The 18th Abduction by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 61

It was just after 8:00 p.m. when the lab tech picked up the soda can with Denny Lopez’s DNA on the rim to compare with the lone pubic hair Claire had retrieved from Carly Myers’s body. It was after 9:00 when I sent my report to Jacobi, and as I closed down and packed up for the night, I ran the Lopez interview through my mind again. Was he a small-time criminal guilty of pimping out willing females in exchange for a cut? Or was he far worse, a clever, psychopathic killer?

I was leaning toward the former, that Lopez was a common parasite who was supplementing his by-the-hour taco delivery job, when my desk phone rang.

Yuki’s name flashed on my caller ID.

What was keeping her in her office at this time of night? I picked up the receiver and Yuki didn’t wait for me to say hello.

“I just heard something,” she said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“Hi, Yuki. What’s up?”

“I gotta talk to you. Your place or mine?”

Yuki’s office was one floor down, so either place was easy enough, but I had one foot out the door, and I asked her, “Can this wait? I’m on my way home.”

“How about we talk in your car?”

I phoned Joe and reached him as he was driving home.

“Have you eaten dinner?” I asked.

“I was thinking we could go out for Thai food.”

There was a restaurant we loved on Clement, located two blocks from our apartment. It was a good idea, but from the sound of Yuki’s voice, I calculated that I was going to be occupied for a while. Joe and I made a plan and a backup plan, and then I took to the fire stairs and headed down.

Yuki was waiting for me on the third-floor landing.

“What took you so long?” she said.

It had been thirty or forty seconds since I’d hung up the phone. I said, “Ha, ha. This had better be good.”

We continued down the stairs to the lobby, exited through the back door, walked along the breezeway past the ME’s office to Harriet Street and the parking lot under the overpass. I unlocked my trusty Explorer and we both got in. I reclined my seat, and Yuki did the same with hers.

“Start talking,” I said.

Yuki said, “Have you ever heard of a Bosnian war criminal named Slobodan Petrović?”

This question was a stunner.

I turned my head to look at my friend. Joe had told me about Petrović, but even though I trusted Yuki completely, I couldn’t just spill Joe’s beans.

Yuki had fixed me with her sharp brown eyes.

“Do you know who I mean?” she asked again.

“The Butcher of Djoba,” I said. “He was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the ICC, but as I recall, the case against him was kicked. It was said that after he was released, he drowned. How’d I do?”

“Impressive,” said Yuki. “Do you know about his particular crimes against humanity?”

“Fill me in,” I said.

I dug around in the console, found a couple of PowerBars, and gave one to Yuki.

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