Season of Sacrifice

by Bharti Kirchner

  ‘Ah, keep doing it. You’re the best.’ Viktor’s glossy eyes popped back open. He moved his head a little. ‘Oh, the specimen you’re asking about? Of that lab rat who wanted to marry me? I’ll tell you. We’ve done some work here on the specimen already, analyzed and reverse-engineered. Just finished, actually. It’s done. The results have been shipped to Moscow. We’ll get a malaria vaccine out of it for the next stage of the trial.’

  ‘And if Anna died by fire …’

  ‘Don’t you get it? Then no one else could have her blood and, by extension, the vaccine formula. Sylvie, malaria queen who came up with the formula, wouldn’t be there to claim it. She’d have died by fire, too. The formula would be mine and MSP’s. We’d dominate the world market.’

  ‘And Ivan would get a huge finder’s fee?’

  ‘Yes. He’s the one who put me on to this after he’d met Sylvie. I was in Moscow then. Once he got a whiff of how valuable her research was, he got back in touch with me. But that’s all in the past, darling. Now it’s just you and me.’

  He raised his head and kissed the air, and she was sure he believed he’d kissed her, as though he’d been overcome by an unquenchable thirst. Her temperature dropped. She pictured Anna and the way she might have felt during her last tryst with him. Anna’s hopes had evaporated. In the dry, barren landscape where she stood, her footing unsteady, she could see no one.

  Maya glanced at her watch and became aware of how little time she had left. She must formulate her remaining questions carefully to get the last bit of the narrative out of him.

  ‘Did you consider using any mood-altering pills with that “lab rat,” to loosen her up a bit?’ she said in a controlled voice.

  ‘I did, even though my power was perfectly adequate for the job.’ He smiled faintly, smugly and put a finger through his tousled hair.

  ‘You fascinate me, you arouse me.’ She breathed those lies in his ear. ‘Tell me more – I want to experience it. Once you’d gotten Anna into that state of mind, I suppose the power of suggestion took her down the desired path?’

  ‘Yes, dear, and a noble path, too, I insist.’

  ‘Help me live it, or maybe we should live it together?’ Again, the lies popped out of her mouth. She even managed to look at him with feigned pride. ‘Your skills are terribly sexy, by the way.’

  ‘I’m not really that sleepy, you know. This evening I’ll give you the kind of pleasure no man has ever given you.’ He sounded euphoric. ‘Since you asked, purification was the process I advocated to Anna.’

  ‘Anna, being a Tibetan, was familiar with the concept, wasn’t she? Dance with fire, in God Agni’s presence, to sanctify the cause of Tibet – am I correct?’

  ‘Yes, you burn yourself to ashes, turn into a beautiful pile of nothing.’

  He doesn’t get his hands dirty. His victims die of their own volition. ‘Only then, I suppose, can you make a lasting statement to the world about the suffering of Tibetans and help break China’s domination of that country?’

  ‘You said it all. In the end, I managed to focus Anna on the benefits of what she was about to undergo. She was totally convinced. She even thanked me.’

  Maya felt oppressively hot. Sweat accumulated on her temples, as though she, too, was on fire. An image of Sylvie bubbled up in her mind. Along with the recollection of the video titled Burn Give Live, which the guru had lent to Sylvie and which had glorified the same concept Viktor had employed to bring Anna to ashes. Still, to get him to spill out more she had to show she was on his side.

  ‘Sylvie – what about her? Why did she choose the same path?’

  ‘What are friends for?’ he said boastfully with a chuckle. ‘I use all the tools at my command. I leave nothing to chance. That’s why I am who I am.’

  ‘I still don’t get why a smart person like Sylvie—’

  ‘Oh, Sylvie was the easy one. She couldn’t live without Ivan and she couldn’t have Ivan. She didn’t need much convincing from me. As far as she was concerned, her life was over. A romantic fool, she was. She lost all faith in people after she found out her sister was sleeping with Ivan.’

  Maya took an uneasy breath. ‘Makes you wonder if Ivan did that intentionally to hurt Sylvie, to get rid of her.’

