A Whisper to the Living

1

It was cold.

Not so cold that Yuri Platkov would not do that which he had promised himself to do if the man was still sitting on the bench in front of the path into Bitsevsky Park. It was cold, but the boy could detect a faint drifting fall of moisture from the dark sky.

The man was still sitting there.

Was this the fifth day in a row? Yuri counted backward and decided that it was. It had snowed three days earlier, putting another white layer on the park. The man had been there before and during the snow.

Every afternoon as Yuri walked home from school the man had been sitting there. Sometimes he was reading a paperback. Sometimes he seemed to be just thinking. He was a block of a man made even bulkier by the thick coat and fur hat he wore.

The man with a broad face similar to that of hundreds of thousands of Russians did not look up from his book. Yuri approached and sat at the end of the bench away from the man, who turned a page slowly.

Darkness was no more than an hour away and people were trudging or scurrying home from work after emerging from the Bitsevsky Park Metro station at the end of the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line, the orange line.

Yuri, eleven years old and supremely confident, felt safe enough. The man was old and certainly slow, his left leg oddly still. Yuri could run with confidence if he felt the need. He was the fastest boy in his form at school. Thin, pale-skinned with blond hair under his earflapped wool hat, he had nothing much to look forward to when he got to the apartment where his mother might be home and his father certainly would not be yet. His grandfather would be in front of the television, whatever he was watching the enemy. They would be having a dinner of salad with the vegetables chopped into little pieces, leftover bean soup with sour cream, and sautéed mushroom stew with onions and sour cream served over mashed potatoes. The mushroom stew was also left over and stored in those plastic see-through containers with blue plastic tops.

Yuri’s mother worked in the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Solnovo, seventeen miles outside of Moscow. Her job was quality control, watching the bottles fill with syrup, water, and carbonation, looking for even the slightest imperfections. She was well paid. She had frequent headaches. On headache days, Yuri sometimes prepared simple dinners or at least opened the plastic containers, heated the contents, and set the table.

Yuri’s father was a bartender in Vodka Bar near the Park Kulutry Metro stop. His father, if he were still home, would leave for work shortly after Yuri came home. Though Yuri was sure his father loved him and his mother, he did a poor job of hiding his desire to get away from his father-in-law each night.

And so Yuri sat on the bench.

The man read on.

“Why are you sitting here?” Yuri said after a minute or two.

“I am waiting,” said the man.

“For whom?”

“You,” said the man, still not looking at the boy.

“Me?”

“Or someone who would be curious enough to wonder who I might be and why I was sitting here on an early winter day.”

Yuri didn’t understand, but he was curious.

“What are you reading?”

The man held up his ragged paperback. Yuri looked at the cover. The title was in English, a language Yuri was slowly and painfully learning in school.

“Ice?”

“Da, yes.”

“You are reading an English book about small rodents?”

“Not ‘mice,’ ” said the man. “Ice. Frozen water. It’s a story. I would offer you a Red October chocolate, but you might think I was a dirty old man.”

“Are you?”

“No,” said the man.

“Then you can offer me a chocolate.”

“What makes you think you can trust me?”

“You have been coming here for five days. You are slow. I think I can trust you. At least I can get away if you try to do something. People are passing and I am sure I am faster than you are.”

The man shifted his weight and with a grunt reached into his coat pocket and came up with a brown see-through bag, which crinkled invitingly. Yuri had a near passion for chocolate. The man reached into the already open bag and fished out a wrapped candy. Yuri could see the familiar image of the woman marioshki figure on the wrapper.

“Throw it,” Yuri said.

The man threw the candy and Yuri caught it. Yuri could catch almost anything thrown to him. He fully expected to be the goalkeeper on his lower school team next year. Yuri pocketed his candy. The man opened a second one and popped it into his mouth, stuffing the wrapper into his pocket.

“You want another for here?”

Yuri shrugged. The man came up with another wrapped chocolate and threw it to the boy, who caught it.

“You are a goalkeeper,” the man said.

“Yes,” said Yuri, this time unwrapping the chocolate and taking a small bite from the end. The candy cracked between his teeth and spread its taste as he chewed it.

“My son is a goalkeeper,” the man said. “He was a goalkeeper. He’s old enough to be your father.”

