The Terrorist Next Door by Sheldon Siegel

vehicles on Hyde Park’s main east-west thoroughfare were police cars. “Did you get to the armory yet?” he asked Robinson.
    “Yeah. Looks like somebody broke into an office and used the phone. A team from Hyde Park station is cordoning off a two-mile radius. Nobody comes or goes without being stopped.”
    “Good. Your people have had eyes on the mosque since the first bomb went off at the Art Institute, right?”
    “Right. It’s been quiet. The only person in the building has been the imam. He’s been there since nine o’clock this morning.”
    “Visitors?”
    “None. A lot of people are away for the summer.”
    “Any chance he stole a cell phone from a maintenance worker at the museum earlier this afternoon?”
    “Nope.”
    “What about the possibility that he planted a bomb at the 53rd Street station?”
    “Only if he did it before we got here at nine.”
    “The detonator cell phone wasn’t stolen until this afternoon. Any chance he placed the call from the armory?”
    “Not unless he left the mosque without three of my best people seeing him.”
    * * *
    Gold looked up into the security camera as he knocked on the reinforced steel door of the unmarked brick building on the southeast corner of 53rd and Cottage Grove in the dicey west end of Hyde Park. The thoroughfare was empty except for the police cars parked across the street. The weathered sign of the shoe repair shop that once occupied the one-story structure was still visible above the chipped plywood covering the space formerly taken up by a plate glass window. The Gates of Peace Mosque was across the street from the Washington Park Armory and two blocks north of Stagg Field. The home of the U. of C. football team was better known as the site where Enrico Fermi had created the world’s first nuclear reaction in 1942—an experiment never tried again within the Chicago city limits.
    The heavy door swung open and a tall young man with boyish features and a trim beard acknowledged Gold with a wary smile. Ibrahim Zibari looked more like a college student than a clergyman, sporting faded Levi’s and a navy polo shirt. His watch was a low-end Casio. His sneakers were mid-priced Nikes. “Good to see you again, David,” Al-Shahid’s imam said in soft-spoken, unaccented English. “Peace be upon you.”
    “Assalum Alaykum,” Gold answered. Chicago PD had encircled his mosque. A SWAT team was standing by in the Armory. “Peace be upon you, too, Ibrahim. This is my new partner, Detective Battle.”
    The young man extended a hand. “Ibrahim Zibari. Nice to meet you.”
    “David has told me good things about you.”
    “David is very kind.” Zibari turned back to Gold. “If you’re here about the bombings, you’re way behind the curve. A couple of your people were here this morning. I presume they’re still outside. I also got a visit from two of Special Agent Fong’s commandos. Seems the FBI is already rounding up the usual suspects.”
    “The young woman killed at the Art Institute was our neighbor. Her mother is one of my father’s caregivers.”
    “I’m sorry. Please express my condolences.”
    “I will. Mind if we come inside and ask you a few questions?”
    “Would you be kind enough to remove your shoes?”
    “Of course.”
    Gold felt the soft throw rugs beneath his feet as he and Battle followed Zibari through the whitewashed room that served as the mosque’s sanctuary and social hall. There was no air conditioning. The empty space smelled of scented candles and fresh tea.
    Battle took the opportunity to do a little gentle probing. “David tells me you did your undergraduate work at Michigan. I understand you spent some time in Iraq after you graduated.”
    “The U.S. Army paid my way through college,” Zibari said. “I returned the favor by spending two years in Baghdad working on a telecommunications system.”
    “It must have been difficult for a Muslim American to be working in Baghdad.”
    “It was difficult for