Eye of the Beholder

by David Ellis

  “Mrs. Lake, listen.” He raises his hand. “It’s very important that I hear the information from you and not the other way around. You can understand that. Please, just give me a name.”

  “The one who testified at the trial,” she says. “Mr. Albany.”

  WHEN GWENDOLYN LAKE excuses herself for the ladies’ room, I use my cell phone to call Mike McDermott. I get his voice mail and leave him a vague message that I need to speak with him right away.

  Now we have an ID, the mysterious “Leo.” Connected to the Bentley family, pictured in the background of that photograph of Harland and the reporters.

  Gwendolyn returns from the restroom and drops in the seat opposite me.

  “Is he committing these crimes?” she asks me. “Just tell me.”

  “Leo? I think so,” I concede.

  She moans. “I think he was—not all there. Mentally, I mean.” She looks at the table. “I didn’t exactly hang out with the staff. But he seemed—a little off. Y‘know, like he’d hold his stare on you or he’d be mumbling to himself. My mother once said he’d had some problems in Russia.”

  “Russia?”

  “Oh, yeah. He was an immigrant. I think his family knew my mother’s family there. My grandmother was a dancer in Russia—”

  “Right, I know.”

  “—Okay. And I think his family asked if he could stay with us. Like, as a favor.”

  “What kind of problems did ‘Leo’ have in Russia?”

  She shakes her head. “Beats me. I don’t think I said two words to him. But Cassie, she was different. The staff loved her.”

  My mind races through my talking points. Last time I talked to Gwendolyn, I didn’t do such a good job of interviewing her. I’ve been given a reprieve, and I want to cover everything.

  A waitress passes us with a cholesterol special, hash browns and dripping eggs and bacon. The smell of fried food turns my stomach in knots.

  “Gwendolyn,” I say, “where were Cassie’s doctors located?”

  “Her doctors? I have no—well, wait,” she says, stopping on that. “Probably the same as mine, actually. I had a doctor named Sor—I think it was Sorenson? Yeah, Dr. Sorenson.” She nods. “Yeah. Dr. Sorenson was my general practitioner. When I’d come to the States, I’d usually get a checkup.”

  “Where was Dr. Sorenson located?”

  “Oh.” She sighs. “It was in some building in the next town over.”

  “The Sherwood Executive Center?”

  She shrugs. “The name of the building? I have no idea.”

  “On Lindsey Avenue in Sherwood Heights? A brick building?”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes trail off. “Right, Lindsey. It was the Mercy Group, or something like that. Yeah, it was, like, maybe ten or twelve stories, something like that” She looks at me again. “Why?”

  “They might want to talk to Cassie’s doctors.”

  The waitress refills her coffee. Gwendolyn smiles at her. I have hardly touched mine because it’s weak, like the stuff at work.

  I sit back in my chair and try to digest this. Looks like Cassie and Professor Albany had something going on. Cassie was pregnant. She must have had an abortion. Her doctors were located in that building in Sherwood Heights where Fred Ciancio transferred the week of the murders.

  “You need to talk to the police,” I say.

  She nods, though she’s not exactly jumping at the prospect.

  “Are you staying here with Nat?”

  She seems surprised by that. “I just got into town. I was planning to go back.”

  “Talk to Detective McDermott” I take a business card and write his cell number on the back, as well as my own. “Don’t go far, Gwendolyn,” I tell her.

  WITH A TREMBLING HAND, Natalia Lake signs the consent form and hands it back to McDermott.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Lake.”

  “You will let me know what comes of this, I trust.” Her eyes search his face for something. McDermott has seen that look too many times. Family members of victims, looking for the cop to tell them it will be okay, that if they close their eyes and pray their loved one will come back.

  “Of course I will.” He takes her cold hand and holds it an extra beat.

  When he turns for the door, she grabs his arm. He looks back at her. She looks as if she has aged during their conversation, the composed, well-groomed woman replaced with a grieving mother with memories that have returned with a vengeance.

  “You think that what is happening now is because of this? Because of Cassie’s abortion? Someone is covering this up?”

