The Deep Dark Descending

by Eskens,Allen

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “You can’t go home,” I said. “You’re in danger. I’m taking you to my house—just for a while, until we can figure something out.”

  “Why did you stop me? Why didn’t you let me finish it?”

  “I didn’t stop anything,” I said. “That bartender already had your gun. The only thing I stopped you from doing was getting wrestled to the ground and arrested. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  I drove into the alley behind my house and into my garage, parking beside the Durango that used to be Jenni’s car. Like everything else of hers, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it. I shut the garage door and headed toward the house, with Anastasia following me.

  “This is your house?”

  I’m sure she meant her question to come across as small talk, but it landed on my ear with a hint of judgement. A hovel compared to her fine home in Kenwood, I felt a tinge of embarrassment as I walked her past the garbage cans outside of my back door.

  No woman had been inside of my house since Jenni died, and I couldn’t help but feel disloyal, regardless of the circumstances. We walked through the kitchen and into the living room where Anastasia took a seat on my couch, sitting in the exact spot where Jenni liked to sit.

  I handed Anastasia a tissue to touch away the tears on her cheeks.

  “Thank you for getting me out of there,” Anastasia whispered.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “I was only trying to keep things from getting out of hand. Besides, I couldn’t let you go in there and kill your husband. I’m a cop. It’s kind of my job.”

  Anastasia stopped crying and looked at me, her eyes searching mine, as if looking for an answer to a question that she hadn’t yet asked. “You think I went there to kill my husband? To kill Reece?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. I went there to kill Mikhail.”

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 30

  M

  ikhail. Two days ago that name meant nothing to me. Now, it meant a great deal. Mikhail will kill me. That’s what Zoya said.

  “Mikhail was at the club?” I asked. “He was there?”

  Anastasia looked at me as if I should already know the answer. “Of course he was there,” she said. “He owns the club.”

  “Mikhail who? What’s his last name?

  “Mikhail Vetrov.”

  “Stay here.” I ran up the steps to my lair and fired up my laptop. Once awake, I typed in Caviar Gentlemen’s Club and went to news articles. The first hit was a story of a shooting outside of the Caviar from two years ago. I scrolled down the article looking for a picture. I wanted to see the man’s face. Finding none, I skimmed the story and came to a small paragraph that read that the owner of the Caviar, a man named Michael Vetter, had refused to comment on the story. I found no mention of named Mikhail Vetrov.

  I brought the laptop down to show Anastasia my find. She sat on my couch, back rigid, knees together, hands on her lap, her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. It struck me, in that moment, just how out of place she seemed, sitting where Jenni used to sit: too young, too pretty, her hair too dark, her lips too red, her eyes too blue. She had a vibrancy that stood in stark contrast to the gray and the dust that had settled throughout my house over the years—a color portrait leaning against a black and white backdrop.

  I sat down beside her. “It says here that the owner of Caviar’s is a man named Michael Vetter.”

  “Yes, he is Michael Vetter, but he is also Mikhail Vetrov. He is from Belarus, like me, but he came here when he was a very young boy. He lives in two worlds. In one, he is Michael Vetter, a businessman, respected. But to people from his other world, people like me, he is Mikhail.”

  I typed Michael Vetter and Caviar into Google and pulled up a screen full of pictures. At the top of the page was a face I recognized, the man I saw standing on the balcony in the club just before I whisked Anastasia out the door.

  I pointed at the picture. “Mikhail?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “His father was a bad man,” she said. “They came here to escape many other bad men. One day, the men from Minsk found Mikhail’s father. They killed him. Mikhail told me this story. He said that he was eighteen when they killed his father. Those men had a business proposition for Mikhail. Lots of money.”

  “Mikhail confided in you? You were close?”

  Anastasia faced ahead, staring at nothing in particular as she considered my question. Then she swallowed hard and said, “I belong to Mikhail . . . or least I used to. Now I belong to Reece.”

  “You belong to . . .?”

  “Mikhail brought me here when I was seventeen. He paid for my travel. He . . . he took care of me. I was his girl. And then I became his . . . I worked for Mikhail.”

  “You were his prostitute?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your sister . . . Zoya? Did she also work for Mikhail?”

  “She wasn’t supposed to. He promised me—”

  “She had a tattoo on her neck—the symbol of the ruble.”

  Anastasia continued to stare straight ahead, as if she hadn’t heard me. I waited patiently. I could tell that she wanted to talk to me. I could also tell that her words came at a great personal cost, each revelation having to be wrenched up from some dark place deep inside of her. Then she lifted her hair back on the right side of her neck, exposing a small ruble tattoo behind her ear.

  “You said that Mikhail gave you to Whitton?”

  “Yes. Mikhail struck a bargain with Reece. I was part of that bargain. One day Mikhail came to me and said that from that day forward, I belonged to Reece Whitton. That was all there was to it.”

  “Anastasia, tell me about this bargain. What did Mikhail get out of it?”

  She took a moment to size me up, her eyes staring into mine as if something deep behind my iris could tell her if she could trust me. In the end I must have passed scrutiny, because she leaned back with a measure of self-satisfaction in her expression and said. “You have never heard of Mikhail before today, is that correct?”

