCAA swim championships at Stanford.

After twenty laps, she pulled herself out and sat on the edge, drinking in the last golden drops of sunlight. A memory came to her from when she was fourteen: her mother on the beach at the Vineyard house, a blue and white scarf trailing in the stiff wind. Storm clouds blowing in from the south, turning the surface of Eel Pond into slate. Emerging from the water into the warm embrace of a towel. Running toward the house as the raindrops began to fall. Lightning searing the sky, thunder rumbling overhead. And her mother’s laughter, like grace notes in the chorus. It was Catherine’s last day on the Vineyard before she left for Somalia.

When the pool fell into shadow, Zoe dried herself off and walked back to her apartment, thinking about dinner. Her iPhone rang just inside the front door. It was Joseph.

“Mariam said to call you,” he began. “A woman in Kabwata filed a report about a missing girl with mental problems. She identified herself as a friend of the girl’s mother.”

Zoe immediately forgot her hunger. “Are you going to talk to her?”

“I’m five minutes from your apartment.”

“I’ll meet you outside the gate.”

The address given by the Kabwata police was on Chilimbulu Road, not far from East Point—a trendy discotheque known for turning up-and-coming Zambian bands into sensations. They parked outside a multi-story complex of flats and Joseph led Zoe to a ground-floor apartment. The door was slightly ajar, giving them a glimpse of the living area. A man about Zoe’s age was lounging on a couch watching television, while two girls—one adolescent, one younger—and a woman in
chitenge
tended the stove in the kitchen. The air was thick with the aroma of cooking vegetables and
nshima
—Zambian maize.

The man came to the door when Joseph knocked. He glanced at Joseph and looked at Zoe. She put her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans and stared back at him.

“I’m Officer Kabuta,” Joseph said in English. “I’m looking for Priscilla Kuwema.”

“What do you want?” the man asked in a thick Bemba accent.

“I need to speak with her,” Joseph replied.

“And the
muzungu
?”

“She’s with me.”

The man shrugged and called out to the woman before returning to the couch. The woman frowned and said something to the girls. Then she walked to the door, her face a mask.

“Are you Priscilla Kuwema?” Joseph asked.

The woman nodded slowly.

“You filed a missing-person report at the Kabwata Police Post?”

“Yes.”

Joseph took out his camera and displayed the image of the girl. The
woman stared at the photo, then turned her gaze to the floor. “Where is she?” she asked, looking ashamed.

“In a safe place.”

“What happened to her?”

“Some people found her in Kanyama two nights ago.”

The woman glanced at the man on the couch.

“Your husband?” Joseph asked.

“No, no,” she said, flustered. “My husband is in Kitwe. He works the mines.”

Joseph raised his eyebrows. “I need to ask you some questions. Can we sit down?”

The woman hesitated before nodding. She exchanged a few words with the man, her tone apologetic. The man reacted angrily, delivering her a sharp-tongued rebuke. The woman hung her head, and her reply sounded to Zoe like a plea. The man glared at her and stomped out of the apartment, bumping Zoe’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.” The woman looked shaken. “He’s my … cousin. He thinks he lives here.”

She took a deep breath and gestured toward the couch, offering them water or beer.

“A Mosi would be nice,” Joseph said. “I’ll try to be brief.”

“Water,” Zoe said when the woman looked at her.

A minute later, she returned with a beer and a bottle of water, both chilled. She sat on the couch, folded her hands in her lap, and began to speak.

“I walked with my … cousin to the market. Bright, my eldest, has a boyfriend who lives in the building. He was here with her. Gift, my youngest, was also here. Kuyeya—that is her name, this girl—was in the back room. Bright says she and her boyfriend were only gone a minute. I don’t know if I believe them. They disappear sometimes.
Gift told me she went down the street to play. I don’t know why she didn’t take Kuyeya. She usually does.” The woman shrugged. “The door was open when I came home. Kuyeya must have left.”

“What time was that?” Joseph asked.

“About nineteen hundred hours. It was after dinner.”

