Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key)

by JC Andrijeski

  “You know him?” A faint edge touched Karkoff’s voice.

  “I had the misfortune of meeting him a few weeks ago, yes,” she said, wincing a little at the lie, but knowing it would be the only thing that fit all the information Karkoff would hear. “I did not know he was married back then. He is a womanizer, apparently. I broke it off. He has been somewhat... persistent since then.”

  Karkoff again fell silent.

  “Do you want me to detain him?” she said.

  The silence stretched. Then, after another, longer pause, he exhaled.

  “No. It does not sound like a good use of your time right now. If you think he might be helpful, put someone on him. Otherwise, cut him loose.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I agree.”

  She was almost afraid to ask the next question, but kept her voice blunt.

  “Do you want me to come in, Karkoff?”

  He grunted, but she heard the faintest tinge of that bleak humor of his again.

  “No,” he said, his voice gruff. “No, I already told you. It is not a good time right now, Ilana. Let me do some checking of my own, first.”

  She fought not to exhale in relief, nodding instead. “Da, okay.”

  She could tell Karkoff wanted to believe her. She could also tell he definitely knew she wasn’t telling him something. He would likely assume it had to do with her comment about this being an internal job. That was something Karkoff could understand.

  It might buy her and Raguel some time.

  What apparently stumped him was whatever he’d heard on those interview tapes.

  She remembered taking Raguel to buy shoes that day as well, wearing her ex-husband’s clothes, and felt that panic in her mind worsen.

  She considering mentioning her intention to visit Kashchenko, meaning the mental institution where Golunsky had been kept prior to his arrest... but decided against it. She could not have said why precisely. Either way, she decided she would wait on sharing more with Karkoff until after she’d heard those tapes.

  “...I’d planned to talk to Golunsky’s mother next,” she said, clearing her throat. “Find out more about his associations, if I can. They are... well, they were estranged... but I thought it best to try.” She paused. “Do you still wish me to do this?”

  “Da. What about his mental diagnosis?” he said. “Did you talk to his doctor? Is there any chance he was in Kashchenko for vyalotekushchaya shizofreniya?”

  Ilana shook her head.

  She knew what Karkoff meant. The diagnostic category “sluggish schizophrenia” was one that Soviet doctors invented on the orders of the KGB. Political dissidents were held under such a diagnoses regularly.

  “He was not there for that,” she said, shaking her head again. “He was there for paranoid delusions mixed with deviant sexual compulsion and violent tendencies. He got committed after he went after a neighborhood boy with a knife. Later they found he had been abusing that boy sexually, along with several other boys in the building. I checked this already, when we first got his name... but I will speak to his mother about these things again, of course. Golunsky lived with her when all of this happened.” She paused. “Do you want me to go back to Kashchenko, too? The militsiya have already been there, so––”

  “No, no. Will Obnizov go with you? To the mother’s?”

  Ilana hesitated, glancing at Raguel. “Should I bring him?”

  “No,” Karkoff said at once. “I would strongly advise not. They will come to talk to him soon. It is better if you are not there.”

  “KGB is coming for Obnizov?” She frowned, biting her lip. “Why?”

  “No one has record of Golunsky leaving the police station, Ilana.”

  Ilana shook her head. “It is not Obnizov, Karkoff. He was as surprised as us... and angry. He thought the Party had moved Golunsky without telling him. I don’t think he could have faked a reaction so well. He was angry with me, thinking I knew of this.”

  “Did you?” Karkoff said.

  The silence between them deepened.

  Karkoff exhaled again.

  “I am sorry, Ilana,” he said. “But maybe you should not share your feelings about Obnizov right now, my friend.”

  “You think I would let an innocent detective take the blame, simply to protect myself?” Her voice was openly angry that time.

  “Ilana... relax. I am saying maybe you do not have all the information. You were gone, da? So you do not really know what Obnizov was doing, do you? Golunsky was already gone when you got there. And Obnizov could have been acting, could he not? Going through the motions of acting surprised... of accusing you? Perhaps he saw an opportunity, given Golunsky’s earlier confessions. Perhaps he is a better actor than you think.” At her silence, Karkoff sighed. “I trust your instincts, Ilana. But you know how this works. It is out of my hands now. There are those here who are... nervous. I cannot tell them not to look at Obnizov.”

  She heard the unspoken part of that, as well.

  Karkoff could not tell them not to look at her, Ilana, either.

  He would have people on her shortly... if he didn’t already.

  “You know how this works, Ilana,” Karkoff repeated.

  Pressing her lips together, she nodded, giving Raguel another look.

  “I do. I do know how it works, Karkoff.”

  “I know you do.” Karkoff’s voice grew slightly less hard. “Report back after you interview the mother. I should be able to tell you more then. Hopefully it will be good news, and you and I can speak of these things in person. But do not take any more prisoners out of jail, comrade Kopovich. Whether they are drunks with crushes on you or not...”

  She did not answer, but only hung up the black handle of the rotary phone.

  Looking up at Raguel, she met his gaze with a grim look of her own.

