The Reformers: A Matt Blake Novel (The Matt Blake legal thriller series Book 2) by Russell Moran Page B

the bombing of the Water Tower Mall in Chicago, just a few short miles from his mosque.
     
    “The heathens say that violence is committed by people they call ‘radical Muslims.’ But the man who is accused of the murders is not in any way a radical. He is an apostate, a reformer as he likes to call himself. He is a man who has written against Sharia law and against the strict adherence to the words of the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon Him. The man is worse than an infidel. He is a Muslim who has turned his back on the only path to truth. The heathens will soon learn that the violence they complain about is caused by scum like Yamani and his Zionist helpers. They are the violent ones. They are the ones who seek to kill.”
     
    That evening, Imam Ishak drove his car along the Dan Ryan Expressway. He was going to a speaking engagement at another mosque in South Chicago. As he approached his exit, a large pickup truck swerved into his lane, hit the side of his car and drove it into a cement barricade. The truck continued on. Ishak was killed immediately. The autopsy would confirm simply that the cause of death was blunt trauma to the head.
     
    The pickup truck was found two hours later, abandoned on the side of a road in Gary, Indiana. The vehicle was taped off as a crime scene, and both the interior and exterior was dusted for fingerprints. Not one print was found on the truck.

Chapter 20
     
     
    Diana had been working on her book for two weeks. Besides her teaching load at the university she was also working on a feature-length article for The Atlantic , as well as helping me on the Yamani case. Dee had just called me to say that she had enough research to begin a first draft.
    At 6:30 p.m. I walked into our apartment. Dee was already there, the dining room table littered with papers. She walked up to me and we kissed. But something was off, something was different.
     
    “Hey, hon,” I said. “How about a smile?”
     
    “After I tell you about my research, you tell me if I should smile.”
     
    I sat at the table. It may sound like a small thing, but it’s rare when Dee isn’t smiling. A smile is like the default setting on her pretty face. It’s sort of like there’s always a smile in there just waiting for an excuse to pop out. She wasn’t smiling. But she did have my attention.
     
    “Why don’t you go freshen up, Matt. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
     
    I went into the master bathroom, took a quick shower, put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and rejoined Dee in the dining room.
     
    “The big three weren’t alone, Matt.”
     
    We were starting to call the three defendants in the mall bombing cases the Big Three, Al Yamani, our client, Mickey Sidduq, Georgina’s guy in New York, and Jake Almeth, Jerry Blackwell’s client in San Francisco—the Big Three .
     
    “A lot of people are, or were, writing critical stuff about Islam. I’ve come up with 36 Muslims who wrote serious critiques about their religion. Twenty are novelists, ten could be described as journalists, and six are non-fiction book writers.”
     
    “Dee, you said ‘or were’ when you just referred to these writers. So are they or were they writing stuff about Islam?”
     
    “Of the 36 people I’ve identified as writers who are critical of Islam, 27 are dead— fucking dead . That’s 75 percent of the reform writers. I dug further. Of the 27 dead guys, only three died of natural causes. One guy was in his 80s and died of a heart attack. One was 75 and died of cancer. And the third guy died at 65 of emphysema. Of the remaining 24 dead people, 19 were shot, two beheaded, and three died in explosions. Are you still wondering why I’m not smiling?”
     
    “Are you thinking about Al Yamani, Dee?”
    “Yes, I’m thinking about Al Yamani, as well as that guy Mickey and the one called Jake. If you and the other lawyers are successful in getting these guys off, what kind of life expectancy will they