Yuri wondered how old this man must then be, but he was too polite to ask. “What position did you play?”

In answer the man leaned forward and rapped his knuckles against his leg. It sounded like a knock at Yuri’s front door.

“No position,” said the man. “My leg was lost when I was your age. So you see that there is no way I could chase a ten-year-old goalkeeper down the street.”

“I am eleven and I wasn’t worried,” said Yuri, popping the last tidbit of candy into his mouth.

“It is probably a good thing to worry when you are near the park and nightfall is approaching.”

Two women passed them by with barely a glance. The women were both carrying their string grocery bags weighted down with the night’s dinner. Both women were fat, possibly sisters. The fatter of the two kept shaking her head as the other woman raised her voice higher and higher. Yuri caught the word baranina. Lamb.

Yuri and the man watched the two women until they were far down the street and the loud voice was lost in a riff of the wind.

The man shifted again, holding the candy in his right hand and fishing his wallet out of an inner pocket with his left.

If he offers lots of money to do some unspeakable thing, I will go find a police car. There is always a police car roaming near the park. This is because. .

The man held open the wallet to show a police badge.

“I am a policeman,” said the man. “My name is Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

“My name is Yuri Platkov. I know why you are sitting here.”

Porfiry Petrovich nodded.

“Him,” said Yuri. “The Bitsevsky Maniac.”

“You know about him?”

“Everyone who lives near the park knows about him. He attacks the old people who hang out around the park. He beats their heads in with a hammer and hides their bodies in the bushes. Some say he has killed fifty or more. You expect him to walk up to you and confess?”

“It has happened in the past, but I do not expect it.”

“How would he even know you were a policeman?”

“He would know,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

“So, you thought someone would just come and sit down and tell you that they knew who the Maniac was?”

“No, but that would be very nice, nicer even if the murderer himself were to sit where you are and confess. I do not expect it, but it would be nice.”

“Then why sit here if you do not expect someone to come to you?”

“You came,” said the policeman.

Cars were moving cautiously in front of them, windshield wipers rubbing faster than was called for by the falling cold mist. Both Yuri and Porfiry Petrovich watched a large white Chaika stretch limousine with tinted windows come by.

“We don’t see cars like that here very much,” said Yuri. “There’s no place a car like that could be going.”

“There’s a big dinner at the Posvit Hotel on the other side of the park,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “Our government is trying to convince a Japanese investment group to develop an area called Gargarin Street.”

“How many has he killed now?” asked the boy.

“Many,” said the policeman. “I can’t tell anyone because the number might be important when we catch him.”

The official internal number of victims, Porfiry Petrovich knew, was nineteen. The unreported number of victims was fifty-one. It was assumed that there were other bodies to be found.

“You are not hoping he will come out of the woods to confess?” Yuri said.

“No, I am not.”

“Maybe you are hoping he will come by and try to kill you?”

“I have considered that possibility,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “I expect that at some point he will come and sit down as you have. Or perhaps he will pass by letting our eyes make contact.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?” Yuri asked.

“Perhaps,” said Porfiry Petrovich, urging his plastic and metal leg to allow him to rise with some dignity.

Now that he was standing, Yuri could see that the man was neither tall nor short. He stood with his legs apart, reminding the boy of a cylindrical box of kasha on the kitchen shelf.

“Shall we shake hands, Yuri Platkov?” Porfiry Petrovich said, holding out a thick right hand.

Foot traffic had grown heavier. People streamed from the direction of the subway. It was safe enough. He placed his hand in that of the policeman. Yuri steeled himself to squeeze, but it wasn’t necessary. The policeman’s grip was firm but gentle.

“The Maniac has moved the bird feeders,” said the boy.

The policeman knew the makeshift bird feeders made of shoe boxes or cereal containers. The feeders, tied by string or ribbon, were hung from the low branches of trees with piles of seed inside left by bird lovers. They existed in almost all parks within the city.

“Moved them where?” asked the policeman.

“Farther from the path, deeper into the trees,” said the boy. “People have to move away from the eyes of others to put in seeds or watch the birds feed. And some of the old men with no home eat the seeds.”

No further clarification was necessary.

“I will look at the bird feeders,” said the policeman.

