Madness Treads Lightly

CHAPTER 11

Katya didn’t hold up well in the cold, and lately she was always freezing. She hadn’t left home since she’d gotten back from Mitya’s funeral. And no one had stopped by or called. They’d forgotten about her as if she’d died along with Mitya. Katya tried not to think about the fact that there wasn’t a kopek in the house, the ampoules were running out, and she couldn’t buy more. She’d be getting feverish soon.

She would try to hold out another day on pills. Wouldn’t it be better to shoot up all the ampoules, swallow all the remaining pills, and wash them down with two hundred grams of pure alcohol? There should be a bottle in the sideboard. It would be an easy and pleasant death, much more pleasant than what Mitya did to himself.

Why didn’t he do that if he’d decided to kill himself? There’s plenty of medicine in the apartment. It’s much simpler and more pleasant to wash a handful of tabs down with pure alcohol, fall asleep, and not wake up.

All of a sudden it occurred to her that Mitya hated drugs so much that he preferred the noose. This was followed by another thought: why did the cops and doctors keep telling her that he was high? And the scratches on his arm… They really were there, the scratches and needle marks. It was just that up until this minute, Katya hadn’t wanted to think about it. Every thought of Mitya caused her physical pain; it was like withdrawal. Everything in her head was confused and she was starting to feel nauseated. Her ears were ringing and she wished she could just shoot up and forget everything. But she had to make the ampoules last.

Glancing at the clock, she discovered it was already evening and remembered she hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. She had to get up and at least have some tea. She didn’t feel like crawling out from under the blanket, but hunger was clawing at her. Throwing Mitya’s jean jacket over her robe, she headed for the kitchen.

All there was in the refrigerator was a dried-up piece of cheese and half a can of corn. In the cabinets, there was stale bread, tea, and sugar. Katya had barely eaten in the past few days. While the kettle was heating, she sat immobile on the stool and looked through the doorway. Again she saw Mitya’s bare feet, large body, and strangely calm, almost indifferent face.

Slipping her hand into the pocket of his jean jacket, Katya felt a pack of cigarettes, which she pulled out. Kents. Mitya had smoked half the pack. A crumpled slip of paper fell out of the pocket. Katya picked it up and smoothed it flat.

It was a page from a notebook, crumpled-up and torn in two places. A few lines written in Mitya’s fleet handwriting were crossed out. That was how he sketched and crossed out drafts of his poems. But these weren’t poems.

Katya smoothed the page out with her open hand on the kitchen table, lit a cigarette, and started to read:

The kettle was whistling desperately. Katya turned off the gas, mechanically poured herself some tea in Mitya’s favorite mug, stirred in the sugar, took a big swallow, crushed out her cigarette and lit another.

“Mitya could have been killed, after all,” she said out loud, evenly. “He was up to something. He was all worked up and kind of nervous. This page was torn out of his notebook. He was going to throw it out but forgot and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He’d been wearing this jacket lately. He’d put his leather jacket on over it.”

Katya quickly rummaged through the jacket’s other pockets and found a handkerchief, a few subway and telephone tokens, and three thousand rubles. Nothing else.

I have to find that notebook! Katya thought. He tore this page out of his diary.

Mitya used to write potential lyrics that came to mind in his diary, as well as telephone numbers, plans, and upcoming events.

Katya rummaged through Mitya’s bag and was surprised to find, amid the sheet music, a forensic psychiatry textbook. But no notebook.

She rummaged through his desk drawers, looked under his dresser, and went through the bookshelves. The small but fat little book that Olga had given Mitya six months ago, a fancy diary bound in black leatherette with embossed gold lettering spelling out Kokusai Koeki Company, Ltd. in roman and Cyrillic letters, wouldn’t just go missing. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture and things in the apartment, and his diary was usually either in his bag or his jacket pocket.

Katya was so worked up she actually forgot about shooting up. Her head hurt. Another half an hour and the pain would be too much for her to think. But if she shot up, she wouldn’t be able to think clearly or remember anything. And she had to remember.

