The Devil's Garden

by Richard Montanari

  “No,” Tommy said. “I just can’t resist a woman in a suit.”

  “Where’s Paul?”

  She was asking about Paul Calderon, the originally assigned ADA. “Paul needed some personal time,” Tommy said. “So lucky you. You got me.”

  “A girl could do worse.”

  “I have two exes who would disagree.”

  Powell smiled, glanced at Michael. “And the Stone Man himself,” she said. “Been a while.”

  She and Michael shook hands. They had not seen each other in nearly a year. It happened that way sometimes. “How have you been?” Michael asked.

  “Better days.” Powell gestured over her shoulder, at the crime scene. “Some fuckery this, eh?”

  “Bad?” Tommy asked.

  “Bad.”

  “What happened?”

  Powell teased her short hair. It was perfect to begin with, but Desiree Powell was nothing if not fussy about her appearance. Michael had not once seen her in jeans and running shoes. “We don’t know too much yet. But it looks like he was tortured. Burned.”

  “Burned?”

  Powell nodded. “This is not the worst of it either.”

  Worse than tortured, burned, and murdered, Michael thought. What the hell happened up there? More importantly, why?

  “Was it a robbery?” Tommy asked.

  Powell shrugged. “Too early to say. Place was not ransacked. There was money in his wallet. Only one drawer in the file cabinet was open. It wasn’t pried.”

  Michael felt his heart skip a beat. The fact that a file drawer was open didn’t mean anything. Yet.

  “Who called it in?” Tommy asked.

  “The son. He stopped by on his way home from work. He’s a night man on the MTA. When he could not reach his father on the phone, he became concerned.”

  “Are we looking at the son?” Tommy asked.

  Powell shook her head. “Not now. Viktor Harkov had some shady dealings, though, I believe. He knew some bad people, did some bad business. Some times these t’ings come back to haunt you, ya no see it?”

  Michael had forgotten how Powell sometimes slipped into her Rastafarian jargon. He had seen the woman on the stand many times, and when the proceedings called for it, Powell could speak like a professor of linguistics. On the street though, she sometimes spoke in her patois. Desiree Powell could work a group, big or small.

  The conversation gave way momentarily to the traffic sounds, the hum of the street, the apparatus of a crime scene. Powell glanced at Michael. “So how have you been?”

  “I am well,” Michael said. He felt anything but.

  “You are both working this,” Powell said.

  There was a direct question in that statement, a question more for Michael than Tommy. It hung in the air like smoke in a darkened theater.

  “I knew him,” Michael said.

  Powell took a few moments, nodded. She probably knew this. She probably knew a little more about Michael and Harkov, but out of respect for Michael’s position, she didn’t press it. For the moment. “I am sorry for the loss of your friend.”

  Michael wanted to correct her – Viktor Harkov was by no means his friend – but he let it drop. He knew the less he said at this time the better.

  “What did you get from the son?” Tommy asked.

  “The son says he last saw his father last night. Says he brought the old man a bowl of soup. I think he knows a little bit more than he is saying. I’ll have him in the chair later today.”

  “But you don’t like him for this,” Michael said.

  Powell shook her head. “No. But I think he knows some reason why this was done. I’ll get him talking. Like they say in Kingston, the higher the monkey climbs the more him expose, eh?”

  “Des?”

  It was Desiree Powell’s partner, Marco Fontova.

  “Excuse me a moment,” she said, stepping away.

  Fontova was around thirty, disposed to striped suits a size too small and a bit too much cologne for daytime. His hair was short and spiked, a style maybe five years too young, but he pulled it off. Michael did not know him well, but knew that Marco Fontova was part of the post 9/11 class of investigators on the NYPD. And that meant, to people who didn’t know better, mostly in the media, he was lacking.

