by P. A. Brown
Friday, 7:45 AM, Northeast Community Police Station, San Fernando Road, Los Angeles
The day shift was just drifting in, chairs scraped the tile floor, the sharp smell of coffee permeated the always stale air.
The smell of conflicting deodorants and colognes fought for dominance amid the walls of posters, flyers and peg boards.
On the wall overlooking both of their desks, the murder board David and Jairo had begun the first day of the case, the day they had come back from Griffith Park, was now a mass of crime scene photos, mug shots, and questions still unanswered.
Jairo had put up a hand-written diagram listing everyone’s name involved in the case from the dead women, the missing women, Sevchuk, Mikalenko, the Avenues’s unnamed connection, and a shadowy figure with no name, and no stats. Oddly, and totally unexpectedly, he had added the dead drive-by banger on Drew.
The Cypress Park banger shot in Avenues territory. Did he see a pattern that wasn’t visible to David?
David pulled the thick murder book out of the ancient green cabinet and opened it to the first page. Halyna Stakchinko had her own murder book, even though it looked like all three were now inextricably intertwined.
Finishing up yet another report, he added it to the growing puzzle. He thought they had a handle on what had happened to the three women, but the key answer was still missing. Why?
Why had Mikalenko, who stood to profit so much from both the babies and the women themselves, killed them? And why L.A. BONEYARD 231
did he go to so much trouble to get them good medical care, assure they were healthy, and that their babies were too, if all he was going to do was erase them? David had seen murders done for the flimsiest, and most ridiculous of reasons, though usually those kinds were impulse killings. A fight gone wrong. A towering rage unchecked. But this had the ring of deliberation.
What had changed to make Mikalenko turn from calculating businessman to cold-blooded killer? The press frequently labeled such crimes senseless, but the truth was that there were reasons for everything. They just didn’t always make sense to anyone but the killer.
Or were they chasing the wrong cat here? Could Mikalenko be telling the truth? But if he didn’t kill the other two women, who did?
The more he stared at what they had uncovered so far, the less he understood. He was almost glad when Jairo came in. At least he’d have someone to bounce ideas off of.
“I don’t get it,” he said without preamble. “Why did Mikalenko turn on them? He’s always been pretty cold up until now. It was all a business transaction. What changed?”
“He did,” Jairo said. “Or he didn’t, and this is his true face.
Maybe there are more than these three women. Maybe he has impulses.”
“And maybe he didn’t do it.”
“So we’re looking for a second doer? Murder partnership.
Pretty rare.”
Like all Academy trained cops, both David and Jairo took courses on not only criminology, but on psychology. David had spent six months in Quantico being taught by the world renowned behavioral profilers. He’d even met FBI Agent William Hagmaier, who had gained Ted Bundy’s trust, while he sat on Florida’s death row, and got the killer to admit to over thirty sadistic slayings over the years he targeted young women.
“He might have a partner,” David conceded. “But I don’t read him that way. I think he’s just a mercenary man who sees profit in everything, and doesn’t care about the consequences.
Not a disorganized, impulse killer. And there’s never been any 232 P.A. Brown
sign of sexual abuse or posing in any of the victims.” David tapped his fingers across the surface of the blue binder. “I think the key is in the doctor. I want to take another run at the house on Leland. Stakchinko, Konjenko and Katrina Mydry, plus the missing Lapchuk, spent their last days in that house. We already know Konjenko kept a diary of sorts. Why not the others? I want to tear that place apart before I release it back to Larson.
Then we need to go back to Mikalenko.”
Jairo nodded. “Before or after the DA’s visit?”
“After. We won’t have time before.”
The interview was set for eight and David and Jairo were at the Men’s Central several minutes early. The DA, Ann Marie DeSoto, met them in the interview room after the two detectives signed their guns into security. Feeling somewhat naked without his Smith & Wesson, David led the way to where Sevchuk waited with his attorney.
