Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
EDIE
I get a Snapchat message from Janey that Darren has a “book for me,” which is his superspy dark-web way of letting me know he did the research I ordered.
Is it possible he could have located Mary? It’s probably too much to hope, but I can’t help it. Good things do happen sometimes.
I head out to his residence hall and wait at the bus stop across the street, per the instructions. A few minutes later he comes strolling up, acting all surprised to meet me, a real Oscar-winning performance.
“Hey, I have something for you!” He digs in his backpack and produces a copy of The Elements of Style , the familiar tan-cover edition with big black letters on the front.
“Thank you!”
He lowers his voice. “You’ll find my notes tucked inside of there, but I’m going to fill you in on some of the narrative right now.”
I nod.
“The last known address of your sister, Mary, is in Newark, in the South Ward. ”
I straighten up. “Is that a current address?”
“No, sorry. When I followed up, the place had turned over two times, and nothing was forwarding. I’m guessing you know about the arrests, the last one for solicitation in November?”
“Yeah.”
“I poked around for known associates, but they’ve dispersed. If someone’s on the streets or couch surfing or whatever, it doesn’t always end up online, even on the dark web. People still need a reason to write about it.”
I nod. If only she were couch surfing. I suppose it’s possible.
“You also asked for the down-low on Luka and his brother. The details are there, but long story short, he got good grades in school, no juvie rap sheet. The teachers seemed to like him well enough. He had one brother—Alteo—who was seven years older than him. At the age of twelve, Luka gets shipped off somewhere. Nobody knows where, but the consensus is an Albanian military academy. You’ll see three citations. ”
I nod.
“The odd thing is that when you check into it, you can see that there are no military academies in Albania. Unless it’s an unlisted military school, which isn’t impossible, but it’s unusual. Why not list it?”
“Right.”
“So he’s gone from the picture all those years from the age of twelve to today when he’s thirty-seven.
That’s twenty-five years he was a ghost. What kind of military school keeps you twenty-four years?
Was he in jail? Farmed out to another family?
There’s a good deal of speculation on message boards, and I stripped some of the chat for you that framed the leading theories.
There’s also a rumor of another brother, which I’m currently following up on.
At any rate, approximately one month ago, he burst back onto the scene and promptly took his dear old brother out for a boat ride.
Though, one assumes the brother didn’t go voluntarily. ”
“Okay,” I say .
Darren glances up and down the street. “The details are a bit extreme?—”
“I want them.”
“Fair enough. So, they’re on this boat ride where he kills his brother and gouges out his eyes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Gouged them right out, probably with his thumbs.”
My blood races. “Is this for sure?”
“Nobody out there is disputing it. Luka Zogaj kills his brother, gouging out the man’s eyes, and throws the body into the water.
Seabirds had pretty well ripped into the corpse before it was recovered, but the medical examiner was able to determine that it was a human-caused injury.
They could tell by the cleanliness of the damage—if seabirds had pecked out Alteo’s eyes after death, the damage would’ve been more ragged, with uneven tears and peck marks on the surrounding facial tissue. ”
My blood races as I remember his words, how he told me he’d gouged out a man’s eyes once. He wasn’t making it up. It was just his own brother.
A chill goes over me. “Any word on... why he’d do such a thing?”
“What reason could there ever be to gouge out another man’s eyes? I’m gonna go with being a sadistic madman.”
He has a point—what reason could there be? But deep down, I think Luka must’ve had some reason... right?
“Here’s where it gets interesting,” he continues. “The eye-gouging was foretold by a two-decades-old prophecy that stated the youngest Zogaj boy would kill the king and gouge out his eyes and ascend to the throne. As king.”
“Foretold? Seriously?”
“According to an analysis by a longtime commentator on all things Albanian clan, the prophecy was originally understood to mean that young Luka would kill his father. Most people think it’s why he was sent away wherever he was—to protect his father from him.
Fast-forward all these years, both parents are dead, and older brother Alteo is running the clan.
Luka comes back from being missing and kills Alteo, gouging out his eyes and becoming king.
So ultimately, the prophecy came true; only the unlucky winner was his brother. ”
Darren goes on about prophecies, telling me how superstitious the older generation still is and that this has carried down to some of the younger ones. Apparently, there are still crones in the old country cranking out prophecies.
I’m still reeling. He did that to his own brother .
Why? Luka is a lot of things—brutal and intense and violent—but he’s also smart and deliberate.
I’ve seen it. And he’s not a sadistic madman, so I don’t think I have that wrong.
Maybe I don’t know his favorite color or his birthday or anything surface-level like that, but I know his scars. I know his heart.
“There’s a bit of time left on your clock,” Darren says. “I want to follow up on one more detail I uncovered, but that’s all for now.”