The Magician's Accomplice

by Michael Genelin

  “Sit down.” He pointed to a wall bench.

  She looked at his face. He was going to tell her something terrible.

  “I’ll stand.”

  “I’m ordering you to sit.”

  She continued looking at his face.

  “It’s Peter Saris?”

  “Yes.”

  She could feel the tremors going though her body, one wave following another, traveling down to her legs, her knees starting to go, her body beginning to sway. She managed to lock her knees and braced herself with a straight arm against the wall. She willed herself to stay erect.

  “He’s dead?”

  Trokan nodded, concerned, watching her. “You should sit down.”

  “What happened?”

  “A phone bomb. There was a call on his office phone, his secretary picked it up, transferred it to Peter, and when he answered, the device was triggered. He died immediately. No pain,” he tried to assure her.

  “Where is he?”

  “They’re taking him out now.”

  She turned toward the stairs. Trokan put his hand on her shoulder, trying to slow her down. She shrugged him off.

  “At the moment it would be better to stay away from me, Colonel.”

  “You want to look at him, I know. He’s much damaged. If you insist on seeing him, then wait until he’s been … made to look a little better.”

  They were bringing the body down the steps on a wheeled stretcher. Jana started toward the stairs, Trokan walking with her.

  “Jana, he wouldn’t like you to see him this way. Allow us to take him away. Let it go for now. Then we can begin to deal with this thing as police should.” He tried to grab her arm, to stop her. She shook him off again, reaching the gurney just as they wheeled it onto the marble floor.

  “Stop!” she ordered the attendants. “Unzip the bag. I want to see him.”

  They looked at her in confusion. Trokan quickly stepped forward. “Open it so she can see the face.”

  One of the attendants unzippered the body bag so the head was visible. Part of the skull was gone; the face that remained was almost completely shredded.

  It was Peter; it also wasn’t Peter. Nothing was left of the Peter she loved. He had died and left her. She fought back the urge to scream, to shout her grief and anger and sorrow at everyone here. Instead, she did what so many police officers have to do: she screamed inside herself. Then silently screamed again. She took deep breaths to calm herself, and then held the air in her lungs for a long moment.

  The bag was empty. The opening of the zipper merely revealed that the rest of the sack was vacant. Her lover was somewhere else. He wasn’t on the gurney. Not her Peter. Not her laughing, loving Peter.

  She zipped the bag closed.

  They rolled the gurney out of the building.

  Using the banister for support, Jana slowly lowered herself to a sitting position on a step. Trokan eased himself down next to her.

  They sat there for two hours before Trokan finally persuaded her to go home.

  Chapter 3

  Jana couldn’t bear to attend the funeral. The air would be filled with empty phrases and condolences which would never ease her grief. She could not face all the people who would be there, the attorney general impotently promising to exact vengeance; the prime minister’s turning it to his own advantage by urging that the national assembly pass the pending program of criminal law reforms; and everyone eyeing her, wondering about her relationship with Peter. The only thing in common would be their thanks that they hadn’t been the one who’d answered the exploding phone.

  Instead, she went to the cemetery two days later, bringing a small bouquet of flowers which she laid on the ground near the grave. She couldn’t get very close because of the heaps of bouquets placed there by Peter’s friends, family, and colleagues, as well as the politicians who hoped to impress constituents with the large condolence cards with their names prominently displayed affixed to the flowers. Jana could only stand there, mute, hoping Peter would miraculously appear next to her, laughing, to tell Jana it was an elaborate hoax to gain some advantage in a case he was investigating. Only it was no hoax; Peter did not appear and Jana went back to her house, unable to vent her grief except in the privacy of her home.

  She cried on and off for days; everything she did around the house was done mechanically. She managed to get up in the morning, brush her teeth, make breakfast, and perform all daily tasks by rote. There was no other way she could have survived. Trokan called her every day, and she managed to say a few words, but intense feelings of loss came at her in waves, pulses varied by anger and disbelief. Slowly, eventually, she had a gradual perception that she needed her normal life back. At the beginning of the following week, she got up very early one morning and decided she had to go to work. Jana went directly to her office that Monday, arriving before anyone else on that shift. She sat at her desk, unable to remember anything she’d been working on. She panicked for a moment, wondering if she’d had a stroke and was now unable to think.

  Jana struggled to focus, to take herself back to the period immediately before Peter’s death. But Peter’s image kept conjuring itself up and she began once again to drown in a sea of disparate emotions.

  She ultimately pulled herself together by forcing herself to look intently at the pieces of furniture in her office, describing each item aloud in the most minute detail she could, noticing the grain in the chairs in front of her desk, the nicks and scratches on her cabinets, the very thin layer of dust on the top of a wall table, another wall table holding the remnants of a few flowers that had, in the week she had been away, withered into desiccation.

  It finally came to her: she had gone to the Carleton Savoy on her last day at work. As soon as she remembered going to the Carleton she recalled the investigation she had participated in and began to make notes of what she remembered. When she got to the end of the crime-scene investigation, she remembered driving to see Peter. Jana felt her emotions welling up. She forced herself to think again about the murder of the student.

