Woman Chased by Crows (55 page)

They left her alone for a while. What did they expect her to do? Lose heart? If she had any hope of getting out of this, it rested on her ability to hold fast. She had no doubt they would kill her when they were finished with her. What else could they do? She knew their faces, some of them anyway, they would need to get away somehow, to somewhere. They couldn't afford to keep her alive. They must be desperate. Something must have happened to force this. Well, of course,
I
forced it, did I not? But they forced it, too. Maybe none of us had a choice in the matter. No choice from the time Viktor bought his suitcase of silk shirts and expensive cologne. From that moment on, the die was cast, and all the players were pawns pushed around a board. Vysotsky, Romanenko, Kolmogorov, Kapitsa — they all paid for knowing Chernenko and what he had stolen. It is quite possible they would have died anyway, even if they had not lost his treasure. Just knowing about it might have sealed their fates. Men like Konstantin Chernenko did not value any lives but their own. So who would care about the little lives of gypsy smugglers caught in a misadventure? Not him. And after he was dead? Not anyone who followed him. How many people had been on the trail over the years? Whoever Lorna Ruth was, she was just the last in a long line of corrupt officials, outright thieves, opportunists. And for what? Was it really worth so much?

How did it happen? How did she let Lorna get so close?

Another rainy night. I only drink when it rains. Not precisely true, but true enough, rain had a way of making her feel more acutely all that she had lost — homeland, career, family, friends — all gone. She was not a person to wallow in self-pity, she was stronger than that, but always, deep within, a secret ache like the ghost of a missing limb kept her company. And on rainy nights it called to her more insistently. The only way to dull the pain was . . . well, what else?

The Rose, a lounge attached to the big family restaurant in the West Mall, not far from the hospital. It was almost exactly six months ago. That afternoon, while showing her students a
tour en l'air
, a girl dropped her three-ring binder and in a desperate attempt to pick it up, the unfortunate child kicked it with her toe, sending it sliding across the wood floor. It came to rest exactly in the wrong place. Anya twisted her ankle so badly upon landing that she was forced to cancel the rest of the class. The student whose binder had caused the accident sobbed and hid behind the piano. Anya laughed and told her not to worry, ballet dancers were always getting sprains, she would be fine in a day or two. One of the students was dispatched to the store for a bag of frozen peas, and then Anya sent them all home.

For two hours she huddled in her corner filled with dread, the bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel, wrapped around her ankle. Pain she could put up with, but being unable to dance, to even walk, made her quite crazy. It brought back such bad memories.

It took them three hours to get around to her in the emergency ward, but in the end they pronounced it a very bad sprain, nothing more, try to stay off it as much as she could for a few weeks. She knew how to look after sprains, she didn't need the lecture, just the reassurance that she hadn't ruptured something, broken something or torn a ligament. A sprain she could deal with. They bandaged her ankle, gave her a few painkillers and an ugly metal walking stick to lean on.

When she stepped outside the rain had begun to fall, a steady, heavy rain. The taxi company said it would be half an hour at least before they could get to her. She told them not to bother. The little shop in the hospital lobby sold her a cheap umbrella and a magazine and she limped the two blocks to the Rose to drink some vodka and ease her various aches and worries.

And that's when Lorna Ruth came in to sit at the next table, or perhaps she had been there all along, Anya couldn't quite remember.

“What are you drinking? Vodka? Brandy for me, on a night like this, warms my blood. I worry about getting a chill. I'm Lorna Ruth. I'm a doctor. Your leg all right?”

“Just a sprained ankle. I will be fine.” She hadn't wanted conversation.

Just a few drinks. Perhaps the rain would slow down and she could limp the three blocks to her apartment without getting soaked. But the woman had kept talking to her. Not asking questions, not prying, just making pleasant conversation about weather, and life in a small town, and how the world was changing, and Anya only half listening, half responding, and somewhere along the way the woman bought her another drink without offering, it just appeared, and perhaps one more, and sometime after that she found herself in her own apartment being put to bed. Maybe it was the painkillers, or the painkillers in combination with the vodka, or there might have been something else in her drink, but whatever the case the woman had, for an hour or two at least, taken control of her life. When she woke up she didn't remember much. It didn't look as though her apartment had been disturbed.

The doctor had left a card beside her telephone.

The next day Lorna Ruth called, just to see how she was doing, she said. She suggested that the combination of painkillers and perhaps one too many vodkas had caused her to pass out. She mentioned that when she was being put to bed she appeared to be having a nightmare. She said she was a psychiatrist, and that if Anya ever felt that she needed someone to talk to, she shouldn't hesitate to call.

And then the dream started coming back, and after a few bad nights she called the only doctor she knew. All she wanted was some sleeping pills. Maybe they would kill the night terrors. Dr. Ruth didn't expect pills to help but she suggested, gently, that perhaps a few sessions talking about what was at the root of her anxieties would do some good.

