The Devil_s Garden

THIRTY-EIGHT

While the forensic team processed the Arsenault house, Powell and Fontova returned to the office. Sondra and James Arsenault had followed them into the city, and would be looking at mugshots in hope of identifying the man who had broken into their home.

Back in the office, Powell and Fontova had run thirty-five names, and found that many of the people whose cases Harkov had lost no longer lived in New York. Of the seven who did, two were currently in jail, five were gainfully employed, more or less, and had, since their incarceration, kept their noses clean.

None had records that would suggest anything near the propensity for extreme violence seen in that room. This was not an ag assault that had gone too far, or an accidental death that occurred as the result of some pushing match that went terribly wrong. This was the work of a bona fide psychopath.

Things were not always so straightforward. There was recently a case where an employee of a gas station was robbed at gunpoint. Thirty minutes later, while being interviewed by detectives, the man had a heart attack, collapsed and died at the scene. In another instance, one that occurred before Powell became a homicide detective, a man was attacked on a Forest Hills playground, wounded with a knife. The man slipped into a coma, where he remained for years. In the meantime, the attacker was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted of aggravated assault, for which he served eight years on a fifteen year sentence. Three weeks after the attacker’s release the man in the coma died.

Were these homicides? There was no question in Desiree Powell’s mind – or indeed the mind of any detective Powell had ever worked with – that they were. The decision, however, was not up to the police. It was up to the district attorney. Plus, it was one thing for a police officer to be certain of someone’s guilt or culpability in a crime. It was another matter to be able to prove it.

Powell studied the possibilities. Nobody jumped out.

She handed the list to Marco Fontova. The addresses were spread out over Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Briarwood, Cypress Hills. In other words, all the way across Queens County, and halfway across Brooklyn.

Fontova reached into his pocket, handed Powell a dollar.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

“I have to go to fucking Cypress Hills?”

Powell nodded, took the bill. “Reach out to Brooklyn Homicide if you have to.”

Fontova pulled a face. There was no love lost between Brooklyn detectives and Queens detectives. Sometimes they had to work together, but they didn’t have to like it.

Grumbling under his breath, Fontova grabbed his coat and left the office.

Powell sank back in her chair. Seniority had its perks, she thought, one of which was certainly not the part where she was older than half the people she worked with.

She checked off a list of people she would be interviewing, then poured herself some coffee. Contrary to popular belief, the cop-shop coffee at Queens Homicide was good. Somebody’s wife or girlfriend – Powell could never keep the rosters straight – had signed somebody up for a Coffee of the Month-type club and either on a lost bet, or under threat of exposure for some office indiscretion, the coffee ended up in the small fridge they kept. Today it was a Kona blend.

Powell sat down at the computer.

She popped in the CD that had been duped from Viktor Harkov’s hard drive. It seemed the man saved everything, including JPEGS of menus from all the takeout restaurants near his office. Powell waded through the first half. Nothing.

She was just about to get on the street when she saw that hidden in one of the folders was a database with only a handful of names and addresses. It was separate from the others. It was mixed in with the files of letters and correspondence. The file was called NYPL 15.25 EFFECT OF INTOXICATION UPON LIABILITY. But that’s not what it was at all. Instead, it was a short list of names, addresses, and other data, with the subhead of ADOPTIONS 2005 (2).

What have we here? Powell thought.

In April 2005 Viktor Harkov brokered the adoption of two sets of twins. One, as Powell already knew, went to Sondra and James Arsenault. In addition to the two little girls adopted by Sondra and James Arsenault, a pair of twin girls, born in Estonia, processed in Helsinki, were adopted by a couple then living in the Whitestone section of Queens. A shiver went up and down Powell’s back when she saw the names. It was one of her favorite feelings.

She picked up her phone, dialed.

“Tommy, Desiree Powell.”

“Hey,” Tommy Christiano said. “You ready for us already?”

“From your mouth Jah’s ear, eh?”

“What’s up?”

“Do you know Michael Roman’s wife?”

There was a slight hesitation on the other end. Powell waited it out.

“Sure. She’s great. Michael married up, big time.”

“What does she do?”

“She works at a clinic up in Crane County.”

“That’s where they’re living now?”

“Yeah.”

“Must be nice,” Powell said. “She’s a doctor?”

“No,” Tommy said. “She’s an RN. Why do you ask?”

“Do you know where she worked before that?” Powell continued, steamrolling over Tommy’s question. She knew that this tactic would not be lost on a prosecutor.

“She was an ER nurse at Downtown Hospital.”

B just rounded the corner, sliding into C, Powell thought. She was not quite there, but she could smell it. She felt the rush. She made her notes, kicked the small talk down the alley as far as it would go. She wanted to ask Tommy a bit more about Michael Roman’s wife and children, but it made more sense to be coy at this moment. Tommy Christiano and Michael Roman were close.

“Is Michael still in the office by any chance?”

“No he’s gone for the day.”

“Ah, okay,” Powell said. “Well, Tommy. Thanks a lot.”

“No problem. Let me know if -”

“I sure will,” Powell interrupted. “I’ll keep you posted.”

Before Tommy said anything else, Powell clicked off. She turned her attention back to the computer monitor. She recalled Sondra Arsenault’s words.

I never got her last name, but I remember she was a nurse. An ER nurse. Her name was Abby.

