Dangerous Evidence

10

The workday had long since drawn to a close, yet in Detective Petelina’s office, all the lights remained on. Elena was sitting behind her desk, her back to the darkened window. The wall clock that her irritated husband had given her as a present many years ago lay in a box on the bottom shelf of her bookcase. This is how she created the illusion that the day was still alive and she could go on working as calmly as ever.

Petelina was examining the unpleasant photographs on her laptop that Mikhail Ustinov had taken at the scene of the incident. Or, was it the scene of the crime after all? Had the girl jumped off the roof on her own or had someone been there to help her? Who could profit by her death? Inevitably, Elena felt a certain professional anger whenever a young girl was killed.

The detective opened the passport of Ekaterina Igorevna Grebenkina. It had been issued in the district center of Grayvoron, in Belgorod Region. The girl in the photo was only fourteen, one year older than Nastya. The shy teenager did not much resemble the twenty-year-old woman who had met her demise on the hood of a car. Despite her battered face, it was clear that she had been attractive. It was unfortunate that she had made such a poor professional choice, but this could be written down to her parents’ lack of oversight just as well. Her dad had only recalled her existence when he was fifty, while her mother eloped to seek her fortune abroad.

The door cracked open and the gaunt and, as per usual, disheveled Mikhail Ustinov slipped into the office. They had agreed that Petelina would stay late and await his preliminary findings.

“What do you think, Misha?” asked Detective Petelina and instantly went on to share all the doubts she had accumulated. “For a suicide, this girl acted much too quickly and decisively. She met her dad, promised some mysterious surprise, climbed to the roof and… If she had wanted to hurt her father, then she would have at least yelled something from the roof – forced him to feel guilty and to try to talk her down. Young women, as a rule, spend a long time deciding to take that final step. It’s not only the end result that’s important to them: They care about how they’ll look after the fact… But in this case – well, it’s just a nightmare and no more.”

“Are you considering the murder option?” the Tadpole entered the conversation, taking a seat across from the detective.

“It could be an accident. Maybe she bent over to shout something to her father, slipped and – ”

“That, I completely agree with,” the forensic expert asserted decisively.

Petelina interlocked her fingers and looked the self-sure expert directly in the eyes. The Tadpole had a tendency to speak in riddles, expecting his interlocutor to figure things out.

“Alright, let’s have it,” the detective said impatiently.

“Let me explain,” the expert began with his favorite phrase. “I did not uncover any evident traces of a struggle either on the body of the deceased or on the roof – torn clothes or missing buttons, for instance.”

“So it was an accident then. The girl bent over and lost her balance.”

“I didn’t finish.” Mikhail Ustinov produced a plastic doll from a bag.

“What is this now?”

The forensic expert stood the doll on the edge of the table.

“We shall conduct an investigative experiment. Let us assume that the young woman is bending over, losing her balance and plummeting down.” Mikhail illustrated his narrative with the doll. “As she falls, she flips and as a result lands either onto her stomach or onto her back, but with her legs pointing away from the building. Correct?”

Elena got up and circled the desk to see the doll on the floor.

“But the girl was lying – » the detective began to grasp what the expert was getting at.

“Absolutely! Face-up, with her head away from the building. This could only happen if she had originally fallen backwards.” The expert demonstrated his version of the fall with the doll. “What’s our conclusion then?”

“She was pushed.” Petelina grew pensive and then shook her head doubtfully. “Push me.”

“You?”

“Go on and push, Misha. This an investigative experiment, remember?”

The flustered expert raised his hands so as not to press against the detective’s breasts and gave her shoulders a sharp shove. Elena started back but managed to grab the Tadpole by the cuff.

“The survival instinct,” she explained. “You proved yourself the Grebenkina fell backwards, so she could have been pushed only against her chest. The girl had long nails. There must be at least a few fibers caught in them. Did you check under her nails?”

“I’m sorry, Detective Petelina. The incident took place in a residential area. There were kids gawking from the windows – I wanted to be done with the body as quickly as possible.”