Polyanskaya is that Lena who took me out on the stairs to shoot up. But what does she have to do with this? What investigator did Mitya want to ask her about? Her thoughts started getting confused and slipping away from her. What if I call her? Just call and tell her about this strange piece of paper? I think her husband works in the police. Yes, Mitya did say something about that. He went to visit her. At the time I think he said Lena Polyanskaya wasn’t anything like a police officer’s wife.

In addition to her headache, Katya had a bad chill that sent her into a cold sweat. But instead of shooting up, Katya took some aspirin, washed them down with cold tea, and ate a piece of bread and cheese and a spoonful of cold corn straight from the can. That didn’t make it better, but Katya had firmly decided not to shoot up until she found Polyanskaya’s phone number and called her. Right then she remembered she hadn’t seen Mitya’s address book once since his death, either. It was the same brand as his diary, only very small and flat.

That’s gone missing, too! The window was open and the telephone wasn’t working. Someone could have easily broken into the apartment, shot Mitya up with narcotics, and… He and I had gone to bed together, we’d been so, so sleepy. He was tired. He’d been on his feet all day since eight in the morning, and I’d shot up and taken two sleeping pills. I don’t remember. I don’t remember much of anything. Lord, it hurts so much. I need to shoot up. Right now, this minute.

There’d been just four ampoules left. And now there were three. She felt relieved and good after shooting up. Katya suddenly understood perfectly that her husband hadn’t killed himself.

“He’d gotten himself into some mess with his producers,” Katya said out loud, calmly and almost joyfully. “All those producers have ties to criminals. Mitya’s no suicide. He doesn’t have that sin on him. And I don’t, either. I didn’t drive him to the noose.”

Her sudden joy was replaced by sobs. Crying made her feel better, like when you’re a child and you cry your heart out and suddenly the world seems new and bright, as if cleansed by your tears. Katya decided she had to call Mitya’s parents immediately and tell them not to agonize. Then she had to go to the church and order prayers for the dead. Olga would give her some money for that. Or she could order them herself. After all, it didn’t matter who did it.

Her mother-in-law came to the phone.

“Nina Andreyevna!” Katya blurted out emotionally without even saying hello. “Mitya didn’t do it. He was killed. You have to understand, he didn’t commit suicide. Do you hear me? I know now for sure that someone broke in through a window that night.”

Tense silence in the receiver. Finally Nina Andreyevna spoke, barely audibly.

“Don’t. Katya. Please, don’t talk about it.”

“Why not? This is very important—”

Katya didn’t get a chance to finish. Olga picked up the extension.

“Please, don’t bother Mama right now,” she asked calmly.

Katya flew into a rage. “I’m not bothering anyone! Am I supposed to apologize to everyone for not dying instead of Mitya? I’m sorry. It’s not my fault I’m still alive. But you all have to know that Mitya didn’t do this. He was killed. You can go to church tomorrow morning.”

“You just shot up and this happy thought has occurred to you?” Olga asked coldly.

“Lord, how sick I am of all of you!” Katya exclaimed. “You only hear and see yourselves. For you, everyone else is a scoundrel and an idiot unworthy of your attention. You come down off your high horse and understand this: your brother was killed. He didn’t hang himself!”

“Fine.” Olga sighed. “Can you try to calm down and explain to me why this suddenly occurred to you?”

“No, I won’t! I won’t calm down, and I won’t tell you anything. I don’t want to talk to you.” There were tears in Katya’s voice, and she blurted out with a sniff, “Give me Polyanskaya’s telephone number!”

“What for?”

“She promised to find me a good addiction specialist,” Katya lied.

“You want to try again?” Suddenly Olga felt uncomfortable. It’s true, I’m too hard on her. That’s wrong. She’s a human being, too, and she’s having a very bad time of it now, much worse than me. She’s completely alone.

“I do.” Katya sniffed again.

