by Lena Bourne
“Stay down,” I tell him. “Or I’ll kill you.”
But he doesn’t, he stands up, wobbling but grinning at me.
“You wouldn’t,” he says and advances. I squeeze the trigger. The shot is deafeningly loud. But it missed him completely.
He bent over anyway, and the expression in his eyes is one of fear. Instead of coming at me again, he scurries away, still bent over, and finds cover behind the car. I think I can hear sirens in the distance, but that might just be the ringing in my ears.
“Shoot him,” Rado hisses. He’s still sitting, clutching his stomach and rocking back and forth.
But I don’t even see the old man anymore. A moment later the car starts up and fear is once again the predominant emotion I feel. He’s going to run us over.
But he doesn’t.
He just speeds away right through the forest.
I’m shaking all over as I point the gun at Rado. He just gives me a puzzled, cross-eyed look and collapses on his side, his bloodied hands releasing his stomach.
I half walk, half crawl to him, and lift his shirt. Blood is oozing from a wound in his side. I use the little strength I have left to press my hand against it. He knows the man who just drove away. He needs to live so he can tell us everything.
26
Mark
The detectives and Tarik aren’t at the gas station yet when we reach it, and I pace up and down by the street as we wait, ignoring both Dino’s and Walter’s attempts to speak to me. At twilight, a black car finally pulls in, followed by a shiny black Mercedes driven by Brina.
I run to the first car as soon as it stops, open the back door and drag Tarik out.
“Where would your sisters go with Milo and Rado?” I ask. “Think hard. Where did they hang out?”
The man is looking at me like he has no idea what’s going on.
“Easy, Mark,” Dino says.
“Where?” I ask again.
“The farm?” Tarik says.
“Where else?” I ask. “Somewhere closer to town. Where did they sneak out to drink and fuck?”
The man reacts to that the way I hoped he would, with his eyes growing brighter and less confused.
“Trn Forest maybe,” he says. “It’s right at the edge of town, not far from our house. Young people would go there to party.”
I release him and take a few steps back.
“Did you find my sister’s body?” Tarik asks breathlessly.
“Yes, in the freezer in your old house,” I say.
He turns so pale he’s nearly white, and I think he’ll throw up at any moment.
“Did Rado kill her?” he chokes out.
I shake my head. “No. I think Vasko Derganec. But I’m sure Rado had something to do with it too”
“What?” Brina and Dino say at the same time. I don’t have the time to explain, so I don’t.
I take out my phone, seeing I have a text and a missed call from Rok, but ignore both as I call up a map of the area on the screen.
“Show me this forest,” I ask Tarik.
He looks at the screen then points at a blob of green just outside of town.
I thank him and run back to the car, calling Rok in the process and ignoring the surprise shocked chatter of the others behind me.
“I was able to track Eva’s phone via an email attachment she opened once,” Rok says.
“Where is she?” I ask before he could continue with his pointless technical explanation. “Trn Forest?”
He gasps. “Yes. I sent you the coordinates. And a program where you can track her movements.”
I hang up and get in the car, calling for the others to follow me. Dino and Brina get in the car with me, and Walter just makes it before I drive off.
Pulling out of the gas station, I barely avoid a collision with a dark blue sedan racing out of town. And a moment later I’m racing too.
“Mark, what do you mean it’s Vasko?” Brina asks.
I’d still rather not talk, just act, but she deserves an explanation. She’s been obsessed with this case for eight years.
“You were right that Anita’s death is connected to Leskovar,” I say. “But it wasn’t Leskovar who killed her. I’m almost certain it was Vasko Derganec. I think the others were genuinely trying to help the women, but Vasko had a different agenda. And I’m pretty sure he’s involved with Esma’s disappearance too. Him and Rado.”
“How do you figure all that?” Dino asks, but Brina seems to be putting the pieces together just like I did.