  “Come,” she said. “We must get out of here. At once.”

  KASHCHENKO

  THEY DROVE SILENTLY, making their way through downtown traffic before crossing the river and entering the old Zamoskvorechiye District of Moscow. Driving through and past that neighborhood as well, she found the Zagorodnoe highway from memory.

  This was not her first visit to this hospital.

  As soon as they were alone in the car, Ilana began to question Raguel.

  “Could a demon change a taped recording?” she said.

  “A physical recording?” The angel frowned. “No.”

  “Then how could the interview Karkoff heard be different from the one I heard? How is that possible? Karkoff tells me he heard my voice on the tape.”

  “Perhaps he did.”

  Frustrated, she gave him a harder stare. “What does that mean?”

  “It means perhaps you were there for the entire interview and simply do not remember. Perhaps what the tape recorder heard is different from what you think happened in your mind.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Raguel shrugged, his gray eyes still. “He is a demon, Ilana. He cannot change the physical world apart from how a human would do it... but he has a lot of control over human minds. Particularly that demon. Lahash is a master of distortions of reality. And I wasn’t there to protect you from that after I touched the key.”

  Frustrated, Ilana watched the traffic pass in front of them as they stopped at a red light. She glanced at Raguel’s profile, biting her lip.

  “Could it be a physical thing?” Raguel said, his voice polite. “Could the tape have been tampered with perhaps, by someone else?”

  She stared at him, thrown at first by his sudden reversal. Then it hit her what he was doing. He was forcing her to think this through logically, to assess what was possible.

  Approaching his words from that angle, she exhaled in frustration.

  “No,” she admitted. “There is not enough time for this.” She gave him a hard look. “To splice tape and create a new version... it would take time. To include me in this tape means they would have recordin
gs of me already. It can be done, of course, but that is very detailed work. For Karkoff to have heard that recording already, they must have sent it to him right after the interview finished... that, or there was an extra listening device in Obnizov’s office.”

  “Unless they had a fake recording ready,” Raguel pointed out.

  Ilana started to answer that, then stopped.

  He was right, that would explain it. But where had they gotten all of the voices?

  Eventually, she shook her head again.

  “It is possible, of course. But what you are suggesting... it is an elaborate thing, comrade,” she admitted. “Your initial explanation is sounding much more likely.”

  It hit her that Raguel’s strategy had worked.

  That explanation had lost most of its charge in their discussion.

  Glancing at him thoughtfully, she shook her head. “You can be a crafty person at times, comrade Archangel.”

  “Or a practical one,” he said. Cautiously, he rested his muscular hand back on her leg, softening his voice. “I need you, Ilana. The more I can help you to understand and accept these relevant aspects of my world, the better we can help one another.”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  Rubbing her leg slowly, Raguel gentled his voice.

  “To me, it is likely that once the key removed me from that room, the tenor of the interview radically changed. The part Karkoff is referencing likely occurred after I was gone... which is why my memory of the interview and your memories coincide.” Raguel’s voice grew more angry. “Lahash could not toy with your mind like that, not while I was there... but he could do whatever he wanted once I was gone. The vast majority of his mind does not live inside the human bodies he possesses, and demon minds are significantly more powerful and complex than that of a human being.”

  “So you really think I was there for this interview Karkoff spoke of?” Ilana stared at him. “That it actually happened? I simply do not remember it?”

  “It is likely, yes.”

  She watched the angel study her face with those gray, crystalline eyes, and bit her lip, rubbing her face with a hand.

  “Okay,” she said. “We will listen to the recordings when we return to my apartment.” She gave him a level look. “Given what I told Karkoff about who you are, I need to bring us both back there soon anyway. But I think we should still go to Kashchenko. If Karkoff asks, I will tell him that I brought you with me on my way to bringing you home.”

  Raguel frowned. “That is risky, is it not?”

  “All of this is risky now, comrade. I think this is a detail.”

  Hesitating a bare beat, Raguel only nodded.

  Minutes later, they had reached the mental institution.

  Taking them to the guard house, Ilana showed them her badge and Raguel’s new papers. The security guard barely glanced at the latter once he saw Ilana’s ID. After getting instructions where to park, they drove past the booth and made their way slowly up the drive towards a low complex of red brick buildings.

  Trying to shove her worry down about both Raguel’s fate and her own, as well as what might be about to hit them next with this whole Golunsky affair, she gave Raguel a warning look as they drove past the guard house, wondering suddenly why she had risked bringing him here after all, given who and what he was.

  But there were many things she did not understand about her own behavior on this day.

  “You will let me talk, yes, comrade?” she said to him warningly.

  “I will, Ilana.”

  Again, the pure seriousness of his answer brought an involuntary smile. She pulled into an empty parking space on the lot where the guard had indicated, and killed the engine. They got out at once and Ilana led Raguel towards the main administrative building, their shoes crunching rhythmically on the dirt and gravel in the road.

  Once inside, she approached the caged reception booth, again with her Party ID badge up for inspection.

  “Who can we ask about Golunsky?” she said, her voice blunt.

