Self-discovery

by Vladimir Savchenko

  At 10:30 in the morning Onisimov returned to headquarters and his office on the first floor, where his windows, hatched with the vertical bars, opened onto Marx Prospect, which was busy at almost any hour of day or night. Matvei Apollonovich gave a brief account of the events to Major Rabinovich, sent a test tube with the liquid to the medical examiner, and called up the emergency room to find out the condition of the only eyewitness. They replied that the lab assistant felt fine and asked to be released.

  “Fine, go ahead, I’ll send a car for him,” Onisimov said.

  No sooner had he arranged for the car than Zubato, the medical examiner, rushed into his office. He was a red — blooded, loud man with hairy arms.

  “Matvei, what did you bring me?” He sank into a chair with emphatic disgust. “Some practical joke! How am I supposed to determine the cause of death on a skeleton?”

  “I brought you what was left,” Onisimov explained, shrugging. “I’m glad you showed up. I want to know, off the top of your head, how does a body turn into a skeleton?”

  “Off the top of my head, as a result of the deterioration of tissues, which under normal circumstances takes weeks and even months. That’s all that the body can do about it.”

  “All right… then how can you turn a body into a skeleton?”

  “Skin the body, cut off the soft tissues, and boil it in water until the bones are completely exposed. It is recommended to change the water. Can you tell me clearly what happened?”

  Onisimov told him.

  “That’s something! I’m really sorry I missed it!” He slapped his knee.

  “What happened on the highway?”

  “A drunk cyclist hit a cow. Both survived. So you say your body melted?” The expert squinted skeptically and brought his face closer to Onisimov. “Matvei, that doesn’t ring true. It just doesn’t happen, I can tell you for sure. A man is no icicle, even if he is dead. They didn’t trick you?”

  “How?”

  “You know, switch the body for a skeleton while you were out… and discard the evidence.”

  “What are you blabbering about? You mean while an academician stood guard for them? Come on, here’s his deposition.” Onisimov fretted as he looked for Azarov’s statement.

  “Ahh, now they’ll show you! The people there….” Zubato wriggled his hairy fingers. “Remember, when that student was exposed to radiation, how the head of the lab tried to blame it all on science, how he said that it was a little — studied phenomenon, that the gamma rays destroyed the crystal cells of the dosimeter. And when we checked, it turned out the students were signed up to work on isotopes without reading about them! Nobody wants to take responsibility, even academicians, if it’s a fishy situation. Try to think: did you leave them alone with the body?”

  “I did,” the detective’s voice fell. “Twice.”

  “And that’s when your body melted!” Zubato broke out in the hearty laugh of a man who knows that disaster has not struck him.

  The detective thought about it and then shook his head.

  “Now, you’re not going to throw me off the track here. I saw for myself… but what are we going to do with this skeleton now?”

  “The hell with it. Wait, here’s an idea. Send it over to the city sculpture studio. Let them reconstruct the face according to Professor Gerasimov’s method; they are familiar with it. If it’s him, you’ll have the crime sensation of the century on your hands. If not — “Zubato gave Matvei Apollonovich a sympathetic look. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when you talk with Aleksei Ignatievich. All right, I’ll send it over there myself. So be it.” He rose. “And while I’m at it, I’ll do the death certificate. I’ll settle for a skeleton, if you can’t come up with a body.”

  Zubato left.

  “What if they did trick me?” Onisimov recalled the academician’s hostility, Assistant Professor Hilobok’s flattery, and he shuddered. “I lost the body, the most important thing. Good show there!”

  He dialed the chemistry lab.

  “Viktoriya Stepanovna, this is Onisimov. Did you analyze the liquid?”

  “Yes, Matvei Apollonovich. The report is being typed, but I’ll read you the conclusion. “Water — 85 percent, protein — 13 percent, amino acids — 0.5 percent, fatty acids — 0.4 percent and so on. In other words, it’s human blood plasma. According to the hemoglutins, it’s classified as type A, with lowered water content.”