And so, almost without a conscious decision on her part, Anya began twice-a-week sessions with a psychiatrist who, as it turned out, had been searching for answers of her own.

Breaking into Dr. Ruth's house wasn't as easy. There were double locks front and back and the ground floor windows had burglar-proof latches. Adele was getting ready to kick in the back door, but Stacy told her to hold off for a minute.

“Upstairs. Looks like the bedroom window's open a crack.”

“Oh sure. Got your rocket pack handy?”

“Standard equipment.” In three easy moves Stacy went from the deck to the railing to the roof of the sunroom, and slid open the bedroom window while hanging by one hand.

“You're in the wrong business,” Adele called up from the back lawn. “Could have been a cat burglar.”

“It's on my resumé,” Stacy said, and disappeared inside. Thirty seconds later she opened the back door. “It's harder to clean out a three-bedroom house in a hurry,” Stacy said. “Maybe they left stuff behind.”

“I'll flip you for who gets the basement.”

“You want it?”

“Hell no. That's where my mother used to stick me when I said ‘fuck.'”

“No problem. You get the attic.”

“Oh fuck, it's got an attic,
too
?”

Stacy grinned. “Meet you back here.”

Adele was happy to find out there was no attic. Attics weren't quite as creepy as cellars, but they did hold a few shitty memories. The upstairs had three bedrooms, two baths. The master bedroom was at the front of the house, overlooking a tree-lined street. The trees were still bare of leaves and the curtains were pulled on all windows on the opposite side. The broadloom bore the imprints of a queen-size bed, two side tables, a loveseat close to the window. The carpet had been recently vacuumed. The closet was bare except for a tangle of discarded wire hangers. They must have had a truck, or one hell of a garbage pickup. The ensuite bathroom was clean. The wastebasket held an empty plastic package for a disposable razor, the medicine cabinet had one bent Q-Tip and a dusting of powder on the bottom shelf. That was it for the happy couple. Didn't look like much action had been going on in there for a while.

The other two bedrooms were small and didn't contain beds. In one of them was an Ikea computer workstation, partially disassembled. Maybe they lost the Allen wrench, I was always doing that. Damn Ikea, anyway. Never could figure out the stupid instructions. Left one behind at my last residence too. The computer cable was neatly coiled on the bottom shelf of the empty bookcase.

The small bathroom was almost as clean as the big one except that they'd left behind the terrycloth toilet seat cover and the medicine cabinet held an empty Dristan squeeze bottle. Adele did a final check. On one of the coat hangers she found a torn piece of what looked to be a baggage claim ticket. That was it for the upstairs.

Stacy called up from the main floor. “Anything?”

“Nada. You?”

“Doesn't look like they were really living here. Not long anyway.”

“Okay, I get the kitchen, maybe they left some peanut butter or something.”

Kitchens are harder to strip bare; upper and lower cabinets, cutlery drawers, refrigerator, oven, nooks and crannies everywhere. Even better, things fall behind refrigerators and stoves and are never seen again unless someone feels like pulling them away from the wall.

“What the hell are you doing?” The man at the back door was loaded down with a lawn sign, a pail filled with cleaning supplies, a broom, a sponge mop and a vacuum cleaner. He wasn't sure if he wanted to confront Adele or yell for help. “You're not supposed to be in here.”

“Are
you
supposed to be in here?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“And who are you?”

“What does it matter who
I
am, who are you?”

Adele showed him her badge. “Adele Moen, Metro Homicide Unit. Hey Stace,” she called, “you want to come in here? We've got a visitor.” She smiled at the man. “Come on in, stranger. State your business.”

“Homicide? Oh Christ. Is there a dead body in here?”

“Haven't found one so far. How about you, Detective Crean?”

Stacy shook her head. “Care to show us some
ID
, sir?”

“I'm Ben Chiklis. I'm the rental agent. This place was supposed to be vacant.”

“Oh, it's vacant all right,” Adele said.

“This was a rental?” Stacy gave that some thought. “Explains the lack of a personal touch. How long were the tenants here, sir?”

“They had a year's lease. It's up next month but the woman said she'd be leaving early. I'm just here to check it out, make sure it's in shape to show it. Nothing broken is there?”

“Wish my place was this clean,” Adele said. “I was just going to check behind the major appliances when you came in, Ben. Why don't you and Detective Crean have a look around and you can tell her all about the tenants.”

Stacy led Mr. Chiklis out of the kitchen and Adele went back to muscling the stove away from the wall. Behind it she found a packet of soy sauce, a crushed fortune cookie and paper-wrapped chopsticks from Long Wok. The fortune said, “You will find true happiness.” The refrigerator held one limp leaf of iceberg lettuce draped over the bottom rack. There was no peanut butter. So much for fortune cookies.