  Michael learned early on that detectives, good detectives, did not learn what they knew from the academy, or manuals, or the bosses. Detectives were schooled by the older cops. Techniques of interrogation and investigation were passed down from experienced detectives to rookies in a ritual as old as the department itself. But when 9/11 happened, a good bit of that changed. On that day, and for weeks and months afterward, law enforcement in the city of New York – and to a certain extent, criminal activity – shut down. Every available detective headed down to ground zero to help out.

  The result was that a lot of detectives near their twenty-year mark accumulated so much overtime, that they retired that year. The further result was that the next crop of city detectives did not have rabbis from whom they could learn, and there were some who felt that many investigators on the job for the past seven or eight years were not up to the task.

  Desiree Powell was not one of these detectives. She had come up on her own at a time when women, especially black women, were not welcomed into the club that was the gold shield detective. Michael could not think of anyone he would rather work with. By the same token, he could not think of anyone he would rather not go up against.

  POWELL STEPPED BACK over to where Michael and Tommy stood. She glanced at the window on the second floor, then at Tommy. “CSU is wrapping up. Shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  “We’ll be across the street,” Tommy said, pointing at the pizza parlor.

  Powell shoved her hands in her pockets, turned, and walked across the street. In that moment, a transport van from the ME’s office arrived. Two weary techs stepped out, walked around back, casually slid out the gurney. They moved as if underwater, and for good reason. It was a beautiful spring day. Viktor Harkov wasn’t going anywhere.

  THEY STOOD AT THE window counter at Angelo’s. Tommy worked a slice. Michael was not hungry.

  Michael had related the entire story, sparing no detail, beginning with the first call made to the adoption agency in South Carolina, and ending with the moment he and Abby unlocked the door to the house and brought Charlotte and Emily into their new home.

  As he was telling the tale, Michael watched Tommy’s face. He knew that this would hurt Tommy – they had few secrets from each other – but Tommy just listened, implacable, not judging.

  Like the savvy lawyer he was, Tommy gave it a few long moments before responding with the options. “You’re saying the papers were forged?” he asked.

  “Just the one document,” Michael replied, matching his volume. “The adoption broker in Helsinki, the one whose job it was to approve and clear the time frame. His assistant was paid five thousand dollars to forge his name on the clearance. The man – the official – died two years ago. We always felt that, unless they began to dig deep and ask a lot of questions, it couldn’t possibly come out.”

  Tommy folded his slice, took a bite, wiped his lips. “They’re going to start digging in about an hour. You know that, right?”

  Michael just nodded. He knew that, if his name was in one of Viktor Harkov’s files, investigators would get around to him.

  Tommy finished eating, rolled his trash and put in the can. He carefully inspected his shirt, tie, trousers. No grease. He sipped his soda. “How did Harkov work these things Did he keep separate files?”

  “I don’t know,” Michael said. “I met him once at his office, then a second time at a restaurant in midtown.”

  “Were there official documents you signed?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “The standard papers. Everything filed with the state of New York is perfectly legal.”

  Tommy looked across the street, at the growing official presence. He looked back at Michael. “You know if you
go up there, you have to sign the log. It will all be on the record.”

  “I know.” Michael tried to sort out all the ramifications of his presence at this scene. He couldn’t think straight. All that mattered was keeping his family safe and intact.

  POWELL STEPPED OUT of the crime scene building, caught Tommy’s eye, waved him over.

  Tommy slipped on his suit coat, shot his cuffs. He handed Michael the keys to his car.

  “Let me see what I can find out.”

  Michael watched Tommy cross the street. He looked at his watch. He was due in court in ninety minutes.

  MICHAEL STOOD ON the street. The sun was high and warm, the sky clear. Too nice a day for dead bodies. Too nice a day for the world to end.

  He recalled the first and only time he had visited Viktor Harkov in his office. He had known what he was doing was wrong, that making a covert payoff to grease the wheels of the adoption process might one day come back to haunt him, but there was a higher purpose, he had thought at the time, a nobility in his larceny.