“We need to warn the medical examiner.”

“I do have some findings about the brandy.”

“The bottle from the roof?”

“Yup. The bottle was opened immediately before being drunk from. I established this through the absence of oxidization on the lid’s threading. The only fingerprints I found on the bottle belong to Ekaterina Grebenkina, the deceased. I measured the brandy’s temperature when I found the bottle. It was five degrees warmer than the outside temperature. You may recall it was 41 degrees out today.”

The expert paused, awaiting an answer to his unasked question.

“If Grebenkina took the bottle up there in her purse,” Petelina began to think out loud, “then the brandy couldn’t’ve cooled so quickly. If the brandy had been brought to the roof earlier, its temperature would have matched the air temperature. And yet, when we found it, the temperature was still falling to match the ambient temperature. This means that someone was waiting for Katya Grebenkina on the roof with the brandy.”

“The note about the pimp,” the expert reminded. “‘Boris is a jerk,’ remember..?”

“Okay. What do we have?” Petelina sat back down at her desk. The thin pencil in her hand began to produce arrows, circles and question marks on a blank sheet of paper. “Katya meets her father and suddenly runs off to get up on the roof. But why? Boris Manuylov, her pimp, is waiting for her up there to commemorate the suicide of Stella Sosuksu. However, Katya has decided to kill her pimp in front of her father.”

“I don’t think that pimps are so sentimental,” remarked Misha. “He couldn’t care less about commemorating a dead girl.”

“Let’s say you’re right. Then here’s another possible version. What if the father had come to loathe his prostitute-daughter? We only have Grebenkin’s words for what happened. The car owner and his friend saw him with his daughter. But they have absolutely no sense of how much time passed. For instance, how many minutes passed between the girl entering the building and falling? And what was Grebenkin doing in this interval? They don’t even remember whether he remained in the courtyard. Then, after the body hits the car, they’re in utter shock and remember nothing whatsoever. Like, for example, how quickly did Grebenkin appear? What if he pushed Katya off the roof and then took the elevator down?”

“Not to mention that Grebenkin was heard threatening the pimp.”

“This fits the theory of blind revenge. Both the debased daughter and her seducer.”

“Grebenkin seems more like a simpleton than some adroit revenger.”

Elena Petelina nodded, glanced over the doodle she had made and sighed.

“Nothing but questions.”

“Wouldn’t be much fun if there weren’t any.”

Before leaving, the Tadpole nodded toward the framed photograph on the detective’s desk.

“Shall I leave you the doll? For your daughter?”

Elena looked at the photo of Nastya on her first day of first grade, holding a bouquet of flowers and wearing a great big bow in her hair.

“Oh, Misha,” she smiled. “She’s given up dolls and taken up curling. She prefers 40 pound granite rocks to dolls these days.”

As soon as the forensic expert had left, the office phone rang. The detective picked up the receiver and heard a polite question.

“Detective Petelina?”

Petelina was happy to hear the voice of Ivan Ivanovich Lopakhin, the medical examiner. She did not know exactly how old he was but was sure that he had performed autopsies and written up findings for detectives who had long since retired. As Lopakhin liked to quip, “The best surgeon in the world hasn’t got a thing on me. Not one of my patients has ever complained.”

“I was just thinking of you, Dr. Lopakhin.”

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Sometimes I get the impression that I’m working in his waiting room.”

“That would make me the travel agent who books your patients.”

“One-way tickets only – no round trips.”

Elena liked to chat with the medical examiner and assumed that it was only thanks to his self-effacing irony that Lopakhin had managed to hold out at his job for so long. However, it was time to get down to business.

“Dr. Lopakhin, I have arranged for the body of Ekaterina Grebenkin to be delivered to you. Please pay special attention to her epithelial tissue as well as any fibers under her nails.”

