Authors: Michael Genelin
T
racking the surviving Guzak brother began with the neighbors. She went into the street, now leading the dog by a piece of twine she had found to use as a leash, and walked over to several of the locals who were standing in a cluster across the street. Seges was two houses down the block, interviewing a homeowner, which Jana thought was all for the best, as she approached the small cluster of women. Several small children clutched at their skirts, staring at Jana in awe and fear.
Jana introduced herself, only to be met with sullen stares. She said, “I have this little dog I found out in back of Mrs. Guzakova’s house. He’s frightened, and probably has not been fed or had anything to drink since yesterday evening. Do you think one of you could get a small bowl of water for the poor little thing?”
A mother yelled over to an older girl who was still prowling around Jana’s police vehicle, ordering her to go inside her house to get a bowl of water and some leftovers from the night before. They watched the little mutt lap up the water first, then begin eating the meat. Jana thanked the girl, who sat next on the ground next to the puppy, petting him; then Jana turned back to the mother.
“I’ll have to find somebody to take the dog. Do you think you might want him?”
The woman shook her head. “I have three children. They give me enough trouble without worrying about a dog.”
“Thank you anyway.” Jana looked at the other women. “Any of you?”
The rest of the women stared back, except for a younger one holding a baby. She stared at the ground, avoiding eye contact.
Jana was glad to see her. The rule is to always focus on the shy ones. When they finally talk, they usually have a lot to say. Jana put warmth into her voice. “Will you tell me your name?”
The woman finally looking up. “Lenka Lalikova.”
“Lenka. A good name. My mother’s name,” Jana lied. Little lies were occasionally needed, and this one did no one any harm. “I loved my mother, even when I was taking care of her in her old age.”
One of the other women chimed in, “That’s what children are for, to love you as you get older.”
There was a general murmur of assent.
“I’m glad you agree. All of you know that Mrs. Guzakova was killed last night?”
All of them, even the shy one, nodded now.
“And her son also,” she added. “A terrible thing.”
“Terrible,” they all agreed.
“I think her son died protecting her,” Jana offered. “Although we’re not altogether sure.”
“I’m surprised,” the shy one got out.
“Yes?” Jana probed.
“He and his brother weren’t around so much.”
“You mean they were
never
around!” one of the other women asserted.
There was a general murmur of assent.
“And the older one has been a miserable human being from the beginning of his life,” an older one tacked on.
“The younger one followed the older one’s example. Both awful,” another woman chimed in.
Jana watched them, convinced that they were now ready to answer her serious questions.
“Has anyone seen the surviving brother?” They made noises indicating they had not. “Or the father?” There was a general round of shrugs.
“We never saw a father. She never talked about a husband,” an older woman said.
“Except once,” Lenka chipped in, to their surprise. “She said he was in Hungary. Then, one day, she told me he had died there.”
“Thank you, Lenka.” Jana smiled her appreciation. “So the mother used to talk to you, eh?”
“Only sometimes. I took cookies to her once in a while because she was alone. We would exchange a few words.”
“Did she ever say what her sons did for a living, or talk about where they were?”
“She never talked about them,” one of the others responded. “I’m surprised she spoke to Lenka. She never talked to anyone else.”
“I can keep my mouth shut,” said Lenka proudly. “She knew I would never repeat anything to anyone.”
“You became her friend,” Jana suggested.
“Not exactly her friend, but I think she liked me.”
“She didn’t like anyone,” said the older woman.
There was another murmur of assent.
“She even told me once that she had a brother.”
“Did she tell you his name, or where he lived?” Jana waited expectantly.
Lenka took a while to think about it. “She never told me his name, but she said he bought her house for her.”
“A nice brother,” said Jana. She thought about the expensive purse, which she had left back in her office. “He must have been very well off to be able to afford to buy his sister a house.”
“I guess so,” Lenka agreed.
“Do you remember his name?”
“No,” Lenka admitted, a little sad that she could not provide the information.
“Does anyone here know what Mrs. Guzakova’s maiden name was?”
