Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

“Someone has to step in and mind the store,” he said. “Anyway, if they’re going to have a new chief, it might as well be Juso.” He’d spoken with Kasic for the first time five minutes ago and was already calling him by his first name.

“And, Vlado.”

“Yes?”

“This is not some drunken gypsy with a hammer in his head. Don’t make trouble for you, or for me. Keep it respectful. The quicker you’re through with it, the better. And above all, keep it neat.”

We’ll see about that, Vlado thought. He still needed to play it cool around Garovic, lest he set off the man’s bureaucratic radar. But he fully intended to run with this until he dropped. The broader and slop-pier things got, the better.

So far the case was quite neat. The file folder which Garovic had treated with such grandiose caution had nothing in it but the previous night’s reports. Grebo’s findings had been standard: Death by high-caliber handgun at close range. No alcohol or drugs in the bloodstream. Vitas’s last meal had been about two hours before he was killed-a roast chicken (Grebo must have sighed with envy) and cabbage, a little rice and some coffee. There was nothing to indicate anything other than a straightforward death by shooting. There were no strange marks on the body to indicate a struggle before he was shot. Nor was Vitas armed, unless the killer had taken the weapon. If Vitas had been keeping an appointment, then it apparently wasn’t with someone he feared.

When Vlado had gone back to the crime scene he’d found little but the pool of blood. The snow on the sidewalk had melted, so there were no footprints, or none he could find by crawling with his nose pressed close to the wet concrete. No one lived nearby, there were only abandoned office buildings shelled full of holes, gutted and waterlogged. The nearest inhabited place at that hour would have been the Skenderia barracks right across the river, although anyone there would have been unlikely to have seen anything. Still, it would be worth speaking with the duty guard from the night before, and with the usual crowd of prostitutes.

The military policeman who’d helped Vlado move the body had noticed nothing before the shooting, although he’d remembered seeing Vitas leave the building about ten minutes earlier, so he must have come straight from his office. The guard didn’t recall hearing the gunshot as such, having heard shots throughout his posting, which had begun four hours earlier. He’d been more concerned with the cold as it seeped through holes in the soles of his boots, and with an anticipated visit from his girlfriend, who’d never shown up. She was supposed to have brought his dinner, so he’d been left only with his daily ration of Drina cigarettes, one pack, and had fought hunger with deep inhalations. But there had been nobody else on the street after Vitas except for Vlado, and no cars other than the usual U.N. armored vehicles that rumbled by at all hours.

Vitas’s wallet had also revealed little-the usual ID cards and a few old receipts, some from well before the war. Vlado glanced fondly at one from a restaurant now closed. He’d gone there once with his wife, a special meal for their fifth wedding anniversary. He thought briefly of the lamb and wild mushrooms, the glasses of red wine, the honeyed pastries for dessert.

In one pants pocket there was only a stubby pencil, in the other a wrinkled and soiled handkerchief. In the shirt pockets, nothing.

As Vlado scanned the report once again, Grebo materialized at his desk.

“Sorry about last night,” Vlado said, looking up. “Hope you were able to finish your drink in peace.”

“Oh, more or less.”

Grebo was fidgeting, glancing back toward Garovic’s office. “In fact, I’m afraid I was maybe in a bit too much of a hurry to get to the bottle.”

“What do you mean? And what’s the matter, Grebo? Still hung over? Actually, what are you doing here at all? Are you meeting Damir on a call?”

“No. It’s the Vitas thing. Do you have a minute?” Glancing around again.

“I’d have all day if I didn’t have to see Kasic in an hour. What about Vitas?”

Grebo pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning toward Vlado and lowering his voice. “I goofed. But I think I can fix things. Maybe. If we still have time.”

“What do you mean you goofed. Cause of death?”

“Please. Give me some credit. On that I never goof. A small error of omission, that’s all. And if I can’t correct it, probably nothing important anyway. It’s like this: Whenever I do a body, I go through all the clothes pretty closely I know you do, too. But, still, things turn up sometimes, and not always in likely places. When we were still doing smugglers it was amazing what you’d find sewn into their coat linings.”

Vlado wondered vaguely where the fruits of the past discoveries had ended up. Probably on Mycky and Grebo’s card tables at the market.

“Anyway, I realized this morning I’d forgotten to do Vitas’ clothes. They were such a bloody mess last night and, well … that wasn’t really the problem, because the clothes of almost everybody I get are a bloody mess. The problem was that I’d rounded up some companionship for drinking after all. And let me tell you, Vlado, she was a lot more interesting to look at than you. So, I suppose I was in a hurry to get away, and I skipped out before checking the clothes.”

“Understandable. And entirely forgivable. What’s your point then?”

“My point is that this morning I figured I’d better get down here and take care of it even if I was still hung over. There were a tew tests to finish up anyway. And lucky I did, too. The minute I finished, Garovic came down with a requisition form to ship the evidence bag and the whole file over to the Interior Ministry. Anyway, I’d had just enough time to find this.”

He handed Vlado a small scrap of paper. A last name was scribbled on it in shaky pencil, next to a street address in Dobrinja, a precarious edge of the city near the old Olympic Village.

“It was in his right pants pocket,” Grebo said.

“It couldn’t have been. I searched his pockets right after making the I.D. I always do.”

“It was the watch pocket. You know, sometimes there’s a smaller pocket just inside the big one. Easy to overlook.”

Vlado frowned. In the dimness of the cigarette lighter he’d missed it. In the old days Imamovic would have wrung his neck for this kind of sloppiness, and he’d have deserved it.

“Well, why didn’t you just give it to Garovic, send it over with the bag?”

“That might not have looked so good, would it. Me coming up at the last minute with something we both should have had last night. I know he thinks we’ve gotten sloppy. And, what the hell, we have. But on a case this big, well, like I said, not too good. So I figured if you still had the file you could slip it in, say that you’d found it. Or log it after the fact. If not …” He shrugged.

“I do have the file, in fact. Garovic took it an hour ago but he just brought it back. So don’t worry, I’ll add it to the record and no one will be the wiser. Though I guess we’d both better be a little more careful from now on.”

Grebo sagged in relief.

“Thanks,” he said. “I was already imagining myself marching up to Zuc. Anyhow, it’s been dusted. The paper, I mean. All the prints belong to Vitas. So it’s probably not much anyway.”

Grebo turned to go as Vlado asked, “How was she, anyway?”

Grebo tilted his head for a moment in puzzlement, then said, “Oh. Her. Yes, well, not worth the hangover, that’s for sure. Probably another reason this case seemed so urgent this morning. Duty suddenly looked a lot more attractive, if you know what I mean.”