Flame Out

by M. P. Cooley

  “He didn’t shoot Brian, if that’s what you’re asking, and he’s coming into the station to go on record with everything he knows.”

  I paused. “Your brother is in a lot of trouble right now.”

  “You heard about the argument?” Dave asked.

  “Sounded a bit more heated than an argument, Dave,” Hale said.

  “Lucas never touched him. But listen, here’s what Brian said. He said that Jake was in prison when Vera got pregnant.”

  I thought of the judge’s words. Jake was unable to attend the wedding that day and I offered to attend in his place. Someone needed to stand up for Vera. My brother took a special interest in her. Jake didn’t miss the wedding because he was at the dentist. He missed it because he was in prison. He couldn’t have been Lucas’s father.

  “Dave, this is all well and good, but this nice information doesn’t mean anything unless you take some action. Bring Lucas to the station right now.”

  “Lucas is upstairs, changing clothes, trying to slip in and out before Natalya catches him—she’s in the backyard and he doesn’t want to have a conversation with her about this now.”

  “You’re at Natalya’s?” I asked. Hale sped up the car, bouncing through the potholes.

  “He’s still mad at her,” Dave said. “I was angry, but for him . . . hold on a second, Lyons. Something’s up.”

  I made the turn onto Natalya’s street too fast, Hale gripping the dashboard as he was shoved against the door. In the distance, I could see Dave’s car parked in front of his aunt’s house.

  “Lucas is shouting, June, something about Jake,” Dave said. Over the phone I heard a car door open and in the distance I saw Dave get out of the car. “June, I can see Jake Medved at the edge of the property. He’s running and . . . Jesus! He’s got a gun!”

  “Stay with the car!” I yelled, even as I watched Dave run toward the backyard.

  We pulled to a stop before Dave was around the building, and I radioed it in, having no reason to work off-channel. I went to the right side of the house and Hale went left, arriving in the backyard at the same time.

  The lawn and garden beyond were beautiful, the late afternoon sun soft through the sunflowers, sentinels guarding the edge of the property. The yard was empty, but from the porch above I heard Natalya’s voice. “Jacob, you show disrespect to me and my home by pointing weapon at me. Put it away! Away, I tell you!”

  I unhooked my glock and Hale drew his Sig Sauer. I held up my hand where he could see, and counted off. “One, two, three.” The two of us circled the porch and ran up the steps, guns drawn, ready for Jake to open fire.

  None came. Jake’s back was to me, the sawed-off shotgun we had been searching for trained on a lunch table where an ashen Maxim Medved sat along with Natalya.

  Dave, in turn, had his glock pointed directly at Jake.

  “Weapons down!” Hale yelled.

  Dave and Jake held firm. I shuddered, the shaded porch blocking out the sun.

  “Batko,” I said.

  “If Aunt Natalya’s harmed, Jake, so help me God, I will send you to hell,” Dave said. Jake didn’t flinch; in fact, he smiled.

  “Hell?” Jake asked. “I deserve it. And after today, it will be crowded. Right, brother? Are you looking forward to spending eternity with me?”

  Maxim Medved was sweating, his face ashen, the remains of a lunch in front of him, marinated asparagus spears, pickled cabbage, and lamb chops. “My dear brother, you know I would lay down my life for my family.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. But we’re free to lay down our lives for you, brother. First Natalya, giving herself to the Nazis.”

  “I did willingly,” Natalya said. “I would fight to death for you, small boys.”

  “You are a good woman, Natalya,” Jake said, lip quivering. “A better person than me. I was so weak minded that my brother convinced me that beating that man who got in the way of his political goals would save the family’s honor.”

  The judge strained for words. “It did.”

  “Not mine, it didn’t. No one would look me in the eye after that, waiting for the murderer to come out. Even Oksana, so gentle, she disappeared without a trace because she thought I was a monster.”

  That was interesting. Even as we pursued the possibility that Oksana’s blood was in the bathroom at Bernie’s house, Jake still thought of her as missing. Perhaps she was. Or perhaps he didn’t kill her.

  “And then my son,” Jake said. “My boy, who wanted nothing more than to live a life of honor, giving his life for his fellow soldiers, his country. You tried to make him kill Luisa. For what reason?” The judge opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out. “Don’t tell me it was to get justice for your family, for Bernie. You would have killed her and left our brother to rot in prison for the rest of his life.”

