A Winsome Murder

by James DeVita

  The cottony clouds, puffy white and low, scuttled across the sky from north to south. He marked the wind. Its speed. He breathed in deeply and stilled himself, steadied his mind. Checked his watch. Focused.

  He got back in his truck.

  She would be here soon.

  She would be here very soon.

  Savva Baratov looked half asleep when Mickey Eagan escorted him into the interview room.

  “Why do you bring me here?” Baratov said. “I have nothing to do with this.”

  Eagan left and shut the door. Coose leaned against the far wall, arms crossed. Mangan pulled out a chair, spun it around, and sat across from Baratov, a stocky, crevice-faced man with a look of privilege smoldering about him. He had wide hands, fingers like fat sausages, and was too well dressed for the owner of a diner.

  “I have done nothing,” Baratov said again. He took off his black-rimmed glasses and cleaned them. “Why do you bring me here?”

  “Actually,” Mangan said, “I’m the one who gets to ask the questions.”

  “I am United States citizen. Eighteen years I am here now. I have rights.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “My lawyer, he comes. Then you ask your questions.”

  Mangan ignored him and asked, “Where are you from anyway?”

  “The Bank Street Diner.”

  “Very funny. I don’t meet a lot of Russian comedians.”

  “There is no jokes in Russia.”

  “Not a fuck of a lot here either. I asked you where you were from.”

  “… Constanta, Romania.”

  “Not familiar with it,” Mangan lied, well aware that Romania was a global center for human trafficking, a leading exporter of human flesh. He opened a file and took out a photo of Deborah Ellison. He slid it across the table. “You know this girl?”

  Baratov looked at it for a long moment. “I must wait for lawyer,” he said. “I am United States citizen.”

  “Look, you can sing that song all the way to the state penitentiary. The place is filled with United States citizens.” Mangan pointed to the photo. “I asked you if you know this girl.”

  Baratov folded his arms across his chest.

  Mangan folded his.

  A long silence passed. Mangan let it strain.

  Finally, Baratov, smiling slightly, looked to the ceiling and said, “A policeman was just born.”

  Something clicked in Mangan’s brain. Something about those words. He’d heard them before. “What? What’d you just say?”

  “Nothing. It is a, how do you say, a proverb where I come from.”

  Mangan couldn’t place where he’d heard the phrase before.

  “And for each police baby that is born,” Baratov added, “there is little lawyer baby born too. That is my proverb. And now, I am so sorry, but I must talk no more until my baby has arrived.”

  Mangan ignored Baratov and nodded to Coose, who walked over and loaded a DVD copy of the security tapes from O’Rourke’s tavern into a laptop. He cued it up and turned the screen toward Baratov. “Where were you on the night of August tenth,” Mangan asked, “between five o’clock and midnight?”

  “Lawyer,” was all Baratov said.

  “Video,” was all that Mangan said.

  Coose pressed the Play button on the laptop.

  Baratov’s wall of a face fell slightly. “I did not—I have nothing to do with this.”

  “With what?” Mangan asked.

  “With her, with what happened to Deborah. It is too horrible to think.”

  “So, you know her?”

  “Who, Deborah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, of course I know her. I like her.”

  “Doesn’t look like you were getting along too well on this tape.”

  “No, that was, that was business meeting.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Come now, my friend, you know my business,” Baratov said, far too smugly for Mangan’s patience. “My girls are clean. Yes? I keep them off the street. But sometimes I need to remind them of the rules, yes? Ask Sergeant Burke, my friend Mr. Burke, in vice, he will tell you. I am fair and safe.”

  The more Baratov talked the more Mangan wanted to punch him in the head. “First off,” Mangan said, “I’m not your friend. And what I do know, is that this girl disappeared very shortly after you had an argument with her.”

  “What argument? We discuss business.”

  “The tape has you leaving the restaurant around seven forty-five, right after her. Where did you go?”

  “I do not remember.”

  “This shows you with a girl a few hours before she was murdered. Where did you go?”