  “That is true.”

  “Yet he has been operating in this city for years. How is that possible? How can he do the business he does and never come to the attention of the police?”

  “Whitton is covering for him.”

  “Who better to have as a partner than the man who would be in charge of the investigation—the man who made the decisions about who got attention and who got ignored?”

  “And you were the price for Whitton’s loyalty.”

  “I was only part of the deal. You’ve seen his house?”

  “Not the kind of thing most cops can afford.”

  “I was a mere token in that deal.”

  “But you married Whitton.”

  Anastasia’s eyes flashed with a sudden hatred. “I am his property,” she said. “I am his payment—his reward. I am not a wife. I am a possession, and he treats me as such—no, he treats me worse than a possession. Me he hurts.”

  She opened her coat and pulled down the collar of her sweater to expose the tops of her breasts. “Look!” she demanded. “Look where he burned me.” She showed me three button-sized scars, the likely result of hot cigarette ash. “And here . . .” She pulled her collar around to expose her shoulder blade. Again more small circles. “I have many more.”

  She closed her sweater back around her neck, and her eyes took on the far-away stare of someone replaying a memory. “My husband is my captor. Mikhail delivered me to him and I went to Reece willingly. I wanted to prove to Mikhail that I would do anything for him—even this.” Then she looked at me with incredulity. “You could never understand. You see only a whore. You do not live in my world.”

  “I’m trying to understand,” I said. “But if you hate Whitton so much, why did you go to the club to kill Mikhail and not your . . . not Reece.”

  “Because my sister is dead and it is Mikhail who will pay for that. You should not ha
ve stopped me. I would have killed him even if I had to tear out his throat with my bare hands.

  “Why Mikhail? How is he involved?”

  Her gaze turned suspicious. “You will not help me. You are a police, like Reece. You do not care for women such as me. You only get in the way.”

  “I’m a cop, that’s true enough, but I am not like Whitton. I want to get these guys as much as you do. I want them to pay for their crimes. I understand what you want, I do, but I need your help. Tell me about Mikhail and about your sister.”

  “My sister . . .” I thought Anastasia was going to cry again. She tightened her lips and drew in a shaky breath. The she said, “When did Zoya die?”

  “Four years ago.”

  Anastasia’s breath halted in her chest. The answer caught her off guard. “Four years?” Her lips began to quaver, but she held it together. “How did she die?”

  I hesitated then said, “She was beaten and then drowned. We don’t know exactly where it happened or how, but that’s what the autopsy showed.”

  “And then?”

  “And then they threw her body into a dumpster.”

  With that, Anastasia began to cry again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her cry grew until she gritted her teeth and screamed into her fists. “God damn him.” Hot breath shot through her lips in hissing bursts as she spoke. “I’m going to kill Mikhail. I don’t care if you arrest me. I don’t care about anything. I will kill him and no one can stop me.”

  “Please, Anastasia. I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to help. You’ve got to believe me. We need to work together. We need to trust each other.”

  Again, she looked at me with suspicion in her eyes.

  “I prefer Ana,” she said. “Not Anastasia.”

  “Okay, Ana.”

  My phone rang. I looked at the number and recognized it. Reece Whitton. I answered.

  “Yes?”

  “Where’s my wife, Rupert?”

  I looked at Ana and put a finger to my lips to tell her to remain quiet. Then I switched the call to speaker phone. “Ana’s here with me. We’re having a chat.”

  “What kind of game are you playing?”

  “Game?” I started to get angry, the memory of his voice planning my wife’s death boiling up inside me. “You think this is a game, you piece of shit?”

  Now it was his turn to hesitate. Then he said, “I think we should meet. Hash this out.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll be on the top floor of the LaSalle Court Parking Ramp.”

  How fitting that he would choose a parking ramp for our meeting, just as he chose a parking ramp to meet Jenni all those years ago. Quiet, isolated. The kind of place where one can do very bad things away from the prying eyes of a city. He couldn’t have picked a better location.

  The poetic justice of it all brought a slight smile to my face, and I said, “I’m on my way.”

  Chapter 31: Up North

  Chapter 31

  Up North

  H

  e’s not in the snow-nest when I get back.

  I’m a dozen yards away when I see that he’s gone, and a spark of panic flairs in my chest. I charge back to where I’d left him, dropping my bundle of rocks in the snow at the edge of the circle. My panic skitters to a halt when I see a path of matted snow about thirty yards long leading to where he’s lying on his back, writhing and covered in snow. He rolled to get away from the nest, and his trail looks like it had been laid down by a drunken walrus. I bend over to catch my breath. Without the rocks, my arms feel light enough to float away and my shoulders ease back into their swollen sockets.

  He is facing away from me, unaware of my presence. I take a few steps toward him and squat to watch. His snowmobile suit is partially unzipped, which I think must have been loosened in his attempt to roll away. But then I see him working his hands up and down over his abdomen. I take a few more steps and he sees me.

  “You fucking psychopath,” he says. “I’m freezing. I can’t feel my fingers. I have frost bite.”

