Before Michael could sign off, Aleks took the phone from his hands, closed it. He crossed the room, and began to put things into a shoulder bag.
Michael looked at Emily. With the index finger of her right hand, she touched the floor, and drew a straight line in the dust.
A few miles away, in a small house in Ozone Park, Charlotte Roman sat at the dining-room table, a fresh white sheet of typing paper in front of her, a rainbow of stubby crayons awaiting her muse. In the background, the television played Wheel of Fortune.
Charlotte surveyed the choices of colors. She picked up a black crayon and began to draw. At first she drew a long horizontal line across the bottom of the page, stretching from one edge to the other. She hesitated for a moment, then continued, drawing first the right side of what would be a rectangle, then the left. Finally, she began to complete the shape, carefully connecting the two sides at the top…
…creating the ridge line of the roof, though Emily Abigail Roman was far too young to know what a ridge line was. To her it was just the top of the house. She ran her small finger through the dust, keeping the line as straight as possible. Underneath the ridge line she made two smaller rectangles, these of course being the windows. Each window had a cross in the center, which made four smaller windows. Beneath the windows…
…she drew a pair of even smaller rectangles, wide and thin, which were flower boxes. Charlotte put down the black crayon and picked up the red one. It was almost halfway gone, but that was okay. Gripping the small crayon tightly, she made little red tulips in the flower boxes, three flowers in each. When she was satisfied, she picked up the green crayon, and filled in the stems and leaves. All that was left to do was the front door. She selected a brown crayon…
… and made a doorway in the dust. With one final poke of her tiny finger, she made the doorknob. A door was useless without a doorknob. Emily Roman looked at her drawing. There was one last touch. She reached forward, and swirled her finger over the chimney. The last little curlicue was the smoke.
FIFTY-THREE
Aleks paced back and forth. He spoke rapidly, drifting from Estonian to Russian to English. He held his knife in his right hand, and as he turned he tapped it against his right leg, slicing the black leather of his coat. To Michael, who had seen his share of unhinged defendants, Aleks was coming apart.
Aleks stood directly in the front window, his back to the room.
“Things go full circle in this life, do they not, Michael Roman?”
Michael stole a glance at Abby. She was rocking back and forth, pulling on the pipes behind her.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked.
Aleks turned to face them. “This place. I can smell the yeast in the air. Once it is in the air, it never leaves, you know. I’ve heard of a bakery in Paris, a shop known for its sourdough breads, that has not used an active culture for more than a hundred years.” He turned to glance at Emily, back. “Do you think things remain? Things like energies, spirits?”
Michael knew he had to keep Aleks talking. “Maybe. I -”
“Were you here when it happened? Did you see it?”
Michael now knew what he was talking about. He was talking about the murder of Peeter and Johanna Roman. “No,” Michael said. “I didn’t see it.”
Aleks nodded. “I read about you. About the incident with the car bomb.”
Michael said nothing.
“You were supposed to die that day, yet you did not. Have you ever questioned this?”
Only every day since, Michael thought. “I don’t know,” he said, hoping to find some common ground with this madman. “Maybe I was destined for something else. Maybe something better.”
“Yes,” Aleks said. “Destiny.” He began to pace back and forth again, now behind Emily. Out of the corner of his eye Michael could see that Abby had begun to work the copper pipe from its mooring. “Tell me. When you were about to die, how did it feel?”
“It felt like nothing,” Michael said. “It happened too fast.”
“No,” Aleks said. “It is the longest moment of your life. It can last forever.”
Michael saw the pipe budge a little more, saw the duct tape on Abby’s wrists begin to fray. Aleks circled behind Emily.
“It was in a place not unlike this that it all began for me,” Aleks said. “I know the feeling. To be brought to the edge of the abyss, and to emerge unscathed. I do not think it was an accident that you came to care for Anna and Marya. I believe it was ordained. Now I must take them home.”
Before he could stop himself, Michael rose from the chair. The words just seemed to tumble out. “I won’t let you!”
Michael glanced again at Emily, at the drawing she had made in the dust. He could not make it out from where he was.
“You should know about their mother,” Aleks continued, moving closer to Emily. “A beautiful young girl. An ennustaja of magnificent power. Elena. She was merely a child when I first saw her. She was the spirit of the gray wolf.” Aleks pointed at the table in front of Michael. “There are two bullets in that weapon. I want you to pick it up.”
Michael froze. “No.”
“I want you to pick it up now!”
Slowly, Michael picked up the pistol. It felt heavy, leaden in his hand. Was it loaded? And if it was, why was Aleks doing this? Michael wondered if he could point it at Aleks, and pull the trigger.
No, he thought. He could not take the chance. Aleks was too close to Emily. “What do you want me to do?”
“There is only one choice. I am going to leave with my daughter, and I cannot take the risk that I will be stopped.”
Michael had no idea what the man meant by one choice. He remained silent.
“First, you will take the weapon, point it at Abigail’s head, and pull the trigger.”
Michael’s heart plunged. “What?”