“And after dark,” Zoe clarified, scanning the apartment with her eyes. Beyond the living room and kitchen, she saw a hallway with three doors, all closed.

The woman nodded. “None of the neighbors saw her.”

“Why does Kuyeya live with you?” Zoe asked.

The woman looked away. “Her mother died two years ago. She has no other family.”

Zoe traded a glance with Joseph, concealing her frustration. “Where is her father?”

The woman shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Kuyeya has light skin.”

“So did Bella—Kuyeya’s mother.”

“How did Bella die?” Zoe inquired.

The woman fidgeted with her hands. “
Va banthu
. The illness came and never went away. I don’t know.” She glanced toward the kitchen. “Excuse me,” she said, leaving to stir the
nshima
.

“She knows something she’s not saying,” Zoe whispered to Joseph.

“Probably a lot of things,” he replied, “but we’re getting off track. We’re not here to talk about the girl’s mother.”

He waited until the woman sat down again and then took over the interview. “What did you do when you found out Kuyeya was gone?”

The woman blinked. “I talked to my daughters. I talked to people in the building.”

“Did you look for her on the street?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“Where might she have been going?”

The woman shook her head. “Kuyeya is not like normal children. I don’t understand her.”

“Does she have friends down the street?”

“No. She usually stays in the back room.”

“Your cousin,” Zoe said, “does
he
have friends nearby?”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “He doesn’t know anything.”

By that you mean exactly the opposite
. “What does he do for a living?”

“The better question,” Joseph interjected, “is what sort of car does he drive?”

“He drives a jeep,” the woman said. “A red Toyota.”

“Do you know anyone who owns a silver SUV?”

The woman thought about this. “I don’t think so.”

At this point Joseph broke the news. “Kuyeya was raped. Do you have any idea who might have done it?”

The woman looked genuinely shocked. She stumbled over her words. “No, I … She never … How is she?”

“She’s recovering.”

The older of the woman’s daughters—Bright—approached shyly and spoke to her mother in Nyanja. She glanced at Joseph and Zoe and then returned to the kitchen.

“Would you like to join us for dinner?” the woman asked.

“No,” Joseph replied. “Will you be home tomorrow afternoon?”

She nodded.

“I’ll come back then.”

“She’s lying about her cousin,” Zoe said as soon as they were seated in Joseph’s truck. She studied his face in the darkness, wondering whether he would give her a window into his thoughts.

“She
is
lying about the cousin,” he said, putting the truck in gear
and pulling onto Chilimbulu Road. “But not because he had anything to do with the rape. He’s probably a live-in boyfriend. I’d guess she’s also lying about her husband. I doubt she has one. She had no ring on her finger or pictures of a man around.”

“How do you know the cousin wasn’t involved?”

“I didn’t tell her about the rape until the end of the conversation. She had no reason to lie when she said he went with her to the market. She also had no reason to lie about his vehicle. As it happens, I saw a red jeep in the lot when we pulled in. It’s more likely that the girl—Kuyeya—wandered out on the street like the woman said.”

Zoe pursed her lips. “So we’re no closer to a suspect than we were before.”

Joseph glanced at her. “We’ll find out more tomorrow.”

“Can I come with you?” she asked eagerly.

He waited a beat before responding. “You have good instincts. And I need to talk to the neighbors. Perhaps you can ask Ms. Kuwema about the girl’s mother.”

“I thought she wasn’t relevant,” Zoe retorted with a grin.

He shrugged. “It would give you something to do.”

“Other than bothering you?”

“Precisely.”

On Tuesday, Zoe left for work an hour early and took a circuitous route through Libala and Kabwata, following a hunch. She had slept poorly the night before, beset by dreams—half remembered, half imagined—of the young man in the bandana and his gang of hoodlums and of Priscilla Kuwema and the girl who had no family. When she woke again, she put the incident in Kanyama out of her mind and concentrated on the woman and the child. Something about the woman’s demeanor, about the man she had called her cousin and the back room where Kuyeya stayed, whispered of secrets buried just below the surface.

