“Here’s the weird part, there’s a marriage certificate, but I can’t find anything else about her. No birth records, no national identification number.”
The blue triangular crosswalk sign lit up, and he crossed the street in the throng of pedestrians. “Figures. Only he could get a marriage license without a national identification number.”
“My thoughts exactly. The sole record of a woman with that name belongs to one born in the nineteen forties, and she was murdered in nineteen sixty-eight.”
Nikolai froze, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Murdered.
“What’s the name?”
“Truss. Sonya Truss”
Sonya. The same name as the woman who had visited Katya on Lisko’s behalf. But was she really a ghost? Did Lisko keep her alive with blood offerings? Maybe he wrung the stuff out of his victims over the place where this woman had died.
Nik smacked his forehead. Chert, a week ago he didn’t even believe in ghosts, and look where his mind took him now. He’d given his imagination an inch, and it had run a fucking marathon.
A car horn blared, and he jumped, finding himself in the middle of the crosswalk after the light had changed. Chert. He hightailed it to the curb.
“You all right? Sounds like a traffic nightmare out there?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” He had a much more serious nightmare on his hands. Thank God he’d taken the woman’s phone number from Katya.
Lyuba exhaled like she was taking a smoke break out the window near her desk. “Want me to dig into this more?”
Dropping down the stairs to the metro station, he shook his head, even though she couldn’t see him.
“No. I’ll take over from here. I’m on the way in. See you soon.” He ended the call.
The last thing he needed was Lyuba poking around in this story and learning all about ghosts, especially if he was really considering helping one kill Lisko, though he sure hoped it didn’t come to that. After holding Katya in his arms, making love to her in the shower, how could he damn her to an eternity of being a ghost?
Defying his ethical values for a personal exception. Wasn’t that the definition of corruption? Wasn’t it exactly what he’d done for his swim coach and Alisa’s dad?
But Katya was different. Everything about her was different.
A train ground and screeched to a stop, a chime sounding before the doors opened. He sprinted toward the filling car, squeezing in the last open space before the chime sounded again, warning the doors would close.
He spun to find a man watching him from the platform and blowing out a mouthful of cigarette smoke. Nik held the gaze until the man turned away. The hair-raising sensation lingered, making him paranoid. The doors closed and he rested his forehead on the cool glass.
Chert. Even his most difficult stories hadn’t felt so complicated. Could maras be freed without a revenge killing? Hell, he might even march himself into a church and ask a priest. If someone could just exorcise Katya, could she go off to rest in some happy afterlife?
His chest ached behind his breastbone, like it had in the weeks after Sofiya had died. The hollow pang of knowing he had not yet brought about justice for Lisko’s victims. He lifted his tie and rubbed at the spot through his shirt. Somehow, the feeling was different with Katya, deeper and sharper than the numbing emptiness of losing his sister.
Eyes closed, he was jostled as the train filled up even tighter with more commuters. He rode the three stops all the way downtown. When the recorded voice announced his station and the door chimed, he let the motion of the crowd carry him onto the platform and all the way up the street.
Again, the back of his neck prickled. He scanned the travelers pouring onto the street, searching for someone watching him. No one stood out, but if they were any good, they wouldn’t. Maybe he was paranoid thinking the first man had been Lisko’s spy.
He reached the office, inhaling the creosote scent deeply, expecting the usual blast of invigoration to hit him. Instead, the smell tightened his throat. Katya had made his apartment smell like the chicken soup of the gods, and the scent of her skin was the most delicious thing he’d ever smelled, better even than the odor of costly truth-telling.
He crossed the room and reached his office. Lyuba arrived at the doorway and slid the papers onto his desk.
Sonya Truss. Her death certificate said March, 15, 1968, fatal gunshot wound to the chest. He took the back stairs down to the paper’s archives and found the microfiche for March. God, when would they get around to digitizing these records? Hopefully before the film disintegrated.