“Actually, I called you precisely because I am so attentive. The poor girl’s body was first delivered to the nearest morgue. We were forced to arrange for her to be delivered here, to the police morgue. And here is what the orderlies told me…”

“I’m all ears.”

“Imagine this, Detective Petelina, there were already two men who came to visit the girl at the hospital morgue today. One said he was her friend, the other her uncle. They came separately. The common thread was that each one wanted to look at her belongings, especially her purse.”

Elena frowned and looked over at the couch. There, in a plastic bag, lay the dead girl’s purse. Elena had automatically dropped it there upon entering her office and turning on the light. Here was the price you paid on the first day of work after a vacation!

“Thank you, Dr. Lopakhin. As soon as you find anything…”

“By all means.”

The detective said farewell to the medical examiner and retrieved the purse. The latch clicked. Elena’s gloved fingers carefully unzipped the zipper. Petelina dumped the contents of the purse onto her empty desk. Her eyes instantly fixed on the most important item.

She couldn’t believe it!

11

Elena’s dissatisfied mother was waiting for her when she got home that night. Olga Ivanovna Gracheva lived in the building next door. She would meet Nastya as the girl came back from school and take her to curling practice. The sixty-year-old woman was not much for diplomacy and spoke whatever was on her mind.

“Normal people miss their homes when they go away on vacation. Un-normal people miss their work.”

“I had to stay late, mom. There was business to take care of.”

“Criminals, eh? How about sparing a thought for your family? The apartment is dusty. The fridge is empty. I had to haul the groceries from the store all on my own to make dinner.”

“What dust? We were gone for two weeks.”

“Dust doesn’t vacation in Thailand. Dust stays here and looks for ways to get into the house. If there’s no one around to clean, then just like those lazy Romans in Pompeii, dust will bury our entire city.”

“Pompeii was buried by Vesuvius erupting, mom.”

“Vesuvius-Shmesuvius. If you can’t find the time for it, find a maid. Cleaning your apartment gives me a backache.”

Nastya emerged from her bedroom. Elena noticed a pent-up sadness in the thirteen-year-old’s eyes.

“What happened, Nastya?”

“While I was off riding that cute elephant in Thailand, I missed the Moscow curling tournament.”

“Big deal. There’ll be other tournaments.”

“The coach got angry and made Vera the skip. Now she’s the team captain. The girls are saying that I’m going to be vice skip now. It’s not fair.”

Elena hugged her daughter.

“At least we had a good time on the beach.”

“You and Valeyev had a good time. Locking yourself away from me every day.”

Elena became embarrassed. Wearing light clothes on the warm beach, she and Valeyev could barely keep their hands off each other like insatiable a pair of newlyweds on their honeymoon.

“You left the girl on her own?” Mrs. Gracheva perked up. “In a strange and savage country with elephants and jungles?”

The front door opened. Marat Valeyev had returned from work. A month before their vacation, Police Captain Valeyev had moved in with Major of Justice Petelina. The two did not feel it necessary to keep their relationship from their coworkers.

“Still a captain?” Mrs. Gracheva greeted her “sonny-in-law.”

“Mom, it’s time for you to go home,” Elena instantly jumped in. “I’ll do the cleaning Saturday and thanks for the dinner.”

“Saturday is still a whiles away,” burbled Mrs. Gracheva, getting her things together in the entryway.

Initially, she had objected to her “smart, successful and beautiful” daughter’s relationship with “an ordinary captain, and a Tatar to boot – God help him.” But once she saw that Lena was not going to change her mind, the mother began to push her agenda in other ways. Accordingly, Mrs. Gracheva used every possible opportunity to barb her “sonny’ with a look or a word.

“Are you planning on formalizing your relationship? Or is the plan simply to have a fling and then move on?”

“Let’s talk about that later, mother. Here is your scarf.”

“The scarf, of course! We wouldn’t want me to catch a cold! After all, who would make the soup and look after little Nastya if I did?”

Elena bore this reproach calmly, figuring that it was best to keep quiet. Her mother, however, did not share the same virtue.