She drove slowly down Chilimbulu Road and pulled to the shoulder. At seven thirty in the morning, the street was swarming with foot traffic—men sporting talktime dispensers, adolescent boys pushing carts overloaded with crates, children dressed in school uniforms heading to class, mothers in
chitenge
with infants strapped to their backs. A few hawkers tried to solicit her, but she ignored them, focusing on the apartment building where Priscilla Kuwema lived. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she had a feeling that morning might tell a different tale from evening.

A red jeep sat empty at the edge of the parking lot. She stored its license-plate number in her iPhone and began taking pictures. The
four-story edifice was constructed of reinforced concrete with an open-air stairwell and balconies barely large enough to accommodate a clothesline. The windows were louvered and covered with grates, but Zoe could see movement behind a number of them. At the base of the stairwell, a group of men stood smoking.

After a minute, a young woman carrying a basket on her shoulder approached the men. One of the men gave her some money, and the girl handed him an oil-stained bag from her basket.
Fritas
, Zoe guessed. The girl then knocked on Priscilla Kuwema’s door. Zoe switched from photo to video and maxed out the zoom, hoping the cousin would answer the door. Instead, a different man appeared, wearing rumpled trousers and a tank top. He squinted at the girl, scratching the stubble on his cheeks. A moment later, Priscilla Kuwema stood in the doorframe, dressed in a miniskirt and a tight-fitting shirt. She gave the girl a wad of bills, took six bags, and closed the door.

Zoe replayed the footage she had captured. The way the man was dressed suggested he had spent the night in the apartment. Was he sleeping with Priscilla Kuwema? If so, who was the cousin? And why had the man not paid for the
fritas
?

Fifteen minutes later, the man left the apartment looking more presentable. He climbed into a delivery truck and drove off. Before long the door opened again and the cousin appeared, a pretty girl in tow. He was dressed in a pink Oxford shirt and jeans, and the girl was heavily made-up and clad in a low-cut blouse and high heels. They kissed beside the red jeep. Then the man left and the girl flirted with the chain-smokers, trading smiles for
fritas
.

When a third man—older than the others—left the apartment with yet another scantily clad woman, Zoe knew that the riddle of Priscilla Kuwema had only two solutions: either she lived with roommates who had regular amorous visitors, or she was a
mahule
—a prostitute.

Zoe checked her watch. It was after eight. She had five minutes before she had to head to the office. She looked down the street and saw the
fritas
vendor soliciting a man on a motorcycle. She locked the Land Rover and waded into the sea of pedestrians. When the motorcyclist left, she approached the girl, money in hand.

“Muli bwange,”
she said.

The girl smiled with her eyes.
“Ndili bwino. Kaya inu?”

“Ndili bwino,”
Zoe said. “Do you speak English?”

“Some.”

“For fifty pin, I want a bag of your
fritas
, and I want to ask you a few questions.”

“Okay,” the girl said.

“Do you know Priscilla Kuwema?”

When the girl looked confused, Zoe pointed at the woman’s apartment.

A shadow crossed the girl’s face. She glanced down the street. “She not use that name.”

Zoe remained impassive. “What name does she use?”

“Doris.”

“Why doesn’t she use her real name?”

The girl took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

Zoe slid the money into her pocket. “If we are going to do business, I need the truth.”

The girl hesitated. “The men,” she said. “They call her Doris.”

“Where is her husband?”

The girl studied the ground. “She not have husband.”

“Who are the men?”

The girl looked scared. She handed Zoe a bag of
fritas
. “They come from the bars.”

“Is Doris a
mahule
?”

The girl nodded. “Now I go. Please.”

Zoe paid the girl and returned to the Land Rover, her mind churning with possibilities. Had Kuyeya’s mother also been a prostitute? Had she lived at the apartment with Priscilla Kuwema—Doris? How many of Doris’s customers had seen Kuyeya? Could one of them be a pedophile? On the other hand, if Doris was a
mahule
, then why did she move so quickly to report Kuyeya’s absence to the police? Joseph was right and wrong at the same time. Doris knew nothing of the rape, but Kuyeya’s mother was hardly immaterial to the investigation.

