Soon. Very soon.
42
McDERMOTT WALKS into the station at a barely controlled pace. Powers comes up to him and tells him, “The affidavits are on your desk. Albany will be here any minute.”
McDermott checks his cell phone, hears a message from Riley.
“We’re looking for Harland Bentley, too. There’s a G-lady here for you?” He gestures to McDermott’s desk. “Got a real mouth on her, that one.”
McDermott allows himself a smile. That much is true.
“Hey, Mickey.” Special Agent Jane McCoy gets out of her chair and winks at him.
“‘Mickey’?”
“Yeah, it’s my new nickname for you.”
“You got tired of ‘Shithead,’ did you? How’s business in CT?”
“Business is booming. Can we talk somewhere?”
The cops and the FBI are generally none too friendly with one another. But years ago, when McDermott was a new detective and McCoy was in Narcotics, they worked together on a large-scale bust of a west-side street gang.
Nowadays, McCoy is in counterterrorism. Since she’s the only fibbie he knows, and it’s close enough to immigration, he called her in on this.
They sit in the same conference room that McDermott has taken over as his own, filled with information on Terry Burgos. McCoy, never one to miss much, manages to take it all in without comment.
She throws a file on the desk. “This is the A-file on Leonid Koslenko. You’re not supposed to have this. Copy what you want. Give it all back.”
McDermott takes the manila folder and nods. “Thanks, Jane.”
“The guy at ICE who ran Koslenko retired ten years ago. He was kept in a general assignment pool after that.”
McDermott shakes his head. He doesn’t get the meaning.
“Meaning,” McCoy says, “since he’d been in the country for ten years without incident, there was no one in particular assigned to look at him. Sounds like maybe there’s a reason to look at him now?”
“That’s a fair statement.” He smiles at her.
“You’re talking like a fed now, Mickey. You’re scaring me.” She tucks her curly hair behind her ear and holds her stare on him a moment too long. Then she blinks it off, turning serious. “Leonid Koslenko was born in 1967 to a wealthy family in Leningrad. When he was fifteen-1982-he was sent to an institution in Lefortovo. He was released almost exactly two years later.”
“An institution? You mean an insane asylum?”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Asylum, prison-sometimes hard to tell the difference in the Soviet Union. But the records showed it was a mental illness, yes.”
“Okay. But he was released after two years?” McDermott recoils. “What, he was cured?”
McCoy is with him on that, one side of her mouth curling up. “He was diagnosed with ‘creeping paranoid schizophrenia.’”
“Which means?”
“Which means, from what I understand, absolutely nothing. Understand, back then, the Soviets locked up political dissidents, Christians, all sorts of people they didn’t want in the general populace. But they didn’t lock them up in prisons. They locked them up in loony bins.”
He winces. He used to use phrases like that, too.
“They used bullshit diagnoses like ‘creeping schizophrenia.’ They would keep them for years that way.”
That makes sense. But the difference here is that American doctors have also diagnosed Koslenko with paranoid schizophrenia. He tells McCoy so.
She shrugs. “So maybe he really did belong there. Regardless, he escaped from the Soviet Union in 1986 and applied to the United States. His parents helped him. And that was the excuse he used. He said he’d been persecuted for religious and political beliefs, and that was why he did time in Lefortovo. And, apparently, the fancy lawyers who helped him out convinced our government that he was telling the truth. Here’s the kicker: You’re going to love who helped him in the States.”
He doesn’t have to guess. But why burst her bubble?
“Harland Bentley,” she announces. “The Harland Bentley. And his wife, Natalia.”
He nods.
“I’m not surprising you,” she gathers.
“Not with that part, no. Jane, he went into that asylum in 1982. He got out in 1984. He got over the Soviet border in 1986 and came to America.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“What happened in those two years? Eighty-four to eighty-six.”
She smiles, but only for a moment. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Mickey.” She leans forward, touches the file she has given him. “And that’s why you’re not supposed to have this file.”
I RETURN TO MY OFFICE after talking to Gwendolyn. I still haven’t heard back from McDermott. I return to the notes that were delivered to me, spread out on my desk. I’ve been over these notes a dozen times over the past few days, but I’m certain that I’m still missing something.
The first one:
If new evil emerges, do heathens ever link past actions? God’s answer is near.
Second:
I will inevitably lose life. Ultimately, sorrow echoes the heavens. Ever sensing. Ever calling out. Never does vindication ever really surrender easily. The immediate messenger endures the opposition, but understanding requires new and loving betrayal and new yearning.
Third:
Others that hunted ensured respect. Sinners know not our wrath. Our ultimate response shall ensure consequences, reviling ethical traitors.
The first note makes sense, at least. He’s talking about a link between his crimes and Terry Burgos’s murders. The third one makes some sense, too, I guess. Our ultimate response shall ensure consequences, reviling ethical traitors. Reviling ethical traitors? It seems awkward, forced.
The more I think about it, the more I agree with Stoletti about the second note. The word choices are odd. Some of it is nonsensical.
Never does vindication ever really surrender easily.
But understanding requires new and loving betrayal and new yearning.
Why did he insert ever in a sentence that didn’t need it? Why use new twice?
Maybe-maybe these notes aren’t meant to be taken literally. We’re expecting someone following Burgos’s crusade to be mentally ill, like him, mixed in with some pathological religious fer vor. These notes bear the markings of all of that.
But maybe there’s more to these notes. Maybe these are in some kind of code.
I get out a separate piece of paper and play with the words, looking for anything. I read it with every other word. Every third word. I don’t discern a pattern. I try to focus on the extra words, what they might mean. I come up empty. But I can’t shake the feeling that some of these words look like they don’t belong-not just ever and now but words like reviling.
Forced.
Why did he need these words, in particular? What role did they play in this code?
Wait a second. Wait a second.
I start scribbling, playing out my theory. My heart starts to pound as it crystallizes. He chose those words because he needed a word that started with that particular letter. He chose ever because he needed an e.
I write the first letter from each word in the first note.
I-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P-A-G-A-I-N.
Jesus Christ.