After Yekaterina

by K. L. Abrahamson

  He left the reviewed newspapers on the table and photocopied the sports article, then approached the old man.

  Again, those rheumy eyes flashed open, the intelligence unmasked in calculation.

  Kazakov placed the sports article before the old man. “This event. Was there anything more reported? Perhaps from the arts and culture side of things?”

  “Arts and culture? Perhaps a small piece. Let me check.” The old librarian stood slowly and shuffled off, but this time Kazakov followed. The old man led down a canyon of head-high wooden racks hung with yellowed newspaper. With each step down the canyon, the yellowing of the paper increased as if they stepped back in time itself.

  The librarian stopped and riffled through the papers hung on the left side of the canyon. Then he harrumphed in satisfaction and slid a sheaf of newspaper off the wall. When he turned his eyes widened as if surprised to see Kazakov beside him. “You should not be here. Only staff can remove the papers.”

  Kazakov nodded. “But as you see, I haven’t touched them.” He looked at the papers in the old man’s hands.

  “Arts and culture,” the old man said, his face oddly noncommittal like a suspect only admitting what he knew the police already knew.

  Kazakov sighed, because nothing was ever easy.

  “Is there anything else about that event? Something not in the sports or arts and culture sections?”

  A twinkle seemed to catch in the old man’s gaze as if he was a teacher pleased with a bright pupil. “In fact, I think there is.” He turned back to the wall of papers and pulled another newspaper section loose, then stepped past Kazakov to lead him back to the reading table. He set the papers down and left Kazakov to read again.

  Settling back into a chair, Kazakov flipped the paper open.

  The arts and culture article was small, most likely overwhelmed by the much larger article about the marriage of the daughter of Fergana’s president. There were photos of flowers and women in flowing dresses that framed around a small article about the charity event. The two paragraphs told about the event being held at a nearby polo field and of the many dignitaries attending along with a sampling of youth musicians as ambassadors for the program. Over twenty thousand dollars was raised for next year’s conference.

  If young people were there, there was a good chance Yekaterina and Semetai were, too. It was something he could likely check. He set the article aside and pulled the other section to him. It was the news section.

  Frowning, he scanned the first page and flipped it open. Nothing on the second page either. He flipped the pages and finally found what he was looking for sandwiched between advertisements for a new model First Auto and one for modern apartment homes in a new building located at the base of Yekaterina Mountain. They were calling the complex Yekaterina Gate.

  The article, dating back to last spring, was six paragraphs long and detailed an altercation that occurred at the reception held in the evening of the charity polo event between adult attendees and an uninvited “tribal” youth. The police were called, but the youth left before they arrived. Apparently one of the guests had his nose bloodied. The youth was being sought for assault.

  Kazakov sat back in his chair wondering just whose nose was bloodied. An uninvited tribal youth. He’d bet money on it being Semetai. Events like this probably wouldn’t include a Muslim youth on their guest list, but he could see Semetai showing up anyway if it gave him a chance to be with Yekaterina. Hell, she probably encouraged him. So, would the altercation have been with Boris Bure? If so, what did that have to do with Collin Archer?

  Damn it, this raised more questions than answers!

  He shoved up from the table and leaned on the snoozing librarian’s desk. “Thank you for your time. Your suggestion was appreciated. May I ask, just how do you come to your conclusions about the items I will need? It seems a momentous task to remember everything.”

  The librarian’s thin lips quivered into a grin. He tapped the side of his head with a bone-thin finger. “Old man. Long memories, and mine is particularly long. That is why they allow me to keep my job until the electronic filing is done. No one has a memory longer than mine.” He cocked his head. “There are things from the past that remain unwritten, but people remember. I remember.” He cocked his head. “Like I remember you, Alexander Kazakov. I remember your mother, too.”

  Kazakov stumbled back a step. “You know me?”

  The old man smiled sadly, revealing the stubs of broken teeth. “Once I lived beside you, but you were very young. You used to play outside on a swing. Your mother would push you.”

  The swing was a hazy memory of air past his cheeks, green swaying overhead, and his mother’s laughter as she held him on her lap. It had been—over thirty-five years? Forty? The years were like mist over the memory, but there was no wizened man next door there, though he might remember a young friend and his parents. Maybe.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. How could you know it was me?”

  “I remember the name. I have followed your police career in the newspaper.” The librarian waved his answer away as if he didn’t matter.

  “May I have your name? I am at a disadvantage.”

  The old man thought a moment. “Your parents knew me as Artyom Shepovalov. These days I am simply Old Man—meant in the most affectionate way, of course.” He shrugged in his chair. “Now you had best be on your way. There are those who would not be happy at where you are looking.”

  Kazakov leaned in over the desk. “You say things like that—what do you know? Tell me?”

  Shepovalov shook his head. “I’ve said enough. These are an old man’s words. An old man’s suspicions. At my age you have time to fully read all these articles and remember them. You can put pieces of what is said and unsaid together. But they are only suspicions nurtured over the years. It takes a young man like you to prove anything. Unfortunately, few young men come asking.” He stood up and shuffled to the table to reclaim Kazakov’s detritus and disappeared back into the stacks, his fading footsteps putting Kazakov in mind of a mythical creature dragging itself away from Baba Yaga into the western deserts to die.