Zoe arrived at the CILA office a few minutes before the all-staff meeting. She looked around for Joseph but didn’t see him. She muddled through the meeting and the morning, conscious of her growing pile of work but consumed by the puzzle of Kuyeya’s case. At noon Sarge asked for an update on her research into the laws of Britain. She extemporized on the fly, but even her near-perfect recall of case authorities didn’t make up for her lack of progress.

Sarge raised an eyebrow. “I need something by the end of the day.”

“I’ll have it to you by four o’clock,” she promised.

She sat down at her laptop and engaged her legal brain. She printed the report five minutes before four and set it on Sarge’s desk, pointing at her watch. Sarge was on the phone, but he acknowledged her with a nod. She got a glass of water from the kitchen and returned to her desk, listening to him flip through the pages. She felt her iPhone vibrate in her pocket.

“It’s Joseph,” she told him. “I’m going to take it outside.”

“Fine, fine,” he said distractedly. “This is good …”

She took the call beside a trellis of flowering creepers.

“I’m almost at the office,” Joseph said. “Are you free?”

“Perfect timing,” she replied, walking to the gate. She crossed the road and climbed into his truck. “I have a surprise for you.”

He peered over the rim of his sunglasses. “What would that be?”

“A little video I took this morning before work.” She took out her iPhone and played him the footage. “The woman goes by the working name Doris. The men come from the bars. I spoke to a vendor of
fritas
on the street. Doris is her best customer.”

“This changes things,” Joseph said. “The perpetrator could be a client.”

She nodded. “Doris has some explaining to do.”

He put the truck in gear and entered the flow of traffic on Church Road. “You’ve made yourself useful. Well done.”

“One other thing,” she said, playing her advantage. “I’d like to talk to her alone.”

Joseph navigated the double roundabout by the Zambia Supreme Court and sped east toward Nationalist Road. Zoe waited, allowing him to make the decision on his own.

“I suppose she might find it easier to talk to a woman,” he said. Then he pointed at her phone. “Can you record the conversation?”

“With or without her consent?”

He laughed. “I don’t want to make you a witness. I just want to hear what she says.”

Ten minutes later, Joseph knocked on Doris’s door. When she didn’t answer, he knocked again, this time more insistently. An old woman peered down at them from a balcony on the third floor but withdrew as soon as Zoe noticed her. Joseph tapped his foot, growing impatient. Just then, Zoe saw two school-aged children—a boy and a girl—walking toward the stairwell.

“Excuse me,” Zoe said to them, “do you know if Doris is home?”

The boy giggled. He turned to the girl and spoke a string of words in Nyanja.

“What’s he saying?” Zoe asked Joseph.

“They’re talking about an animal—what do you call it?—a genet. It hunts at night and sleeps during the day.” He patted the boy on the head.
“Zikomo,”
he said, and the children ran chattering toward the stairs.

They knocked again on Doris’s door. After a while they heard the sound of shuffling feet, then the door opened a crack, revealing the face of Bright. The girl was dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt. She stared at them fearfully. Joseph exchanged a few words with her in Nyanja.

“Her mother is taking a bath,” he said to Zoe. “Why don’t you wait for her? I’m going to walk around and ask some questions.”

“Muli bwange?”
Zoe said when Bright opened the door.

“I’m okay,” the girl replied, gesturing toward the couch. “Wait here.”

As soon as she disappeared, Zoe took a seat and studied the room around her. The furnishings were simple and clean. The couch had a matching chair. The floor was covered with woven rugs, and there were curtains on the windows. Beside the door was a bookshelf adorned with half-melted candles and carvings of game animals. The walls, however, were bare, save for an ebony ceremonial mask that hung over the door.

Eventually, Doris appeared and greeted Zoe with a plastic smile. Clad in a conservative
chitenge
gown, she barely resembled the seductress who had purchased six bags of
fritas
that morning. “Where is the officer?” she asked.

