about Petrović. Follow me on this. Torture. Rape. Hanging. Does this ring a bell with you—or am I totally out of my mind?”
“You’re thinking Carly Myers?”
“Do you see it?”
“How do you connect them?” Yuki asked me. “She’s a schoolteacher. He owns a pricey steak house.”
“She was a schoolteacher who turned tricks on the side—in a motel. Petrović imprisoned women in a building that, under his occupation, was called the rape hotel. He enjoyed hanging people, didn’t he? Carly was found manually strangled, then hanged.”
“Keep going,” Yuki said.
“I’m thinking out loud,” I said. “I admit I don’t know how Petrović would know Carly—or any of them. But it’s not impossible, right?”
“No, this is all good,” Yuki said. “You could be onto something. Want to toss this around with Claire and Cindy?”
“Another good idea,” I said. Sometimes we amazed ourselves.
Yuki and I hugged good-bye, and I drove home thinking about Petrović, wondering if it was possible that he’d gotten his hands on the three schoolteachers from Pacific View Prep.
I’d do anything to find out if and how.
CHAPTER 63
The next morning I left home early so I could meet the girls for breakfast at MacBain’s before work.
When I hit Bryant and Langston, I heard shouting and saw that Bryant Street was cordoned off from Seventh to Harriet and mobbed by protesters.
I made the required detour and a few turns before I could park under the overpass on Harriet Street, then I walked up the block to the intersection and saw the protesters. They were mostly high-school kids, hundreds of them. They wore maroon-and-gold Pacific View sweat shirts and were surging toward the Hall of Justice, carrying signs with the faces of Carly, Susan, and Adele, and chanting, “Do your job. Do your job.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
I was doing my job, as was Conklin and the homicide crew, and the volunteer cops, our first-class ME, and the crime lab. But even the manpower, the twenty-four-hour days, the interviews, and the deep research hadn’t produced a live suspect.
Yes, I felt defensive, but there were no acceptable excuses.
The Pacific View student body, the parents of the three women, and all of the city’s citizens had every right to demand answers.
Someone shouted my name.
I turned to see Claire coming toward me, only yards away on Harriet. She tossed her head in the direction of the demonstration and looked as distressed as I felt.
We put our arms around each other’s waists and crossed the street together. Cindy and Yuki waved to us from the entrance to MacBain’s, and we burst through the door together.
Syd MacBain said, “Take any table you like.”
No discussion needed, we went for our favorite table.
We ordered coffee and tea, and I swore Cindy in, as usual, officially notifying her that this meeting was off the record. She rolled her baby blues, shook her head, making her blond curls bounce, and said, “Gaaaaahhhhhh.”
Claire laughed, Yuki joined in with her rolling, merry giggle, and then we were all laughing, because you cannot hear Yuki’s laughter without falling apart.
I had to give it to Cindy. She broke the gloom into pieces.
Once the hot drinks arrived, Yuki took charge and briefed our group on Slobodan Petrović’s suppression of Djoba, Bosnia, two decades ago.
“He’s here now,” she said, “going under an alias, Antonije Branko.”
“Petrović is in San Francisco?” Cindy asked.
“Looks like it,” Yuki said. “A man presumed to be Petrović just opened a steak house on California.”
“Tony’s? The one that used to be Oscar’s?” asked Claire.
Yuki said, “That’s the one.”
Claire and Cindy were shocked. They listened avidly as Yuki described an aspect of Petrović’s modus operandi—his documented pattern of rape, torture, and murder. I’d spent a restless night talking it over with Joe, comparing Petrović’s MO to the strangulation and hanging of Carly Myers in a motel shower.
I wasn’t yet convinced that the dots, in fact, connected.
When Yuki turned the meeting over to me, I explained that Petrović was known to have kept women prisoners in a rape hotel, and that he had sadistic tendencies.
Cindy said, “Go on,” and I did.
I said, “Myers was found in a motel frequented by prostitutes. With nothing more than what we’ve said, I can’t help but wonder if this bizarre torture and hanging of Carly Myers was committed by Petrović. And if so, is he on a roll? Has he stashed Saran and Jones in other motels around town? Because we don’t know where they are. We don’t have a clue.”
I thought of those students chanting “Do your job” just down