  McDermott offers what he can, a compromising expression and generic words of comfort. He does not know the answer. And in many ways, he doesn’t care. He is not here to solve a sixteen-year-old case.

  He is here to find Leo Koslenko.

  ONCE BACK INSIDE Shelly Trotter’s apartment, Leo slides the glass door closed again and wipes the sweat off his forehead. He takes a moment to catch his breath. What to do first?

  He looks back into the living room, where the chain saw rests in his gym bag. Then he checks his watch.

  Soon. Very soon.

  42

  McDERMOTT WALKS into the station at a barely controlled pace. Powers comes up to him and tells him, “The affidavits are on your desk. Albany will be here any minute.”

  McDermott checks his cell phone, hears a message from Riley.

  “We’re looking for Harland Bentley, too. There’s a G-lady here for you?” He gestures to McDermott’s desk. “Got a real mouth on her, that one.”

  McDermott allows himself a smile. That much is true.

  “Hey, Mickey.” Special Agent Jane McCoy gets out of her chair and winks at him.

  “‘Mickey’?”

  “Yeah, it’s my new nickname for you.”

  “You got tired of ‘Shithead,’ did you? How’s business in CT?”

  “Business is booming. Can we talk somewhere?”

  The cops and the FBI are generally none too friendly with one another. But years ago, when McDermott was a new detective and McCoy was in Narcotics, they worked together on a large-scale bust of a west-side street gang.

  Nowadays, McCoy is in counterterrorism. Since she’s the only fibbie he knows, and it’s close enough to immigration, he called her in on this.

  They sit in the same conference room that McDermott has taken over as his own, filled with information on Terry Burgos. McCoy, never one to miss much, manages to take it all in without comment.

  She throws a file on the desk. “This is the A-file on Leonid Koslenko. You’re not supposed to have this. Copy what you want. Give it all back.”

  McDermott takes the manila folder and nods. “Thanks, Jane.”

  “The guy at ICE who ran Koslenko retired ten years ago. He was kept in a general assignment pool after that.”

  McDermott shakes his head. He doesn’t get the meaning.

  “Meaning,” McCoy says, “since he’d been in the country for ten years without incident, there was no one in particular assigned to look at him. Sounds like maybe there’s a reason to look at him now?”

  “That’s a fair statement.” He smiles at her.

  “You’re talking like a fed now, Mickey. You’re scaring me.” She tucks her curly hair behind her ear and holds her stare on him a moment too long. Then she blinks it off, turning serious. “Leonid Koslenko was born in 1967 to a wealthy family in Leningrad. When he was fifteen—1982—he was sent to an institution in Lefortovo. He was released almost exactly two years later.”

  “An institution? You mean an insane asylum?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Asylum, prison—sometimes hard to tell the difference in the Soviet Union. But the records showed it was a mental illness, yes.”

  “Okay. But he was released after two years?” McDermott recoils. “What, he was cured?”

  McCoy is with him on that, one side of her mouth curling up. “He was diagnosed with ‘creeping paranoid schizophrenia.’”

  “Which
means?”

  “Which means, from what I understand, absolutely nothing. Understand, back then, the Soviets locked up political dissidents, Christians, all sorts of people they didn’t want in the general populace. But they didn’t lock them up in prisons. They locked them up in loony bins.”

  He winces. He used to use phrases like that, too.

  “They used bullshit diagnoses like ‘creeping schizophrenia.’ They would keep them for years that way.”

  That makes sense. But the difference here is that American doctors have also diagnosed Koslenko with paranoid schizophrenia. He tells McCoy so.

  She shrugs. “So maybe he really did belong there. Regardless, he escaped from the Soviet Union in 1986 and applied to the United States. His parents helped him. And that was the excuse he used. He said he’d been persecuted for religious and political beliefs, and that was why he did time in Lefortovo. And, apparently, the fancy lawyers who helped him out convinced our government that he was telling the truth. Here’s the kicker: You’re going to love who helped him in the States.”

