Read Online Lost and Found in Prague by Kelly Jones - Free Book Online Page A

until a replacement was designated. Senator Jaroslav Zajic, an ally of the president, who opposed the treaty and often clashed with the PM, was rumored to be on the verge of a shift in alliances. Those against ratification of the treaty claimed it would diminish the country’s financial freedom and autonomy won through the revolution years ago. Political motivation had to be considered.
    The senator’s early-morning incoming phone call had been traced, though not without difficulty, Dal having gone to the top of the chain, all the way to the office of the minister of the interior to have the information released. The call to the dead man, with the official government block, had been made by a fellow senator of the Czech Parliament, Senator Viktor Vlasák, a man getting on in years who had served so long that this in itself might account for the demanding tone of his voice. It was unlikely he’d been directly involved in the murder and was calling to determine if the feat had been accomplished. Yet his sudden hang-up puzzled Dal. The senator had explained he was in a hurry and the continuing discussion he referred to in the call had concerned a matter of Parliament that he was not yet at liberty to discuss. Senator Vlasák was known to be in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty.
    Detective Kristof Sokol was in the process of following up on information from Senator Zajic’s recently obtained phone records, now thoroughly picked over by a unit technician. With the number of blocked calls, the resistance, jumping through hoops, and wending through red tape, this had proved to be an arduous, frustrating task.
    The financial forensics expert, recently transferred from the commercial crime unit, was attempting to decipher the senator’s complicated financial records. Bo Doubek, like Kristof, was one of the new breed, well educated, tech savvy, analytical. He could crack just about any bank account and trace a money trail like a squirrel picking up peanuts. But this one, even he admitted, was rough going, with enough holes and blackouts it was like analyzing a string of ruptured DNA.
    “I’m still working on it,” he told the group. “One path leads to another, but so far, nothing that might indicate a motive for murder.” Doubek scratched his face nervously. Though now in his early thirties, he still had a bad case of acne. He looked like a kid who holed up in his mother’s apartment, spending his entire day sitting at a computer, having no emotional or social contact with anyone in the real world. Dal knew him to be shy, but he was a true wiz with a computer and an asset to the department.
    Branislov Cerný sat silently, shaking his head now and then. He was of the old school: Crimes were solved in the field, not sitting at a desk all day in front of a computer. Cerný operated the old-fashioned way—gut instinct, and perhaps at times too much force. Often it seemed he fell back on the old ways. A favorite quote: “Take a wrench to justice and get the job done.” He’d served as an officer in the SNB, the National Security Corps, the police force of Czechoslovakia, before the country was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Officers coming into the police force had been thoroughly vetted, attempting to purge any remnants of the Communist ideology.
    “I’m still checking out several recurring calls,” Kristof said. “One in particular that popped up several days in a row, then disappeared about three weeks before the senator’s murder. We’ve traced it to a Hugo Hutka, but unfortunately the man was killed in an auto accident in early March.”
    Eyes popped wide around the table; papers shuffled. Cerný took a slow, thoughtful drink of coffee, then got up to refill his cup.
    “Anything suspicious about the accident?” Dal asked.
    “The body was badly burned, but nothing indicates, at least from the report, that it was anything but an accident. Detective Cerný and I are headed over to talk with the widow