The recorder was turned on, introductions were made all around, coffee distributed.
DeSoto spoke first. “I have the list of charges we are prepared to enter against Dr. Jozef Sevchuk. Do you have anything to add to this, Detective Sergeant Laine?”
“Only that it appears the second body in the Griffith Park grave was a Katrina Mydry,” David said. “And not Natalya Lapchuk, as we first thought. We’ll need to check if this woman was also a patient of Dr. Sevchuk.”
DeSoto nodded and handed the papers she had prepared to Sevchuk’s lawyer, Barney Pearlman, who slipped a pair of reading glasses on and read them slowly, his fleshy lips pursed in concentration. Finally he slipped the glasses off and met first David’s gaze then DeSoto’s.
“What are you offering my client?”
“Reduction of conspiracy to commit homicide to criminal misdemeanor, first degree murder reduced to second. Ten to fifteen years concurrently. With good behavior your client could be out in eight years.”
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“And facing deportation and revocation of his medical license.”
DeSoto shrugged. “That’s not in my playing field; that would be up to Immigration and the Medical board. I’m telling you what I can offer.”
Pearlman and Sevchuk held a whispered conversation.
Pearlman leaned back. “In exchange for what?”
DeSoto ticked off each point on her neatly clipped pink nails. “He tells us everything he knows about Valerian Mikalenko, AKA Mickey, and his involvement in the deaths of Halyna Stakchinko, Zuzanna Konjenko and Katrina Mydry.
With additional time off, if he can tell us where Natalya Lapchuk is. What he knew about Mikalenko’s plans for the babies born to those women, and any others he knows of and what was his involvement with the death of those fetuses.”
“And if he doesn’t know anything?”
“Then he has to convince me of that. And I might have been born at night, but I assure you it wasn’t last night. I believe your client knows a great deal he’s not telling us. We’re willing to toss him back in exchange for a bigger fish.”
“Ten to fifteen is hardly being tossed back. Time served and deportation.”
“Unacceptable. This level of crime has to be punishable by something. Dr. Sevchuk betrayed not only his Hippocratic Oath, but the trust of all those women who looked to him for safety. He hoped to profit from their misery.”
More hurried whispering. Sevchuk was beginning to look like a whipped dog, who only expected more abuse, and was resigned to it. Finally Pearlman nodded grimly. “My client accepts, though he thinks he is being given a raw deal here.”
DeSoto was cool and didn’t say any of the things David might have, like what kind of deal did Halyna, Zuzanna and Katrina get? But it wasn’t his place to comment on the charges.
It was just his job to give DeSoto the facts to back up those charges.
“Does he know where Natalya is?”
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“He says not. She had wanted to return to Ukraine. Maybe she got out.”
“Maybe.” David was doubtful. He would check the flights to Eastern Europe but didn’t hold out much hope. Chances were Natalya hadn’t got her passport back.
David turned the tape on and Mirandized Sevchuk, who looked paler and paler as the words fell between them. Finally David said, “So start talking. Tell me everything from how you met Mikalenko, to how he brought in the women, and what he said about them. Surely you must have wondered about this man who had so many pregnant women arou
nd him. Did you know he was running a baby brokerage?”
“No! Mikalenko first called me nearly eighteen months ago.
He knew of some Ukrainian immigrants who were in need of a doctor, that is all. One of them was pregnant, and she wanted a Ukrainian doctor. She did not trust American doctors. I am sorry—”
David waved him on.
“Natalya was the first. I thought nothing of it, until Mikalenko brought me another pregnant girl, and he offered me ten thousand dollars to be present for the children’s birth.”
“Did he ever say why he offered this?”
“He was...” Sevchuk shot a glance at his lawyer, who nodded reluctantly. Sevchuk sighed and went on. “I thought I could do the girls some good. Sometimes I do not think Mikalenko treated them very good. They feared him.” He saw the contempt on David’s face. “But you must understand. They loved him, too. He was everything to them, and he told them he would take care of them.”
