the block. Was Petrović a lead? Or was I just hoping for something to give us a handle on this kidnapping and murder?
Claire’s voice broke into my thoughts.
She said, “I just got this back from the lab last night. These are impressions of those unusual premortem cuts on Carly’s body.”
Cindy hadn’t heard about those cuts. She jumped in with questions.
“What kind of cuts? Can I see the pictures? Oh. Oh. Those don’t look fatal. Were they, Claire?”
Claire said, “No, they weren’t fatal. These wounds were probably inflicted to scare her and make her compliant. Sometime after that, she was asphyxiated, and then, when she was dead, she was hanged. Seems to me that the hanging was for effect. She was dressed in a men’s white shirt—probably just to hide the wounds, make a better-looking corpse.”
Claire and I have been close friends since we were both rookies, and I can read her pretty well.
From the look on her face, I was sure that Claire was about to drop some kind of news we hadn’t heard before.
CHAPTER 64
My phone buzzed, Richie texting me that Jacobi wanted to meet with us right away.
I texted back. Ten more minutes. Maybe fifteen.
Then I tuned back in to what Claire was saying. She had opened another folder of photo enlargements, saying, “These pictures are of the latex molds pulled from the slashes in Carly’s torso. See here: thin slabs of latex and a ridge where the latex material seeped into the wounds. The report suggests that the wounds may have been caused by throwing stars.”
“Are those the same as ninja stars?” Cindy asked.
Without waiting for an answer, Cindy began googling throwing stars on her phone.
“Here we go,” she said. “Actual name of throwing stars is shuriken. They’re of Japanese origin but used in other countries. ‘Historically, shuriken are made out of almost any metallic found objects’ … dah-dah-dah … ‘star-shaped, five-pointed, swastika-shaped,’ and so on.”
She swiped on her phone, read another page, and resumed her summary.
“The stars are not meant as a killing weapon—to your point, Claire. They’re used more to injure and distract and to supplement swords and other weapons … Uh, they’re usually five to eight inches in diameter, very thin, thrown with a smooth movement so that they slip effortlessly out of the hand. Okay, paraphrasing here, the victim often doesn’t see the star and thinks he’s been cut by an invisible sword.”
Claire said, “Yeah. That thin blade sounds right. One of the wounds was a slice on Carly’s forearm. Like defense against a glancing blade.”
Cindy showed us an image of throwing stars of all shapes tacked to a display board. Then she put down her phone and said, “Throwing stars are illegal in many countries and some states. They’re illegal in California.”
I remembered what Claire had said when I went to the morgue to see Carly Myers’s body: “If you find the weapon, you may find the killer.”
Forensics had homed in on the most probable weapon. But how were throwing stars a link to Slobodan Petrović?
The check arrived. Cash dropped on the table from four hands. We hugged and headed off to work.
I moved fast, edging through the demonstration and taking the front steps, wanting to get to that meeting with Conklin and Jacobi.
I had a lot to tell them about the genocidal war criminal living near the Panhandle. That he had a documented history of torture, rape, and mass murder.
And that, according to postwar witness reports, Petrović was a sadist: he made a point of hanging his victims, and it seemed like he just loved to do it.
CHAPTER 65
Security called up to Joe, saying that he had a visitor, Miss Anna Sotovina.
“Send her up,” Joe said.
Anna had stood him up for last evening’s six-thirty meeting, turned off her phone, and not returned his texts and calls. He’d been worried about her all night, and now he was pissed off.
When she knocked on the doorframe, he checked her out. She was dressed for her job and didn’t seem scared or injured. He asked her to come in and indicated a chair.
She started speaking as she crossed the room.
“I turned off my phone,” she said. “I didn’t want it to ring when I was waiting in my car.”
“You didn’t think to call and let me know where you were?”
“I know. I know. I had a sudden idea to follow Petrović home from the restaurant.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“After lunch I went to Tony’s. I used a car from the lot so that he wouldn’t recognize