off his shoes.
He said, “Clapper’s the best. If there’s trace on the body or evidence in the woods, he’ll find it. And this media hurricane is going to pay off, Lindsay. Someone, a witness to the abduction or the murders, is going to remember something and come forward with a bona fide lead.”
If only. If there was a hot tip out there, it had to come in before we found Susan Jones.
CHAPTER 77
Joe had requisitioned a repurposed black Toyota RAV4 with a powerful engine and high-tech bells and whistles throughout.
The GPS tracking device on the underside of Petrović’s car was transmitting to a monitor attached to the Toyota’s dash. The blue Jaguar was still parked across the street from Petrović’s yellow Victorian house.
It was a weekday morning, and Tony’s Place for Steak wasn’t yet open, but Joe had a team on California Street watching the front and another team on Jones with a view of the adjacent condo and garage. Petrović couldn’t leave either place without being seen and followed. Period.
Joe had eyes on the target’s house when the front door opened and Petrović stepped out. He locked the door behind him, then came down the front steps to the street. Joe lifted his binoculars to his eyes and watched as the hog puffed on his cigar—always managing to obscure a clear view of his face—and headed toward his car with a nice jaunty step.
Life for Slobodan Petrović was very good.
The blue Jaguar was parked within fifty yards of where Joe sat in the Toyota. He observed Petrović unlock his eighty-thousand-dollar showboat and surreptitiously look up and down the block, checking out the traffic, parked cars, neighboring homes. He seemed satisfied that there was nothing untoward around him—no danger, no tail, just another beautiful morning in the City by the Bay.
The Butcher of Djoba got into his car and started her up.
Joe switched on the little Toyota as well. He was prepared to follow Petrović to his restaurant, as he’d done every morning this week, but the Jaguar had a new flight path.
Petrović drove west on Fell, took a left turn on Masonic, crossing the Panhandle, and took another left on Oak, heading back the way he had come.
Where was Petrović going?
Joe was three cars back as the Jag took the left on Oak, a wide residential street that ran parallel to Fell. Joe followed the Jag through the awkward turn but now had to hang back so as not to be seen. And then, damn it, he caught a red light while the Jag sailed through the intersection.
Joe checked the empty one-way cross street and ran the light. Once he was clear, he called his guys at the steak house to let them know that it looked like Petrović was heading into the Civic Center area.
His team was also tracking the Jaguar on their monitors, and while one car stayed in place on California, the other tore out of a side street and headed toward the straightaway of Van Ness.
The little Toyota SUV with the hot-rod engine was the most unremarkable-looking car on the road—if you didn’t know that it was loaded with a hundred thousand dollars of government electronics.
Right now the GPS was pinging the satellite and laying out the Jaguar’s route on the monitor. As Joe followed Petrović’s car through the crowded Civic Center area, passing Davies Symphony Hall and the War Memorial Opera House on the left, and City Hall on the right, he was concerned that Petrović was going off script.
Why? And what was his destination?
CHAPTER 78
Joe drove through Polk Gulch with a backup team behind him, both cars tailing the Jag, when Petrović took a right on Union where it crossed Van Ness.
Was Petrović trying to lose them? Or was this a ruse, a deliberate joke on them, taking them out of the way and then doubling back to his restaurant?
Or was this was something else entirely?
Instead of looping back, Petrović stayed on Union, climbing uphill to the high-priced neighborhood of Russian Hill.
Joe exchanged words with his teams, instructing his follow car to speed up and pass him. If Petrović had picked up the Toyota in the rearview, he would now think that he’d lost his tail.
A church was up ahead on the left, and something was happening there. A half dozen limos interspersed with media trucks were parked out front. Reporters sat on high canvas director’s chairs, facing their cameras, makeup people touching up their hair. Traffic cops held up their hands to