Rasputin's Prodigy

by Michael Weinberger

  We were definitely going to need him in the coming fight, if we could find him.

  Chapter 30

  Pha's lungs screamed for air and her legs were burning with exertion as she ran. She hadn't eaten since she had started running more than a day ago and only stopped once to drink. When she made that stop she drank as much as she could force into her stomach from a fast moving stream before going back to running again. She remembered what her new father had told her back in Bangkok, about fear and how to channel it into strength. Back in her birth city she had been afraid of people, mostly her mother and later the Madame of the brothel where her mother had worked. But she had never known such fear as she felt now, because here in the wilderness there were no labyrinths of hidden streets or alleyways with dark shadows that could hide her from anyone who would want to hurt her. There were no people here, and as much as she knew that people were to be feared, she was running through a wild landscape, where her imagination placed every dark predator and demon she had ever read or heard about, hiding and ready to pounce from behind each tree she encountered.

  In time she had reached the edge of the forest just as the sun was beginning to set and she stopped to peer out of the trees. A small farmhouse was in the distance with an area surrounded by a wooden fence. Ambling around inside the fence were unusual looking animals that she had never seen before. They somewhat resembled large goats, but covered with a thick and curly fur that didn't sway in the wind. They had gentle faces, but a few had large curled horns that were enough of a warning for her to avoid trying to sneak past them. If they were aggressive she was certain the large horned animals could run her down in a second.

  Smoke billowed from the chimney of the simple stone and mortar house, and the scent of cooking food immediately sent her stomach churning with hunger. She needed to eat and replenish some of the energy she had expended if she were going to keep running. Eventually hunger overwhelmed her fear and she slowly walked from the edge of the woods to approach the gate in the fence. Several of the goat creatures were grazing on grass by the gate and lifted their heads as she approached. She froze, and the animals quickly lost interest in her and went back to their meal.

  She continued walking and began plucking small yellow flowers that were growing wild in the field surrounding the farm. She had remembered that the goats in her grandmother's village had liked to eat the flowers on the jungle floor more than grass, when they could find them, and she hoped the same would be true for these creatures.

  The animals didn't lift their heads again until she was standing next to them with only the gate standing between her and the animals. Her close proximity had made some of the beasts amble back and away from the gate, while others started braying an alarm for the rest of the little herd. One of the larger horned animals approached warily and stomped its small hooves on the ground as she stared at them from her side of the gate. Slowly she stuck her hand through the openings of the gate, offering a couple of the flowers to the agitated creature with the horns. Initially it stepped back from the her outstretched arm, but then seemed to notice the flowers and quickly stepped up to accept them. The animal immediately switched from making angry sounds to satisfied grunts as it began munching on the flowers, which spurred the other animals in the herd to saunter over and begin bleating at her, not in alarm, but instead for their own portions.

  The girl chuckled at the creatures. They even sounded a little bit like the goats she had taken care of in her the village. Although their calls were louder and deeper than the animals back home, the familiarity was comforting. She was handing out the last of the flowers when a loud barking came from the house and a large dog ran at full speed toward her location. A man walked out of the house as well, holding a rifle in his hands. Every part of her being screamed at her to turn and run back to the forest, but she knew she'd never be able to outrun either the dog or a bullet, so she dropped the remaining flowers she had been feeding the animals onto the ground and stood her very still. The dog came up fast, snarling, growling and flashing it's large teeth at her, but at the last minute it pulled up short to just begin barking wildly, as the animals that had been eating her flowers quickly dispersed.

  The man was running as well and shouting something in a language she didn't understand, but she never took her eyes off the dog's eyes. The dog was hopping around in a half circle trying to get a reaction out of her, but the girl made no move to run and the creature’s predatory instincts were confused.

  The man who approached was sounding angrier and angrier, and his deep voice began to crack in frustration as Pha realized that the man was yelling at the dog, not at her. He grabbed the dog by its collar and repeated an order until the dog reluctantly sat and became quiet. The man regarded her with a stern look on his face. He said something abrupt to her and flicked the arm that held the rifle at her in a “go away” motion. The girl felt some relief that he was not going to hurt her, but leaving was not an option anymore. She needed help and, if this man meant her no harm, then she had to find a way to get him to help her.

  The man repeated himself, but seeing no reaction from the girl his face screwed up in a look of confusion as he knelt down on one knee to look at her in more of an eye-to-eye level. His voice softened as well, and when he spoke again his tone was filled more with concern than anger. She still didn't know how to react, and remained standing still, until the man put the rifle down and held out his hand to her. She didn't mean to flinch, but years of wariness around strangers made her react instinctively.

  The man, upon seeing her reaction, pulled his hand back quickly and held it up with his palm facing her. She began to lose her nervousness as the man spoke softly and tried to communicate with her. The man scolded the dog sharply once more, and then turned his head and shouted something she didn’t understand back toward the house. A woman's voice answered and the two spoke a few words to each other before the woman walked from the house holding the hand of a small child.

