Facade

by Susan Cory

  Then again, maybe this was the perfect time to catch him with his guard down. She changed into black jeans and a sweater, then snapped Sheba's leash onto her pink leather collar with biker's studs.

  As soon as Iris opened the door to Luc's condo, Sheba raced toward the bedroom. Only then did Iris pause. Was it such a great idea to barge in on Luc the morning after they'd had a disagreement? What if he had company? It wasn't as if they had ever discussed any ground rules for this relationship. After a month or so of spending nights together, Luc had simply given her a key. She had done the same.

  Iris crept toward the door without hearing any voice, much less two. She peered in to see Sheba sitting on Luc's empty bed. The dog looked at her and let out a mournful howl.

  Iris remembered, several Saturdays before, when she had swung by the restaurant at closing time to find two foxy, thirtyish women avidly chatting up Luc.

  She slid under Luc's duvet and curled her body around his cold pillow.

  CHAPTER 21

  Detective Russo's stomach roiled in protest at his third cup of scorched police station coffee. It was Sunday morning and he tossed the front section of the Globe into the trash can. He ran his hand from the base of his short, powerful neck up over his shaved head and back again, which did nothing to relax him. The brass wanted Paul Malone to handle this Lara Kurjak case instead of Missing Persons. Since Malone was his lieutenant as well as his partner, the case was his as well. Russo hated these missing kids cases. He stared at the framed photograph on his desk of his red-headed son, ten-year-old Charlie Junior, in a little league uniform. If he had his way, knowing what he did about the pervs out there, he'd never let Charlie leave the house.

  The media pressure was already starting to ramp up after that jerk Harvard professor had fanned the flames on TV the night before. Maybe this would give him the opportunity to show Malone how much he'd learned at those expensive Criminal Justice workshops he'd been going to. He could do more of the heavy lifting on the case before Malone went into his predictable uber-stressed mode, with all the weight loss, haunted looks, and wickedly short tempers that that went with it.

  Russo heard an attention-seeking cough and glanced up at the ponytailed rookie, Samantha Carter, standing at the entrance to his cluttered workspace.

  “There's a call on the helpline you might want to hear.”

  “Someone saw her?” he asked as he followed Carter to her cubicle in the open office section of the homicide division. He couldn't help thinking for the hundredth time since they'd moved to East Cambridge from the grand but seedy old HQ in Central Square that the new headquarters looked like a friggin' insurance office.

  “No, it's about the father. He sounds like a real piece of work,” she said.

  “Caller?”

  “Wouldn't identify herself but said the father knows her husband.”

  “Do we have a track on where she called from?”

  “No, she hung up too soon.”

  Russo plonked himself down into a visitor chair that creaked slightly. Carter punched buttons as she listened to the left earphone of her headset.

  “Here it is.” She put the sound on speaker.

  “Lara's father, Ivano Kurjak, told my husband he'd sold Lara to a man in Bosnia. He said he was going to send her there to marry this man after her school was finished in June.”

  Samantha's voice came on. “Ma'am, can you tell me your name and how your husband knows Mr. Kurjak?”

  The raspy voice continued. “She probably tried to run away. He might have found her and smuggled her out of the country. That's what you should check on.”

  “Tell me your name please.”

  The line went dead.

  “Could you trace it?” Russo asked.

  “No, she must have been timing it. Why do the cop shows give away all our secrets? She rang off just before the address registered.”

  “Damn.” Russo stood. “Still, good work, Carter. See if you can clean up the recording. Maybe there's some background noise we can use.”

  On his way back to his desk, the detective stopped at Malone's glass-enclosed office to update his superior. As Malone looked up from his bulky desktop computer and spotted Russo lingering in the doorway, he said, “How's it going tracking down our professor's war-time paramour?”

  Russo eased into the office and relaxed into the chair across from Malone. “It's been really hard to track down any records from that time. Bosnia was the Wild West when DeWitt was out there.”

