The Devil_s Garden

by Richard Montanari

  He scooped Charlotte into his arms, lifted her into the air, held her close, and began to run down the hill. He almost slipped when they reached a narrow section of the creek, his leather-soled shoes slipping on a slippery rock. He found his balance as they forded the shallow water. Michael was certain he heard footsteps approaching rapidly behind them, the snapping of fallen branches and plodding on leaves, but he knew he could not stop.

  Moments later they reached the back of the Meisner property. Michael put Charlotte down, and together they ran across the backyard, skirting the garden. They reached the back patio and the sliding door. Michael banged on the glass. Within moments Zoe came into the dining room, looked at them. At first it appeared as if she did not know Michael, but soon recognition dawned. She crossed the room, slid open the glass door.

  “Michael,” she said. “How nice.”

  Zoe Meisner was a widower in her sixties. She lived for her garden, her dog, and community fundraisers. In that order.

  Shasta came loping up. She was a big golden Lab, and when she reached the end of the living-room carpet, momentum and a hefty diet propelled her across the quarry tile of the foyer, sliding, trying to maintain balance. She stopped just short of knocking Charlotte over.

  The dog wagged its tail and began to lick Charlotte’s face. Charlotte giggled, and it loosed something in Michael’s chest. The sound of his daughter laughing. He realized he had all but begun to think he would never hear that sound again.

  Michael caught his breath, tried to appear normal. “Uh, Zoe, I was wondering if I could ask you a small favor.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Why don’t you come on in? Would you like some tea?”

  “No,” Michael said. “No thanks. I was wondering, could you watch Charlotte for just a few minutes?”

  Zoe looked him up and down, perhaps for the first time noticing the clothes he was wearing, and the dirt and mud along the cuffs of his maroon golf slacks, slacks that Michael found himself unconsciously hitching every few seconds. He hoped the gun did not fall out of his waistband.

  “Are you all right?” Zoe asked.

  “I’m fine,” Michael said. “Just kind of a… crazy day.”

  In addition to being the town’s resident expert on all things organic, Zoe Meisner was the repository of neighborhood gossip. She gave Michael a skeptical glance, then looked at Charlotte, who was busy petting the dog.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I won’t be long,” Michael said, half out the door already.

  “No hurry,” Zoe said. “Take your time.”

  Michael crossed the yard, and headed back up the hill.

  The backyard was empty when Michael again reached his house. This time he came in on the southern end of the property, in the area behind the shed and the garage, from where he could see the side door. He saw no one. He glanced at the windows. The drapes behind the large picture window in the back of the house were closed; the horizontal blinds in the window over the kitchen sink were lowered. He saw no lights, no shadows. The vertical blinds, which hung over the sliding glass door, were only half drawn. He glanced at the side of the house. In order for him to see if Abby’s car – or any car – was still in the driveway, he would have to move across the yard. He would be visible from any and all windows in the back.

  Michael tried to slow his breathing, his heart. For a few mad moments he could not remember the layout inside his own house. It seemed to be blocked.

  Moreover, he did not know how many people were in his house. He did not know if Aleks and Kolya were the only two people doing this to them. But he knew he could no longer wait.

  He sidled up to the northern edge of the property, then along the side of the house. He edged up to the window in the first floor bedroom, the bedroom they used as an office. He saw no one inside.

  He inched along the back wall of the house, pushed open the sliding glass door, drew the weapon, then thought better of it. He put it back into the waistband of his slacks. He stepped into the house.

  The kitchen was empty. Two juice glasses sat on the table. Michael glanced around the room, trying to take it all in. He wanted to call out, but stopped himself. He looked at the refrigerator magnets, the letters and numbers he and Abby often used to teach the girls new words. It was a pretty strict rule, a daily routine. Every day Abby would choose a word, and she and the girls would go over it, sometimes looking it up online or in the big dictionary in their home office. Abby would always leave the word in place until Michael got home. Many times the girls would be waiting for Michael at the door when he returned from work, dragging him excitedly into the kitchen to teach him the new word.