  When the woman and child arrived the Pha's eyes went wide at the sight of a little girl holding on to the woman's hand, and the immense number of colored ribbons tied within her braided hair. Seeing her staring at the ribbons the little girl reached into a pocket of the dress she was wearing and held out a tiny handful of colored ribbons to her. Pha looked from the girl's hand to the man and woman, and they were all were smiling warmly at her.

  Finally the man broke the silence and waved at Pha to get her attention. She watched as he pointed to the child, who was likely his daughter, and said, “Mishka,” before pointing back to her, his bushy eyebrows raised as if asking a question.

  Understanding leaked in and she pointed to herself as, in a voice that cracked her words, she said, “Pha.”

  Chapter 31

  After searching the streets for Alexei without any luck, Alpha, Chris and I had driven out of town to meet up with William, Igor and Sasha at their rented farmhouse. The owner initially seemed overjoyed with the extra income Alpha provided him in return for his hospitality. But after resting his eyes on William, he had decided that it was a good time to take his sheep out to pasture. His wife, on the other hand, made herself out to be the doting hostess, and almost magically she had a variety of breads and cheeses set out for us when we walked through the door. She immediately took on a matronly role with us, as if she had known us our entire lives, and she seemed to otherwise revel in the fact that she had guests. I was sure the food, and likely the overtly sunny disposition of the woman, was more rooted in the fact that we had paid nearly three times the couple's asking price for using their dilapidated barn as a personal shelter for our small troop, and also for a storage space for our gear for at least the next few nights.

  Chris and I tucked into the food and Alpha went out to look for William, who we all unnervingly noticed was quite absent from the bed in which he was supposed to be recovering from the wounds he sustained when we prevented him from killing Alexei.

  “So, what exactly do we do next.” Chris a
sked between mouthfuls of bread and cheese.

  I shrugged my shoulders, “You didn't much care for my last idea.”

  Chris nodded, “Well, the fact that it went south leaves me with the pleasant ability to say ‘I told you so.’ On the other hand, it's not as though any of us had any better ideas.”

  I shook my head and sighed, “To tell you the truth, I think I was acting out of desperation, as opposed to any kind of inspiration.”

  Chris kept eating, but his eyes were locked onto me, wordlessly expressing his desire for me to continue.

  “I'm pretty much tapped out here. I know you are all looking to me for a plan, and expecting my experience as a Detective to just ‘Sherlock’ something out of thin air.” I put some of my food back onto the plate in front of me, as my appetite suddenly diminished, “I am literally a stranger in a strange land here. I don't even know where to begin to start sleuthing around, and even if I did, I can't speak the language to conduct a proper interrogation because I don’t know how to form the words in order to ask the questions that might begin to give us a lead.”

  Chris listened to every word I said without making his usual commentary and then seemed to consider his next words before speaking them, “Frustrating, isn't it?”

  I frowned, “What?”

  Seeing my negative reaction to the question, Chris held his hands up, “I'm just saying it's a frustrating feeling to have the skills to accomplish what you need to do, but circumstances prevent you from using them.”

  My frown deepened, but not in anger. Chris was circling around a point he wanted to make and, despite his usual frivolity, he had moments when he could be quite inspired, even profound.

  “I don't think I can remember ever feeling helpless before,” I confessed.

  Chris nodded, “Back when I was working as a Medical Examiner there were times when I knew, I mean I just knew, that I was looking at a homicide, but nothing would come back from the lab to indicate making such a report. Blood work was clear, no signs of intentional trauma, no allergic or other chemical reactions that could be associated with foul play, still I knew something was wrong, and I had to figure out how I was going to get the answers.”

  “What did you do?”

  Chris smiled a wolf's grin at me, “I asked the corpse.”

  “You mean you studied the body and let it reveal its secrets as you continued your examination?”

  Chris looked at me like I was crazy, “No, I started a conversation with the corpse, and once we had fully broken the ice and developed a friendly report, I flat out asked the corpse what had killed him or her.”

  I waited for the sarcastic zinger to follow, but it never came. Chris just sat there looking at me expectantly until I responded, “You spoke to the corpses?”

  “Sure, we talked about all kinds of things. From the weather to whatever game might have been on the radio the night before. Just idle chat, of course, kind of like anytime you are trying to get to know someone new.”

  “And the bodies spoke back to you?”

  Chris admitted, “In a way. Listen, when you spend hours upon hours in the morgue, eventually the dead will either become something akin to a puzzle, or maybe similar to a machine comprised of like parts. The danger is that your humanity gets sucked away when you start looking down on a formerly living human being like this. The magic and mystery goes away, which leads to a very pragmatic way at looking at life as a whole. Eventually everything becomes so empirical that we lose something in ourselves that we desperately need.”

  “Which is what?”

  “We lose our imagination. Our creativity. Our ability to theorize outside of what is most obviously right in front of us, and it’s my experience that tells me this is where and how the answers reveal themselves.”

  “Okay, so how does talking to the corpses fit in... and what do you mean that they talk to you ‘in a way’?”

