Stuart Kaminsky: A Whisper to the Living

Any of them could be pulled from there to concentrate on the Maniac if and when they were needed.

Rostnikov looked at his watch. It was growing late, but he had one important stop to make before heading home. He had removed his leg and massaged the stump when he had sat back behind his desk. He had no recollection of the time when he was a child and had a functioning left leg. He well remembered his atrophied leg, a burden he had grown accustomed to. He missed the leg, which resided in a large jar in the underground laboratory of the possibly mad scientist Paulinin, who claimed to engage in conversations with the dead. Now Porfiry Petrovich faced the prospect of allowing the never-fully-welcome device to take on much of the weight of his considerable bulk.

It couldn’t be helped. He picked up the phone on his desk, pushed a button, and told Karpo to meet him two levels below Petrovka.

Rostnikov knew that the Yak’s assistant Pankov listened to all conversations in both Rostnikov’s office and the shared office of his team from a trio of hidden microphones. Rostnikov took some pleasure in sometimes leading the often-perspiring little man astray. This time, however, there was no deceit.

It was time to pay a visit to the dark labyrinth of a laboratory on the second level below the ground floor of Petrovka where the bespectacled Paulinin worked on and talked to the dead amid chards, fragments, books, and jars of formerly living parts and tissue of man and animal.

In one of the larger jars on a shelf not far from the two autopsy tables, Rostnikov’s shriveled left leg floated languidly.

“I willneed to see them all,” Paulinin said, looking over the top of his rimless glasses.

He wore off-white latex gloves and a wrinkled but clean laboratory coat with only a few stains of plum-colored blood on the left arm and a small dark ochre splatter on his chest.

Neither Karpo, who was generally regarded as the closest thing Paulinin had to a friend, nor Rostnikov reminded Paulinin that there were at least fifteen bodies of the Maniac’s victims, two of which now lay naked in front of them.

Rostnikov nodded his agreement. The MVD would resist. They had no desire to open the door to evidence of any more victims. Rostnikov would need intervention from the Yak, but he was sure he could get it. Karpo did not nod. He would check the reports and notes on his desk to determine where they might seek additional victims.

Meanwhile, on the two tables in front of them lay the nearly white corpse of an old man with a chest covered by wiry black-and-white hair. The other corpse was of a man about forty-five or fifty who had the dark cast and looks of a person whose ancestry hinted at Mongol. The corpses lay on their sides facing away from each other. Paulinin stood between them, a proprietary hand on the shoulder of each as if he were trying to mediate a dispute between the dead.

Rostnikov and Karpo could see the back of the head of each corpse. The skulls, shaved by Paulinin and the hair carefully placed in Ziploc bags, were crushed, revealing dark jagged wounds of deep red and black.

“My friend here,” said the scientist, patting the arm of the old man on his right, “was homeless before I took him in. He washed frequently but without soap. He cut his own hair. You can see that here. He could not reach all the way back, which suggests arthritis.

“He had a place in the park near a large oak tree. There are traces of leaf and root fragments of oak in his hair where he ran his fingers through like a brush. Wait. The traces are also on his quite filthy clothing, and some of those traces go back at least a month.”

Paulinin moved around the tables and into the darkness next to a desk overflowing with books and reports, with barely enough room for the computer. Paulinin used the mouse and scroll and music began.

“Schumann. Piano. My guests will be more comfortable with Schumann, don’t you think?”

“How could they not be?” asked Rostnikov.

With the sound of Schumann behind him, Paulinin returned to the corpses and whispered to the younger dead man, the one who looked like a Mongol, “You have not been forgotten.”

The scientist continued, “These new friends were killed by the same person. Wounds are so similar that even those idiots who have been looking at the other corpses could see that. What may be even more consequential is that the same weapon was used, a claw hammer, first the blunt end and then the claw. From behind. The killer is strong, probably young. I will know after examining the other corpses if all were murdered by the same person and with the same hammer.

“If so. .,” he continued, looking at Karpo and Rostnikov to complete his thought.

“If so,” said Karpo, “he has the hammer, and if we find one where he lives or works you can tell if it is the murder weapon.”

“I can,” said Paulinin with a grin of satisfaction. “But there is more. The dolts who wrote reports on previous victims noted that there was evidence that they had been drinking shortly before they died. They were correct. It takes no great forensic skill to open a stomach and find alcohol, but. .”

He paused again for his students to finish the sentence.

“. . but what kind of alcohol?” asked Rostnikov.

He could have used a chair at this point. His left leg was beginning to feel irritation in its mooring.

“Precisely,” said Paulinin. “The alcohol was a cheap off-the-shelf wine called Nitin from Greece. Cheap though it may be, it is not usually the first choice of the homeless. There are cheaper ways to get drunk.”

Paulinin paused again, waiting.

Rostnikov felt like raising his hand as he had done almost half a century ago in school. Instead, he looked at Karpo, who nodded and said, “Therefore it is possible the wine belonged to the killer.”

“Right. It is too late to be sure it was drunk by any of the victims except, perhaps, for these two and the two or three before them. The autopsy reports on the previous victims mention nothing about the brand of wine. The dolts missed it,” said Paulinin.

“So,” said Rostnikov, “we check with the shops in a five-mile radius of the park for ones that carry Nitin and see if they can think of any customers who have been buying Nitin at least since the days of the first murder.”

“Assuming, of course,” said Paulinin, “that he has been using the same wine since he started.”

There was a soft ripple of the piano and rapid rise to a near-frenzied crescendo.

“You disabled the microphones?” asked Rostnikov under the frantic pianist.

“Moments before you arrived.”

Paulinin’s laboratory was bugged not by Pankov but by some department of the former KGB. It was to be expected, as whoever was listening accepted the likelihood of being discovered. Once disabled, someone would come in when Paulinin was not there and move the microphone or microphones. Then the game of Find-the-Bug would begin again. In spite of the clutter, the size of the laboratory, the ones who were doing the listening were having trouble finding a new location for their devices.

“When you have the next victim,” Paulinin said, “do not let anyone but your people touch it. Bring them exactly as you find them. These two here have been hosed down. They were delivered nice and clean. I want them dirty if dirt was their destiny. I had to look harder than necessary for evidence traces. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” said Rostnikov.

“Fortunately, their hosing down was as inept as the examination of the content of the stomachs,” Paulinin continued. “Look.”

The scientist turned the body of the older man farther on his side, holding him in place and reaching down with his gloved hand to push the dead man’s ear forward.