“Seems to me you all did a fine job of that.”
“I did not kill anyone. I would not have harmed any of those women—”
“What about Mikalenko? Would he have harmed any of them?”
“No! I do not know. He was a volatile man. He had a temper...”
L.A. BONEYARD 235
“So he could have hurt someone who made him angry.”
Sevchuk hung his head, staring at his hand manacled to the table. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Did you ever see him get rough with anyone?”
Sevchuk still would not meet his gaze. He nodded. “Once only.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He asked me to attend to Halyna at her house. She was distraught and Mikalenko was furious, though neither of them said why. At one point he called her terrible names and slapped her across the face so hard she fell to the floor. Then he walked out. I would have stayed, but she told me to go, and Mikalenko was waiting...”
“What kind of names did he call her?” David leaned over the table. So, he noticed, did DeSoto and Pearlman.
“He called her a murderer. That the blood on her hands would never wash off. I am so very sorry. I never meant any harm to anyone...”
When it became clear Sevchuk couldn’t or wouldn’t speak anymore, DeSoto loaded her files back in her briefcase, and with a curt, “I’ll be in touch with the details by day’s end,” she left, her briefcase slapping against her nylon clad leg. Jairo took Sevchuk back to the Men’s Central and Pearlman left to chase other ambulances. David made his way back the Northeast, where he spent the time waiting for Jairo to return, so they could make one more run at the Leland house. While he waited, he made a courtesy call to Larson about their visit. Larson declined to meet them. David had secured a key from him earlier. He’d leave it in police hands, though he reminded David he hoped he’d be getting the property back soon.
“I can sympathize, Mr. Larson, but this is a murder investigation, and that takes precedence over your needs.”
“This is going to be costing me soon, officer. It’s going to take me at least a week to get this place cleaned up before I can even think about renting it out.”
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“I’ll do my best.” David hung up before the landlord could continue.
They rolled as soon as Jairo got back, signing out a Crown Vic from the motor pool and heading west.
The house might have entered a sort of Twilight Zone, where time was suspended. There was a new layer of dust on everything and the air felt even more closed up.
David started at one end of the house and Jairo the other.
They would overlap, both searching each bedroom, then they would meet in the living room. David pulled on a pair of sterile nitrile gloves and searched every nook, and cranny, first in Zuzanna’s bedroom, then after that turned up nothing, Halyna’s. Zuzanna had been the diarist, but that didn’t mean a stressed out Halyna, fearing the worst, wouldn’t have tried to sort out her nightmare by writing about it.
Her bedroom yielded nothing. The same results in the cramped bathroom. A look into the depths of each kitchen drawer and the cupboards packed with canned vegetables and packaged soups held no surprises.
After nearly three hours of searching, and a headache that had lodged behind his eyes and pulsed with each heartbeat, David headed for the last room: the living room. Jairo was already there, checking out a side table and up inside a tall floor lamp. David headed straight for the ikon corner.
“I already checked there,” Jairo said.
“S’okay, I’ll check it again.”
He remembered what Konstatinov had said about people hiding things in ikon corners, and the money they had recovered. Had they overlooked something else? He pulled every picture off the wall, examining each one front and back, even prying open the mat and frames of all of them. He checked out the ornate crosses and the empty Easter basket with its colorful embroidered liner. He lifted out the liner and shook it. A small notebook flipped out onto the floor. He stooped to pick it up.
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Jairo came over and crouched down. David opened the first page of the palm-sized booklet with a colorful cover and briefly scanned the contents. “Ukrainian. We’re going to need Konstatinov again. I’ll call him, you keep on looking.”
Konstatinov agreed to come out as soon as he could get away. Maybe forty minutes. The two detectives went back to searching, with more diligence, now that they knew something had been overlooked. This time when nothing more showed up David was satisfied nothing more would. They met Konstatinov outside on the front porch. David handed him the booklet and he began to read, his lips moving as he made sure he got each word.