  Chris chuckled, “Yeah I know how that sounds, but what I mean is that I look in their file, which usually contains a picture of the person in life, and I force myself to think of them as still alive. What they were like, how their voices might have sounded, how they carried themselves and such the like. Eventually I re-create them in my head as people, and then I can hold a conversation with them, and extrapolate what I think their answers will be.”

  “That's... kind of weird.” I said.

  Chris laughed, “Only ‘kind of weird’?” I'd say it's far more severe than that. Here let me show you what I mean. I had this one person who had apparently died from a terrible stroke in his sleep. The thing was that he was relatively young, in his mid-forties, had no family history of stroke, didn't smoke and was supposed to have been an athlete in decent physical condition. Now, understand that a stroke is something that can be idiopathic, in other words it can just happen for no reason, but the idea of the stroke didn't sit well with me. I could see the guy's muscle tone and the volume of his lungs and couldn't wrap my head around the idea that this guy had thrown a blood clot or some such thing. Imagine my surprise when I opened up his brain and couldn't find the source of the stroke. His blood chemistry was clear and there was no report or indication of trauma to the head. I followed every typical cause of stroke and came up empty, so I started thinking, what if the cause of death wasn't a stroke? Now understand that the guy had clearly had a stroke from the amount of brain tissue that had apparently been destroyed by pre-mortem necrosis, but what if there another cause of death? Such that, as the man had been dying of his actual cause of death, it secondarily caused him to have a stroke just as he died?”

  I couldn't help but interject, “Is that even possible?”

  “Sure,” Chris said matter-of-factly, “in fact there are several poisons that can make such things happen. The problem was that most of these are man-made compounds and show up on toxicology reports, and his blood work was clear. There are a couple of natural products that could have the same effect, but these would need to be injected directly into the bloodstream.”

  “Why is that a problem?” I asked.

  “Mostly because injections leave puncture marks at the sight of the injection, not to mention signs of bruising that becomes very apparent post-mortem, because the blood that would normally circulate in and out of the tiny trauma ends up pooling and is very visible on the skin.”

  I nodded my understanding, so Chris continued, “I couldn't shake the sense that this was what happened, so I re-inspected the body for bruising and used a magnifying glass on all the bruises I could find. Nothing.”

  “So what did you do?”

  I was about to give up and write the report as a death by natural causes, but it still just didn't sit right in my gut. I stepped back and pictured the guy as I believe he would be in life. The conversation was mostly about football and who had the best quarterback/receiver combination in the league. I pictured the guy sitting in the desk chair next to me and after “talking” to him for a while I noticed he wasn't able to sit comfortably in the chair. I asked him about it and he denied being uncomfortable, but he kept fidgeting in the chair. After a little more prodding on my part he admitted to having hemorrhoids.”

  I had been completely rapt in what Chris had been telling me right up until that point, but as soon as the word hemorrhoids came out of his mouth I was sure my friend was punking me. I rolled my eyes and started to get up from the table when Chris ordered, “Sit down!”

  I froze, stunned. Chris never spoke like that to anyone, much less me, and I quickly sat back down in my chair. Chris' displeasure was evident in the frown on his face as he stared at me for a couple seconds before asking, “Where was I?”

  “Hemorrhoids.”

  “Right! Hemorrhoids. So, the guy's fidgeting around in the chair complaining about his hemorrhoid problem and the ‘eureka moment’ happens.”

  “The eureka moment?” I ask.

  “Yes, exactly. I end the conversation, go back to the examination table, flip the body over and start looking where the ‘sun d
on't shine.’ I'm not sure what it was that clued my brain to make the guy fidget on the chair in our conversation, maybe it was the gut contents that I removed from his stomach, which was nothing but fast food, or maybe I had seen the hemorrhoids on my initial exam, but when I inspected the tiny arteries under the magnifying glass I found the puncture wound. It looked so much like an open rupture that hemorrhoids sometimes get that I had totally scanned over it without a second thought, but there it was. No bruising or any of the other signs of trauma that an injection site would normally have post-mortem.”

  I stared blankly at Chris before finding my voice, “Are you telling me that the guy was actually killed by a murderer who injected poison into his ass? This is your inspirational anecdote intended to help me?”

  Chris smiled at me, “Think about it for a second and I'll tell you that a scraping of the man's skin around his mouth and nose had faint traces of a Chloroform derivative.”

  “Chloroform?” I knew about the chemical mostly from old spy novels and movies. It was a particularly dangerous compound that was one of the first used in surgical procedures to anesthetize a patient.

  “Is that stuff still around?” I asked.

  Chris shrugged, “Sure, but most doctors have abandoned it for something with far fewer side effects, or the risk of over-dosing the patient.”

  “So, who uses it these days?”

  Chris said very seriously, “Mostly people who aren't concerned about the intended recipient waking up again.”

  I thought about what Chris was saying and asked, “So they knocked the guy out with the Chloroform to make sure he didn't otherwise struggle or wake up while they injected the poison into his...” I suddenly didn't feel right about making light of an actual murder victim, despite the unusual circumstances. “...Before injecting him in an area that would likely be overlooked during an autopsy. That the idea?”

  “Yep, pretty screwed–up, right?”