“Fine. Maybe it will work this time.” Olga recited Lena’s number from memory, and Katya wrote it down with a pencil stub on the same sheet of paper she’d found in Mitya’s jacket pocket.

“You don’t have any money, though,” Olga said gently. “Would you like me to come bring you some food?”

“Thank you, but I’ll get by,” Katya proudly refused.

Polyanskaya’s line was busy when she dialed it a few minutes later. Katya was moaning from impatience. She needed to talk to someone right away, someone who would listen sympathetically. And who else could she talk to? Regina Valentinovna, of course! While Polyanskaya’s line was busy, she could dial the other number.

As always, Regina Valentinovna picked up the phone immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Katya said softly. “I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this.”

“Have you run out of drugs?” This time Regina’s voice sounded cold and irritable.

“I’ve got three ampoules left. I’ll be out pretty soon. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want me to give you some money?”

“No.” Katya was embarrassed. “Have I ever asked you for that? I just wanted to ask your advice. Maybe I could try to go to the hospital for treatment again?”

“Sure. Give it a try,” Regina replied indifferently.

“It’s very hard. Even in the expensive hospital Olga put me in, they didn’t do anything to make withdrawal easier. Now she won’t have anything to do with me, and I can only get treated for free in those awful psych clinics. I won’t last there. I wanted to ask you, there are all kinds of charitable societies and centers where they help people like me. You must know them. Only it has to happen quickly. I can’t be alone. I can’t take care of myself. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, what to do with myself, or how to go on living.”

“You’ve really decided to quit?”

“I decided a long time ago, only it just doesn’t work. You were the one who told me I was weak willed.”

“And why do you think your will is stronger now?”

“Oh, I don’t. But now I know I have to do it. For Mitya’s sake. He’s gone, of course, but I’m certain his soul will rest easier if I stop shooting up. I also wanted to tell you one thing. I only just realized it tonight. It’s very important.” Katya’s voice was triumphant. “Someone broke in through the window that night.”

“And who might that have been?” Regina asked.

“The murderer,” Katya whispered.

“I wonder what kind of murderer this was.”

“I don’t know yet. But I do know for sure that he came in through the window.”

“You’ve decided to play Holmes?”

“You don’t believe me either!” Katya exclaimed in despair.

“Who else doesn’t?”

“Olga and all of them.”

“To believe you, we need facts. Do you have any?” Regina asked quickly.

“Yes! But very few for now, and I’m afraid they’ll seem silly to you.”

“Why would they? First tell me, and then we can put our heads together.”

“Okay. First of all, two things have gone missing, Mitya’s diary and his address book. Secondly, I found a crumpled-up piece of paper in his jacket pocket.” Katya read into the receiver what he’d written. “And thirdly, I remembered that that night the wind blew the window open, so it wasn’t locked. Someone broke the latch, climbed into the apartment, and then, after killing Mitya and making it look as if he’d hanged himself, climbed out.”

“Have you told anyone other than me about this?” Regina asked gently.

“No. No one wants to listen to me.”

“All right, then, Katya dear. In no case are you to tell anyone anything. If someone did kill Mitya, then it was someone very close to him. If you start sharing your suspicions, you might share them with the murderer without even knowing. To be perfectly honest, what you’ve told me really isn’t enough. Don’t be mad, but this seems a little like gibberish. You don’t want them to stick you back in the nuthouse, do you? It’s better to keep quiet. I promise I’ll help you sort this out. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Katya whispered, distraught. “I won’t tell anyone anything.”

After hearing Lena’s story about the fake doctor’s visit, Misha Sichkin sighed heavily into the receiver and said, “Lena, do you miss life on the wild side? Was it too much for you to ask her name and call the clinic before opening the door and letting her in?”

“Yes, it was,” Lena admitted. “And awkward. I can’t keep a person waiting on the stairs all the time I’m trying to get through on the phone. Do you know what it’s like to try to get through to a pediatric clinic?”

“I know you’re capable of opening the door without even asking who’s there or looking through the peephole! How am I supposed to get even the most elementary rules of safety into your head?”