“Paka, good-bye,” the boy said.

“Paka, Yuri Platkov,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

Yuri started to move away and then turned to face the standing man.

“Are you important?”

“I am Chief Inspector in the Office of Special Investigations.”

“I have never heard of such an office.”

“Good. That is as it should be.”

Yuri turned and hurried away adjusting the scarf around his neck as he followed the jumble of icy footprints in the thin layer of snow that crackled under his feet.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had been handed the case of the Bitsevksy Maniac only six days earlier. For the past two years, the murders had been under the jurisdiction of the MVD, Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del, the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The existence of the murderer had been kept a secret. But the public began to learn of the Maniac through word of mouth, surviving relatives, and newspapers and small magazines that couldn’t be silenced. They learned of it long before Rostnikov was handed the case. The MVD was embarrassed and the way out of the embarrassment was to issue an internal document, which they were certain would be leaked, stating that their resources had to be concentrated on terrorist threats and that the Office of Special Investigations was ready to take on principal responsibility for finding “the murders in and around Bitsevsky Park.”

Fortunately, Igor Yaklovev, Director of the Office of Special Investigations, was quite willing to take on the high-profile case. The Yak was always willing to take on cases that no one else wanted provided there was a payoff in the end, be it an acknowledgment of his skills as an investigator, the possibility of a promotion, or the likelihood of an opportunity to blackmail a government official or a wealthy citizen.

The Yak, lean and always impeccably dressed in a dark suit and tie, seldom left his office in Petrovka, Moscow’s police headquarters, though it was rumored that he engaged in regular martial-arts exercises with Vladimir Putin, with whom he had served in the KGB in St. Petersburg. The Yak relied completely on Rostnikov and his team to successfully take care of the investigations for which the Yak took credit. In turn, Colonel Yaklovev did his best to protect Rostnikov and his team when trouble arose.

Now in his own office down the hall from the Yak’s, Rostnikov continued to go over the MVD reports on the investigation. The stack was at least three inches high, and he was sure that everything had not been turned over to him. It was only natural that MVD officers and the Yak would pull out possibly vital documents to hold for possible gain or simply to hamper the investigation in the hope of failure.

Still, there was much in the pile of folders and reports, including the photographs of all the victims and the autopsy reports. Rostnikov had divided the pile of reports in two and given one stack to Emil Karpo, the gaunt, almost cadaverous inspector who would certainly read every word placed in his hands. Rostnikov, however, would move through instinctively, catching a word here, something in the corner of a photograph there. Sometimes he knew what to look for, but more often he would simply sense what he needed to know, though he would acknowledge there were times in the past when he missed some vital piece of information. In a few days, he would switch piles with Karpo and go through the same process again. They were a good team. Karpo was an analyst of fact with no imagination. Rostnikov trusted his imagination and doubted facts.

The others on his team who shared an office with Karpo were on other cases. Rostnikov’s son, Iosef, mistakenly named for Stalin when the Man of Steel was still considered the savior of the Soviet Union, was investigating the death of a professional boxer and the wife of a giant of a man who was on the verge of becoming heavyweight champion of the world. That investigation had just begun. Iosef was assisted by Akardy Zelach, the Slouch, a lumbering man of no great investigative skills but often surprising talents.

Zelach’s mother was in the hospital almost certainly dying from an ailment that the doctors could not identify. Zelach, who was forty-one years old, lived with and listened to his mother. He could not even imagine what life might be like without her. On the other hand, Sasha Tkach dreamt of living without the daily unannounced appearances of his mother.

Sasha’s mother, Lydia Tkach, was a retired government apparachnik who was given to shouting directions to her son about how to live, what to eat, and what he could do to try to win back his wife and Lydia’s two grandchildren. Lydia was nearly deaf. Lydia had a pair of very effective hearing aids. Lydia refused to wear them. Sasha was sure this was because she had no interest in hearing what anyone else had to say.

Sasha was still morose and not a joy to be with since his wife, Maya, had moved to Kiev with their two children. Sasha had willingly fallen victim to one woman too many.

Elena Timofeyeva had her own concerns, primarily the coming wedding to Iosef Rostnikov, son of Porfiry Petrovich to whom she was to be married in five days. It was required that they were to be wed exactly thirty-two days from the time that they registered with ZAGS, the all-powerful office that controlled marriages. At the moment, however, Elena and Sasha were assigned to protect a British journalist about to look at organized prostitution in Moscow.