  Today there were no words spelled out. The letters were all bunched together at the top of the door, a jumble of nonsense. A pair of numbers had been dragged to the bottom.

  Michael sidled up to the living room, peered in. Another empty room. One of the dining room chairs had been positioned in front of the sliding glass door.

  A lookout position? Michael wondered.

  He crossed the foyer, moved silently up the steps. He peered into the bathroom. The shower curtain was pulled open. The room was empty. He looked into the girls’ room. The beds were made, the room tidy as always. He edged down the hallway and caught a whiff of something at the back of his throat that tasted like warm brass. He looked into the master bedroom.

  The room was covered in blood.

  “Oh my God. No!”

  The bed sheets were bunched in the middle of the bed, the TV had fallen off the dresser, things were scattered all over the room. There was blood on the walls, the ceiling. The room where he slept, where he made love to his wife, was an abattoir. He steadied himself against the wall. He saw a thick rut of scarlet leading from the foot of the bed over to the closet. He took the gun in his unsteady hand, eased open the closet door.

  There, inside, was Kolya. There was no point in trying to determine if he was still alive. His face was a bloated plum, crusted with blood. There was a gaping wound in his neck.

  Michael ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, the madness all but overtaking him. He quickly crossed the living room and was just about to enter the kitchen, when he almost tripped over something on the floor. He stopped, looked down. It was the body of Desiree Powell.

  He lurched into the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

  Aleks had Abby and Emily. Gone. And his house was strewn with corpses.

  Michael looked out the front window. At the bottom of the hill, just visible through the trees, he could see a car turning into the drive, the unmistakable dark blue of a city police car.

  Michael knew that even if the police believed him – and there was little chance of that, considering that Michael himself, if the positions were reversed, would have a hard time believing he had nothing to do with these crimes – it would cause two courses of action. One, he would be taken into custody. Two, the police department, not to mention the FBI and the Crane County sheriff’s office would kick into high gear to locate Abby, Emily, and the man who was terrorizing his family.

  And who knew what would happen if the police found Aleksander Savisaar?

  No. He would turn himself in, but not until Abby and Charlotte and Emily were with him. He had to be in the same room with his family. He would never believe in the world again until that moment.

  He glanced out the window. Marco Fontova was just getting out of his car. The good news was that he was alone. He had not brought in the troops. Not yet.

  Michael ran to the back door, looked around the yard, the area behind the house. No cops. He heard the doorbell ring as he slipped outside, the revolver now a dead weight in his pocket, his mind a jumble of dark scenarios.

  There was no way to lock the sliding glass door from the outside. He would have to leave it open. He glanced back into the house. He could see Desiree Powell’s feet from the patio, and knew it would be all the probable cause Fontova would need to enter.

  Michael sprin
ted across the yard, ran down the hill, leaping over fallen trees. He forded the creek at a low point, being careful not to slip on the rocks, all the while expecting to hear a gunshot. A few moments later he made it through the woods to the Meisner house. He picked up Charlotte, telling Zoe Meisner nothing. She would hear the sirens soon enough.

  Five minutes later, with Charlotte strapped into a seatbelt in the front seat with him, he left Eden Falls, and headed for the 102, and Ozone Park. There was only one place to go. There was only one man who could help him.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Des.”

  Lucien stood on the corner, his blinding white smile a beacon in the steamy dusk of a Kingston summer night. His two skinny chums – a pair of funny bwois who never brought luck or favor – poked him in the ribs.

  Jealous, she thought. Who wouldn’t be? She was a princess.

  Inside, butterflies took to the breeze. From somewhere came the sound of Peter Tosh’s “Glass House”.

  “Des.”

  Detective Desiree Powell opened her eyes. It was not Lucien. It was Marco Fontova. If her chest had not been on fire, if it did not feel as if someone had deposited a grand piano on her ribs, and then weighted that down with anvils, and then had the entire New York Rangers team work out on it, she might have laughed. She passed out again, but could not find Lucien.

