The Devil's Garden

by Richard Montanari

  “This is what frightens me,” Sondra said. “I have seen a few people who look familiar. Or maybe I’m just projecting.”

  “Don’t worry if you don’t find the man who broke into your house among these photographs. He may not be in the system. It’s always worth a shot, though.”

  Powell opened up a 9 × 12 envelope. She had printed off two pictures from the New York Magazine article. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to show you a couple of other photographs.”

  “Sure,” Sondra said.

  Powell held forth the first one. It was a picture of Michael Roman, taken from the cover of the magazine. He was leaning against a BMW convertible coupe, black trousers and open white shirt, his suit coat over his shoulder, looking pretty GQ, if Powell had to say so herself. Powell had cropped out the magazine’s logo, and everything else that might indicate it came from a magazine. She didn’t want to give the woman the impression this was some kind of celebrity, even though he probably was in certain New York legal circles. It might taint the woman’s identification, although Powell found Sondra Arsenault to be a careful, meticulous professional, and didn’t think she’d fall for the hype. “Do you know this man?”

  Sondra took it from her, looked at it closely. She shook her head. “No.”

  “This was taken five years ago. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m quite sure.”

  “He doesn’t look at all familiar to you?”

  More scrutiny, probably just to be polite. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life.”

  “Okay,” Powell said. “Thanks. Mr Arsenault?”

  James Arsenault shook his head immediately. Powell noticed that his lips were chapped and cracked and white. In his hand was a small bottle of Tylenol. He was probably taking one every twenty minutes, without water. This guy was a wreck.

  Powell put the first picture back in the envelope, handed the woman the second photograph. This one too had been cropped. “What about her?” she asked. “Does this woman look familiar?”

  Sondra took the color copy of the magazine page. “That’s her!” she said. “That’s the woman who gave me Viktor Harkov’s phone number.”

  “This is Abby?”

  “Yes. No question.”

  “And you don’t know her last name, where she lives, where she works, anything else about her?”

  “No,” Sondra said. “Sorry. I met her at the conference, we talked about adopting, and she told me that she and her husband had just adopted, and that she knew a lawyer who did a really good job. She gave me Viktor Harkov’s phone number, and that was about it.”

  “Did she say anything to you about his methods, the way he worked?”

  “No,” Sondra said, perhaps more forcefully than she would have liked. “I mean, I later got the impression that Abby may not have known that the guy was a little . . .”

  “I know what you mean,” Powell said, finding no reason to supply Sondra Arsenault with a pejorative term for a man who was at that moment being dissected on a cold steel table in South Jamaica. They all knew who he was and what he did. The question, if there would be a question, was what did Abby Roman know about the man, and when did she know it? Before she recommended Harkov to the Arsenaults, or after.

  There had been two sets of twins illegally brokered by Viktor Harkov in 2005. Two sets of girls. If Harkov’s killer had visited the Arsenault house perhaps he was now in search of the other pair of twins. Perhaps he had already found them. Perhaps there was another family in jeopardy.

  Like Cape Fear, Powell thought.

  She had to get that movie, check it out.

  WHILE THE ARSENAULTS spoke to a police artist, and created a composite of the man who had broken into their house, Detective Desiree Powell left the Homicide Squad, stopped at the Homestead on Lefferts Boulevard for a cherry strudel and a coffee.

  Within twenty minutes she was on the Van Wyck, heading toward a small town in Crane County called Eden Falls.

  THIRTY-NINE

  There were four vehicles in the parking lot. A pair of Fiestas that looked like rental cars, a ten-year-old van, and the blue Ford.

  Michael walked slowly over to one of the Fiestas. It was parked three spaces away from the Ford. He glanced quickly at the Ford and saw that the man sitting in the driver’s seat was black, perhaps in his twenties, earbuds in his ears. He had most likely seen Michael emerge from Room 119, but had paid no attention to the man in the baggy raincoat, tweed hat, and sunglasses. He had his eyes closed, his head bobbing to the music.

  Michael stepped over the low guard-rail fence behind the cars. He searched the area near the expressway for something, anything. He found a short length of steel rebar, the material used to strengthen concrete. He picked up the pipe, slid it into his waistband in the back, then dropped to the ground behind the Ford. He waited a full minute. The man in the car had not seen him in the rear-view or side mirrors. Michael crawled along the ground, along the right side of the Ford, then circled in front of the car. When he reached the left front tire, he took out a small piece of the broken mirror. He had wrapped it in a washcloth, but it had cut through the fabric. His hand was bleeding. He began to cut along the tire, right at the rim. After a minute or so, he heard the air begin to leak out.

  Two minutes later, with the tire almost flat, Michael crawled to the back of the car, stood up, and made his way back over to the Fiesta.

  When he reached the car, he dug into his pocket as if he was fishing around for car keys. He glanced over at the driver of the Ford. The man looked over. Michael pointed to the front tire on the Ford, mouthed a few words. The man just stared at him for a few moments, then rolled down the window.

  “You’ve got a flat tire.” Michael said. He knew the man could not hear him.

  The man opened the door. He was about Michael’s size, but younger. He was dressed in green camouflage pants and a black hoodie. Michael knew that once the man got out, he would only have a few seconds to act.