He began with that date and worked forward. The article didn’t appear until the eighteenth.
Chert. What a story. A murder-suicide. A jeweler named Truss had killed his wife and two daughters, Sonya and Anya. And…strange… The investigating officer Ivan Lisko reported that the jeweler had stolen and sold a valuable diamond necklace from a communist party official.
Lisko. Not an uncommon name, but still, the coincidences were stacking up to heights beyond belief.
He went back to his desk and poked around in the online public records. Sure enough, Dmitri Lisko’s birth certificate named Ivan Lisko his father. Minutes later, another result turned up. The elder Lisko had served a term in Lukyanivska Prison for militsya corruption—a dirty cop.
What the hell was going on? He pulled the paper out of his pocket and smoothed it onto the desk. Sonya’s number. He dialed the first four digits, then hung up.
He didn’t want Lisko’s attention, didn’t want Dariya or Katya in the man’s sights.
What had the woman wanted with Katya in the first place? To somehow trick her into silence? And if she’d been a ghost before, why wasn’t she now?
On a whim, he typed the dead sister’s name into the public records database. Anya Truss.
Several records appeared, a death certificate issued at the same time as Sonya’s. The birth and childhood death of another girl named Anya Truss. And at the bottom of the screen, a marriage certificate for a woman with Sonya’s dead sister’s national identification number. He selected the document from the list of files. A progress meter spun as it loaded on to the screen. With the way things were going, she’d be married to the ghost of Ivan Lisko.
His eyes searched the screen for the name of her husband, and his blood turned cold.
Sergey Yuchenko.
Anya Truss was married to the cop who’d been helping Nikolai investigate Katya’s murder. He was married to a damn ghost, and he was Dmitri Lisko’s brother-in-law.
He wanted to wring the kid’s neck, then ask him a million questions. He reached around to grab at his nape, where once again, some premonition tingled along his hairline.
If Yuchenko was crooked, Lisko knew Nikolai was investigating him. He had to warn Dariya, get her out of the building, and send Katya somewhere safe to hide.
He called his niece. The ringing felt interminable until her voicemail kicked on.
He hung up and tried the number for their landline. Again, it rang for an eternity. Just when he thought it would roll into the message box, she picked up.
“Thank God—”
“Geez, Kolya, what is it?”
“Put Katya on the phone.”
“But she’s—”
“I don’t care what she’s doing. Get her.”
Chapter 21
After breakfast, Katya had shown Dariya the Web site of her university and the listings for her favorite courses—the ones she thought the girl would especially like. After letting Katya drive the browsing around the academic pages for a while, Dariya had seized control of the computer and begun looking into student life, dormitories, clubs. Katya had never lived on campus, but had commuted from home, as her parents had insisted.
Dariya sizzled with interest, as excited as she was when discussing Femme Fatale.
The energy was contagious, and Katya enjoyed imagining herself with that independe
nce—not just freedom to learn and think, but also to laugh with friends and just…live. No mara pulling her reins.
With the thought, her splitting headache returned, as if the spirit were trying to cleave her in half. She went back to Nikolai’s room and crawled under his blankets, which smelled of him—sweet, salty sweat and his spicy shaving cream. The sheets felt decadently soft against her skin, and the memories of what they’d done in the bed were even more decadent. She’d lived very little in the twenty-six years she’d been given to roam the earth, but at least she’d taken some greedy bites out of the second chances he’d given her.
In the dark, enrobed in his bed and his scent, the mara rested. Katya hovered on the edge of sleep, not so much tired as wrung out by all the emotions tormenting her body. In the distance of the apartment, the incessant ringing of a telephone barely registered in her consciousness. Moments later, the door opened with a click.
She blinked at the band of light that crawled over the bed.
“Sorry to bother you, but Kolya wants to talk to you.” Dariya held out her phone, yanking on one of her pink locks and grimacing. She didn’t need to say he sounded worried.
Katya brought the device to her ear. “Hello?”
