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gunman would shoot again, reached under the bed for his gun and had
shot the young man four times, killing him.
It was an eminently reasonable story. Kosta had done what any man
would have done. Here was his wife, apparently dead beside him, and
her killer, still armed, hovered over the bed, perhaps preparing to put
a bullet into Kosta's head. Kosta, it seemed, had done the only right
thing, and the police had no reason to think anything different had
gone on in the house.
But Dina knew better.
Kosta had arranged this murder attempt, he was sure of it. Dina stood
out in the driveway in the shadows of early morning and watched in
amazement as his brother-in-law charmed the police with the heroic tale
of how he had avenged the shooting of his wife. To Dina's eye Kosta
looked guilty as hell. But he knew also that to a stranger Kosta
looked as innocent as could be. This was not a man who was burdened
with guilt. If his hands shook at all it was because his wife had just
been shot and he had just killed a boy. If he seemed not as grief
stricken as he ought, it was because he was still in shock. No, Dina
thought, the police aren't going to see right through Kosta. I have to
catch him. I have to stop him.
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He scanned his memories for a clue, the proverbial forgotten detail
that would nail Kosta. Suddenly an idea came to him.
"Can I make a request?" he said to one policeman. He explained about
his trip downstairs for a glass of milk.
"When I came up I turned the light switch off," he said.
"Can you take a fingerprint from the bottom of the switch to see who
turned it on?" Dina was still somewhat dazed and confused, and
different scenarios of what had happened were able to reside in his
mind at the same time. In this one, he was thinking that Kosta might
have turned on the light earlier to let the gunman in and then gone
back to bed while the gunman hid in one of the dark rooms before doing
his business.
In fact, a light switch is not sufficient surface to yield a usable
fingerprint, but neither Dina nor Kosta knew this at the time and to
Dina's eyes, Kosta's reaction was panic.
"No, no, Dina," Kosta said. "That's okay, there's no need for that. I
think. . . I think I might have left the light on."
Can't you see it, Dina thought, can't you see how guilty he is?
But the police officers seemed to sense nothing.
Literally within minutes of Lisa's arrival at Halifax Memorial Hospital
the waiting rooms were swarming with anxious Greeks. The word had gone
out over a telephone network. Lisa's been shot. Dina had gotten
dressed and called his friend Timmy. Timmy's mother had called a few
people. Each of them had called others and long before Lisa went into
surgery there were forty friends and relatives crammed into three
waiting rooms at the hospital.
Among this crowd of friends and family Dina felt lonely.
What they shared was a love and concern for Lisa, but alone possessed
the terrible knowledge that Lisa's own husband, a friend to all of
them, was trying to kill her.
He had tried to tell a few of them, but it was only making "liings
worse.
"At the house my uncle Stacy had come over while the police were
questioning me and I had taken him aside and told him, "Look, it's
Kosta who's trying to kill Lisa,' and I told him the whole thing about
Deidre and Teja and the holdup. And he said, "Dina, you're delirious,
that's crazy.
He didn't believe me. So I told him, "Look, whether you believe me or
not, don't repeat what I just told you." By the time Dina was at the
hospital he understood that it was best not to share his suspicions
with his Greek family and friends. He loved them all, but he also knew
how much they loved to talk, and if he told them what he thought, it
would only be a matter of minutes before it got back to Kosta. Kosta,
he knew, would laugh it off and then kill Dina to shut him up. When
Dina saw his aunt Joyce, his uncle Stacy's sister, he told her what he
had told Stacy and said, "Make sure Stacy doesn't repeat it. I'm
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putting on a facade with Kosta and I don't want him to know I know."
Now Dina set about the more urgent business of protecting his sister.
He roamed about the hectic hospital from policeman to policeman. "I
want twenty-four hour protection for my sister," he said. He was
almost crying. "I want a police officer watching her at all times."
He did not mention Kosta. He presented the reasonable argument that
she had been held up by a gunman barely thirty-six hours ago and it
appeared that somebody was trying to kill her. The police couldn't
promise anything.
"Okay, if you don't think she needs it, I'll pay for it," he told
them.
"Just give her the protection. I'll pay for it."
Still, he couldn't seem to get anyone to say, "Yes, Dina, she will be
protected."
"But then this woman investigator came over to me," he says. "Her name
was Allison Ebel. I said, "Look, are you an investigator on this
case?" She said, "Yes,' so I pulled her aside into a hallway where
nobody could hear us. "It's Kosta,' I told her. "It's Kosta, he's
trying to kill my sister." I told her everything. I said if I'm wrong
then I don't want to be quoted on this. She said she would see what
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