  ‘Yeah, you could say that. It wasn’t for Veen, certainly. I’ve seen a photo of her. That fat slut, that bitch – she killed Sylvie if anyone did. I only helped Sylvie by giving her what she wanted … a beautiful ending.’

  Get them high and talk them into burning themselves. Make them believe it’s a beautiful ending.

  Again, he gave a smile of self-importance. ‘You’re not upset, are you? I assisted Sylvie with the mechanical part of the act, to put her out of the misery. Mine was an act of compassion, sweetheart. What a glorious way to die.’

  The mechanical part of the act? How cold-blooded that sounded. How it tallied with what Maya had come to believe regarding Veen’s involvement in the love triangle. Veen, also, had been used by these men, manipulated and blinded to reality. Maya’s heart felt crushed. Now she saw what the guru had also suggested: the fine demarcation between life and death, a fragile line in the sand. Pursue the wrong partner, lose your head, get so obsessed that you sever yourself from the real world and soon you’re standing on the wrong side of that line.

  ‘Oh, about Atticus,’ she said. ‘Did Ivan send those gangsters to beat him up?’

  ‘Now you’re asking about that stupid accountant?’

  ‘It’d really help if you just told me.’

  ‘Yeah, he was too chummy with Sylvie and we didn’t trust him. He’d have gone after Ivan for having a fling with his wife. He’d have foiled our plans.’

  She threw in her last but one question: ‘How does Tara Martin fit into all this?’

  ‘The crazy head. We didn’t trust her either, not knowing what Sylvie had spilled to her during those salon visits. She took almost no convincing.’

  ‘Aren’t you proud?’ After a pause, she slid in another important question. ‘What about Jennifer?’

  ‘Jennifer, the ravishing beauty, made it all possible. We couldn’t have done it without her. But maybe now we can.’

  They were planning to do away with Jennifer.

  Still lying on his back, Viktor rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times. ‘Have I talked enough? I’m yours. I’m all yours, darling. I want to dance with you. Dance naked. Dance all night. Dance under the stars. Shall we?’

  ‘First, let me get more champagne.’

  He propped himself up on the pillow, then again fell back on the bed. ‘Don’t be too long. I’m ready.’

  Acting as though she was light on her feet, she danced out of the bed, tiptoed into the living room and found her loafers but not her jeans. She was breathing hard. Had he hidden them? No time to look, but she couldn’t go out the front door dressed like this. How fortunate she had a plan B worked out with Joe. In the bathroom, she locked the door, her heart hammering. What if Viktor rolled out of bed and came chasing after her?

  She opened the window wider, took a deep breath. Outfitted in her blouse, underpants and walking shoes, and standing on top of the toilet tank, she grabbed the top of the window frame. She put her head through the window, saw the hanging rope. Grasping it, her lifeline now, coercing her legs after her, she wriggled out onto the open steel gratings of the fire escape deck.

  A furry hand feathered her bare legs.

  Her scream froze in her throat.

  It meowed.

  Chest heaving, she groped her way a few feet to reach the ladder of the fire stairs, a contraption that had probably never been used.

  She heard Viktor’s faint bedroom voice. ‘Darling, where are you?’

  That gave her the jolt she needed. She descended the three flights of steel-grated stairs as fast as she could, grasping the iron railing for balance and still feeling nearly out of control. Panting, she reached the retractable ladder at the very bottom of the escape and slipped down it, dropping the last two feet
to the alley.

  Solid ground. How good it felt on her feet. And that light breeze.

  Once her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit yard, she looked around frantically.

  Cal’s metallic gray Hyundai was waiting. ‘Get in,’ he said urgently, poking his head out of the driver’s-side window, then leaning to his right and unlocking the passenger door.

  She snatched open the passenger door and somehow managed to put her seat belt on, disregarding the odd look Cal gave her for her scanty outfit.

  By now Viktor had figured out Maya wasn’t returning to bed. She imagined him cursing her, looking for her and frantic to catch her. What if Viktor took the elevator and came downstairs? He’d kiss her hard. He’d use his honey-smooth voice and his scent to talk her into going back to his apartment.

  A light flashed somewhere. Did she also see a shape?