“Since you’re already living together, you should at least help the bonehead get promoted or something. You hear me, Valeyev?” Mrs. Gracheva raised her voice. “I won’t give you my blessing to get married until you’re at least a major!”

“Oh Lord!” sighed Elena as she shut the door behind her mother. “Don’t pay her any attention, Marat. She wants what’s best for us.”

“I can only imagine what would happen if she starts wanting what’s worst for us…”

Two hours later, by the light of the bedside lamp, Elena was sitting on the edge of her bed, applying nourishing lotion to her dry skin, bronzed from the two-week tan. Marat rolled up to her from behind and reached his hand under her nightgown.

“Argh! Watch your ice claws!” Elena tensed and slapped at the pushy man’s hand. “What happened with the pimp? Why couldn’t you locate him?”

Marat was used to the fact that Lena always talked about her work and was happy to talk business even in bed.

“Boris Manuylov wasn’t at the modeling agency, but we found out a lot about him.”

“Anything interesting?”

“He’s thirty-four. He used to play guitar in a popular rock band when he was twenty. Supposedly, he was really good. The band toured around the country and acted like real rockers – you know, drinking, groupies, orgies. Then one day, in one of the towns they were playing in, a crook burst into Manuylov’s room – Manuylov was in there with his girl. The crook did the wise thing. He didn’t kill anyone and didn’t even beat the boy up. Instead, he stuck Manuylov’s left hand between the door and the jamb and rocked the door back several times across his fingers.”

“That’s horrible!”

“As a result, they had to amputate his middle finger – the other ones are just mangled. That’s how Manuylov got the name Birdless. He’ll never play guitar again. It’s worth noting that all of this happened because of the girl.”

“Got it. Since that time he didn’t hold women in much esteem, so he became a pimp.”

“That’s it.”

Elena finished massaging the lotion into her legs and feet. Her hands moved up to her lower back.

“Want me to help?” Marat offered.

The woman lay down on her stomach. Marat happily rolled her nightgown up to her shoulders. His eyes sparkled.

“Why just look at you!”

“Don’t get distracted. Why didn’t you catch up with Manuylov at his apartment?”

“It was empty, but he won’t get very far. I know his type. He’s hiding out somewhere this very moment, drinking no doubt. He may try to go back home in the morning. We put a mark on the door and warned the beat cop. As soon as old Birdless turns up, the local cops will detain him. Then we’ll put the squeeze on him and get him to talk.”

“A mark? What kind of mark?”

“A thief’s mark. A piece of transparent plastic from a bottle. We wedged it into the door crack. Burglars use this trick to case apartments – to make sure the owners are out of town. We just adapted it for our own ends. If the mark falls out, then Manuylov came back. The beat cop will check it in the morning and call a patrol car.”

“Learning from the burglars.”

“They learn from us, we learn from them. Symbiosis.”

“That same beat cop knows very well that Boris Manuylov is a pimp. Why didn’t he arrest him earlier?”

“Female instinct is incorrigible.”

“What instinct?”

“To have men take care of them.”

“It’s the male instinct that’s incorrigible – hey there, the deal was you rub my back, not my butt. I already did that part, thank you very much.”

“You’re tanned all over, except here. And your skin is all soft…”

“What are your fingers doing? Oh you animal!”

Elena tried to slap him away, but Marat grabbed her arm and flipped the woman onto her back. Elena encountered a pair of clouded eyes which left no doubts about his intentions.

“Who’s a slave to his instincts now? You male anima – ”

She did not get a chance to finish her thought. Marat sealed her mouth with a long kiss. His fingers wandered along the most intimate parts of her body, encountering no resistance. Responding to his attention, the woman relaxed and at some point herself guided her lover between her legs.