Any of them could be pulled from there to concentrate on the Maniac if and when they were needed.

Rostnikov looked at his watch. It was growing late, but he had one important stop to make before heading home. He had removed his leg and massaged the stump when he had sat back behind his desk. He had no recollection of the time when he was a child and had a functioning left leg. He well remembered his atrophied leg, a burden he had grown accustomed to. He missed the leg, which resided in a large jar in the underground laboratory of the possibly mad scientist Paulinin, who claimed to engage in conversations with the dead. Now Porfiry Petrovich faced the prospect of allowing the never-fully-welcome device to take on much of the weight of his considerable bulk.

It couldn’t be helped. He picked up the phone on his desk, pushed a button, and told Karpo to meet him two levels below Petrovka.

Rostnikov knew that the Yak’s assistant Pankov listened to all conversations in both Rostnikov’s office and the shared office of his team from a trio of hidden microphones. Rostnikov took some pleasure in sometimes leading the often-perspiring little man astray. This time, however, there was no deceit.

It was time to pay a visit to the dark labyrinth of a laboratory on the second level below the ground floor of Petrovka where the bespectacled Paulinin worked on and talked to the dead amid chards, fragments, books, and jars of formerly living parts and tissue of man and animal.

In one of the larger jars on a shelf not far from the two autopsy tables, Rostnikov’s shriveled left leg floated languidly.

“I will need to see them all,” Paulinin said, looking over the top of his rimless glasses.

He wore off-white latex gloves and a wrinkled but clean laboratory coat with only a few stains of plum-colored blood on the left arm and a small dark ochre splatter on his chest.

Neither Karpo, who was generally regarded as the closest thing Paulinin had to a friend, nor Rostnikov reminded Paulinin that there were at least fifteen bodies of the Maniac’s victims, two of which now lay naked in front of them.

Rostnikov nodded his agreement. The MVD would resist. They had no desire to open the door to evidence of any more victims. Rostnikov would need intervention from the Yak, but he was sure he could get it. Karpo did not nod. He would check the reports and notes on his desk to determine where they might seek additional victims.

Meanwhile, on the two tables in front of them lay the nearly white corpse of an old man with a chest covered by wiry black-and-white hair. The other corpse was of a man about forty-five or fifty who had the dark cast and looks of a person whose ancestry hinted at Mongol. The corpses lay on their sides facing away from each other. Paulinin stood between them, a proprietary hand on the shoulder of each as if he were trying to mediate a dispute between the dead.

Rostnikov and Karpo could see the back of the head of each corpse. The skulls, shaved by Paulinin and the hair carefully placed in Ziploc bags, were crushed, revealing dark jagged wounds of deep red and black.

“My friend here,” said the scientist, patting the arm of the old man on his right, “was homeless before I took him in. He washed frequently but without soap. He cut his own hair. You can see that here. He could not reach all the way back, which suggests arthritis.

“He had a place in the park near a large oak tree. There are traces of leaf and root fragments of oak in his hair where he ran his fingers through like a brush. Wait. The traces are also on his quite filthy clothing, and some of those traces go back at least a month.”

Paulinin moved around the tables and into the darkness next to a desk overflowing with books and reports, with barely enough room for the computer. Paulinin used the mouse and scroll and music began.

“Schumann. Piano. My guests will be more comfortable with Schumann, don’t you think?”

“How could they not be?” asked Rostnikov.

With the sound of Schumann behind him, Paulinin returned to the corpses and whispered to the younger dead man, the one who looked like a Mongol, “You have not been forgotten.”

The scientist continued, “These new friends were killed by the same person. Wounds are so similar that even those idiots who have been looking at the other corpses could see that. What may be even more consequential is that the same weapon was used, a claw hammer, first the blunt end and then the claw. From behind. The killer is strong, probably young. I will know after examining the other corpses if all were murdered by the same person and with the same hammer.

“If so. .,” he continued, looking at Karpo and Rostnikov to complete his thought.

“If so,” said Karpo, “he has the hammer, and if we find one where he lives or works you can tell if it is the murder weapon.”