“Then you will take your own life. You see, it will be seen as a murder/suicide, the logical actions of a man who killed the lawyer who illegally worked for him, then a young thug with whom he had done business. Not to mention the police detective who came to investigate. In your madness, seeing no way out, you brought your wife here, to the site of your life’s greatest tragedy, and took both your lives.”
Michael’s mind began to reel. Abby sobbed. “That’s… that’s not going to happen.”
Aleks crouched down behind Emily. “Maybe there is another choice for you.” He took one of the small, empty glass vials from the chain around his neck, placed it on the floor in front of Emily. He held the tip of the knife just inches from the back of the little girl’s head. “There are other ways for Anna to come with me.”
Abby screamed into the gag in her mouth. She began to rock back and forth violently, pulling on the pipe.
“We do not live in your world,” Aleks said, glancing at his knife. “These things cannot hurt us.”
“No.”
“The choice is between your life and Anna’s. What are you willing to do for her?”
“Don’t…” Michael lifted the pistol.
“Are you willing to trade your life for hers?”
“Stop!”
“Put the gun to Abigail’s head, Michael. If you love this child you will not hesitate.” He moved the knife even closer.
“Wait!” Michael screamed.
Emily looked up at him. In that moment Michael saw his daughter as a teenager, a young woman, an adult. It all came down to this moment.
“Make your choice now, Michael Roman,” Aleks said.
Michael knew what he had to do. Aleks was right. There really was no choice.
FIFTY-FOUR
There had been other suitors over the years, many interlopers in their lives. Once, in a small village in Livonia, a young boy had dared speak with him about his daughter, Marya. The boy claimed to be the son of the town’s bailiff. This was after the second siege of Reval. Led by Ivan the Terrible, there was a sickness in the air, a state of lawlessness that swept the towns of Dunaburg, Kokenhausen
and Wendenthe, and Aleks had dispatched the boy with no consequence.
Marya had been nearly seventeen at the time, a young woman of incomparable beauty. As she and Anna flowered to womanhood, they had begun to manifest small differences, not only in their personalities, but also in their looks. From a few yards away, to most people, they were indistinguishable from each other – their honey-colored hair, their flawless skin, their clear-blue eyes. But a father knows his children.
And now this man. A man who claimed to be their father. Another intruder.
Aleks stood outside the church, a bitter wind cutting along the ridge that led to the banks of the river. Anna sat before him, wrapped in fur. At her feet was a bundle, a swaddled, stillborn infant.
Aleks looked at the imposters.
Next to the dead child sat the grey wolf; primordial siver eyes set deep into the smooth dome of his head.
“Do it now,” he said. “Or I will do it for you.”
The gray wolf bayed.
The man raised the weapon, and pointed it at the woman’s head.
FIFTY-FIVE
The building was a three-store commercial block on Ditmars near Crescent, home to a bodega, a dry cleaner, and the shuttered space on the end. There was a driveway to the right, leading behind the building. Next to it was a six-suite, two-story apartment building. Powell had been by this block many times, but like so much of New York, she hadn’t noticed it.
Above the storefronts were living quarters. Along the block the windows on the upper floors were open, some with sheer curtains billowing out in the warm spring evening, some with the sounds of dinner being prepared, the evening news blaring its tragedies.
Powell stepped up to the front entrance. It was covered by a rusted steel riot gate. The windows were soaped, all but opaque. Everything seemed benign, empty, peaceful. Had she been wrong about this? She had gotten reports from her teams every minute or so. There had been no sign of Michael Roman or the girls, no sign of their cutter.
Fontova came around the corner. He had gone to check the back entrance to the building.
“Anything?” Powell asked.
“The window in the back door is broken.”
“Recently?”
“Yeah. The glazing doesn’t look weathered.”
“Any vehicles?”
“No, but there’s no glass laying on the ground in front of the door.”
“It was broken from the outside.”
“Yeah. And it’s got blood on it.”
The two detectives looked at each other with understanding. “Let’s get some backup here.”
Fontova lifted the handset to his mouth, and called it in.
That’s when they heard the gunshots.
FIFTY-SIX
The blasts were deafening in the confined space. Michael was stunned at how easy it was to do what he had done, how little pressure was needed to pull the trigger, how short the journey between life and death. He had talked about it for many years, had sat in judgment and conclusion of those who had said things like “it just went off,” and “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” never having any understanding of the process.
Now, having pulled the trigger, he knew it wasn’t that hard. The difficult part was making the decision to aim the weapon.
Michael had pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired the rounds. He kept pulling the trigger, but it seemed that Aleks had told him the truth. There were only two bullets in the gun. Michael ejected the magazine and threw the two parts in different directions.
As soon as the echo of the gun blast began to fade, Aleks stood. Michael could see in his eyes a fierce determination to bring this all to a close. He strode with slow deliberation toward Abby, the knife at his side.
“You have made a mistake,” Aleks said. “You could have made this far less painful for your wife, for yourself, but you chose to defy me. To defy your destiny.”
He stopped in front of Abby, raised the knife. There was nothing Michael could do to stop him.
“Isa!” Emily screamed.