  “Yes, I see. Could it be toxic?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Even, if say, you bathed in it?”

  “Well, you could swallow some and drown. Does that help?”

  “Thank you!” Matvei Apollonovich slammed down the phone. “Wise ass! But I guess that means accidental death is ruled out. Could the assistant have drowned him in the tub? No, it doesn’t look like a drowning.”

  Onisimov liked the entire business less and less with every passing minute. He spread out the documents he got at the institute’s personnel department and at the laboratory and lost himself in their study. He was distracted by the phone.

  “Matvei, you owe me!” boomed Zubato’s triumphant voice. “I’ve managed to establish a few things from the skeleton. There are deep vertical cracks in the middle of the sixth and seventh ribs on the right side. Such cracks are the result of a blow by a heavy blunt instrument or against a blunt object, whatever. The surface has minute cracks, fresh — “

  “I see!”

  “These cracks in themselves can not be the cause of death. But a violent blow could have seriously injured the internal organs, which, unfortunately, are missing. Well, that’s about it. I hope it helps.”

  “And how! Did you send out the skull for identification?”

  “Just now. And I called ahead. They promised to do it as fast as possible.”

  “So, this is no accident. Liquid and short circuits don’t break a man’s ribs. Oh, oh. It looks as if there were two accident victims there: an injured victim and a dead victim. And it looks as though the two had a serious fight.”

  Onisimov felt better. The case was taking on familiar aspects. He began composing an urgent telegram to Kharkov.

  The June day was getting hotter. The sun melted the asphalt. The heat seeped into Onisimov’s office, and he turned on the fan on his desk.

  The answer from the Kharkov police came at exactly 1:00 P.M. Lab assistant Kravets was brought in at 1:30. As he entered the office, he looked around, and smirked as he noticed the barred windows.

  “Is that to make people confess faster?”

  “No — no,” Matvei Apollonovich drawled gently. “This building used to be a wholesale warehouse and so the entire first floor has reinforced windows. We’ll be removing them soon; not too many robbers try breaking into a police station, heh — heh. Sit down. Are you feeling all right now? Can you make a statement?”

  “I can.”

  The assistant walked across the room and sat in a chair opposite the window. The detective looked him over. He was young, maybe twenty — four, not older than that. He looked like Krivoshein, the way he might have been ten years ago. “Actually, he didn’t look like that,” Matvei Apollonovich thought as he looked at the photo in Krivoshein’s personnel file. “This fellow is much more handsome.” And there really was something of a model’s or actor’s perfection in Kravets’s face. The impression of perfection was marred by the eyes — actually not the eyes themselves, which were blue and had a youthful clarity, but in the marksman’s squint of the lids. “He has eyes that seem to have lived a lot,” the detective noted. “He seems to have gotten over the experience quickly enough. Let’s see.”

  “You know, you resemble the deceased.”

  “The deceased!” The assistant clenched his jaw and shut his eyes for a second. “That means — “

  “Yes, it does,” Onisimov said harshly. “He’s jumpy,” he thought. “Well, let’s do this in order.” He reached for a piece of paper and unscrewed his pen. “Your name, patronymic, age, place of work or study, a
ddress?”

  “But you must know all that already?”

  “Know or not, that’s the regulation; the witness must give all that information himself.”

  “So he’s dead…. What should I do now? What should I say? It’s a catastrophe. Damn it, I shouldn’t have come to the police. I should have run off from the clinic. What will happen now?” Kravets thought.

  “Please, write down the following: Viktor Vitalyevich Kravets, age twenty — four, a student in the fifth year in the physics department of Kharkov University. I reside in Kharkov, on Kholodnaya Gora. I’m here to do my practical work.”

  “I see,” the detective said, and instead of writing it down, twisted his pen rapidly and aimlessly. “You were related to Krivoshein. How?” “Distantly,” the student laughed uncomfortably. “Seventh cousin twice removed, you know.”

