They stood in the hallway. They were waiting for the investigating detectives to invite them in. There was a time when anyone authorized to be at a crime scene could walk onto the scene at any time. No longer. Enough contaminated crime scenes leading to forensic evidence being tossed out at trial had changed all that.
Michael could hear conversations inside the office. He strained to understand what was being said. He heard scattered words: Telephone . . . voltage . . . serrated . . . eyelid . . . blood evidence.
Michael did not hear anything about files, stolen or otherwise. He did not hear the word adoption. There was a glimmer of hope in this.
Five minutes later, Detective Powell waved them in.
WHEN MICHAEL MET Viktor Harkov, nearly five years earlier, the man had walked with a limp. A long-time diabetic with a litany of other physical ailments, Harkov’s body seemed frail even then. But not his mind. Although Michael had never squared off against the man in a courtroom, he knew a few lawyers who had, including Tommy, and they all agreed that Viktor Harkov never walked into Kew Gardens unprepared. He was much sharper than he looked. It was all part of the act.
Now Viktor Harkov looked hardly human.
The dead man slumped in his chair behind the desk. The sight was horrific. Harkov’s skin was paper white, leached of all color. His mouth was open in a slash of terror, baring yellowed teeth, gums thick with dried blood and saliva. Where his left eye had been was now a charred bubble of flesh, a red bull’s-eye at the center. A thin column of phlegm leaked from one of his nostrils.
As Michael passed to the left of Harkov’s desk, he had to look twice to be certain what he was seeing was true. It appeared as if Harkov’s trousers had been ripped or torn away. The area surrounding his genitals too had been burned, the flesh there blackened and spilt. Michael had seen many indignities in homicide victims – from the targets of sexual predators, to gang hits that left little to identify, to the nearly superhuman violence of murder done in a jealous rage – and in each there was a mortification to the way these people were seen in death. Perhaps a violent demise was in and of itself the final humiliation, one the victim could not avenge. Michael had always thought that this was part of his job as a prosecutor. Not to necessarily exact revenge – although anyone on the state side of the aisle who denied vengeance was part of their motivation would be lying – but rather to stand up in a court of law and restore some measure of dignity to those who could not rise.
What was done to Viktor Harkov was as brutal a humiliation as Michael had ever seen.
On the desk was a desk phone, an older touch-tone model, a nicotine-stained avocado green popular in the Seventies. From beneath the phone extended a pair of long electrical wires; one snaking across the desk and attached to one of Harkov’s toes. The other wire, ending in an alligator clip, lay along Harkov’s left leg. The alligator clip was scorched black.
But that was not the worst of it. The reason that the desk was covered in dark, drying blood, was that whoever had tortured this old man, whoever had killed this man, had thought the act of murder was not enough.
He had cut off the old man’s hands.
Michael looked up from the mutilated corpse, his eyes roaming the scene, for what? Perhaps some respite from the horror. Perhaps for some justification to why this man had been so destroyed in his place of business. Then it hit him. He was looking for something that would tell him to what degree to be worried. For a moment he felt deep shame, realizing he was leaping over the horror of what had happened to Viktor Harkov, and thinking about himself. As he glanced around the room, his gaze landed on Desiree Powell. His heart skipped.
Powell was watching him.
THEY STOOD IN THE outer office. Michael looked at the file cabinet. It was a five-drawer steel model. The bottom drawer was slightly open. A crime scene technician was dusting the file cabinet for prints.
“Is that how they found it?” Michael asked. “With only one drawer open?”
Tommy nodded.
Michael glanced below the desk. There he saw an old Dell tower computer, perhaps a Pentium II model from the Eighties or Nineties. It too was covered in black fingerprint powder. Michael knew they would take the entire computer system back to the lab for more controlled tests – including an examination of the data on the hard drive – but with a vicious murder like this, they did field tests to get prints up and into the system as soon as possible. The old adage about the first forty-eight hours of a homicide investigation being critical was not just an adage, it was true.