“I can,” said Paulinin with a grin of satisfaction. “But there is more. The dolts who wrote reports on previous victims noted that there was evidence that they had been drinking shortly before they died. They were correct. It takes no great forensic skill to open a stomach and find alcohol, but. .”

He paused again for his students to finish the sentence.

“. . but what kind of alcohol?” asked Rostnikov.

He could have used a chair at this point. His left leg was beginning to feel irritation in its mooring.

“Precisely,” said Paulinin. “The alcohol was a cheap off-the-shelf wine called Nitin from Greece. Cheap though it may be, it is not usually the first choice of the homeless. There are cheaper ways to get drunk.”

Paulinin paused again, waiting.

Rostnikov felt like raising his hand as he had done almost half a century ago in school. Instead, he looked at Karpo, who nodded and said, “Therefore it is possible the wine belonged to the killer.”

“Right. It is too late to be sure it was drunk by any of the victims except, perhaps, for these two and the two or three before them. The autopsy reports on the previous victims mention nothing about the brand of wine. The dolts missed it,” said Paulinin.

“So,” said Rostnikov, “we check with the shops in a five-mile radius of the park for ones that carry Nitin and see if they can think of any customers who have been buying Nitin at least since the days of the first murder.”

“Assuming, of course,” said Paulinin, “that he has been using the same wine since he started.”

There was a soft ripple of the piano and rapid rise to a near-frenzied crescendo.

“You disabled the microphones?” asked Rostnikov under the frantic pianist.

“Moments before you arrived.”

Paulinin’s laboratory was bugged not by Pankov but by some department of the former KGB. It was to be expected, as whoever was listening accepted the likelihood of being discovered. Once disabled, someone would come in when Paulinin was not there and move the microphone or microphones. Then the game of Find-the-Bug would begin again. In spite of the clutter, the size of the laboratory, the ones who were doing the listening were having trouble finding a new location for their devices.

“When you have the next victim,” Paulinin said, “do not let anyone but your people touch it. Bring them exactly as you find them. These two here have been hosed down. They were delivered nice and clean. I want them dirty if dirt was their destiny. I had to look harder than necessary for evidence traces. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” said Rostnikov.

“Fortunately, their hosing down was as inept as the examination of the content of the stomachs,” Paulinin continued. “Look.”

The scientist turned the body of the older man farther on his side, holding him in place and reaching down with his gloved hand to push the dead man’s ear forward.

“See?”

Rostnikov and Karpo moved forward to look. Rostnikov saw nothing.

Karpo said, “A small green spot.”

“A stain,” said Paulinin with a smile.

“What is it?” asked Rostnikov.

“Juice. Guava juice,” the beaming scientist said, still holding up the body.

“You analyzed it?” asked Rostnikov.

“I tasted it,” said Paulinin.

The image of Paulinin touching his finger to his tongue after pressing it, probably moist, against the tiny dot was less than tantalizing to Porfiry Petrovich.

“Would you like to try?”

“I don’t care for guava juice,” said Rostnikov.

Karpo declined with a nod.

“Suit yourselves,” said Paulinin, easing the body down. “It is a distinctive taste. In any case, I shall see if there is a trace of guava juice in our silent friend’s stomach. If not. .”

“Then the killer may have been the one drinking guava juice,” said Karpo. “The wine was for the victims.”

“Precisely, but in fact he did not have to drink the wine or the juice,” said Paulinin. “Just touch them.”

“Who,” asked Rostnikov, looking down at the dead man, “would have guava juice on his fingers without having drunk it?”

“How should I know?” asked Paulinin impatiently. “Maybe someone who works with guava juice. Moscow cannot be crowded with purchasers of guava juice and Nitin wine. You are the detective. You find out.”

“We will,” said Rostnikov.

“You want to see your leg?” asked Paulinin.

“Why not?” asked Rostnikov with a shrug. “Why not.”

Aleksandr Chenko carefully removed the cans of sweet potatoes and lined them up on the shelf, labels facing forward, after carefully and quickly examining each can for rust or dents or torn labels.

