by TG Wolff
I kept it real with my sister and father. They traveled to me a few times and we talked, emailed, texted enough. It was hard, but they understood. My life was simple in some ways, complex in others, but, ultimately, my own.
Until three years ago.
I was in Washington after completing a successful mission that sent an unspecified regime’s chemical weapons program back to the Stone Age. Each day seemed to have a new reason for a never-ending meeting in a windowless room with bad coffee and tasteless sandwiches. Any moment I could, I was outside. One day, the meeting ended early thanks to a little something-something in the chicken salad, which I was not responsible for but did appreciate. To celebrate my foresight to choose yogurt and fruit salad, I went for a run. You just never know when the difference between a good and bad day comes down to stamina, training, and moving just a little bit faster. I was in a park with a hundred other people who escaped work early, enjoying the feel of real air on my skin, the sunshine on my face, the pavement beneath my feet. Then he ran into me. Literally.
Gavriil, which is pronounced similar to Gabriel, came around a bend on the wrong side of the path and POW. Just like in Batman from the nineteen-sixties, the word leapt between us, putting me down hard on the coarse surface.
The asphalt took the skin off my knee when I rolled. I ended up in a very un-professional, un-athletic position. I was about to go Hulk smash on the dumbass when I got an unimpeded view of Professor Bambi on ice. Hulk backed off at the total confusion in those big chocolate eyes. I got to my feet. “What the hell were you thinking?”
Gavriil’s foot kept shooting out from under him, the grass beneath was slick from a hard morning rain. I gripped his arm and pulled him toward the path, arms and legs learning to work together again. On his feet, his eyes several inches above mine, he cocked his head like a curious bird. “I was considering the effects climate change would have on nutrient-limited populations.”
Not what I was expecting. And he just kept going, limping after me when I would have left him, grass and blood coloring his legs. He was like a determined puppy who spoke in big words. What could I do? I took him home.
He was smarter and kinder than any man I had met. He was incredibly absentminded about what he considered the trivial details of life (socks) but obsessive about emerging challenges of our times (feeding already-starving populations). Our first date was Chinese food while I administered first aid to our knees and elbows, after which he rearranged my apartment to make it more efficient.
Weird, but it did work better.
We weren’t an obvious couple, the agent and the professor, but it worked. In all departments. Gavriil ran as an excuse to think. Nobody talked to him when he ran. Nobody asked questions. The running fed a prolific researcher but also developed stamina, which he put to good use along with the springs of our mattress. I accused him once of reading a book on sex because no brainy professor should know as much as he did. He had read a dozen books, he corrected, and had plans for me.
Days turned into weeks. Gavriil and I saw each other every day. He got my sense of humor. I got his obsession for answers. We talked, and we laughed. We shared a passion for fro-yo and nineties music, and tacos.
I was happy, but I knew I was living on borrowed time. I’d been in the States for two months, the longest since I’d gone out on assignments. It couldn’t last. Sooner or later, an assignment would come, and I would leave. I backed away emotionally. It was a survival instinct more than an intellectual choice.
Gavriil’s temper had a fuse a mile long but was connected to a nuclear bomb. It detonated one Sunday after I explained what we had was fun-and-games, and it was time to move on. When the dust cleared, we were engaged, and I had put in for a transfer. Six months later, I was Mrs. Rubchinskaya, we owned a little slice of suburbia, and I was part of a pilot program keeping the sharpest, hardest kids in DC in line.
Life was good, in a different way. I thought I would miss being an agent. How could being a suburban house wife satisfy my need for the thrills, the pace, the intellectual challenge? Holy crap was I naïve. Reality was I didn’t have time to miss the life. My husband invited me into the world of chemical formulas capable of sustaining people rather than killing and maiming. My day job was in the poorly named “Youth Prevention Facility.” Most students lived at home and came to the YPF six days a week as a condition of release. To qualify, kids had to have genius-level IQs and a rap sheet. You know what happens when you combine wicked smart and few moral boundaries? Yep. Moi. Every day I reaped what I’d sown. Those kids challenged my ass from sun up to sun down and were as devious as the high-stakes world I’d left behind.
When I changed my life to make one with Gavriil, I gave up nothing and got everything in return.
For two years, I juggled marriage and chemistry, court appearances and barbecues. I could write a book about it, but it would be boring. Nobody wants to read a story about how happy someone is. Please. We all want to read about hardship and pain. We want to know other people’s lives are worse than ours. We all appreciate a good underdog story but only after the dog has been kicked, stepped on, and lied to.
And so, you’ll be happy to hear, we are at the point where my life went over a cliff.
A year ago, Gavriil had been invited to be the keynote speaker at an international conference on population growth. He was so excited, he called everyone he knew and a few he didn’t. He wrote his speech and rehearsed it to the point he recited it in his sleep. He held me hostage when he couldn’t decide which of the five brown suits he owned to wear. I loved him most when he geeked out. We were flying out together. I would have a little vacation in a city I adored while he razzle-dazzled big ag from around the world. The night before we were to leave, one of my kids was arrested. Andrew Dixon. Everyone has a favorite and Dix was mine. With my husband’s support, I delayed leaving for a day. The next morning, I was at the hearing, at Dixon’s side, when he was charged with hacking into the Taco Taco Taco network and repricing beef tacos to ten cents. He owned the crime but argued extenuating circumstances. He was hungry, and he only had a dollar. I loaned him the money for the fine, which he would earn with a part-time job at said Taco Taco Taco. Everyone was a winner.
