Lost and Found in Prague (5 page)

BOOK: Lost and Found in Prague
11.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

7

Ornate Bohemian palaces and sturdy Renaissance homes lined the avenues of the Malá Strana. Tall, slender structures in a variety of pastel confectionery colors, topped with red tiles, stood shoulder to shoulder along the narrow streets. A group of tourists gathered before a wheeled cart, eating mustard-slathered
klobásy
cradled in buns not quite long enough to fully embrace the sausages. Dana was tempted by the spicy, warm aroma, but she would wait for lunch at the convent. She was meeting Caroline at noon.

Emerging from a narrow street into an area clogged with foot traffic, she gazed up toward a wide stone path already bulging with visitors making their way up to the castle. She turned in the opposite direction and strolled down toward the river and onto the Charles Bridge, the Karluv most. A walking-only bridge, it overflowed with artists, vendors, musicians, and tourists. Baroque statues of saints perched on the balustrades of each side. She stopped to look at the miniature paintings displayed by a young artist with a mop of blond hair, an untrimmed beard, a colorful tie-dyed shirt. Little fairy-tale scenes of the city. She lingered for a moment, joining the crowd gathered to listen to a quartet of musicians. A fellow wearing a baseball cap sat on a stool playing a guitar, a man plunked a bass, one played a flute, another slid a trombone. The bass player smiled at Dana flirtatiously. She smiled back. After listening several more minutes, she placed a euro, left over from Italy, in the instrument case propped open for the listeners’ offerings. The bass player nodded a thank-you. Dana moved on to the far side of the bridge and watched a skeleton marionette, dressed as a sad-faced clown, play a guitar orchestrated by an enthusiastic puppet master. A group of tourists knotted in a circle around the performance.

How different the city had been those many years ago when she’d visited. No holiday crowds gathered in a carnival-like atmosphere. Those congregating then had been protesters, dissenters, mostly young people demanding democratic reform. When she and Caroline arrived, they found themselves in a city in which the students had already set the stage. On November 17, 1989, the two girls joined a peaceful, officially sanctioned march to commemorate International Student Day, though everyone knew it was more than that; the true intent was to protest the oppressive Communist regime. The marchers wound down the hill from the cemetery at Vyšehrad, where they had visited the gravesite of a student who’d been killed fifty years before during a similar march protesting the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia.

Fifteen thousand strong, Caroline and Dana numbered among them, they moved along the bank of the River Vltava and up Národní Street, where they were met by antiterrorist squads in red berets and police in white helmets with shields and nightsticks. The students chanted and sang songs of freedom—
Svobodu!
Some carried flowers, and others placed candles along the streets and sidewalks. Now, Dana could hardly believe that she had been there.

After that November seventeenth demonstration, in which it was reported that several were beaten and one killed—though this death turned out to be a false account—the students were joined by actors, musicians, and eventually workers. By November twenty-third, the day before Dana left for home, four days before a national strike, the throngs had swelled to over a million. The red berets and helmeted police had disappeared, though plainclothes officers, easily identified in their polyester raincoats, observed without interfering, overwhelmed or simply understanding the inevitable. It had already happened in Poland, Hungary, and East Germany.

The Velvet Revolution
, Dana thought now as she continued toward Václavské námesti, where the original march had been destined to end. Today the streets were lined with holiday shoppers, along with businessmen and -women who worked in this busy, vibrant commercial section of Prague. She lingered several moments near the statue of St. Wenceslas, recalling how the area had once been carpeted with flowers, candles, and handmade signs, overlaid with peaceful, hopeful young voices.

Just before noon, she set off to have lunch with Caroline.

Again she crossed the bridge and pulled out the map she’d picked up at the hotel. Finding the street where the convent was located, she dug her address book out of her bag, checking numbers as she walked.

She approached a building, enclosed within an iron fence, set in a quaint little square with chestnut trees and stone benches, which was identified with brass numerals, though nothing announced it as a convent. Healthy green vines climbed the gray stone, sprouting small violet-colored buds reaching toward the midday sun. Dana unlatched the gate and walked up to the door, finding a handwritten notice tacked beneath a small peephole. A series of Czech words, which she could not decipher, appeared along with numbers that Dana guessed from the configuration must be dates.

