David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

He winces. He used to use phrases like that, too.

“They used bullshit diagnoses like ‘creeping schizophrenia.’ They would keep them for years that way.”

That makes sense. But the difference here is that American doctors have also diagnosed Koslenko with paranoid schizophrenia. He tells McCoy so.

She shrugs. “So maybe he really did belong there. Regardless, he escaped from the Soviet Union in 1986 and applied to the United States. His parents helped him. And that was the excuse he used. He said he’d been persecuted for religious and political beliefs, and that was why he did time in Lefortovo. And, apparently, the fancy lawyers who helped him out convinced our government that he was telling the truth. Here’s the kicker: You’re going to love who helped him in the States.”

He doesn’t have to guess. But why burst her bubble?

“Harland Bentley,” she announces. “The Harland Bentley. And his wife, Natalia.”

He nods.

“I’m not surprising you,” she gathers.

“Not with that part, no. Jane, he went into that asylum in 1982. He got out in 1984. He got over the Soviet border in 1986 and came to America.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“What happened in those two years? Eighty-four to eighty-six.”

She smiles, but only for a moment. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Mickey.” She leans forward, touches the file she has given him. “And that’s why you’re not supposed to have this file.”

I RETURN TO MY OFFICE after talking to Gwendolyn. I still haven’t heard back from McDermott. I return to the notes that were delivered to me, spread out on my desk. I’ve been over these notes a dozen times over the past few days, but I’m certain that I’m still missing something.

The first one:

If new evil emerges, do heathens ever link past actions? God’s answer is near.

Second:

I will inevitably lose life. Ultimately, sorrow echoes the heavens. Ever sensing. Ever calling out. Never does vindication ever really surrender easily. The immediate messenger endures the opposition, but understanding requires new and loving betrayal and new yearning.

Third:

Others that hunted ensured respect. Sinners know not our wrath. Our ultimate response shall ensure consequences, reviling ethical traitors.

The first note makes sense, at least. He’s talking about a link between his crimes and Terry Burgos’s murders. The third one makes some sense, too, I guess. Our ultimate response shall ensure consequences, reviling ethical traitors. Reviling ethical traitors? It seems awkward, forced.

The more I think about it, the more I agree with Stoletti about the second note. The word choices are odd. Some of it is nonsensical.

Never does vindication ever really surrender easily.

But understanding requires new and loving betrayal and new yearning.

Why did he insert ever in a sentence that didn’t need it? Why use new twice?

Maybe-maybe these notes aren’t meant to be taken literally. We’re expecting someone following Burgos’s crusade to be mentally ill, like him, mixed in with some pathological religious fer vor. These notes bear the markings of all of that.

But maybe there’s more to these notes. Maybe these are in some kind of code.

I get out a separate piece of paper and play with the words, looking for anything. I read it with every other word. Every third word. I don’t discern a pattern. I try to focus on the extra words, what they might mean. I come up empty. But I can’t shake the feeling that some of these words look like they don’t belong-not just ever and now but words like reviling.

Forced.

Why did he need these words, in particular? What role did they play in this code?

Wait a second. Wait a second.

I start scribbling, playing out my theory. My heart starts to pound as it crystallizes. He chose those words because he needed a word that started with that particular letter. He chose ever because he needed an e.

I write the first letter from each word in the first note.

I-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P-A-G-A-I-N.

Jesus Christ.

I need help again.

The second note:

I-W-I-L-L-U-S-E T-H-E S-E-C-O-N-D V-E-R-S-E T-I-M-E T-O B-U-R-N A-L-B-A-N-Y.

I will use the second verse. Time to burn Albany. The third note:

O-T-H-E-R-S K-N-O-W-O-U-R S-E-C-R-E-T.

Others know our secret.

He wrote these notes to me. He needs my help again. Now he will burn Albany. Others know our secret.

Our secret? He needs my help? Again?

What the hell does this mean?

IT’S TIME. TIME NOW.

Leo walks over to the window overlooking the street: A woman is showing a piece of real estate to a couple of men on the other side of the street and down about eight houses; a FedEx truck is parked up the street a ways; two Latino women and their small children walk on the sidewalk, eating fresh corn dipped in butter and salt.

Leo puts on the plastic smock and fastens the ties behind his neck and back. Then he walks over to the stereo in the apartment. On top of the receiver is a framed photograph of Shelly Trotter and Paul Riley in a park, waving to the camera. He waves back.

Hello, Paul. You see what I’m about to do?

The CD already in the player is classical piano music. He pauses a moment, closes his eyes, listens to the graceful, spirited hands of Horowitz. Katrina had played, though not this beautifully of course, her young, inexpert hands clanking clumsily over the keys. Mother taught her. She’d wanted to teach Leo, too, but Father wouldn’t allow it. Men of the world had no time for such trivialities, he’d said, but Leo had been envious of Kat, and was sure that she’d continued her play over the years as one of many ways to taunt her younger brother, to display her dominance over him. Oh, they hadn’t seen it in Kat, even afterward, the many ways she’d seduced and manipulated the entire family, her treachery, the evil in her soul, until his moment finally came on the ice when she’d slipped and was finally at last vulnerable, unable to gain traction with her skates, as he fell on top of her, pressed his thumbs into her throat, and, yes, he cried, though she’d given him no choice, only he had the courage to do it, and he knows that Mother and Father knew, in the recesses of their minds, even as they sent him off to Lefortovo, that he’d been brave and wise and just-

He opens his eyes, adjusts the volume control on the stereo so that Horowitz’s piano is very loud but not deafening. Then he walks into the bathroom.

Her naked body is in a ball, stuffed horizontally into the tub. He debates it for a second, then takes her ankles and moves her legs over the side of the tub. Now she is on her back, looking up with vacant eyes at the ceiling. Her nose is broken. So is her neck. Otherwise, she is beautiful.

Leo tugs on the chain saw, the violent buzz drowning out the music.

McCoy PREFACES HER COMMENTS. No one is sure about this. The government had its suspicions but never confirmed them.

“After the Soviet Union collapsed,” she explains, “we learned a lot of things about them. Some of it was ancient history. Some of it not so ancient. Koslenko’s name came up once during a debriefing. That’s all.”

McDermott nods along, impatient. “What did Leo Koslenko do from 1984 to 1986, Jane?”

McCoy clears her throat. “This isn’t my specialty, Mike. But you needed this on short notice, so I’ll try.” She takes a moment. “There is something known as the ‘Thirteenth Department.’ It was the part of the Soviet State Security Service-the KGB-devoted to what they called ‘executive action: We learned in 1993, from a former spy, that Leonid Koslenko may have been recruited from Lefortovo to be a part of the Thirteenth.”