The Sin Collector

ANDREY

Andrey had never seen such a beautiful woman. Not beautiful in the contemporary sense, when some disproportionate feature gives a face its charm or makes an actor famous. No. This woman carried a kind of nineteenth-century grace about her. The regularity of her features combined to make the perfect portrait: the gentle oval of her face, the big blue eyes, the even, light-colored eyebrows, the slight nose, the smooth forehead. The face was astonishing, but Andrey was surprised to find that it did not seem to affect him. Was it because he was in love with Masha? Or was it just that perfection like this inspired only chaste admiration? That was probably a load of bull. According to Fomin’s interview with the downstairs neighbor, Masha’s stepdad’s feelings hadn’t been chaste in the least.

“Ms. Kuznetsova,” he began. “Why didn’t you show up at your meeting with Dr. Belov yesterday?”

Anna raised her perfect eyebrows just a bit. Evidently, her repertoire of facial expressions was limited.

“He canceled it.”

“Did he call you?”

“Yes. Well, no. Someone he works with called, and said that Yury—Dr. Belov—was stuck at the office. They said he wouldn’t be able to come.”

“Had he ever canceled a meeting with you before?”

Anna paused to think. “Yes, two or three times. But he always did it himself. I didn’t think he trusted his colleagues enough to give them my phone number and let them in on that, uh, side of his life. It startled me a little.”

“And how long have you two been—meeting?”

“About two years,” she answered calmly, brushing a shining lock of hair out of her face. Andrey couldn’t help watching. Beauty really was a force to be reckoned with. “I used to be his patient.” She smiled simply, revealing her perfect teeth. “He felt sorry for me.”

Andrey didn’t have time to be surprised before she looked him straight in the eye and asked, “Did something happen to him?”

“He”—Andrey cleared his throat—“he died. He was murdered yesterday evening. I’m very sorry.” Andrey thought he was ready for any sort of reaction, from crystalline tears to muffled sobbing. But the beauty surprised him. Her face, up to then so exquisitely immobile, suddenly began to shake as if she were having a fit. Her lips gaped open, contorting her mouth; her temples throbbed; her chin jutted forward, then back again; and her eyebrows shot up high, buckling her perfectly smooth forehead into accordion-like folds. The whole effect was so ghastly that Andrey jumped up, nearly knocking over his chair.

“My medicine!” Kuznetsova moaned, in a strange, low voice, through a clenched jaw, and she pointed to a cupboard.

Andrey yanked open the door and saw it right away, a vial in the very center of the lowest shelf. There was a stern warning on the label: “BY PRESCRIPTION ONLY.”

“Thirty drops,” she wheezed, and Andrey began counting out drops into a glass that was waiting conveniently nearby. Time seemed to stand still. Andrey switched off his peripheral vision. He could see nothing but the drops of medicine splashing one by one into the glass. Fifteen. Sixteen. He couldn’t make a mistake, and he couldn’t look at the terrifying sight sharing the room with him.

When the medicine was finally ready, he held the glass as she drank it down, her lips trembling, and fell back in her chair. Andrey turned to the window. Kuznetsova’s apartment was on the third floor of an old building, and it looked out over a quiet courtyard. How many of these were left in Moscow? Must be expensive, he thought suddenly. I wonder what she does for a living. Or is she just the fortunate spouse of some crooked cop?

“Excuse me,” a calm voice finally pronounced behind him. “I didn’t expect that. I should be used to it by now.”

Andrey turned around, and saw the flawless beauty restored.

“It was all so strange. The phone call, the fact that Yury didn’t cancel himself. He knew how important it was for us to meet at least once a week. You probably think he was just my lover,” she said, bowing her head a little, and laughing sadly. “But he was my therapist, too. Do you have any cigarettes?”

Andrey nodded and got the pack out of his pocket.

Kuznetsova took an awkward drag. “I really don’t smoke much. But Yury said it was all right after an attack. It calms me down. Anyway, yes. My husband was the one who first brought me to the clinic. He didn’t even know the difference between psychologists and psychiatrists. They were all just head doctors to him. That’s what I thought, too. It seemed all right, fancy, nice and clean. Not some haunted old asylum. But Yury—he realized quickly that I needed a different kind of doctor, not a psychologist. He was scared for me. My husband was, too.” Kuznetsova laughed again. “But I was only scared of my husband. Anyway, Yury prescribed some medicine and some intensive therapy. My husband got jealous. He thought I wanted to go to the clinic just to see Yury. And that was true, actually, but Yury didn’t know it. To make a long story short, my husband forbade me to go back, saying he’d kill Yury if I did. By that time, I had stopped being afraid of dying myself. So Yury volunteered to go on treating me, but somewhere other than the clinic. I don’t think he really knew, at the start, how things would end up.”

“What about your husband? Did he ever guess? From what I understand, he’s—”

“Yes, he’s a police officer, too. But no, he never knew. I filed for divorce. He didn’t want to let me go. He watched me like a guard dog. A nervous, vicious guard dog! I knew,” she said, lowering her voice, “that he had killed people before. He swore he hadn’t, but I could feel it! I couldn’t go on living with him. Before Yury came into my life, I had thought about leaving him some other way. I tried suicide, but he always caught me in time. When I met Yury, though, it was like someone had switched on the light at the end of the tunnel. As long as I saw him at least once a week, I wasn’t afraid anymore. So it’s actually hard to say what he was for me. Did I need him as a man or as a doctor? He actually said I didn’t need him anymore. He said I was almost all better and that I’d learned how to control myself.”

Kuznetsova paused. “So now I get to test that theory out.” She turned to look out the window. One shining tear rolled down her perfect face. She looked like a fairy-tale princess.

Andrey waited a few moments before asking her the next question, the decisive one.

“Ms. Kuznetsova, how can I get in touch with your husband? Your ex-husband, I mean.”

“That would be difficult.” A remarkable smirk crept across her face.

“I can go see him at work, or—”

“He’s at Vostryakovsky.”

At first, Andrey didn’t understand.

“The cemetery. My husband is dead. He was killed in the line of duty a year and a half ago. He never did give me that divorce. And he never planned to. Yury and I didn’t meet in this apartment, because it was too far for him to travel. Besides, I shared this place with my husband, and Yury was squeamish about things like that.”

Andrey said nothing. A police officer, capable of murder. Someone indirectly acquainted with Masha’s stepfather. Judging by his disappointment, Andrey could tell how much he’d been counting on this interview to confirm his new lead. He stood up slowly and said good-bye.

As she showed him out, the princess made one more comment, seemingly less to Andrey than to herself.

“They were both so scared for me. But here I am, alive and almost well. But not them. It’s so surreal.”