The button was a great idea, no question, but as a means of escape, it depended entirely on the good will of the individual, or individuals, on the other side of the door.
The cold air cut its way into my skin as I edged toward the back of the refrigerator. I found myself wanting to jam my hands into my pockets. Instead, I began to pull out the bins, to examine them closely, along with the shelves beneath them. I was looking for blood evidence, which I didn’t find, but I was struck by the number of empty bins. There was a lot of food in the refrigerator, including a dozen varieties of cheese and enough fruit to stock a pushcart, but the unit was only a third full. Clearly, it was too large for a single family.
My fingertips and toes were growing numb by the time I gave up the search. My forearms were rapidly following suit. I was wearing a short-sleeved polo shirt, loosely woven, and lightweight tropical slacks, both seemingly as porous as fishnets. The temperature inside the refrigerator could not have been more than a few degrees above freezing.
For a moment, I stood in the doorway, letting warm air from the kitchen wash across my body. Sister Kassia and Tynia were still seated at the table, still engaged in intense conversation. But now the empty space in front of Tynia was taken up by a set of silverware, a service for twelve by the look of it. Tynia was working on the knives, one at a time, coating them with polish, then buffing them until they gleamed. She worked quickly, leaving me to suppose that she’d been assigned a number of duties, and that she faced consequences if they were not completed before the return of her employer.
‘Sister?’ I waited until the nun turned to me. ‘I’m going to close the door. I want you to open it in five minutes. Not before, understand?’ I shifted my gaze to Tynia. Initially, I found her eyes questioning, but then her doubts were replaced by simple recognition. We understood each other now.
When the door closed and the refrigerator went dark, I took several steps back. I couldn’t shake a feeling that the room was contracting around me and I instinctively hunched over, as if avoiding a blow. In that moment, the cold became organic, an alive and hungry parasite burrowing down through my skin.
I was tempted to fight back, to jog in place, to flap my arms, as I knew Mynka had been tempted, as Tynia had been tempted. But there was just so much oxygen in that little room and the harder I worked the sooner it would be exhausted. The only question was which would kill me first, would I freeze to death or would I suffocate?
But these were questions that didn’t need answering. After a time — which I was unable to measure — I began to shiver, a reflex which became more and more intense as the seconds ticked by. Eventually, conserving oxygen ceased to be a viable option. I started to run in place, slowly at first, than faster, until my body produced enough heat to drive the cold away. The effect, as I well knew, would only be temporary. As long as that door remained closed, the cold was an enemy that couldn’t be defeated, or even kept at bay for any length of time.
Literally blind, I groped my way toward what I hoped was the room’s door, only to discover myself up against the back wall. I turned on my heel, aiming to re-trace my steps, but was unable to walk a straight line. I kept lurching into the bins on either side as I shuffled along. By the time I reached the door, I was breathing hard. Because the adrenalin was pumping? Or because my lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen?
I let my index finger rest on the emergency button, wondering how many times Mynka had stood here, how many times she’d pushed the panic button? I wondered if she’d become angry when no one responded. Whether she’d held the button down, smashed her fist on the door, demanded release. Or if she was in fear of some greater punishment, something worse than the cold room.
When I pressed the button, a buzzer sounded on the other side of the door. The buzzer was loud even in the sealed refrigerator; in the kitchen, it must have been ear splitting. I tried to imagine Mynka’s tormentor on the other side of the door, knowing it might have been Margaret or Ronald, or both.
The sound of the buzzer, of course, would only inspire a true sadist to persist, to confine Mynka long enough, before she was killed, to produce an unforeseen consequence. I’d noted this consequence at the crime scene, as had Dr Hyong at the autopsy: lividity that should have been purple-black was rosy pink. That single anomaly, more than any other factor, was responsible for my presence in the Portola townhouse.
I didn’t panic, didn’t pound on the door or repeatedly press the emergency button, as I imagined that Mynka and Tynia had, but I felt an overwhelming sense of relief when Sister Kassia opened the door and I stepped out. The nun was holding a mug of hot coffee and smiling faintly, while Tynia stood by the table, polishing cloth in hand.
I took the mug, cradling it between my fingers until I stopped shivering. ‘Who did it?’ I asked Tynia. When she shook her head, I added, ‘Who put you in the cold room?’
‘Madame,’ she answered.
‘Not Ronald?’
Her sudden smile was contemptuous. ‘Never.’ She turned to Sister Kassia and spoke in rapid-fire Polish.
‘Tynia says that Ronald is a coward, that he only does what his mother tells him to do. She says that when Margaret’s angry, she calls her son, “La Bamba.”?’
‘What about David? Did she have a pet name for David?’
‘Jerk,’ Tynia responded. ‘Always she is saying, “Jerk, do this, do that.” David is hating this, but is also fearing the mother. She is beating her sons from time they are babies.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Mynka is telling me this and I am seeing Madame for myself. When becomes angry, she is crazy woman. Punch, kick, slap. Her sons are pushing her away, but they are never fighting back.’
I nodded, then turned to Sister Kassia. ‘Are you and Tynia finished?’
‘We have a bit more ground to cover. I’ve spent most of the time describing what comes after the women and their children arrive at the shelter.’
‘What’d you tell her?’
‘I told her that we’ll get them jobs as soon as they’re settled in, that their children will be cared for by professionals while they work, that we’ll help them find housing, that legal assistance will be available.’
I left it there and began to search the kitchen for any trace of blood evidence. I didn’t know whether or not a servant has the right to allow a cop into her employer’s home, or if a cop, once admitted, has the right to seize evidence. But if I discovered traces of Mynka’s killing in that kitchen, I intended to document them. Unfortunately, the only evidence I found was evidence of a thorough cleanup, a cleanup that included the floor beneath the refrigerator and beneath a huge dishwasher. In the broom closet, every item, from the dustpan to the mop, was new. That didn’t mean there was no evidence to recover, only that recovery demanded a level of expertise that excluded Harry Corbin.
When I took a chair at the kitchen table next to Sister Kassia and settled down, Tynia was finishing up the last of the teaspoons. By then, we’d been inside the townhouse for about an hour.
‘You’re not going to like this, Harry, so let’s get it on the table.’ Sister Kassia’s brows formed twin arches above her eyes, arches that mirrored the curve of her downturned mouth. ‘Tynia has been in touch with some of the other women.’
I looked over at Tynia. She shrank back in her chair and dropped the spoon she was polishing. I listened to it clatter on the tabletop, thinking that she was right to be afraid.
‘Harry?’ The nun tapped my arm. ‘There are five women staying in the Astoria apartment. Tynia only contacted two of them.?.?.’