  “I see!” Onisimov put down his pen and picked up the telegraph; his voice became severe. “Look here, citizen, it doesn’t check out.” “What doesn’t check out?”

  “Your story, that you’re Kravets, that you live and study in Kharkov, and so on. There’s no student by that name in Kharkov. And the person you name has never lived at 17, Kholodnaya Gora, either.” The suspect’s cheeks suddenly dropped, and his face turned red. “They got me. How stupid of me! Damn it! Of course, they checked all that out immediately. Boy, lack of experience shows every time. But what can I say now?” he thought.

  “Tell the truth. And in detail. Don’t forget that we’re dealing with a homicide here.”

  Kravets thought: “The truth. Easier said than done.” “You see, the truth… how can I put it… that’s too much and too complicated,” the assistant began mumbling, hating and despising himself for this lack of control. “I’d have to discuss information theory and the modeling of random processes.”

  “Just don’t try to cloud the issues, citizen,” Onisimov said, frowning disdainfully. “People aren’t killed by theories — this was definitely practical application and fact.”

  “But… you must understand, actually no one at all may have died. It can be proven… or attempted to be proven. You see, citizen investigator — (Why did I call him that? I haven’t been arrested yet.) — You see, first of all, a man is not, well, not a hunk of protoplasm weighing 150 pounds. There are the fifty quarts of water, forty — four pounds of protein, fats and carbohydrates, enzymes, and so on. No, man is first and foremost information. A concentration of information. And if it has not disappeared, then the man is still alive.”

  He stopped and bit his lip. “No, this is nonsense. It’s hopeless,” he thought.

  “Yes, I’m listening. Go on,” the detective said, laughing to himself. The assistant glanced up at him, got more comfortable in his chair, and said with a small smile:

  “In short, if you don’t want to hear the theories, then Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein — that’s me. You can put that into the official record.”

  It was so unexpected and daring that Matvei Apollonovich was stunned for a second. “Should I send him to the psychiatrist?” he thought. But the suspect’s blue eyes looked at him reasonably and there was mockery in their depths. That’s what brought Onisimov out of his suspended animation.

  “I see!” He got up. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I haven’t familiarized myself with his file, that I wasn’t present at the scene of the accident, that I don’t remember his face?” He leaned on the desk top. “ If you refuse to identify yourself, it’s only worse for you. We’ll find out anyway. Do you admit your papers are forged?”

  “That’s it. We have to stop playing,” Kravets thought, and said:

  “No. You still have to prove that. You might as well consider me a forgery while you’re at it!”

  The assistant turned to look out the window.

  “Don’t clown around with me, citizen!” The detective had raised his voice. “What was your purpose in entering the lab? Answer me! What happened between you and Krivoshein? Answer!”

  “I’m not answering anything!”

  Matvei Apollonovich scolded himself for losing his temper. He sat down and after a pause started talking in a heartfelt manner:

  “Listen, don’t think that I’m trying to pin anything on you. My job is to investigate thoroughly, to fill in the missing blanks, and then the prosecutor’s office evaluates it, and the court makes the decision. But you’re hurting yourself. You don’t understand one thing: if you confess later, under duress as they say, it won’t count as much as making a clean breast of things now. It might not all be so terrible. But for now, everything points against you. Proof of an assault on the body, expert testimony, and other circumstances. And it all boils down to one thing.” He leaned across the desk and lowered his voice. “It looks as if you… alleviated the victim’s suffering.”

  The suspect lowered his head and rubbed his face. He was seeing the scene again. The skeleton with Krivoshein’s head twitching convulsively in the tank, his own hands holding on to the tank’s edge, the warm, gentle liquid touching them and then — the blow!

  “I’m not sure myself, if it’s me or not,” he muttered in a depressed voice. “I can’t understand it.” He looked up. “Listen, I have to get back to the lab!”