WHENEVER MICHAEL RODE to homicide scenes, he always stood on the sidelines, confident and somewhat in awe of the job that the criminalists did. He watched how they addressed the scene, always mindful of every aspect and department of the forensic team – fingerprints, hair and fiber, blood evidence, documents. He had never wanted to jump in and help. Everyone had their job, and in Queens County those people were among the best in the city. But now, watching the glacial pace of the physical investigation, he felt helpless and increasingly hopeless. He wanted to tear through the file cabinets and see which files were missing. He wanted to go through the disks and CDs in Viktor Harkov’s desk and delete any mention of the names Michael and Abby Roman. He wanted to drop a match in the middle of this dusty, ugly office, and destroy the essence of the practice. He wanted to do all these things because, if there was any possibility that his relationship with Viktor Harkov became known, there was a real possibility that Charlotte and Emily could be taken away. And that would be the end of his life.
All he could do, for the moment, was stand on the sidelines.
And watch.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, after the body had been moved to the morgue, which was located in South Queens, Michael and Tommy stood next to Tommy’s car. Every other car on the block had gotten a ticket. Tommy had his Queens County DA’s placard on the dashboard.
Neither man spoke for a long minute.
“Go to work,” Tommy finally said. “You have a case to try.”
Before Michael could respond, Tommy’s cellphone rang. He stepped away, answered. While he talked, Michael looked down the street, toward Astoria Park. He watched them working on the huge pool in the park, getting it ready for the summer season. He recalled many a hot July or August day when he was small, jumping into the clear blue water, not a care in the world.
Tommy closed his phone. “We don’t know too much yet,” Tommy said. “First, they lifted a dozen prints off the file cabinet. They’re running them now. Second, it looks like there were no backup files in the office. They took a quick look at the hard drive of the computer, and it was wiped clean.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to salvage anything from it?”
“They’ve done it before.”
“So this was about Viktor’s business.”
“We don’t know that yet,” Tommy said. “But get this. They’re pretty sure that the telephone and the wires were set up as some sort of torture device.”
“The phone?”
“Yeah. I heard that the way it was hooked up was that if the phone rang, it would send a charge through the wires. They think whoever did this had it hooked up to the old guy’s genitals, and his left eye.”
“Christ.”
“Sick bastard. They dumped the phone records from the office, and they found out that Harkov’s office phone got sixteen calls in a ten-minute period, all from a disposable cell.”
“My God.”
“Whatever this guy wanted out of Harkov, the old fucker didn’t give it up easily.”
“What about his hands?”
“They figure it was post-mortem. But just.”
“And this is how Harkov’s son found him.”
“Can you imagine?” Tommy said. “Turns out Viktor moved in with his son Joseph a year ago,” he continued. “I guess they were pretty close.”
“Did Powell get a statement from him yet?”
“Just a preliminary statement. And dig this. Joseph Harkov
told Powell the police could not go through the old man’s effects.”
Because Viktor Harkov had something to hide, Michael thought. He felt his stomach churn with every breath.
“As you might expect, Powell is none too happy about this,” Tommy added.
“Where is that warrant?”
“Calderon started working it around eight this morning. It was in the pipe before you called me.”
Michael knew the process. A fresh homicide warrant would be expedited, as time was of the essence. It could come through any minute, or it might still be a few hours.
“Does anyone else live in the Harkovs’ apartment?” Michael asked.
“I don’t think so,” Tommy said.
“Do you think the old man may have kept something at the apartment? Backup files, duplicate files?”
Silence from Tommy. He knew what Michael meant. He glanced at his watch.
“Let’s go.”
