The Last Witness
Page 21
* * *
NEW YORK
Baize pulled into the driveway.
There was no sign of Carla’s Ford.
She hardly ever parked in the garage, but Baize checked anyway, letting herself into the house and disabling the alarm.
The garage was empty.
When she moved into the kitchen she opened the refrigerator.
Some yogurt, milk, cheese, a few cans of Diet Coke, and a bottle of white wine. From the looks of it, Carla hadn’t visited the supermarket recently.
Baize climbed the stairs.
She didn’t like to be nosy, but she was concerned—concerned because Carla hardly called her in the last three days, or answered all her calls. And when she did answer she didn’t say a whole lot.
Then last night she had called to say she was flying to Europe for a few days.
“Why?”
“Just some legal stuff I need to notarize, to do with Jan.”
She sounded somber. Baize tried to call her back three times that morning but her calls went straight to Carla’s voice mail.
In Carla’s study, she noticed the old photographs of herself and Dan spread out on the desk.
They brought back good memories, made her smile.
Next to the photos was a letter.
She picked it up, and frowned, a little puzzled.
A letter of condolence written by one of Dan’s army buddies in Tennessee.
She heard a vehicle pull up outside in the street.
A man climbed out of a gray van. He wore overalls and walked up the driveway, carrying an official-looking clipboard.
The doorbell rang.
• • •
“Hi, Mrs. Carla Lane?”
Baize stared back at him warily.
The man smiled, showed his ID. Glasses, dark hair slicked back, a teeny bit of an overbite.
“I’m with the phone company. Got a call about a faulty line.”
“You’re talking to the wrong woman.”
“Ma’am?”
“Carla’s my granddaughter but she’s not here right now. There’s a problem with her line?”
“It seems to be intermittent, ma’am. Could be a loose wire, something simple like that. I might need to hang a meter on all the phone sockets room to room, and make sure we’ve got a signal, ya with me, ma’am?”
“No, you’re blinding me with science.”
“She didn’t mention any problems?”
“No. But I’ve left messages that she doesn’t answer. The same with her cell.”
The man was handsome in a quirky sort of way. Kind of like that actor Billy Bob Thornton, only better-looking.
“I don’t know about the cell, ma’am, but she may not get the land-line calls because the line’s intermittent. Are you okay for me to check it out?”
“May I see your ID again?”
“You sure can.” He presented it once more and smiled. “Yeah, that’s me, unfortunately.”
The ID looked official, a bland-faced corporate mug shot.
Baize handed it back. “How long will it take?”
“Coming up to lunchtime, feeling pretty hungry, so I’m hoping not too long.”
• • •
Billy Davix went room to room, leaving the elderly woman making coffee.
He took his time. The glasses, the hair slicked back, the overalls, all part of his act. He always liked this part of the job, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. It gave him a big kick, just like his acting days.
He fitted audio bugs in the three house phones: in the living room, bedroom, and study. The trick was to be slick and slow, no rush, not go like a rocket.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
On the study desk he noticed the photographs and correspondence. He plucked a miniature video camera from his tool kit and took some close-up footage of the letter and photographs.
He saw the attaché case on the floor.
He opened it. Reams of sheet music, pencils, eraser, and a pencil sharpener. He saw the envelope, unfolded the page inside, saw the names, and his eyebrows twitched.
He smiled, held the camera over the page, and then popped it back in the attaché.
As he checked all the study drawers, he listened for any sound coming up the stairs.
In the drawers, he found a bunch of computer printouts and bills, including one from the phone company with her cell phone number. He found a couple of more letters from a doctor’s office, and a copy of a hospital bill.
He used the camera again.
Five minutes later he was down the stairs and back in the kitchen, carrying his meter and tools.
“I think I found the problem, ma’am.”
“Good for you, Einstein. What was it?”
“Loose wire in one of the sockets.”
“Great. Maybe now my granddaughter will answer my calls when she gets back.”
“When will that be, ma’am?”
“I don’t know. She said she’d be abroad for a few days. Maybe she isn’t answering her cell messages because she hasn’t got coverage.”
“Could be. Where is she?”
“Somewhere in darkest Europe, that’s all I know. Care for some coffee?”
He gave her the Billy Bob grin. “No, thank you, ma’am, but I sure appreciate the offer. Any more trouble and you just holler.”
36
* * *
DUBROVNIK
From the air she saw pale blue sea.
Carla stared out the window at the Dalmatian coast as the Al Italia Airbus descended. Mediterranean-looking villages with red pantiled roofs clung to cliffs and mountainsides, and everywhere there were deep gorges and rolling hills of thick forest.
She felt a flux of emotions: fear, anxiety, uncertainty. Her heart beat wildly. A part of her felt she was coming home. Another part of her dreaded what lay ahead. Her palms perspired, she felt palpitations.
She wasn’t over the shock of Angel’s revelation.
