Daria Desombre: The Sin Collector

“Your mother is a very strong woman, Masha, dear. Believe me. The drugs she’s getting will give her nervous system a break. But she’ll be better soon, and then, terrible as it may sound, she’ll be too busy making funeral arrangements to get bogged down by her own thoughts. So don’t you even think about making those arrangements yourself, all right?”

“Got it,” said Masha, remembering her fit of dish scrubbing in Katya’s kitchen.

“Good girl!” Nadya smiled and gave her a pat on the head. “I’ve already looked in on her today. Don’t just sit next to her while she’s sleeping. Go outside and take a walk, find something to do with yourself.”

“Okay,” said Masha, and smiled back. But her smile was forced.

Nadya nodded good-bye and walked off down the corridor, and Masha stood there for a few seconds, watching her go. Then she dialed Kenty’s number again. Again she got his voice mail.

When she left her mother’s room, Masha caught sight of a familiar figure standing near the nurse’s desk.

“Irina?” Masha walked over, and the woman turned around. Masha was surprised, as she always was, by her almost sickly thinness.

“Mashenka!” The woman broke into a smile and reached out to embrace her. “Such sad news, Masha! Your poor mother! Losing Fyodor, and now Yury, too! How is she?”

“She’s sleeping,” said Masha. “They’re giving her sedatives, and—”

“Sure, sure,” Irina said, tilting her head to look at her, and Masha saw that she had been crying. “And how are you doing? Holding on all right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Masha felt the tears welling up in her eyes.

“Now, now, don’t cry,” Irina said, stroking her shoulder. “Nick-Nick is very proud of you. Did you know that? He thinks you have a real knack for what you do. Just like Fyodor. A gift, if you want to put it that way.”

That’s when Masha finally broke down. She couldn’t hold it back any longer. She took a breath, intending to say something, explain her sudden tears, but Irina was still stroking her back and whispering, “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

There was something absurd about how it was only then that Masha was able to cry. Not on her mother’s shoulder, and not to Innokenty or Andrey, but there with Nick-Nick’s wife, someone she hadn’t seen for probably ten years. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose into the lace handkerchief Irina offered her.

“I’m sorry. I’m so tired,” Masha said.

“Of course, of course!” Irina said again, tucking the handkerchief away in her bag. As she did so, Masha caught sight of a bruise on the woman’s arm. Irina hurried to adjust her dress. “Well, Mashenka, I’ve got to go and visit your mama. Come and see us soon, all right?”

And she stood up and walked off, with a heavy tread that didn’t match her thin frame, down the hallway toward Masha’s mother’s room.

Masha decided to take Nadya’s advice about going out for a walk while she waited for Natasha to wake up. She wanted to see her mother, tell her it would be okay, give her a kiss. Then, finally, she would go back to Petrovka. She felt irresistibly pulled to the place, like an addict needing her fix.

But as soon as she stepped outside she saw Andrey waiting, and then he was walking toward her quickly. Masha felt her heart freeze. The feeling of foreboding was so powerful that she stopped where she stood, not wanting to take a step to meet him. No matter what kind of news Andrey was bringing, she knew she would be much happier in the last few seconds before he opened his mouth.

“Poklonnaya Hill?” she asked after Andrey had told her about the most recent body.

“Yes. Moscow’s own ‘Hill of Worshipful Submission,’ where pilgrims traditionally stop before entering a holy city to pray, bow, and—”

“I know what it is,” Masha interrupted him. “Tollhouse?”

It was a refrain by now, a call-and-response routine.

“The nineteenth. Heresy. Deviation from the tenets of the Orthodox faith.”

“Who?” Masha asked in a whisper.

“Masha,” he began. “I’m so sorry.”

But the deep, empty oblivion engulfed her before he could say the name.

Andrey barely managed to catch her as she fell. Masha lay in his arms, pale, her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Hey! Somebody, help!” Andrey shouted.

Clinic staff rushed toward them with a stretcher, and he stumbled over his words, trying to explain that Masha’s mother was here already, shoving his badge under their noses. He said her mother was a friend of Nadya’s, the name springing from his memory like a ping-pong ball even though Masha had only mentioned it in passing. Thank God, Nadya herself soon ran out, and she slapped Masha on the cheeks, trying to bring her around. Andrey stood there gaping like an idiot, shame pounding in his head like a migraine. He trotted along next to the men carrying her stretcher, which they were now loading into an enormous elevator.

Suddenly, Masha woke up and sobbed. “What’s happening to me?”

“You fainted,” Nadya said. “You’re under a great deal of stress. Your mother has an empty bed in her room. We’ll put you in there with her for the day, to rest.”

Andrey swallowed hard and gave Masha’s hand a squeeze. He felt a gentle pressure in response.

“I’ll be back this afternoon,” Andrey said, his voice hoarse. “What can I bring you?”

“Nothing.” Masha closed her eyes. “I don’t need anything.”

“Masha’s best friend died,” he told Nadya when they left the room.

“Good Lord.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence?”

“No, it’s not,” Andrey answered, shaking his head. “This is the third murder of someone close to her, all in a row. I think—I think this is a terrible time for her. She’s going to blame herself.”

“But that’s nonsense!” Nadya objected.

Andrey smiled morosely, nodded, and walked out of the clinic.

A very simple idea still had its hooks in him. It hadn’t stopped nagging at him since the evening before. Andrey just needed one day to check it out, or half a day, if everyone would leave him alone. Andrey passed out assignments to each member of the Sin Collector team. He had one guy drive out to the military post where the soldiers had died, he sent one to interview witnesses at the Victory Park fire, and he asked another to do some research on the governor’s wife’s closest associates.

He could have come up with a hundred other urgent assignments, but they all had the same ultimate goal. He needed to get every member of the group out of the way, get all the secondary problems out of his head. He even ignored a call from Anyutin (blasphemy)! Relieved to find the office empty at last, Andrey locked the door from the inside, yanked the phone cord from the wall, and, in one decisive gesture, swept all the last few months’ worth of papers, business cards, and file folders off the top of his desk. Then he exhaled, and dove into the dossiers on the Sin Collector case that had been delivered to him yesterday. He looked through all of them, right down to the photos of the lacerated hunk of flesh that had previously been Masha’s stepfather.

Andrey scrutinized each file. He had to tease out the ties that bound the killer to the dead. How had the first victims caught the Sin Collector’s eye? What if Innokenty was right and the Old Believers had nothing to do with it? Actually, the Old Believers were out of the question now, weren’t they? Innokenty had been burned as a heretic, after all, so the one doing the punishing must be from some other camp. Could Kenty have been in the army? Or under criminal investigation? The killer was obviously no amateur, so somehow, Kenty must have caught the attention of the professionals: Andrey’s own colleagues from defense or law enforcement.