22. Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter twenty-two
Noble eased the rental to a stop on a dusty stretch of gravel in front of a drab house in what amounted to the suburbs.
The two-story dwelling with the clay shingled roof was tucked away on a road with an indecipherable name.
Strazarska Kosa was the closest Noble could come to an English interpretation.
The road—if you could call it a road, more of a weed choked dirt track—ran south from Belgrade into rolling green foothills surrounding.
Any vestiges of old-world charm ended with the blacktop several miles back.
Here the buildings were all utilitarian cinderblock surrounded by small plots of farmland.
Plums seemed to be the most common crop, along with smaller raspberry bushes.
Shoulder high trees, limbs sagging with fruit, marched in ranks along the sloping hillsides.
A chorus of cicadas provided the only soundtrack to the dark landscape.
The moon was a rumor behind a clump of clouds as Noble shifted the ?koda into park and switched off the engine.
Then he waited. He sat in the car and listened to the incessant insect drone and the gentle creak of wind in the branches.
He was acclimating himself to the local landscape.
While his ears studied the soundscape, Noble detailed his surroundings, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
After ten silent minutes, he switched off the overhead dome, stepped out of the car and left the door open. He didn’t want locals to hear a car door shut and look out a window. In the city, a slamming door was almost invisible. In the countryside, it peaked people’s interest.
He crossed the road, slipped over a waist high wall and started through the small patch of trees toward Dejan Pavlovi?’s house.
His shoes whispered softly in the grass.
Crickets quieted at his approach. Noble snagged a plum from a branch as he passed, took a bite and savored the difference between fresh fruit and the stuff you bought from a store.
It’s the difference in taste and texture you get from freshly caught fish versus grouper that had been frozen and trucked to the supermarket.
Wiping juice from his chin with the back of a hand, Noble circled around to the back of the house, already convinced Pavlovi? was not home.
He hadn’t been in quite some time. Nobody put that much time and effort into growing plums, then left them on the branch.
These plums should have been picked already.
Instead they were still hanging, ripe, and forgotten.
Noble dropped the half-eaten fruit and stepped onto the porch. There were no lights on inside and a wilted plant hung near the back door. More evidence that Dejan Pavlovi? was not at home.
With his shoulder against the door frame, Noble glanced once around the shadowed landscape to make sure there were no witness, then tried the knob. It was locked. No surprise there.
Opening his wallet, he withdrew a small pick and a tension tool.
He kept a shoulder against the door frame as he inserted the tension tool, then scrubbed the lock.
A few quick scrapes was all it took. Scrubbing is a crude method that can quickly defeat a simple lock, but it leaves tell-tale signs for anyone who cared to look.
Using just his thumb and pinkie, Noble turned the knob.
The door hinged open, giving him access to a simple kitchen with an aging refrigerator that made a loud metallic clank when the compressor clicked on.
Noble stepped inside, spotted a dishrag laying on the counter and used it to erase his prints from the knob.
He moved into the living room, going slow, wincing at every creak of old wooden floorboards.
It wasn’t that long ago that Noble had been searching a house and activated a pressure mine mounted under the floor. If not the timely intervention of Cook and Witwicky, that would have been the end for Noble. Now, he stayed close to the walls.
In the living room, he found signs of a struggle.
Nothing overt. No smashed televisions or overturned chairs.
No broken lamps. But the coffee table had been shoved recently and a few journals had fallen off onto the rug.
The sofa was also out of place. Most people keep their sofa and coffee table aligned, or mostly aligned.
This combo was at odd angles. Noble used the flashlight on his phone and knelt down.
It didn’t take long to spot a dent in the carpet fibers where the sofa used to sit.
Noble chewed the inside of one cheek.
The front door was intact and didn’t show any signs of forced entry. Someone had come in, maybe Dejan Pavlovi? had even let them in, and then he’d been overpowered in the living room, knocking the sofa and table out of place in the process.
There was no blood. Noble splashed his light around but didn’t find any droplets. The former investigator hadn’t been killed here. He’d been taken.
“You still alive Pavlovi??” Noble inquired of the empty house.
He made a few clicking noises as he thought about Bill and Milena and now Dejan Pavlovi?.
All three had been involved in the investigation of human rights violations during the Kosovo War.
Now all three were missing. That didn’t bode well.
He made a thorough search of the rest of the house but didn’t uncover anything out of the ordinary. Dejan Pavlovi? had been a widower who lived a Spartan life in his retirement. He spent most of his time reading and tending his crop of plum trees.
Noble let himself out the front door, wiped his prints from the knob with the dishtowel, and pocketed it as he stepped onto the front porch.
He’d toss the rag in a wastebasket somewhere in town, erasing any evidence he’d ever been here.
He was halfway down the lawn when a sedan hurtled around a bend in the road, shrieking to a stop in front of Dejan Pavlovi?’s house.
The tires locked, kicking up a wave of gravel that pelted the low stone wall.