How could she live with Mila Shavik? How could she live with a man who was a killer, a brutal, wanted war criminal? How could she and yet agree to betray him?
Fear gnawed at her. Could she really trust Angel?
She didn’t think so.
What if Angel played a part in Jan’s death?
What if she was being tricked, lured to her own death?
Carla felt confused, on edge.
The aircraft shook as it descended through the clouds. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she glimpsed the pale sandstone walls and cobbled streets of ancient Dubrovnik, the bay scattered with palm trees and cruise ships.
Down there, somewhere, was the street and restaurant where her parents first met. Where she and Luka lived the first years of their lives.
Where her ghosts walked.
• • •
Ten minutes later the aircraft tires shrieked as they kissed the runway.
When Carla retrieved her luggage from the baggage carousel, she didn’t noticed the two casually dressed young men watching her from across the hall. One of them wore a black Nikon camera dangling around his neck.
He snapped off three quick shots of Carla when she wasn’t looking.
• • •
“Mrs. Lane?”
The man who met in the arrivals area looked in his fifties, with a friendly face and tired, baggy eyes. He carried a white page on which he’d written her name in black marker: Carla Lane.
“My name’s Sean Kelly. I’m a forensic pathologist working with the International Commission on Missing Persons.”
“Mr. Kelly. Are you English?”
He smiled charmingly as they shook hands. “Irish, but I’ll forgive the insult. If you’ll come this way, please, my car’s in the parking lot.”
He took her suitcase and led her to an old blue Renault with a dented front fender.
He opened the passenger door for her. Tossed on the backseat was a rolled-up pair of work trousers and some
muddy work boots.
Kelly climbed into the driver’s seat. “I’ve got business here in Dubrovnik this afternoon so I believe I’ll be driving you to the site in the morning. It’s a long drive, about seven hours.”
“Thank you.”
“Some of the victims’ remains have already been moved to storage near Omarska, in Sanski Most.”
“Are we going there?”
“No, the excavations are still ongoing at the site, where we’ve set up a temporary mortuary. Have you visited Dubrovnik before, Mrs. Lane?”
“As a child.”
“You made hotel arrangements?”
“The Hotel Villa Dubrovnik.”
“I know it well.” Kelly drove toward the city.
“The remains you found whose DNA matched mine, who did they belong to?”
“We made a positive match with a female the same age as your mother.”
Carla felt a pang of grief cut her like a blade. “Are . . . are you certain?”
Kelly’s green eyes glinted with pity. “The mother-to-daughter DNA link is a very strong one. Our threshold for any match is 99.95 percent probability, so I’m afraid there’s no doubt.” Kelly glanced across. “I couldn’t help but wonder about your American accent. Have you lived there long?”
“Since I was a child. I was adopted by my father’s family.”
“I see. Well, we’ll try to make the whole process here as smooth as possible. I’m sure you’re apprehensive.”
“Tell me how the bodies were found.”
“A farmer plowing a field came across some human bones.”
Kelly slowed as he went around a bend.
“It was sheer luck. Part of my job involves studying satellite aerial photography taken by the Americans during the conflict, looking for evidence of massacre sites. Believe it or not, there are still sites undiscovered, even twenty years later.”
“Why has it taken so long so long?”
“Often killings happened in remote locations. Anything from single families to entire villages, to thousands of victims killed over days or weeks. In some cases there are no witnesses left alive to come forward. Which is a problem, because until we have at least some intelligence to begin the search, we don’t know where to look. So burial sites will probably still turn up by accident for many decades to come.”
Kelly shook his head. “To tell the truth, I’ve been working here on and off for many years now and it doesn’t get any easier. It’s a tough part of the job, having to confirm a victim’s death to relatives.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Were any remains of children found at the site?”
“Yes, quite a few.”
Carla’s heart sank. “Did my DNA match any of them?”
“Pardon?”
“My four-year-old brother was imprisoned in the camp. I’ve never known if he lived or died.”
“Dear Lord, I’m very sorry to hear that. But none of the children were a match with your DNA, at least none of them so far.”
“So far?”
“There’s a smaller burial site nearby. We think they may be a different batch of victims, who died from ill health, or possibly at another camp, but we’re not sure yet. We haven’t excavated that site.”
“When will you?”
“There’s a whole procedure to go through, involving the Missing Persons’ Institute, the police, the pathologist, and the local prosecutor. It could be another week or maybe more.”
Kelly pulled up outside the Hotel Villa Dubrovnik, high up in the hills on the edge of the old town, with magnificent views of the port.
“Here we are, Mrs. Lane.” He took her luggage from the car and led her toward the hotel.
“I was told the massacre site wasn’t far from the women’s camp?”
“That’s right. Roughly about two miles.”
“How did the victims die?”
Kelly seemed to hold back.
“Please, I need to know.”
“I can only tell you what we can assume from the evidence.”
“Tell me.”
