The 18th Abduction

by James Patterson

  Five miles after getting behind the wheel, Anna was on Fell Street, three blocks from where she lived, and there, like a beacon, was Petrović’s yellow-and-blue Victorian house.

  Best of all, his Jaguar was out front, exactly where she hoped it would be. There was only one vacant parking spot, and it was at the east end of the block. She didn’t get the best view of the house from there, but she would see the Jag leave, no matter what direction the Butcher took.

  Anna parked the Tesla with ease and touched the image on the screen to lower her seat back a few degrees. Once she was as comfortable as she had ever been in her life, she shut down the engine and settled in to watch.

  She had spied on Petrović, had followed him before through the dirty streets of the Tenderloin. But she’d always lost him, her bright-red car calling too much attention for a close pursuit. He wouldn’t imagine her in this Model X.

  Sitting in front of his house, she imagined trailing him, watching to see what shady activities he must be involved in here in San Francisco. She suspected drugs, human trafficking, gambling. That’s who he was. A mass murderer. A monster.

  Tonight she wouldn’t lose him.

  Anna reached for her handbag, felt around, and took out the nut-and-chocolate bar she’d stashed for a moment like this. She ate, drank water, thought about Petrović and how much she hated him—when everything went wrong. There was a violent crash from behind, and she was thrown hard into the steering wheel.

  What happened?

  Anna righted herself, looked behind her, and opened her door, the falcon wing creaking now, injured in the crash. Filled with fury, she got out of the car and saw him. Not Petrović. It was the man in the Escalade, who had rammed the Tesla from behind. He was backing up, putting his vehicle in gear, getting ready to ram her again.

  She’d been attacked again by that vicious soldier who had raped her. He buzzed down his window.

  Anna screamed at him in her native language.

  “You. I see you. I know you. I know how to find you. I’m calling the police. No, the FBI.”

  The man with the gray beard and hair gestured Sorry, but Anna knew that he’d rammed her on purpose. It was a warning. She went back to her car, leaned all the way in, and got her purse from the footwell.

  She would take pictures of the man and his license plate. Then she would call Joe. She was so consumed by this task, she never heard the footsteps behind her.

  Chapter 85

  Joe was on Tenth Avenue at California, waiting for the light to turn, when his phone buzzed.

  Lindsay was texting him, saying that she was sorry. She was jammed up at work, not sure when she would be home, and he should go ahead and have dinner without her.

  He texted back, No problem. CU later.

  Joe had spent the day immersed in the Petrović files, saturated with the man’s documented cruelty, as certain as Lindsay that Petrović had killed Carly Myers and Adele Saran. And also like Lindsay, he had nothing to prove it.

  He checked the GPS and saw the pulsing blip representing the blue Jaguar, motionless on California near Tony’s Place. He made a turn and ten minutes later Joe was parked on the corner where he had an unobstructed view of the opposite corner and the brightly lit Place for Steak.

  Joe phoned Robert Diano and Bill Ennis, the team assigned to the restaurant. He told them that he was relieving them for an hour, that they should take a break. Diano reported back that they would be at the pizzeria on Bush Street.

  Joe watched them head out, and he took over the surveillance of the Jag and the restaurant. A minute later, as if Joe had materialized him, Petrović, holding a paper bag, left the restaurant, waved at him, and crossed the street directly to where Joe sat in the Toyota.

  What the hell?

  “Hey,” he called out, “Joe Molinari.”

  Petrović shook the bag like he had a mouse in there and he was letting his pet owl know that Daddy was home with something tasty.

  Joe ran through his options and quickly settled on his only move. He got out of the car and spoke to Petrović over the roof.

  “Tony, right?”

  Petrović said, “You hungry, Joe?”

  Joe said, “How’d you know?”

  He smiled, walked around the back of the car, and stretched out his hand for a friendly shake. Petrović did the same. Joe feinted, grabbed Petrović by the knot of his tie, spun him, and shoved him hard against the car.

