Richard Montanari: The Devil_s Garden

The building was a three-store commercial block on Ditmars near Crescent, home to a bodega, a dry cleaner, and the shuttered space on the end. There was a driveway to the right, leading behind the building. Next to it was a six-suite, two-story apartment building. Powell had been by this block many times, but like so much of New York, she hadn’t noticed it.

Above the storefronts were living quarters. Along the block the windows on the upper floors were open, some with sheer curtains billowing out in the warm spring evening, some with the sounds of dinner being prepared, the evening news blaring its tragedies.

Powell stepped up to the front entrance. It was covered by a rusted steel riot gate. The windows were soaped, all but opaque. Everything seemed benign, empty, peaceful. Had she been wrong about this? She had gotten reports from her teams every minute or so. There had been no sign of Michael Roman or the girls, no sign of their cutter.

Fontova came around the corner. He had gone to check the back entrance to the building.

“Anything?” Powell asked.

“The window in the back door is broken.”

“Recently?”

“Yeah. The glazing doesn’t look weathered.”

“Any vehicles?”

“No, but there’s no glass laying on the ground in front of the door.”

“It was broken from the outside.”

“Yeah. And it’s got blood on it.”

The two detectives looked at each other with understanding. “Let’s get some backup here.”

Fontova lifted the handset to his mouth, and called it in.

That’s when they heard the gunshots.

The blasts were deafening in the confined space. Michael was stunned at how easy it was to do what he had done, how little pressure was needed to pull the trigger, how short the journey between life and death. He had talked about it for many years, had sat in judgment and conclusion of those who had said things like “it just went off,” and “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” never having any understanding of the process.

Now, having pulled the trigger, he knew it wasn’t that hard. The difficult part was making the decision to aim the weapon.

Michael had pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired the rounds. He kept pulling the trigger, but it seemed that Aleks had told him the truth. There were only two bullets in the gun. Michael ejected the magazine and threw the two parts in different directions.

As soon as the echo of the gun blast began to fade, Aleks stood. Michael could see in his eyes a fierce determination to bring this all to a close. He strode with slow deliberation toward Abby, the knife at his side.

“You have made a mistake,” Aleks said. “You could have made this far less painful for your wife, for yourself, but you chose to defy me. To defy your destiny.”

He stopped in front of Abby, raised the knife. There was nothing Michael could do to stop him.

“Isa!” Emily screamed.

In that second – a moment where Emily cried out the word father in Estonian -Aleks turned, looked at Emily. Michael knew there would never be another moment. He ran at Aleks, hitting him full force in the side, knocking him backwards. The two men crashed into the drywall with a bone-jarring force. Aleks righted himself, and lashed out with his fist, catching Michael high on the left side of his head, stunning him, showing him flashes of bright white light behind his eyes. Michael went down to the hardwood floor, but was able to roll, absorbing most of the impact with his shoulder. He sprang to his feet, and was now face to face with Aleks. Aleks slashed at the air between them, closing the distance little by little. The blade came in high, but Michael sidestepped. He caught the blade flat on his upper arm.

Michael backed across the room, toward his daughter. In the background he could hear Abby screaming into her gag, the sound of the metal pipes clanging as she struggled ferociously to break free. Michael was breathing hard, the blows he had taken to the head were clouding his vision. Aleks slashed at him again, this time slicing open the back of Michael’s right hand. As Michael pulled away, he stumbled over something on the floor, momentarily losing his balance.

Aleks lunged toward Emily. With all rational thought beyond him, Michael righted himself and threw his body between them. The knife carved into the left side of Michael’s stomach, slicing away a large flap of skin and flesh. Michael fell back into the wall, the pain a searing lava flow down his right side. He felt his leg go numb, slid down the wall, his hands groping for purchase. He found one of the dismantled table legs leaning in the corner.

As Aleks moved again toward Emily, Michael struggled to his knees, clawed his way to his feet. He raised the table leg high, and brought it around in an almost complete arc, hitting Aleks on the side of his head, stunning him. The sound of the impact was loud, the long rusted bolt fastened at the top of the table leg cut deep into Aleks’s scalp. Aleks’s eyes rolled into his head as he staggered back and went down, blood now seeping from the head wound. Michael brought the bludgeon down twice more, all but shattering Aleks’s right knee.

Michael limped across the room, lifted his cuffed hands over Emily’s head, picked her up, the right side of his body now grown ice cold. He glanced behind them, at the front door of the bakery. It was locked with a deadbolt, secured by iron bars. No exit. Aleks was between them and the back door. He was trying to get to his feet.

Michael looked at Abby. Her eyes told him all he needed to know. She wanted him to get out with Emily while he could.

Filled with a suffocating fear, with no way out, Michael held Emily close, and lurched toward the steps leading to the second floor. He angled his body against the handrail for balance. One step, two, three. Each effort drained him of energy, leaving slick scarlet footprints on the worn treads. Moments later he heard Aleks mount the stairs behind them, dragging his fractured leg.

“You will not take her!” Aleks screamed.

The knife came down, splintering the dry steps, just inches behind Michael’s feet.

“She is my daughter!”

Again the knife descended, this time tearing at the hem of Michael’s jeans, the hot blade cutting through the heel of his shoe.

When the two wounded men reached the top, Aleks swung the knife in a whistling arc, nearly taking off the newel post on the landing. The blade missed Emily’s head by inches.

Michael turned the corner at the top of the stairs, his sense memory propelling him down the short hallway to his old bedroom. He burst through the door, ran toward the window, nearly slipping in his own blood.

He put Emily down at the far side of the room. He knew the door had a slide bolt, and if he could just make it back, he could bolt the door, and it would give him a few precious seconds to break the window and get the attention of someone on the street.

But when he turned back to the door, Aleks was there. He lunged at Michael, the knife out front. At the last second Michael was able to dodge the full force of the blade, but it sliced into his left shoulder. Michael shrieked in pain as Aleks turned and came at him again. This time Michael warded off the blow as Aleks slammed into him, the momentum of the attack propelling them both into the closet door, knocking it off its hinges, choking them in the dust and soot of decades. The two men fell to the floor, struggling for control. Michael grabbed his attacker by the wrist, trying to hold off the knife, but Aleks was too strong.

As Aleks brought the blade ever closer to his throat, Michael sensed something brushing his cheek, something in the debris on the floor of the closet. He flashed on a mental image, the drawing Emily had made in the dust, the crude sketch of a little house, a cottage with a chimney and smoke.