“How solid are you?” He was out of breath, and the phone rustled with the sounds of rapid movement. He was headed somewhere in a hurry.
“Um…” The chills hadn’t even started. “Pretty good, I think. What’s going on?”
“I’m on my way home.”
In spite of the urgency and the fear in his voice, her heart gave a little flutter at the prospect of seeing him.
“Lisko knows I’ve been investigating him. That woman, Sonya, is his wife, and her sister, Anya, is married to the cop I was stupid enough to trust.”
“Oh.” It was all Katya could manage as the mara stirred in her, like a second soul shifting inside her, waking up from a fragile rest. Would Lisko finally come to find her? And if this was the end, how could she ever be ready to say good-bye to Nikolai?
Then, with a chill as cold as the grip of death coming to take her back to the spirit realm, she understood what he was afraid of.
“We have to get Dariya out of here.” She locked eyes with the girl, who’d folded her long arms over her chest, as resolute as a marble statue.
“I already begged her to go. She won’t leave without you.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly. I’m not sure she could leave without a mouthful of those tranqs the doctor gave her, and she can’t leave like that, either. Is there some place you can hide her in the building? A storage room, a broom closet?”
“Mr. Kulish’s apartment. Upstairs, six C.”
“He came back today,” Nikolai said. “I saw him in the lobby.”
“But he’s a kind man. He’ll take her in—”
A thunderous knock sounded at the apartment door.
Dariya’s gaze flew to Katya’s.
“Was that—?” Nikolai asked.
“Hang on.” She muted the microphone and leveled a stare at Dariya. “Go to your room and stay there until I say you can come out.”
Like a model fifteen-year-old, she pouted her defiance.
“Dariya, this isn’t a joke. It’s the sort of thing Nikolai has been trying to protect you from. So don’t be stupid, and don’t make him more afraid. Go to your room and lock the door.”
The knock rang out again. “Hello. Is anyone home? I’m Officer Marchuk of the militsya. I’m afraid I have some bad news about Nikolai Zurkov.”
The girl deflated, somehow losing a solid inch of height. “Should we call the real militsya?”
Katya shook her head. “He’s probably legit.”
Dariya’s eyes widened, but as Nikolai’s niece, she knew very well that law enforcement could not always be trusted. With a visible gulp, she dropped her arms and tiptoed hurriedly through the living room to her bedroom. Katya followed, pointed under the bed, and depressed the lock in the knob.
Just as she cast a glance at the front door, bracing herself for another knock, the officer rattled the handle. “Anybody home?”
Her heart began to race. She unmuted Dariya’s phone but didn’t dare speak, setting it on the countertop so Nikolai might hear. As quietly as she could manage, she carried over a chair from the table. First, she slid the spice rack out from the narrow, deep cabinet. She peered inside but saw nothing. The angle of the cabinet was such that its back wall would be dark no matter the position of the sun outside. She shone light from Dariya’s phone screen into the shadowy space.
Sure enough, the back panel was about four inches closer to the door, making it shallower than the other cabinets. At the bottom left corner, a finger hole had been cut. She pulled it out gingerly. With a thud, a cardboard box fell flat onto the base of the cabinet. She jerked back, nearly losing her footing on the chair. If there was a gun in there, she didn’t want to be dropping it willy-nilly
“Hello?” After a few seconds, the door rattled, as if a large man had rammed it with his shoulder.
Her hands shook just as dramatically.
In the hallway, a door closed. “Can I help you?” a woman asked. God bless Mrs. Lutsenko.
“I’m looking for Nikolai Zurkov or his niece, Dariya.”
“Well, I’m sure they’re out. School and work and the like. Would you like me to deliver a message?”
“No, thank you, ma’am. The matter is urgent, and we need to find them immediately.”
Two sets of footsteps moved away from the door. When the sound changed to the heavy footfalls of shoes on stairs, she took the phone.
“Nikolai?” she whispered.