With growing passion, Elena replied to the man’s thrusts. Her arousal grew. Suddenly she recalled the birth control pills that had fallen out of Katya Grebenkina’s purse. It was time for her to think about some birth control as well. It was so difficult to control Marat when he was unbridled like this. Or was it better to have some faith in God’s plan? What would her mother say if—

“Oh Marat,” the woman’s lips whispered, as a series of shuddering thrusts culminated in a deep burst of delight.

12

Dirty white letters and the silhouette of a cat with a raised tail glowed in the red storefront. Alex Bayukin checked the tattered note in his hand: Wild Kitties, a strip club. He was at the right place.

Following his severe concussion in combat, Alex did not put much stock in his memory. He had gotten the strip club’s address – where the pimp might be – from the floozies at the modeling agency. Initially, the proud little bitches had refused to tell him anything. But their silence lasted exactly up until the moment that the bimbos realized who was more of a threat to them – the runaway pimp or the unwanted guest with the crazed look in his eyes.

While they were at it, the long-legged fillies also provided a nice description of Birdless Boris and even threw in an image of his insolent mug on one of their cell phones. It wouldn’t be hard to spot a goon like him: Birdless, who was of average height and a little older than thirty, sported a shoulder-length rocker’s mane and wore a guitar-shaped pendant around his neck. For clothes, he seemed to prefer dress-shirts with unbuttoned collars, vests, and leather jackets adorned with multiple zippers. The greatest distinguishing mark, however, was the absent middle finger on his left hand.

A 240 lbs. mountain of a bouncer towered before the entrance to the strip club. Alex could barely keep himself from kicking the man in the apex of his wide stance. For his part, the bouncer looked askance at the Alex’s dirty shoes and standard-issue pilot’s jacket that Alex’s friend, a helicopter pilot, had give him.

“I’m fresh out of the army, brother. It’s my first day in the capital,” explained ex-Captain Bayukin.

The bouncer smirked and told Alex to buy a ticket for a thousand rubles. Then, he scanned Alex with a handheld metal detector. When the metal detector squealed, the bouncer’s eyebrow rose inquisitively.

“If it ain’t these,” grinned Alex, demonstrating his keys and phone, “maybe I’m just too eager to get in.” He made sure to hold his hands at the level of his waist to screen the Yarygin Pistol tucked in his belt.

The bouncer reciprocated the grin.

“Go nuts, bud. It’s a white party in there tonight.”

The most conspicuous part of the semi-dark, music-filled hall was a catwalk that terminated in a pole. Girls in snow-white lingerie that resembled bridal wear would appeared on the catwalk. As they danced, “the brides” parted with their inhibition and their clothes, which were evidently supposed to symbolize innocence. The simple conceit was aimed squarely below the belts of the male onlookers. By the end of the striptease, the former “prudes” were left with only their shoes, thongs and garters. At this point, the now “mature” women would descend and walk along the snug alcoves of the club’s floor, searching for a customer’s lap among the alcoves’ plush seats.

Alex sidled up to the bar and ordered a whiskey. It was a good thing that his general-father had outfitted him with money to carry on his search. The action around the pole was bedazzling. Having taken in several dances and three servings of booze, Alex recalled his reason for coming here in the first place.

The fingerless pimp! Where was that gimp, anyway?

There were no mangled hands to be seen along the bar, so Alex turned and began walking along the plush alcoves. The dim lighting concealed the customers’ faces, but thankfully current hairstyles prescribed short haircuts, whereas the pimp wore his long.

And there he was, a solitary figure with a shoulder-length mane sitting in a corner booth – and he had on a vest!

Alex bent down and coughed politely.

“Excuse me, you haven’t seen…”

A pendant with a guitar glinted on the man’s chest. The hand holding the glass looked more like a cleft claw, with a gap where the middle finger should have been.

Alex plunked down beside him.

“What’s up, Birdless. I’ve come here for you.”

“I don’t believe we’ve – » The pimp was peering into Alex’s face trying to remember him.

“Relax. My memory’s no good either anymore. But I do know one thing for certain. You’re going to give me Katya’s purse as well as the envelope.”

“What envelope?” the pimp tensed up.

