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22
MARK
I droppedBrina off at the task force office to continue going over the CCTV footage with Rok and was halfway to the studio to pick up Eva when Brina called me.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she says breathlessly. “A woman has come in looking for Eva. She says she was attacked by the river about fifteen years ago but got away.”
What I actually can’t believe is that we didn’t think to look into this possibility from the get-go. Given the nature of these killings and room for failure in the killer’s MO, it should have occurred to me that someone might’ve escaped the killer at one point. I guess a survivor coming forward on their own is one good thing to come out of all the media frenzy surrounding the case and Eva.
“I’ll be right there,” I say and get ready to make a U-turn at a crossroads that’s not meant for that.
I call Dino right after and he uses his good-natured mocking tone to assure me Eva and he will be able to manage the ride back to the office just fine without me.
“But the interview is not going very well,” he adds. “Hana’s here too and they’re going at it like two cats fighting for territory.”
Great, if she’d told me Hana was to be there as well, I’d have both understood why Eva was so set on doing this interview tonight and told her not to do it. I just hope the damage won’t be too severe. Eva isn’t as resilient to criticism as she likes to believe she is.
But she’ll tell me all about it when she gets back and right now, I really need to focus on this survivor. So less than five minutes later, I’m taking the marble stairs to the office two at a time.
All the overhead lights are on in the main room of the office, and a short, slight woman is sitting at the head of the table flanked by Brina and Rok. Her wavy shoulder-length wavy hair is hanging limply down the sides of her face, which is what I actually notice first. She looks angelic, like a cherub from some old painting, and if she took a little more care with her appearance, she’d be a stunner. She kind of still is, despite the large coffee stain on the front of her oversized grey sweatshirt and the faded, holey black sweatpants she’s wearing, which have a huge hole over the right knee. Her sneakers are so caked with dark brown mud I can’t even tell what color they’re supposed to be.
Brina introduces me to her, then turns to me. “This is Anica Lazar. She says she can identify the killer. Please tell him what you told us.”
Brina is using a very soft, caring voice with her and Rok is solicitously offering her a cup of steaming tea, chamomile, by the smell of it. She’s ignoring him, her big, brilliantly blue—turquoise almost—eyes fixed solely on me.
I take off my coat and sling it over the chair in front of me before sitting down in it.
“Tell me your story, Anica,” I say in a kindly voice. She smiles shyly and nods.
“I was homeless at the time… this was fifteen years ago last November and now I’m not homeless anymore… I live on my grandmother’s farm just outside of Ljubljana… but I was homeless then…” she pauses to take a deep breath and nods again. I don’t try to hurry her in any way.
“I was sleeping down by the river, in the public toilets near the dam, to be exact,” she says and pauses again to take another breath. “And one night, I was returning home… well, to the toilet… late and these two men offered me some wine and a sandwich. They seemed nice enough and I was starving… I was always starving back then… so I took it. And then, all of a sudden one of them hugs me from behind and the other is holding a knife to my chest…”
“There were two of them?” I ask into the pause she makes and she nods in a very exaggerated fashion.
“And did they demand anything from you?” I ask.
I’m beginning to think this has nothing to do with our case. She was probably attacked by two guys who wanted to have some fun with a homeless girl, sick as that is.
“Demand? No,” she says and shakes her head. “But one of them… the one with the knife said the strangest thing. He said, “All your troubles are over now. You will sleep and never wake up again in this forsaken life, but in one of everlasting bliss. Do not fear. The river will take your blood and calm all your worries… or something like that. I forget the exact words.”
But what she does remember very closely echoes the letter the journalist showed us yesterday. And fits Eva’s working theory of how the killer subdues his victims. Though if there are two of them, that no longer seems like such a difficult task.
“How did you get away?” I ask.
She smiles, of all things, and nods again. “That… yes… I was very skinny then, much skinnier than I am now, and I was wearing this huge coat… the one holding me was mostly just holding the coat and not me, so I wiggled out of it and kicked the knife away. Then I just ran, right into the middle of the street where I was very nearly hit by a bus. The bus driver, he stopped, and I got on the bus and told him to just drive. I took that bus right to the end of the line and then just kept walking. I went to my grandmother’s farm and begged her to let me live with her, and she did. I didn’t return to Ljubljana for years after that. I was too scared to.”
She is definitely not all there mentally, that much is evident from the fractured way she speaks and the agelessness of her face. I can’t figure out how old she is. Could be twenty, could be forty.
“Your grandmother sounds like a very kind woman, I’m sure she took good care of you,” I say kindly and she smiles and nods again. “Where is her farm?”
Her eyes widen just a little, but then she nods again. “It’s in the village of Utik, in the direction of Kranj. Not far at all.”
“And you say you can identify the men?” I ask, searching my coat pocket for my phone. “Do you mind if I show you a few pictures so you can try?”
“Better not,” Brina says warningly. “Sojer will want to do this by the book, with a proper lineup and everything.”
The witness looks at her, then back at me, smiling widely. “Oh, but I can tell you who they are. I saw them on TV once. They’re two psychiatrists, one of them is called Kline and the other… let me think… Lah, or, no… wait… Lap. Yes, that’s it. Lap. They seemed like such nice men on TV that my grandmother wouldn’t believe me when I told her they attacked me once, but I was sure… so, so, sure.”
