of Petrović in Bosnia. In one of them there’s hanged bodies of captives in Djoba. And apparently, he was good with throwing stars.”
Conklin stopped his burger just short of his mouth. I hadn’t told him about the photo of Petrović with his troops and the bodies hanging from trees in the background. It was Joe’s case. FBI intel. I hadn’t told my partner about Anna.
“Throwing stars? Okay, you’ve hooked me now,” said my partner. “Keep talking.”
“It wasn’t mine to tell,” I said. “But you need to know.”
“Speak,” Conklin said.
“A Bosnian war survivor, Anna Sotovina, came to the FBI because she saw Petrović in San Francisco.”
“She can tie him to the victims?”
“No, but she’s convinced he recognized her. Joe thought so, too. Now Anna has been missing for two days. Joe has the case. He’s looking for her and Petrović. As for us, we can wait for Mr. Big to make a mistake, or we can partner up with the FBI.”
Conklin said, “We’ve done it before. They take over and we buy them coffee.”
“Who cares? Let’s nail the Butcher before we find another body hanging from a tree.”
Conklin grabbed his phone and called Jacobi.
I grabbed mine and called Joe.
CHAPTER 99
Jacobi had worked a small miracle.
This morning he and FBI field office supervisor Craig Steinmetz had shredded the red tape, and a joint task force had been born. Conklin and I, along with Joe and his team, were working together to locate Petrović and bring him in for questioning. Anna’s disappearance was the probable cause we needed.
Petrović wasn’t in his house on Fell. Likewise, the maître d’ at his restaurant said that Tony wouldn’t be in today, that’s all he knew.
At 5:00 p.m., after a fruitless day of hide-and-seek, traffic cameras flagged Petrović’s Jaguar coming across the Bay Bridge. A team of agents tailed him to the Laurel Heights neighborhood and then lost him.
Then a patrol car located Petrović’s car parked on Pine Street in front of a men’s clothier. An undercover went into the shop, looked around, and didn’t see Petrović. When he showed the salespeople a photo, they all said they had not seen him. The cop and his partner canvassed the rest of the block before calling it quits.
It seemed that Petrović had gone underground once more, to our immense and vocal frustration.
It was now twenty past midnight.
Conklin and I waited inside a plain black Honda sedan parked on a pleasant residential block with a good view of the Jaguar. Rich was behind the wheel, and I manned the coms, which were crackling, connecting us to dispatch and to team members stationed at various places in this neighborhood.
Joe’s team was inside a surveillance van stationed on Geary, four blocks away. I’d seen the van. It had a dinged-up chassis, ladders on top, a decal on the side reading KELLY’S HOME REPAIR. Inside, it was like a spaceship equipped with cutting-edge tech: listening devices, a satellite hookup, a periscope, and four agents dressed in workmen’s clothes so that they could easily leave the van without bringing attention to it or themselves.
We had eyes, ears, and boots on the street, but there was nothing to report.
Shops were closed. Traffic was slight. Houses were dark. Six FBI agents, a SWAT team, and Conklin and I were on alert for one man.
It had been a long night.
At that moment Conklin was on the phone with Cindy.
“It can’t be helped, Cin. And no, I can’t tell you about it on the record. I just can’t … I realize that … I understand. Do you understand me? Hold on.”
He said to me, “Will you talk to her?”
I said, “Really?”
I reached for the phone and said, “Cindy, there’s nothing to tell. We’re on a stakeout.”
My attention was drawn to an SUV with a broken headlight that cruised past us, slowed down, and stopped up the block, keeping the motor on.
I grabbed my binoculars and took a good look at the vehicle, a Cadillac Escalade. All I could get off the plate were the last three numbers, and even those numbers were approximate.
Rich took back his phone, saying, “Cindy, we’ve gotta go. Love you.”
He clicked off, and together we watched as the SUV’s passenger-side door opened and a large man got out. Then the car moved off, north on Presidio Avenue.
I turned my eyes back to the large man approaching a white-trimmed gray house across the street and up the block a hundred yards from where we were parked. There was a garage on the street level,