Savaged

“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. Isaac Driscoll?”

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 Kavazovic on it.

“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 loveseat. 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. He furrowed his brow. “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.”

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“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?”