Free Facade by Susan Cory Page B

Muslim.”
    “I understand. You don't drink, but you're playing cards, talking with your buddies. Maybe someone mentions that they have a friend back in the old country who needs a wife. Lara is a good Muslim daughter. She'd probably make a good wife. She's a beautiful girl, no?”
    Ivano Kurjak glared at him from under his bushy eyebrows.
    “So how did Lara take the news? Some girls might find it exciting, even romantic to get married that young.”
    Ivano's glare turned ominous. At least he hadn't lawyered up yet.
    “How old was your wife when you married?”
    Malone returned with three sweating soda cans that he passed around.
    “We can find that out in the records,” Russo continued. “Does Lara have a passport?”
    Kurjak offered nothing.
    “We can check on that too.”
    After another fruitless twenty minutes, Malone indicated the door and said “ Mr. Kurjak, you're free to go. Thank you so much for your co-operation. I hope we can count on you to help us if anything new develops.”
    As Lara's father was escorted onto the elevator, Officer Foster slipped in behind him, absently punching something into his phone.
    Back in Malone's tidy office, Russo sat in the lone visitor's chair. “I pity poor Lara for having him for a father. Foster's the tail?”
    “Yeah, let's see where Kurjak goes now that we've riled him up.”
    “So, no Amber Alert, right?” Russo asked.
    “It doesn't meet the criteria. We can't even prove that an abduction's taken place. We sure as hell don't have a description of the captor or vehicle. She might be a runaway. We just haven't found her trail yet. It's times like these I almost wish the Feebs would muscle their way into the case.”
    The two detectives fell into a generally aggravated silence, as Malone randomly pushed some papers around his desktop. The phone buzzed. Malone listened for a few seconds, then gave Russo a get-up flick of his hand. “You've got the callback from London on your line—the guy from DeWitt's UN group.”
    A short while later Russo slid back into the extra chair across Malone's obsessively neat desk as the lieutenant gave him his full attention.
    Russo's eyes were wide and he shook his head slowly. “I've just heard a complete re-enactment of how the Serbs held the Dutch peacekeepers hostage, demanding and getting all of the U.N. battalion's weapons.”
    “What?” Malone said. “The Serbs took the U.N. troops' guns? How did they get away with that?”
    “Sounds like the Serbs did whatever they wanted.” Russo shifted in his seat. “It gets worse. While the Dutch guys were unarmed, the Serbs marched into the protected safe area of Srebrenica and pretty much slaughtered all the male Muslims. You don't even want to know what they did to the females.”
    “Oh, God. This was on the news. Ethnic cleansing—right?”
    “Yeah, the Serbs were on a mission. Meanwhile, the Dutch soldiers had no weapons and couldn't do anything, and when they returned to Holland and they got treated like shit for letting it happen.”
    “And DeWitt was mixed up in this?”
    “He was in the middle of it. Somehow, it doesn't sound like a setting for romance.”
    “Did this Brit from his battalion say anything about DeWitt's activities over there? Did he know of any Bosnian girlfriends or anything?”
    “Said he'd never seen DeWitt with any woman—thought he was gay. He did say that the guy spent a lot of time off in the woods. He almost missed roll call once and that got him a detention, on-base for a day, a big deal, that. He remembered that because he didn't like the guy. He thought DeWitt gave off 'superior airs.' That's how he put it.”
    “Were there any other soldiers DeWitt was close with?”
    “Apparently he saved a guy's life. A fellow Dutch soldier named 'Crazy-dog' Jansen. No one ever used his real name. A Serb sniper started shooting from a church tower in a village they were patrolling. Crazy-dog got shot in the leg. He was out in the open, an easy target,