“That’s good. You did very well, Elizabeth. We’re going to arrest these men. It may be necessary for you to identify them again, in a lineup. They won’t be able to see you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Your testimony will help put very dangerous men behind bars. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is very grateful.”
“You’re welcome.”
He smiled at that. “We’ll talk again. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next weeks. If you need anything, Elizabeth, anything at all, one of the marshals will get it for you, or you can contact me. We want you to be as comfortable as possible.”
“Thank you.”
Tension she hadn’t been aware of melted away when he left.
As Terry had earlier, Griffith sat on the arm of her chair. “He was tough on you because it’s going to be hard. What you’re doing, what the defense team will do to discredit your testimony. It’s not going to be an easy road.”
“I know. Are you still part of the investigation?”
“It’s a joint investigation, because Riley and me pushed for it. It’s the feds’ ball, but we’re still on the court. How are you holding up?”
“I’m all right. Everyone’s been very considerate. Thank you for getting my things.”
“No problem. Do you need anything else?”
“I’d like my laptop. I should have asked you before, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“You’re not going to be able to e-mail anyone, go into chat rooms, post on boards.”
“It’s not for that. I want to study, and research. If I could have my computer, some of my books …”
“I’ll check it out.”
That had to be good enough.
When night fell, they put her in a car with John and Terry. Griffith and Riley drove behind; more marshals took the lead.
As they sped along the expressway, it occurred to her that only twenty-four hours ago she’d put on her new red dress, her high, sparkling shoes.
And Julie, eyes bright, voice giddy, had sat beside her in a cab. Alive.
Everything had been so different.
Now everything was different again.
They pulled directly into the garage of a simple two-story house with a wide, deep yard. But for the car, the garage stood empty—no tools, no boxes, no debris.
The door leading to the interior boasted a deadlock.
The man who opened the door had some gray threaded through his dark brown hair. Though nearly as tall as John, he was more filled out—muscular in jeans and a polo shirt, his weapon holstered at his side.
He stepped back so they could enter the kitchen—bigger than the one they’d just left. The appliances more modern, the floor a buff-colored tile.
“Liz, this is Deputy Marshal Cosgrove.”
“Bill.” He extended a hand and an encouraging smile to Elizabeth. “Welcome home. Deputy Peski—that’s Lynda—is doing a perimeter check. We’ll be keeping you safe tonight.”
“Oh … But—”
“We’ll be back in the morning,” John told her. “But we’ll get you settled in before we go.”
“Why don’t I take you up, show you your room,” Terry suggested, and before Elizabeth could agree or protest, Terry had picked up her suitcase and started out.
“She looks younger than I figured,” Bill commented.
“She’s worn out, still a little glazed over. But the kid’s solid. She held up to two hours with Pomeroy without one fumble. A jury’s going to love her.”
“A teenage girl taking down the Volkovs.” Bill shook his head. “Go figure.”
Sergei Volkov was in his prime, a wealthy man who’d come from wretched poverty. By the age of ten he’d been an accomplished thief who’d known every corner, every rat hole, in his miserable ghetto in Moscow. He’d killed his first man at thirteen, gutting him with an American-made combat knife he’d stolen from a rival. He’d broken the arm of the rival, a wily boy of sixteen.
He still had the knife.
He’d risen through the ranks of the Moscow bratva, becoming a brigadier before his eighteenth birthday.
Ambition had driven him higher until, with his brother Mikhail, he’d taken over the bratva in a merciless, bloody coup even as the Soviet Union crumbled. It was, in Sergei’s mind, a moment of opportunity and change.
He married a woman with a lovely face and a taste for finer things. She’d given him two daughters, and he’d been amazed at how deeply he’d loved them from their first breath. He’d wept when he’d held each child for the first time, overcome with joy and wonder and pride.
But when, at last, he’d held his son, there were no tears. That joy, that wonder and pride, were too deep for tears.
His children, his love and ambition for them, pushed him to emigrate to America. There he could present them with opportunities, with a richer life.
And he’d deemed it time to expand.
He’d seen his oldest child married to a lawyer, and had held his first grandchild. And wept. He’d set up his younger daughter—his artist, his dreamer—in her own gallery.
But his son, ah, his son, his businessman with a degree from the University of Chicago, there was his legacy. His boy was smart, strong, clearheaded, cool-blooded.
All the hopes and hungers of the young boy in the Moscow ghetto had been realized in the son.
He worked now in his shade garden of his Gold Coast estate, waiting for Ilya to arrive. Sergei was a hard and handsome man with shocks of white waving through his dark hair, thick black brows over onyx eyes. He kept himself rigorously fit and satisfied his wife, his mistress and the occasional whore.
His gardens were another source of pride. He had landscapers and groundskeepers, of course, but spent hours a week when he could puttering, digging in the dirt, planting some new specimen with his own hands.
If he hadn’t become a pakhan, Sergei believed he might have lived a happy, very simple life as a gardener.
In his baggy shorts, the star tattoos on his knees grubby with earth and mulch, he continued to dig as he heard his son approach.
“Chicken shit,” Sergei said. “It’s cheap, easy to come by, and it makes the plants very happy.”
Confounded, as always, by his father’s love of dirt, Ilya shook his head. “And smells like chicken shit.”
“A small price to pay. My hostas enjoy, and see there? The lungwort will bloom soon. So many secrets in the shade and shadows.”
Sergei looked up then, squinting a bit. “So. Have you found her?”
“Not yet. We will. I have a man checking at Harvard. We’ll have her name soon, and from there, we’ll have her.”
“Women lie, Ilya.”
“I don’t think she lied about this. She studies medicine there, and is unhappy. Her mother, a surgeon, here in Chicago. I believe this is also true. We’re looking for the mother.”
Ilya crouched down. “I won’t go to prison.”
“No, you won’t go to prison. Nor will Yakov. I work on other avenues as well. But I’m not pleased one of my most valued brigadiers sits now in a cell.”
“He won’t talk.”
“This doesn’t worry me. He will say nothing, as Yegor will say nothing. The American police? Musor.” He dismissed them as garbage with a flick of the wrist. “They will never break such as these. Nor would they break you if we were not able to convince the judge on the bail. But this girl, she worries me. It worries me, Ilya, that she was there and lives. It worries me that Yakov had no knowledge she and the other were there.”
“If I hadn’t been delayed, I would have been there, and would have stopped it. Then there would be no witness.”
“Communication, this was a problem. And is also been dealt with.”
“You said to keep an eye on him, Papa, to stay close to him until he could be disciplined for stealing.”
Ilya shoved up, yanked off his sunglasses. “I would have cut off his hand myself for stealing from the family. You gave him everything, but all he thinks of is more. More money, more drugs, more women, more show. My cousin. Suki.” He snarled the word for traitor. “He spits in our faces, again and again. You were good to him, Papa.”