Chapter Thirty-Five

The old woman peeked through the crack in the door, peering at Mark, eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"Hello, ma'am. Almina Kavazovi??"

"Yes."

"Agent Mark Gallagher. I'd like to ask you some questions if I may."

"About what?" she demanded in a heavily accented voice, not widening the door an inch.

"A man who used to live in the apartment next door to you."

Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Almost . Mark caught it and knew his hunch had been right when he'd gotten the list of tenants at the apartment building Driscoll's sister had mentioned and found the name Kavazovi? on it.

"Dr. Driscoll? What about him?"

"Ma'am, this conversation would be a lot easier if you'd let me come in for a few minutes. I have—"

The chain lock disengaged with a soft clatter, and the door opened before Mark could finish his sentence. The woman stood back to allow him entrance, an old lady in a flowered house dress, her hair tucked into a dark handkerchief wrapped around her head. "I knew this day would come," she said, her voice suddenly holding none of the suspicion, only resignation. She turned, and he shut her door, following her to the living room, where she'd already sunk down into an easy chair that faced a flowered love seat. The furniture was well worn, but the room was neat and tidy, lace doilies atop almost every flat surface. Mark sat and waited for her to speak.

"What did he do?" she asked.

"He's dead, ma'am."

She met his eyes then, though she didn't appear shocked. "Yes," she said matter-of-factly, "it is for the better then."

"Will you tell me about Dr. Driscoll? How you came to know him?"

She sighed, a weary sound that rattled in her throat. "He was my neighbor, like you say. I didn't know him much, just that he work for government. I come from Bosnia in nineties during the war. My family try to come, but they…" She trailed off for a moment, and Mark waited until she continued. "They cannot."

Mark didn't ask her to elaborate on that, and he could imagine the reasons her family had run into trouble attempting to immigrate. Red tape…holdups…inadequate finances… He wondered how she'd made it out, but that was somewhat immaterial.

"I go to Dr. Driscoll, ask him if he can help since he have government job. At first he say no. He cannot help. Then he come back later and say yes. He can help me if I take a job for him, follow his rules, and tell no one."

"What job was that, ma'am?" he asked, his heart sinking, figuring he already knew what she was going to say.

"To take care of baby. To raise him until Dr. Driscoll is ready to train him."

Train him? Mark had expected her to tell him about raising the baby, but not about…training. He remembered back to his own roaming questions about Driscoll's interest in the Spartans. "What kind of training?"

"He do not say. He just tell me I must not coddle the boy or I would be doing him disservice. He tell me to feed boy and care for him, but no more. Do not coddle," she repeated. "That is very important, he say. It is the good way."

"And in exchange for that, he would help get your family here?"

She bobbed her head. "Yes, and get me visa so I can work. I sew the lace and sell to small shops. Now internet too but not so much since hands don't work so well."

Mark glanced at her gnarled hands, clutched together in her lap, knuckles white.

"I…see. And did he pay you to care for the boy?"

"Expenses only."

"And did he arrange for your family to come here?"

She shook her head, looking away from him. "He was not able to after all. I find out later they were killed in war."

"I'm sorry."

She didn't acknowledge him, her shoulders held rigid. "But I get my paperwork. I am U.S. citizen now."

Mark waited a moment and then asked, "So you raised this boy until he was how old?"

"Seven, almost eight."

"And then Driscoll took him to begin this training?"

"Yes," she said, a catch in her voice, and where she had not shed tears when speaking of her family killed in her home country, her eyes glittered when she spoke of the boy.

"Do you know if Driscoll was working with someone else?"

"No. No one else. Just him."

"Did you have any idea what this so-called training entailed?"

"No. I do not know. Dr. Driscoll come here at night when boy sleeping. I try to stop him. I…do not want to let him go. I will raise him, I say. But Driscoll push me. He say he will revoke my work visa. I will starve with no work. No family." She hung her head. "He give the boy medicine so he will not make fuss and then he take him." The look on her face was so bereft that despite what she'd done, Mark couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the old woman in front of him. No country. No family. Left to live with the terrible choices she'd made out of desperation. Left with not knowing what had become of the boy she'd obviously loved, though she'd been instructed not to.

