The Ledger of the Lost
Karam's Legacy, Chapter 14: The Names They Buried
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This is Chapter 14 of my serialized novel - Karam’s Legacy
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Deputy Inspector Christopher Mason hadn’t slept well in weeks.
He tried Amir’s phone again—voicemail.
With a quiet sigh, he set the phone down on his desk and sank into his chair, finally surrendering to the immense weight of exhaustion he felt on his eyes.
October 2007
The first sign that something was wrong came as a phone call Mason should’ve ignored.
It was late. The precinct was nearly empty. He’d stayed behind under the pretense of paperwork, but the truth was simpler—he was worried. Karam hadn’t checked in for days. Not that he owed Mason anything anymore. But after their last conversation, a knot had lodged in Mason’s chest. Something was coming.
He was staring at the blinking cursor on his screen when the desk phone rang.
Unlisted number.
“Captain Mason,” he answered.
There was a pause. Then a low, gravelly voice: “You need to tell your boy to back off.”
The line went dead.
Mason sat up straight, heart thudding. He didn’t need to ask who. The voice had meant Karam. And “back off” wasn’t a warning.
He grabbed his coat, ignoring the stack of case files on his desk, and bolted down the stairs. His hands were already dialing Karam’s number before he hit the parking lot.
No answer. Again. No answer.
The streets of Queens blurred past his windshield. His gut told him exactly where Karam would be—somewhere public, maybe a subway station. He’d mentioned following a lead in Astoria. “It’s bigger than I thought,” he had said two weeks ago. “They’re using the Demographics Unit to set people up. Entrapment. False arrests. They’re targeting Muslims. Sikhs are getting caught up. This isn’t surveillance, Chris.”
Instead of backing Karam, Mason had warned him. Don’t get too close. This goes all the way up the chain.
One man—an immigrant already skirting the edge as a vigilante—wasn’t going to change anything.
The flashing lights were already washing the street in red and blue when Mason arrived.
Two cruisers. One ambulance. Yellow tape looped around the stairwell entrance of the Astoria–Ditmars subway station.
Mason parked crooked, jumped the curb, flashed his badge, and shoved past the cluster of uniforms gathered near the platform.
“Who’s the victim?” he barked.
A young officer looked up. “No ID yet. Older guy. Maybe mid-40s. Witness said he tried to stop a robbery—chased a man who stole a woman’s purse.”
Mason’s stomach turned.
“Where is he?”
The officer motioned toward the platform. “Didn’t make it. Paramedics called it five minutes ago.”
Mason descended the stairs. The platform was mostly cleared, but the chalk outline and the blood told enough of the story.
He saw the body.
Time stopped.
Karam lay twisted near the tracks, face drained of color, eyes still open, wide, confused, as if asking a question he never got to finish.
Mason’s knees nearly buckled.
He hadn’t seen him in weeks. And now he was looking at him through the jagged lens of crime scene tape.
His eyes darted over the damage: bruised jaw, split brow, blood streaked at the corner of his mouth—signs of a fight. Signs of a man who did his duty even when he stopped wearing a badge.
And then the small, precise wound near his ribs.
Too clean. Too professional.
Mason swallowed hard, his throat dry. I’m so sorry.
The platform, the lights, the sounds—they all blurred behind the truth: Karam hadn’t just died. He’d been targeted. Killed for getting too close.
A hand on his shoulder—an officer, asking something. Mason didn’t hear. Couldn’t. A second tap. Mason finally looked up at the officer, who handed him a sealed bag. “Found this in the victim’s jacket.”
Inside was a folded piece of paper. Karam’s handwriting—sharp, rushed, unmistakable.
“Asset ID: M3/CTD/27.”
Mason quickly put the sealed bag in his pocket. He had an inkling as to what would come next. If this were truly an inside job, then there would be an effort to hide all the evidence.
He quickly walked back up the stairs and back into his car. He picked up his cell phone, not the department-issued one. “Manfred?”
“Mason?”
“Empty Karam’s dojo. Now. Everything. Tonight.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
Mason held his breath. “He’s dead. Manfred. He’s gone. They got him.”
The sirens faded. The blood was gone.
Mason jolted upright in his chair, breath shallow, heart hammering. For a second, he wasn’t sure if the pounding was in his chest or at the door.
The office came back into focus: dull light, stale coffee, the quiet hum of the air vent.
2025. Not a subway platform. Not that night.
He rubbed his face hard, forcing the ghosts back into their corners.
“Yeah?” he called out, voice hoarse.
The door creaked open, and in stepped Detective Brian Cruz, sharp suit, fresh haircut, and a calm smile that was a little too calm for the case he was working on.
“Deputy Inspector,” Cruz said with a nod. “Heard you wanted a quick update on the armored truck incident.”
Mason motioned to the chair across from him. “Appreciate you making the time, Detective.”
Cruz sat down, placing a plain manila folder on the desk. He opened up the folder and started going through the investigation.