  The victim was studying geological engineering; something she had no knowledge of. Evidently he’d been a bright young man, but one with so little money that he was hungry enough to try to “steal” breakfast. Jana amended the thought slightly She recalled the briefcase with the wax paper lining. Denis Macek was planning to steal more food than he could eat for breakfast. He was going to stuff food inside the briefcase after he had filled himself up that morning, and he was trying to ensure that the food he put in the briefcase to eat over the next few days would not cling to the inside of the case and, subsequently, get grease on his school textbooks and papers.

  Jana heard people moving around the outer offices. The staff was starting to arrive for work. What was she supposed to say to her officers? That she had taken a short vacation and now wanted them to brief her on the current status of their cases? “Yes” to the briefing; no, she would be open and straightforward about her sorrow. She had been mourning and had needed the time off. They knew about Peter. They would understand.

  She forced herself to focus again on the killing at the hotel. A motive was out there, just hanging out of reach, begging Jana to find it. Could there be a connection between the student’s murder and Peter’s death? Bratislava was not a town where professional killings occurred daily. These had both been carefully orchestrated assassinations. Jana had to look at the possibility. She went on with her analysis. Several people must have been involved. Yes, she agreed with herself: multiple killers, a minimum of two: the professional shooter and at least one other person who had paid for and ordered the shooting. As for Peter’s murder, if his killer had not shot the student, then at least three people were involved: two “hit men” and at least one “customer” who had paid for the gunman. If the killings were not related, then … a second “customer.”

  Jana thought over the false use of the hotel guest’s name in the student murder. Had the killer actually made a mistake when he
shot the young man? Was he supposed to kill the man whose identity the student had appropriated? And, if so, how could he have known that “Fico” was supposed to be in that particular place at that particular time?

  Jana heard more people arriving in the outer offices, cheerful, drinking tea or coffee, exchanging pleasantries. She toyed with the idea of joining them, and then realized that she would be a dead weight on their spirits. Instead, she dialed Elias to get an update on the investigation. A recorded message referred her to another number where Elias could be reached. She called, Elias answered. “Anti-Corruption Division, Investigator Elias. Can I help you?”

  “Matinova here. What are you doing up in the Anti-Corruption Division?”

  “I’ve been transferred, Commander. Just a temporary seconding.”

  “Why the transfer?”

  There was a momentary silence. She could hear his breathing get louder, as if he were under stress.

  “They wanted an experienced homicide investigator.”

  “What case, Elias?” As soon as Jana asked the question, she knew the answer. Because of his experience, they had assigned Elias to investigate Peter’s killing. That was bad. Anti-Corruption would lock up all information. Any evidence they found, and progress or lack of progress about the investigation, would be buried in the sealed files of the very secretive personnel of that division. That way, they would also keep control of, and silence about, the cases Peter had been looking into. Yet one case or another under their jurisdiction was almost assuredly the basis for Peter’s murder.

  “I asked you a question, Elias.”

  “I’m not allowed to discuss any of the cases I’ve been assigned to here, Commander.”

  “Understand this, I didn’t just ask you a question: it was an order. Are you working on the telephone murder of the prosecutor?”

  “Commander, I’m under other orders that supersede yours. To repeat, I can’t answer any of your questions. Good-bye, Commander.” He hung up.

  Jana stared at the receiver as if it had betrayed her and then slowly placed it on its cradle. She had been walled off from the investigation of Peter’s death. She had also not received any progress reports on the killing of the student. Elias’s answer was the key: someone in the higher echelons of command had approved Elias’s transfer and set up the roadblock to her participation in either investigation.

  It took a few seconds for Jana to realize that her phone was ringing. She grudgingly answered it. “Matinova here.”

  “That’s not the approved way to answer the phone, Commander.”

  “Colonel?”

  “Yes, I heard you had signed in.”

  Jana hadn’t signed the roster when she came in.

  “I assume Elias told you.”

  Trokan was not the slightest degree nonplussed about being caught in a fabrication. “He seemed a little worried on the phone. He’s a good man.” There was a moment of silence. “You feel okay?”

  “Never better.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Yes, it’s a lie.”

  “Do you feel well enough to come into my office? I need to talk to you.”

  He didn’t wait for her answer.

  She walked toward Trokan’s office, passing a number of her men. Each nodded in a simple greeting. Everyone was pretending that she had never been away and this was just another day at police headquarters. It was better this way. She silently thanked them all, glad they were making it easy for her. Trokan’s door was open; Jana walked in without knocking.

  The colonel looked up from a set of reports he was studying, nodded her to a chair, then walked to his office door and closed it. He came over, hunkered down near her, and took her hand, patting it in consolation.

  “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Elias was assigned to Anti-Corruption. You had to be the one who assigned him. Why remove him from my unit, Colonel?”

  “As I said, he’s a good man. It seemed like a good idea.”

  “He’s taken the hotel case with him?”

