The Girl With 39 Graves

by Michael Beres

  A girl of 16 after a day at school, excited about a field trip to the Carpathian caves and…

  “How much will this so-called field trip cost?” asks her mother in her singsong voice.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Surely the bus alone will cost me a meal.”

  “I’m not sure, Mother. I’ll find out.”

  “From where does the bus leave?”

  “Right here, in Uzh…in Ungvár.”

  A slap, her mother angry because she almost used the non-Hungarian pronunciation.

  Mariya had not spoken to her mother in decades. The last time was a call Janos encouraged. After news of shutting down the “Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Factory for Trafficked Children,” she called to tell her mother she was safe. Mariya’s mother said it was good she was safe and hung up, the same way the recorded singsong voice comes to an end with a definitive click.

  Kiev Private Investigator Janos Nagy was called Gypsy, a name inherited from his mentor, Lazlo Horvath, when both were in the Kiev Soviet Militia Unit prior to Chernobyl. Comrades named him Boy Gypsy and Lazlo Father Gypsy. Lazlo retired to Chicago and wanted Janos and Mariya to move to Chicago. Visas were ready; it was only a matter of time.

  For Janos, cases these days were not dangerous as in his past. The vow to stick with Kiev domestic matters and avoid standoffs with Russian Mafia was his promise to Mariya. They’d met two years earlier. She needed a detective to determine if the death of her husband Viktor in the fire at his video store was an accident, as authorities said, or murder, as Mariya suspected. Mariya’s analytical mind teamed with Janos’ thoroughness led to deep shit, leaving them no choice but to escape various branches of police, the SBU, the Russian Mafia, and traffickers hiding young people inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

  Janos’ experience, first in the militia working with Lazlo in Soviet days, then as a private investigator during Ukraine independence, taught him there was always another doorway leading deeper into the human soul’s shit. When Mariya called about his sister Sonia, he knew by the tone of Mariya’s voice, one of these doorways had opened.

  “I repeatedly tried calling Sonia back. She was in Marta’s hotel room in Odessa and someone was at the door. After that the phone went dead.”

  “Perhaps a quarrel,” said Janos. “Their relationship has been difficult, especially with other women and men in the mix.”

  “It’s not about their relationship,” said Mariya.

  “How can you know? You said the phone went dead.”

  “Sonia took the overnight train from Kiev and was supposed to meet Marta for breakfast. When she went to the room, it appeared Marta had not slept there.”

  “Aha.”

  “Janos, your sister was serious. Sonia and I have become close. It’s not a quarrel. They agreed to meet at a certain time and Marta’s not there.”

  Later that afternoon, with no word from Sonia, Janos called the central militia office in Odessa. After numerous transfers, he got through to the chief homicide investigator who said Sonia was brought to the militia’s morgue to identify the body of Doctor Marta Adamivna Voronko. Marta was found that morning near Chkalovo beach. Although she was in the surf, and the cause of death was suffocation, her jaw was broken and radioactive soil was stuffed down her throat, copycatting other nighttime murders committed during the last year in and around both Kiev and Odessa. The flaw in Janos’ conversation with the Odessa militia unit office was not lack of consistency of the phone system, but lack of brains on the other end of the line.

  “Perhaps I misunderstand. You take my sister into your basement morgue, show her Doctor Marta Voronko’s body complete with broken jaw and Chernobyl soil, she identifies the body, and you allow her to walk out of the building unattended?”

  “It’s difficult understanding if you shout.”

  Janos lowered his voice. “Very well. Where the hell is my sister?”

  “We told her to wait. She was put in a room and one of our female officers was going to accompany her and—”

  “Why didn’t someone follow her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know anything? Did she walk out under her own power, or was she dragged out?”

  “As I said, when we left her in the room she was distraught, but physically she was fine.”

  “Have you cordoned off the area?”

  “Of course.”

  “How many officers and how large a perimeter?”

  “Bring your Hungarian ass down here. We can use it to measure the perimeter!”

