Dan Fesperman: Lie in the Dark

He’d probably been killed by the gunshot a few moments ago, doubtless from someone perched in a window across the river, some asshole with a nightscope and nothing better to do. Vlado angrily tossed his cigarette away, watching the small trail of sparks arch through the night as it fell.

For a moment he felt paralyzed. In all these months of war and four years as an investigator, he had never been the one to discover a body. Always he’d been summoned, until this moment. In a matter of hours he had seen one man shot and a second one needlessly risk his life. And now this, a body at his feet with no one else in sight. It was deeply unsettling, but there was also the undeniable hint of a thrill, because for a moment only he and the killer knew. Perhaps the sniper was watching him even now, had listened to Vlado’s footsteps and watched the flung cigarette floating end over end, while knowing exactly what terrible knowledge was unfolding down on the corner.

But the sniper had not bargained on the arrival of a professional, someone to whom this would be not just an ordeal but a revelation to learn from, a jittery taste of the odd intimacy between killer and victim.

Vlado straightened and walked around the corner into a sheltered street until he reached the next block. He looked both ways, and to the left he could barely make out a guard in front of the Interior Ministry fifty yards away.

“You,” he shouted, his voice loud but somehow weak at the same time. There was no movement. Was the man dozing? Dead?

Finally the guard turned, shouting back gruffly, “It is after curfew. You must come here for questioning. Slowly, please.”

Vlado heard the click of a gun’s safety.

“I’m a policeman,” he shouted back, feeling the tone of authority return to his voice. “Detective Inspector Petric. There’s a man who’s been shot over here by the river. Come and help me. Now.”

The soldier-or was he military police? Hard to tell in the dark, they all carried the same weapons-strolled over at a leisurely pace. But his nonchalance stiffened when Vlado led him into the field of fire by the river, and as they prepared to lift the body he glanced repeatedly toward the wall of darkness on the hillside across the water.

“Help me move him,” Vlado said. “You take the arms.” Let him rub against that mess of a head, Vlado thought. “I’ll take the legs.”

The guard gasped, and Vlado didn’t need to ask why.

Vlado figured they might as well haul the body to the porch of the police building. Grebo could write it up and call the hospital, save the boys at the morgue a few minutes of paperwork. They’d owe him one.

“Why are we crossing the river,” the guard whispered urgently, sounding alarmed as they moved onto the bridge, the water gurgling below.

“Relax. We’re taking him to police headquarters. It’s only a few more yards.”

As soon as they reached the porch, the soldier dropped the dead man’s arms. He was already worried he’d be missed at his post. He looked down, brushing the front of his uniform and checking for bloodstains, then began to ease away.

“Hold on a minute,” Vlado said. He ordered the young man to fetch Grebo from upstairs.

The porch was sheltered from fire, so Vlado drew out his lighter for a better look.

Good God. Right in the face. A bigger mess than the gypsy’s husband. Still, there was something vaguely familiar in what remained of the jawline, in the bulk and shape of the body.

Grebo pushed through the door, followed by the soldier.

“Christ, Vlado. Knew you should have stayed for a drink. How close were you?”

“Not very. I think I heard the shot as I was coming out the door. He was over the river, a block down.”

“And you brought him back here?” A hint of irritation in the voice.

“Figured we might as well handle him, or that you could at least take a look,” Vlado said, feeling stupid now, sheepish.

Grebo shrugged, exhaling through his nose, fumes of plum brandy misting into the night, then pulled a penlight from a shirt pocket and flicked the beam toward the ruined face. Vlado looked away this time, focusing on Grebo, and saw his eyebrows arch in surprise.

“This one’s no sniper,” Grebo said, leaning closer, squinting now. “Whoever did this was close.”

“Close enough to be on the same side of the river?”

“Close enough to be stepping on his toes.”

Vlado let that sink in, then announced what Grebo already knew:

“I guess he’s our customer then.”

“Looks that way.”

Now it would be necessary to work, and a mixture of weariness and distaste came over Vlado, though not without a stirring of his slumbering curiosity. His mind shifted into the rote workings of an investigator fresh on a crime scene, and his first thought was a question: Why kill someone in a known sniper zone, unless you wanted it to look like a sniper had done it? That would imply a plan, something more than blind emotion at work, perhaps even something elaborate for a change. It had possibilities, he told himself.

He thought of the guard, who’d already disappeared back to his post without a word and would now have to be questioned, to find out if he’d seen or heard anyone nearby a few minutes earlier. Same thing for the whores at Skenderia, if any had been on duty at this hour. They would have been just across the river from the shooting, skulking next to the sandbagged walls that kept them out of the line of fire but still handy to the French and Egyptian soldiers. Perhaps they’d heard something before or after, though God knows they couldn’t have seen a thing in this darkness.

Already he’d made mistakes. He thought with disgust of how he and the guard had trampled all over the murder scene, stepping in the blood, then dragging the main piece of evidence down the street and over a bridge. He realized with mild alarm how much he’d let himself begin to slip, despite all his precautions. There was no excuse for it. He made a note to himself to bathe and shave tonight the minute he was home, no matter how cold the water, even if he had to head out in the morning with a load of empty jugs to stand in line for a fresh supply.

For now, he’d have to return with a flashlight to the spot where he’d found the body and search the scene-carefully, though, flicking the light sparingly lest he attract the attention of a real sniper-looking for the pool of blood and whatever else might be around.

But first things first. The victim needed to be identified.

Vlado reached behind the body and pulled out the man’s wallet. It seemed full, about seventy D-marks in all, a small fortune these days. There had certainly been no robbery.

“Give me a light,” he said to Grebo, who turned his penlight toward the wallet. The narrow beam landed on the identification photo, that of a brown-eyed man in his mid-to-late forties, coal-black hair. Vlado recognized him at once.

“ Esmir Vitas,” he said, without bothering to read the fine print, and his stomach made a small leap.

“Vitas,” Grebo said. “Sounds familiar.”

“It should. He’s chief of the Interior Ministry’s special police. Or was.” He looked up at Grebo. “I’d say he’s our customer all right.”

“He’s not ours,” Lutva Garovic announced the next morning, striding across the office as soon as Vlado arrived.

Garovic was chief of detectives, a bureaucrat whose instincts had never failed him except when it came to actually getting things done. He had survived Tito’s death, departmental shakeups, Party purges, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the first two years of the war, and he would doubtless still be bossing unimportant people years later no matter who ended up ruling the city. Three decades of meandering in bureaucracy’s midstream had taught him that the only way to stay afloat in shifting currents was to swim neither too hard nor too fast. He had mastered the art of treading water, prospering by never aspiring to anything greater than the glory of whoever happened to be issuing his orders. When communism fell out of fashion, he was among the first to stop using Party buzzwords. If it ever made a comeback, he’d quickly learn to say them again.