  Gone.

  She drifted back. It took a while to find a sound within her. “How long have I been out?” she asked. Her voice sounded like someone else’s, like an old scratchy recording from the Twenties.

  Fontova looked at his watch. His face betrayed his fear, his concern for her. It was sweet. “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you look at your watch if you don’t know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Am I bleeding out?”

  Fontova shook his head. “No.”

  There was someone standing behind Fontova, a blond female paramedic, too young and pretty to be in this line of work. As Powell struggled to sit up, the young EMT told her to stay down, but it wasn’t going to happen. Fontova helped Desiree into a sitting position. With a great deal of pain she leaned against the wall. The room began to spin and, for a moment, she felt the nausea creep. She took a moment, waited it out. She then reached behind her. Something was wrong. “Where’re my cuffs?”

  Fontova looked away, then back. He was never good at telling her bad news. “I think they were taken,” he said. “Your badge too.”

  “Motherfucker.”

  Fontova raised an eyebrow. “I think that might be two dollars.”

  “Mother is not a swear word.”

  “I think it’s the intent, though.”

  The sickness came over her in a foul rush. Powell choked back the bile. She glanced to her left, saw the Kevlar vest they had taken off her. It was ripped and dented. “Jesus.”

  “You okay?” Fontova asked.

  Powell just glared at him.

  “Okay. Well. There’s something you should see.”

  “Where?”

  Fontova pointed at the steps. Powell looked up. “That might take a while. Like maybe a week.”

  “Hang on,” Fontova said. He stood up, took the stairs two at a time, probably in an attempt to show off to the pretty blond paramedic. When he returned a few minutes later, he held his cellphone in front of him. Powell glanced at the screen. There, in living color – mostly red – was a dead male body, slumped in a closet. It looked like his face had been carved by a meat slicer.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “The bedroom looks like a slaughterhouse.”

  Powell looked more closely at the small screen. The DOA could have been anyone. “Is it Michael Roman?”

  Fontova shook his head, held up an evidence bag. In it was an oversized leather wallet, connected to a chain. “His name was Nikolai Udenko.”

  “Did you run him?”

  Fontova nodded. “Small timer. Did a stretch at Rikers for assault. No wants or warrants.”

  “Then why is he dead in this pretty house?”

  Fontova had no answer.

  “Ma’am?”

  Powell glanced over at the paramedic. She hated being called ma’am, but this kid looked twenty-four, and Powell figured it was the right term. “Yeah?”

  “I should really take a look at those ribs.”

  Ten minutes later, while an EMT team wrapped her damaged – probably broken – ribs, Powell tried to put it all together.

  Since she’d gotten the assignment, she was certain she had the starting point of this case. She believed it was the point where all homicide investigations began, that being with the murder itself. Elementary this, no?

  No. Not always.

  “We got a call from the 105,” Fontova said, sitting at the dining-room table, looking the other way while Desiree Powell – wearing just her bra on top – got swaddled in Ace bandages. “It seems that a uniformed officer talked to a man up there at one of the pay-and-play motels along Hampstead. They’d gotten a call of two men fighting in the parking lot.”

  “What about it?” All three words hurt. Powell winced. The paramedic helped her slip her blouse back on.

  “The officer said the guy did not have any ID on him, but identified himself as a Queens prosecutor.”

  “A prosecutor?”

  Fontova nodded. “The guy said his name was Michael Roman.”

  “Okay.”

  “They checked him out, let him slide. But the officer said they pulled around the back of the motel and watched the guy drive away. He was driving a 1999 Ford Contour.”

  “He run the plate?”

  Fontova looked at his notes. “Yeah. It comes back to a company called Brooklyn Stars.”

  “What the hell is that, a Roller Derby Team?”

  “Small car dealership in Greenpoint. Probably a chop shop. I checked it out. Guess who owns the place?”