  “Shouting at the brother of a woman you lost? I’m a Hungarian vampire. I’ll come there and suck blood. And while I’m on my way, I’ll contact Odessa militia officials I can trust!”

  Chapter 7

  When Sonia Nagy walked out of the Odessa militia office interrogation room, down the stairs, and out to the street, she paused in sunlight wondering how much time had passed and why no one had stopped her. The terror on Marta’s face in the brightly lit room with officers and a morgue technician standing opposite the body, combined with alcohol scent and walls lined with body drawers, had been unreal. Someone had tried to properly close Marta’s mouth to ease the facial expression and done a poor job. The change in bone structure was obvious. When Sonia saw specks of dirt in the corners of Marta’s mouth the taste of dirt came into her own mouth.

  Sonia had wanted to kiss Marta this morning instead of sitting on a bench across the street from the militia office. Was she practicing the Ukrainian superstition in which one sits before a journey? Was she breathing? Was this really sun on her face? Perhaps a hair dryer in the hotel bathroom. Marta waiting outside for her turn. Sonia will go to the door, open it, and Marta will take her usual morning shower.

  A rush of air was followed by a hiss and squeal. When Sonia no longer felt the sun, she realized a bus had stopped. She boarded the bus. It turned several corners and headed away from city center. A breeze from the window blew her hair across her face. Back at militia headquarters the door to the interrogation room had been left slightly open. Sonia recalled overhearing two young male officers in the hallway.

  “Where was she found?”

  “Chkalovo beach. At first we thought she’d fallen off the yacht club pier. Last year a drunk fell off and drifted there. But dirt in the woman’s mouth points to the Chernobyl killer.”

  “Is this the first time he’s left a victim on a beach?”

  “They’re usually found in alleyways near a bar or dance club.”

  “Perhaps Chkalovo beach offers a clue, since it’s the official nude beach.”

  “Why haven’t they changed the name? Chkalovo was a Russian test pilot. They changed other Soviet names.”

  “That’s the point. It wasn’t a nudist beach in Soviet times. Using his name’s an insult. Bathers hurriedly disrobing the way a pilot would if his flight suit caught fire.”

  “If there’s any hurrying at Chkalovo beach it’s to run from flabby old men with dicks hanging out. Did you hear about the Mir space station cosmonaut’s dick?”

  “No.”

  “Our cosmonaut’s up there for months. He gets taller, but also sleeps nude and his dick grows. When American astronaut comes on, cosmonaut shows the American who says, “I thought you were all Russians up here. Are you from Texas?”

  “What does this have to do with the Chernobyl killer?”

  “It’s simply a joke. You have one better?”

  “A legend about Chkalovo beach and why it’s named after the Russian pilot. He’s older, wants to be a cosmonaut, but fails the physical. Depressed, he moves to Odessa and wanders this beach searching for youth A flabby yet well-endowed Chkalovo whose dick hangs out one leg of his shorts while balls hang out the other decides, what’s the use, removes his shorts, and the nude beach is born. Seeing him naked causes jaws to drop. And when he
sees their jaws drop, he becomes angry, gets hold of radioactive dirt, and does something about these dropping jaws.”

  The laughter of the two militiamen walking down the hallway was inside Sonia’s head trying to get out. She hadn’t laughed. Instead, she opened the door, saw the sign for the stairway, and left the building. It seemed important to go where Marta was found. Perhaps, in a parallel world, Marta would be there waiting for her.

  Sonia sat on the side of the bus facing the beaches. The bus stopped at Arkadia beach with its restaurants and people sitting beneath a rainbow of umbrellas. The parade of people exiting the bus was colorful. Sonia looked down and realized she, too, was dressed colorfully in turquoise slacks, white blouse, and red jacket. Marta would have liked the colors.

  The bus whined as it climbed a hill and the sanatorium came into view. Sonia stood in the aisle swaying back and forth in her other world where militiamen joked. A teenaged boy laughed when she almost fell into his lap. The driver stared in his rearview mirror, pulled the door lever, and announced the sanatorium stop in a gruff voice. After Sonia stepped off, the laughing teenaged boy pushed her aside, ran around the front of the bus, and the driver shouted. When the bus and the teenaged boy were gone, Sonia crossed over in a daze, taking the pathway around the sanatorium to the zigzag beach stairway.