  Matvei Apollonovich almost jumped up: he hadn’t expected such a rapid victory. “Listen, that can happen too,” he said, nodding sympathetically. “In a state of frenzy from an insult or through overzealous self — defense. Let’s go down to the lab, and you can explain on the scene just what transpired there.” He picked up Monomakh’s Crown from his desk and casually asked: “Was this what you hit him on the chest with? It’s a heavy thing.”

  “That’s enough!” The suspect spoke harshly and almost haughtily. He straightened up. “I see no reason to continue this discussion. You’re trying to put me into a corner. By the way, that ‘heavy thing’ costs over five thousand rubles. Be careful with it.”

  “Does this mean that you don’t want to tell me anything?” “Yes.”

  “I see.” The detective pushed a button. “You’ll have to be held until this is cleared up.”

  A gangly policeman with a long face and droopy nose appeared at the door. In the Ukraine, people like him are described as “tall but still bends.”

  “Gayevoy?” the detective looked at him uncertainly. “Aren’t any of the guards around?”

  ‘They’re all out in the field, comrade captain,” he replied. “A lot of them are at the beaches, maintaining law and order.” “Do you have a car?” “A small GAZ.”

  “Convey the detained suspect to the city jail. It’s too bad you refuse to help yourself and us, citizen. You’re just making it worse for yourself.”

  The lab assistant turned in the doorway. “And it’s too bad that you think Krivoshein is dead.” “One of those characters who likes to make a grand exit. Always have the last word.” Onisimov chuckled. “I’ve seen plenty like him. But he’ll come round after a while.”

  Matvei Apollonovich lit a cigarette and drummed his fingers on the desk. At first all the clues (faked papers, medical testimony, circumstances) led him to think that the assistant, if he wasn’t the killer, was at least actively involved in Krivoshein’s death. But this conversation had changed his mind. Not what the suspect had said, but how. He did not sense in him the forethought, the game playing, that fatal game playing that gives away the criminal long before there is any evidence.

  “It is looking like an unpremeditated murder. He said himself, 1 don’t know if it was me or not. But what about the skeleton? How did it happen? And did it happen? And what about the attempt to pass himself off as Krivoshein by using a theoretical explanation? Is he faking? And what if the absence of game playing is just the most subtle game of all? No, where would such a young, inexperienced fellow develop that? And then, what motives are there for a premeditated murder? What was going on between them? And what about the forged documents?”

  Matvei Apollonovich’s mind hit a dead end. “All right, let’s
look into the circumstances.” He stood up and looked out into the hall. Assistant Professor Hilobok was pacing up and down.

  “Please come in! I asked you here, comrade Hilobok, to — “

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” Hilobok nodded. “Others experience tragedy, and I clean up the messes. People do die of old age, and may God grant us both such ends, Matvei Apollonovich, eh? But Krivoshein never did anything the way everyone else did. No, no, I’m sorry for him. Don’t think… it’s always a pity when a man dies, right? But Valentin Vasilyevich had caused me so many problems in the past. And all because he was a stubborn character, with no respect for anyone, no consideration, diverging from the collective time and time again.”

  “I see. But I would like to ascertain what it was Krivoshein was doing in that lab that was under his jurisdiction. Since you are the scientific secretary, I thought — “

  “I just knew you’d ask!” Harry Haritonovich smiled happily. “I even brought along a copy of the thematic plans with me, naturally.” He rustled the papers in his briefcase. “Here it is, theme 152, specific goals — research on NIR, title — ‘The self — organization of complex electronic systems with an integral introduction of information/ contents of the work — ‘Research on the possibilities of self — organization of complex system into a more complex one with an integral (not differentiated according to signals and symbols) introduction of varying information by adding a superstructure of its output to the system/ financing — here’s the budget, nature of the work — mathematical, logical, and experimental, director of the project — engineer V. V. Krivoshein, executor, the same — “ “What was the gist of his research?”

  ‘The gist? Hmmm.” Hilobok’s face grew serious. “The self — organization of systems… so that a machine could build itself, understand? They’re doing intensive work on this in America. Very. In the USA — “