“Why? What have I done?”
“What have you done?” He leaned down. She barely came to his chest. “Did you kill him?”
“Kill who?” What is he talking about? “I’ve never killed anyone.” As she said it, her deep-seated guilt about the Ahearns made her feel like a liar. She worried that she sounded like one, too.
He seized her arm. “You will identify a body first, and then we will see if you killed him.”
“Wait. I can’t. My daughter. She’s sick.”
The other policeman patted his burly colleague on the back, then looked at Galina. “You may bring your girl.”
That only panicked Galina more. Adrenaline flooded through her. She wanted to run away with Alexandra — as far as she could.
The businesslike policeman smiled and shook his head. Almost kindly. But Galina knew better.
“She has leukemia,” Galina said softly. “Can we do this tomorrow when I can get someone to stay with her?”
Tattoo shook his head and forced a smile, as if mimicking his partner. “We can get a special nurse to take care of her.”
“You don’t want a special nurse,” the other policeman said. “You want to bring her.”
Alexandra began to cry when Galina, more weary than ever from the burdens of her never-ending day, gathered her daughter into her arms once more. Galina would have wept, too, if she hadn’t been more worried about the evidence on the computers in her apartment that could incriminate her in even more grievous crimes than the murder of some man.
Who? Oleg?
No, Oleg would never be the murdered. Oleg was the murderer.
Awkwardly, she locked up with Alexandra’s arms around her neck, face nestled against her chest. For all the good the locks would do.
If they want in, they’ll get in.
The two officers put her in the backseat of a black SUV with metal mesh separating her and Alexandra from the two of them.
Alexandra was weepy, so Galina kept telling her that everything would be fine. But Galina didn’t believe a word of the comforts she tried so hard to give, and doubted her daughter did, either.
Tattoo looked back at her in the rearview mirror. “Why are you so sure everything is going to be all right?” He turned to stare at Alexandra. “She’s not too young to know that life can be cruel.”
No doubt he was an expert in that regard. Galina didn’t reply.
Night was falling in full. Not a great time to go to the Moscow morgue, but that was where the two cops brought them, pulling up in front.
“Door to dead service,” Tattoo said.
“Put your arms around Mommy’s neck,” Galina told Alexandra. “Can you do that?”
Her child, still weeping quietly, complied.
Tattoo opened her door and Galina slipped out of the car. The hem of her yellow skirt rose as she slid off the seat. The nice cop, who had come around to the curb, looked away. Tattoo stared so hard she thought he’d demand a replay.
They really are good cop, bad cop.
She followed them into the building, then walked down a marbled flight of stairs to the morgue proper. Galina thought of the thousands — no, tens of thousands — who had taken those same steps. But horrible as their journeys had been, they were the lucky ones. So many millions had disappeared into mass graves. Nobody had ever found them. Even the existence of their bodies — their locations and identities — were lost to history and the long blank stare of Stalin and his henchmen.
So she felt a dread that had been known to scores of others as a large room spread out before her downstairs, an open space bordered by offices on both sides. The reek of chemicals soured her every breath.
She had no inkling as to why they wanted her there, except that it had to be connected to Oleg. Everything in her world was now connected to him.
But a murder in Moscow?
Would they have a body waiting for her on a gurney, or in one of those drawers they pull out? Like in the movies where you’re supposed to look at it and say, “That’s him.”
After placing Alexandra on a couch in the medical examiner’s office, the two policemen led her out under bright fluorescent lights to a body bag laid out on a table. Tattoo unzipped it from the top of the dead man’s head to his feet in a single flourish, as if he were a magician unveiling the final stage of an illusion.
But this was terribly real. Gritty beyond all measure, no matter how much Tattoo tried to make a performance out of it. The worst, though, was the reason she couldn’t identify the body: The dead man’s head was turned to the side — and missing all of its features. All she could see was bone and brain expressed through a gaped and cracked cranium, and the mashed inside of his torso — chest and stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, squashed and mangled and scarcely recognizable. His legs had been flattened by a force so powerful that even the femur was less than a quarter inch thick.
“Somebody pushed him into a garbage truck,” the nice policeman said. “We have a witness. I’m sorry, but you must look.” He reached past Tattoo to turn the head aside. “This is a better angle.”
And there was half of Viktor Vascov’s face: one nostril, one eye, a mouth cleaved neatly — almost surgically — down the middle. Alexandra’s father.
She’d had so few expectations of him, but never had she thought she’d end up down there identifying his crushed body on a gurney.
“Yes, I know him,” Galina said, turning away as she spoke, her voice shaky.
“Who?” Tattoo demanded. “Who is this?”
She gave him the name.
“You are certain.” Tattoo held up his hands flashing two peace signs. “V for Viktor,” he waved his left hand, “V for Vascov,” then his right.
She was still looking away, missing the show.
“Yes, Viktor Vascov. I know him.” She looked at the open door of the medical examiner’s office, making sure Alexandra was still on the couch. She didn’t want her to come out and see this nightmare face that belonged to her father. “He is my daughter’s father. Please, can we go? The smell.”
“Not so good,” Tattoo agreed, sniffing and smiling.
He zipped up Viktor’s body with another dramatic sweep of his hand.
Galina thought she would be sick. She stumbled away. Good Cop wrapped his arm around her back for support, then guided her toward the stairs.
“Take her to my office,” Tattoo ordered from behind them.
“Alexandra,” she said.
“She’ll be okay,” said Tattoo.
Galina pushed past him and lifted her daughter off the medical examiner’s couch. Each arm felt heavy as a ship’s anchor as she carried her up the stairs. Good Cop led her into an office with a large portrait of Stalin on the wall. He was making a brilliant comeback, even in death.
“Sit,” Tattoo said, apparently oblivious to the fact that she had already settled on a chair with Alexandra on her lap.
Tattoo swung his legs over his chair, macho style, and faced her, nodding to his left for Good Cop to sit.
“How did you kill this Viktor Vascov? You must tell me now,” Tattoo said, a wry smile on his face. “You are so small, and he’s so much bigger. You must be very good at it.” He scratched his neck, right by the crossed axes.
“What?” she shouted, almost jumping out of her chair with Alexandra, whom she startled enough to look around, panic once more straining the girl’s face. “It’s okay,” Galina whispered to her.