  The big man expelled air and, having been thrown off-balance, tripped over his feet, stumbled, and fell to the pavement. He raged, “Are you crazy, attacking a civilian?”

  Joe had his gun in his hand. He pointed the muzzle at the Butcher’s head.

  Petrović said, “What are you doing? I’m trying to be a nice guy. I brought you dinner.”

  “I know who you are, Petrović,” Joe said. “I wouldn’t call you a civilian. I could shoot you now and become an overnight international hero. I’ve thought about it, and instead I’m going to give you a warning.”

  Petrović was grinning, but he wasn’t pushing back.

  He must have known that Joe didn’t need much of an excuse, that he probably had a throw-down weapon in the car. That the dash cam was off. If he were in Petrović’s place, that’s what Joe would be thinking. The FBI would win this one.

  Joe said, “Bike girl is under FBI protection. Hurt her, and I’m dragging you back to Bosnia myself.”

  “You mixed me up with someone else, Joe. She’s not my type. I like them younger. And prettier.”

  Joe glared at Petrović for another moment, then said, “Get up.”

  Petrović had to use his hands and knees to leverage himself to a standing position, then he dusted himself off with his large hands. He said, “We have to do this again sometime. Did I say that right?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Joe said. “Next time dinner’s on me.”

  Petrović smiled, turned, and limped back to the restaurant.

  Joe got into his car, while keeping his eyes on Petrović. His pulse was pounding hard, as if he’d sprinted five miles. He was furious at himself, not because he’d crossed a line with Petrović, but that Petrović had made him—twice—and made sure Joe knew it.

  Petrović was playing with him.

  Joe had a kit in the trunk. He got out an evidence bag, retrieved Petrović’s doggy bag from where it had fallen, sealed and tagged it.

  He called Rob Diano and told him what had occurred, adding, “I have to go to the office.”

  “We’re on our way back to your location,” said the agent.

  When Diano and Ennis pulled up alongside him, Joe waved, then drove to the FBI branch on Golden Gate Avenue.

  He knew Petrović would be gunning for him. He hoped so. He’d like a clean shot at this piece of filth. He’d really like to put him down.

  Chapter 86

  Twenty-four hours after his encounter with Petrović, Joe was in his office, getting ready to head out and salvage some of his Saturday, when Agent Rob Diano called and delivered the chilling news.

  “We lost Petrović. I don’t know how, he—”

  Joe interrupted. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Molinari, it’s complicated. Hear me out. Last night at twenty-three hundred we followed him from his steak joint to his house. The car didn’t move all night. We had eyes on it throughout. Seven a.m. the car was still in front of the house when we hand him off to Carroll and Bartoff.

  “Carroll turns on the GPS, and the monitor shows the car is moving. But he sees it—parked right there on Fell. Plates check out—Petrović’s Jag—but the blip on the screen is moving. Obviously, the subject switched out the tracker, put it on another vehicle. So where is he? Did he leave the house on foot through the backyard overnight and someone gave him a lift? That’s my guess. Sorry, Molinari. We can’t cover all the bases at the same—”

  Just then Carroll phoned from the Fell Street location. Without waiting for Joe to speak, he said, “Molinari. The Jag
is still outside the house on Fell. I followed the signal and found the tracker on a florist’s delivery truck. We’re on it now. Sunshine Florist, white panel van, on Fair Oaks.”

  “Shit.”

  “I pulled them over, nice as pie. ‘Would you mind? We’re looking for a criminal.’ No problem. They’re father and son doing their store’s deliveries. We checked out the van. Nobody in there. No cigar fumes. Nothing but flowers. Ran Sunshine’s license, registration, plates. They’re clean. Showed them a picture of Tony. They don’t know him. We pulled the tracking device, so when you see the Jag moving, it’s us. We’re coming in to file a report.”

  Joe hung up, thinking that he hadn’t heard from Anna in more than a day. Now that they’d lost Petrović, he felt alarmed. He called her, left a message, asked her to return his call. He texted her. No response. He called the general phone line at the Tesla dealership. After a ring he heard, “Sales, this is Dale Winston.”