“He’s outside talking to the neighbors. I wanted to speak with you alone.”

Doris tilted her head. “Would you like tea?”

“Please,” Zoe said.

Doris went to the stove and filled a kettle with water. “You are American?”

“I’m from New York,” Zoe replied.

“Ah.” Doris sounded almost wistful. “Lusaka is small to you?”

Zoe shrugged. “You can see the stars at night.”

They continued to make small talk until the tea finished steeping. Doris handed Zoe a mug and took a seat on the chair. Zoe reached into the pocket of her suit jacket and touched her iPhone, commencing the recording.

“Ms. Kuwema,” she began, “I want you to know that I’m not here to investigate you. I’m here because of what happened to Kuyeya. I need your help to find the man who raped her.”

Doris nodded, looking nervous.

“I know how you make a living,” Zoe said, speaking softly to lessen the blow. “I know you go by the street name Doris. I know that the man who was here last night is not your cousin. I saw the men who were with you this morning, and the other women.”

Doris stared at her.

“I don’t want to make problems for you,” Zoe continued. “But I need you to answer my questions exactly as I ask them, leaving nothing out. Will you do that, for Kuyeya’s sake?”

The silence between them extended until it became awkward. Zoe was about to restate her plea when Doris spoke, her tone low and even. “I will tell you what I know.”

Zoe let out the breath she was holding. “Good. How old is Kuyeya?”

Doris shrugged. “I think she is thirteen or fourteen. But I’m not sure.”

“When did you meet Bella?”

Doris looked at the ceiling. “It was winter, the year Chiluba was arrested.”

Zoe processed this. Frederick Chiluba, the first Zambian president in the multi-party era, had been charged with corruption by his successor, Levy Mwanawasa, and subjected to public prosecution—an event that had shaken Zambia’s patronage system to the core. She searched her memory for the year. “That was 2004?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you meet her?”

Doris placed her hands in her lap. “On Addis Ababa Drive, near the Pamodzi hotel.”

“You were streetwalking?”

Doris nodded. “She was new. The other girls were unkind because she was pretty and they didn’t want to lose business. I took pity on her. She reminded me of my sister.”

“Where was she staying at the time?”

“I don’t know. I think it was a flat in Northmead.”

Zoe took another sip of tea. “Did she move in with you?”

“Yes. Soon after we met. She helped with rent.”

“Was Bella her street name?”

Doris nodded again. “Her real name was Charity Mizinga.”

“She never mentioned anything about Kuyeya’s age?”

Doris thought about this. “I think she was born in January. I do not know what year.”

“Where was Bella from?”

“She came from Southern Province. Her mother was Tonga.”

Zoe felt a twinge of hope. “Are her parents still alive?”

Doris shook her head. “I think they are dead.”

“And her extended family?”

“I don’t know. She never talked about them.”

Zoe took the conversation in a different direction. “When Bella brought men here, what did she do with Kuyeya?”

Doris stood. “I will show you.”

Zoe followed her down the hallway to the door on the right. The room beyond was bare except for a mattress and a chest of drawers.

“This was her place,” Doris said. “Now I rent it to other girls. When Bella did business here, she put Kuyeya in the bathroom. When she went out, she left Kuyeya in this room.”

On the far wall, Zoe saw thin marks in pairs and triplets. She knelt down and examined them carefully. From their spacing, she guessed they had been made by fingernails. She pictured the girl scoring the wall, and remembered Joy Herald’s explanation of the stigma of disability. The indignation she felt was tempered by sorrow.

“Bella was popular with the men,” Doris said when they returned to the living room. “But she never had enough money. She was always giving it to
ngangas
for Kuyeya’s medicine.”

Zoe frowned. An
nganga
was a traditional healer. “Why didn’t she go to a clinic?”

“She trusted the
ngangas
. They helped us with STDs.”

“Did the men Bella brought here ever … touch Kuyeya?”

Doris looked horrified. “No. The child was not available.”