The Death Trust

FOURTEEN

I was getting to know the stretch of road between Ramstein AB and K-town pretty well, but the town itself was a different matter. Masters took the pilot’s seat.

“The address puts her in the historic part — the old town,” she told me.

“Who lives there?” I asked.

“In the old town? Locals with money, and staff officers without dependents. Von Koeppen — people like that.”

I glanced at her. This was our first break. Not knowing where von Koeppen lived, but finding this woman, the one General Scott was apparently putting a hump into.

“Was the phone where you thought it would be?” asked Masters, overtaking a line of cabs, sitting on the horn as she passed so that they wouldn’t pull out in front of us.

“Pretty much,” I said. That won a smile from Masters, a genuine one this time.

“You’re good at this,” she said.

I can deal with abuse; compliments are hard. I ignored it and instead took the photo of Peyton Scott out of my pocket, the one I’d taken from the garage, and propped it on top of the dash. “We need to find out more about this guy.”

Masters weaved through the traffic like a fighter pilot on a bandit’s six. “Mrs. Scott was lying when she said she knew nothing about that second autopsy.”

“Yeah,” I said. I felt that, too.

“And her coming out with the news about her husband having an affair — what did you make of that?”

“I think she said it to throw us. It was almost like she enjoyed telling us. She knows we’re going to find out about this other woman. I’d say she was just getting in first, sort of taking the wind from our sails. Question is, why the games?”

Masters nodded. We were making headway, and not just on the case. “What about the suicide thing?” she asked.

“I guess it’s possible.”

“But do you think it’s likely?”

I considered that before answering. It was the question I’d been chewing on myself, and having difficulty swallowing. “Last night I’d have said definitely not, but now?” I shrugged. “I’m not a hundred percent sure either way, but not because of anything the widow has said. We know that Scott was badly broken up about his son’s death. It hit him hard.” In other words, the palings were up my ass as I sat up there on top of the fence. I remembered the photos of Peyton on the garage wall and on display in the study. The collections were like shrines. But there was something odd about the photos, something niggling at me. I had that feeling. The one where I know the answer will come. It just takes time. Though hopefully not a year’s time, when I’m lying on a beach somewhere.

“But there was nearly thirteen months between the death of the son and the death of the father. If General Scott was suicidal over the news of Peyton, why would the old man take so long to end it all?”

“I don’t know,” I said. That was a good question. “Maybe we can ask Varvara. She might know.”

“Did you notice the books in the general’s study?” she asked. “War history of the last century — almost every single title.”

“The guy was a general. I’d have been surprised if he had a reference library on macramé,” I said. I’d noticed his books, too. He was a big fan of WWII, especially of the conflict in the Pacific.

“I took some pics of his study, his books, when Harmony wasn’t looking.” Masters accelerated into a gap in the traffic and then hit the brakes to avoid crashing into the tail end of a semi.

“Do you always drive like this?” I asked.

“When it’s a rental.” Masters appeared oblivious to this near-death experience.

“Remind me to insist we take your car next time. Why the sudden rush?”

“You’re the one who said we’d be there in three minutes. And what kind of name is Varvara, anyway? Where does a name like that come from?”

We pulled into a parking space outside a newish apartment building that was mostly glass. Actually, it was mostly sky and rainbows if I was to be poetic about it — reflections thereof. Varvara had said she lived on the seventh floor, which Masters confirmed with a simple directory assistance call to the local phone company. Apartment 703. We took the elevator to the seventh floor. The building seemed deserted, although that was probably because most of its residents were at work. Mindless Muzak filtered through hidden speakers and was sucked into the thick carpet underfoot.

Apartment 703 was a short walk from the elevator. I rang the doorbell and waited. Varvara was taking her time. I knocked. I heard a rustle behind the door and a shadow filtered across the spy hole. “Who are you?” came a muffled female voice.

“Varvara Kadyrov? OSI. You’re expecting us.”

“Show me ID.”

Masters and I shared a look. We reached into our coats, pulled our badges, and held them up where they could be seen. The lady was nervous. After a moment or two of hesitation, chains and latches were released and the door opened.

My first impressions of our hostess were colored by the polished nickel-plated Colt 45 that appeared the size of a cannon in her petite hand, which she pointed at my face, chest, groin, and face again as she waved it about. It was a ceremonial pistol, probably the general’s, but it could kill just as effectively as any ten-dollar throw-down. “You come alone?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

Varvara’s eyes swept from me to Masters, and then back to me. She was having trouble believing me.

“We’re alone. Now put the gun down,” said Masters in a soothing voice, trying to hypnotize the woman with calmness. It didn’t seem to be working.