Powell tapped her pen on the desk. She got back on the Internet, did a search for Michael Roman. In a few seconds she got a hit on an article that had been written in New York Magazine a few years ago, a cover story about how Roman had survived an attempted car bombing. Powell remembered the incident well. She had never seen the article.

She began to skim the piece of writing for details. It was lengthy, so she decided to just do a Find search on the page. She got a hit immediately.

“Interesting,” she said to no one in particular.

Michael Roman’s wife was named Abigail.

Sondra and James Arsenault sat in the squad room of the 112th Precinct. Sondra had never been in a police station before, and she had no idea how unrelentingly grim they could be.

In her time as a social worker she had met many types of people. Granted, the nature of her work meant that many of the people with whom she came in contact were in some way troubled but, for Sondra Arsenault, this was both the joy and the challenge. While it was true that some people entered the mental health field with a god complex – an exaggerated sense of hubris in which a patient is formed and molded by the therapist into a vision of normalcy – most of Sondra’s colleagues in the field were dedicated people to whom a person entering into therapy was not a blank slate to be recreated in some sense of normalcy, but rather that few behaviors are hardwired, and that adjustment could be made.

Until today. As she scrolled through computer screen after computer screen of mugshots she realized she had seen more evil in an hour than she had seen in her previous eighteen years in the field of mental health.

Looking at these faces she was reminded of the difference between working the city and working the suburbs. Perhaps Detective Powell had been right when she asked her about where she applied her science, and whether there might be a difference in what happened in a city, as opposed the comfort and safety of the suburbs.

The detective was right. There was a difference.

Powell stepped into the cramped, windowless room. “How are you guys doing?”

Sondra looked up. “All of these men have broken the law?”

Powell cleared a chair of papers, sat down. “Some more than once,” she said with an understanding smile. “Some more than ten times. Some are working their way through the alphabet – assault, burglary, car theft, driving without a permit.” She winced at her reach on that one, but no one seemed to notice. “Have you seen anyone who looks familiar?”

“This is what frightens me,” Sondra said. “I have seen a few people who look familiar. Or maybe I’m just projecting.”

“Don’t worry if you don’t find the man who broke into your house among these photographs. He may not be in the system. It’s always worth a shot, though.”

Powell opened up a 9? 12 envelope. She had printed off two pictures from the New York Magazine article. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to show you a couple of other photographs.”

“Sure,” Sondra said.

Powell held forth the first one. It was a picture of Michael Roman, taken from the cover of the magazine. He was leaning against a BMW convertible coupe, black trousers and open white shirt, his suit coat over his shoulder, looking pretty GQ, if Powell had to say so herself. Powell had cropped out the magazine’s logo, and everything else that might indicate it came from a magazine. She didn’t want to give the woman the impression this was some kind of celebrity, even though he probably was in certain New York legal circles. It might taint the woman’s identification, although Powell found Sondra Arsenault to be a careful, meticulous professional, and didn’t think she’d fall for the hype. “Do you know this man?”

Sondra took it from her, looked at it closely. She shook her head. “No.”

“This was taken five years ago. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m quite sure.”

“He doesn’t look at all familiar to you?”

More scrutiny, probably just to be polite. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life.”

“Okay,” Powell said. “Thanks. Mr Arsenault?”

James Arsenault shook his head immediately. Powell noticed that his lips were chapped and cracked and white. In his hand was a small bottle of Tylenol. He was probably taking one every twenty minutes, without water. This guy was a wreck.

Powell put the first picture back in the envelope, handed the woman the second photograph. This one too had been cropped. “What about her?” she asked. “Does this woman look familiar?”

Sondra took the color copy of the magazine page. “That’s her!” she said. “That’s the woman who gave me Viktor Harkov’s phone number.”

“This is Abby?”

“Yes. No question.”

“And you don’t know her last name, where she lives, where she works, anything else about her?”

“No,” Sondra said. “Sorry. I met her at the conference, we talked about adopting, and she told me that she and her husband had just adopted, and that she knew a lawyer who did a really good job. She gave me Viktor Harkov’s phone number, and that was about it.”

“Did she say anything to you about his methods, the way he worked?”

“No,” Sondra said, perhaps more forcefully than she would have liked. “I mean, I later got the impression that Abby may not have known that the guy was a little…”

“I know what you mean,” Powell said, finding no reason to supply Sondra Arsenault with a pejorative term for a man who was at that moment being dissected on a cold steel table in South Jamaica. They all knew who he was and what he did. The question, if there would be a question, was what did Abby Roman know about the man, and when did she know it? Before she recommended Harkov to the Arsenaults, or after.

There had been two sets of twins illegally brokered by Viktor Harkov in 2005. Two sets of girls. If Harkov’s killer had visited the Arsenault house perhaps he was now in search of the other pair of twins. Perhaps he had already found them. Perhaps there was another family in jeopardy.

Like Cape Fear, Powell thought.

She had to get that movie, check it out.

While the arsenaults spoke to a police artist, and created a composite of the man who had broken into their house, Detective Desiree Powell left the Homicide Squad, stopped at the Homestead on Lefferts Boulevard for a cherry strudel and a coffee.

Within twenty minutes she was on the Van Wyck, heading toward a small town in Crane County called Eden Falls.