She knocked. Nothing. She checked her watch. Her lunch date with Caroline was scheduled for noon and she was a few minutes early. She knocked again. Still, nothing.

For the first time since she’d left home, Dana felt ill prepared without her lifeline—her cell phone. She had a number for the convent, but no way to call. After another quick knock, a wait, she wondered if she should go back to the hotel to use the phone. She could slip a note under the door, but saying what? Didn’t they have a lunch date? She felt a trickle of irritation.

Sensing a shuffling of footsteps on the cobblestones, Dana turned. An elderly man made his way toward the convent gate, his steps, oddly, both quick and labored. He wore a tweed cap and a heavy wool sweater that hung at an odd angle as if he’d mismatched the buttons with the buttonholes. As he approached she noticed patches of whiskers, spots of chin missed in shaving due to the deep crevices in his lined face. His eyebrows, thick wisps of white hair sticking up here and there, had taken on a life of their own.

“Ne, Ne,”
he said, annoyance lacing over his voice. His brows pinched together, wisps of hair from one mingling with the other.

He rattled off a series of words as he unlatched the gate.

She didn’t understand, though the word for
no
had pretty much the same tone and inflection in any language. When he jabbed his finger at the sign posted on the door, she raised her shoulders, arms extended, palms flat, in the international gesture of
I don’t understand.

His eyes flashed, then softened. “English?” he asked.

She nodded, realizing he was asking about her language, not nationality.

“American English,” he said knowingly.

“Yes,” she replied with what she hoped was a friendly tone.

Again he jabbed at the sign.
“Ne, ne.”
He ran his finger under the dates—written in the European style: day first, month second.
“Ne, ne,”
he said again, hands flying, head jerking as if looking for help. “Maria,” he called out to a trio of girls passing on the opposite side of the square.

The tallest skipped over, unlatched the gate, and greeted the old man. They carried on an animated conversation and then she turned to Dana.

“You wish me read the . . .” She hesitated, searching for the words, and then, like the old man, she pointed to the sign on the door.

“Prosím,”
Dana replied.
Please
. “The sign,” she said, offering the word in English. “Yes, please read the sign.”

The child smiled. “Yes, I read the sign.” She was a beautiful girl—blond curls and bright blue eyes—made even sweeter by her friendly smile. Dana guessed her to be about ten.

“The womans,” the girl said slowly, pausing to point at the convent door. “The good womans . . .” She pressed her hands together as if to indicate the nuns. “They is no here for you today. They is prayer for the good old woman. The very old woman.” She smiled an apologetic smile. “My English no good. I learn in school, but some words . . .”

“You’re doing fine,” Dana said.

“The good old, yes, very, very old, she . . . she . . .” The girl turned back to her friends across the square. Three more children had stopped alongside the two who had accompanied her. The girl—Maria, according to the old man—threw a quick succession of Czech words toward the youngsters, who exchanged glances before all eyes landed on the smallest boy.

“Jan,” Maria called to him. He appeared to be about seven or eight, with the same blond curls. Perhaps they were brother and sister.

He called back, “She dead.”

The girl grinned now, pleased that he’d supplied the correct word, unaffected, it seemed, by this grim news. “Yes, she dead,” Maria announced proudly.

“The old nun?” Dana asked.

“Yes,
nun
.” The girl nodded, her smile still intact.

The dates, Dana realized now—covering a full week from last Friday to this coming Saturday—indicated a period of mourning in which the nuns would not be available. She wondered why Caroline hadn’t left a message for her at the hotel.

The girl said, “Very, very old nun.” Her smile faded slowly as if she realized it might be misinterpreted. “Very sad she dead.” The corners of her mouth turned down in an exaggerated, artificial way. “Very old. She go to . . .” She pointed up.

“Thank you for your help,” Dana said.
“Dekuji.”

“Yes, I very happy help you. The good womans, the nuns, they be here for you after this day.” Again she pointed to the sign.

Sunday, the day before her scheduled departure, Dana thought.

After thanking the children and the old man for their help, Dana returned to the hotel and called the convent, leaving a message for Caroline, expressing her condolences for the nuns’ loss and suggesting they get together Sunday for lunch. Again, she left the hotel, found a street vendor, and ordered a grilled sausage, which she smothered with golden mustard and ate sitting on the edge of a large concrete flower box. Then she set out to explore.