  “Okay, okay, I go to the Bank Street!” Baratov said, his cockiness limply retreating. “I am open all night, and through weekend. The drunks they come late for food, yes? You can see, my receipts, my cameras. I have cameras too. I am on the tape if you look. I work all night. I give you tapes, yes? Come, we go now and get them, I don’t care. No warrant. We go now.”

  Mangan looked to Coose and said, “Send Eagan over there.”

  Coose stepped out of the room.

  “I do not lie, Detective,” Baratov said. “I take care of my girls. You ask them.”

  “Why were you at a restaurant with two of your girls? I don’t see a lot of hookers going out to dinner with their pimps.”

  “That word—pimp—it is terrible. I am like father to my girls.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you’re a regular bang-up dad.”

  “What is this bang-up?”

  “Just—would you—just shut up, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “How do you know Deborah Ellison?”

  “Fenyana bring her to me. For a job. I say yes. They work together sometimes. I take care of her.”

  “To the tune of 70 percent, right?”

  Baratov gave a half nod.

  Mangan asked, “Do you know anyone that might want to hurt her?”

  “No.”

  “She have any trouble with your customers? Any violence or drugs?”

  “No.”

  “No drugs?”

  “No. No drugs. Fenyana tells me Deborah has quit the drugs.”

  “Deborah Ellison was on drugs?”

  “Yes, you know, the meth.”

  Mangan noted this. “She owe anybody money that you know of ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She owe you money?”

  “No.”

  At that point the door opened and Coose walked in, followed by a thin, well-dressed man.

  “Good morning,” the man said. “I’m Marcus Grigory, Mr. Baratov’s lawyer. You’re charging my client with what, may I ask?”

  Coose closed the door and said, “Violating the Clean Indoor Air Ordinance. Permitting smoking in the Bank Street Diner. Health department sent us.”

  “I’m sorry, Officer,” Grigory said, “are you trying to be funny?” No one said anything. “If you have formal charges to make against my client, please do so. If not, we’re finished here.” He waited for an answer. “Very well.” He gestured to Savva. “Come, Mr. Baratov.” Baratov stood as Grigory opened the door for him. “By the way,” Grigory said, “you’ll be hearing from us. This frivolous and unwarranted harassment of my client by the Chicago police is just one more example of the continued ethnic stereotyping of—”

  “Would you please stop talking,” Mangan said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look, I don’t care about your client’s little titty business, but I promise you I will make his life absolutely miserable if he doesn’t cooperate.” The only people Mangan hated worse than guys like Baratov were lawyers for guys like Baratov. “I will have the Department of Health, the fire inspector, the building inspector, the IRS, the INS, and every other S-ending acronym I can think of, camping out on the sidewalk of his restaurant twenty-four-seven.” Mangan wanted to hit something, he closed in on Baratov. “I will put you under, Mr. Savvy, Ali
Baba—whatever the hell your name is! You are fucking with the wrong guy!”

  “Hey, hey,” Coose said, stepping between them. “Enough! James, back off. Back off !”

  Baratov threw up his hands. “Why is this?”

  “Asshole,” Mangan yelled as Coose shoved him away.

  “Everybody relax,” Coose called out. “Just relax, James!”

  Mangan mumbled, “Piece of shit,” under his breath as he forced himself to keep distance. The switch had clicked in him again—On—and like an electric current it buzzed his legs and tingled his hands with rage. He removed himself to the other side of the room, breathing deeply, willing himself calmer.

  “Why do you do this to me?” Baratov yelled. “I tell you all I know!”

  Grigory stepped in. “Mr. Baratov, don’t say anything. This is ridiculous, Detective, but nothing that I didn’t expect. I do my homework. I know you. I know your history of violence, don’t think I don’t.” They started out. “We’ll be seeing you in court, Detective. Trust to it.”