  The woman’s eyes widened. Clearly, she recognized the name.

  “One minute,” she said, holding up a finger. “I will be right back, Party comrade Kopovich.”

  Her voice was polite, bordering on afraid.

  Puzzled, Ilana glanced at Raguel.

  A faint frown touched his lips as well.

  Seconds later, a man appeared at the door of the booth, looking flustered. Probably in his mid-fifties, he was overweight with dark-rimmed glasses and a clean-shaven face. He wore a stained lab coat over a rumpled shirt he might have slept in.

  “You work for Karkoff?” he said, his face flushed.

  Ilana fought to hide her bewilderment, feeling her heart beat louder in her chest.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The doctor in the stained lab coat didn’t seem to notice her confusion.

  “I will buzz you in,” he said, reaching for the switch to unlock the side door even as he spoke. “Meet me by the door... to your right.”

  The door buzzer made a grating, broken sound as he hit the switch.

  By the time Ilana and Raguel had walked over to unlocked door, the doctor had left the glass booth and waited for them on the other side.

  “Come with me, please,” he said, his voice still openly nervous.

  Glancing again at Raguel, Ilana shrugged, following the man down an unmarked hallway. They passed primarily plain but clean administrative rooms and what looked like shared offices. Ilana knew the wards themselves were housed on the other side of more locked doors.

  They had a research lab here as well, housed in a separate building.

  The doctor took them to a small conference room that had bars on the windows along with chickenwire mesh on the outside of the glass. Indicating for them to sit in two of the vinyl-padded chairs, he sat directly across from them, looking even more flustered than he had before.

  It struck Ilana a second time that he looked afraid.

  Terrified, even.

  “Doctor, I––”

  Before she could finish, he burst out with a rush of words.

  “––I have done as your superiors asked, comrade,” he said, pushing his dark-rimmed glasses up his nose. He was sweating, she noticed, despite the coldness of the room. “There is no need to worry. It is already done, for all intents and purposes. All of the visitor files have been removed for patient #4920110. All of them. They are being burned in the basement furnace as we speak...”

  Ilana felt her breath stop in her chest.

  Next to her, Raguel stiffened.

  Recovering as fast as she could, Ilana pressed her lips together nodding.

  “I had actually hoped to take a look at those before they were destroyed,” she said, her voice polite, calm. “Did Karkoff not mention that?”

  The man blanched, turning the color of chalk. “He did not.”

  Afraid the doctor might have a brain embolism right in front of her, she held up a calming hand. “It is quite all right doctor, I am sure that is my fault. A communication problem on our end.”

  The doctor blinked at them, then swallowed visibly, some of that fear lessening in his eyes. “We might be able to catch my nurse before she finishes,” he offered.

  Ilana glanced at Raguel as the man got up, walking over to a phone on a small desk on the other side of the room. Raguel’s expression looked tense, borderline angry. Both of them turned back to the doctor when his voice rose.

  “Anna? Did you finish with those files I spoke to you about? The ones that required disposal?” There was a pause while he listened to whoever spoke on the other side. Glancing at Ilana, he gave her a grim look then, shaking his head perceptibly. “Okay. Yes. Thank you, Anna. I appreciate your quick work in this matter.”

  Setting down the phone, he walked over to them.

  Ilana could not help but noticed he looked marginally more calm. Sighing as he sank his weight back into the larger chair, he wiped his forehead with a folded handkerchief be
fore meeting Ilana’s gaze.

  “I am sorry,” he said, still sounding relieved. “But it is done.”

  Ilana nodded, keeping her face calm, borderline disinterested. “Well, thank you, Doctor. We were just here to ensure that the task had been completed. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course... of course,” he said hastily. “We will be much more careful about how such things are recorded in the future, just as I told Karkoff. I just thought... with him here to see his dying father, that there was little political motive there.”

  Ilana again glanced at Raguel, before looking back at the doctor. “Comrade Karkoff’s father, you mean?”

  The doctor looked distressed again. “Was I not supposed to tell you that?”

  Ilana held up a hand. “No, no... it is fine. We were told only about Golunsky. I am sorry to hear about his father dying, but it has no relevance to our task here.”

  “Of course.” The doctor rose to his feet, relief expanding off him as he smiled. “Is there anything else that Commander Karkoff would like me to see to in this matter?”

  “Just one thing,” Ilana said casually. “He asked me to double-check with you. Prior to his escape, did anyone else come to visit Golunsky... apart from Commander Karkoff himself?”

  The man turned, giving her a faintly surprised look. “No. No, of course not, comrade. We had him completely isolated. Karkoff’s orders.”

  “Remind me... were those orders given after his father’s death?”

  The doctor looked faintly confused as he thought. Then his brow cleared. “Yes. The same day in fact. I remember now, because the topic came up when we were discussing internment options for his father. I had forgotten until now.”

  “And you are sure those orders were never violated?” Ilana bit her lip, keeping her voice stern, as if those other imaginary people were her concern. “No one else got in his room? Only those handful of visits by Commander Karkoff?”