  “He’s the one who carried out the initial phase of the investigation, so it seemed appropriate.”

  “And the killing of … the prosecutor?”

  “We’ve decided to conduct a discreet investigation. There are lots of possibilities as to where it will go, and prudence is advisable. We don’t want any of the cases that Peter was working on to be compromised. You, of all people, should realize that. Your involvement would also present the appearance of a conflict of interest. We don’t want to taint any case we develop.” He eased himself erect, then walked back to his desk, sighing as he sat down. “I find I like softer chairs as I age.” He leaned back, gazing at Jana, waiting for her to speak.

  “That means I’m to sit on my hands.” She held her hands up for him to see. “These hands don’t like people to sit on them, even if it’s me. They complain. They’re only happy when they have work to do.”

  “I would never have my very best investigator sit on her hands. That’d be a waste of her considerable resources and the state’s money, and I’m very careful with the state’s money.”

  “You’re asking Elias to do a lot.”

  “At one time or other, we each have to shoulder the burden. Which also means you. We have a special assignment for you.”

  Jana was surprised by this unexpected announcement. Everything was taking a turn for the worse.

  “I want to continue with the work I’ve been doing.”

  Trokan went on as if he hadn’t heard her, finding a black loose-leaf book marked confidential on its cover. “This is the protocol for Europol. Slovakia is required to send another representative to The Hague to work on the cases which are generated through the program. Europol has cross-country jurisdiction, which means, as an investigative body, it has enormous power. We’ve selected you as the new representative of our country.”

  He placed the book on the desk in front of her and waited for her to take it. Jana did not move.

  “You want to stay here, I know,” Trokan growled. Then he softened his voice. “Your man is dead, and there is nothing that can be done about that.”

  “I can do at least one thing about it.”

  “No, you can’t find the killer. Because you’re not working the case. You are officially relieved of your duties in this division. You have one responsibility left: to go to The Hague. No one, I repeat, no one does what they feel they want to do in our police force. If, for a second, you think I’m going to allow you to go off on your own because of our close relationship over the years, you’re mistaken.”

  “I’ll find out why he was killed; I’ll find out who killed him. It’s all very simple.”

  “Yes, it’s simple: you won’t remain on the police force if you begin an illegal investigation of your own. Rogue police officers don’t stay on the force.” He exhaled noisily, then tried another tack. “We have known each other for half-of-forever. I’ve done you favors; you’ve done me favors. Do me one last favor: don’t make me have to begin a disciplinary proceeding which you can’t win. Go to Europol. Then, if we don’t succeed in our investigation here, I will bring you back in a bit and you can take it over. I promise you, my word of honor as your friend and colonel, I’ll do that.

  “Realize, this new assignment has been cleared all the way through to the minister. He has spoken, and he won’t like it if you disobey him. And, since I’m charged with having my subordinates do what he wants, he won’t like me if you disobey the order. And I would become very cranky and be forced to do things to you which I will hate myself for afterward. So, go, Jana. Please go!

  Jana wanted to get up and pound on his desk, to shriek at Trokan until he could no longer stand it and had to agree with her, then run to the minister’s office and put a gun to his head to force him into letting her stay to work on the case. In the end, after flirting with these fantasies, Jana looked at the reality of the situation. If they kept the case files away from her, refusing to let her work as a police
officer with access to all the resources that the department had, she would be stymied. She had no option.

  Jana nodded her assent. “Okay.”

  “Good. Be well, Jana.”

  Jana went home. She had been given three days to prepare to leave the country.

  But after an hour of sitting, looking at the walls of her kitchen, Jana decided to take action. She had three days. She had to take advantage of them. Jana also knew the first place she would start: Peter’s apartment.

  Chapter 4

  It did not take her long to get to the apartment. However, she sat in her car outside for a while to steel herself to return to Peter’s space. Being inside would conjure up all the memories she had of the two of them together: holding hands with him, the brush of a kiss on her neck, an exchange of looks that told them both how connected they were to each other, making love in his bed. She would remember everything that the relationship meant, and everything that was now irretrievably lost. Jana tried to repress her feelings, to compel herself to ignore memories, to exist only in the present. She would always have Peter in her mind. He would go with her wherever she went. But, at the moment, Jana had little time to waste. At the moment, recalling memories was not the way to spend her time, for her or for him.

  She slid out of her car and walked into the building and climbed the stairs to the third floor where Peter had lived, all the while wondering what she would look for. The answer was simple: Peter’s murder had to be connected to his investigations. She had no access to his office files, but he brought work home, and maybe she would find case files, notes, photographs, potential exhibits, anything and everything that a trial lawyer would use.

  When she reached the door, Jana pushed the remaining stray thoughts of her lover away and, as a precaution, knocked on the door. Almost immediately, it opened. A bird-beaked, heavy-set old woman stood in the doorway.

  Jana recognized her as the landlady, a harridan who would howl if you were even a half-day late with the rent or committed some imagined infraction of the house rules. The landlady looked at Jana, not recognizing her. Then she frowned, a glint of recognition arriving in her eyes.