“The Leskovars were killed with a gun that belongs to them,” she says. “So it must’ve been used by someone who knew they had it.”
“And Leskovar’s ex-wife and Ivan Derganec were shot by someone they willingly let into the cabin,” I add. “Someone who missed a lot before actually shooting them. I’m sure the print Ida found in the kitchen will match Vasko.”
“And he married a woman who looks exactly like Esma Rajić,” Brina concludes and we both fall silent, which works for me.
“Sounds like a lot of conjecture to me,” Dino says.
“No, no, it makes sense,” Brina says. “And this Rado character probably helped him somehow.”
Dino says something else, but I’m no longer listening. The sun has almost set, soon it will be dark. And I can’t shake the thought that with night falling, all hope of finding Eva alive will die too.
Eva
Rado’s eyes are rolling into the back of his head, and even though he’s trying to keep them open, the best he can do is make his eyelids flutter.
“Talk to me, Rado,” I say loudly. “Who was that man?”
“Va…Vasko…Derganec,” he splutters and the name immediately connects to a picture in my mind. One of Leskovar’s friends and assistants in whatever they were doing with those women. He’s also a prominent political and business figure in Slovenia. That’s why his face was familiar.
“He killed Esma?” I ask.
“Hit her. Split her skull. Because she wouldn’t go with him,” he says. “She wanted to stay with me.”
“With you? Not your brother Milo?” I ask.
His eyes are fluttering still, and spittle is running down his chin. It’s not mixed with blood, which I think is a good sign. I hope.
“Me,” he says and smiles. “Milo and her…not working anymore. Never did, she realized. She chose me. She loved me. and I loved her. But Vasko, he was obsessed with her. Tried to force her to go with him, but she wouldn’t. He hit her. She died in my arms.”
That causes him to start breathing jaggedly and irregularly. I’m afraid he’ll die on me at any moment. My jeans are already soaked in his blood even though I’m putting as much pressure on his wound as I can.
“He…he threatened he’d tell everyone I killed her,” he says. “I had to hide her body. But I couldn’t bury her. So I put her in a freezer. At my house.”
He shudders, his breathing hoarse and erratic.
“I…I…tried to keep it a secret, so hard. But Milo found Esma’s body, in the freezer, in the broken down part of the house. Said she was calling to him. So I told him everything. Told Anita everything too. Milo…he couldn’t take it…he killed himself. And Anita ran away, afraid I’d kill her too.”
“Did you?” I ask.
He shakes his head, it’s a feeble movement.
“Vasko did. She tracked him down and went after him, alone. Accused him of killing her sister. He beat her to death, made me get rid of her body…cut off her hands…I died that night too.”
“Why did you help him?” I ask. I’m nauseous just from hearing his story. I can’t imagine why anyone would do all that to his friends.
“He…he threatened that he’d get me arrested…for Esma and Anita…I didn’t want to go to jail…I was scared…he is a powerful man,” he says. “No one would believe me over him.”
“How could you do that to the woman you claim you loved? To your childhood friend?”
Whatever he says, I’ll never und
erstand it.
“Esma…she was just dead…and Anita too,” he says. “What could I do? I couldn’t save them. If I went to jail, they’d still be dead.”
“You could’ve protected them,” I snap. “You could’ve sent their real killer to prison. You didn’t have to mutilate their bodies.”
“I tried,” he says, his eyes rolling into the back of his head so that only the whites show.
To a man, the killers I’ve interviewed for my books and my research, have all been cowards underneath all the sadism and brutality. Even the ones that had no normal emotions to call their own all felt fear for themselves, and they showed it too. One of the more sickening things about the work I do is watching monsters be afraid and feeling sorry for them.
Maybe that’s something all killers have in common, the link. But then again, it’s what all humans have in common. Survival instinct. Our most base emotion. Fata was right, Rado is in no way a good match for Renata.
