Karpo nodded and left the room.
“They will die,” said Alexi, growing a bit more calm when the door was closed.
“Let us both hope that they do not,” said Rostnikov.
The plan was breaking down. Not all district stations had a time or even a place where all the officers could be brought together. Elena and Sasha could gather officers on each shift, but that would require Magda Stern to be at each gathering. It could take days. It could take weeks. And what if he wasn’t from the adjoining districts? Maybe he was from farther out. Maybe he wasn’t even a police officer.
Magda Stern had said that not only was he in uniform but he got into a police car after attacking her. Could it have been a car disguised to look like a police car? That was possible.
As for current photographs of the officers in each district, some stations had a full set, some had a few, and some had only old ones. Elena suggested that they methodically take photographs of every officer from top to bottom, starting with Trotsky Station. If an officer was home sick, they would go to his home.
“It could take months,” said Sasha, holding his forehead. “I need aspirin.”
They were seated in Elena’s cubbyhole office. Sasha sat across from her. The desk between them was very small.
“You have another idea?” she asked.
“We are already trying my idea,” he said as Elena dug into her drawer and came up with a small, white plastic container with a red top. She handed it to Sasha, who opened it and gulped three white capsules dry. He coughed, swallowed, and managed to get them down. He returned the container to Elena. There were only two pills left.
“Do you have any other ideas?” she asked.
“You have a camera?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Film?”
“We will talk to Porfiry Petrovich about buying and processing the film,” she said, the idea taking shape as she spoke.
“By the time he gets permission for such a purchase, if he even agrees with the plan, six more women could be raped and beaten, possibly murdered.”
“I say we try,” said Elena.
“So do I,” came a voice from the open entryway to the cubicle.
Iosef Rostnikov wore slacks, a white shirt and a sweater, and held a coat over his arm. He was smiling at Elena. Sasha, head in pain but feeling perhaps a bit better, looked at Elena, who was trying to hide a smile.
With all that is happening, am I not to be spared this maudlin mating ritual? Sasha mused.
“In fact,” Iosef went on, “I’ll supply the film. Japanese. Black-and-white. 800 ISO. You won’t even need a flash.”
“Just time,” said Sasha. “Where did you get enough film for this?”
“A donation when I worked at the theater before I became a policeman,” he said, stepping into the small room. “From a man who described himself as a businessman. Foreign accent. Very good clothes. Came to see me after a show. Shook my hand. Said he liked my work. The next day a carton of film was at the theater with a Japanese camera, a Nikon. I think the man was a gangster. The camera and the film are in my closet.”
“A waste of time,” said Sasha.
“A dead end,” said Elena, looking up at Iosef with a smile.
“A red herring,” said Iosef.
“Doomed to failure,” Elena came back.
“Preposterous idea,” Iosef agreed.
“As much chance as a cooked chicken,” said Elena.
“A completely-” Iosef began, but was interrupted by Sasha, who almost shouted, “All right. We use Iosef’s film. But we are going ahead with my plan.”
“At this point,” said Elena, “we have no choice.”
“And I will add my camera to Elena’s so you can both go out at the same time,” said Iosef.
Sasha shrugged, tossing his head back, closing his eyes. Elena looked up at Iosef more guardedly than she had a moment earlier.
Elena Timofeyeva had come to work exhausted. She had taken three aspirin before she even left home. Iosef was pushing gently for marriage but pushing nonetheless.
Last night in his bed they had talked, held each other and talked. Elena had gotten up at four in the morning. Her hope had been to get into the pull-out bed in her aunt’s living room before her aunt rose. If she hurried, which she had done, she would even have time for up to two and a half hours of sleep.
However, when she had returned to the apartment she shared with Anna Timofeyeva, the former powerful deputy procurator for Moscow who was now an invalid who read and looked out windows, she was not alone in the living room. It was just after dawn and she needed that sleep, but Lydia Tkach, Sasha’s deaf, shrill mother was there, at the table, across from Anna. Anna was drinking her tea and listening. Lydia was ignoring her tea and talking.
Anna was a heavy woman given to gray dresses. She had no children, had never married; and had had only three affairs in her life, all brief, all long ago, before she was her niece’s age. Anna kept herself clean and her rapidly graying hair neatly brushed and cut short. In her aunt, who had suffered two heart attacks, one major, Elena always saw her future self. It depressed her. To marry Iosef and turn into her aunt or even her mother back in Odessa was something she preferred not to contemplate. Elena knew she had a pretty, clear-skinned face and that she was smart and intuitive, better at her job than Sasha, who had been an investigator for almost a decade. But Iosef. He was bright, creative. His mother was still a beauty. His father, Porfiry Petrovich, was no beauty, but he had a confident, resigned power and great loyalty to those who worked with him.
Bakunin, Anna Timofeyeva’s orange cat, leapt off Anna’s lap and ran to Elena, who reached down to stroke her as she greeted her aunt and the rapidly talking visitor.
Anna looked up at her niece and shared an almost undetectable look that said “I am trapped. What can I do?”
“I know I said I would not complain,” said Lydia loudly, holding up her hands. She was as frail in appearance as Anna was solid, though it was Lydia who was by far the more healthy of the pair. “And this is not technically a complaint. I leave it to Elena if this is a complaint. Who should know better than Elena what my son goes through each day? He is my only child.”
“Elena has worked all night,” said Anna. “I think she needs some rest. Elya, go into my bedroom and use my bed. Lydia and I will do our best to be quiet.”
Elena nodded her head in appreciation. Later, when she got up and before she left, she would make herself something to eat. There wasn’t much. Some tea, bread, cheese, a bloodred sausage whose origins it was best not to question. There was also half of a sad, small cabbage.
“Elena,” Lydia said, touching her bird breast with her fist somewhere in the vicinity of where people thought the human heart resided. “Tell me, before you sleep. Honestly. My grandchild, Illya, is ill. My daughter-in-law does not tell me, does not call me. My own son doesn’t call me.”
“He’s been very busy,” Elena said. “We have a serial rapist.”
“Rapists!” Lydia cried. “Murderers. Rapists. Sasha’s been wounded more than once, beaten by car thieves, lunatics. Fine, that is what he wants to do, I can’t stop him. But I should see my grandchildren when I want to. I have nothing to do anymore. No job. I can take care of them. They don’t need day care. You have to pay for day care. And the little one is sick. My daughter-in-law doesn’t like me.”
I wonder why? thought Elena in resignation as she moved back to the kitchen area to prepare an awkward sandwich with two crumbling slices of bread. Elena looked at her aunt, who was close to having enough of Lydia for the day. Lydia Tkach, Elena knew, was a very mixed blessing. When she wasn’t decrying the offenses of her son, the police, her daughter-in-law, her low pension, and the chill in her apartment down the hall or recounting with fondness the protection they all had under Communism, Lydia Tkach was surprisingly good company. She was bright, well-read, could handle a computer with great skill, played chess at the same level as Anna, and was more than willing to run small errands or just sit at the window with Anna looking at the mothers with their children in the snow of the courtyard.