When he met David’s gaze he looked shell-shocked. “You will not believe this.”
“Try me.”
“They despaired of getting out. They knew they could never escape and Mikalenko would turn them into baby-making machines, making money off of the having of sex with strange men and the giving birth of children that would be forever lost to them.” He closed his eyes as if the pain was too much. “They knew there was only one way out, so they all agreed they must do this.”
“Murder/suicide pact,” David said softly. Beside him Jairo took a deep shuddering breath. “Well, it explains the hesitation marks. She really didn’t want to do this.”
“Yes. Halyna would take care of the other two girls. It was horrible, she says. There was so much blood... Katrina died as planned but Zuzanna didn’t. I think they both lost the stomach for it. The two hid Katrina’s body under the crawl space of the house, wrapped in a thick blanket from Katrina’s bed.
Mikalenko was furious. He thought Katrina had run away and he punished both of the other girls harshly for allowing her to run. Zuzanna was badly cut but Mikalenko made her work anyway. He would not let them go to the hospital. Only Sevchuk was allowed to treat them. He tried to beat it out of Zuzanna, about what had happened. He never guessed the truth. Six weeks later Halyna writes that she would try again.
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She says part of her had hoped it would not be necessary, that they could find another way. She wanted to live...”
Konstatinov flipped to the last page of the notebook.
“There is nothing more, so I cannot be telling you if she succeeded or not.”
“Oh I think we can safely assume she succeeded,” David said. “There were two bodies in the park. We’ve finally IDed them as Zuzanna Konjenko and Katrina Mydry.” His two nameless and faceless murder books now had identities.
Sometimes it would be nice to be wrong.
“But how did they get there?” Jairo asked. “We’ve seen no sign any of the girls knew how to drive, let alone had access to a car.”
“I doubt Halyna disposed of the bodies.” David was speculating now, examining each fact he knew in light of what they had found. “This explains Mikalenko saying he didn’t kill the women. He only knew about Halyna. I think he caught her after she’d killed Zuzanna and before she could
finish the job on herself. Remember the slash marks on her face at the autopsy? They were all inflicted pre-mortem. Either she did it to herself to reduce her ‘value’ to him, or he did it in a rage, when he found out what she had done. Once it was done, whoever did it, he still had to dispose of their bodies.” His voice grew cold. “And decide what to do with Halyna. I think he dragged her up to the overpass and threw her over as punishment. He couldn’t let her get away with it. If she escaped, she’d be a witness against him. He couldn’t allow that. Plus, I imagine he was furious, and that rage fueled him. Maybe he didn’t even mean to kill her, just terrify her so she’d never do anything like that again.”
“He still had her baby, if he kept her around long enough to have it,” Jairo said.
“Right. But Halyna was bent on self-destruction, and I don’t imagine it would be too hard to goad Mikalenko into doing something foolish. He might well regret it later, but she would have escaped him in the only way she knew how.”
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Both Jairo and Konstatinov looked dumb-struck by the horror of what the three women had endured. What they had been driven to. David watched the array of emotions march across their faces, and wished he could feel those kinds of things again. Unbidden came a memory of Chris getting all teary-eyed when they had come across a baby mule deer that had wandered onto the Golden State Freeway west of Griffith Park and been struck by an SUV. Maybe Chris was doing the best thing for them. Maybe David didn’t deserve the love of a man who could feel so deeply, when he seemed able to feel nothing.
“She was a very brave girl,” Konstatinov said softly. All three of them nodded.
“Well,” David said brusquely. “Let’s go tell a killer he’s going away for life. No plea bargains for this one.”
“He was truly a monster,” Konstatinov said.
“Come on, let’s get this back to evidence and book it in,” he said. “Then we’re going to see Mikalenko again. Let him explain this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Friday, 4:40 PM, Los Angeles Men’s Central, 450 Bauchet Street, Los Angeles