  Joe said, “Can you put me through to Anna Sotovina?”

  “And who may I say is calling?” Winston asked.

  “Joe Molinari, FBI.”

  “Oh. Anna’s not here. Actually, she didn’t come in today. That’s not like her. In fact, I’m worried. She’s a very disciplined person, but she’s forgetting things, showing up late. And now—this is the worst. I don’t know why I trusted her.”

  Winston explained to Joe that Anna had needed to use a loaner overnight, was supposed to return it to the shop this morning by nine. She hadn’t come in with the car, and he hadn’t been able to reach her.

  Joe took down details on the vehicle, left an urgent message for Anna with Winston, hung up, and made notes to the file.

  Petrović hadn’t been seen in twenty hours.

  Anna hadn’t come to work and hadn’t returned calls.

  It was premature, and highly speculative, but those facts added up.

  One plus one equaled Petrović had Anna.

  Where in God’s name were they?

  Chapter 87

  My anxiety was simmering as my partner and I crossed the motel’s parking lot at dawn.

  Dispatch had roused me an hour ago saying there’d been another murder at the Big Four Motel. Was it Susan Jones? Were we going to find her body hanging in a shower?

  The motel looked subdued at sunrise. The homeless campers in the parking lot were dozing in their bags and rags, despite the sirens and flashers and squawking of car radios. Many of the motel guests had pulled on robes and jackets over their sleepwear and were grouped under the big orange awning in front of Tuohy’s office.

  One of the uniformed officers approached us, introduced herself as Officer Joyce Birmingham, and said that she was the first officer on the scene.

  She said, “Sergeant, we got the call at five and responded. The manager asked for you. Mr. Jake Tuohy. He said you and Inspector Conklin have some history here.”

  Carly Myers’s body was still vivid in my mind. I asked Birmingham to run the scene for us.

  “The vic is a white male—”

  “What’s that? Male?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Approximately thirty-five, no ID on him, but Tuohy says he knows who he is. A pimp. Denny something.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Tuohy didn’t know his last name. A guest found the body in the space between the soft drink machine and the ice maker. My partner and I taped off the vending machine area, and we’re about to do the same to the parking lot. Mr. Tuohy is waiting for you in his office.”

  “Okay, Birmingham. Good job. You called CSI?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and the ME.”

  I said, “We’d like to see the body now.”

  Officer Birmingham walked Conklin and me to the bank of vending machines on the ground floor. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Lopez was dressed in the same clothes he was wearing when we dragged him off the street and into our house yesterday. Jeans, cotton shirt, maroon pullover, denim jacket. He was lying in the gap between the large vending machine and the ice maker, folded neatly into the space. I saw no blood, no signs of violence.

  But there was no question. Denny was dead. I thought of him saying, “For God’s sake. You’re going to get me killed.” Almost forty-eight hours later, it had happened.

  Conklin and I looked at each other. No words were needed, but I felt responsible. It was a message. His killer was very likely the same person who’d killed the schoolteachers, or knew who did.

  Conklin squeezed my shoulder. I patted his hand. And together we stared down at the dead man.

  Had he been killed while loitering in the parking lot?

  Or had he been murdered elsewhere? A car could have backed up to this spot to dump his body. Two men could have done it in under a minute.

  I stooped to Denny’s body and, using a pen, moved his collar aside. There were bruises around his neck. He’d been strangled but not hanged.

  Similar MO but not identical.

  And why had he been killed at all?

  Conklin and I theorized over Denny’s body.

  Had he told the wrong barfly at Bud’s that he’d been questioned about the big man buying drinks for the murdered women at the Bridge? Had the big man heard that Denny was talking and put him down?

  Or was this an unrelated murder? Denny could have gotten into something in the parking lot. Then got rolled. Strangled.

  Nah. Too much of a coincidence.

  Normally, I didn’t talk to the dead, but I heard myself say, “What happened to you, Denny?”