  The man stepped out of the car, pulled the headphones out of his ears. He regarded Michael with suspicion. “What?”

  “Your front tire,” Michael said, doing his best southern accent, the word tire coming out tar. “It looks like you’ve got a flat.”

  The man considered Michael for a few more moments, then walked around the open car door. “Goddamn it.” He stood for a few seconds, hands on hips, as if willing the tire to inflate. He then reached into the car, extracted the keys from the ignition. He walked to the rear, opened the trunk. Michael sidled up.

  “You want me to call Triple A or something?” Michael asked. “I got the Triple A.”

  “I’m good,” he said, with a look that said back the fuck off.

  At the moment the man turned his back on Michael, Michael slipped the pipe out of his waistband, and brought it down on the back of the man’s neck, pulling back at the last second. This was far from his area of expertise, and he didn’t want to kill the man. It was a mistake. The man grunted on the impact, and staggered away a few steps, but didn’t go down. He was strong.

  “Motherfucker.” The man reached behind his head, saw the blood on his fingers.

  Before he could turn around to face him fully, Michael stepped in, raised the pipe again, preparing to deliver a second blow, but when he brought his arm down, the man raised an arm to block it. He was fast. The man then wheeled around, shifting his weight, and caught Michael on the side of the face with a glancing blow. Michael saw stars for a moment. His legs buckled, but he maintained his balance.

  When he recovered he saw the man reaching into the trunk, coming back with a handgun.

  There was no time to react. Michael brought the pipe up and around as hard as he could. He caught the man on the bridge of his nose, exploding it into a thick mist of blood and cartilage. Michael saw the man’s eyes roll into his head. His legs sagged, gave out. He fell backwards, half-in and half-out of the trunk. The gun, a small-caliber revolver, fell from his hand onto the pitted asphalt of the parking
lot.

  And it was over. The man did not move.

  For some reason, Michael was frozen with inaction. He was afraid he had killed the man, but soon got over it. He realized that he was standing in a motel parking lot, within sight of the avenue with a bloodied steel pipe in his hand, and a man’s body laying in the trunk of a car in front of him. He gathered his wits, his strength. He threw the pipe in the trunk, picked up the gun, stuffed in it into his pocket. He glanced around, turning 360 degrees. Seeing no one watching him, he pulled the spare tire and the jack out of the trunk. He then lifted the man’s legs, and maneuvered the body fully into the trunk. He closed the lid, grabbed the keys out of the lock.

  Ten minutes later, with the tire changed, he got into the car. He found that he could not catch his breath. He glanced around the front seat. An MP3 player, a half-eaten Whopper, an unopened forty-ounce. The smell of cooked meat and blood made his stomach churn.

  He opened the glove compartment. A pair of maps, a pack of Salems, a small Maglite. Nothing he could use. What he needed was a cellphone. He looked in the back seat, in the console. No phone.

  He grabbed the keys out of the ignition, got out of the car. He walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk. The man had not regained consciousness, but his face looked all but destroyed. Michael reached in, touched the side of his neck. He found a pulse. He began to pat the man down, searching his side pockets, his back pockets. He found a small roll of cash, a small bag of marijuana, another set of keys. But no phone. He tried to turn the man onto his side, but he was heavy, and a dead weight. He tried again. He couldn’t budge him.

  Suddenly, the man began to moan. Michael reached further into the trunk, retrieved a long steel crowbar. He slipped it beneath the man, began to roll him over. The man coughed, spitting blood into the air.

  “The fuck, man . . .” the man managed. He was coming to. And getting louder. Michael reached into the pocket of his raincoat, got out the now bloodied washcloth. He rolled it into a ball, stuffed into the man’s mouth.

  Michael then went back to his task of prying the man’s body onto its side. After a few more tries the man rolled over. Michael reached into the pocket of his fleece hoodie, and found a cellphone, along with a few hundred in cash, and an ID that identified the man in the trunk as Omar Cantwell. Michael took the phone and cash, slammed shut the trunk, got back in the car.

  With his hands surprisingly steady, considering what he had just done, what he was about to do, he opened the phone, punched in the numbers, and called Tommy Christiano.

  TOMMY FELL SILENT. Michael knew enough to wait it out. His head throbbed, his eyes burned.

  “Is he dead?” Tommy asked.

  The truth was, Michael had no idea. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  He had told Tommy everything, beginning with the phone call from the man called Aleksander Savisaar.

  “You’ve got to come in, man.”

  “I can’t, Tommy.”

  “You have to. This is getting worse and worse. How long do you think it will be before Powell adds it up?”

  “This is my family, man. We can’t call in the cavalry. Not until I know the play.”

  “You can’t do this alone.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  Tommy quieted again. Michael glanced at his watch. He had three minutes to get back inside the motel room.

  “Powell just called here,” Tommy said. “She was asking about Abby.”

  “What? Abby? Why?”

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  Michael tried to anticipate the course of the investigation. “What did she ask?”

  “She asked about where Abby worked. About where she used to work.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her the truth,” Tommy said. “It’s not like she couldn’t get the information elsewhere.”