“You have come to kill me,” she declared, hand flexing on the grip, squeezing it, finger squirming inside the trigger guard. The hammer was cocked and I was starting to sweat. I’ve been shot a couple of times and I’ve learned it’s not pleasant.

“No, we’re here to ask you some questions,” I told her. “Nice, easy questions.”

“Abraham said you would come.” Her eyes flicked from me to Masters and back again, not sure who to settle on.

“Put the gun down, Ms. Kadyrov,” I said. She didn’t hear me. The fear in her eyes told me that. Instead she took a two-handed grip on the weapon waggling inches from my nose and turned her face away, either preparing herself for the crushing explosion to come, or to shield her face from mine as it splattered back at her after being dissolved by the slug. I snatched out with my left hand as she clamped her eyes shut, a reflex grab. I wrapped my fingers around the gun and my pinky slipped between hammer and pistol body. Her muscles contracted and the hammer slammed home, the pain it caused completely out of proportion to the almost inaudible chick sound. “Oh, shit!” I shouted. My damn finger might as well have been closed in a car door. “Jesus,” I yelled a couple of times as I did a circuit of her room with the Colt dangling from my pinky. I cocked the hammer and released the digit, then seated the hammer back. I held the gun by my side while I shook my hand and completed a second lap of the room. “Fucking, fuck fuck!” I said. I examined my finger — all the skin had been stripped around the second joint and the pad was already blowing up with a blister full of blood. I wriggled it. Nothing broken. I removed the eight-round magazine, pulled back the slider, and ejected the round in the spout. That extra round told me Abraham Scott had loaded it for her.

Masters had Ms. Kadyrov against the wall, her forearm jammed up against her neck and one of her arms twisted behind her back.

“Let her go,” I said.

“What?”

“Let her go.”

“But she—”

“I don’t have any cuffs and neither do you, Special Agent. She’s not a suspect. Let her go.” It was obvious that Varvara Kadyrov was scared witless of something. Someone. Masters released the woman, who continued to lean against the wall, knocking a Miró print askew. She was crying silently, her back convulsing in short spasms. She turned and sagged against the wall, sobbing, her hand covering her mouth and nose. Masters looked at me, uncertain of what to do. I motioned at her with a waggle of the gun to comfort the woman. She put her arm around Ms. Kadyrov’s shoulders, brought her across to a brown leather sofa in the middle of the room, and seated her.

“We are special agents with the air force, Ms. Kadyrov. Police,” I said, giving my hand another shake. “We’re here to investigate the death of General Scott. It was me who spoke to you on his cell.” The day’s edition of the Trib was on the coffee table; her late lover’s photo was on the front page. I walked into the kitchen, filled a glass with water, carried it back, and put it in front of her. The apartment was small but light, the furniture all new. The place could have been a spread in an Ikea catalogue. Everything had probably been bought at the same time, even the Miró prints, when Varvara Kadyrov moved into this place.

Varvara leaned forward and took the glass. I noticed for the first time how strikingly beautiful she was. What is it with this place, I wondered. Do they put down ugly people at birth here, or just refuse them entry? “Ms. Kadyrov, did General Scott tell you people might come to kill you?”

“Yes,” she said, sipping the water. I gestured at the newspaper in front of her. “You knew the general was dead, yet you called his cell.”

“I wanted to know if it had been found, so that I could be prepared.”

My pinkie throbbed, reminding me. Yeah, she’d been prepared to blow my head off. The woman looked at me over the rim of the glass and I was struck almost dumb by the bluest pair of eyes I’d ever seen, a concentrated blue that appeared to project particles of blueness.

I swallowed and tried not to stare. Her hair was thick and so black it even shone blue in places, and fell loose to the small of her back. She wore a thin blue cardigan over a fitted pink T-shirt, faded hipster jeans, and Nikes. “Are you Russian?” I asked. Her accent was unusual — different from German.

“Latvian.”

“From Riga?” Masters asked.

Varvara nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. Masters and I exchanged a glance. The highlighted flights on the ATC management printout. RIX. Riga.

“Who would be trying to kill you?”

“People…I don’t know.”

I tried a different approach. “Ms. Kadyrov, were you and General Scott lovers?”

The woman shook her head vehemently. “No.”

“What was your relationship with him?”

“He helped me, took me away. I was grateful.”

How grateful? I wondered. “What did he take you away from?”

“Riga.”

“Is that where you met?”

“Yes.”

“How did you meet?” Women who looked like Varvara didn’t hang around the PX. Well, not the PX in my air force, at any rate.

“At a club. My boss introduced us.”

“What kind of club?”

“A table-dancing club. I was a dancer.”

I looked at Varvara with fresh eyes. Yeah, a stripper in a titty bar. That fit, possibly one of the few things that did in this case so far. General Abraham Scott — you ol’ dog, you…

“Are the people he took you away from the same people who killed him?” Masters asked, taking the questioning off in a direction away from lingerie and poles.