“Crash happened this morning on Crescent and 31st in Astoria. The truck overturned, the rear axle toast. One guard’s recovering at Elmhurst. Minor injuries. The other one’s missing—Fatin Ibrahim.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Ok, that much I know. Continue.”
Cruz nodded, “Right. Former NYPD. Left about 17 years ago. Been bouncing between security gigs. Clean record.”
Mason kept his expression neutral.
“No prints?” Mason asked.
“None. Not even partials.”
Mason leaned back. “That’s not a robbery. That’s an operation.” Mason shifted in his seat. “Talk to the surviving guard?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Cruz replied. “He says there was a flash—some kind of impact—then smoke. Said Ibrahim yelled something like ‘run’ or ‘get out.’ Next thing he knows, he’s waking up to EMTs.”
“And the money’s gone,” Mason said flatly.
“Half a mil,” Cruz confirmed, with a shrug that felt just a little rehearsed. “No dye packs. Locks cut clean. No struggle. No prints.”
Mason let the silence stretch.
“Fits the profile,” Cruz added, too quickly. “Clean exit. Guy vanishes. Maybe he had debts. Maybe he just snapped.”
“Profile?” Mason said.
Cruz paused, then smiled—a little too polished. “Former cop. Hasn’t been able to hold a steady job. Could have been desperate for something. I mean, driving around that much money every day. It happens. You don’t think so?”
“I don’t like stories that write themselves,” Mason replied, meeting his eyes.
A beat passed. Cruz smiled—tight, practiced, just casual enough to be calculated. “Spoke to the wife,” he added. “Says she’s as shocked as anyone. She swears he’d never do something like this. But you know how that goes.”
Mason didn’t reply. His gaze dropped to the folder again, then back up. “So what’s next?”
Cruz nodded. “We have to find him.” Cruz stood, buttoning his jacket. Cruz gave a small salute and left, the door clicking shut behind him.
Mason stared at the door for a moment. He glanced down at the file that Cruz gave him. Cruz didn’t work for him, but he’d met people like Cruz in his career. Squeekly clean people, boy scouts from the outside, but they were smug and ambitious. The goal was to close as many cases as possible. Don’t dig in too deep. Tie things up in a nice little bow.
He didn’t like that.
He would be digging into this one a bit deeper. For now, he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer. He pulled out a sealed bag, the same one they’d found on Karam, and placed it on his desk. Mason then pulled out a small black notebook and opened it up to the first page.
He stared at the note again—one he’d reviewed a hundred times but never fully cracked. Then he re-read what he’d written in his notebook, trying to crack the code:
M3: Manhattan District 3?
CTD: Counterterrorism Division. That much he was sure of.
27: still a mystery. A case number? A priority level? Or was it a sequence—victim twenty-seven?
He didn’t like the way his gut twisted. Because if 27 was a number in a sequence… how long was this list?
The rain outside tapped against the windowpane, steady and soft. Amir sat cross-legged on the floor of his apartment. Folders. Loose papers. Case notes. All spread out around him.
He’d been at it for hours, sifting through names, notes, and locations. At some point, he’d given up on the notebook and moved to his laptop, transferring his father’s scribbles into a clean, structured Notion database.
Now only one item remained: a plain, unmarked folder buried at the bottom of the last pile.
Inside: stapled stacks of paper—column after column of handwriting in a tight, deliberate script.
Code – Name
He tilted his head. Not dojo rosters. Not client logs. Nothing personal.
He flipped through a few entries:
M1/CTD/01 – Ameen Qureshi
M2/CIA/02 – Abdul Kareem Jackson
M1/FBI/03 – Zainab Jaffri
M3/ICE/05 – Barkat Rahman
His eyes narrowed.
He thumbed deeper.
M1/FIO/14 – Wakil Afzal
M3/FIO/19 – Munir Afzal
His breath caught. Family names.
And then, a gut punch:
M3/CTD/27 – Bashir Shabazz
Amir’s hands began to tremble. He stared at it for a long moment, chest tightening, ears ringing.
“No…” he whispered.
He sank back onto his heels, the folder open in his lap. His fingers brushed against the pages—over 150 names.
South Asian. Black. Muslim. Sikh. Immigrants. Neighbors.
Amir shuddered to think of what this all meant. Were these…victims?
His eyes started to focus on the third set of letters:
CTD. FIO. ICE. CIA. FBI. DEA.
Suddenly, things started to make sense.
Agencies. Departments. Units.
FBI and DEA were easy.
CIA…really? The CIA?
ICE…yes, his father noted people vanished, disappeared.
CTD. FIO.
FIO, he recognized. Field Intelligence.
So that means CTD could be the counterterrorism division.
He whispered the letters aloud, like speaking them might make them less ominous.
“Counterterrorism. Field Intelligence. Immigration. Surveillance…”
His father had been tracking a system—a machine disguised as national security, coordinated across agencies and departments, grinding people down in the name of protection. A machine that didn’t care who you were, only what box you checked.
His stomach twisted. This list felt like an obituary. Written in code.
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Parth, I just recommended your serialized novel with an encouraging note to you!!