While I was at home packing for my flight to Rome, Gavriil was in her streets dying.
The call came from the Rome police. They were sorry to inform me my husband had been killed, a victim of a traffic accident. They said Gavriil stepped into a busy street without looking. He died in surgery, his chest crushed.
I didn’t question the conclusions. I considered handcuffing Gavriil to me when we walked through DC because his attention was everywhere except in front of him. I felt guilty, of course I did. If I’d been with him as we planned, he couldn’t have stepped in front of the car. The one day I thought wouldn’t matter made all the difference in the world.
I did get on the flight to Rome with nothing but my travel documents and a shattered heart.
The next half year was hazy. I’m sure I woke and dressed and ate. I had to have gone to work and paid the mortgage. I must have grocery shopped and cleaned the house and done every other part of daily life, but I can’t recall a detail. Then I opened an email.
November 9, 2018. The short note was written in broken English. I nearly tossed it in the spam folder, expecting a long-distance cousin was secretly prince of the UAE and interested in practicing trickle-down economics if only I could send him twelve hundred dollars to bribe customs officials.
It wasn’t about economics.
“He was pushed. I spended many hours looking to tell you. I telled the police but they no interested. I am hoping I am doing right. Annette Lambert.”
The attached video was three minutes long. The first minutes were of a busy Rome night. Tall, stone building flanked a street with cars jockeying for position like in a Mario Kart game. People hurried along the sidewalk. The ground was glossy, reflecting the lights above. It had rained recently. A w
oman laughed, the one who recorded the scene.
Then he stepped into the frame. My Gavriil. He wore a buttoned-down dress shirt and his favorite brown pants.
The camera stepped down, into the street. A quick toot toot had the camera jumping back to the sidewalk. The image shook, but it captured Gavriil lurching forward, tumbling into the street at the same moment a yellow vehicle crossed through the same point in space. He was there and then he simply wasn’t.
The camera angle fell until only shoes were visible. Shouts in Italian called for an ambulance, for the police. Calls sounded out to help my husband and many answered. Many tried.
Yeah, well, the fuck lot of good it did.
I contacted the Rome police, spoke to the investigating detective. I sent him the video and presented the evidence. I am fluent in Russian, French, and Spanish but not Italian. Still, I pieced together the vocabulary and calmly showed proof my husband did not enter the street out of poor judgement.
I did not scream like a hysterical wife.
I did not throw out baseless allegations.
I did not make mountains out of mole hills.
My career had been law enforcement. Knowing how the game was played, I professionally laid out the evidence, asking his case be reopened. I obsessed over checking voicemail, email. I slept with my phone next to my bed and even took it into the bathroom.
A week after I initiated contact, I received a short email.
Signora Rubchinskaya, thank you for the video you submitted. We have reviewed and determined our original findings are correct. Signor Rubchinsky, regrettably, stepped into a street and was struck by a passing vehicle. We continue to search for the driver and vehicle as time and resources allow. Respectfully, Inspector Luigi Marconi.
I followed up with Inspector Marconi and then his superiors but to no avail. There was sympathy for the widow but no real consideration of new evidence in such a simple case. Every door slammed in my face.
So, I opened a window.
Four months before my death, I contacted Ian. After months of no contact, he could have told me to pound salt. Instead, he went all in for Gavriil. He called in a friend of his own who interviewed Annette Lambert. She lived outside Paris and had been on vacation with friends. He extracted details not clear from the shaking video, including a partial license plate number. Another of Ian’s friends spoke with poliziotto who shared the copy of the final report and a forgotten detail. Gavriil had had a lady caller at the hotel. The hotel staff indicated the woman, who spoke with a Russian accent, visited my husband both days he had been in residence. The police suspected the two were having an affair and it was perhaps because of this woman my husband died. Had he been looking at the street instead of his mistress, they speculated, he would be alive today.
The next day, I decided to kill myself.
Before Gavriil, I was a different person. I reveled in skills and resources, brains and a loose enough moral code to take advantage of said assets. While it may not have been my body in the grave, Gavriil’s wife died with him. Now? I’m just the woman who’s going to set the story straight.
My husband was murdered. Somewhere, someone holds a clue, someone knows something to point me to the next something and so on and so forth until…POW. It was about the details of crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s and the patience and determination to find the place where the killer screwed up and crossed the i’s.
With Ian’s file in hand, I could get down to my own details—what the hell? My phone just lit up like the sky on the Fourth of July. The ground alarm at my place had been triggered. The gas pedal down, I wove through traffic, racing to the brick shit house I bought and customized. The neighborhood I lived in was a few notches up from The Hideaway but still warranted extra measures. I installed a wrought-iron gate outside the open cage of the rear stairs. An electronic fob was needed to open the gate. Rig it, pry it, climb it—like someone just did—and I know it.
