Anna showed the scar on her face to the utterly silent room.
“The same day I’m telling about, the women of the town were rounded up, corralled into the school auditorium. They were stripped naked, and those who were pregnant were taken out and shot. We were told that we were to bear the children of our enemies and only when we were pregnant would we get rest.
“We were fed. We had to clean the school, and we slept on the floors of the classrooms. We were raped repeatedly and beaten, and we did not complain or even talk to each other for fear of our lives.”
Anna paused. I could see that she was keeping a tight hold on her composure. I was glad when she was able to go on.
She said, “Women with children were told that they could have more. ‘You will give us little Chetniks,’ the soldiers said. They put blades to the children’s throats, used them as hostages to make their mothers comply. Sometimes we were gang-raped by two, four, or as many as seven revolting and cruel soldiers. He—Petrović—frequented the rape hotel.
“Sometimes a woman fought back. It was a suicide wish that was often granted by pistol or the leg of a chair. My aunts and sisters and cousins and friends were all raped and killed in the schoolrooms.
“I did become pregnant. I was brought to a doctor who said so. But before I could retire to a closet and sleep, a fight broke out and I was beaten with everyone else. I lost the baby I did not know and didn’t yet love.
“Later I learned that I could not ever again bear a child.
“When the war ended, I came to the USA and found, to my horror, that he, Petrović, was living a half mile away from my door. I know that his crimes outside of Bosnia are not the purview of this court, but I say this with your permission. Petrović was not fighting his father’s war or any war when he raped and beat me, and when he did the same to other women and killed them with his hands in the sunny state of California. There was no war in California. It was about him, and his love of power. His love of power over life and death.
“Please. Keep him here. Do not release him. Please.”
CHAPTER 119
There was an attenuated silence as Anna returned to her seat, and then the crying started in the observation room and the witness section. Even some of the judges put handkerchiefs to their eyes.
I sobbed into my husband’s jacket and I couldn’t stop. But I was forced to look up when I heard the sound of the gavel cracking through my headphones. Judge Bouchard called the court to order. He thanked the witnesses, and he adjourned the proceedings for thirty minutes.
The main hall outside the courtroom was flooded with people who couldn’t stay in their seats any longer. Friends and even strangers embraced. Press spoke into phones and recorders. Lines to the washrooms were long. No one broke the tension with conversation or laughter.
Twenty-nine minutes later the gallery was full and court was in session again.
The rooms were utterly quiet, filled with expectation. Judge Bouchard’s use of the gavel was pro forma.
The judge asked, “Mr. Petrović. Would you like to make a closing statement?”
Petrović got up, crossed the room with a heavy stride, and mounted the three steps to the dock. The overconfidence was gone, but his anger was fully present.
Without thanks to the court or any preamble, he said, “I am not a war criminal. You,” he said, pointing a finger at the rows of witnesses, “are liars. All of you are liars. I am a patriot. I am a Serbian hero, and history will remember me as such. Streets and parks and sons will be named for me. So all of you can go to hell.”
With that, he put his hand up to his mouth. I couldn’t see what he was holding, but when he tipped his head back, I gathered that he had swallowed something.
“Joe. What was that?”
“I read that he has hypertension.”
Petrović dropped something, a vial, and made an obscene gesture with his hand, waving it in a slow circle, taking in the whole room. And then he collapsed to the floor.
The bailiff moved fast. Guards left their positions at the doors. They all rushed to the dock, where Petrović slumped partially on the steps, his head on the floor.
Was this a trick?
Petrović was flung about by spasms. He writhed, grabbed at his throat, and made sounds that could only be caused by agonizing pain. I could tell from the cherry-red color of his skin, the way his open eyes bulged, that Petrović had evaded a life sentence in prison by taking cyanide—easily obtained, easily smuggled in, guaranteeing a quick but excruciating death.
Where had his self-confidence gone?
To hell. He’d known when Anna made her statement that there was no chance he’d be leaving court a free man.
Petrović’s attorneys were detained by the guards. The judge cleared the courtroom, but those of us in the observation room saw the paramedics come in. It took four of them to get Petrović onto a stretcher and out the door.
They were too late.
Slobodan Petrović was finally dead. We’d never forget him.
And, for sure, Joe and I would never forget Anna Sotovina.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thanks to these experts who shared their time and knowledge with us during the writing of this book:
Captain Richard Conklin, BSI Commander, Stamford, Connecticut, Police Department; Phil Hoffman, attorney-at-law, partner, Pryor Cashman LLC, NYC; Michael A. Cizmar, former U.S. Marine and FBI agent, SME, CCE; Steven Cerutti, Homeland Security Investigator, New York, ret.; J. M. Sereno, investigator for the U.S. Attorney’s office, Connecticut; Lt. Patricia Correa, SFPD, ret.; and Lt. Lisa Frazer, SFPD, Airport Division.
We also wish to thank our fabulous researcher, Ingrid Taylar, West Coast, USA; John Duffy, passionate war historian; and Mary Jordan, who keeps the whole shebang in order and on time with some LOLs along the way.
Read on for a sneak preview of the next thrilling instalment in the Women’s Murder Club series
19TH CHRISTMAS
Coming October 2019
CHAPTER 1
Julian Lambert was an ex-con in his mid-thirties, sweet faced, with thinning, light-colored hair, wearing a red down jacket.
As he sat on a bench in Union Square waiting for his phone call, he took in the view of the Christmas tree at the center of the square. The tree was really something: an eighty-three-foot-tall cone of green lights with a star on top, ringed by pots of pointy red flowers, surrounded by a red-painted picket fence.
That tree was secure. It wasn’t going anywhere.
It was lunchtime, and all around him consumers hurried out of stores weighed down with shopping bags, evidence of money pissed away in an orgy of spending. Julian wondered idly how these dummies were going to pay for their commercially fabricated gifting spree. Almost catching him by surprise, Julian’s phone vibrated.
He fished it out of his pocket, connected, and said his name, and Mr. Loman, the boss, said, “Hello.”
Julian knew that he was meant only to listen, and that was fine with him. He felt both excited and soothed as Loman explained just enough of the plan to allow Julian to salivate at the possibilities.
A heist.
A huge one.
The plan had many moving parts, Loman said, but if it went off as designed, by this time next year Julian would be living in the Caribbean, or Medellín, or Saint-Tropez. He was picturing a life of blue skies and sunshine, with a side of leggy young things in string bikinis, when Loman asked if he had any questions.