“You’re a piece of shit low-life,” I tell him. “But I’ll keep you alive if I can, so your accomplice, who’s an even bigger coward, will get his too.”
But the thing is, strength is draining out of me faster than the blood flows from his stomach.
I think I hear my name being called. I think it’s Mark’s voice calling me. But it can’t be. He’s so far away from here. Probably doesn’t even know I’m missing yet.
And yet he’s here, calling me. I call back, shout his name, asking him to find me. He can’t, but that doesn’t matter. As long as I can hear his voice, I know I’ll be just fine.
Mark
Rok sent me two texts. One with a satellite image of the forest with a blue dot roughly a third of the way in. The other, a link to an app that shows the blue dot moving. He explained that the first image was taken twenty minutes ago. Both the blue dots are Eva’s phone. I have to choose which to try first.
I stop the car at the edge of the woods and run in, calling Eva’s name. It’s not a hard choice, even though it’s the most devastating choice I’ve ever had to make. He brought her to the forest to get rid of her. She’s not in his moving car, just her phone is. She’s here. And I will find her. Even if it kills me.
I can hear the others in the forest with me. They’re not calling her name. They’re calling mine. I don’t respond.
I will find her.
Branches are hitting me in the face, I’m stumbling over roots, darkness is falling fast all around me. I call louder. And louder.
Nothing.
How can that be? She’s gone. Even if she is here, she’s gone.
I call her name over and over again anyway.
Nothing. Just the sound of my hard breathing and the rustling of grass beneath my feet, the crunching of branches.
Then I hear my name called.
Softly, from very far away, Eva is calling me.
It might not be real. And at the same time, I know it is. I’m certain of it.
I follow the voice, run towards it.
And then there she is. The day’s last light is attaching itself to her hair, making it shine silver in the gloomy twilight.
She’s covered in blood. A man is lying on his side next to her. Her face is dark. But she glows anyway.
“Eva, I found you,” I say as I drop to my knees beside her.
She smiles the brightest smile I’ve ever seen. Her face is one giant bruise, one of her eyes is swollen shut, the other going that way fast. The man beside her is covered in blood, as are her hands which she’s pressing against his stomach.
“It was…it was—“
“Vasko Derganec” I finish the sentence for her.
“Get him,” she says. “He ran away, the dirty sick coward. Get him. For me.”
I wrap my arm around her and hold her gently. “I’m staying with you.”
“No, get him, go after him. Before he vanishes,” she says even as she leans against me. “He can’t get away with all this.”
The others have reached us, panting, making a lot of noise, and asking a lot of questions.
“Get him,” she says again and I nod, then call Dino over.
“Get them to the hospital,” I tell him, and don’t let go of Eva until he’s got her.
“Where are you going?” he asks as I stride away.
“To finish this tonight,” I say and run back the way I came, back towards my car.
The blue dot is now Vasko. And he’s not getting far.
It’s fully dark by the time I finally catch up to Vasko’s car on an empty country road. He’s not going as fast as he was when he nearly collided with me exiting the gas station, as he’s having trouble staying in his lane. It’s him. I know because I’m on top of the moving blue dot that is Eva’s phone. The land on either side of this gently winding road is dark and flat, the horizon lost in the black night.
I approach from behind, signaling for him to stop by blinking the lights. He responds by putting on the right blinker to signal I should overtake him and slows down. I speed up, get in the lane beside him and look into his car, just to make sure I’ve got the right guy. I do. The look on his face is a mixture of panic and surprise as he recognizes me. Right before it twists in fear, as I veer right and my car collides with his.
He tries to speed up, but I anticipated that, get slightly ahead of him and slam my car into his again. This time, the impact causes him to lose control of the car. He goes off the road, his car bouncing on the uneven terrain until it comes to a stop a few meters from the road. A part of me wishes a land mine would explode under him now. But it doesn’t.
He’s only partly out of the car by the time I’m standing next to it. He screams as I pull on his left arm to get him out. His left hand is hanging off his wrist limply, and it’s much darker than it should be.
