Daria Desombre: The Sin Collector

Masha made photocopies of some of the documents and put them in her bag. She glanced at Andrey’s desk. Where did he go? she wondered. It certainly seemed he wouldn’t be back tonight.

As she passed through the security gate, she caught sight of an exceedingly familiar man cloaked in an old raincoat.

“Nick-Nick!” Masha called.

Nick-Nick turned and beamed at her, baring his poorly made dentures.

For the first time, it occurred to Masha that Nick-Nick was getting older. He didn’t look so much like a classmate of her father’s anymore, and she thought sadly, Papa would have changed over the years, too. After all, Nick-Nick had always been in better shape than her father was, doing martial arts, playing tennis, even talking Masha’s father into skiing with him once in a while. So, if Nick-Nick was on the decline, what would her father look like now? What does that matter? Masha scolded herself. He’d be however he would be. And whatever that was, it would have made her life so happy and so, well, different, that she couldn’t even imagine it.

Masha hurried over and gave her father’s friend an enthusiastic kiss on the cheek. Nick-Nick’s bushy eyebrows shot upward.

“Oh-ho!” He backed away from her a little. “Have you forgotten where you are, missy? It’s Nikolay Nikolayevich here. And no kisses, please! What if somebody sees?”

Masha glanced around. Sure enough, right outside the building her new boss was getting out of his car. Very careful not to look in their direction, he walked briskly into the building.

“Oh no!” whined Masha. “You’re right!”

“Did we blow your cover?” Nick-Nick said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“It’s not funny.” Masha sighed. “Of course, he already knew someone pulled strings to get me in here. He just didn’t know who. Until now.”

“Not a nice guy?”

“He’s terrible,” Masha said.

“Don’t worry. He’ll take another look and realize you’re so much more than pulled strings.”

“I guess,” said Masha, sighing again.

Nick-Nick smiled, then very innocently asked the question that Masha suspected was always on his mind. “And how’s your mom?”

Perfect! snarled Andrey. Obviously, somebody at the top had pushed Anyutin to take the girl on, but Katyshev himself! Herr Prosecutor! An unblemished reputation, the best of the best, the people’s avenger. Somebody Andrey wouldn’t even be brave enough to ask for a light. And here he and the little honor student were bosom buddies. They might as well be family, the way she kissed him on the cheek.

Andrey was so pissed he opted to storm up the stairs instead of taking the elevator.

Only once he reached his office and sat down at his own desk did he start to recover a little. He turned on the electric kettle, opened a window, found a cigarette, and took a drag. While he smoked, he stirred up some instant coffee and dove into the computer. He went to the missing persons database and typed in his search criteria. Last six months, male. Faces flashed on the screen. Lots of people go missing in six months in Moscow.

But wait. Andrey grabbed for his cell phone and scrolled to see the photos, but he already knew. The drowned man they’d found today shared a not-very-pleasant face with one Mr. I. A. Yelnik, born 1970, missing since February. “Well!” whispered Andrey as the hot coffee burned his throat. His fingers trembled with excitement as he felt the case begin to gain ground.

The first tiny step, even just an inch, was the most important. Andrey thought of a new case like a boulder at the top of a hill. He pushed at it steadily, gradually, until it finally began to budge. Now the next step. Who are you, Yelnik, old pal? The database of past offenders did not let him down. Andrey’s computer screen filled with text and pictures, views from the front and the side, in which Yelnik was clearly much younger than he had been this morning on the banks of the Moskva. Andrey rubbed his nose again, happily this time.

Old Yelnik was a murderer.

As she drove, Masha tried to shake the nasty feeling that plagued her. It made her furious that Yakovlev had already connected her with Katyshev on her very first day, when she hadn’t even had time to show him what she was capable of. Masha was sure her association with the wise old prosecutor would do nothing to improve her reputation with the denim-clad Yakovlev. On the other hand, she thought, braking smoothly near the gates of the old electric station, maybe she didn’t have to prove anything to anyone.

It was late, and the tram station was empty. Nobody was there but a lone security guard, a big burly guy paging through a magazine. When he saw Masha looking he put the magazine down. SuperAuto, she read.

“Who you here for?” This one obviously wasn’t the type for good manners.

“I need to speak with Ignatiyev,” said Masha in a perfectly professional tone. So it was a rude surprise when the guy gave her a sassy grin.

“You a reporter?”

Masha nodded warily.

“Not much use coming around now. It’s been two years since Ignatiyev got fired! Couldn’t keep up.” The guard looked pleased with the fate his colleague had suffered, then revealed why. “Five hundred rubles gets you inside. And I can tell the story as well as he could.”

“Just a second.” Masha rummaged around in her purse and pulled out a wad of cash. She figured she could eat apples for lunch the rest of the week.

The guard ushered her in and led her down long, narrow corridors. They finally emerged at a staircase, at the end of which loomed an iron door.

“They put this in after the murders,” he explained, unlocking the door with a key he kept on a bulky chain he fished out of his pocket. The guard hit a switch, and the basement glowed with the type of blue halogen light you would expect in an office.

The basement was empty, and it looked just like the basement of any other government building. Masha asked herself why on earth she had come here, and spent her lunch money, too. But the guard was warming up now to his side job as a teller of sad tales, and he pointed out the place in the center of the room where the three chairs had been. Everything in his story matched the description in the files Masha had read. She had a copy in her bag right now.

“And so,” the guard was saying dramatically, “all the victims had their tongues cut. But not in the same way, you know? For one it was just the tip. The woman’s was half cut out, and the other guy’s was sliced off at the root. The cops said that they might have been able to untie each other, and save themselves, if they had been able to talk. It was some sort of fancy knot, like a sailor’s knot. But obviously those three weren’t talking. There was a whole ocean of blood in here.”

“What about the numbers?” asked Masha. “The numbers on their shirts.”

“Nah.” The guard shrugged. “I don’t remember any numbers.”

Masha went to bed early in the morning. Her head hurt, and a blurry negative of the scene in the basement, with the three victims, swam before her eyes. She could see their chins, dripping with blood, and the single rope that tied them all together, hands behind their backs.

Half-asleep, she heard her mother come in quietly. Masha guessed, from what she heard, that she was hanging up the sweater Masha had tossed on the ground. Then there was another rustling noise. That must be her mother picking up the photograph off the floor, the one from the file Masha had put together for the next day. She was annoyed. There was no way Natasha would be happy about a picture of three dead people.