“The women and children were being transported on trucks from a nearby camp called the Devil’s Hill. We think they were being driven to some other destination.”
Kelly’s cheek twitched with a look of discomfort.
“From the way gunshot wounds were inflicted on a number of the women, we suspect they may have tried to escape by jumping off, perhaps as the trucks slowed or stopped, or got stuck. We found cranial fragments and shell casings on the other side from the road from the grave. So the guards must have opened fire on them from above.”
“And then?”
“Then all hell probably broke loose and they decided to finish everyone off. All the remaining women and children were shot at reasonably close range. There were bullets and shell casings beside the grave.”
“They were buried where they died?”
“Pretty much. The field’s next to the road. At some stage their killers brought in an excavator to gouge out a mass grave, to cover up their crime.”
Carla fell silent for a time. “Is the Devil’s Hill camp still there?”
“Yes, it’s still intact, even if parts of it were destroyed by shelling.”
Kelly added, “There was talk of it being knocked down some years ago, but relatives wanted it kept as a kind of memorial. Though it’s just left abandoned. You’ve heard about the camp?”
“I escaped from there as it was being evacuated.”
“I . . . I didn’t know. I understood there was only one living survivor, an elderly woman who now lives in America.”
“Alma Dragovich?”
“Yes.”
“I know her.”
Kelly frowned. “If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you come forward as a witness before now?”
“It’s a long story, Mr. Kelly. Can we can talk about it another time?”
“Of course. How about I pick you up at eight a.m.?”
• • •
Across the street, the two young men sat in a gray BMW, watching Carla and Kelly talking outside the hotel.
The passenger aimed the Nikon camera.
He clicked off at least a dozen good shots of the pair as they talked, then another three as Carla stepped in through the hotel entrance.
37
* * *
Carla showered, threw on the hotel bathrobe, and went to stand on the tiny balcony.
A warm breeze blew. The Hotel Villa Dubrovnik was a rambling place, the walls covered with jasmine and bougainvillea. Stretched out below her was the old town where she had spent much of her childhood.
Something in her bones felt familiar with everything she could see and taste and smell: the bustling sidewalks crowded with tourists, the twisting narrow streets, the tangy salt air, the shrieks of seagulls. The town’s old fort perched on top of cliffs, waves crashing into the rocks below.
A couple of huge cruise ships squatted in the glassy harbor. It felt like a bizarre homecoming—it made her feel both crestfallen and elated. Crestfallen because she knew with certainty now that her mother was dead.
Had her father met a similar fate? If he’d lived, he’d have made contact with the refugee agencies. That seemed unlikely to have happened after so long. It crushed her, made her sad.
And yet she felt a powerful sense of hope that Luka might be alive. She wanted to think nothing but positive thoughts.
Luka would be a young man now, in his mid-twenties. It seemed so strange to think that in the blink of an eye her little brother might have gone from being a child to a grown man.
She felt like weeping for all those missing years.
Where are you, Luka? Who has taken care of you? Who has loved you with your mama and papa and your sister gone? Who put you to sleep all those nights and tucked you in? She felt her emotions flare.
Noise drifted up from the town. Somewhere in those streets crowded with tourists was
Mr. Banda’s restaurant. She wondered if it was still in business. She threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, draped a sweater over her shoulders, and went down to the reception desk.
The young man on duty smiled. “Madam.”
“Do you know of a restaurant called the Marco Polo?”
“In the old town? Yes. The food’s excellent and not expensive, but it’s always busy.”
“Would you book me a table?”
“Of course. Let me give you directions.”
• • •
The streets were bedlam, lined with shops and trader’s stalls. Kiosks sold trinkets and cigarettes and postcards. In cafés and restaurants, waiters ran in every direction, carrying trays balanced above their heads.
It felt strange to think that over thirty years ago her father walked these same streets the evening he met her mother.
She recognized familiar names on shops and directions on signposts, as words and phrases came back to her, like fragments of a long-forgotten school poem.
A sign said: PLAŽA. Beach. She remembered that.
She followed the sign. The streets grew quieter, less crowded. A gray BMW coasted past her, with two young men inside.
The passenger was coarse-faced, his muscled chest bulging under his polo shirt. A leather jacket lay across his knees, a camera on top. As the BMW passed her, the passenger looked away.
The car disappeared around a corner. As it did so, the driver gave a brief glance back at her, but didn’t make eye contact.
Carla shivered. The man’s look didn’t feel like an admiring glance.
It felt like something a little more sinister.
Or was it just her imagination?
She tried to bury the thought as she hurried on.
• • •
The beach looked so familiar.
A wonderful memory blossomed in her mind. A sunny day she and Luka posed for a picture, laughing and eating ice cream and touching noses.
The same beach where her parents strolled soon after they met.
Where on that wondrous day her mother led her and Luka down to the sea in their bathing suits, the first summer her brother began to walk. Her mama holding their hands as they rushed together into the blue waves.
Memories washed over Carla.