Later that evening, after visiting the Mucha Museum, as well as the National Museum, she returned to her hotel to find a message for her at the reception desk. Sealed in an envelope,
DANA PIERSON
was hand-printed in familiar large block letters on the front. Immediately, Dana tore it open. The brevity, the large caps, the lack of punctuation—all Caroline’s style. It read:

MEET OUR LADY VICTORIOUS 11 AM

THURSDAY VOTIVE CANDLES URGENT

It was signed simply
C
.


8

Dal Damek sat, along with a half dozen officers, as he had each morning for the past two and a half weeks, going over photographs, crime scene mock-ups, charts, graphs, autopsy and ballistic reports, studying information that had been gathered during the previous day, anything relating to the murder of Senator Jaroslav Zajic. Some days there was little new, and they found themselves stepping back to move forward, attempting to see something new revealed in what they’d already discovered. Each day there was little of value to report to the chief of criminal investigations.

They’d had numerous calls and tips, some from the usual suspects, among them a couple of well-known crazies who had theories on just about any crime that had taken place in the city. They’d interviewed shopkeepers, restaurant workers, the doormen at the Grand Hotel Praha. A mime who worked the square had come in voluntarily in full costume, whiteface, white hat, white clown suit, to say he’d seen something suspicious several days before the murder—a man taking photos. Not of the clock tower, the Jan Hus monument, or the Kostel Panny Marie pred Týnem, like the hundreds of tourists every day, but of rooftops of buildings, such as restaurants, shops, and hotels. A little unusual, for sure, but the description the mime gave of the man was vague and he’d not seen him again.

The number of possible suspects, as well as multiple motives to consider, along with the difficulty in obtaining financial, phone, and e-mail records, made the case all the more difficult. It seemed there were as many willing to protect the senator—from what, Dal wasn’t sure—as those with reason to wish him dead.

The senator’s wife had to be considered a suspect, and this had not been completely dismissed. Senator Zajic met once a week, same time, same place—the Hotel Rott Praha—with a woman who was not his wife. The hotel, located in the center of the tourist district frequented by foreigners, provided a perfect place to go unnoticed.

Then, on schedule, as the senator was a man who kept to a regular routine, he walked to his office, passing through the Old Town Square, always walking directly on the cobblestone path below the astronomical clock. If there was one thing the senator could be counted on, it was keeping his schedule and routine. And the murderer knew this routine.

The wife, aware of the affair, possibly past affairs, seemed to accept this as part of the deal. If she was involved, she’d hired a professional. The shot had indeed come from the roof, and the wife, a large woman in her sixties, had surely not made this ascent. During her first interview she’d said if she was going to kill her husband she would have done it long ago.

The mistress, too, a buxom amber-haired stage actress, had to be considered, though Dal sensed that she was perfectly content with the present arrangement, desiring no further entanglement. She had no known motive.

The press, which tended toward high drama, had already decided the murder was politically motivated. With the volatility in the ever-evolving democracy of the Czech Republic, it had to be considered. In March, the government had collapsed under a no-confidence vote. The prime minister, a supporter of the EU Lisbon Treaty, had resigned, though he would continue in office until a replacement was designated. Senator Jaroslav Zajic, an ally of the president, who opposed the treaty and often clashed with the PM, was rumored to be on the verge of a shift in alliances. Those against ratification of the treaty claimed it would diminish the country’s financial freedom and autonomy won through the revolution years ago. Political motivation had to be considered.

The senator’s early-morning incoming phone call had been traced, though not without difficulty, Dal having gone to the top of the chain, all the way to the office of the minister of the interior to have the information released. The call to the dead man, with the official government block, had been made by a fellow senator of the Czech Parliament, Senator Viktor Vlasák, a man getting on in years who had served so long that this in itself might account for the demanding tone of his voice. It was unlikely he’d been directly involved in the murder and was calling to determine if the feat had been accomplished. Yet his sudden hang-up puzzled Dal. The senator had explained he was in a hurry and the continuing discussion he referred to in the call had concerned a matter of Parliament that he was not yet at liberty to discuss. Senator Vlasák was known to be in opposition to the Lisbon Treaty.

Detective Kristof Sokol was in the process of following up on information from Senator Zajic’s recently obtained phone records, now thoroughly picked over by a unit technician. With the number of blocked calls, the resistance, jumping through hoops, and wending through red tape, this had proved to be an arduous, frustrating task.

