The Witness (10 page)

“And in fact got sick. After you were sick, you fell asleep out on the terrace. How often do you drink?”

“I don’t. I mean to say I’ve had small amounts of wine, as my mother believes I should develop a sophisticated palate, but I’d never had a mixed drink before.”

“So it was your first experience with that kind of alcohol, and you consumed nearly five glasses throughout the evening, became ill, slept—or passed out—outside. Yet you claim you can identify the individuals who entered the home and shot Alexi Gurevich and Julie Masters? And at what distance?”

“About ten feet. But I can be sure. I saw them very clearly. They were in the light.”

“Wouldn’t you have been impaired after knocking back all that alcohol, after partying yourself sick?”

Shamed, she stared down at the hands she had clutched in her lap. “I’m sure my reaction time was impaired, and surely my judgment. But not my eyesight or hearing.”

Pomeroy nodded at one of the men with him. The man stepped forward, laid several photographs on the table.

“Do you recognize any of these men?” he asked her.

“Yes.” She pointed to one at the right corner of the layout. “That’s Yakov Korotkii. That’s the man who shot Alex, then Julie. His hair’s longer in the photograph.”

“Do you know this man?” Pomeroy asked her. “Had you met him before?”

“I never met him. I only saw him, and only last night, when he shot Alex and Julie.”

“All right.” Pomeroy picked up that set of photos, and the man set down another pile. “Do you recognize anyone here?”

“This man. They called him Yegor. I don’t know the rest of his name. He was with Korotkii. He restrained Alex, then pushed him down to his knees.”

“And once more.” Again, the photos were removed, others laid out.

“That’s Ilya.” Because her lips trembled, she pressed them tight. “Ilya Volkov. He came in after … after Julie and Alex were dead. Only a few minutes after. He was angry. He spoke in Russian.”

“How do you know he was angry?”

“I speak Russian, not very well. They said … this is translated. Is that all right?”

“Yes.”

She took a breath, relayed the conversation.

“Then I ran. I knew they’d start looking for me, and if they found me, they’d kill me because I’d seen. When I stopped running, I called nine-one-one.”

“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.”

S
ERGEI
V
OLKOV 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.”

“The son of your mother’s cousin. How could I not do my best? Still, I had hopes.”

“You took him in, him and Yakov.”

“And Yakov has proven himself worthy of that gift time and again. Alexi?” Sergei shrugged. “Chicken shit,” he said with half a smile. “Now he’ll be fertilizer. The drugs. He was weak for them. This is why I was strict with you and your sisters. Drugs are business only. For drugs—that is the root—he steals from us, betrays us and his own blood.”

“If I’d known, I’d have been there, to watch him beg like a woman. To watch him die.”

“The information on his arrest, on the deal the bastard made with the cops, only came to us that night. He had to be dealt with quickly. I sent Yakov and Yegor to check his house, to see if he was there. So perhaps he was dealt with too quickly. Mistakes were made, as the Americans say. You’ve not been one to whore with Alexi in the past. His taste was always less refined than yours.”

“I was to stay close,” Ilya repeated. “And the girl, she was intriguing. Fresh, unspoiled. Sad. A little sad. I liked her.”

“There are plenty of others. She’s already dead. Now you’ll stay for supper. It will please your mother, and me.”

“Of course.”

T
WO WEEKS PASSED, THEN THE START OF ANOTHER
. E
LIZA
beth could count on one hand the number of times she’d been allowed to leave the house. And never alone.

She was never alone.

She, who’d once longed for companionship, now found the lack of solitude more confining than the four walls of her room.

She had her laptop. They’d blocked her access to e-mail and chat boards. Out of boredom and curiosity, she hacked through the blocks. Not that she planned to contact anyone, but it gave her a sense of accomplishment.

She kept that small triumph to herself.

She had nightmares, and kept them to herself as well.

They brought her books, and music CDs. She only had to ask. Devouring the popular fiction and music her mother so strongly disapproved of should have given her a sense of freedom. Instead, it only served to highlight how much she’d missed, and how little she knew of the real world.

Her mother never came.

Every morning John and Terry relieved the night shift, and every evening Bill and Lynda relieved them. Sometimes they made food; breakfast seemed to be John’s specialty. For the most part, they brought it in. Pizza or burgers, chicken or Chinese. Out of guilt—and partially out of defense—Elizabeth began to experiment in the kitchen. Recipes were just formulas, as far as she could see. The kitchen a kind of laboratory.

And in experimenting, she found an affinity. She liked the chopping and stirring, the scents, the textures.

“What’s on the menu?”

From her seat at the table, Elizabeth glanced up as John walked in. “I thought I might try this stir-fry chicken.”

“Sounds good.” He got himself coffee. “My wife does stir-fry to trick the kids into eating vegetables.”

She knew he and his wife, Maddie, had two children. A seven-year-old boy, Maxfield, named for the painter Maxfield Parrish, and Emily—for Emily Brontë—age five.

He’d shown her pictures, the ones from his wallet, and told her funny little stories about them.

To personalize himself; she understood that. And it had, but it also forced her to realize there were no funny little stories about her as a child.

“Do they worry about you? Being in law enforcement?”

“Max and Em? They’re too young to worry. They know I chase bad guys, and that’s about as far as it goes right now. Maddie?” He sat with his coffee. “Yeah, some. It’s part of the package. And it can be tough on her, the long hours, the time away from home.”

“You said she was a court reporter.”

“Yeah, until Max came along. Best day of my life, that day in court. Even though I could barely remember my own name with her sitting there. Most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I don’t know how I got lucky enough to talk her into going out with me, much less marrying me.”