The women shook their heads. Then the woman who had sent her daughter to fetch the water finally volunteered. “I think it was like the politician, Dalingo, or Durinka, something like that.”
“Good,” Jana encouraged. “Does anyone remember when Mrs. Guzakova and her sons moved in?”
The same woman answered. “I was here when she came. Ten, no . . . twelve years back.”
“Did her sons move her in?” Jana pushed her. “Or perhaps she used a furniture-moving business? Can you remember?”
“Who remembers that far back?”
“Was she a churchgoer?”
There was a chorus of “no’s” and “never’s.”
“Did any of you see them leave last night?”
There was another chorus of negatives.
“Thank you, ladies, for your assistance.” Jana wound up the conversation, then picked up the dog. “Oh,” she added, “are you sure that none of you can keep the dog?” For a second, Jana thought that Lenka would take the little thing. Jana could see her hesitate, then decide against it. “I may be back to talk to you all again. Good-bye.”
Jana began walking toward her car. Seges was slowly ambling toward the vehicle as if he had not a care in the world. Jana was willing to bet he had found out nothing. She stopped, looking back, then beckoned Lenka to come over. Jana took her arm, leaning close to her, and the two of them went to the car.
“Lenka, could I ask you something?”
“Yes,” said Lenka, timidly.
“It is important that no one enter the house. I’m going to have a forensic team come out here, but they are busy and won’t arrive until late today. It’s important that
nobody
go inside the house, and, knowing the natural curiosity people have about this type of case, someone might be tempted to peek in, perhaps go inside and take a souvenir or two. That would contaminate the scene, making it very difficult for our people to perform the necessary tests. So, could I ask you to make sure that people don’t go inside the house? You know, shoo them away. I would give you whatever authority you feel you need to do that.”
“I won’t be able to stop them if they try to force their way in,” Lenka mumbled.
“I’d never expect you to do that. But the other neighbors will listen if they know that I’ll ask you to report and that I’d deal with them.”
Lenka finally agreed.
“And one more thing, the little dog. Do you think you could keep him until the forensic men come? If you don’t want to keep him then, they’ll take him from you.”
Without waiting for an answer, Jana handed the dog’s leash to Lenka, patted her on the arm, and got into the car. Seges was already in the driver’s seat.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Bits and pieces.”
“You want to tell me?” He put the car in gear. “I might be able to help.”
Seges’s description of himself as a potential helper was contrary to anything she knew about him.
“Did
you
discover anything?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then let’s leave it that way. Drive!”
Seges shrugged, then started back to Bratislava. Jana relaxed and tried to clear her mind. Unbidden, the thought of Andras, the Hungarian police officer she had talked to in Vienna, popped into her head. She hadn’t bothered to ask him a very important question when he’d told her about the smuggling operation he’d broken in Hungary. She mentally kicked herself for being too stupid or lazy to ask for so simple and basic a piece of information.
She prodded Seges to go faster, promising to let him off the hook for going through her desk, at least for the moment, if he cut thirty minutes off their time from the village. He almost made it.
Once in her office, Jana immediately dialed Andras’s number, waiting impatiently until he answered.
When he did, she made sure to be friendly. “Andras, how have you been since our meeting in Vienna?”
“Budapest is always better for me,” he replied, then went right to business. “Why has the smartest lady in the whole Slovak police department called a simple detective from Hungary?”
“I need to test your memory, Andras.”
“That’s all? I was hoping for more.”
“Just a quick item, my friend. The case you described when we were last in Vienna. The smuggling case. You mentioned that one of the defendants was a Slovak. He was killed in his jail cell. Did you confirm his name? Were you satisfied it was not a false name, an alias?”
“I’m not a dolt, Jana. Of course I confirmed it. He had arrests going back for years. His fingerprints and photo matched.”
“Please tell me his last name.”
Jana could almost hear the cells in Andras’s brain click as he dredged up the name of the man she wanted.
“His name was Durajka.”