  ‘Quick.’ Maya’s heart surged in her throat. ‘We must get out of here fast.’

  Cal gunned the engine and the car shot out of the alley; tires squealed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Uma cried out from the backseat.

  Maya gave an embarrassed, ‘Yes.’

  ‘But your clothing?’ Uma passed her shawl to Maya, saying, ‘You can tell me later.’

  Maya wrapped the shawl around her. She absorbed its warmth, got a grip on herself.

  Cal turned onto Roosevelt Avenue. ‘We’re heading straight to the police precinct. They’ll have a search warrant to go to Viktor’s apartment.’

  Uma said to Cal, ‘Do you suppose the arrests will happen soon?’

  Cal nodded and maneuvered the car around a slow-moving pickup truck. ‘Everything will happen quickly now, ladies. Don’t worry. The men will be locked up. Jennifer, too.’

  Uma passed a bottle of water to Maya. ‘Drink, my child.’

  After a few sips, Maya got her natural rhythm back, although a deep sorrow blew through her for the women who had died. A cold hand feathered her neck as she pictured Viktor flinging his clothes into his suitcase, searching the Internet for an earlier flight and making a call to Ivan. He’d formulated a plan to take revenge against her – try to relax her guard and seduce her. Her only hope: in his drunken state, he might not be able to trot out too far.

  She thanked both Uma and Cal for their help, adding, ‘I’ll have plenty to say to the authorities. With my copcam being on, the police will also have a chance to watch the camera footage of Viktor’s confession. I only wish it wasn’t such a sordid tale.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Maya dropped Uma off at the airport a few days later and returned home, still weepy from the farewell. The living room was empty, shadowy and lifeless; the windows were blank. She heard footsteps on the porch and looked through the peephole. There stood Justin, out of the blue, weary-eyed and denim-clad, his shoulders hunched.

  She opened the door. ‘Hello,’ she said, if a little unenthusiastically.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind my dropping by. May I come in?’

  Once they were seated on opposite sides of the coffee table, Justin said, ‘I’d like to talk with you. It’s long overdue. I apologize.’

  ‘It’s not really necessary.’ Her voice was level, unemotional, with a finality to it.

  ‘It is necessary, Maya.’

  ‘You may not realize this but I know everything because of Annette.’

  ‘You don’t know everything because Annette doesn’t know everything.’

  ‘So what’s left to tell? Isn’t it enough you cheated on me, betrayed me and didn’t have the decency to—?’ Maya stopped speaking, her voice clogged with resentment.

  ‘You have every right to be furious. In fact, you’ve shown more restraint than most women would under similar circumstances.’ Sadness and remorse dulled his features. He looked plain, ordinary, confused. ‘You see, when I was investigating the drug case involving Jennifer’s boyfriend, she began to lean on me. I was seeing you then and at first I tried to keep our contact businesslike. But she was so young, so vulnerable, had survived so much and had no one to turn to. And I … I got caught.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have told me this sooner?’

  ‘I wanted to. It was a difficult period of my life and I failed miserably.’

  Maya turned her face away and silently weighed several other aspects of this case: Jennifer stealing the specimen, being in cahoots with Ivan and Viktor and being complicit in Anna’s death. She said out loud, ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘What you might not know is that Jennifer has a rare disease, a hereditary neuropathy inherited from her mother. Jennifer has been on strong painkillers ever since I’ve known her. I felt so sorry, I had to be there for her. Other symptoms also presented themselves. Because of her own medical condition, Jennifer grasped Viktor’s urgency in getting hold of the malaria vaccine. Then there was Viktor’s persuasive power. And her attraction to Ivan. Before long, she got caught in their plan. Maybe she didn’t care, knowing she didn’t have much time left. Maybe she thought she’d be able to get away with it. I might never find out the real answer.’ He took a long sigh. ‘I still can’t believe it … but Jennifer and I have split up. She’s met someone else.’

  After all that? Maya could see how much this fall-out had hurt Justin. Head bowed, lips pressed against each other, he fought the mist in his eyes.

