Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

“She is five foot and six inches tall, or within an inch. Approximately one hundred and twenty pounds. About thirty years of age. Right-handed but with a sprained wrist. Strong. Determined. If you find her, I can definitely identify her from the description given by our friend.”

He went silent and looked at each of the detectives with a knowing, secret smile.

Iosef briefly considered not asking Paulinin how he knew all of this, but that would be cruel. The man had nothing but his skill and vanity and the need for a small appreciative audience.

“Two of the surviving victims of this woman said she had used her right hand,” he said, holding up his right hand as if clasping a knife. “The others didn’t remember. Our friend here was stabbed by someone with the knife in the left hand.”

“A different attacker?” asked Elena.

“No,” said Paulinin. “Same knife in all the attacks. Same general pattern, but this time the strokes came across from the left and were not as deep. Mind you, they were deep, but not as deep as those she had delivered in the past with her right hand. Hence, there is something wrong with her right hand, probably a strain. She strikes hard, very hard. She could well cause herself injury. The spacing and location of the blows suggest an attacker without plan or pattern. She simply lashes out, probably screams when she attacks. Her height is evident from the angle of the wounds, and her weight is more than suggested by the depth of her thrusts.”

“And you can identify her?” asked Elena.

“Bolgakov didn’t bother to examine my friend here closely. Look at his fingers.”

Both detectives leaned forward to examine the white fingers.

“Under the nails of his right hand,” said Paulinin. “He held up his hands to ward her off after the first two or three blows, but it was too late. He touched her face or arm. There were tiny, very tiny pieces of surface skin under his nails. Definitely a woman.”

“DNA,” said Iosef.

“Absolutely,” said Paulinin. “Find her. Look for a woman with a weak right wrist, possibly bandaged. You know her height, her general description. Questions?”

“We have spoken to those who have survived this woman’s attacks. They have given us a description,” said Elena, removing the artist’s sketch from her pocket. “They say this is a reasonable representation.”

Paulinin adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to examine the sketch.

“She is not that thin in the face,” he said. “Given her weight she could not be. Your surviving victims got only a glimpse before they were struck. They had childhood images of witches to pull from deep inside their surprise and fear.”

“We will adjust the sketch,” Iosef said.

“It will help, but you are seeking a woman, not a witch. She probably looks like a mouse. No, not a mouse, a timid rabbit, unnoticed, shy, and then she strikes. And then she is gone.”

“You know this to be a fact?” asked Elena.

Paulinin stepped back, clearly offended.

“My friend here told me,” he said. “By his wounds, his former life, his whispers without words that only those of us who listen closely can hear. I gave you facts. Any more questions?”

“None,” said Elena.

“Then go,” he said. “My “friend and I still have much to talk about.”

“What goes on in here is nothing compared to what goes on in.the streets,” said the paunchy man with the clean-cut goatee and short-trimmed dark hair.

They were in the club and bar called Loni’s on Kropotkin Street. Loni’s took up two floors of a former ten-story apartment building. It was vast and dark and smelled of alcohol, sweat, and the ammonia being used by the cleaning crew. Six women were working slowly, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing graffiti from the walls, taking down torn posters of leather-clad, electric-guitar-holding young men with open mouths and angry faces, and putting up fresh posters very much like the ones they removed. The women moved silently, pushing buckets of water ahead of them.

The paunchy man in a black T-shirt was Karoli Stinichkov. He was the day manager. His duties involved seeing to it that Loni’s was ready for the nightly crowd-clean, well stocked-and that the money from the preceding night, which ended at almost four in the morning, was correctly accounted for.

Karoli had a partner who worked evenings and nights. The men met late every afternoon for an hour, and every morning for an hour, to hand over the keys and give a report to the other.

This worked well because neither man liked the other. They were brothers-in-law. The sisters they were married to didn’t like either of the men.

“You’ve got crowds of homosexuals hanging around in front of the Bolshoi, drug dealers right in Derzhinski Square where State Security can look out the windows of Lubyanka and see them. You’ve got …”

“Misha Lovski,” Emil Karpo interrupted.

“Misha Lovski?” the man asked.

“Naked Cossack,” said Zelach.

“Oh, him,” said Karoli. “His name is Lovski? Between you and me and nobody else, he’s a bastard son of a bitch. But what can we do? They like him. They go crazy for him. Between you and me and nobody else I don’t understand half of what he says, but then I don’t really have to listen to him or any of them much. My partner’s here at night.”

“When was he last here?” asked Karpo.

“My partner?”

“Lovski.”

The gaunt detective made Karoli nervous. He had a great deal to hide, though almost none of it was related to the prick who called himself and his group of addle-brains Naked Cossack. Karoli shrugged and reached for the Diet Sprite with ice that was bubbling on the bar.

“You mean performing? That was last week. Wednesday, I think. They’re due back on Saturday. Saturday is a big night.”

“He come in here when he’s not performing?”

“I’m told,” Karoli said, looking at the ice in his drink. “He likes to be patted on the back, praised. The skinheads buy him drinks and things.”

“Things?” asked Karpo. “Drugs?”

“Things,” Karoli answered. “We don’t sell anything but soft drinks and alcohol and a few things to eat. Chips. They love chips. You know how many bags of chips we sell every week?”

“I do not,” said Karpo.

“Eight, nine hundred, maybe more,” said Karoli proudly. “We get all kinds from a plant outside the city. They have a deal with some potato farmers in the north.”

“Misha Lovski,” Karpo repeated. “He was in here two nights ago.

“Wait, Yervonovich is still here. He doesn’t sleep. Bartender. Knows everybody. Wait.”

Karoli motioned to one of the nearby cleaning women, who came over, a rag in her hand.

“Go in the back. Get Abbi,” he ordered.

The woman looked at the two policemen and moved slowly around the long bar and through a door.

“Between you and me and nobody else,” Karoli said. “A lot of the skinheads like Naked Cossack because of the girl, the redheaded girl who backs him and pretends to play.”

“Anarchista,” Zelach said.

“That is right,” Karoli confirmed. “Crazy business. At another club, the Cossack and the girl pretended to have sex during a song he was singing about wanting to be an American Indian and scalp slaves. Sick stuff. And he is not the worst. Filth. But it is a good living. I like the old stuff. Rock ’n’ roll. Elvis. Bill Haley. Johnny Rotten.”

A man staggered out through the door behind the bar. He wore no shirt and there was a dark stain on his tan slacks. The man was hairless and looked ancient and hung over.

“Abbi,” Karoli said. “Cops. They have questions. Answer them. We don’t want trouble.”

“When was Misha Lovski last in here?” asked Karpo.