TWENTY
Aleks stood in the hallway on the second floor. On the walls were enlarged photographs of Michael and Abigail Roman and their two adopted daughters. One had them standing on a beach somewhere, tall sawgrass tufting through the sand all around them. Another had them all looking down into the lens, as if the photographer was in a hole of some sort. Yet another, when the girls were quite small, showed them standing between Abigail and Michael, against a brick wall. The girls barely came up to the adults’ knees, and the photo was cut off at the parents’ waists. It was clearly meant to be amusing, to show scale. The girls were much taller now. It made Aleks consider how much time had passed since he had ridden down to the Keskkülas’ farm that dark night, how much time had passed since the midwife had found him and told him that Elena had gone into labor early.
He stood in the doorway to their room. There were two beds. The walls were pastel pink; the windows and doors had white trim. The furniture in the room – a nightstand between the beds, a low dresser, a pair of desks – were all white as well. The room was tidy, considering the occupants were four-year-old girls. There was the odd toy on the bed, a sweater folded on one of the desks. Beyond these things, the room was arranged with a casual precision.
In the far corner was a table with four little chairs, a table bearing place settings for three.
The room smelled of powders and fruity shampoo. On the walls were posters and drawings. The posters were of someone called Dora the Explorer. The drawings were of Valentines and shamrocks and Easter eggs.
He crossed the room, opened one of the drawers in the dresser. In it were neatly folded little T-shirts, rolled socks in shockingly bright colors. The second drawer held small plastic purses, folded nylon knapsacks, and two pairs of white gloves.
Aleks reached into the drawer, held the gloves in his hand, closed his eyes, felt their presence within him, saw the women . . .
. . . standing by the river, eternal, caught in that ephemeral beauty that knew neither youth nor age . . . at their feet the clear water runs . . . the ceaseless cycles of life. He sits on the nearby hill, flute in hand, his pride boundless. As everything around them is birthed and dies, generations flitting by in seconds, they remain the same. Above them, a light in the deep violet sky. Olga, never seen, always present . . .
THE MASTER BEDROOM on the second floor overlooked the front of the house. It was tastefully, if not expensively decorated. A four-poster bed, a dresser with an LCD flat-screen TV on it, an exercise bike in the corner. This room was not quite as tidy as the girls’ room. It had the look and feel of people who lived their lives in a hurry.
Aleks went through the drawers. It seemed Abigail had control of the top three drawers in the dresser; Michael the bottom two.
The closet was packed with suits, shirts, skirts, dresses on wooden hangers. The shelves were crowded with boxes containing folded sweaters and vests. The top shelf held a box full of photos and memorabilia. Aleks removed the box, placed it on the bed.
He flipped through a pair of photo albums – Michael and Abigail at their wedding, their honeymoon, at Christmas and birthday parties. The second photo album was dedicated to the girls. On the first page was a large photo of Anna and Marya in a crib, in what looked like a doctor’s office. They were no more than a few months old. Aleks tried to recall this time in his life, the first year or so after the girls had been stolen from him. The fury he felt was never far from the surface. The rest of the album was of the girls on the beach, the girls in the backyard, the girls on their tricycles.
At the bottom of the box was a scrapbook of sorts. Near the back of the book he found a series of articles about Michael. The longest article – indeed a cover story – was from New York magazine, dated five years earlier. The title on the front:
A QUEENS PROSECUTOR ESCAPES DEATH TO PUT GANGSTERS AWAY
Aleks flipped to the table of contents, scanned it, then turned to the article. On the left-hand page was another photograph of Michael Roman, this time leaning against a car on a New York side street. Aleks began to read. The lead was typical fluff, but it was in the fifth paragraph that Aleks found something that fascinated him, something he had never expected.
Mr Roman, 30, has served as an assistant district attorney in Queens County for five years. Born in Astoria, he is no stranger to the world of street violence. When Roman was just nine years old, his parents, Peeter and Johanna, were murdered in a botched robbery of their shop, a specialty bakery called Pikk Street on Ditmars Boulevard.
A graduate of St John’s Law School, Roman came to work for the Queens County DA’s office in 1999, and since that time has prosecuted a number of high-profile cases.
Aleks’s eyes skimmed down the page.