  Jake’s hand began to shake, an old man’s quaver, the muscles worn. “You tried to get my son to do something dishonorable, and he couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t let him do it. And when you began to think that he might tell the truth to the police, you shot him. You shot my boy.”

  Dave raised his gun, pressing it to Jake’s neck. “Drop the gun, Jake.”

  “You have no idea what you’re doing.” Jake craned his neck, trying to look at Dave, who forced the barrel of the gun harder into Jake’s jaw. “You stupid child.”

  As Jake twisted around, Hale’s hand shot out as quickly as a snake’s tongue and grabbed the gun. He opened the barrel, let the cartridges fall to the floor, and then threw the shotgun over the porch onto the lawn. “Stupid child,” Lucas said as he pushed the screen door open. “Is that what you thought of me, Jake, when you killed my mother to keep her quiet? Stupid child?”

  I holstered my gun and confronted Lucas, chest to chest. He had showered and changed clothes, and his fine hair dripped water onto the collar of his green flannel shirt. He shoved me hard, unaware of me except as an object that stood between him and the person he thought had killed his mother, until I shoved him back.

  “That monster,” Lucas said, “deserves to die.”

  I watched as Hale slid around Dave, a head tilt letting me know he was going to subdue Lucas.

  “Lucas, let me do this,” Dave said, pressing the gun into Jake’s side. “I’ll make sure Mom’s killer gets what’s coming to him.”

  “David,” Natalya talked over me, her voice calm. “David, ne vbyty yoho.”

  “What do you mean I don’t need to kill my mother’s murderer?” Dave’s hands shook. “Teta, I thought you, more than anyone, would understand.”

  “Dave,” I said gently, “listen to your aunt. This isn’t justice. This is revenge. Let me arrest your mother’s killer, send him to prison.” I glanced over at the judge to see if he responded, but he sat silent and open-mouthed. “I’ll make sure your mother’s killer dies there.”

  Dave dropped his weapon, handing it to me grip first, and took a deep hitching breath, half sigh and half sob. “You’re right. I don’t need to do this.”

  “No,” Natalya said, looking across the table to her lunch companion. “You do not need to kill your mother’s killer. I already did.”

  CHAPTER 29

  A KNIFE DROPPED OUT OF THE JUDGE’S HAND AND ONTO THE floor, clattering across the tile.

  “Hemlock,” she said. “I stop planting whole field of fruits and vegetables, and my landfills with hemlock.” She waved to the open field. “Crop of poison.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. “He’s shaking. Is he in pain?”

  “Some, I believe. I hope.” She smiled. “Do not feign sorrow, Jacob, unless you grieve because I killed him first.”

  Maxim Medved slumped, his breath shallow, his fingertips blue. As Hale spoke quickly into his phone requesting an ambulance, I went to the dying man, grabbing his shoulders, trying to lower him gently to the ground. He smelled of Old Spice cologne and the faintest hint of gunpowder, and I found myself pinned under his bulk as his useless legs folded. Jake grabbed his brother’s
shoulders and together we laid him on his back, his feet elevated on his folded trench coat, trying to make sure any oxygen Maxim took in got to his brain.

  His brother crouched next to him, slapping Maxim’s cheeks to get the blood flowing, soft and then hard. The imprints of Jake’s fingers on the judge’s face didn’t disappear, however, and his skin remained white. His circulatory system was shutting down. I reached across and stilled Jake’s hands.

  “What form did you use, Natalya?” I demanded. “For the hemlock?”

  She pointed to the asparagus spears. “Green leaves? You see?”

  “The stuff that looks like parsley?” Hale asked.

  “Looks like, but is not,” Natalya said. “Fronds from hemlock. Also, shredded root is in cabbage salad, and the lamb, it also has hemlock.”

  “He couldn’t taste it?” Dave asked. “You always said growing up that we should never eat the plants that looked like wild carrots if they were bitter.”

  “But it takes single frond, barely anything, to kill. And Maxim had appetites. He was greedy, even as a child. Sour apples picked from tree or chocolate bars from American soldiers, he could never get enough.” She looked as if she wanted to spit on him. “Food, power, women . . . never enough.”