The financial forensics expert, recently transferred from the commercial crime unit, was attempting to decipher the senator’s complicated financial records. Bo Doubek, like Kristof, was one of the new breed, well educated, tech savvy, analytical. He could crack just about any bank account and trace a money trail like a squirrel picking up peanuts. But this one, even he admitted, was rough going, with enough holes and blackouts it was like analyzing a string of ruptured DNA.

“I’m still working on it,” he told the group. “One path leads to another, but so far, nothing that might indicate a motive for murder.” Doubek scratched his face nervously. Though now in his early thirties, he still had a bad case of acne. He looked like a kid who holed up in his mother’s apartment, spending his entire day sitting at a computer, having no emotional or social contact with anyone in the real world. Dal knew him to be shy, but he was a true wiz with a computer and an asset to the department.

Branislov Cerný sat silently, shaking his head now and then. He was of the old school: Crimes were solved in the field, not sitting at a desk all day in front of a computer. Cerný operated the old-fashioned way—gut instinct, and perhaps at times too much force. Often it seemed he fell back on the old ways. A favorite quote: “Take a wrench to justice and get the job done.” He’d served as an officer in the SNB, the National Security Corps, the police force of Czechoslovakia, before the country was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Officers coming into the police force had been thoroughly vetted, attempting to purge any remnants of the Communist ideology.

“I’m still checking out several recurring calls,” Kristof said. “One in particular that popped up several days in a row, then disappeared about three weeks before the senator’s murder. We’ve traced it to a Hugo Hutka, but unfortunately the man was killed in an auto accident in early March.”

Eyes popped wide around the table; papers shuffled. Cerný took a slow, thoughtful drink of coffee, then got up to refill his cup.

“Anything suspicious about the accident?” Dal asked.

“The body was badly burned, but nothing indicates, at least from the report, that it was anything but an accident. Detective Cerný and I are headed over to talk with the widow this morning.”

Dal nodded, considering this new information. Someone who had been communicating with Zajic on a regular basis, passing away just before the senator himself, certainly warranted another look.

Dal opened a second file and withdrew a photo of a thin man, facedown, red seeping into the sparkling snow like a macabre version of a kid’s cherry ice treat. A man in shabby clothes lying dead at the foot of the statue of St. Wenceslas on Václavské námesti.

“You’re looking at the Filip Kula murder again?” Cerný grunted as he maneuvered himself back into his chair, straightening his back, planting his coffee mug on the table.

“You believe the two homicides are related?” Detective Sokol asked his superior. From the photo, comparing this man to the well-dressed, well-fed senator, it would seem unlikely the two men had anything in common or had met in social circles. Dal, who’d had no part in the Kula investigation, did not intend to officially reopen it, yet he doubted the person responsible for this earlier homicide had been put away. The fact that the lead detective had retired along with the prior chief, Tomáš Malý, concerned Dal. There had been a major shake-up in the department in the past few months.

The case of Filip Kula would not have made headlines—an addict out to score some drugs—had the victim not been a once-popular film star. His murder had dredged up history as well as headlines. Twenty years ago he’d been active as a dissenter during the Velvet Revolution, one of the popular voices of the movement. Within years, his health and fame declined, ravaged by an expensive drug habit. Many younger citizens of Prague, Kristof among them, had not initially recognized the name Filip Kula. Those who knew of the star would not have recognized the man. He’d once been the heartthrob of many a Czech girl, but he’d died a vagabond in frayed trousers and ripped overcoat. His identity had not been known for several days, as he carried no ID. No one was looking for him. His family had disowned him. The first reports assumed he was involved in either prostitution or drugs, since the area was frequented in the early morning by those seeking either. Days later, during a separate investigation, an ID had been found in the hotel room of a man well-known for being part of a petty theft ring, and it had been matched to the murder victim. Being Romany, the accused was considered expendable.

Dal had not seriously considered these two cases related except for the fact that they were far from the norm in Prague, if murder could in any way be considered normal. Prague was a relatively safe city. When a murder occurred it was generally domestic or gang related. And very few murders remained unsolved. Yet he continued to think of Josef Kovár’s taunting words concerning the Kula investigation as he and Detective Sokol had left the professor’s study in Kutná Hora.