  Powell would have thrown up her hands if it wouldn’t have sent her into paroxysms of agony. “I am in a world of hurt. Don’t make me guess.”

  “Nikolai Udenko.”

  “Our friendly neighborhood DOA?”

  “The same.”

  Powell glanced out the window. Her chest was aflame. But that didn’t stop the wheels from turning.

  “So let me get this straight. We’ve got a torture homicide up in the 114, the victim a shady lawyer tied to ADA Michael Roman – a man who I might add was spotted this afternoon on Hampstead Avenue, driving a car that belonged to a man we just found sliced and diced in the aforementioned Mr Roman’s lovely suburban house.”

  “Yep.”

  “A house inside which I talked to his rabbit-eyed wife before taking three -”

  “Four.”

  “Four slugs to the vest.” Powell shifted her weight in the chair. For some reason, learning about the fourth shot made her ribs even worse. “And now the wife and daughters are gone.”

  “In the wind.”

  Powell thought it might take a calculator to add all this up. “Some fuckery this.”

  “That’s exactly what I was gonna say, but I gave that word in all its forms up for Lent.”

  Fontova held up a second evidence bag, this one containing what looked to Powell like a. 25 semi-auto.

  “That was my ticket to heaven?” Powell asked.

  “Yep.”

  “That bitty thing? I’m almost embarrassed.” The truth was, a. 25 could drop you just like a. 38, depending on the load. Powell thanked the Lord it was only a twenty-five. At the range at which she had been shot, the vest might not have saved her if it had been anything bigger.

  “I called in the serial number,” Fontova said. “And it turns out this here belly gun is registered to none other than one Abigail Reed Roman, RN, thirty-one, of Eden Falls, New York.”

  Powell just looked at her partner. “Now, you’re just a handbook of police procedure aren’t you?”

  “Tell the world, chica.”

  “Well I may not know much, but I’m sure of
one thing,” Powell said, struggling to her feet.

  “What’s that?”

  “I know she didn’t pull the trigger.”

  As the shooting team headed up to Eden Falls, Powell got on her cellphone to Lieutenant John Testa, the commanding officer of the Queens Homicide Squad. Testa was a supple sixty, with a full head of silver hair and burnished little gray eyes that could make you confess to something you never did. He had an unrequited thing for Desiree, and therefore she could usually wrap him around her finger. After assuring her supervisor that she was fine (she was not), and pleading with him to not pull her in (she hated begging), she told him the facts as they knew them. Except in detail about how her chest felt like she had been kicked for a forty-nine-yard field gold and it hurt to even hold the cellphone. Testa caved, let her stay on the street.

  As promised, five minutes later, he issued an arrest warrant for Michael Roman.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Michael drove two miles under the speed limit, coming to a full stop at stop signs and red lights. He was usually a careful driver, especially with the girls in the car, but today there were more reasons to be cautious. He did not know if there were wants and warrants on him yet. He had to be where he was going, but he had to get there.

  The horror of what he had found inside his house roiled within him. The place where his children played, where he had thought his family was protected, was shrouded in blood. Right now a madman had his wife and one of his children. And that madman could be anywhere in the city.

  He had gotten on Henry Hudson Parkway heading south, frantically scanning both the side and rear-view mirrors, trying to see if Aleks was following him. For the first few miles, he concentrated on looking for Abby’s car. He saw no champagne-colored Acuras. Then it occurred to him that Aleks might have had his own car, a car unknown to Michael. He had not been able to see the length of the driveway.

  He called Abby’s brother Wallace, first at his office, then at his house in Westchester. Wallace said he had not spoken to Abby since the birthday party, and Michael did not sense that Wallace was under any kind of duress. Wallace Reed could negotiate multimillion dollar contracts with foreign investors, but when it came to confrontations he was not the coolest egg in the dozen. Michael doubted he would have even been able to talk if a psychopath was holding him hostage.