  Green and red militia tape cordoning off a square appeared up the beach when the stairway turned on the steepest part of the hill. Two uniformed militiamen standing guard eyed her as she walked close. They looked to one another and shrugged as she knelt on pebble stone and wept. When one of the militiamen walked her way, she stood and ran inland past him.

  In the dune bordered by grass, several couples sunbathed. A few were nude. They lay on blankets in a hollow protected from wind. After she passed the couples and crossed over the grassy dune, a man wearing a dark blue sweatshirt appeared. He wore no bottoms and had an erection. When she changed direction, he came toward her.

  He was muscular, his head bald and egg-shaped. Hair surrounding his penis was bushy and black and she thought, he is a pervert trying to impersonate a younger Khrushchev. The man blocked her path, making her stop. His thick eyebrows rose as he smiled.

  He spoke Russian. “I’m here to inform you this is nudist beach. On nudist beach, one must go at least half way, as I have done.” He paused a moment before frowning and shaking his head. “No? Then I must become nudist beach security.”

  Rather than knocking her down and raping her, he held her erect, threw her purse to the ground, took off her jacket, ripped her blouse open, and reached around to undo her brassiere. His strength outweighed the resistance she could offer. His rotten fish breath was hot. In seconds she was topless. He let go of her, nodded approval, and spoke seriously and slowly.

  “You will not investigate fathers or grandfathers. Leave Odessa and return to Kiev. Your lover is gone forever and you will be gone forever if you do not walk away. Chernobyl killer will continue if you do not leave and remain silent.” After staring at her a moment, he turned and walked briskly toward the sea, his chunky white buttocks disappearing over the dune.

  Sonia put her brassiere and torn blouse back on, grabbed her purse, and ran back to the sanatorium stairway. The teenaged boy who’d pushed out of the bus sat on one of the benches using binoculars to spy on the nudist beach. Because her blouse had lost its buttons, she put on her jacket and zipped it up. She took out her cell phone and saw it was turned off. She turned on the phone, shaded its screen with one hand, and selected her brother Janos’ number.

  Chapter 8

  Clairvoyant moments are chronic for brooders. The word in Hungarian folk tales is telepátia, carrying wider meaning than the English word. Two floors below Lazlo Horvath’s apartment window, pedestrians of diverse ethnic origins walk or stand at bus stops. Shoes, some obviously old and worn, tread carefully on uneven sidewalks screaming from crevices and cracks for repair. Pothole patches like stray puzzle pieces sag beneath the wheels of buses flying “heavy” between stops.

  A woman in full black burka with a narrow eye slit walks on the uneven sidewalk. A newspaper headline said French officials were voting to ban face coverings. Lazlo had nothing against the woman, but the orthodox costume brought thoughts of death. Perhaps the grim reaper minus his scythe with two olive-skinned little boys in tow? Might the boys someday become terrorists? He’d been a scythe of death several times, killing in self-defense in the Kiev Militia, and again afterwards as a private investigator.

  Two deaths weighed on Lazlo, two boys he’d never forget. An eight-year-old from his building crushed by a delivery van as he ran for an orange Frisbee. After befriending Lazlo, the boy decided he’d be called Gypsy in his neighborhood gang. Lazlo tried convincing Jermaine to quit his gang, but failed. Lazlo purchased the Frisbee. Therefore, Lazlo was the fly in the ointment of Jermaine’s life. Jermaine would have gone on to become whatever a black man can become in a world where sidewalks are obstacle paths and bombs are buried in streets. The van was a bread truck. Earlier today, Ria’s hair in the morning sun at the café was the color of bread crust. Past, present, and future there in the street. Telepátia.

  After the burka and two boys were gone, a young man appeared, reminding Lazlo of the other boy he’d killed. The young man carried a guitar case, not much different than the violin case of the boy he’d shot dead 50 years earlier near the Hungarian and Romanian borders in what was then the Ukraine Republic of the Soviet Union.