  He doesn’t have to guess. But why burst her bubble?

  “Harland Bentley,” she announces. “The Harland Bentley. And his wife, Natalia.”

  He nods.

  “I’m not surprising you,” she gathers.

  “Not with that part, no. Jane, he went into that asylum in 1982. He got out in 1984. He got over the Soviet border in 1986 and came to America.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “What happened in those two years? Eighty-four to eighty-six.”

  She smiles, but only for a moment. “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, Mickey.” She leans forward, touches the file she has given him. “And that’s why you’re not supposed to have this file.”

  I RETURN TO MY OFFICE after talking to Gwendolyn. I still haven’t heard back from McDermott. I return to the notes that were delivered to me, spread out on my desk. I’ve been over these notes a dozen times over the past few days, but I’m certain that I’m still missing something.

  The first one:

  If new evil emerges, do heathens ever link past actions? God’s answer is near.

  Second:

  I will inevitably lose life. Ultimately, sorrow echoes the heavens. Ever sensing. Ever calling out. Never does vindication ever really surrender easily. The immediate messenger endures the opposition, but understanding requires new and loving betrayal and new yearning.

  Third:

  Others that hunted ensured respect. Sinners know not our wrath. Our ultimate response shall ensure consequences, reviling ethical traitors.

  The first note makes sense, at least. He’s talking about a link between his crimes and Terry Burgos’s murders. The third one makes some sense, too, I guess. Our ultimate response shall ensure consequences, reviling ethical traitors. Reviling ethical traitors? It seems awkward, forced.

  The more I think about it, the more I agree with Stoletti about the second note. The word choices are odd. Some of it is nonsensical.

  Never does vindication ever really surrender easily.

  But understanding requires new and loving betrayal and new yearning.

  Why did he insert ever in a sentence that didn’t need it? Why use new twice?

  Maybe—maybe these notes aren’t meant to be taken literally. We’re expecting someone following Burgos’s crusade to be mentally ill, like him, mixed in with some pathological religious fer vor. These notes bear the markings of all of that.

  But maybe there’s more to these notes. Maybe these are in some kind of code.

  I get out a separate piece of paper and play with the words, looking for anything. I read it with every other word. Every third word. I don’t discern a pattern. I try to focus on the extra words, what they might mean. I come up empty. But I can’t shake the feeling that some of these words look like they don’t belong—not just ever and now but words like reviling.

  Forced.

  Why did he need these words, in particular? What role did they play in this code?

  Wait a second. Wait a second.

  I start scribbling, playing out my theory. My heart starts to pound as it crystallizes. He chose those words because he needed a word that started with that particular letter. He chose ever because he needed an e.

  I write the first letter from each word in the first note.

  I-N-E-E-D-H-E-L-P-A-G-A-I-N.

  Jesus Christ.

  I need help again.

  The second note:

  I-W-I-L-L-U-S-E T-H-E S-E-C-O-N-D V-E-R-S-E T-I-M-E T-O B-U-R-N A-L-B-A-N-Y.

  I will use the second verse. Time to burn Albany. The third note:

  O-T-H-E-R-S K-N-O-W-O-U-R S-E-C-R-E-T.

  Others know our secret.

  He wrote these notes to me. He needs my help again. Now he will burn Albany. Others know our secret.

  Our secret? He needs my help? Again?

  What the hell does this mean?

  IT’S TIME. TIME NOW.

  Leo walks over to the window overlooking the street: A woman is showing a piece of real estate to a couple of men on the other side of the street and down about eight houses; a FedEx truck is parked up the street a ways; two Latino women and their small children walk on the sidewalk, eating fresh corn dipped in butter and salt.

  Leo puts on the plastic smock and fastens the ties behind his neck and back. Then he walks over to the stereo in the apartment. On top of the receiver is a framed photograph of Shelly Trotter and Paul Riley in a park, waving to the camera. He waves back.

  Hello, Paul. You see what I’m about to do?