  “Aunt Natalya,” Dave’s voice broke. “Judge Medved couldn’t have children. It had to have been Jake, and when Mom tried to blackmail him, he—”

  “Jake’s violence, it was not in his nature. Maxim nurtured it, directing Jake which men to beat—Maxim was head and Jake was fist. And Jake took punishment. He went to prison—”

  “You are proving my point, Aunt Natalya,” Dave said. “Jake was capable of—”

  Natalya held up her hand. “Jake was in prison during the time that Lucas was conceived. Maxim was not. Because of mumps, Maxim’s wife Sonya was unable to have children. Maxim, he could. There were stories . . .” she moved closer to where I sat next to Maxim, her orthopedic shoe inches from Maxim’s ear and pointed down at him with two twisted fingers, “of his proclivities.”

  I looked up at Natalya. “Proclivities?”

  “Young women, they said, little more than children. A girl from Odessa, who killed herself in shame when she discovered she was pregnant. A woman who worked at his brother Bernard’s factory who had a child out of wedlock, mother and child moving to Utica, and with her stories she told of Maxim’s perversions. Vera. These women . . . these girls . . . were called liars, even by me.” She stared down at Maxim like a god at the day of reckoning. “Maxim, he said he owed me his life because I helped him escape Nazis. I decided he should pay.”

  “But why not bring him to the police?” Dave said. “Things aren’t the same here, teta. We would have made sure justice was served.”

  “No, you would not!” Natalya shouted, coughing at the last words and limping toward the rail of the porch, again an old woman. “This morning you said you could not, David. You said I ruined all hope of getting justice for Vera. You said I hid purse for too long and if police had found note in 1983 instead of now . . .” Her hands shook as she gripped the porch rail. “But I did not know of note, and Taras . . . even when Vera was pregnant, he said Lucas was his, and I knew no different. He treated Lucas like they shared blood. He would have put down his life for both of you.” Dave nodded along with his aunt, but Lucas only stared down at the Judge, hand clenching and unclenching.

  “That day,” Natalya said, “when Luisa and I found purse in Bernard’s house . . . and I saw all that blood, I knew Vera had died there, and I thought it was at Bernard’s hand and he must be brought low. But I punished an innocent man, wronging him in worst way, robbing him of life. I sent Luisa into exile and condemned you boys and your father to a life of yearning always for a dead woman.” Her hands shook as she gripped the porch. “I had to make it right.”

  “By killing him?” Dave yelled. “Teta, you are not a murderer!”

  “David, Stalin and Nazis stripped away our humanity, rotting our best parts with starvation, murder. Maxim, Jacob, me—” Natalya said.

  “You aren’t like them,” Lucas said. “You fed the hungry, you protected the weak.”

  “I should have let Red Army capture Maxim, let him die in unmarked grave, like millions before him.” Natalya dragged herself back to her chair. “Like Vera, in barrel of basement. Alone. Unmourned.”

  Shadows spread across the lawn as the last light faded and in the distance I heard approaching sirens. Dave brushed his shoulder against his brother, but Lucas pushed away, his eyes darting from his aunt to his brother to Maxim, helpless on the ground.

  “Anything to say, my boys?” Natalya was panting. “To me or to him. He looks gone, but he can hear you.”

  “When you told me to build that wall,” Lucas said, his voice expressionless, “was it some sort of joke to you? Having me bury my mother?”

  “He can’t answer, Lucas,” I said. “You are never going to know.”

  “No. I was talking to Jake. Did you have me brick her in?”

  Jake knelt, resting his hand on the seat of the chair his brother had been in, and slowly stood, facing Lucas.

  “My brother didn’t tell me Vera was in one of those barrels—I didn’t even know she was dead until they found her after the fire. It seems that for once, my brother did his own dirty work. But I wouldn’t have stopped him. I never did, not even when he asked my son to commit murder.” Lucas pulled his fist back, but Dave grabbed Lucas’s hand, pulling his brother away. Jake didn’t notice.

  “Has there been word on my boy?” Jake asked Hale, who guided him to the far end of the porch.