“What is the meaning of this?” he slurs nasally. His nose is badly damaged, probably broken. I want to finish the job. Beat him like he beat Eva. And Anita.
I don’t know what’s stopping me. I could leave him in this field. And when they found him, they wouldn’t blame me.
“I’m taking you in to be arrested for the murders of Esma and Anita Rajić,” I say. “And for the attempted murder of Eva Lah.”
He shoots me a sharp look. “Her and Rado Kopanja assaulted me. I barely got away with my life. Rado killed Esma and Anita. I have proof.”
“We found your proof,” I say. “In a freezer.”
I slam him against the car, preventing him from moving by pressing my forearm against his throat, as I dial Dino’s number, telling him where they can come to get him.
“We’re right behind you, Mark,” Dino says.
The man hears it too, and wriggles under my arm, aiming a kick for my legs. I’m way ahead of him on that one too. And the punch I land in his stomach is now completely justified.
“What the hell did any of those women do to you?” I ask as he struggles to catch his breath.
I’m not particularly interested in hearing his story right now. I can listen to that later. Right now, I just want to get back to Eva as soon as I can. But talking to him is one way to keep from beating him to a pulp.
“I didn’t do anything to them,” he says. “I want my lawyer.”
“But you killed your lawyer, didn’t you?” I ask. “Your own brother. How could you?”
Regret alights on his face for a moment, but is gone the next.
“He was going to turn me in,” he says. “Leskovar too. My friend and my brother were going to turn me in to the police. And for what. For something they were both just as guilty of. They had it coming.”
“So the three of you and Leskovar’s ex-wife were trafficking women?” I ask.
“Yes, twenty years ago we were all involved in that,” he says. “But then they all met their conscience and started genuinely helping the women. They’d rescue them from whatever strip club or whore house they were working at and procured new ID cards for them. They even provided them with money. A bunch of idiots. Well, that on
ly made it easier for me to continue doing what they didn’t have to stomach for.”
“And what was that?” I’m not particularly interested in his motivation, but I’m sensing this might be the only time he tells his full story so I might as well try to get as much of it out of him as I can.
“If I didn’t sell those women, someone else would have,” he says. “They couldn’t live on their own, they had no idea how. So I befriended them while they waited for their shiny new papers and money, lured them away once they thought they were free, and made millions selling them on.”
I don’t know what is sicker: that he did this, or that he sounds so proud of himself for doing it.
“And Leskovar and your brother didn’t know?”
He barks a laugh that turns into a cough. “Never even suspected. Rado was my go-between in moving the women. That’s how I met Esma. She was special. So beautiful and pure. But she wouldn’t be with me. I didn’t want to kill her. It just happened.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I say, not able to stop myself.
“It was an accident,” he says, growing agitated. “I just pushed her a little and she fell, cracked her head on a rock. Rado helped me get rid of her. But then the idiot Rado met his conscience too. He told Leskovar everything. Including what happened to Anita. Rado is the one who actually killed her and he was supposed to get rid of her body, but he messed up and just dumped her in the middle of Ljubljana. So I had to kill Leskovar. He was going to turn me in!”
I honestly don’t want to listen to him anymore. But he’s practically frothing at the mouth to tell his story.
“How could you kill your own brother though?” I ask accusingly, hoping to egg him on even more.
“I wish it hadn’t come to that. But Leskovar told my brother and his ex-wife everything before he died. They were determined to turn me in too. My own brother! And for what? To protect a bunch of whores? I had to protect myself.”
I’m talking to a very cold, very deranged person. I can’t wait to hand him over for someone else to deal with.
“I’ll deny everything, of course,” he says. “I have enough dirt on powerful people to make that happen. Turns out a lot of guys want young women who can’t say no and I was able to provide them. Plus, all the witnesses are now dead. You can’t touch me.”