  “Were you able to dig up anything about his activities there?” Malone asked.

  “He was in this division, the Dutchbat, that was assigned to protect the Muslims in Srebrenica. Thing is, they obviously failed because the Serbs ended up massacring eight thousand Muslim men and boys and raping most of the Muslim women.”

  “The Dutch soldiers just stood by and let that happen?”

  “According to what I've read, these guys had their hands tied,” Russo explained. “The UN would only let them use force in self-defense and the NATO planes that were supposed to do the actual fighting never showed up.”

  “Sounds like a scene from Hell. And we're supposed to believe that in the middle of all this DeWitt was playing Romeo with some Muslim woman?”

  Russo shrugged. “I wouldn't know, but I guess these things happen during wartime. I did manage to come up with the name of someone from his division. The guy lives in London now. I left him a voice message several hours ago but he hasn't called me back yet, no surprise given the time difference.”

  “Good—keep ahead of that. And see if you can find out where the assistant Nils something was on that Wednesday night. Maybe he's the one Lara was really coming to see at the GSD.”

  Russo was about to rise from his chair when he remembered what he'd come here to tell Malone. “Almost forgot—Carter got an anonymous tip saying the father had promised the girl for an arranged marriage in Bosnia this summer. Can you believe it? The kid is twelve—she should be playing with dolls or maybe watching Gossip Girl.”

  Malone shook his head in disgust. “Get Foster to check the airlines for female minors traveling to that area in the last few days. Probably need to check flights to Paris and Frankfurt, too... who knows where else.”

  “Will do. But doesn't this give more weight to our idea that she's a runaway?”

  “We're already following up on how she might have left the area. But, seems like time to bring dear old dad in for questioning.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Ellie tapped on Iris' kitchen window and waggled a turquoise yoga mat in front of her.

  As Iris let her in Ellie took in the scene and asked, “What's wrong? Are things still messed up with Luc?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You're reading the obituaries,” she stabbed the newspaper spread out on the kitchen table with her index finger, “while listening to Bonnie Raitt in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I rest my case. Now go get on your yoga clothes and we can talk on the way over.”

  Five minutes later they were walking along Walden St. toward the Soni Yoga Studio.

  “Don't jump to conclusions,” Ellie said. “I can't see Luc spending the night with someone else. Jeez Iris, he made you that eight course meal of your favorite foods a few weeks ago. He even boiled up sticky toffee pudding for dessert! He loves you. Of course he's intimidated by your going out to dinner with one of the most famous architects in the world. You just need to assure him that Xander is not real life. Luc's your real life. You can get him settled down.”

  “I told him I wasn't interested in dating Xander. I was just curious about the life of a hotshot celebrity architect like him.”

  “You know you can be pretty intimidating yourself.”

  “Oh, please. You know me better than that,” Iris said.

  “Sure, I do. I know how insecure you can be and where your baggage comes from. But poor Luc doesn't. You need to show him that side of you.”

  “The screwed-up side.”
>
  “Exactly.”

  They unrolled their mats and spent the next hour saluting the sun and posing like mountains.

  Looking at the front row, Iris recognized the gray braid of Alise, a favorite neighbor who sometimes dog-sat for Sheba. When the class was over, Alise joined them on their walk home. As they passed the community garden at the Raymond St. playground, Alise said “I am so in love with your boyfriend, Iris.”

  “Should I be worried?” Iris asked.

  Alise chuckled. “Luc did a presentation this morning at the garden here, giving us some great new ways to use herbs in cooking. I can't wait to try his recipe for elderflower sauce to put on shrimp.”

  “He was here this morning?”

  “Yes, didn't you know? The posters were on telephone poles all around the neighborhood. He was so patient. One woman even brought her little granddaughter. He let the girl smell the different herbs. What a sweet guy.”

  Ellie gave Iris a sharp elbow in the ribs.