  The CD already in the player is classical piano music. He pauses a moment, closes his eyes, listens to the graceful, spirited hands of Horowitz. Katrina had played, though not this beautifully of course, her young, inexpert hands clanking clumsily over the keys. Mother taught her. She’d wanted to teach Leo, too, but Father wouldn’t allow it. Men of the world had no time for such trivialities, he’d said, but Leo had been envious of Kat, and was sure that she’d continued her play over the years as one of many ways to taunt her younger brother, to display her dominance over him. Oh, they hadn’t seen it in Kat, even afterward, the many ways she’d seduced and manipulated the entire family, her treachery, the evil in her soul, until his moment finally came on the ice when she’d slipped and was finally at last vulnerable, unable to gain traction with her skates, as he fell on top of her, pressed his thumbs into her throat, and, yes, he cried, though she’d given him no choice, only he had the courage to do it, and he knows that Mother and Father knew, in the recesses of their minds, even as they sent him off to Lefortovo, that he’d been brave and wise and just—

  He opens his eyes, adjusts the volume control on the stereo so that Horowitz’s piano is very loud but not deafening. Then he walks into the bathroom.

  Her naked body is in a ball, stuffed horizontally into the tub. He debates it for a second, then takes her ankles and moves her legs over the side of the tub. Now she is on her back, looking up with vacant eyes at the ceiling. Her nose is broken. So is her neck. Otherwise, she is beautiful.

  Leo tugs on the chain saw, the violent buzz drowning out the music.

  McCoy PREFACES HER COMMENTS. No one is sure about this. The government had its suspicions but never confirmed them.

  “After the Soviet Union collapsed,” she explains, “we learned a lot of things about them. Some of it was ancient history. Some of it not so ancient. Koslenko’s name came up once during a debriefing. That’s all.”

  McDermott nods along, impatient. “What did Leo Koslenko do from 1984 to 1986, Jane?”

  McCoy clears her throat. “This isn’t my specialty, Mike. But you needed this on short notice, so I’ll try.” She takes a moment. “There is something known as the ‘Thirteenth Department.’ It was the part of the Soviet State Security Service—the KGB—devoted to what they called ‘executive action: We learned in 1993, from a former spy, that Leonid Koslenko may have been recruited from Lefortovo to be a part of t
he Thirteenth.”

  McDermott stares at her for a long time without speaking.

  “There is some suspicion,” she continues, “that this is why he only served two years in Lefortovo. It was not unheard of for the Soviets to recruit people from their asylums, or their prisons, for this executive action work.”

  McDermott raises his eyebrows. “And executive action is?”

  “Wet work. Abductions, beatings, torture,” McCoy says. “Maybe murder. Strong-arm stuff. Domestic, mostly. It wouldn’t be uncommon for them to use someone from an asylum with the requisite talents, then throw them back inside. If they try to talk about it, the simple explanation is that these people are ‘crazy.’ They’d be easily discredited. Who’s going to believe a loony tune?”

  McDermott looks away, again trying to ignore the remark.

  “Oh, shit.” McCoy covers her face. “Mike, I’m so sorry. I didn‘t—”

  “Forget it.” He pushes himself out of his chair, shows McCoy his back.

  “I’m such an idiot, Mike. How—how is Grace doing?”

  He doesn’t answer. It’s not the time to think about his daughter. McCoy cusses herself out again, tries again for the apology, while McDermott works on the information. He thinks about what he found in Koslenko’s basement. The massive documentation about the Bentleys and Paul Riley and Terry Burgos, the photos of the prostitutes.

  “You’re telling me,” he says slowly, “that Leo Koslenko was a Soviet operative?”

  “I’m using past tense, Mike. There is no ‘Soviet’ anymore. And I’m saying maybe. Look”—she frames her hands—“we’re not talking about a guy who could assassinate a target from a hundred yards away. We’re not talking about a guy who could be trusted with state secrets. But a lot of what the KGB did wasn’t sophisticated at all. It was simply keeping the dissidents in line. Bring them in for some friendly, government-style torture. Shake them awake in the middle of the night and remind them that you know where they live.”