"Do you know what happened to boy?" she asked, not meeting Mark's eyes, her body tense and unmoving as though she was holding her breath as she waited for his answer.

"He's alive. He had a very harsh upbringing, as you have probably imagined. But he's a survivor. He's very strong."

A tear escaped her eye and ran down her wrinkled cheek. "Yes. Strong. That's why I call him Jak. Means strong in my language." She took a moment as she obviously gathered herself. "He very smart boy. Good boy." The expression on her face was one of pride as she said it. "Driscoll move from here, he say he building nice house to raise Jak soon. He say no school, it interfere with training. But I teach the boy to read, and I teach him numbers in the English. I tell him not to talk like me but like the TV. He very smart and learn fast. I say the words are very important. I try to teach him what I can with books about tying knots and building things. What I think will help him. And I make him stay outside many hours every day so he climb trees and build forts and grow even stronger. I try…I try to give him what I can."

What she should have done was call the police and report Driscoll. But…Jesus, there were always so many shades of gray involved in the cases he worked, so many stories, so many situations that most people couldn't even imagine surviving. "From what I know, what you did helped him."

"Good." She paused for only a moment before asking, "He killed Driscoll then? My Jak?"

"He says he's innocent of the crime, and there's no evidence to say otherwise. Driscoll's murder is unsolved right now."

She looked vaguely surprised at his answer, as though she'd assumed Jak had killed him. Hell, after finding out what he had, he was surprised Jak hadn't killed him. If that turned out to be true. And though there was no evidence against him, he had one hell of a motive. The man had not only watched on as Jak had suffered, but he'd deceived him about there being a war. Enemies. He'd planted the fear in him when he was just a child so it was all he'd ever known. It was really a wonder Jak wasn't stark raving mad.

"He…remembers me?"

"He does, yes."

The old woman nodded, tears shimmering in her eyes again. "Will you tell him Baka is sorry. So very, very sorry."

"Yes, ma'am. Of course I will."

Once he'd said goodbye and left the small apartment of the woman Jak had once called Baka, Mark descended the steps, walking slowly to his car, one of the pieces of the puzzle of Jak's life sliding into place.

He turned the ignition and sat for a moment staring up at the apartment building where Jak had been raised, unknowingly being prepared for a "training" program devised by a sick and/or evil mind. What the hell did that mean? What had Driscoll's point been? Why had he done what he'd done to an innocent boy? He glanced at what he could see behind the building. A vast expanse of woods…the place Jak had first played at what would become his only existence.

Jak was the common denominator in all of this. How? Why? Who else knew what Driscoll had set up other than the woman found murdered in town? Jak's mother. Had there really been cameras in the trees? If so, who removed them? Driscoll? Who was the man on the cliff? Or had that actually been Driscoll and Jak's young mind had misremembered?

Mark pondered on all he knew and what he'd just learned, his mind then turning to Harper Ward and how her parents had been murdered too. Driscoll had been particularly bothered by the foster care system, Dr. Swift had told him. Harper Ward had grown up in social services. Did that mean anything? Were the two cases random and unconnected? They very well could be, but Mark had a feeling they were twisted together in some sinister way he could not yet fathom.

A shiver rolled through him as he backed out of the parking space at the apartment complex, the old woman in the apartment he'd just visited staring at him from her window. When he'd first started investigating the homicides, he'd believed them to be crimes of hate. He'd find the perpetrator and then move on to the next case. But with each week, with more and more puzzle pieces emerging, he became increasingly disturbed. Jak had been taken and mistreated and had probably nearly died while trying to survive. A woman had been manipulated to believe that in taking in a baby, she'd find joy in a reunion with her family. Families broken. Parents grieving. But how was it all linked? What was first? Who was responsible? Would anyone pay for these crimes of cruelty?

And was there a bigger picture he wasn't yet seeing?