  He took his papers and his suspicions and returned out to the street. He was surprised that the day had swallowed the morning and noontime was here, filling the streets with fur-clad people hurrying to midday meals. The wind had died, but the temperature had dropped precipitously so that his breath seemed to freeze before it could be exhaled and ears and nose were painful. Gloved hands over his ears and his collar up, the soft fur protecting his neck, he hurried down the now-shoveled path on the sidewalk back to his car. Inside, he sat shivering with the heater turned on full. It was no time to be outside. It was a wonder the Perseus started. The rubber tires thumped as he drove, the rubber already frozen flat on one side as he headed for the printer’s shop in the old town for his appointed meeting.

  Again, he did not chance parking near the shop but parked outside the narrow streets of the Islamic quarter and trudged inside on foot, following ragged trails through the heavy snow. There were no plowed streets here, only the occasional doorway or shop entrance where the worst of the snow had been cleared away.

  The printer’s shop was one such place, its cleared doorway masking how many might have passed this way. Kazakov climbed the single stone stair and stepped inside into blessed warmth. Somewhere unseen a wood-burning stove was working, its natural warmth far more pleasing than the electric heat that chugged out of the vents in the squad room or the newspaper archive. The small silver bell jingled over his head and the same proprietor stuck his head through the curtain from the rear of the shop.

  “You came. In this snow, I thought you might not.” He stepped through the curtain and came to the door, checking outside before locking it and turning the open sign to closed. “Come. This way. There are others waiting.”

  He led Kazakov through the curtain into a storeroom and, like the Blue Corner, beyond the storeroom into modest living qua
rters.

  The room was a kitchen with a low ceiling and a soot-blackened clay hearth against one wall. A great black kettle hung from an iron hook over the fire in the hearth and wood shelves were set into stucco walls. They stepped through another curtain and he found himself in a sitting room with worn carpets over the floor and low seating platforms built along the walls, now covered in faded embroidered cushions. Age-silvered beams held up the ceiling and an electric heater sat against one wall, humming out its warmth. Seven men and five women sat on opposite sides of the room, the men dressed in workmen’s stout trousers and woolen shirts, the women in a variety of dress—four in house dresses and one younger woman in trousers. All the women wore headscarves and the men had the small white taqiyah perched on their heads. They all watched him with silent dark eyes as the shop owner produced a chair from somewhere and placed it on the floor in the center of the room as if a detective would not deign to sit with them in their customary way.

  “For you,” he said and motioned Kazakov to the chair.

  “Thank you, but I’ve no need for such a thing.” He shifted the chair next to the wall and awkwardly settled cross-legged to the floor. It was a long time since had done such a thing, though as a lad he had sat with the tribal visitors near the dacha many times. His heavy coat spread around him and formed an uncomfortable lump under his bum.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” he said to his host. He looked around the room. “And for coming today. I am Detektiv Alexander Kazakov with the New Moscow Politseyshiy, the police department. I appreciate your trust in me.”

  “He investigates Semetai’s death,” said his host.

  Kazakov nodded and scanned the waiting faces. “What can you tell me of Semetai Manas, the young man?”

  The men looked at each other, apparently each waiting for someone else to start.

  “He was a good boy. The best. But he fell in love—with that girl!” spat the younger woman in trousers.

  Kazakov looked at her mildly, encouraging.

  “I am his aunt. I should know. He looked up to me because I have found a way to walk in both your world and ours. He was smart. He was funny. He was devout to the faith.”

  Her words were the typical litany of the bereaved and not particularly helpful. “Devout enough that he fell in love with a Russian girl.”

  “He thought she had connections that could help him,” one of the other women said, her hair hidden under a floral scarf, her dress so faded he could almost not make out the floral design.

  “No,” said a thin woman who huddled in the middle of the five as if she was ill. “He loved her. Do not speak ill of the dead. I may not have approved, but my boy loved her. She loved him back. She even came to my home and she was a charming girl—always willing to help. He was devoted to her.”

  She had large, faded brown eyes that pooled with tears and Kazakov inhaled. Semetai’s missing mother was here in the room.

  “I miss him,” the woman said. “But she would mourn him, too.”

  The line of men nodded.

  “I knew Semetai. He was my friend,” said a young man with dark hair and eyes who looked to be of an age with the dead youth. He looked to the shop proprietor, who nodded. “He cared for Yekaterina very much. He spoke of marriage.”

  There was a tsking amongst the women.

  “He did!” the youngster said. “When they were together, he was truly happy. He could see a future for himself.” He shook his head bitterly. “Not like most of us.”

  The youth fell silent and so did the others. Kazakov hauled his notebook and pen from his coat pocket. “Semetai’s body was found in a field outside of the old quarter. Yekaterina was found dead in Potemkin Park. What can you tell me about that?”

  More looks and an uneasiness stirred through them as if they were stalks of grass in the wind.