“Thank you, Andras. Can you send me his file?”
“What else are police friends good for? I’ll get it out to you immediately.”
“Wonderful.”
She hung up.
It would have to be confirmed when the file arrived, but Jana had no real doubts that Durajka had been Guzakova’s maiden name. Guzakova’s brother had paid for her house. And there was the pocketbook. There are no coincidences. The woman’s brother had been the Slovak man involved in the smuggling operation, the one who had been murdered in his cell. Brother killed, sister killed, one nephew killed; they had to be connected. And if Jana didn’t get lucky, Guzakova’s older son was either going to have his throat slit or a bullet in his head before she could talk to him. Whoever was after the brothers was quite efficient.
Jana got on the phone again, asking Trokan for permission to authorize overtime for her men, then assigned them to the now-extended search for the remaining Guzak brother. They would do a door-to-door inquiry, showing the older brother’s mug shots to anyone and everyone on the streets, in businesses or dwellings. They’d also display the photo taken from the younger brother’s Ukrainian driver’s license and see if that registered with anyone. Trolling of the side-street apartments near the murder scene for witnesses to the two murders would also be extended. As an afterthought, Jana told her men to hand out fliers with the photos to people on the
Ulicas
riding the trams, and have the cab drivers alerted to see if the elder Guzak had taken one of their cabs. Bulletins were already out to all the police stations in Slovakia, and Jana made sure that one went to the neighboring countries just in case the brother had fled across the border.
Perhaps it would pay off; perhaps not.
Jana called the Ukraine
militsia
in Kiev and tried to contact Mikhail Grushov, an old friend of hers from that police force. Jana felt a stab of irritation when she learned that Grushov had retired and left Ukraine. The answering officer referring her to a police captain she didn’t know. The captain was none too pleased to get a call from Slovakia, which would mean extra work for him; but when Jana promised him a bottle of
Borovicka,
the white-lightning alcohol that Slovakia specialized in, he quickly changed his tone, asked her to call him Alexi, began calling her by her first name, and invited her to a quiet dinner for two.
Jana chatted for a minute, then came to the point of the call, asking him to check on the Kremenchuk address found in the wallet of the younger Guzak brother, as well as the Kiev address on the fake Ukraine driver’s license the dead man was carrying. She got his fax number so she could send a copy of the license to him, then agreed to come visit him when she had the time, both of them knowing that was just phone flirtation protocol.
They both hung up, Jana delighted by his agreement to help. The Ukraine police were not esteemed for their sense of duty, and even less for their cooperation with other police departments. She hoped this would be an exception.
Jana pondered her next step. The only items she had left were the card for the strip club that the dead man had in his possession, and the telephone number in Vienna. She sighed: Austria would have to wait. As for the club, she had been there before on police business. Like all these clubs, it had a history of prostitution that no one ever did anything about. Prostitution was not a crime in Slovakia, as long as the man did the propositioning. She checked the club’s card. It didn’t open until late evening, so she had to wait before she paid it a visit.
She needed a backup officer. Seges would love this type of club, but he would probably spend his time ogling the girls rather than paying attention to the reason for the visit. But she reluctantly decided that it had to be him: all of her other men were out combing the city. Besides, she thought, she needed to put Seges’s invasion of her desk’s privacy behind her. It would do no good to condemn him. Even if he was not an investigator in any sense of the word, she needed a body to watch her back while she did the investigating. She couldn’t go to a place like this club without another officer to provide extra eyes and hands. As little as Seges might help, he would at least make the visit official, and safe.
Jana turned next to the dead woman.
She ran a national identity request on Guzakova. The result came back almost immediately. It had the usual place of birth, date of birth, and current address, as well as other useless bits of information. The date of birth was hard to believe when she compared it to the face and appearance of the woman she had seen last night. The woman must have had a hard life. Belonging to a family of thieves couldn’t have helped. Jana mulled over what she knew of the woman and her family. Since the rest of them were thieves, maybe the little old lady, as Jana thought of her now, was a thief as well?