The man was, at best, eccentric. More likely he was a bit mad.
Paulinin was twenty paces ahead of them, maneuvering around familiar objects that formed the maze of his sanctuary-laboratory tables covered with metallic and glass contrivances, most of which were his own peculiar invention and which no one else would know how to use, stacks of books and scientific journals on the floor and on lower tables and two desks, one of which was missing several drawers. Along the walls were shelves up to the top of the ten-foot ceiling. On the shelves were cardboard and wooden boxes, each with a large number in black on its sides. There were also jars ranging in size from a gallon to five gallons or more. Something floated in each of the jars. A brain, a kidney, a small animal, and, somewhere, the left leg of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov; and, according to Petrovka lore, the brain of Josef Stalin.
Elena and Iosef wended their way toward Paulinin, who now stood behind a table on which lay the naked body of a man who appeared to be about fifty. The corpse was neither fat nor thin, tall nor short. He was not particularly handsome; neither was he ugly. Stripped of his suit, the dead colonel was simply a corpse with seven deep, long, clotted knife wounds on his neck, arms, and stomach.
Paulinin’s arms were out and resting next to the body. When he leaned forward, the strong overhead light cast a shadow in the sockets of his eyes. The visitors to Paulinin’s lair had a wide variety of options with which to respond, ranging from amusement to discomfort and fear.
Iosef thought Paulinin would have been a particularly sad and isolated creature were he not sustained by his own paranoia, delusions, and self-confidence.
“This should be Emil Karpo’s case,” Paulinin said.
The closest thing the scientist had to a friend was the silent pale detective. At least once a week they lunched together. Karpo was a good listener. Paulinin was a talker.
“We take the cases we are assigned,” Elena said.
“I didn’t suggest otherwise,” Paulinin said with irritation. “I made an observation. It is bad enough that those bunglers up there”-he looked up toward the ceiling-“treat the dead with ignorance and no respect,” he went on. “Do you know what Bolgakov did?”
Neither Elena nor Iosef knew who Bolgakov was.
“Woman, dead inside the Kremlin gift shop,” Paulinin said. “Greek. Just fell. Boom. Like that. No one saw. She was in a corner, supposedly alone. And Bolgakov, that oaf who could not see an elephant without an electron microscope, looks at the body, declares she had a heart attack. Case closed. The great Bolgakov has spoken. I get the body after they have pawed it with no sense of respect or dignity. I read the report. Broken nose. Bolgakov says she fell on her nose when she had her attack. Cheek bones are intact. Bone in the nose is thin. The nose had been broken before, twice. One rib had been broken before. Simple X rays showed that. Given her weight, even if she didn’t fall flat, the nose should have been flattened, pulp. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” said Iosef patiently.
“Heart attack,” Paulinin went on. “Pills in her purse for angina. Bolgakov, the language expert, can read the pill bottle in Greek but just enough to make out the medication. I get the bottle. Can I read Greek?”
“I do not know,” said Elena.
“I cannot,” Paulinin said with a smile. “But I do not pretend to. I find a Greek. There’s one at the newsstand on Kolpolski Square. I give him the bottle. The pills belong to the woman’s husband. She was carrying them for him. I go back to the body, look at the heart, the arteries. Bolgakov had not bothered to open her. There was nothing wrong with her heart till it stopped. She died of a stroke brought on by a blow to her head. Something hit her in the face. She fell back and struck her head. Hematoma under the hair. Any idiot could see it if he looked, but not the great Bolgakov, chief medical examiner for the Homicide Division.”
“So what did happen?” asked Iosef, knowing that they would not get to the dead man before them till Paulinin’s story was over.
“I asked to see the husband of the dead woman. He was leaving with the body that very day. They had waited two days to get the dead woman to me. I talked to Karpo. He stopped the man at the airport and brought him here. You know what I found?”
“What?” asked Elena, resisting the urge to look at her watch.
“Signs of broken capillaries in the knuckles of his right hand. That is what I found. They had fought. He had punched her. She had fallen and the fools upstairs had missed it.”
“He confessed?” asked Elena.
“Of course,” said Paulinin. “I laid out the evidence. One, two, three, four, five. Built a tower of steel truth. He was a wife beater. Greece has as many as we do in Russia, but possibly Russian women have thicker skulls.”
He looked directly at Elena, who met his eyes.
“Interesting,” she said. “The man on the table.”
“You want some coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you,” said Elena.
Both she and Iosef had made the mistake in the past of accepting Paulinin’s offer of coffee or tea. They had suffered for their attempt to get on his good side, not knowing at the time that he had no good side. The coffee had come in small glass jars with hints of white powder and something that did not look like coffee grounds floating in the tan liquid. They had drunk the vile brew, trying to avoid the floating dots.
“Business, then,” said Paulinin. “My friend here,” he said, touching the hairy chest of the corpse, “and I have had a long talk. He told me all about his attacker.”
With this Paulinin looked down at the face of the dead man, whose eyes were closed.
“And he told you?” Iosef prompted.
“She is five foot and six inches tall, or within an inch. Approximately one hundred and twenty pounds. About thirty years of age. Right-handed but with a sprained wrist. Strong. Determined. If you find her, I can definitely identify her from the description given by our friend.”
He went silent and looked at each of the detectives with a knowing, secret smile.
Iosef briefly considered not asking Paulinin how he knew all of this, but that would be cruel. The man had nothing but his skill and vanity and the need for a small appreciative audience.
“Two of the surviving victims of this woman said she had used her right hand,” he said, holding up his right hand as if clasping a knife. “The others didn’t remember. Our friend here was stabbed by someone with the knife in the left hand.”
“A different attacker?” asked Elena.
“No,” said Paulinin. “Same knife in all the attacks. Same general pattern, but this time the strokes came across from the left and were not as deep. Mind you, they were deep, but not as deep as those she had delivered in the past with her right hand. Hence, there is something wrong with her right hand, probably a strain. She strikes hard, very hard. She could well cause herself injury. The spacing and location of the blows suggest an attacker without plan or pattern. She simply lashes out, probably screams when she attacks. Her height is evident from the angle of the wounds, and her weight is more than suggested by the depth of her thrusts.”
“And you can identify her?” asked Elena.
“Bolgakov didn’t bother to examine my friend here closely. Look at his fingers.”
Both detectives leaned forward to examine the white fingers.
“Under the nails of his right hand,” said Paulinin. “He held up his hands to ward her off after the first two or three blows, but it was too late. He touched her face or arm. There were tiny, very tiny pieces of surface skin under his nails. Definitely a woman.”
“DNA,” said Iosef.
“Absolutely,” said Paulinin. “Find her. Look for a woman with a weak right wrist, possibly bandaged. You know her height, her general description. Questions?”