  CHAPTER 23

  Iris entered her kitchen bubbling and humming with affection for Luc. He WAS a sweet guy, and she was lucky. She needed to reassure him about her commitment to him, so she speed-dialed his number, and felt a thrill when he answered.

  “Hi, it's me,” she said. “Can I come over to talk?”

  There was a gaping pause, then “I'm heading over to my sister's for dinner soon.”

  She let out a breath.

  “But I have half an hour before I need to leave,” he continued, “if you wanted to come over now.”

  “I'll be right there. Five minutes.”

  Iris ran up to her bedroom to peel off her sweaty yogawear and take a quick shower. She tossed on a loose cashmere sweater and a pair of skinny jeans, then shook her long chestnut hair out of its ponytail. Luc had sounded distant, maybe irritated. She had to smooth things over. After slapping on a swipe of red berry lip stain, she flew downstairs. She put Sheba on her leash, then opened the door. Only to find Jasna standing on the front porch, looking ashen, her spindly arm in mid-reach toward the doorbell.

  “I'm just running out now,” Iris blurted out before registering how debilitated her student looked.

  “I need your help,” Jasna said, her dark eyes pleading.

  Iris checked her watch, then figured she could take a few minutes to calm her student's stress about whatever imagined catastrophe before setting off again for Luc's place. She led Jasna quickly into the living room.

  Jasna perched on the edge of one of Iris' favorite black leather club chairs. “Please, I have to tell someone. This is all my fault and now Lara might be dead.”

  “Lara? The missing girl?” Iris settled onto the sofa across from Jasna. “How are you involved with her?”

  “This is such a mess.” Clearly at the point of tears, Jasna told Iris how she had befriended Lara and tried to help the girl escape from her father's plan for some awful hell of an arranged marriage in Bosnia.

  “What about the police? Or child services? Why didn't you report this to them? They could have stopped the father.”

  “Lara was terrified they would put her in foster care, into some group home or have her adopted by someone even more abusive than her father,” Jasna explained. “She wanted me to adopt her, but I live too close by. Her father would have found her and shipped her off to Bosnia.”

  Iris had to concede that they were right—Lara probably would have ended up in foster care if she had approached any authorities at all.“Okay, what happened next?”

  “I noticed bruises on Lara's arms when I'd see her in her father's shop where she worked after school. He was hitting her when he got drunk. I knew I had to help her get away soon.”

  “Where were you intending to hide her?”

  “I have a brother, Edvin, in another country. He and his partner love kids. We all talked about Lara going to live with them. She and Edvin hit it off when they met, and Lara liked the idea of being far enough away from her father.”

  “And something went wrong with this plan?” Iris said.

  Jasna ran a hand through her choppy black hair until it stood up in tufts. “On the night Lara disappeared, she came to my apartment and waited there while I went to Rory's to borrow his car. I was only gone for half an hour. When I returned she was gone. The window to the fire escape was open and my bedspread was missing. Lara's bag, with all her things in it, was still there.”

  “Maybe she changed her mind and decided to run away?”

  “That's what I'd hoped at first. I thought maybe she'd gotten scared about such a big, sudden change and gone instead to a friend's house. I kept hoping she'd call me in the morning. No call ever came and I got scared. Why would she have left all her things behind? She even left her wallet with some money. And we had already talked about other places she could go—there weren't any. She had no other choices.”

  “Call the police,” Iris instructed. “Now. They need to have it confirmed that someone took Lara. They probably think she ran away.”

  “I already made a call to the police, anonymously, telling them about the arranged marriage threat.”

  “Good. They need to know that. Maybe her father learned about your plan, then followed her to your apartment and grabbed her. She could be in Bosnia by now.”

  “Then why would he have reported her missing to the police?” Jasna asked.

  Iris considered the question, then said “that's something for the police to figure out. But they need to have all of the facts before they can track Lara down. Right now they don't even know an accurate location or time for where or when she went missing. That means they're wasting their time questioning people around Lara's apartment about earlier that evening.”

