Daria Desombre: The Sin Collector

Pasha went on. “And on the back of his head—”

“I know. I saw the number.”

“But that’s not all. Look!” He lifted up one of the blue hands for Andrey to see. “I found ice under his fingernails. But it’s not from a freezer. There are microparticles in there that indicate the ice occurred naturally.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s the middle of July, and the last time there was ice on the river was February, maybe March at the latest. His lungs are gone, but I can tell you for sure the guy was drowned. Dropped through some hole in the ice.”

“Okay. And the body froze?”

“Yes, and I stand by that. Plus, he was only thrown back in the river again a couple of days ago.”

“That’s crazy.” Andrey rubbed his forehead.

“I know,” Pasha said, his voice tired.

“So, this is what we have.” Andrey made himself look again at the man’s contorted face. “The guy is dying because somebody chucked him through a hole in the ice, then he tries to claw his way out of there—”

“He gave it a good shot, too. He’s covered in scrapes and scratches. Look.” Pasha turned the corpse’s head so Andrey could get a better view.

“Right. So the guy puts up a good fight, but he croaks. Then the murderer goes and reels him in, and puts his catch on ice for six months before tossing it back. Was he trying to cover up the time of death, maybe?”

“Well, if the killer’s not a complete idiot, he knew we’d detect the frozen tissues. On the other hand, he might have killed him, say, three winters ago. If it was frozen well, the body could still be in this sort of shape.”

“No, Pasha.” Andrey looked again at the victim’s wide-open eyes. “That’s not possible; Yelnik disappeared last winter.”

“That’s the guy’s name?” Pasha pushed the corpse back into the refrigerated compartment.

“Yep. Matched him to his mugshot yesterday. The tattoo helped. So if the murderer wasn’t going to be able to trick us in terms of time frame, then why make such a big tzimmes , as an old woman I know used to say?”

“The place?” asked Pasha, pulling off his gloves.

First she rang the doorbell. Not much chance that Natasha would be home, but it was best to be sure. Then Katya used her key to unlock the door, took a deep breath, and crossed the threshold, smiling at the familiar smells. While she was taking off her boots, she thought she heard someone in the kitchen.

“Natasha?” she called. But there was nobody there. Only a clock ticking, and the washing machine spinning in the bathroom.

Katya paused before the mirror just inside the door. She liked to look at herself in this mirror, as if she were the lady of the house. It felt totally natural. The soft golden light from the chandelier had the same magical effect she remembered from childhood. She was a princess again, not some poor shepherd girl, and everyone else could get out of her damn way. Katya tiptoed farther into the apartment. There was a new blanket on the sofa in the living room. Soft. Probably cashmere.

A new bottle of lotion sat on the shelf in the bathroom. Must be Natasha’s. Masha never cared about things like that. Katya mentally put the lotion aside for later.

In Masha’s room, everything seemed frozen in time. The summer sun beat through the window.

“So stuffy in here,” Katya said out loud, and she opened the window to air things out.

She spent a bit longer in Natasha’s room, standing in front of her closet. She took note of the chocolate-brown strappy heels and the businesslike pinstripe suit with its surprising leopard-print lining. Katya took a deep sniff. Natasha had switched perfumes again. Masha’s mother could never stay loyal to just one. She was always experimenting. Katya liked that. She played a game with Natasha’s perfumes, trying to decide which one would be best for her, and concluded they would all work nicely.

She moved on into the kitchen and peeked inside the fridge. But that always ruined her fun. There was no way, here, to pretend this was her own place, because the real-life lady of the house might notice if half a wheel of cheese disappeared (Katya adored this Dutch cheese, and it was crazy expensive), or a bunch of grapes went missing. So Katya devoured the contents of that enormous refrigerator with her eyes only, like a poor idiot visiting from the provinces might look at a fancy still life at the Hermitage.

Katya desperately wanted to take a bath, but it was too risky. It would be too hard to explain if they caught her lounging in a tub full of bubbles and aromatic oils. A shower, maybe. Katya had her alibi ready. “Oh, Natasha, I fell in a puddle, I got caught under a downspout, a Mercedes flew by and splashed me!” Katya knew Natasha would allow it. They’d even have some tea afterward, and Natasha would grill her about Masha’s many admirers. She always wanted to hear about that. Sometimes, when there were clues that Masha had her eye on someone (bold but amateurish attempts at makeup, for example), Natasha even sent Katya out to spy for her.

And Katya performed well. One time she found out that the “someone” was in Masha’s class, and his name was Petya, a respectable son of wealthy parents. He drove a Porsche, and when Katya caught sight of that Porsche, she practically jumped out of her skin. But silly Masha said she wasn’t impressed—with all the huge SUVs on the road, you couldn’t see a thing from a little sports car. It was never clear what Petya saw in Masha. Katya would have said there wasn’t much to see. Her thick hair, she supposed, or her eyes, maybe. She had even said something about them to Masha once. Masha had laughed and shocked Katya by quoting something in French about how people compliment a woman’s eyes when the woman herself isn’t very pretty. And she was smart, sure, but for guys that was more of a drawback. So what had Petya fallen for? Must have been her last name: Karavay. Real elegant, and pretty famous in some circles. The dead lawyer and all.

Katya remembered how much everyone fussed over Masha after he died, even Katya’s own mother, as if she didn’t have anyone better to pity. Oh, the poor child, losing her father so young! What a tragedy!

Katya had spoken up then. “What about me? Don’t you ever feel sorry for me?” she objected. “My father deserted me before I was even born!”

Her mother said she did feel sorry for her, really. She patted Katya’s head and told her not to be jealous, that it wasn’t nice. But Katya was jealous. She thought she must have been born with that feeling inside of her, the feeling she felt when she looked out their first-floor window at the girl in the colorful jacket, riding high on her father’s shoulders as he laughed, when she heard the old women praising him from their benches. What a good father that Fyodor Karavay is, they used to say. And a big shot, too! And she felt it when she saw Fyodor with Natasha, who looked so young and who dressed in the sort of clothes Katya’s own mother had never even dreamed of owning, and every time she saw his picture in the paper with an article about some high-profile trial. Katya desperately wanted to be friends with Masha, but she also wanted to claw her eyes out. It was a strange, worrying, terrible feeling, one that Katya’s mother correctly identified only ten years later.

The year that both girls turned thirteen, Katya’s mother, Rita, was offered an enormous amount of money for their one-bedroom apartment downtown. They could use it to buy one twice as big in a less trendy neighborhood. Her mother was happy. The buyer made all the arrangements for them, even helped them move, and Rita was so grateful, knowing she never could have handled it on her own. She gushed to Katya about how they’d have their own bedrooms now, not to mention an extra room, an actual living room (“And maybe, Katya, it could be a nursery someday!”).