“Well at least you didn’t ask who Katya was.” Alex grabbed Birdless’s balls and twisted his fist. “Your whore took an envelope that didn’t belong to her. You’re going to return it.”

“I don’t know a damn thing,” the pimp whimpered.

Alex tightened his grip.

“Hand over the envelope,” he whispered ominously, “or you’ll lose something a bit more vital than your middle finger.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“Why don’t you think a little harder. Maybe you’ll recall after all…”

“Yes, yes!” begged Boris.

Alex relaxed his hand.

“Where’s the envelope?”

“It’s downstairs. Hang on, I’ll go get it.”

The pimp signaled and a nude beauty appeared across from Alex. Spreading her legs, she straddled Alex’s knees; then, wrapping her fingers around his neck she began to gyrate her head and rear to the music’s rhythm. Startled, Alex found a pair of plump, stiff nipples tittering inches away from his lips. He wanted to bite them and, unwittingly, squeezed the dancer’s waist with his arms.

“You gotta pay extra for that, friend!” the girl warned.

Alex removed his hands and suddenly noticed that Boris had vanished.

“Where’d he go?”

“No third wheels. He ordered you a private dance, handsome.”

“Where’s Birdless?” Pushing away the stripper, Alex jumped up from the sofa.

“Easy!” the stripper became upset. “You won’t even thank me?”

Alex grasped her implication and stuck two thousand-ruble bills into the garter on the girl’s thigh.

“Where did Boris run off to?”

“He went downstairs, I think. We have a sauna down there.” The girl pointed and licked her finger suggestively with her extended tongue. “Wish I had someone with your energy – just maybe in a more capable body, bunny.”

Downstairs, Alex found himself in a lounge dimly illuminated in red light. A door led to a VIP-only sauna from which wafted the scent of dry lavender and music filled with female moans. Standing next to a small but well-stocked bar, a cute, plump girl in a skintight black leotard smiled at him politely. She was wearing riding boots, leather shorts and a vest that was doing its utmost to rein in the silicone implants struggling to get out.

“You are expected,” the little donut cooed through puffy lips, pouring a glass of champagne.

Alex thirstily gulped down the cold drink and opened the door to the indicated room. Here, he found two bronze-skinned girls in white bras and stockings, writhing alluringly from a giant bed with a coffee-colored cover. Various animal skins and rugs lay covering the floor. Like a cat, one of the bronze-skinned girls began crawling towards Alex. She rubbed herself playfully against his leg and began to unfasten his belt. As the female fingers slipped beneath his clothes, Alex’s breathing became halting. As if by miracle, the bachelor’s most improbable fantasies were coming true.

At this moment, something fell softly onto the bearskin rug. Terror distorted the girl’s dark face. Alex turned around and saw his fallen gun. Like a frothy wave against a cliff face, his reveries came shattering against reality.

Zipping his zipper, Alex darted out of the room and stuck his gun into the silicone implants of the donut in black.

“Where’s Birdless at? Start talking, bitch!”

“He ran out!” The girl glanced at the emergency exit at the end of the hallway.

“Did he tell you to distract me?”

“A customary surprise for our favorite customers.”

Enraged, Alex headed for the emergency exit. His mind was having difficulty coming to terms with the realities of living in the city. Everything here is so goddamn customary. He wished he could shoot holes in the girl’s over-inflated balloons and shout “Surprise!”

In the meantime, outside in the parking lot, Boris Manuylov had reached his white Honda. He plunked down behind the wheel and checked to see if the psycho from the club was still chasing him. Seeing no one, he took two deep breaths to calm himself and slid the key into the ignition. The psycho had been diverted, while he had managed to keep his envelope. It was time to get the hell out of dodge.

At this moment, a dark figure rose from behind the driver’s seat. A garrote fashioned from a rope slipped around the pimp’s throat and pulled tight, binding him tight to the headrest.

“Here we are then,” a sinister voice whispered in his ear.