Investigators believe the car bombing was the work of the Patrescu brothers in an attempt to delay the trial. Incredibly, in the blast that destroyed half a city block, Mr Roman received just a few minor wounds.
Aleks looked at the photograph of the bombing. The car was a charred shell; the building behind it was all but rubble. It reminded him of many of the city streets in Grozny. It was truly stunning that the man had not been killed. A miracle.
And that’s when it occurred to him. The man who had taken care of Anna and Marya all these years, the man whom his daughters called Daddy, was just like him. Michael Roman had faced the devil and walked away unharmed.
Michael Roman, too, was deathless.
TWENTY-ONE
In the backyard, Abby talked to the girls. She saw the fear in their eyes, but she did her best to allay it. The young man stood at the back of the property, smoking a cigarette. The one who called himself Aleks – the one who claimed to be Charlotte and Emily’s biological father – was still in the house. Abby could not see him, but she could all but feel his predator’s cold eyes on her.
For the moment, the girls still looked concerned, but not nearly as frightened as they had before. “Everything is okay, guys. There’s no reason to be scared.” Abby wished she knew this to be true. “Okay?”
The girls nodded.
“Are we going to Britanny’s house?” Emily asked.
Brittany Salcer was a babysitter two streets over. She also babysat for her own sister’s twin boys, who were just over three years old. “Not today honey.”
“But why?”
“The boys have a cold. Brittany doesn’t want you guys getting sick.”
“Are you going to the hospital?”
The hospital was in fact the Hudson Medical Clinic, an urgent-care facility on Dowling Street. When they had moved from the city Abby had tried to hang onto her job as an ER nurse at Downtown Hospital, but the commute – an hour each way, not to mention the expense – was killing them. Her work at the clinic was not nearly as challenging, but she had fallen into a rhythm there. Throat cultures, lacerations, flu shots, skinned knees – what the job lacked in challenge it more than made up for in satisfaction.
“No,” she said. “Not today.”
Abby suddenly saw movement to her left. She noticed that the young man
at the back of the yard noticed as well. A flash of bright red in the woods behind the house.
Abby glanced over. Zoe Meisner was walking through the woods, down by the creek. Her golden Lab Shasta was following a scent. Abby saw the dog stop, glance up the hill, nose high in the air. Was he picking up the scent of the young man? Of Kolya? In a flash the dog came bounding up the hill, churning leaves, kicking dirt, vaulting over logs. Zoe called to Shasta, but the dog did not heed her.
Zoe – she of the outrageously bright floral gardening smocks and even more outrageous floral perfume – noticed Abby and the girls and waved. Abby lifted a hand to wave back, but stopped herself. If she acknowledged Zoe, maybe the woman would take it as a reason to walk up the hill for an over-the-fence hen session. On the other hand, if Abby didn’t acknowledge her, she might come over to see why. Abby waved back.
A few seconds later Zoe started to walk through the woods, up the hill, to the Roman house.
Shasta was already romping with the girls.
Abby saw the young man at the back of the yard toss his cigarette, stand a little straighter. His eyes flicked from the big dog, to the woman walking up the hill, back. He unbuttoned his jacket.
Inside the house, the curtains parted.
No, Abby thought.
No.
TWENTY-TWO
Joseph Harkov’s apartment was a third floor walk-up on Twenty-First Avenue, near Steinway. According to the report, Joseph Harkov worked night shift at the MTA station at Broadway and 46th Street.
Michael and Tommy stood across the street in a Super Deli, watching the entrance. Michael had met Joseph Harkov twice, but that had been a few years ago, and only in passing. He wasn’t sure he would remember the man if he saw him.
At just after one, Joseph Harkov walked out of the front door. Michael pegged him instantly. He looked like a younger version of his father and had already taken on the old man’s bent posture, although he was probably only in his forties. He waited at a bus stop on the corner for fifteen minutes or so, every so often dabbing his eyes with a tissue, then boarded a bus.
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