Hannibal had a pretty good guess of who it was, and sprinted up the stairs to the second floor. When he reached the door he called out his own name before trying the knob. It was unlocked and he pushed in, to find himself staring into the barrel of Ivanovich’s pistol.
“Be cool, Aleksandr,” Hannibal said, raising his hands. He stepped back, using his shoulder to push the door closed, then paused to take in the situation. Yakov Sidorov was in the chair beside the round table, almost exactly where Hannibal had left him. But now his veined hands gripped the arms of the chair. Viktoriya crouched on the far side of the far bed, looking over the edge of it, half her face hidden from view. At the front of the room Ivanovich stood with his pistol thrust toward Hannibal and his left foot on Jamal Krada’s throat.
“It’s me, and I’m alone,” Hannibal said. Ivanovich relaxed a notch and lowered his gun so that it pointed at Krada’s face. The Algerian went pale and Hannibal saw a wet stain begin to spread on the front of his pants.
“You don’t want to kill him,” Hannibal said, slowly lowering his hands. “Well, maybe you do, but you shouldn’t. Do you know who you got there?”
“All I need to know is, he’s the man who came here to kill Viktoriya,” Ivanovich said. He reached into the back of his waistband and flipped a small handgun to Hannibal. It matched the picture on the box Hannibal saw at Krada’s house. “He killed her mother and her husband with that, and here he is to finish the family.”
“Not likely,” Hannibal said. “She’s the reason he killed the other three.”
“Three?” Viktoriya asked, standing and walking just far enough around the beds so she could see Krada. “Jamal, did you kill them all?”
“Wait a minute,” Ivanovich said, sitting on the bed. He kept his gun on Krada even though he was looking at Hannibal. “I thought Boris Tolstaya killed Nikita Petrova.”
Hannibal wondered why these people always used first and last names. “For a while so did I. Boris sure thought he killed Nikita, and Dani Gana held it over him to get what he wanted, a trip to North Africa. They both described a fight and a beating Nikita took. But nobody said anything about throwing him off a roof. I think he was still alive when they left. And when they left, they didn’t know that someone else was looking for him and had followed them to the building.”
“This is silly,” Viktoriya said, leaning back against Sidorov’s arm for support. “Why would he kill my daddy?”
“Because he found out that his wife told your father about your pregnancy,” Hannibal said. “She gets talky when she drinks. See, he couldn’t afford for the word to get out that he had gotten another student pregnant.”
“Another?” she whispered.
“He followed your father from the Russia House that night, hoping to persuade him to remain silent. What he didn’t know is that his wife never named him as the father. She just wanted you yanked out of school, and figured that letting your dad know you got knocked up would do the trick.”
Now Krada sat up. “He didn’t know it was me?”
“No, asshole,” Hannibal said. “Actually, he accused Boris. That’s what set off the fight they had before you got there. But you didn’t see any of that, did you? You just hid in the shadows like the coward you are until Boris and his boys were gone. Then you went up, expecting to talk to Nikita, maybe threaten him, I don’t know. But instead you found him beaten, battered, maybe unconscious. Your problem was 90 percent solved.”
“Nikita was helpless,” Ivanovich said, poking the side of Krada’s head with the muzzle of his pistol. “So you pitched him off the roof, you heartless bastard. You even took his watch off and took his wallet.”
“And you said he killed Mama too?” Viktoriya asked. “That’s impossible.”
“No, girl, it ain’t,” Hannibal said, pulling a chair over and dropping into it. “Aleksandr just took the murder weapon off him, an exotic caliber you don’t see much around here.”
“But there was no reason,” Sidorov said, holding Viktoriya’s arm as if she might faint and fall.
“You’ve got to understand,” Hannibal said. “When Nikita died he left far less than anyone expected, and the mob did nothing for her. Boris sent her money out of guilt, but had to stop when the half million disappeared and he had to go underground. Dani Gana sent her money from a bank back home, kind of a bribe to get her to keep other men away from Viktoriya here. But that stopped once he was certain the girl would marry him. So things were getting a little tight for Raisa. She had no more pockets to tap. But then Viktoriya called this bum again.”
“You were calling him?” The hurt in Ivanovich’s voice was palpable. To her credit, the girl met his eyes without blinking.
“I’m thinking she told him every time anything important happened,” Hannibal said. “But again, Mrs. Krada heard it and figured she’d try the same trick twice. Only this time, when she called Raisa, she told her who the culprit was. Raisa was more desperate than angry. Her daughter was about to leave her in the dust.”
“Oh dear,” Sidorov said. “She tried to blackmail him.”
“Bingo,” Hannibal said. “She called him to demand money, and let him know why. Now, Krada here is no killer, but once a man kills another human…”
“For some, it gets easier each time,” Ivanovich said.
“So he took his little, quiet, easily concealed target pistol over to Raisa’s house, plugged her, and ran off. And you never even suspected it was him, did you?” Hannibal turned to Viktoriya.
“Daddy and Mama?” she said, looking at Krada as if he was a new kind of lizard she had not seen before. “How could you? I love you. I loved you.”
Ivanovich looked at her face, now with tears streaking down it, and then looked at Sidorov’s shocked expression and Hannibal’s look of contempt. Then he looked down at Krada, who forced a terrified smile. Ivanovich nodded and grinned back.
“Smiling in their faces,” he said, “while filling up the hole. So many dirty little faces, in your filthy little, worn-out, broken-down, see-through soul.”
Hannibal knew he was the only person in that room who recognized the Nine Inch Nails lyric, and he knew what came next. Ivanovich pulled Krada to his feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Hannibal asked.
“You are not a killer,” Ivanovich said in a very level, businesslike voice. “I will take this one to a good place and dispose of him. He won’t be found for days and even when he is, he won’t be identifiable.”
Krada’s eyes flared wide, as if it had never occurred to him that such a thing could happen to him. He turned to Viktoriya, who looked at the carpet. Hannibal got to his feet.
“No, Aleksandr. I have to take him to Rissik. He deserves the collar for bending the rules for us the last few days, and this man needs to face justice.”
Ivanovich dismissed Hannibal’s words with a puff of air. “Your justice system isn’t worth shit. My way, the world is rid of a cockroach for good. Your way, he probably goes free.”
“Come on, Aleksandr,” Hannibal said. “I’ve got the murder weapon in my pocket. Besides, he’s going to confess to everything. Won’t you, dickhead?”
Krada looked from the pistol in Ivanovich’s hand to his eyes, swallowed hard, and moved his head up and down like a drinking bird. Hannibal wrapped his hand around Krada’s arm. He hadn’t seemed so small when Hannibal was sitting in his house.
“Let me take him, Aleksandr,” Hannibal said, ignoring the gun and fixing his attention on the real danger, Ivanovich’s eyes. It was one of those times when six seconds felt like a lifetime and Hannibal forgot to breathe.
“All right,” Ivanovich said. “But not without me.”
Hannibal let out a long breath, filled his lungs again, and nodded. He pulled the door open.
“You can’t just leave us here,” Sidorov said. Hannibal had forgotten the other two were in the room.