  I walk up and kneel down beside him, ignoring his insult. Even with his elbows strapped behind his back and his hand tethered together, he has somehow worked his coat’s zipper down to his waist. At first, I’m not concerned, but then I notice that he’s been sawing the cotton cord up and down against the zipper. The teeth of a zipper aren’t sharp, but given enough time and enough motivation—and I suppose there’s no shortage of motivation here—those teeth could cut a cotton cord.

  I had doubled the cord when I tied his wrists, and to my surprise, he’s managed to saw through one of his bindings and had notched a gash into the second.

  “Impressive,” I said. “I must have been gone longer than I thought.”

  “You’re insane. Let me go you fucking nut job.”

  There’s not enough drawstring to retie the section that he cut, but one strand should be enough to hold him—besides, I have the belt around the elbows as a backup. I’ll just have to keep a better eye on him from now on.

  I grab the collar of his snowmobile suit and drag him back to the nest as he curses and threatens me. Before I start to dig the fifth hole, I tug his zipper back up to his neck. “Wouldn’t want you catching a cold,” I say.

  “How can you be so glib?” he asks with swelling anger in his voice.

  I set the auger into the fifth starter hole and my body stiffens as it prepares to greet the pain. The first turn of the shaft awakens the tattered muscles in my chest and arms again. Four more holes to go. I’m only half way done and it feels like I’ve been at this for days, not hours.

  As I drill, the man works on me the way he’s been working me the whole day: prattling on about the terrible mistake I’ve made, threatening to have my job, offering to forgive me if I stop now. His words fall into a thick, blurry hum, as if he’s talking to me from the bottom of a swimming pool.

  Pain radiates across my pectorals with each turn of the crank, but the sharpest aches are the spikes stabbing my forearms and the dull throb punching up from my toes. When I get about halfway to the water on this fifth hole, I stand and stretch my back. From the corner of my eye, I can see him twisting his shoulders and stomach, trying to reach the zipper again. I turn to face him, but he’s focused on his escape plan, writhing and bending to try and reach the handle of his zipper. When he sees me watching him, he shoots me a scowl and stops his wiggling.

  “You’re working awfully hard to cut that rope,” I say. “Not the actions of a man who thinks this is all a bluff.”

  “I’m tired of this,” he says—and he does sound tired now. “You know you can’t go through with this. You’re a cop. It’s not in your DNA.”

  “You have no idea what’s in my DNA.”

  “If I did something, show me the evidence. Come on, asshole. Show me.” He makes a point of looking around in mock confusion. “What? No evidence? I didn’t think so. This whole Kabuki theater is because you have nothing.”

  “You’re my evidence,” I say.

  “I’m your evidence? What does that even mean? That’s bullshit. I’m innocent—innocent until proven guilty.”

  “No,” I say. “You’re not innocent until proven guilty. Not here. You don’t have that right. But you want your day in court, get on with it. I have three and a half more holes to cut. You have until I finish this circle to prove your innocence.”

  “Prove my innocence? How can I—”

  I start turning the auger again.

  “I . . . I’m not even sure what I’m accused—”

  “State your name for the record,” I holler over the grind of the auger.

  “What?”

  “That’s how you start a trial. Don’t you know anything? If you’re going to testify you have to state your name first.”

  “You want me to—”

  “What’s your fucking name?”

  “Christ, you’re going to kill me and you don’t even know my name? I’m telling
you, I’m not the guy you think I am. I didn’t kill your family. I don’t know anything about it. You have to let me go. You have to—”

  “Shut—up!” I stop the auger again so that he can see the seriousness in my eyes. “I said, state your name.”

  “My name is Michael Vetter—”

  “What is your birth name?”

  “What?

  “I’m not asking you what you call yourself now. I want you to tell me your real name—the name they gave you when you popped out of your momma’s lady parts.”

  “I’m Michael Vetter, you sick bastard.”

  “You’re lying already.”

  I see fear and understanding coalesce on his face. He’s wondering how much I know. I start turning the auger again.

  “I am Michael Vetter. I don’t know what else you want. That’s my name. That’s always been my name.”

  “You were born Mikhail Vetrov. You were born in Minsk and came to America as a young boy. How am I doing so far?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  I point my finger at Mikhail. “Mikhail Vetrov, you are here today accused of the murder of my wife, Jenni Rupert. You are also accused of the murder of her unborn child. You are a pimp and a destroyer of the innocent. These are a just a few of the many crimes for which you will pay today.”

  “Now I’m a pimp as well? Why don’t you add some more bullshit to the list, maybe arsonist, or . . . I know, shoplifter. Honestly Detective, you’re not making sense. I never did any of that.”

  I pull the blade out of the hole and jam the shoveled end into the ice near Mikhail’s face, sending chips spraying into the air. “Don’t say that!” I yell. “Don’t fucking say that. If you tell me, one more time, that you’re innocent, I swear I’ll shove a glove down your throat. You wanted a trial, well, here it is. Say what you need to say, but this will be your only chance. Talk—don’t talk—I don’t care. But if you tell me again that you’re innocent, I . . .”