”Yeah!“ he cried, laughing even harder. ”That’s it!
”The meter’s running, Marko.“
”Yeah, I know. Okay. I come from Srebece, yeah? It’s a little village not far from Dubrovnik. When I was in Srebece, I was nine years old. I had a family. Sister, brother, mama, papa. Everybody happy. Then the Serbs came. It wasn’t like CNN, okay? They came at night and beat down the doors. All the houses, everybody’s doors smashed. The soldiers did what they wanted, took what they wanted. Everything. Money, furniture, cars, girls.“
Marko sniffed and looked around the hospital room. He wasn’t laughing anymore. ”When they came to our house, we were eating supper. Purple cabbage, I still remember it. When Papa got up from the table, they hit him with the butt of a rifle. Five soldiers, we had. Two older guys, three kids. All with Kalashnikovs. They beat my father to the floor. After him, my brother, Karol. Karol was sixteen. Then they took my mother and sister to the bedrooms. Three guys. Papa tried to stop them, so the oldest guy shot him in the stomach. Papa lay on the floor, holding his guts in while Mama and Katrina screamed from the back.“
”Where were you?“
”One of the soldiers held me. When he let go to light a cigarette, I tried to run to Mama. That’s when the old guy stuck his bayonet into my stomach. I didn’t even feel it. It was like somebody knocked the wind out of me. Like a football hit me hard in the gut.“
Marko began jangling his handcuffs. ”The raping went on for a long time. Mama and Katrina never stopped screaming. They fought the bastards. Finally the soldiers brought them back. No clothes, blood all over them. Then the old guy said he wants a show. He tells my brother to screw my sister. You believe that? Karol says no, he won’t do it. The guy says, ‘Do it or I kill your mother, you stinking Croat.’ Now I understand he meant to kill us all anyway, but then…I was a stupid kid. The Serbs did this all over the place, man. Especially to the Muslims.“
”Like the Chinese in Tibet.“
”What?“
”When the Chinese army invaded Tibet, they forced the Buddhist monks to kill their fellow monks. Because they’re nonviolent. The Chinese made them break their most sacred vow.“
Marko nods soberly. ”That’s it. Same thing. So this is happening, yeah? Mama tells Katrina to help Karol do sex to her, do anything they say. And Karol is trying. He’s crying and doing this thing to my sister. My sister was a virgin, man. You understand this? My brother is fucking my sister on the couch. Papa is sobbing and screaming that the Serbs are animals, so they shoot him again to shut him up.“
”Did they kill him?“
Marko nods. ”Completely. So Mama goes crazy. Her life is over, she’s watching this obscenity, and she sits down on the floor and stares at the wall like an insane person. For a second I think maybe it’s going to be okay. Even though I’m bleeding all over the place, right? Then I hear a commotion outside, and about ten soldiers run through the door. They’re drunk, covered with blood. They go crazy, right there. They’re screaming at the first guys to kill us, that we’re dogs like the Muslims. Then one of them takes out a knife, kneels down, and cuts off Papa’s head.“
Marko made a slashing motion with the flat of his hand. The cuffs rattled.
”He holds out Papa’s head to my mother and orders her to nurse it. Put her breast in its mouth, yeah? She ignores the guy, so he shoots her. It was a blessing, believe me. Then they force Katrina to take Papa’s head. She’s crying, but she does what they say. They all laugh, and then someone says it’s time to get back to the trucks. The old guy looks at Karol, says, ‘Good-bye, dog,’ and shoots him in the chest. Then they grab Katrina and drag her outside. That’s the last time I ever saw her.“
”And you?“
”The last guy to leave stuck me again, in the balls this time. Then he left me there to die. I tell you, man, I don’t know how I made it.“
”Or why.“
Marko nodded vehemently. ”That’s right!
”There’s no answer to that.“
”I guess not. Anyway, they moved me to a hospital in Sarajevo. They thought they were helping me. In some ways it was better there, other ways worse. But I learned to survive. And I got some payback.“
”How’s that?“
”Me and some guys, we found some Serb girls later on. One or two at a time, you know? When we finished, we’d say, ‘Tell them it’s for Srebece.’“
”Why did you do that?“
Marko looked confused. ”Because that’s what they did to us. To our women.“
”The girls you raped didn’t do anything to you.“
More confusion. ”They were Serbs, man.“
”Why didn’t you target soldiers instead?“
A sly smile. ”We did that, too. We fucked some people up.“
I walked to the window and looked out at the bypass. Cars were passing outside, the people inside them oblivious to most of what had happened in their town last night, unable even to imagine the horrors that Marko Bakic had endured in his hometown.
”What about Kate?“ I asked.
Marko’s face closed. ”That’s something else, man. That was an accident.“
”What do you mean?“
”I always liked Kate. More than that, really. She wasn’t like the other girls. She had something.“
”You had a thing for her?“
”Yeah. From the time I first got here. But I was cool about it. Kate was that type, you know? If you let her know you wanted her, she wouldn’t look at you. So I waited.“
”And you slept with Mia Burke.“
Another sly smile. ”You know about that? Yeah. Mia’s hot, too. But Kate…she had a dark side I liked. But she was dating that stupid football player. Anyway, I watched her for a long time. I was starting to think I’d never get my chance, but then…“
”She came to you for the pills.“
”Yeah.“
”You thought you had her then.“
Marko nodded. ”Cyrus fucked that up.“
”So what did you do?“
”I kept waiting. I know how to wait, man. You learn to wait for water, you can wait for anything. I followed her sometimes. I even tracked her cell phone at the end.“
”Like Cyrus?“
Marko laughs. ”Cyrus never tracked her phone. I just told the cop that to get him off my back.“
So Sonny Cross never got the truth from Marko, not even with his
”Think so?“
”You shot those people at Cyrus’s safe house. You were trying to kill him.“
Marko can’t conceal his pride.
”That’s why Cyrus’s guys went to the Wilsons‘, to get payback.“
The arrogance vanishes, replaced by a terrible bitterness.
”Let’s get back to Kate,“ I say quietly. ”Were you following her on the day she died?“
Marko raises his cuffed hands and scratches at the bandage on his shoulder. ”Yeah. When the guys picked me up at Coach Anders’s house, I ran home and checked my computer. I got a fix on her, and got them to drop me down by the creek. Not too close, though. They left me in front of a friend’s house. I didn’t want them telling Cyrus what I was doing. I went in from Sherwood Estates, not Pinehaven.“
”How did you find her?“ I asked, remembering Ellen’s version of the story.
”I wasn’t sure exactly where she was. I figured she was jogging by the water, but it had been raining, so I wasn’t sure. I went down there to see.“
”What did you find?“