Stopped at a red light, my phone flashed yellow. The perp passed the second-floor landing. Only the first two floors in my three-story building housed civilians. The third floor, with its three apartments, was mine.
My phone flashed red, the light turned green, and I left rubber on the road. The perp was now on my floor. Two apartments overlooked the street. One I lived in; the other I worked in. A third, empty apartment faced the parking lot. I didn’t need the space. I needed the privacy.
Only one mile to go, but a mile in the city was like the last two minutes of a basketball game. I hit every fucking light as if the traffic gods were getting off by slowing me down. Stopped at another blasted light, I swiped across the phone, opening an app showing an elongated dot in the empty apartment. The infrared image indicated a single perp. Who?
Irish was my first thought. I’d been careful setting up the cover. There was no way Sam Irish could find me four hours after he knew I was dead.
Except it wasn’t impossible. Irish was that good.
What did Irish want with me? What was the scene at the funeral about? He and I concluded any unfinished business years ago. Okay…technically I owed him one but, come on, can’t a dead woman catch a break? This just wasn’t like Irish. He was all business and no business would bring him to my door after three years.
Finally, I whipped into my lot, feet on the pavement before the engine was off. A glance at the app showed the soon-to-be-dead man was in my apartment, lingering in my kitchen.
The cocky bastard was in my refrigerator!
Not Irish. This was too, well, unprofessional. Whoever this asshole was was about to get a lesson in breaking and entering. My hands breaking his neck, my boot entering his ass. I skirted close to the yellow brick, invisible unless the son of a bitch stuck his head out the window. Around to the gate, a quick swipe of the fob, and I was in. I traded the phone for my 9mm and silently climbed the stairs. The ancient, cast-iron steps were as temperamental as an old dog. I invested serious time learning the bitch’s moods and sore spots. Skip step three. Step on the right edge of step six. Slowly, methodically I crested the third-floor landing. I consulted the app. The perp sat at my kitchen table.
The two front apartments have rear doors off the kitchen to a common hallway. The hallway led to a door and the rear landing, where I now stood. My perp had picked the useless hundred-dollar electronic lock I’d installed but was considerate enough to leave it open for me.
Weapon drawn, I proceeded up the hall, ready to make Swiss cheese of anything that moved. I reached the set of twin doors. The one on the right, to my work space, was intact. The one on the left, to my living space, was ajar.
With a wave of my fob, I entered my work space and then reengaged the lock. The kitchen in my work space had as much to do with food as a cow did with a ladder. This was my laboratory. Behind the vintage nineteen twenties cabinet doors were the latest in chemical engineering tools and materials. Some of my shit was so new, it hadn’t been invented yet.
I checked the app. The son of a bitch was back at my refrigerator. What the hell kind of bottomless pit asshole was in my house? The spot lingered, it fucking lingered at my refrigerator, then it drifted back to the table, only to pong back toward the refrigerator and veer off to the right.
He was in the bathroom.
Seizing opportunity, I stripped off my sophisticated slut boots to slip across the hall on bare, silent feet. Gun raised, I entered my apartment. The bathroom was directly opposite, door closed. I slipped through the door immediately to my left and took a low position inside my bedroom.
My heart pounded loudly in my ears. I counted the beats, willing my pulse to slow. The dress wasn’t meant for surveillance, squeezing the breath from me. I hitched up the short skirt, trading modesty for mobility.
The toilet flushed, but no water ran in the sink. The bathroom door latch clicked as it was freed from the door frame.
I peeked around. A tall, lanky bastard strutted into my kitchen like he owned the place. I stru
ck like a cat, silently, fluidly. A surprised cry went up and then his face pressed in my floor, my gun pressed to his head.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t put a hole in your head a bus could drive through!” He was a good six inches taller than me but the body below mine was thin, nearly hollow.
“I…I didn’t finish my sandwich.”
I shook my head, trying to get the words to make sense. “Your…what?”
“My sandwich.”
That’s what I thought he said. I looked at the face communing with my waxed floors. Unbelievable! Pushing to my feet, I dragged the teenage bag of bones with me. “Andrew Dixon, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Six feet two inches, one hundred sixty pounds of trouble goggled at me with eyes as big as sandwich plates.
“I knew you weren’t dead.” Dix moved like an overgrown puppy, not sure whether to spin, leap, or pee. “I knew you weren’t!” He clapped his hands and pointed at me. “That was you at your funeral today. Right? I thought you were like, your fat sister.”
“How did you know I wasn’t dead? How did you find me?”
“I just sort of sensed it, you know. It’s like, you know the difference between when you really lose something and when you just can’t find it? Yeah. I couldn’t find you, but you weren’t lost.”
Having worked with Dix and a dozen like him for a few years, I’d developed an ear for teen-ese. There were rules and a logic to the speech. I found it best to ignore everything between the commas.
“You just had a feeling.” I slid the safety on the gun and secured it in the kitchen drawer designated for “specialty” cutlery. “Did your feeling bring you here?”
“I followed you here like a month ago. Maybe more. You know, when you started acting weird. After today, well, I don’t know, I like, needed to see for myself. When I saw the body in the casket—who was that anyway?”