  Mandatory Soviet Army tour long before Chernobyl. He and Viktor assigned to arrest deserters in the region simply because they both speak Hungarian. To their officers, nothing but a matter of worthless boys killing worthless boys. Insane officers still angry with Khrushchev and his Cuban missile fiasco. Lazlo gripped the windowsill and closed his eyes

  A snowy day in the eastern Carpathian foothills. The driver stays in the truck on the main road as Lazlo and Viktor trudge the back road. A violin playing as they approach the farmhouse. The deserter’s file indicates he comes from a family of violinists. Lazlo and Viktor hope he’ll hide so he can stay the winter and help with spring planting. Deserters are common, many forgotten. When Viktor knocks, the deserter with violin in hand answers. As noted in his file he has red hair. Mother and sister appear, both with black hair. The sister, perhaps 16, pleads as the deserter gives himself up. The mother says her son’s hotheadedness is inherited from a long-lost grandfather, a redhead who ran away to America.

  The redheaded son asks to bring his violin. He retrieves the violin case, reaches inside, turns with a pistol, and shoots Viktor in the chest. Viktor falls back through the open doorway. The pistol turns toward Lazlo. The struggle to release the safety and pull the trigger moves Lazlo’s rifle too high. The bullet explodes the deserter’s forehead. The women scream. Bloody bits of red hair streak the snow as the driver drags the deserter and Lazlo carries Viktor to the truck. Both are alive, but die while the truck speeds to the nearest hospital.

  When Lazlo visits the farmhouse again with his captain, the deserter’s father is home. He gives them the violin to bury with his son, saying villagers called his son Red Gypsy. Mother and daughter have put strands of their hair into the violin case. The mother weeps in another room. The daughter stares at Lazlo with dark eyes. Except for the visit with his captain to confirm what happened, there is no further investigation. Back at camp Lazlo’s comrades baptize him with the name Gypsy, insisting the name migrated from the deserter’s soul to his soul when he avenged Viktor’s death.

  Lazlo opened his eyes. The woman in the burka with two boys reappeared, coming from the other direction. She seemed to look up toward Lazlo’s window, reached deep into her garment, pulled out a cell phone, held the phone to her eye slit, and thumbed in a number. Suddenly, across the room, Lazlo’s cell phone rang with its Kafkaesque pinball tone. The woman in the burka spoke on her phone and resumed walking.

  Lazlo hurried across the room, almost t
ripping on a rag rug. He flipped the phone open, “Janos Nagy” on the display. They spoke their usual Hungarian.

  “Janos, I knew you’d call. Time there?”

  “After midnight, Laz.”

  Lazlo sat at his kitchen table. They discussed the Chernobyl serial killings. Not only had the killings migrated from Kiev to Odessa, but now his friends Janos Nagy and Mariya Nemeth were drawn into the investigation.

  “Your sister’s lover, dead?”

  Janos spoke softly. “I’m with Sonia. Marta was found on Chkalovo beach. But there’s more. Sonia goes to the beach after the militia loses track of her. An obvious Mafia thug rips off her blouse and gives her a warning. She’s not to investigate Marta’s death, or the death of Marta’s father and grandfather. But on the same night of Marta’s killing, a waitress in Kiev is killed. Her name was Keresztes and, like my Mariya, she was originally from Uzhgorod.”

  “Keresztes is Hungarian, common to the area when I was a boy,” said Lazlo.

  “The Chernobyl killer does not discriminate, Laz. Along with contaminated soil, a Star of David was drawn on her forehead using her blood. No fingerprints.”

  “Marta did not have the Star of David mark?” asked Lazlo.

  “No Star of David,” said Janos. “But her jaw was broken and soil was in her throat. Also, some of her hair was pulled and shoved into her mouth. Odessa detectives say she was killed on the beach and dragged into the shallows. But listen to this. I checked the airport; it would have been impossible to fly from Odessa to Kiev that time of night. Therefore, that night there were two so-called Chernobyl killers.”

  “Copycat or cover up?”