Dal had gone personally to question Ludovit Holomek, the Romany man in jail accused of the Filip Kula murder. The man swore he had nothing to do with the actor’s death, that he didn’t even know who Filip Kula was, that he’d come across the body and simply taken advantage of the situation and removed his wallet. He’d admitted that much—the evidence was right there. He’d complained that, for all his trouble, he’d discovered but a few tattered bills. Dal’s inclination was to believe him on all counts. The Romany were known as petty thieves, preying mostly on tourists. Dal had investigated one murder during his entire career in homicide involving a Romany as the perpetrator—an angry wife who had stabbed and killed her husband for no reason other than his complaints about a meal she’d prepared for him.

Across the table, Detective Branislov Cerný seemed to ponder this, though
ponder
was generally not a word associated with the man. Once a virile, athletic man, Cerný had been worn down to a hard core of resentment, if not apathy, passed over time and time again for promotion. Perhaps he should have retired years ago, but he was hanging on three more months for full retirement. Dal liked the man, if not always his methods.

“You’re not buying this Gypsy’s confession?” the old detective asked.

The record showed the man had confessed, but that wasn’t the song he was singing when Dal visited him in jail.

Silence all around the room as the photo of the deceased Filip Kula made its way around the table. Dal attempted to catch the reaction of Detective Karel Beneš, a chunky, round-cheeked redhead. His first case in homicide as a junior detective had been the Kula case. Several weeks ago, after the detective assigned to the case had retired, Dal had asked Beneš to come in. Dal sensed the young man had concerns regarding the murder of Filip Kula as he sat nervously in the office of his newly appointed chief, though he was reluctant to criticize the former chief investigator or lead detective. He’d told Dal the case had received little attention; a true investigation hadn’t even been initiated. Then came the discovery of the man’s identity and the headlines praising the chief investigator for closing the case. Now, Beneš twitched again, his pale redhead’s complexion burning with what might have been either embarrassment or anger.

“One shot in the head,” Cerný mused. “One stabbed in the heart. A fallen film star meets his demise while attempting to score some drugs? How does this relate to a philandering senator?” Dal had implied in no way that the two were related. Cerný shot a look toward Beneš, then Detective Sokol, realizing it was he who was attempting to make the connection.

“Political motivation?” Kristof asked. “The common link between the two? Filip Kula was a dissenter during the Velvet Revolution. Those engaged in the arts—actors, playwrights, musicians—were particularly involved in promoting political reform and the end of Communist censorship.”

Dal realized the young detective had studied the case. He liked his initiative. Had Kristof, too, sitting silently in the professor’s study with his superior, then following him in his exit like an obedient puppy, caught something in the man’s speaking of this case? Neither Dal nor Kristof had mentioned a possible connection on the drive back to Prague.

As Dal’s eyes darted around the table, he realized, not for the first time, that, other than Cerný and Detective Zik Reznik, the latter with whom Beneš was now partnered, he was working with a bunch of inexperienced investigators. Tadpoles, he mused.

“Any evidence he’d become involved in politics in recent years?” Reznik stared down at the photo of a man who had obviously fallen on hard times.

“Senator Zajic joined the Civic Forum in late 1989,” Kristof replied. A fact that Dal was well aware of since the investigation had been initiated. “Kula had been active since its inception. A Charter 77 advocate.”

Cerný shook his head. “The Civic Forum, catchall for post-Communist Czechoslovakia. Anyone who wanted to be involved in the new republic joined. Any recent connection between the two men?”

“No connection.” Kristof glanced sideways at Beneš, whose nostrils flared as he looked down at the table. “Yet,” Kristof added.

“If there is, I’d certainly like to know,” Dal said, waving a hand over the file, then the table of officers. “I’d like to take a look at Kula’s activities in the weeks preceding his murder.” Damek handed the file to Reznik, glancing at Beneš, who nodded as if ready to get moving on the case, to prove himself. “Every detail. Places frequented, acquaintances. Financial”—he indicated Doubek—“I want to know if he had any income. How he was supporting his drug habit.”

BOOK: Lost and Found in Prague
11.08Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Lost in Time by Melissa de La Cruz
For Kingdom and Country by I.D. Roberts
Grounds to Believe by Shelley Bates
Divine Fantasy by Melanie Jackson
Twilight Girl by Della Martin
Lyrics by Richard Matheson