“Fuck. Thank God. Are you okay?” Nikolai’s voice came from the phone where she’d set it on top of the fridge.
“Yes.”
Then she set the phone on top of the box and carefully lowered both to the floor, where she sat on the rug and lifted the lid. Sure enough, a handgun of some sort lay in the box atop a pile of papers.
“What’s going on?” Nikolai asked again.
“He’s gone, but as soon as he shakes Mrs. Lutsenko, he’ll be back.” She picked up the phone. “I found Fedir’s gun.”
“Chert.” The rough, windy, raking sounds of the phone continued to sound loudly from Nikolai’s end.
“I’ll keep Dariya safe until you get here and can take her somewhere else.” Where, she didn’t know. The pair was nearly as alone as Katya. But surely that wasn’t true. Dariya had friends, Nikolai had colleagues. Somewhere would be safe enough.
In the wordless rasping that followed, she could hear his inner monologue, all his arguments with her handling that weapon. Had she known him so well, so quickly, that she could guess his mind? Or maybe it only seemed so, because she was certain he would want her to protect his niece.
With satisfying predictability, he finally spoke. “Do you know how to use that thing?”
She tilted her head to look at the grip. It seemed obvious enough. “Slide in the magazine and turn off the safety?”
“That should do it.” All the noise on his end came to a sudden stop and he blew out a loud breath. “Put yourself somewhere out of first sight from the front door, but with a clear shot.”
“Sure thing, Captain Obvious.”
He snorted. “And it could pack quite a punch in terms of recoil. Be ready for that so you can get off several rounds, and for God’s sake, be careful.”
“I won’t let anything happen to her.”
“I know that, but take care of yourself too.”
She forced herself to laugh. “What’s the worst he can do to me?”
“If only I knew, Katya. But I don’t, so I can only worry and let my fucked-up imagination run wild.”
“Stop worrying and get here.”
“Wait a second.” A car door slammed, and he barked out the address of the apartment—he was in a taxicab. Depending on the traffic, he could here be fifteen
minutes, or an hour. “Katya, I’m so sorry. I screwed up. I trusted the wrong guy.”
Fedir’s gun shook in her hand. “Welcome to the club.”
She ended the call.
Dariya must have been waiting and listening, because she cracked her bedroom door.
“Keep it locked,” Katya called out. “Nikolai is on his way to pick you up.”
“I don’t want to go. And we can’t leave you here.”
“You have to leave. I have to stay. Now close the door.”
“All right already. But for the record, I don’t like bossy Katya very much.”
Katya chuckled under her breath as the door slammed shut. She carried the box over to the corner of the apartment behind the front door, where she would see someone enter before they turned to see her. She loaded the gun, turned off the safety, and hefted the weight of the weapon in her hand. Had it been a gun like this that killed her? The thought sent a tremor through her arm.
She set it on the floor within easy reach.
She leaned against the wall, her legs splayed, the box between her knees. Her gaze settled on the small sheaf of papers inside.
A passport and birth certificate lay on top. The name on both was Theodore Anatoly, though it was Fedir’s picture. All those months loving him, owing him, and he’d never told her his real name. Beneath that was a sheet of A4 paper, plain white, neat rows of numbers penciled in. The last several entries were amounts she’d recognized—those bonuses Fedir had received. And the final number—200 thousand euros—had a minus sign in front of it. The amount had been circled in pencil. Next to it was the name Lisko.
Had Fedir owed the man that astronomical sum?
The final paper in the box was an unmarked envelope. She opened it and slid out another sheet of folded A4 paper.
Dearest Katya,
At the sight of her name, heat bled out of her.
If you are reading this, there is a good chance something has happened to me. God knows, you’d never go snooping into someone else’s private business, which is how I was able to keep the truth from you for so long. If it pained you to find this gun, to learn who—what—I really am, forgive me. I only lied because I wanted to keep you for myself.
The Siren's Dream Page 18