  Sirens whined to a halt in front of the house, and I heard the clatter of paramedic equipment out front.

  “There’s not much time now, my boys,” Natalya said, reaching out her hand. Dave let himself be pulled close, but Lucas stayed still and watchful.

  “Anything to say, Lucas?” Natalya said. “The old man will soon be beyond our reach.”

  “Hi, Dad,” Lucas said conversationally. He bared his teeth like an animal, a mockery of a smile, and I moved closer to him, ready for what I didn’t know. Natalya had already done enough damage.

  “You thought it was worth it to deny me.” Lucas knelt, and I dropped beside him. “To deny who I was . . .” He took both hands and covered Medved’s mouth and nose and pressed down. “To take my mother.”

  I tried to grab Lucas under his arms, but he clenched them to his sides, and I was peeling his fingers away one by one when Dave reached around and grabbed Lucas in a bear hug, pulling him free as he thrashed wildly.

  “Lucas. Lucas,” Dave said. “Please don’t do this. Please don’t. You’re the only family I have left. If you kill a dying man . . .”

  The emergency responders pulled the gurney up the steps, and Dave dragged his brother free.

  “Do you have your mouth guard?” I asked the first paramedic. “It’s hemlock, and even a blade—”

  “We always have our mouth guards,” he said. “Now give us room.”

  They strapped Judge Medved to the gurney and asked Hale to force air into the judge’s lungs in steady intervals, manually pumping oxygen until they could get him on the ventilator. The metal wheels clattered against the brick steps as the group crashing down to the grass, covering the sound of Natalya’s gentle fall.

  “Teta,” Dave said, his voice hoarse.

  “The judge would not eat unless I joined him in meal,” she said. “We always shared food.” Crumpled on the ground, she looked scared. “I had to make it right.”

  CHAPTER 30

  WE MADE A DEAL: JAKE COULD STAY AT THE HOSPITAL UNTIL Brian woke up, but he had to tell Hale and me everything that happened to Luisa. Unfortunately, he was lying.

  “My brother promised my son the bar if I killed Luisa.”

  The waiting room was packed with people hoping Brian and Natalya would live. Hale and I were the only people who were pulling for the judge to survive because we wanted to question him, although maybe Dave had
his fingers crossed: He wanted to keep Natalya out of jail.

  Hale, Jake, and I were camped in an empty patient room, propped up on a pair of beds. Could I leave a tip for housekeeping in the hospital? I felt guilty for messing up the sharp hospital corners, but I was too tired to stay standing.

  “And you agreed,” I said to Jake, “to cross state lines to conduct kidnapping and murder—”

  “A federal offense,” Hale added.

  “Over a bar?”

  “Sure,” Jake said.

  “That’s not what you said earlier today.” I stood up and started pacing. After Kevin’s illness, the smell of hospital rooms left me ready to crawl out of my skin. In addition to calming me, I got to throw Jake off balance. He couldn’t act nonchalant when he had to crane his neck to see me. “At Natalya’s you said your brother coerced your son into committing the crime.”

  “You must have misheard. Maxim asked Brian to do it, and my son refused.”

  “And you agreed?” I asked. “Aren’t you past your head-busting days?”

  Jake flexed his arm, although I saw no visible difference in muscle tone. “I can still throw a case of beer around and Luisa didn’t weigh much more than that. I knew I could do the job.”

  Hale raised one eyebrow at Jake. “But why?”

  “When Brian came home from Afghanistan, all . . . broken,” Jake clenched his fists, “I made a deal with the devil: I’d sign over the bar to Maxim, and he’d give me the property and cash for a house.” Jake’s eyes darted to the side, and I was beginning to think Jake had a reverse tell: He only made eye contact when he was lying. “My boy was not going to get better trapped on the second floor of a bar.”

  “So if the deal gave you what you wanted,” I asked, “why’d you try to reverse the terms?”

  “Brian needed a future. And that would only happen if he owned the bar.”

  “I don’t understand what your brother got out of the deal,” Hale said. “If he’d kept his mouth shut . . .”

  “He was running scared. I was the first to spot her—just a flash across the screen. Didn’t think anything of it at first, and showed it to Maxim as a laugh.” He shook his head. “Seeing her . . . he turned to stone.”