  Jasna suddenly couldn't seem to catch her breath and started to hyperventilate.

  Iris was on her feet and crossed the room to ease the girl's head gently down as she bent forward. “Stay there. I'll get a paper bag.” She rushed back from her kitchen recycling bin and handed the Star Market bag to Jasna, telling her to “breathe deeply into this.” Where Iris had learned that trick, she had no idea.

  After a few minutes Jasna's panic attack gradually subsided and she sat back up. Her face was a mask of despair. “I can't tell this to the police. I was helping a minor run away. I'm here on a student visa and Immigration will deport me. Professor Reid, I need you to tell them. That's why I came here. But I need you to tell them without their finding out about me. Please?”

  Iris knew she was susceptible to this kind of appeal. She knew she was a sucker for helping an underdog, and that it always got her into trouble. Yet she found herself saying “Maybe there's some indirect way of getting this information to the police. Let me think about it. But the first order of business now is to get you something to eat. You look like you haven't eaten or slept in days.”

  Jasna gave her a pathetic, grateful look. “I've just been so worried about Lara,” she said.

  Iris checked her watch. “It's eight-thirty. I don't have much in my refrigerator so I'm going to take you out to dinner.”

  Her words seemed to calm the young woman down. Iris grabbed her purse and jacket, then stood still before Jasna.

  “There's one thing we need to get straight if I'm going to help you, one condition.”

  “Anything.”

  “I saw the marks on your legs yesterday. You're not going to be able to help Lara if you can't stay healthy yourself. So here's the deal. We'll look for Lara and you'll get some serious professional help for the cutting. OK?”

  Jasna looked away. “I will.” She wrapped her raincoat tighter around her small frame. “It's just that I just blame myself. She never would've been taken if it weren't for my stupid plan,” she whispered.

  “This is not your fault.” Iris rested a hand on Jasna's shoulder reassuringly. “Her father's plan to send her to Bosnia is what started this chain of events. But the person to blame is whoever took her.”

  As they approached the front door Iris saw Sheba curled up
in front of it, leash still attached.

  “Oh, hell,” Iris said as she remembered her overdue rendezvous with Luc.

  CHAPTER 24

  “You think Slavs are barbarians! This is ethnic profile. Who told you I sending my angel to Bosnia to marry? Is it the Dutch swine? He is telling more lies?”

  Malone flicked a beleaguered look at his partner and pulled back from the table. They had been stuck in this cramped interview room for the last half hour with a truculent man who smelled like grease and onions. Worse, whenever the guy got excited, which was frequently, he would launch spit across the table along with his agitated words.

  Malone rose to his feet and said, “Wanna Coke?”

  “Yes, I want Coke,” Mr. Kurjak said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Actually, I was asking the detective, but I'll get you one too.” Malone slammed the door shut behind him.

  “Look, Mr. Kurjak,” Russo said, “we have a witness who told us about the arranged marriage in Bosnia. If you want to help us find your daughter, you need to tell us everything that was going on with her. Don't get me wrong, you have my sympathy. I'm sure it's difficult raising a young girl by yourself.”

  Kurjak exhaled a “Pfff.”

  “It must be stressful to try to run a business while taking care of a preteen girl. I can understand that.” Russo tried to look solicitious. “You go to these card games with your friends. Have a few drinks”.

  “Hey, I don't drink alcohol and I don't gamble. We play cards, but not for money. I'm good Muslim.”

  “I understand. You don't drink, but you're playing cards, talking with your buddies. Maybe someone mentions that they have a friend back in the old country who needs a wife. Lara is a good Muslim daughter. She'd probably make a good wife. She's a beautiful girl, no?”

  Ivano Kurjak glared at him from under his bushy eyebrows.

  “So how did Lara take the news? Some girls might find it exciting, even romantic to get married that young.”