Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

The reason for his dismissal: Illegal conduct. See attached. This time there was indeed an attachment.

It was a single-spaced investigation report based on the accounts of two undercover operatives, and when Vlado saw their names he felt the skin prickling on the back of his neck. One was a supervisor at the cigarette plant named Kupric. The other was a butcher named Hrnic. Each told a tale of unsavory connections, with the unfortunate Mr. Militunovic linked to the illicit trafficking of meat and cigarettes.

The whole affair had taken a mere two days to initiate and conclude, amazing alacrity under any circumstances, much less amidst the hurlyburly that must have prevailed in the days just before the raid.

Yet, for all the disgrace Milutinovic had suddenly brought down on himself, not only was he not prosecuted, but he’d been given a generous-incredibly generous, under the circumstances-severance payment of five hundred D-marks. No wonder he hadn’t made a stink. It was more than he would have made in a year’s work. Not that his squawking would have been given much heed in that chaotic time, anyway. In the rush of last-minute details Vitas probably hadn’t even known Milutinovic had been bumped off the custody squad, much less replaced by an unstable grocer with a murderous ax to grind. It was tantamount to a death sentence for Zarko. If someone had wanted him out of the way in order to claim a bigger share from the smuggled art, this had done the trick.

Vlado flipped to the disposition report from Milutinovic’s disciplinary hearing, and there again was the block red stamp of the word APPROVED. It was dated September 30th.

Below it was the full, bold signature of the man who had orchestrated this entire manuever, Assistant Chief Juso Kasic.

Vlado glanced over his shoulder every few feet on his way home, half expecting to see Kasic, or perhaps the man in the beret who’d greeted him at the ministry, or even the four men in dark overcoats who’d taken Glavas away. Thinking of them he decided on a detour, and he turned toward the small hill on the east side of town that had come to represent so much about the way this war was fought.

Sprawled atop the hill were the buildings of the Kosevo Hospital complex, home to the city’s dead, dying, and wounded. This status made the hospital a prominent site on the targeting map of every siege gunner. Although who needed maps when from most vantage points Kosevo was as easy to spot as the highest office tower. For anyone gazing down the long barrel of a howitzer it loomed on its hump of land like a broken medieval fortress, its crowded wards ripe with the promise of being able to finish the work that yesterday’s shells had only begun.

The hospital’s doctors and administrators-or at least, the ones who hadn’t either left or been killed-had duly and painstakingly mapped each of the hundreds of shell impacts. They distributed the maps liberally to journalists, human rights organizations, and visitors of all stripes, another small cry of outrage with its inevitable perverse edge of pride: Look at what we have endured.

Vlado’s destination was a low-slung plastered building halfway up the face of the hill. You didn’t need directions to it anymore because of the smell that announced from a hundred yards away that this must be the city morgue.

Early in the war the place had been quite literally swamped by death, the chambers of its cellar knee-deep in stacked bodies, maggots, and floodwater from pipes that had burst in the shelling. The director had fled, along with half his staff. It had taken weeks to get another team up and running, and by then the overload was nearly unbearable. The water and most of the maggots had since been mopped away, but the smell from those weeks had never quite disappeared, and some believed it never would.

The smell was even stronger indoors, as Vlado found the moment he opened the door, a stench of rot and putrefaction that nearly doubled him over. He reached for a handkerchief, then stopped, working hard to breathe through his mouth, feeling the rasp of the foul air on his throat. Two men sat behind a dull gray counter at empty desks, smoking cigarettes and reading outdated magazines as if manning the office of an auto garage. Both wore thick, black rubber boots. Stained cotton smocks hung beside heavy rubber gloves behind them on the wall.

“Police Inspector Petric,” Vlado announced, still struggling not to inhale through his nose. Somehow the stench was registering anyway, more as taste than smell.

“I’d like a look at your new arrivals. Particularly anything that might have come in from Dobrinja. Or anyone in the past twenty-four hours who has showed up with a Dobrinja address, no matter where they were found.”

“Got a name?” said one of the men, putting down his magazine.

“Glavas, Milan. Older man. Late sixties, early seventies.”

The man checked a clipboard, flipping back a page, then shook his head as he exhaled smoke.

“No one by that name. But we do have three without I.D.s.”

He opened a rear door and leaned down a stairwell. The reeking smell doubled in intensity. Vlado shifted uncomfortably.

“Mustafa!” the man shouted down the stairs. “The three no-names, were any from Dobrinja?”

Mustafa came strolling up the stairs in reply, wiping his hands on a filthy rag. His smock, too, was stained brown, only his glistened with fresh additions.

“Yes,” he answered finally. “Two of them, I think. A man and a woman. Both older. She’s still here, funeral tomorrow.”

“And the man?” Vlado asked.

“Buried this morning.”

The clerk turned toward Vlado. “Sorry, Inspector. Looks like you’re too late.”

“I want him dug up.” Vlado said. “Now.”

“You’ll need the family’s approval.” Clearly the clerk was ready to go home for the day, and Vlado could hardly blame him.

“Family approval, when you don’t even have his name?”

Vlado had him on that one, but the clerk wasn’t yet ready to give in. “Look, we’re happy to dig him up for you. We won’t even make you get a judge’s order, although technically we could. But it’s a bad time of day now. Too much light. It’ll be dusk in less than an hour, so why don’t you just have a seat and a smoke and wait until dark. You could wait until morning, but the ground will be frozen harder then, so you’d best get out there while the digging’s easier.”

Good enough. But he was damned if he’d wait here. “In an hour, then, but I’ll meet your man on the field.”

“Look for him at the fresh mounds. They’re the only ones not covered with snow. You know the place?”

“Know it well,” Vlado said.

“Mustafa will be there as well.” Mustafa looked less than happy to hear it. “In case you make an identification.”

Vlado spent the next hour trying to walk off the smell that clung to his jacket, his pants, his face. He coughed and spat as if it were a bone lodged in his throat, but after a while he couldn’t decide whether the smell or merely the thought of it was stronger.

When the appointed time arrived he moved down the hill and across the snowy field, soaking his shoes and socks as he strolled by the rows of rough wooden markers-the narrow slabs for the Muslims mixed with the crosses for the Catholics and the Orthodox Christians. In the gathering darkness he could see that the gravedigger was already at work. The earth was still soft from the morning’s labors, so the going was easy, and it was only a few minutes before the shovel struck wood.

A year earlier and the body might not even have merited the luxury of a coffin. Death had come in such a rush that the city had run out of caskets, and most wood had been used for firewood. Now, with casualties slacking off, supply was again meeting demand. The few casketmakers still in business were setting away a nest egg for their future, provided they themselves survived.