"Good," said the Wolfhound. "I have a report to give at the People's Court in Podolski this afternoon. Since we got started a bit late" and with this he paused for less than a breath to let his eyes fall on Rostnikov before he continued — "there will be no time for progress reports on continuing investigations. We will, therefore, meet tomorrow morning at six for progress reports. Inspector Rostnikov, this note is for you."
The Wolfhound produced an envelope from behind his back and handed it to Rostnikov. Without waiting for comment, the Wolfhound.turned and strode out of the room, his shiny black boots clapping against the tile floor.
Grigorovich and Pankov placed their various papers into folders, tucked the folders under their arms, and uttered a clipped "Good morning, Comrades" as they exited.
Alone, Rostnikov looked up at the single window for the first time since he had entered the room. His leg had grown stiff, his clothes were still wet, and he knew it was still raining. The envelope the colonel had handed him was grayish-white, unmarked. Nothing was written on it. Rostnikov slit the top flap with his fingernail. The note was brief, typed. He looked out at the rain, sighed, and stood up. He would have to take the metro, but he should still make it by the time indicated in the letter.
Before he left the building, he went to the central desk and said that he wanted a copy of the report on Case Number 16 for that morning.
"Case Number?" the short-haired woman behind the desk asked, looking at the stack of files in front of her.
"Oleg Pesknoko, the circus performer who died this morning," Rostnikov said.
"Ah," said the woman triumphantly, locating the file and handing it to Rostnikov. "The accident."
"Yes," Rostnikov said, tucking the file under his arm. "The accident."
The man who had killed eight prostitutes in the past six years had no idea on that Monday morning that Investigator Emil Karpo of the Procurator's Office was looking for him. Yuri Pon really didn't worry about the police at all, because he was well aware of, the official status of the investigation of his activities. He was aware of the progress, or lack of it, because he worked in the central records department of the Office of the Procurator General of Moscow.
Pon had not even checked the files for the possibility of any recent activity. No one really cared about the prostitutes. There were too many other priorities: murders, mannings, crimes against the state. Since prostitutes did not officially exist any longer, the file referred to the victims as "women of questionable character." Pon referred to them, and only to himself and his diary, as the snakes.
Since he was a boy, Pon, who was nearing his forty-first birthday, had seen these women and had sensed, knew, what they were. He had seen them, been fascinated by the prostitutes who hung around the railway stations and the others who sat in hotel lobbies or restaurants on Gorky Street. He had seen them, dreamed of them, even wanted them, though he was repulsed by the idea. There was no possibility that Yuri Pon would actually go to bed with a prostitute.
As he sat at his desk, stamping the folders in front of him with an official seal, he shook his head to confirm his determination. He would never go with a prostitute. It would be like… like wrapping a snake around your most private parts, the way he had wrapped a cloth in the tub when he was a child. But it would be more smooth and scaly. Yuri Pon shuddered. The shudder ran through his puttylike body. Nausea made him lift his eyes and peer through his glasses toward the washroom. But the feeling passed and he sat back, furiously stamping, stamping, stamping.
And why had mis come on? He had been drinking the night before. That was true. But that wasn't unusual. Had he been drinking the night before it had happened the other times? He didn't remember. Perhaps he had, but there had also been many nights when he had consumed far more vodka, felt far more the pull and repulsion of the prostitutes, especially the one at the restaurant on Gorky.
"Comrade Pon," a voice broke in.
Pon shook and almost dropped the seal in his hand.
"Pon," the woman repeated.
"Yes," Pon answered, adjusting his glasses and looking up at Ludmilla Kropetskanoya, the assistant files supervisor, who always wore black and looked like a light pole.
"File these." She handed him a half dozen files and strode away from his desk toward the stairs. "And try to hurry with this busywork and get back to the computer."
Pon watched her leave, feeling nothing but a vague dizziness from the drinking of the night before. As he rose he continued to wonder why he was thinking about the prostitutes once more. Was he going to start having those nights again? The nights when the feeling wouldn't go away? Night after night after night, feeling his body in the darkness, responding to the memories of those women, responding but never satisfied. The killings had given him relief, great relief. But the feeling had always come back.
Pon tucked the sheets of new information and reports under his left arm and pushed the odd pieces of paper back into the files as he walked slowly to the rows of drawers behind him. He paused at the white plastic table, stacked the files, and began to sort them by case number.
It had been almost a full year since he had last needed to find a prostitute. Though he was too cautious to be certain, still he hoped that it might mean that the feeling was gone for good. He liked his job, liked the two-room apartment he shared with Nikolai. He enjoyed filing. It took little thought and gave him a feeling of accomplishment and plenty of time to think. These were his filesneat, not a report sticking up, not a file frayedand soon, within months perhaps, he and the others would have everything fully transferred to the computers. Though he had a limited supply of new file
It was with this thought that Pon froze and stared at the file in his hand. Number 1265–0987. It was the only file number in the whole system he had memorized, because he felt it was his, the file detailing all of his dispositions of prostitutes. He had kept it even more orderly than the rest. He wanted it to remain untouched, perfect, safe.
And now, almost a year after anyone had looked at it, someone had come, probably during the overnight shift, and pulled the file. Yuri had mixed feelings. Fear and excitement made his hands tremble, and he had a shiver of something almost mystical. He had thought little about that file, about those feelings, about what he had had to do, for months. But this morning he had come in sensing, feeling, the echo of it all again. The reason was clear.
He had somehow known that someone was thinking about him. It was uncanny and frustrating, for there was no one he could tell about this.
Nikolai had once said that when he had the pains in his side he had awakened during the night and had seen a huge, clear letter C embossed on his skin at the point of the greatest pain. The C had been formed by a pebbly ridge of flesh. "I was sure, I knew, that in spite of the impossibility," Nikolai had said, leaning forward as if he were telling a great secret, "my body was informing me that I had cancer. Only it was stranger than that. I did not have cancer, only dyspepsia. I had told myself "and with this Nikolai pointed a dark finger at his head" that I had cancer. My mind had been strong enough to generate a change in my skin. Amazing."
Perhaps, somehow, this was what had happened to Yuri Pon this morning, but he could never tell Nikolai or his mother or anyone. Then a horrible half image came to him, a half image of himself telling not only of this uncanny incident but of everything he thought and felt, telling all this to a gaunt man who looked like a dark priest.
Yuri blinked his eyes, put down the files, and adjusted his glasses before he felt strong enough to open his file. The name of the person who had checked it out this very morning was written in a tall, firm hand that kept the letters neat and within the lines: Emil Karpo. Yuri Pon knew the name. Karpo had checked the file out sixteen times in the past eight years, far more than any other investigator, though Karpo was not even the principal investigator on the case.