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6
EVA
The already greyclouds above us are converging into an even darker and bigger mass over our heads as we stand on the muddy bank of the Ljubljanica River where Ana Kobe’s body was found. Low rumbling thunder can be heard in the distance and rain will start again soon. There are a few gawkers observing us from the walkway, the sidewalk of the main road that passes here, and from across the river, mostly older people with dogs or on bikes, but no one is coming close or looking like they want to speak to us.
We’re standing on a paved walkway that runs in two lanes—one for walking and a narrower one for cyclists—from here all the way to the Fužine Castle. A patch of grass and mud separates the river bank from the walkway, and just like Milo said, some of the trees growing here are practically in the water. Tall apartment buildings line both sides of the river here.
An area of the riverbank about five by five meters was cordoned off while the forensics worked, but now only a few forgotten pieces of blue and white tape tied to tree trunks here and there are blowing in the breeze. The muddy riverbank is rutted and crisscrossed by the many footprints of the people who gathered the evidence and looked at the body.
Only a small area remains pristine and untouched—the spot where the body was found. A circle of harder, darker mud shows where she bled out. Soon the rain that’s coming will wash even that away.
“We didn’t find much,” Ida says behind us, startling me back to the present.
I turn to greet her. She’s a top-notch forensic criminalist and has been an invaluable help to the task force on all the cases we’ve investigated so far, though she is not officially part of the team yet.
She’s meticulous and thorough and she lets the evidence lead her to conclusions and not the other way around, as seems to be the case for Dr. Marolt, among others.
“Did you find her wallet or phone?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes, over here.”
She waves us to follow her to a beat-up, rusty black trashcan standing next to one of the green wooden benches that line the paved part of the riverside walkway.
“Her phone was in here,” she says. “It was switched off even though the battery was nearly full. She didn’t have her wallet with her. It was found by the detectives in her apartment.”
“Then how was she ID’d so quickly?” Mark asks.
“There was a letter in her coat pocket addressed to her,” Ida says. “From an oncologist with instructions on how to prepare for an exam.”
“She had cancer?” Eva asks. “But she was only twenty-six.”
Ida shrugs. “I don’t know the full details. You’ll have to talk to one of the detectives who interviewed her family this morning. Sojer is heading the investigation.”
The look on Mark’s face is tight in that way it gets when he’s annoyed at something and trying to hide it. Sojer is the detective who went after Mark hard last fall, and as much as Mark insists the man was just doing his job, I’m sure the blood between them never cooled completely.
He looks up and down the riverside. To our right is the street that leads to the all night gas station and to our left the walkway stretches into the distance with yet more apartment buildings lining it.
Mark points in that direction. “So, Milo was coming from there, and his building is about a five minutes’ walk from here. He didn’t meet anyone on the way, so the killer either left via the main road or past this apartment building here.”
He points to the rectangular, eight-floor building that is nearly identical to all the others in this area. The only thing that differentiates it from the others is its newly renovated yellow facade.
“Sojer seemed pretty convinced he has his man,” Ida says musingly.
“Did they interview any of the residents in this building?” Mark asks. “The trees grow thick over this spot, but without leaves and with all those windows facing the river, someone might’ve seen something.”
Ida shrugs. “You’d have to talk to him about that. Or better yet, do the interviews yourselves.”
My mind is still stuck on the phone they found.
“Could her phone have been switched off from being thrown in the trashcan, or did someone do it deliberately?” I ask.
“Hard to tell,” Ida answers. “It’s possible. You know how it is with these touch screens, you have to work to get anything done… we’re running it for prints and trace evidence. And the techs might be able to tell us more about the activity on it.”
“There was no blood on it, though?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “None that I could see.”
Mark had retreated back to towards the crime scene and is looking around, up and down the riverbank and at the apartment building, probably trying to ascertain where the best view of the crime scene would be.
