The Devil_s Garden

TWENTY

Aleks stood in the hallway on the second floor. On the walls were enlarged photographs of Michael and Abigail Roman and their two adopted daughters. One had them standing on a beach somewhere, tall sawgrass tufting through the sand all around them. Another had them all looking down into the lens, as if the photographer was in a hole of some sort. Yet another, when the girls were quite small, showed them standing between Abigail and Michael, against a brick wall. The girls barely came up to the adults’ knees, and the photo was cut off at the parents’ waists. It was clearly meant to be amusing, to show scale. The girls were much taller now. It made Aleks consider how much time had passed since he had ridden down to the Keskkulas’ farm that dark night, how much time had passed since the midwife had found him and told him that Elena had gone into labor early.

He stood in the doorway to their room. There were two beds. The walls were pastel pink; the windows and doors had white trim. The furniture in the room – a nightstand between the beds, a low dresser, a pair of desks – were all white as well. The room was tidy, considering the occupants were four-year-old girls. There was the odd toy on the bed, a sweater folded on one of the desks. Beyond these things, the room was arranged with a casual precision.

In the far corner was a table with four little chairs, a table bearing place settings for three.

The room smelled of powders and fruity shampoo. On the walls were posters and drawings. The posters were of someone called Dora the Explorer. The drawings were of Valentines and shamrocks and Easter eggs.

He crossed the room, opened one of the drawers in the dresser. In it were neatly folded little T-shirts, rolled socks in shockingly bright colors. The second drawer held small plastic purses, folded nylon knapsacks, and two pairs of white gloves.

Aleks reached into the drawer, held the gloves in his hand, closed his eyes, felt their presence within him, saw the women…

… standing by the river, eternal, caught in that ephemeral beauty that knew neither youth nor age… at their feet the clear water runs… the ceaseless cycles of life. He sits on the nearby hill, flute in hand, his pride boundless. As everything around them is birthed and dies, generations flitting by in seconds, they remain the same. Above them, a light in the deep violet sky. Olga, never seen, always present…

The master bedroom on the second floor overlooked the front of the house. It was tastefully, if not expensively decorated. A four-poster bed, a dresser with an LCD flat-screen TV on it, an exercise bike in the corner. This room was not quite as tidy as the girls’ room. It had the look and feel of people who lived their lives in a hurry.

Aleks went through the drawers. It seemed Abigail had control of the top three drawers in the dresser; Michael the bottom two.

The closet was packed with suits, shirts, skirts, dresses on wooden hangers. The shelves were crowded with boxes containing folded sweaters and vests. The top shelf held a box full of photos and memorabilia. Aleks removed the box, placed it on the bed.

He flipped through a pair of photo albums – Michael and Abigail at their wedding, their honeymoon, at Christmas and birthday parties. The second photo album was dedicated to the girls. On the first page was a large photo of Anna and Marya in a crib, in what looked like a doctor’s office. They were no more than a few months old. Aleks tried to recall this time in his life, the first year or so after the girls had been stolen from him. The fury he felt was never far from the surface. The rest of the album was of the girls on the beach, the girls in the backyard, the girls on their tricycles.

At the bottom of the box was a scrapbook of sorts. Near the back of the book he found a series of articles about Michael. The longest article – indeed a cover story – was from New York magazine, dated five years earlier. The title on the front:

A QUEENS PROSECUTOR ESCAPES DEATH TO PUT GANGSTERS AWAY

Aleks flipped to the table of contents, scanned it, then turned to the article. On the left-hand page was another photograph of Michael Roman, this time leaning against a car on a New York side street. Aleks began to read. The lead was typical fluff, but it was in the fifth paragraph that Aleks found something that fascinated him, something he had never expected.

Mr Roman, 30, has served as an assistant district attorney in Queens County for five years. Born in Astoria, he is no stranger to the world of street violence. When Roman was just nine years old, his parents, Peeter and Johanna, were murdered in a botched robbery of their shop, a specialty bakery called Pikk Street on Ditmars Boulevard.

A graduate of St John’s Law School, Roman came to work for the Queens County DA’s office in 1999, and since that time has prosecuted a number of high-profile cases.

Aleks’s eyes skimmed down the page.

Investigators believe the car bombing was the work of the Patrescu brothers in an attempt to delay the trial. Incredibly, in the blast that destroyed half a city block, Mr Roman received just a few minor wounds.

Aleks looked at the photograph of the bombing. The car was a charred shell; the building behind it was all but rubble. It reminded him of many of the city streets in Grozny. It was truly stunning that the man had not been killed. A miracle.

And that’s when it occurred to him. The man who had taken care of Anna and Marya all these years, the man whom his daughters called Daddy, was just like him. Michael Roman had faced the devil and walked away unharmed.

Michael Roman, too, was deathless.