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
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
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