looked to be in his twenties. That was Carson Wells, who was called Junior. The man lying next to him was ten years older and heavy. Randy LaPierre.
They were still stunned from the flash grenade, but Junior lifted his chin off the floor and said to me, “Like I just said, I thought someone was breaking in. I fired. I didn’t hit anyone. You’ve got no right to arrest us.”
I stooped to their level, literally.
I said, “First one to tell me where I can find Susan Jones and Anna Sotovina makes a friend in the police department. I will work hard to get you a break from the law.”
Randy said, “I don’t understand. We live here. I don’t know them. I swear on my mother.”
“What about you, Junior? Want to be my friend?”
“What Randy said. I never heard of them.”
I said, “You can tell your mothers you’ll be in jail at 850 Bryant. Seventh floor.”
I called to the two cops standing in the doorway, and they hauled the men to their feet.
Randy said, “Do what you want, lady. You’ve got shit on us.”
Uniforms were taking out the trash when Joe and his partner came up from the garage level, rejoining Conklin and me in the living room.
“No one is in the house,” Joe said. “Anna’s not here. Susan’s not here.”
“Come onnnn. Don’t say that.”
He said, “There are three bedrooms on this floor. We found some women’s clothing in closets. Street clothes and lingerie. There were boxes of makeup in a dressing room. We’ll send it out for testing. If any of the women used the lipstick, we’ll get a DNA match.”
“So they were here.”
“What I’m thinking is we may have just missed them,” Joe said. “The garage door to the street was closed, but the rear door to the back garden was wide open. And if a car was waiting for them on Bush?”
He threw up his hands, looking more demoralized than I’d ever seen him.
Crap. Team Petrović had seen us, and maybe we’d been breathing down their necks enough that they had to make a move. So they used their exit strategy.
CHAPTER 104
Out on the street, flashers lit up the predawn morning.
Cops had strung crime-scene tape in front of the house to keep passersby out of our scene. Some people had been roused from their beds at 2:00 a.m. and were clumped together on the sidewalks to find out what had happened. We weren’t talking.
Joe’s ride was waiting.
He said, “Put Petrović on ice. Diano and I want to stop off at the office and file a report, but I’ll see you at the Hall in an hour. I’m feeling good about this.”
I was optimistic, too. The women were gone, so maybe alive. And Petrović was ours—for as long as we could hold him. How long would that be? Days? Weeks? We needed evidence if we were going to charge him.
And if we couldn’t do that, we’d have to let him go.
I flashed back to Petrović pointing a gun at my face. I was still shaken by that sight and knowing that he could have pulled the trigger. We’d talked him down.
But the thought came to me. What if he got another chance at me? And I thought about Susan and Anna. Totally powerless. I’d never met them, but I felt as though I knew them. And I had a sense of the terror they’d felt, the brutality they’d been subjected to.
I looked up at Joe. I’m pretty sure he could read my face and see how close I was to tears. He reached for me. I went into his arms, and we kissed in front of cops and Feds and God and everyone. He said, “It’s okay, Linds. We did great.”
The Honda pulled up. Conklin honked the horn. I released Joe and squeezed his hand.
Then I got into the car and buckled up.
We passed Petrović’s Jaguar, still parked in front of the men’s clothing shop.
“Richie, back up.”
I got out of the car and copied down the Jaguar’s tag number.
Then I called the lab.
CHAPTER 105
Same night—or more accurately, that morning—Jacobi stood up from his desk, opened the drawer in his credenza, and pulled out a bag from Sam’s Deli.
“Sit. Sit down,” he told us.
He congratulated us on bringing in Petrović, then passed the bag over his desk, saying, “Here’s what I’ve got. Two BLTs, a bag of chips, two Kind bars and some information, for what it’s worth.”
Conklin tore open the deli bag, handed a foil-wrapped sandwich to me, and