  As he stood there, watching the police do their job, getting ever closer to the truth, he asked himself if it had been worth it. In his mind, he saw his beautiful girls. The answer was yes.

  He took out his phone, scrolled down to Abby’s cellphone number. His finger hovered over the touch screen. He had to call her, but couldn’t tell her about this. Not yet. Perhaps this had nothing to do with Viktor’s side-business of adoption. Maybe this was just another robbery homicide, or some family or ethnic dispute gone terribly wrong. Maybe Viktor Harkov had gotten involved in something far more dangerous than simply circumventing adoption laws. Maybe there was nothing for them to worry about.

  On the other hand, maybe there was.

  EIGHTEEN

  He stood about ten feet away, in the hallway leading to the first-floor office. He was half in shadow, but seemed to fill up the entire door jamb.

  Abby watched him. She tried to think of how much cash she could get together. The man had said nothing yet about money, but it was coming. What else could this be about? The man who called himself Aleksander, along with his partner, had probably done this before, stalking a suburban family, holding them for ransom. She’d read about it.

  How long had they been watching? How much did they want? Why had they been selected? They weren’t rich. Far from it. Hell, all you had to do was check out the cars in the driveways along the street. The Murrays had a Lexus and a BMW. The Rinaldis had a Porsche Cayenne.

  Abby did the math. There was less than a thousand dollars in the house. She had very little jewelry. They owned no valuable paintings or sculpture. If you added up all the gadgets – digital camera, camcorder, computers, stereo system – it didn’t add up to much. Was this going to work against them?

  The initial shock of seeing a stranger standing in her home had begun to fade, turning instead into something else, the slow-crawling fear one feels when things slide completely beyond one’s control.

  Keep it together Abby, she thought. The girls. The girls. The –

  – cellphone rang. Abby jumped. The sound of the ringtone – a silly song she and the girls had downloaded online – sounded sardonically comic now, as if they were all in an abandoned amusement park.

  The phone was on the counter, halfway across the kitchen. The man who called himself Aleksander picked up the phone, looked at it. He beckoned Abby toward him, showed her the screen.

  It was Michael calling.

  Abby noticed for the first time that the man was wearing latex gloves. The sight made her heart sink even lower. It added all kinds of possibilities, any number of futures to this scenario. All dark. Perhaps this was not a kidnapping after all. Perhaps this was not about money.

  “I want you to speak to him,” he said. “I want you to sound normal. I want you to tell him whatever it is you tell him on a beautiful day such as this. He will soon enough know his role. But not now.” Aleks pointed out the window. The man he called Kolya was pushing the girls on their swings. “Do you understand this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please put this on speakerphone.”

  Abby took the phone. Despite her trembling hands, she flipped it open, pressed SPEAKER. She did her best to keep the fear from her voice. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “What’s up?” Abby asked. “You at the office?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “I’m going to be stuck here for a while. The voir dire is taking longer than I thought.”

  If there was one thing Abby Roman and her husband excelled at in their marriage, it was a nightly recap of their days. Abby was certain that the Colin Harris case – a case Abby knew was close to the bone for Michael – had wrapped its jury selection days earlier. The voir dire was complete, the panel was set, and here was her husband telling her it was not.

  “You’re inside your office?” Abby asked.

  A pause, then: “Yeah.”

  Michael was lying. She heard street sounds in the background, loud street sounds. He was outside.

  Why was he lying?

  “Something wrong?” Abby asked. She looked at Aleks as she said this, feeling he knew that she was trying to communicate something. He now stood in the shadows of the hallway, listening intently to the conversation. She could not see his eyes. He was impenetrable. “Are you worried about the case?”

  “Not really,” Michael replied. “Just a few last-minute details. No big deal.”

  “The block sale went pretty well,” Abby said, trying to sound chatty. “We sold the toreador painting. It went for high one-figures.”