“No. Different people, but the same.”

I was starting to feel confused. I hoped that English being a second language for Varvara was where the confusion lay, rather than in deliberate obfuscation.

“Abraham gave me the gun. He said they would try to kill him and that they might come for me.”

They.

“Abraham was a good man. I loved him as a father,” she said, picking up the Trib, looking at the photo of the smiling but now very dead Abraham Scott, and then dropping it back on the table. “Will you kill them?” she asked.

“I don’t know who they are, Ms. Kadyrov. We were hoping you could help us out on that,” I said.

“The establishment killed him — the same people also killed his son.”

“But he was killed in Baghdad,” Masters said.

“Yes. That’s where they killed him.”

They, again. I asked once more. “Who are they, Ms. Kadyrov?”

Varvara shook her head. “I told you, the establishment.”

The establishment. The ubiquitous they. The them to our us.

“Did General Scott talk to you about his son’s death?” Masters asked.

“Yes. He was very sad, and then, when he found out, he was very angry.”

“Found out what?” I asked, playing good cop — dumb-ass cop. No prizes for guessing which one I was.

“That they had him killed. I can’t tell you more. You should ask Abraham’s wife. Harmony.”

This raised Masters’s eyebrows. “What does Harmony know?”

“She knows everything. Abraham was in Riga when his wife phoned him with the news. He was very upset. He loved his son very much. He flew home immediately. I saw him again a week later. He was a very different man. Angry, and so very sad.”

“Was Abraham a regular visitor to Riga?”

“He came several times.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Varvara said, draining the glass.

Looking at Ms. Kadyrov, I had a pretty good idea why. It was obvious we were spinning our wheels here. I wondered whether it was worth attaching a security detail to the Latvian. Were her fears for her safety just a little paranoia, or did these people, whoever they were, want her dead? And why would anyone want to kill her? Unless she knew more than she was prepared to divulge, I couldn’t see that she’d be a threat to anyone, with the possible exception of Harmony Scott, who, it seemed, knew exactly in whose sauce her husband was dipping his salami. I didn’t buy the whole “we were just friends” routine Varvara Kadyrov put on about her relationship with Scott. It was pretty obvious Abraham was bumping uglies with this Russian doll whenever the opportunity arose, so to speak. Christ, who wouldn’t? The woman was about as drop-dead as they came, and, with an accent that made her sound like a Bond girl, she was fantasy on a stick. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Kadyrov,” I said. “Oh, and I’ll be keeping this.” I pulled the big silver Colt out of my pocket, flashing it. “But we’ll assign security to guard your apartment.”

“Yes, thank you. I do not feel safe,” she said.

I put a card from the Pensione Freedom on the table and wrote both Masters’s cell number and mine on the reverse side. “If you think of anything that might help this investigation, please call either of us,” I said, gesturing at Masters with a tilt of my head. “Also, we might have some more questions at a later time so we’d appreciate it if you’d let us know if you’re going somewhere.”

“Yes, of course,” Varvara said. “I’m sorry about your finger. Is it okay?”

“I’ll live,” I said. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the general’s cell. It had my prints all over it and wouldn’t be much use as evidence. More important were the calls he made on it, and we could get a record of those from the phone company. “You might as well have this,” I said, handing the cell to her. General Scott certainly had no more use for it.

“Thank you. Good-bye,” said Varvara Kadyrov as the door clicked shut. Masters and I walked down the hall to a Muzak version of a Ricky Martin tune, which, come to think of it, didn’t make it any worse.

“We should have arrested her,” said Masters as we waited for the elevator.

“Why?” I asked. “What for?”

“Assault with a deadly weapon, for one thing. I don’t appreciate being threatened with a loaded gun.”

“She was terrified,” I said. “And I’d say Abraham Scott was the only friend she had in this country. As for the gun, from the way she held it, I don’t think she’s ever fired one.” And it wasn’t you she was pointing it at. “Also, I think there’s more she can tell us. We just need to reassure her we’re the good guys, rather than on the side of Doctor No.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” My tooth was aching and the cell in my pocket was buzzing. I answered it, listened for a handful of seconds, and then dropped it back in my pocket.

“Who was that?” inquired Masters.

“Bishop. I think it’s quite possible people would have noticed Captain Veitch dissecting Peyton Scott,” I said.

“Because…?”

“It’s not often you see a dead guy performing an autopsy on another dead guy. Something like that would probably draw an audience.”

“What?”

“Bishop just told me Captain Homer Veitch had been dead almost a month before he supposedly performed the autopsy on Peyton Scott. He was killed in a car-bomb incident in Fallujah.”