  “You’re damn right you will,” Mangan said, catching Baratov’s eye. “And by the way, I am personally going to be the one who tells Mr. Nazarkov how your client is going around telling everybody he’s in the Russian mafia. Yuri Nazarkov’s Russian mafia. I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to hear that.”

  Baratov stopped two steps from the doorway.

  “He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?” Mangan asked. “Your buddy, Yuri? I’ll give him a call as soon as you leave. Let him know where you live.”

  Baratov faltered. “Please do not do such a thing.”

  “Mr. Baratov,” Grigory said, motioning to leave. “Don’t say anything.”

  Mangan asked Baratov again. “Why were you meeting with the girls?”

  “I, I talk to Deborah because—”

  Grigory grabbed Baratov’s arm and pulled him away. “Mr. Baratov, please.”

  “Zatknis’! ” Baratov screamed at him, and shoved him off. “Go! You go now!”

  Grigory backed slowly through the open doorway. “Very well, Mr. Baratov,” he said, leaving. “I’ll, I’ll wait for you out in the hall.”

  Coose closed the door and Baratov sat back down.

  “I will be honest here, Detective.”

  “I look forward to that.”

  “You will not talk to Mr. Nazarkov?”

  Mangan pressed the question again. “Why were you at dinner with Deborah Ellison on the night that she was murdered?”

  “I go because Fenyana, she tells me that Deborah wants to work on her own. She does not want to share so much the money with me. Yes? And she does not want Fenyana to work for me no more. She has a computer, the laptop, and the girls now, they do their own online escort service. All by themselves they want to do this, but I tell her this is not safe.”

  Coose sat on the edge of the table. “And that you’d be losing a shit-load of money, right?”

  “Yes, I will not lie. Yes. I think, maybe she takes my customers. So I go with Fenyana to the restaurant, to talk. Fenyana does not want to leave me, she knows it is not safe. She has been by herself alone before, and beaten, one time very badly. So I tell Deborah, this is dangerous. You cannot be alone. You must stay with me.”

  “Did you threaten her?” Coose asked.

  “No, I do not really threaten. I want to scare her, yes, but that is all. I tell to her what happens to these girls sometimes. She does not believe me.”

  “What did she say?” Mangan asked.

  “Nothing. She is mad and says I go home now and she leaves. She is mad at Fenyana too, because Fenyana agrees with me.”

  “Where’d you go after she left the restaurant?”

  “I follow her, she is not outside. So I send Fenyana to work, in the cab. And I tell her I will go to Deborah, I will find her and convince her.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. I cannot find her. I go to her apartment, I bang the door. She is nowhere. And that is it. I do not see her again. Fenyana does not see her. She did not come home that night. And then, of course, so sad, later, we hear what has happened to her. It is so terrible. And that it should happen after I speak of such dangers.”

  Baratov appeared moved. Authentically. Mangan looked to Coose.

  “Is it not strange?” Baratov continued. “And then Fenyana, she goes away too, and one of my girls, she tells me that Fenyana has run away because she thinks I am the cause for this, for what has happened to Deborah.”

  “What does she think?” Mangan asked.

  “She thinks I am the person who has done this to Deborah! I am not. I would never.” Baratov dropped his head. “Never. That is all I know. I do not lie.”

  “We think she’s in California,” Mangan said. “You know why she might have gone there?”

  “San Francisco, maybe. Richmond. It is Russian—how you say?—Russian area. She worked there when she first come to America.”

  Mangan jotted the information down. He knew he had nothing to hold Baratov on, but what was worse, he believed him. “Okay,” he told him. “You can go.”

  “Yes. I go.”

  Coose hopped off the table and showed him to the door and said, “I’ll keep in touch.”

  “Yes. Yes. And, please,” Baratov said, half in the hallway, “please, you will say nothing to Mr. Nazarkov?”

  Coose tried to slam the door on him but didn’t get a chance because Willie Palmer came barging through first. He shoved Baratov into the hall and closed the door.

  “What?” Mangan asked. “You got something?”

  “No, no—it’s—Wesley Faber, from Wisconsin? The police chief ?”