  Maya sat with this extraordinary confession. ‘You, as a police detective—’

  ‘I’m clearing out my office desk.’ His voice broke. ‘Devastated as I am, my career is over. I knew that Jennifer had stolen the specimen, but just couldn’t …’

  She felt herself softening toward Justin, knowing how much that detective position meant to him. It defined who he envisioned himself to be: dutiful, efficient, serving his employer and offering help to the community. ‘What’s next for you?’

  ‘Oh, I s’pose I’ll mow the lawn, prune my cherry tree, fertilize the flower beds and plant some herbs. How many times did you ask me to do all those things? And I’m trying to get custody of my son. He’s the sweetest boy. He’ll keep me on my toes if he comes to stay with me.’

  She pictured the boy with pudgy cheeks, how he’d reached for her with his little hands, how he could quickly turn on a full, silly smile. ‘You’ll do a good job of raising him, I’m sure.’ And she found she meant this. She bore no ill-will.

  ‘I also need to look after my yard. Would you have time to give me a hand?’

  It startled her but didn’t move her; too late now. The excitement with which she might have greeted such an offer in the past had vanished. Now she regarded herself as a different person, one who’d outgrown her fantasy about Justin, and she stood on a different shore. Her ability to follow through on her beliefs, willingness to put herself at risk and to jump into actions when necessary had helped bring her to this point.

  She shook her head and said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’

  How light her shoulders felt. How easy it was to breathe. She looked toward the sun-splashed street outside the window, heard piano music floating from a neighbor’s house.

  ‘Oh, one more thing, Maya. You came to see me several times at my house to talk about Sylvie. You probably got the impression I was brushing you off – I acted so curt toward you.’

  ‘Well, yeah, I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with me.’

  ‘No, Maya, that’s not it.’ Justin’s voice was thick. ‘I dearly love you; I was concerned. I didn’t want to see you get hurt.’

  He’d never spoken so openly about how he felt about her. Nor had she ever heard so much emotion in his voice. ‘What do you mean?’

  He turned his face away for a moment, then spoke again. ‘Those criminals would have been at you. I wouldn’t have been able to bear that. You’re probably still scratching your head over a whole host of incidents. Allow me to shed light on a few of them. That blue sedan belongs to a friend of mine, Chuck Davis. You figured that out, didn’t you? I knew, sooner or later, you would.’

  She nodded and smiled at the man wh
o had been her guardian angel. Her heart filled with gratitude for others in her circle who similarly cared about her. Love and care at unexpected times from unexpected places. How the very thought brightened the room for her. Sylvie dawned in her mind. Lovely and talented, Sylvie had been adored by many. Pitifully, she’d signed off without that awareness.

  Justin broke the silence. ‘And, oh, that elderly woman who followed you to the grocery store? She’s Jennifer’s multilingual grandmother. A former stage actress in Europe, she now lives in New York and is quite a prankster. She loves Jennifer, came to visit her on vacation. It’s probably no surprise that Jennifer is jealous of you. You two met at the flea market. Later, Jennifer asked me if I knew you and I had to tell her the story of our relationship. We weren’t getting along well and she felt even more insecure because of that. In order to keep you away from me and scare you off, she recruited her grandmother. That old lady could have hurt you. She had a knife with her. She didn’t quite pull it off, but still, it must have left you wondering why she came after you in the first place. You know, Maya, I’d have stopped the whole thing, except I didn’t hear about it until after the fact. That led to a big disagreement between Jennifer and me, the beginning of the end of our relationship.’ He paused. ‘My apologies to you.’

  Back off or you’ll be dead. Jennifer wanted Maya to stop her visits to Justin. Simple as that. Maya had misunderstood that warning. She took a deep breath. ‘I have something to disclose as well. I’m a licensed private eye now, with this case in my portfolio.’

  ‘Really?’ He gazed at her proudly. ‘How did that happen?’

  She sat back, felt the plush rug under her feet and gave him a rundown of how she’d proceeded, what she’d found, all her struggles, fears and setbacks and a few triumphant moments.

  Justin’s face relaxed into a hint of a smile. ‘Congratulations. Look, if you ever need to brainstorm another case, you know where to go.’ Slowly, he got up. He seemed to have difficulty getting the words out as he said, ‘I’ll always love you, Maya. Hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.’