  “He was supposed to be home,” volunteered the thin woman who was Manas’s mother. “He had gone to see Yekaterina. He was upset about something but would not discuss it. Always he went to see her. I suppose you can talk to the one who has stolen your heart, but he was supposed to be home by then. He was always home on time.” She shook her head and swallowed—to hold back more tears, Kazakov supposed.

  “I heard a shout.” A man who had not spoken previously lifted large, grease-blackened hand off his lap as if to wave his story into being. “It was closing time. I own a mechanic shop at the edge of the new city. I heard a shout and then footsteps running. It is usually quiet at that hour so something made me go to the window. Three men ran past, into the old city.”

  Kazakov made a note of it. “Tell me more, please.”

  The man’s trousers were stained with grease, his shirt as well, and yet both bore the creases of fresh laundering. His face was newly shaven and his hair neatly combed. This was apparently an important meeting.

  “They came from the direction of the new city. Perhaps down Peter Street. They looked as if they pursued someone, but I did not see who. They entered the street at the end of my block and I did not see them again, for I closed my shop and went home. I did not think of it again until I heard what had happened.”

  “Did you tell the police?” Kazakov asked and received a shake of the man’s head.

  “What did they look like?” Kazakov tried again.

  The big man stirred uneasily. “They wore black coats and fur hats…”

  He paused, and Kazakov nodded encouragement.

  The man closed his eyes. “They wore black coats and fur hats like ofitser politsii.”

  The room went silent and Kazakov felt thirteen sets of eyes on him. He exhaled and nodded. “All of them?”

  The man nodded. “At least two.”

  “Were they Russian, too?”

  The man nodded. “I think so.”

  Kazakov straightened to ease his back and reevaluated what he’d previously thought. He’d concluded that the community had probably killed the son. He’d thought that they had rejected Semetai because of Yekaterina and her parents had killed the girl for the same reason. Natania Bure’s plea not to investigate fit with that story. What the hell was going on and what did it mean?

  “Can you tell me anything distinctive about these men?”

  The man shook his head. “I saw them only for an instant as they ran past and then only from the back.”

  “Did they see you?”

  The man frowned. “I—I don’t think so.”

  That was something. “Good. Do not speak to anyone else about this.”

  Kazakov looked around the room. “There are other voices here. What do you know? Help me find Semetai’s killer. Please.”

  “We saw them,” one of the other women said. She was older, with strands of steel-gray hair straying out from under her kerchief. She clutched the hand of the woman next to her, a young woman, not much more than a girl but already clad in drab colors and, peeking out from her scarf, her rich chestnut hair had gone dull. The younger woman swallowed, nodded.

  “Tell me what happened?”

  The younger girl’s knuckles were white where she gripped the older woman’s fingers. “We were coming home from visiting friends. It was time to make dinner for my husband.”

  She lifted her chin as if she took power from the fact that she was married so young. Some of the Muslim families held to older, tribal ways and believed that their daughters were best married at sixteen. Once it had been younger, but laws had been passed limiting the age.

  “We came around a corner and Semetai crashed into us. Mother fell. I was pushed against the wall. He looked at me as if he did not see me, then turned and ran. I never saw him again. I helped mother stand, but three men came around the corner. One produced a badge and said they were seeking a criminal. They asked if we had seen anyone. We both said ‘no,’ but I don’t think they believed us. We went right home and only later heard that Semetai had been killed.”

  Kazakov wrote it down. “Can you describe these men?”

  The girl looked at he
r hand intertwined with her mother’s. “Big, like you. Two had brown hair. One had much lighter hair. One had big teeth. One man had a gun drawn. After they left us, we hurried home. We are afraid to go outside again, for they know what we look like.”

  The men nodded.

  The print shop owner nodded, too. “There are strangers in the old town. I have seen them myself. They dress in workmen’s clothing and drink tea in our tearooms, but they are not of us. They come from the city.” He lifted his chin and it was if all of New Moscow was a foreign land to them.

  “I am afraid to speak to my friends in public,” said the young man who had spoken earlier. “These newcomers watch us and they are everywhere. My brother worked for a time across the mountains in China and he said it was like that there—watching, always watching. I told him he should not stay there, but he said there is work.”

  He shook his head.

  “You are police. Who are these men?” asked the old woman.

  All eyes turned to Kazakov as he shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

  But his mind was racing. Watchers infiltrating the town. That was news to him. And men with badges pursuing Semetai Manas. Men dressed much like him. Could the police be involved? He thought of Rostoff’s determination that Kazakov not investigate. It made too much troubling sense and meant that he was going to have to be very careful, indeed.

  “Did anyone see Semetai Manas again?” he asked.

  Again, the troubled stirring. No one said a word until finally the shopkeeper rose and crossed to the oldest grandfather present. The man’s face was wizened with the squint lines that came of years in the mountains peering into the distant, glaring snows. He wore the same trousers and work shirt as the others but puddled around him was a thick fur coat and beside him sat one of the tall, traditional fur hats worn by the tribal people. A mark across his brow showed where the hat usually sat.

  “You must tell him what you saw.”

  “I must do nothing. I do not trust his kind.” He shook his head. “He asks much and tells nothing, like all his kind.”