“What are you doing?” Maya whispered from the stove where she was turning on the kettle.
“Looking for…aha, here,” he said.
“Sasha, what’s wrong?” came his mother’s voice from the next room.
“Nothing mother. Go back to sleep.” He looked at his notes again and there it was. He should have put it together. It might be nothing, but he should have seen it. He was sure Rostnikov and Karpo would have seen it, but he had not tied it together.
“I have to go quickly,” he said to Maya, slipping into his pants.
“All right,” she said. “Take the sandwiches, and don’t eat them too early.”
He took them and grabbed for his coat on the wall. “And don’t worry.”
“Worry?” he asked.
“About the boy,” she said.
And then he felt a terrible guilt.
In twenty minutes he stood before the apartment building he was seeking. He had been there the day before, had interviewed a young man, a confident young man, one of four people he had talked to, friends or acquaintances of Aleksander Granovsky. This one had really been no different. The difference was that he lived on Petro Street. Petro Street was where the cab driver had been killed. True it was at least a mile from here, but he remembered the two witnesses who had reported that the killer looked young and had headed down Petro Street. He had accepted the young man’s alibi too easily. He had to check with the man’s wife.
When he had looked up the names of the Granovsky friends, the Petro address had simply been one of them. In fact, it was probably nothing, a coincidence, but he should have noticed. Tkach bounded up the stairs and down the dark hall.
“Ilyusha Malenko,” he called after he knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again and called again.
He tried the door but it was locked. Five minutes later he found the building superintendent, who was unimpressed by the police officer. She was a stout woman in her thirties with stringy red hair and a permanent scowl.
“The Malenkos are quiet people,” she said.
“I don’t care about that,” Tkach answered impatiently.
“I know they have some friends whom they should not have, but they are young. They will learn. We have to support our comrades. Besides,” she said leaning toward Tkach, “young Malenko’s father is a man with influence.”
“I want the door open now,” demanded Tkach.
“And if I say ‘no?’” she said with hands on ample hips.
“I’ll have you arrested,” he said slowly. “You are obstructing an investigation of murder. In fact, I think you have gone too far already.”
“Wait,” said the woman searching in her apron pocket. “I’m just being careful. I have a responsible job.”
Tkach took a particular delight in frightening the woman. He had never had any success in influencing his own building superintendent, who did not look radically different from the one before him.
She wobbled down the corridor ahead of him and grunted up the stairs. He followed, wondering what he would find in his search. Maybe something incriminating, some evidence of a sickle, something. In fact, though he was excited by what he was doing, he also hoped that he would find nothing, expected that he would find nothing and that Malenko’s wife would say he had been quietly at home when the murders were committed.
“All right, it’s open,” said the red-haired woman stepping in ahead of him. “Now what you think you will find is…”
Tkach had been right behind her when she suddenly backed up. Her wide rear hit him in mid-stomach, and they both tumbled to the hall floor. Tkach’s breath was gone, and he struggled to push the heavy burden from him so he could try to resume living.
His first thought when he saw her face was that she was having a heart attack. The woman’s eyes were wide with fright, and she was gurgling. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would be essential, but the idea repulsed him and he considered seriously letting her die. Instead of dying, she pointed to the room. Tkach forced himself up, pulled out his gun, and moved into the room doubled over, though he was now getting air. What he saw straightened him up and filled him with nausea.
The figure swayed above him in the room, strung up by a man’s tie to a rod which was used to separate the room into two halves. The figure was all red and that of a woman. He could tell from the dress. He certainly could not tell from the face. There was no face, just a pulpy mass of blood.
There was no one else in the room. Had there been he could easily have smashed Tkach’s brains and walked out even though the detective was armed, because the detective was also hypnotized by the image before him. He didn’t want to think of his first impression, but it came up at him as his eyes held fast on the gently swaying body. His first impression was that he was looking up at the corpse of his own Maya. He knew he was going to be sick, but he didn’t want it to happen in here where he would have to explain it. He went out the door, tripped over the superintendent, who screamed, and raced for the cold outside.
Emil Karpo did not spend the night in the hospital, though he was advised to do so. His wound was not bad, though he had to wear a bandage and sling. The pain was greater than he would have expected, but he did not fear pain. The hospital was too protective and protected. Emil Karpo wanted to be somewhere where he could count on the help of Emil Karpo, and that somewhere was in his room. He had slept for six hours and then arose in the morning with an arm so sore that any movement was agony. His first act, after forcing his pants on with one hand, was to call Petrovka, where he found out that Vonovich was being held for the murder of Aleksander Granovsky.
He was told by Rostnikov to take the rest of the week off. His protest was overridden, and a compromise was reached. Karpo would take the day off to rest. He hung up and went back to his room to rest, but he knew he would not rest. There was nothing wrong with his feet or his head. He could work, must work. Every day that went by without catching a criminal meant another day for another crime. In spite of social change and the clear needs of the state, people continued to commit crimes against each other, and it remained the responsibility of Emil Karpo to do his best to keep the criminals in check.
So Karpo dressed. It was painful and took almost half an hour, but he did it and did it alone. Since he knew no one in his apartment building with any intimacy or cordiality, that was the way he would have to have done it anyway.
He was on his way out of the building when the phone rang in his room, but he did not hear it. It was, in fact, Rostnikov calling to tell him of a call he had just received from Sasha Tkach on Petro Street.
Karpo decided his task for the day would be a relatively easy one. He had a few suspects to check in the case of the person who was impersonating a police officer and preying on the African students. It was a short list of people who had been arrested for crimes committed while in some kind of disguise or uniform. The first name on the list was that of Vasily Kusnitsov also known as Chaplin because he liked to think that he looked like Charlie Chaplin. Kusnitsov was not home. The next name on his list was that of Rudolf Kroft, a former circus performer who had come on bad times after injuring his leg in a fall. He had twice been arrested for posing as a bus driver and a census taker. The house on Meduedkoya Street was not difficult to find, but it was an incredible house. Karpo thought that a good breath of air or another touch of snow would be enough to send the old wooden building tumbling. He walked gently up the steps of the three-story building and opened the door. The little alcove was cold as the outside. Karpo resisted the desire to rub his sore arm and examined the names on the wall. Kroft was on the top floor. He made his way up the creaking stairs finding that it grew no warmer as he rose. The room he sought was right at the top and he knocked.
“Kroft,” he said. “I want to talk to you. Police.”