  Michael tried to process it all, but everything seemed to bottleneck.

  “What are you going to do?” Tommy asked.

  Good question, Michael thought. “I’m going to go back into the room and wait for the call. Then I’m going to my house.”

  “You’ll never get there in thirty minutes.”

  “I’m going to try,” Michael said. “And Tommy?”

  “What?”

  “Promise me you’re not going to make a move.”

  Tommy took a moment, perhaps weighing all the odds. “I’ll meet you.”

  “No,” Michael said. “Look. I’ve got this phone. Have you got the number on that end?”

  Michael could hear Tommy scribbling on a pad. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay. Just put your ear to the rail and call me the second you know something. If Powell gets any closer, you call.”

  “Mickey,” he said. “You’ve got to –”

  “I know, man. I know.”

  Michael closed the phone, put it on vibrate, slipped it into his pocket. He listened. There were no sounds coming from the trunk of the car.

  He looked into the rear-view mirror. The sight he saw there unnerved him. His face was dotted and streaked with blood, slightly swollen and bruised. He reached into the Burger King bag, pulled out a handful of napkins. He opened the forty-ounce, dampened the napkins, and did his best to clean his face.

  He looked again. Clean enough. His ears were still ringing from the blow he had taken to the side of his face, his heart was pounding, his head ached. He said a silent prayer, put his hand on the door. He had sixty seconds to get into the room. He prayed his watch was accurate – that Kolya’s watch was accurate – and that he had not missed the call. He opened the car door, got out.

  “Put your hands where I can see them!” the voice behind him shouted.

  Michael spun around. Flashing lights dazzled his eyes.

  He was surrounded by police cars.

  FORTY

  Abby could not wait any longer. Every second the girls were gone, every second she did not know Michael’s whereabouts, was another arrow in her heart. Keeping the gun on Kolya, she had made a number of phone calls. She had called the office and was told Michael had left for the day. She had called his cellphone and gotten voicemail. She had called a few of his haunts – the Austin Ale House, the Sly Fox. No one had seen him. She almost called Tommy, but Tommy would see right through her. Tommy would know something was terribly wrong.

  She wanted to put an end to this, to see the reassuring presence of a police car in her drive, the calm, assured manner of detectives and FBI agents, authority figures who could take this out of her trembling hands. She wanted to hold her husband, her girls.

  But unless she knew her daughters would be safe, she could not take that chance. She looked out the window for what was probably the fiftieth time in the past ten minutes.

  “You know, he’s probably not coming back,” Kolya said. He was slumped in the upholstered chair in the corner, a chair that until recently had been a putty velvet. Now it was caked and streaked with deep brown blood. He was breathing through his mouth, which for him, Abby thought, was probably business as usual.

  “Shut up.”

  “You know what I think, Mrs ADA? I think he took your precious little girls and he hit the road. God only knows what he’s doing with them right this second. He’s probably –”

  “I said shut the fuck up!” Abby pointed the .25 at him. Kolya didn’t react. Abby wondered just how many times this man had had a weapon shoved in his face over the years. “I don’t want to hear another word. You don’t get to talk.”

  Kolya acquiesced. For the moment. He shifted his weight in the chair, trying to find a comfortable position. Abby hoped he was never going to be comfortable for the rest of his life. Hopefully he would spend it in a prison cell.

  Kolya looked at his watch. “Fuck this. I’m outta here.” He struggled to his feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  Abby tensed. “Sit down.”

  Kolya stoo
d, facing her, not ten feet away, his hands behind his back. “No.”

  This isn’t happening, Abby thought. “I swear to God I will put a bullet in your head. Now sit down.”

  Kolya smirked. “You a killer now? That what you are? A killer nurse?” He edged a few inches toward her. “I don’t think so.”

  Abby backed up. She cocked the weapon. “Sit down. Don’t make me do this.”

  Kolya looked around. “So, what’s stopping you? There’s no one here. Who’s gonna know it was cold-blooded murder?” He took another step. He was five feet away now. “All you gotta do is tell them I tried to jump your bones. They’ll believe you. You being a citizen and all.”

  Abby backed up another inch. She was almost against the closet now. “Stop.”

  Kolya stopped moving forward, his hands still behind his back. “You know what? I don’t think you can do it, Mrs ADA. I think you’re all talk. Just like your husband.”

  “Shut up,” Abby said, her voice cracking. “Just shut up!”

  Kolya took another small step forward, and suddenly there was another voice in the room. Somebody talking about how the lottery jackpot was up to $245 million, and how you too could be a winner. Somehow the flat-screen television on the dresser had clicked to life. Instinctively, Abby glanced at it. And understood. This was why Kolya had his hands behind his back. He had the remote. He was trying to distract her, and it worked. She only looked away for a second, but it was long enough for Kolya. He lunged across the room. For a short, stocky man he was incredibly fast.

  Abby fell back against the wall, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger. Twice.

  Nothing. The weapon didn’t fire. It was empty.

  Once Kolya realized he was not going to be shot and killed in this suburban house in Eden Falls, New York, Abby saw the full animal emerge.

  In a second he was on top of her. “You fuckin’ cunt! I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!”