  The toreador painting was a running joke. Michael, whose taste in oils and acrylics ranged from A Bachelor’s Dog to New Year’s Eve in Dog Ville, bought it at a flea market while he was in college. It had sat in their garage for their entire marriage – Abby refused to hang it in the house – the unsold veteran of five straight block sales, in two different counties.

  “Babe?” Abby said. “The painting?”

  A long pause. Abby wondered if the call had been dropped. Then: “I’m sorry,” Michael said. “Let me . . . let me call you back.”

  “Good luck.”

  Another long pause. “Thanks.”

  Something was wrong. Abby glanced at Aleks. He nodded. He meant for her to hang up.

  “Okay. I love you.” Abby barely got the words out. She wondered if this was the last time she’d ever speak to her husband. “And I –”

  Dead air.

  She pressed END CALL. The screen reverted to the photograph Abby used as wallpaper, a picture of herself, Michael, and the twins sitting on a bench near the beach in Cape May. Charlotte and Emily wore floppy straw sun hats. The sun was high, the water blue, the sand golden. Her heart ached.

  Aleks held out his hands, indicating he wanted Abby to toss him the phone. She did. He caught it, put it in a pocket. “I appreciate your discretion. I am sure Anna and Marya do as well.”

  Anna and Marya. It was the second time he had used these names.

  Abby slipped onto one of the stools at the breakfast counter. She remembered shopping for the stools in White Plains, trying to decide on color, fabric, finish. It seemed so important at the time. It seemed to matter. It seemed like a million years ago.

  “What are you going to do with us?” she asked.

  For a moment, the man looked amused at her choice of words. “We are going to do nothing. We are going to wait.”

  For how long? Abby wanted to ask. For whom? For what? She remained silent. She eyed the drawer on the kitchen island, the drawer containing the knives. Her glance was not lost on her captor.

  He turned, glanced out the back window, then back to Abby.

  “And now, if you would honor me with an introduction.”

  He crossed the kitchen, stopping just a few feet away from Abby, and for the first time she saw his face in the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through the large window overlooking the backyard, saw his pale eyes, his sharp cheekbones, the way his
widow’s peak met at his brow. The nausea suddenly became a violent, thrashing thing inside her. She knew this face almost as well as she knew her own. She tried to speak, but the words felt parched on her lips. “An introduction?”

  Aleks smoothed his hair with his hands, straightened his clothing, as if he were a shy Victorian suitor meeting his betrothed for the first time. “Yes,” he said. “It is time I met Anna and Marya.”

  “Why do you keep saying those names?” Abby asked, although she feared the answer. “Who are Anna and Marya?”

  Aleks glanced out the window at the twins running around the yard. His profile was now unmistakable. He looked back at Abby.

  His words took her legs away.

  “They are my daughters.”

  NINETEEN

  Michael sat in the passenger seat of Tommy’s Lexus RR5, his mind outracing his heart. But not by much.

  Abby had sounded distracted. Whenever she tried to make cocktail chatter with him, something was up. He had wanted to ask her why, but he knew he’d have to get off the phone quickly, because if he didn’t, she would read him, and he would have been forced to tell her about Viktor Harkov. He hated to lie to her. He didn’t lie to her. All he could hope for was that she didn’t see it on the news before he could tell her. She rarely watched television news, so this was in his favor.

  When he did tell her about the murder, he wanted to have a lot more information. There was only one way that was going to happen.

  TOMMY MADE HIS WAY through the traffic. He opened the driver’s side door, but did not slip inside. He looked a little shaken. He took a few seconds. Tommy Christiano never took a few seconds. Especially with Michael.

  “What’s up, man?” Michael asked. “Talk to me.”

  Tommy looked up. “You sure you want to do this?”

  Michael did not want to see it. He felt he had no choice. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  THE SMELL HIT HIM first. It wasn’t as bad as some of the ripe corpses he had encountered in his time in the office, but it was bad enough. Many of the crime scene personnel walking in and out of the office wore white masks.