  While Conklin notified dispatch that we were on the scene, I called Jacobi at home.

  I apologized for waking him up, but hell, this couldn’t wait.

  “Our favorite pimp got taken out,” I told Jacobi. “Denny Lopez. He gave us nothing. This was a senseless, stupid death.”

  “Not your fault, Boxer.”

  “That’s not how it feels,” I said.

  As I signed off with Jacobi, Conklin said, “Look,” and pointed to Taqueria del Lobo’s delivery truck at the far end of the parking lot. He said, “That’ll be back at the lab within the hour.”

  Conklin and I edged through the crowd, heading toward the manager’s office to see Jake Tuohy and get the day rolling. I had a terrible sense of déjà vu. I pictured all the interviews that would follow, the guests who had been minding their own business, or asleep, hadn’t heard a thing.

  But one bright thought peeked through the clouds.

  Denny’s killing, compared with the others, lacked finesse. I would say it had been rushed. Maybe we were crowding our killer. Maybe we were getting under his skin.

  Chapter 88

  Joe was annotating the Petrović file when Diano called.

  “You were right,” the agent said. “The GPS had autotrack. I have the location of the car.”

  “Watch but don’t touch it,” Joe said. “Give me the coordinates.”

  Joe drove to the address Diano had given him in Laurel Heights, an upscale area of two- and three-story Edwardian homes, tree-lined streets, and expensive shops, everything beautifully maintained.

  He easily found the Tesla with the dinged-up front fender parked in front of the Laurel Inn on Presidio. You really couldn’t miss it. The back end of the car was caved in from a bad collision.

  Joe touched the door handle and the falcon wing creaked open and lifted.

  A purple scarf was curled up in the passenger-side footwell. Joe recognized it as Anna’s, and there was a candy bar wrapper near the scarf that confirmed it.

  Snickers. Anna’s favorite.

  Joe’s backup teams joined him at the car, and they spread out. They had no picture of Anna, but her description—a woman of forty, five foot six, 130 pounds, with a scar the size and shape of a hand on the left side of her face from eye to mouth—should serve.

  The five experienced federal agents went from door to door, from shop to hotel to apartment building, in a grid five blocks in all directions from the car. The wreck of the Tesla had been noticed, but no one
had seen a woman matching Anna’s description. The photo of Petrović also drew a negative response.

  Joe phoned Steinmetz and reported what he knew: the damage to the vehicle, no indication of violence inside the car, and no sign of Anna. He suggested that Steinmetz get the SFPD involved. The Tesla had to be transported to the city’s forensics lab, and they needed to file a missing persons report.

  Joe watched the flatbed truck take the Tesla down Presidio Avenue toward the forensics lab at Hunters Point. Once it was out of sight, he phoned Dale Winston at the dealership to ask if Anna had made contact and to tell him that the car had been seized by the FBI.

  Joe returned to the office and sat down with Steinmetz, who once again stated the uncomfortable truth.

  There was still nothing linking Petrović to Anna.

  “But here’s an idea, Molinari,” Steinmetz said. “Ask Petrović for permission to search his home, car, and business. Say you just want to eliminate him as a person of interest. See what he says.”

  Joe thought it over and saw no serious downside. And maybe Petrović would toss them a bone, have a suggestion—or a telling misdirection.

  Joe found Petrović at Tony’s Place. The former military executioner said that he was “eager to help out law enforcement. No problem.”

  Joe, Diano, and Ennis went through the restaurant. Then Petrović led the caravan of federal agents to his house and threw open the doors.

  He mocked the agents as they searched the spacious three floors.

  “Maybe she’s in the washing machine, Joe. Have you searched the trunk of my car? Don’t forget to dust everything for fingerprints. I’ll send the bill for cleanup to the FBI.”

  Joe was polite. But after three hours of eating shit, he was seething.

  Did Petrović have Anna?

  Or had she had an accident with the car and, rather than face the music, taken off to parts unknown?

  Anna was strong-willed and angry at him.