“Misha, I get it. You’re two hundred percent right. It’s my own fault. But tell me who this woman might be. And why she would do it. Could she really have been casing our place?”

“Did you call the clinic?”

“Of course. This morning.”

“Naturally, they confirmed that there are no wellness checks going on now.”

“Right. And no one had any plans to give flu shots.”

“Maybe it was a doctor from another clinic? And there was a mix-up with addresses?” Misha suggested.

“Oh, how I wish I could believe that!” Lena sighed.

“If only you’d asked her her name. Listen, Lena, can you repeat the part about the suicide?”

Lena briefly retold Mitya’s story and mentioned her conversation with her husband on the subject.

“Things are never boring with you, Lena.” Misha smiled into the receiver. “You like to complicate everything. I agree with Seryozha. I don’t see anything criminal in the Sinitsyn story, either. Whereas this doctor… It’s not like she was casing your place, though you never know. The only consolation is that you and Seryozha don’t have anything in particular to steal. Your apartment’s hardly going to interest serious housebreakers.”

“You mean only serious ones have places cased?”

“As a rule, yes. Listen, Lena, I’ll send someone over and he’ll set up a security alarm at your apartment. If anything happens, we’ll have a team there in five minutes. Only don’t forget to turn it on, okay? My man will give you detailed instructions. Lock all the doors. And don’t let any strangers in.”

“Misha, thank you, and forgive me.”

“I can’t!” Misha grumbled angrily. “When Seryozha comes back, I’m going to tell him I gave you a good tongue-lashing.”

“All right, Misha, I get it. Don’t make things worse than they already are. You know, the moment she left, for some reason I felt like a squeezed lemon. I got a headache, my knees got all wobbly, and I got sick to my stomach for no reason at all. At the time, I didn’t even suspect she wasn’t a doctor from the Filatov. I thought I’d been talking to a sweet, normal person, and then there was the feeling, you know, as if she’d x-rayed me or hypnotized me. Just tell me honestly what you really think. Could there be any connection between Sinitsyn’s suicide and the doctor’s visit?”

“Just think about it. What kind of connection could there be?”

Regina always took a dislike to beautiful women, especially if they were also smart. But unlike other women, she was honest about it. She could admit to herself that another woman was prettier, smarter, and better—and hate her for it. Regina’s hatred had no consequences, provided the woman didn’t get in her way.

Everything about Polyanskaya irritated her. Her fresh, regular features, her long, graceful neck, her dark brown hair casually pulled back in a heavy knot, her short, slender figure, even her little diamond earrings. But she especially didn’t like the woman’s hands—the delicate, fragile wrists, the long, slender fingers, and the shortly cut nails.

How much time and effort Regina had devoted to her own hands with their stubby fingers, broad palms, and fat, plebeian wrists! Even the surgeons at the Swiss clinic couldn’t do their magic on her hands.

Of course, Regina had taken a risk when she cooked up the Filatov doctor scheme. But she believed that she should always meet and talk to whomever she was going to be dealing with. She wanted to know them up close, insofar as that was possible. After that, she could decide whether or not her opponent was dangerous and what to expect from him.

She’d prepared painstakingly for the meeting. She’d put a lot of serious thought into altering her appearance, so that the image of the bedraggled but sweet and attentive pediatrician from the Filatov Hospital was 100 percent authentic.

She may have made one mistake: she stayed too long. It was a forgivable mistake, though. Anyone can just be tired and relax over a cup of good coffee. It’s perfectly normal.

Not that she could have left earlier. She had to finish the conversation. If Polyanskaya had kept up the topic of suicide and told her Sinitsyn’s story, she could have been reassured, at least for a while.

But Polyanskaya didn’t say a word about her friend’s brother, though she couldn’t not have been thinking of him. Another woman in her place would definitely have laid out the story. In the situation Regina had deftly set up, Sinitsyn’s suicide just begged to be brought up.

