City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris Page B

had been scrunched up and wrapped around her neck like a cord, so it was possible that there were still foreign fibers in the fabric that hadn’t been loosened by her long stay in the sea. Katya found a long black hair on the inside of the scarf. It probably belonged to Eve. In the same spot, she found two shorter, paler hairs. She quickly slid them into a baggie and labeled them. They were blond. Male hairs, she guessed. This was interesting. Where would Eve encounter a blond? Where would anyone encounter a blond? And why were the hairs on the inside of the scarf?
    She nearly picked up the phone to call Zainab at home, but she knew that her boss would not be thrilled, no matter how good the news. Zainab was all business, all the time. Her first question would be
Did you finish looking at
everything?
    Reluctantly, Katya went to the last item of clothing: the burqa. It was just like any other face covering, a plain black rectangle of fabric with Velcro to fasten it at the back of the head and a slit for the eyes. She scanned it for hairs and found none. Two pale beige patches on the inside looked like makeup stains. Eve’s face powder might have rubbed off on the fabric. Katya decided to take a sample of the stain, to double-check that it was makeup. Using scissors, she began to cut a small square at the edge of the stain, but something in her revolted against the idea of damaging the burqa. She picked up a swab instead. Suddenly, her cell phone chimed. She looked at her purse.
    Forcing herself to stay on task, she scraped some of the makeup from the fabric onto a microscope slide. Her cell phone chimed again.
    Katya set the burqa on the table and went to her purse. There were two Bluetooth messages, both the same. When she opened them, a picture appeared. It showed a woman’s face, completely veiled except for a pair of smiling black eyes. Beneath the picture was the caption
Smile, you’re on camera!
    Katya snorted in disgust.
Even here,
she thought,
in my office.
The lab’s windows were too high to see out of, but she was certain that if she climbed on a chair, she would see a group of young girls on the sidewalk below, making ridiculously slow progress down the street, hands working the cell phones beneath their cloaks. One of them would be sending this message.
    It wasn’t the first time she’d been Bluetoothed by passing strangers. It was the preferred method of communication between flirtatious teens on the street—and sometimes the only way for a man to get a woman’s attention. There was nothing like a jangling cell phone to make a girl stop what she was doing and look around, even raise her burqa if she was wearing one. For Katya it was an embarrassment. Sometimes so many messages came while she was in public that she had to turn her phone off. But no one had ever sent a picture of themselves in a burqa before. What a stupid idea! She tossed the phone in her purse and went back to the burqa.
    The minute she picked the burqa back up, her cell phone chimed again. At the very same moment, her fingers encountered something stiff. She looked down at the burqa, not sure she could believe it.
    Had the Bluetooth message come from
this?
    She quickly laid the fabric flat and, feeling the edges, picked up the magnifying glass. Then she spotted it. A small silver wire woven into the side seam. The wire led to a tiny black metallic patch at the lower corner of the burqa. She touched the patch gently with a finger, and on cue, her cell phone chimed.
    She dropped the burqa. “Bluetooth?” she said, gaping in astonishment. She grabbed the cell phone from her purse. There were two more messages, both the same as the first ones.
    This time she couldn’t stop herself from picking up the phone to call Zainab. A Bluetooth burqa! She’d read about them in fashion magazines but thought they were only for runways. Who, after all, would be ridiculous enough to wear a burqa for modesty while Bluetoothing her picture to every