He had been refilling the shelves of the Volga Supermarket II for the past nineteen years. He was good at it. No, he was perfect at it. It was taken for granted that Aleksandr would have the shelves full, report low inventory or damaged or no-longer-fresh produce, help customers find what they were looking for. Six store managers had come and gone in the past nineteen years while Aleksandr never missed a day, was never sick, never late for work. His reward for this was that he was almost completely unnoticed. It was easy to go unnoticed among the seventy employees in the hypermodern twenty-four-hour supermarket. He could lose himself among the shopping carts and the high metal shelving in the huge storeroom at the back of the store. He could report various damaged cans of juice and take them home. Nitin wine he had to pay for.

Aleksandr had the face of a forty-year-old Russian, smooth shaven, brown hair evenly cut. He was not handsome, but neither was he homely. His face was without blemish, his body neither heavy nor thin, and he was a few inches under six feet tall.

He was paid every two weeks. He never asked for a raise, though he had received four since he had taken the job. Assistant managers rose from the ranks between the many brightly lit aisles under twenty-five-foot-high ceilings and in the dank, dull light of the back rooms. That was fine with Aleksandr, who now backed up to examine the line of asparagus cans in even rows, close together but not quite touching one another.

Aleksandr Chenko believed in setting goals for himself and working to achieve them. The goals could even be arbitrary. Any set of goals worked to give meaning to life. As it happened, Aleksandr’s goals were meaningful. When he completed his quest, he would be famous. That would be good, but the discipline of working toward his goal would be more rewarding.

Aleksandr lifted the empty box and carried it through the door to the rear of the store. The smell of fresh-cut meat greeted him. That was good, one of the many smells he enjoyed: fresh meat, fresh fish, particularly salmon, fruit, vegetables, strong cheese. He placed the box on the floor, took out his cardboard cutter, and gracefully and efficiently broke down the box.

When the day’s work was done, he would take off his always clean apron and place it on the hook behind the door next to Max’s always dirty apron. He wondered how a slacker like Max could do so little work and make his apron so filthy. Aleksandr would select a few items for his dinner and say good night to all. He would smile. They would smile back. He was liked, perhaps not well liked because of his reclusive ways, but liked nonetheless.

He would walk through Bitsevsky Park as he always did, barely looking into the snow-covered trees. He would pass close to where his two latest victims had been found only two days ago.

Aleksandr Chenko wondered if the police would figure out what he had been doing for the past two years. He wanted to tell them, but he was no fool. There would be no phone calls, no e-mails, and no notes to the media.

Once in the one-room, always neat apartment in which he lived alone, he would put away his groceries, prepare a small meal, have a half glass of nearly black Georgian dry Saperavi. Working in a supermarket had advantages. There was still a boycott of Georgian and Moldavian wines, a punishment for dealing with the West. However, various products, like Georgian wine, could always be obtained from longtime suppliers. Aleks would drink the wine after dinner and then sit back and wait an hour or so to see if the feeling would come. If it did, he would retrieve the hammer, go to the park, and kill someone. It really didn’t matter who. It was neither “the who” nor “the when” that mattered; it was “the how many.”

Yes, he wished to succeed in his goal, but he was not, as the frightened public or the police certainly believed, insane. He could wait for the feeling, wait indefinitely. It was not a compulsion, barely an urge. He made no plans to kill but would strike when the feeling was upon him.

There was a problem. He was never certain about how many of those he killed had been found by the police. It was essential that they be found. He did not bury them and did not really hide them. He did not go into the depths of the park dragging the dead and bleeding.

It was incredible that so many police regularly searching the park were unable to find the dead.

Aleksandr waited awhile and then said, “Not tonight. Not yet.”

After eating a hot pork sandwich, Aleks got undressed, removing all his clothing, and then moved to his bed in the corner with the book he had been reading. He put an arm behind his head atop the two pillows, placed the book on a third pillow on his stomach, and began to read.

He did not turn on the radio or listen to music. He had never understood the lure or pleasure of music. The instruments that created these sounds had struck him since early boyhood as ridiculous toys. He preferred silence.

Later he would turn out the light, put the bookmark in the page, and place the book on the floor. Finally, in the darkness, he would reach down and gently fondle his testicles. There was nothing consciously sexual in his doing this. It was comforting and helped him fall asleep.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” he would tell the darkness. “Perhaps tomorrow.”