But Polyanskaya didn’t say a word about it. That meant, first of all, that she’d taken her friend’s brother’s suicide to heart and was thinking about it intently. Secondly, it meant that subconsciously she didn’t believe it was a suicide. And thirdly, it showed that she wasn’t indiscreet.

Am I taking this too far? Regina asked herself. Why would Polyanskaya get involved in all this? Sinitsyn wasn’t family. He was barely anyone to her. And she immediately answered her own question: No. Not too far!

Olga Sinitsyna, the dead man’s sister, wouldn’t dig deeply. First of all, she didn’t have much information to work with, and, secondly, she was inattentive to detail. She hadn’t even noticed the scratches on her dead brother’s arm. But most important, she had a completely different mindset. She was a tactician where Polyanskaya was a strategist. She thought concretely; Polyanskaya, abstractly. Polyanskaya knew how to generalize and analyze unobtrusive, inchoate facts. The analyst in her would think and act until she had dug all the way to the truth. No matter how dangerous it got for her.

Not only that—the graver the danger, the more decisively she would act.

What if I just got rid of her? Regina thought. It can’t be a suicide this time, obviously. Perhaps an accident would work. But that’s dangerous, too.

As she sat in this stranger’s cozy kitchen drinking strong coffee, Regina’s spine tingled, sensing the danger presented by her generous host. And now the Crowell article, which Regina herself had just read.

She came across the cassette with Mitya’s new songs by accident. For some reason it was in the nursery, at the bottom of Liza’s toy box. Lena set everything aside and slipped it into the tape player. A pure, low voice began,

Lena listened to song after song. Mitya was talented, of course. But it was hardly worth his time to go looking for producers. His songs had a keen sense of time, but a time irrevocably in the past. They sounded great at a songwriters’ conference and in nightclubs. But to be successful these days, you had to write and sing differently than he did.

“The Tobolsk rain runs down my collar,” the tape player sang.

Yes, of course, we were talking about our trip through Tyumen Province, Lena remembered. Lord, that was all we talked about that evening. Why? It’s been fourteen years, after all. Why was Mitya so adamant about revisiting that subject?

The song ended and so did the tape—nearly. Lena was about to take it out and turn it over when suddenly she heard light coughing and Mitya’s voice.

“I may be acting foolishly and improperly. It would be simpler to go to the prosecutor. Simpler and more honest. But I don’t trust our justice system. In a year, the statute of limitations will run out. It might not even apply to you. Your crimes don’t have a statute of limitations. Actually, the law isn’t my strong point, and I have no intention of hiring a lawyer to explain to me the best way to blackmail you. I might not do anything at all.”

More coughing. Then a nervous laugh.

The tape ended. Lena quickly turned the cassette over and listened to the other side from beginning to end, but it was all songs. While they were playing, Lena took down the latest edition of the Criminal Code and searched the index for “statute of limitations.”

The tape player sang,

Lena listened to the songs and read the Criminal Code. Fifteen years after a felony is committed… The question of applying the statute of limitations to an individual who has committed a capital crime… shall be decided by the court. If the court does not deem it possible to release said individual from criminal responsibility in connection with the statute of limitations, then the death penalty and life imprisonment are not applicable.

“Fifteen years,” Lena murmured thoughtfully. “Mitya said the statute of limitations would run out in a year. That means it was fourteen years ago. Fourteen years ago the three of us, Olga, Mitya, and I, were traveling through Tyumen Province. That’s exactly what Mitya was talking about two weeks ago. Lord, what nonsense is this? Who was he trying to blackmail? And what with? What do Tobolsk and the statute of limitations have to do with anything?”

“He was hinting at some similarity, something about some law…”

Lena gave a start when the phone rang. Who could that be so late? she thought, looking at her watch. It was 12:30.

“Lena, hello,” an unfamiliar woman’s voice said softly, with a touch of hysteria. “I’m sorry. I probably woke you. Don’t you recognize me?”

“No.”

“It’s Katya Sinitsyna.”