“Do you think Stockwell detonated the second bomb?” Keely asked.
“Hard to tell. The only thing I know for sure is that Stockwell always looks out for himself first. Everyone else runs a distant second. If he says he didn’t detonate the second bomb, he may be telling the truth, or he may be trying to avoid a longer jail sentence.” Lane gradually increased his pace to keep up with his partner.
“Where do we look?” Keely asked.
“I’ve been thinking about retracing our steps and asking for DNA from Zacki Branimir. But first, I think we need to talk with Mladen. From now on, we don’t tell anyone when we’re coming to have a chat. For now, at least, I don’t think we should call in our location to dispatch. We can let Lori know, but that’s about it.” Lane stepped onto the curb and waited for a gap in traffic so they could cross Nineteenth Street.
“You don’t think Stockwell acted on his own, then?” Keely looked left while Lane looked right. They stepped into the crosswalk.
“No. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that other members of the Scotch drinkers’ club will be distancing themselves from Stockwell. Any association with Stockwell is beginning to look like a career-limiting move. Whoever tipped Stockwell to our location and your personal information isn’t likely to come forward. The only way we’ll know is if Stockwell tells us who it was. Chief Simpson will put the communications department under a microscope. So we should be safer now.” Lane pointed at a house on their left. It was a two-storey with rounded windows, a brick face, and copper pillars. The front yard consisted of wild flowers and Colorado blue spruce trees behind an ornamental iron fence.
“Nice.” Keely smiled when she saw various toys scattered across the front deck. “Looks a little out of my price range.”
“I just like looking. I get the feeling it’s a happy place to live.”
They continued walking.
“Let’s go and see Mladen,” Lane said. “I’d like to ask him a few more questions.”
Fifteen minutes later, they walked into a camera and framing shop on Eleventh Avenue at the western edge of downtown.
Inside, they took in the pictures placed up near the top of the walls. “Someone’s been to Greece.” Keely looked at the photographs of the people and the houses climbing up from the seashore to the top of the hill.
Lane spotted the young woman at the counter and walked toward her. “Is Mladen in?”
She looked up from the computer screen, tucked her brown hair behind her ear, and said, “He should be upstairs.” She walked out from behind the counter. Lane and Keely followed her up three stairs to a room filled with sample frames, a variety of borders, and a workbench the size of a pool table. She pushed open a door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. “Mladen! A couple of customers are here to see you.”
The young woman turned, smiled, and walked past the detectives. “Thanks,” Keely said.
The door swung open and Mladen appeared carrying a rectangular piece of glass. He looked at the detectives and gently set the glass down on the bench.
“We’d like you to look at some pictures.” Lane placed a brown envelope on top of the glass.
Mladen looked at the envelope as if it might burn him if he touched it. He reached out to it then pulled his hand away.
Keely said, “They’re pictures of some soldiers. We’d like to know if you can identify them.”
Mladen’s hand reached for the envelope, then pulled back again. He shook his head. “You don’t know what this can do to me.”
“What do you mean?” Lane asked.
“You don’t know what you’re asking. It’s Goran, isn’t it? I still have nightmares about the war. They’re getting bad again.” Mladen’s face was white as he stared at the envelope.
Lane went to pull the envelope away.
“Wait,” Mladen said. He took a long breath, picked up the envelope, and slid the photos out. He set all three on the bench. “The man is Borislav Goran. Both pictures are the same man. He is older in this one.” Mladen pointed at the driver’s licence photo. “He was the leader of the Tarantulas. He ordered the killings and the rapes.” Mladen pulled over a stool and sat down. His eyes never left the photos. “The woman is older in this photo, but it looks like his girlfriend. She was a sniper. She guarded us while the Tarantulas took the men into the forest and executed them. All of the members of Goran’s paramilitary unit had the same insignia on their jackets. Some of them even had tattoos up here on their shoulders.” Mladen touched the shoulder of his right arm. “Yes, that looks like her.”
“A name?” Keely’s voice was just audible.
Mladen shook his head before looking at the detectives. “We never knew her name.” He pointed at Keely and the vivid bruise on her face. “You were injured in that explosion? The newspaper said two detectives were injured.”
Keely nodded. “Yes, it was us.”
Mladen looked at Lane. “Do you think you know what war is like?”
“No,” Lane said.
“The militia – these Tarantulas – they took a coffee break after the killings, before they started the rapes.” He pointed at the picture of Jelena. “The woman watched. She smoked her cigarettes and she watched. The Tarantulas joked about what they were going to do to us.” Mladen looked at the detectives in turn. “I hope that you will never find out what war is like.”
“Where were you on Sunday morning at ten o’clock?” Lane asked.
“Leo and I were at Prince’s Island. It was a busy day for us.” Mladen took the photos, put them back in the envelope, and handed them to Lane. “After the explosion, are you still the same people?”
After a few years on this job, I’m a different person.
“The flashbacks happen all the time,” Keely said.
Mladen showed them his thumb and forefinger, holding them barely a millimetre apart. “You’ve had a tiny taste of what war is like.”
“Why are you so kind to the children in your performances?” Lane asked.
Mladen hesitated, as if suspecting a trap. “My mother made me promise not to become a killer. To become a man who was kind to children. A man she could be proud of.”
“Do you have a cellphone?” Lane asked.
“Of course. You want the number?” Mladen recited it. Lane wrote it down. As he turned, he saw Mladen spraying the worktable with cleaner and wiping at the spot where the photos had been. I wish it were that easy to wipe away a memory.
A few minutes later, Keely opened the passenger door and got into the Chev. “Let’s go have a chat with Leo.”
Lane drove north, then east to a computer store up the hill from the centre of the city. They parked next to a camouflage green and grey SUV the size of a bus.
“Either somebody’s trying to make a statement or has a bit of a Napoleon complex.” Keely undid her seat belt and watched a middle-aged woman climb into the SUV and put on her glasses.
“Or it’s somebody’s mom on a shopping trip.” Lane smiled as he looked over the roof of the Chev.
Keely shook her head. “Smartass.” She covered her mouth when she realized what she’d said. Lane laughed and walked to the computer store.
Inside, a receptionist sat at the head of a line of desks. Behind her sat a row of five salesmen. No one looked up.
Keely and Lane stood in front of the bespectacled receptionist. She looked up and blinked at them through magnified eyes. “Yes?”
“We’d like to talk with Leo, please.” Keely showed the receptionist her id.
“I’m in here.” Leo’s head popped up from behind a monitor. “I’ll be right out.”
The secretary stared at her computer screen and said, “He’ll be right with you.”
Lane looked around. Software and hardware were neatly stacked along the walls and shelves. Three customers were playing with demo computers.
Leo said, “We can meet in here.” He held his right hand up and guided them through a glass door into an office, and closed the door. “Sit down.”