In that second – a moment where Emily cried out the word father in Estonian -Aleks turned, looked at Emily. Michael knew there would never be another moment. He ran at Aleks, hitting him full force in the side, knocking him backwards. The two men crashed into the drywall with a bone-jarring force. Aleks righted himself, and lashed out with his fist, catching Michael high on the left side of his head, stunning him, showing him flashes of bright white light behind his eyes. Michael went down to the hardwood floor, but was able to roll, absorbing most of the impact with his shoulder. He sprang to his feet, and was now face to face with Aleks. Aleks slashed at the air between them, closing the distance little by little. The blade came in high, but Michael sidestepped. He caught the blade flat on his upper arm.
Michael backed across the room, toward his daughter. In the background he could hear Abby screaming into her gag, the sound of the metal pipes clanging as she struggled ferociously to break free. Michael was breathing hard, the blows he had taken to the head were clouding his vision. Aleks slashed at him again, this time slicing open the back of Michael’s right hand. As Michael pulled away, he stumbled over something on the floor, momentarily losing his balance.
Aleks lunged toward Emily. With all rational thought beyond him, Michael righted himself and threw his body between them. The knife carved into the left side of Michael’s stomach, slicing away a large flap of skin and flesh. Michael fell back into the wall, the pain a searing lava flow down his right side. He felt his leg go numb, slid down the wall, his hands groping for purchase. He found one of the dismantled table legs leaning in the corner.
As Aleks moved again toward Emily, Michael struggled to his knees, clawed his way to his feet. He raised the table leg high, and brought it around in an almost complete arc, hitting Aleks on the side of his head, stunning him. The sound of the impact was loud, the long rusted bolt fastened at the top of the table leg cut deep into Aleks’s scalp. Aleks’s eyes rolled into his head as he staggered back and went down, blood now seeping from the head wound. Michael brought the bludgeon down twice more, all but shattering Aleks’s right knee.
Michael limped across the room, lifted his cuffed hands over Emily’s head, picked her up, the right side of his body now grown ice cold. He glanced behind them, at the front door of the bakery. It was locked with a deadbolt, secured by iron bars. No exit. Aleks was between them and the back door. He was trying to get to his feet.
Michael looked at Abby. Her eyes told him all he needed to know. She wanted him to get out with Emily while he could.
Filled with a suffocating fear, with no way out, Michael held Emily close, and lurched toward the steps leading to the second floor. He angled his body against the handrail for balance. One step, two, three. Each effort drained him of energy, leaving slick scarlet footprints on the worn treads. Moments later he heard Aleks mount the stairs behind them, dragging his fractured leg.
“You will not take her!” Aleks screamed.
The knife came down, splintering the dry steps, just inches behind Michael’s feet.
“She is my daughter!”
Again the knife descended, this time tearing at the hem of Michael’s jeans, the hot blade cutting through the heel of his shoe.
When the two wounded men reached the top, Aleks swung the knife in a whistling arc, nearly taking off the newel post on the landing. The blade missed Emily’s head by inches.
Michael turned the corner at the top of the stairs, his sense memory propelling him down the short hallway to his old bedroom. He burst through the door, ran toward the window, nearly slipping in his own blood.
He put Emily down at the far side of the room. He knew the door had a slide bolt, and if he could just make it back, he could bolt the door, and it would give him a few precious seconds to break the window and get the attention of someone on the street.
But when he turned back to the door, Aleks was there. He lunged at Michael, the knife out front. At the last second Micha
el was able to dodge the full force of the blade, but it sliced into his left shoulder. Michael shrieked in pain as Aleks turned and came at him again. This time Michael warded off the blow as Aleks slammed into him, the momentum of the attack propelling them both into the closet door, knocking it off its hinges, choking them in the dust and soot of decades. The two men fell to the floor, struggling for control. Michael grabbed his attacker by the wrist, trying to hold off the knife, but Aleks was too strong.
As Aleks brought the blade ever closer to his throat, Michael sensed something brushing his cheek, something in the debris on the floor of the closet. He flashed on a mental image, the drawing Emily had made in the dust, the crude sketch of a little house, a cottage with a chimney and smoke.
Good night, my little nupp.
It was something that lived in Michael’s heart, his memory: his mother on the fire escape, a warm, summer evening, the skyline of Manhattan before them like a glittering promise.
Next to him was his mother’s knitting basket. The basket with the Estonian cottage embroidered on its side.
Michael felt the knife tip nearing his Adam’s apple. With all his strength he pushed Aleks away from him, buying seconds. His hands still cuffed, he tore the knitting bag open, groped inside, felt the needle, the vintage twelve-inch Minerva steel needle his mother used for lace.
As Aleks came in for the kill, Michael summoned the final vestige of his strength. He did not have time for thought. He swung the needle up with all his power, plunging it into Aleks’s left temple.
Aleks screamed and staggered back, blood gushing from the wound.
Michael tried to stand, to cross the room to Emily, but his legs would not hold him. A darkness began to descend. The last image Michael had was Aleks staggering across the room, red eyes bulging in their sockets, spinning wildly, blood spraying the walls, his voice a rutting animal sound.
I’m sorry, my love, Michael thought as the last of his strength left him, the light wavering, then falling dim. I’m sorry.
The Devil_s Garden Page 29