  “Yeah?”

  “His daughter was just shot. Just this morning, about an hour from here. They think it’s the same guy.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  Every morning at six thirty, five days a week, Jennifer jogged the breakwater that led to the Stony Point Marina in Waukegan, Illinois. On this morning, she had been pushing herself. She felt strong, her legs, her breathing. It had been almost a year and a half since having her first child, Kayla, and although she’d hit her goal weight she still didn’t feel like she’d gotten her old body back yet, and she was becoming dimly aware that she might never get it back completely. Her mind drifted as she quickened her pace, wishing she could wear sports bras all the time, wondering whether or not she’d be able to stick to her diet once the holidays ambushed her.

  The sun had risen just enough to begin taking the early chill out of the air as she jogged through the entrance of the marina. To her right, Lake Michigan, glittering, looked beautiful; to her left, a wide swath of grass was dotted with picnic tables and clusters of silver birch. Through the trees she could see the dock, crowded with sailboats and power boats of all shapes and sizes. Two charter boats were loading gear and customers on board. At one of the picnic tables in the grassy area sat a man sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He watched her as she ran past in her very short shorts, her long legs and long arms bare, her damp skin sparkly in the morning sun.

  At the end of the jogging path, which skirted the breakwater, was a cul-de-sac lined with various sand-boxed exercise stations: a pull-up bar, a place for step training, another for sit-ups. This was the halfway mark of the route Jennifer ran each morning. After some sit-ups and stretching, she would head back home.

  A gently windy day. Jennifer sprinted the last few yards, aware that the man she’d passed at the picnic table was still staring at her. She ignored him. She wasn’t concerned; the seven o’clock fishing boats hadn’t sailed yet, and the concession stand was open, selling coffee and donuts. She did her sit-ups quickly, wanting to stop at one hundred, and almost did, but made herself do one hundred and ten. She stood and leaned over, fingers to toes, to the left, to the right, and then a slow roll up. She reached high above her head and looked out over the ruffle
d waters of Lake Michigan, a long stretch left, then right. She took in a deep breath, very deep, a yoga class breath, and let it out slowly—

  When her head hit the pavement she felt violently nauseous and needed to vomit. A puddle of viscous liquid quickly pooled up around her mouth, thick and warm, and she gurgled in the tepid blood that caught in her throat and bubbled out her nose. Her limbs trembled uncontrollably, her bowels loosed themselves, and then all went still and quiet … and she wondered then, for some odd reason, whether her husband and her baby girl had eaten breakfast yet.

  She died quickly.

  The bullet, which entered her back a few inches below her left shoulder, had shattered her scapula and sixth rib, ripped through her lungs, and lacerated her pulmonary vein and aorta. A kill shot. A single .243-caliber bullet fired from a distance of perhaps seventy-five or a hundred yards had dropped her to the ground, as one witness would later describe, as if “her legs just went out from under.”

  Jennifer Faber Paulsen, daughter of police chief Wesley Faber of Winsome Bay, Wisconsin, was dead.

  There would be more.

  But first he would write.

  He would write the story now, for all to see and read.

  He spent a long time writing, and while he wrote, a thing like calmness closed in around him. Something about it, about the act of writing, eased the compulsion in him to keep doing more of what he had been doing. If he looked not left nor right, but kept on straight ahead, sailing into the illusionary white square of words before him, his mind settled into what seemed a smooth and glassy levelness.

  But then his words ran out.

  And he began to hear her.

  She was coming.

  Her thoughts … were coming …

  They had found him again. They pressed at this mind, swelling the space around his brain and bulging his skull inward till her inexistence burst the weir of his mind. Her thoughts spilled everywhere, gushing out his eyes and fingers, leaking onto the keyboard and desk and puddling beneath his chair. These thoughts—the obscene conjectures of his mind—were the frantic rats that gnawed incessantly at his brain: on that unthinkable night, which she did not survive, in her last moments before she ceased to be, what had she been thinking?