Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

Joe was polite. But after three hours of eating shit, he was seething.

Did Petrović have Anna?

Or had she had an accident with the car and, rather than face the music, taken off to parts unknown?

Anna was strong-willed and angry at him.

If she had gone off on her own, Joe really had no clue where to look for her.

Chapter 89

Finally home after my eighteen-hour day in the Tenderloin, I greeted Joe and Martha from the doorway. I unbuckled my gun belt, pulled off my jacket, and stepped out of my shoes, leaving it all in a heap, and made my way across the room to my husband.

I was exhausted, frustrated, and starving, but still dying to tell Joe about Lopez and kick the case around with him. He was sitting on the sofa with his laptop open on the coffee table. I dropped onto the couch next to him, put my arms around him, and hugged him to pieces.

“I’m guessing you had a bad day,” he said, hugging me back.

I got right into it, telling him about Denny Lopez in snatches, knowing that Joe was an expert at making sense of random clues. Then he did the same with me.

“Anna is missing,” he said. “She borrowed a car from the dealership, had an accident, and vanished.”

When he’d given it all up, I saw that his case was like mine, clues everywhere, leading to nothing.

“Keep your phone charged,” I said. “She could call saying she ran away from home and that she’s all right.”

He nodded, but from the look on his face, I knew he was deeply worried. He didn’t buy my happy ending for Anna at all.

“I did find something interesting,” he said, “about our pal Slobodan Petrović.”

He turned the laptop so that I could see the photo on his computer screen, a slightly out-of-focus image of a group of about eight men wearing fatigues, loosely gathered in a wooded area. They looked like they were having an outing. But there was more to it than that—much more.

A female wearing only a skirt pulled up around her thighs was lying in the middle ground, encircled by several of the men. And in the background, shaded by trees, were bodies of men and women in civilian clothing hanging from branches. There had to be a dozen of them. The vignette looked unreal, like an art installation, the product of a particularly gruesome imagination. But it wasn’t art. And it wasn’t imaginary.

“Oh, my God,” I said several times.

Then I scrutinized the picture, looking for “our pal” Petrović.

Standing near the center of the frame was a large, wide-shouldered man with a shaved head, wearing fatigues, combat boots. There was something in his hand, small, possibly metallic, with points—like a throwing star.

Joe said, “That’s him.”

“Is it?” I wasn’t sure.

“There’s a caption. I translated it. ‘Colonel Slobodan Petrović and men after taking the Bosnian town of Djoba. Petrović is proficient in the use of shuriken, throwing stars.’”

I asked, “What’s the source of the photo?”

“It appears to have been taken by one of the soldiers. It showed up in the trials against the Serbian Army high command. The caption was added during the trial, and it’s unattributed.

“And I found this,” Joe said. “A Serbian soldier testified at Petrović’s trial. Here’s a quote: ‘Colonel Petrović and other army officers would watch the hangings. I heard but never saw this. There were rumors that they would sometimes hunt victims in the woods.’”

Joe looked at me.

“You called it, Joe. When Adele’s body was discovered, you said you thought it was the work of a gang. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to call Petrović the gang leader.”

“I think so,” he said. “Get ready for the punch line. The witness said, ‘Colonel Petrović had a reputation for using a throwing star, and using it well.’”

I threw myself back on the couch. Was this proof? Was this evidence against the man who had injured Carly Myers and Adele Saran with throwing stars and then hanged them? What was the value of testimony from an unnamed witness who may have flipped on Petrović in order to get leniency from the court? Even the report of hunting in the woods was unsubstantiated.

Joe and I talked about this, concluding, naturally, that neither the SFPD nor the FBI could vet these foreign crimes attested to by unnamed witnesses. Furthermore, we still had no direct evidence that linked Petrović to throwing stars, or hanging anyone, in the USA.

“It’s a mile short of probable cause,” I said.

“Exactly what Steinmetz said. But here’s what I say. We’re a step closer to landing this son of a bitch.”

Chapter 90

The pain nagged and pulled at Anna until she was forced to wake up and open her eyes.

She saw nothing but blackness and thought she was blind.

Panic raised a fine sweat over her whole body, and for a long moment she forgot to breathe.

What happened to me? Where am I?

The pain was excruciating. It radiated from the back of her head and seemed to spread everywhere. Her heart bucked as the pieces came together.

She was a prisoner again.

A bar of light coming from under a door showed her that she was on a bed in a small room.

How did I get here?

A feeling of flying came into her mind, then images of driving the Tesla, all speed and freedom. She’d parked outside Petrović’s house. And a void opened in her memory. Something had happened.

Anna’s head was killing her.

She must have taken a blow and lost consciousness. She didn’t remember any of that, but she tried to recall it, clawing at the fog wrapped around her memory. And then she was dragged into the present by the ragged sound of breathing beside her.

She looked around the small room for a way out. There were no windows, just one door and the thin bar of light.

It was enough to see that her clothes had been thrown around the floor. His clothes were in a pile by the side of the bed.

Her stomach was empty but she heaved, clamped her hand over her mouth. She told herself to just lie still and breathe and think. In time she looked at the man in the bed and assessed him. How strong was he, how drunk, how much of a threat.

He wasn’t big, but from what she could see, he was muscular, like the soldiers in the rape hotel in Djoba. Anna had survived the hotel because she’d focused on the future, when she would be free, and what she would do one day to her attackers.

To Petrović.

She sat up slowly, and the man shifted beside her, clacked his teeth, stopped breathing, threw his arm across her, and came awake.

He looked at her.

“What?” he said.

“Bathroom,” she said.

He pointed at the door, rolled over so that he was facing the wall, and resumed his sleep.

Anna dressed in the dark. She could not find her purse, her phone, but the door was unlocked. She stepped out into a hallway, holding her shoes. A night-light was on in the bathroom to her right, and she went in, closed the door. There was no lock.

She flipped the switch by the door and the ceiling light came on. Heart pounding, ready to spring up if the door opened, Anna used the toilet, then went to the sink.

There was a note taped to the mirror.

It was written in Bosnian in large, black block letters:

“ANNA. STARA PRAVILA JOŠ UVIJEK PRIMJENJUJU. ZNAŠ. ”

It meant “The old rules still apply. You know.”

It was signed “SP.”

Chapter 91

“Anna. The old rules still apply. You know. SP.”

She knew Petrović’s rules well.

Obey. If you don’t, we will happily kill you.

SP. Slobodan Petrović had made the rules.

Images flickered, faces of women she’d known from school and the market and from neighboring homes: Dalila and her mother, Amela; her best friend, Uma; and Zuhra, her husband’s younger sister. The girls who had defied the soldiers or had curled into balls and given up—they were killed.