The Sin Collector

ANDREY

They didn’t have to wait long. Artyom Minayev had been torn in half between two trees near the Florus and Laurus Church, close to the former site of the Myasnitsky Gate. While they were getting the corpse down out of the trees, Andrey pondered the logistical difficulties. The killer had to choose trees with two important qualities: not old enough to break, and not young enough to stay bent under the weight of the body. Minayev wasn’t a big guy, maybe one hundred thirty pounds, and it occurred to Andrey that the sinner’s size might have been decisive in attracting the Sin Collector’s attention.

There was no doubt that the victim had, in fact, sinned. Only the most serious tollhouses were left now, where the demons interrogated their captives for bigger transgressions than verbal diarrhea. But as terrible as Minayev’s sins might have been, Andrey couldn’t think of a single crime bad enough to justify getting torn apart alive.

As he climbed the stairs to Minayev’s apartment, he noticed the frightened but curious faces of two little boys peeking out from a doorway one floor below. An unsteady female voice called from inside, and the small faces disappeared behind the upholstered door. Andrey made a mental note to have a talk with them afterward. Kids that age notice everything.

Minayev’s place was a typical bachelor pad. Maybe a little tidier than most, Andrey had to admit, thinking of his own mess and vowing to clean soon. After all, he might be getting a visit from one Masha Karavay—something he still couldn’t quite believe. Minayev’s refrigerator held just enough to feed one person a basic lunch and dinner for two days, so he probably hadn’t been expecting company. A plate with the remnants of some smoked fish from the night before was sitting in the living room, stinking up the whole place. But Andrey agreed with the forensics guys: he’d smelled worse. He took a slow stroll through the room.

Nothing much, just an imposingly big computer with a separate hard drive. Cartoon fish swam lazily across the big screen. Andrey gave the forensics expert nearby a questioning look and got a nod in response. He touched the mouse, and the screen came to life. A video window was open on the desktop. Andrey clicked “Play.”

Music started up, a rhythmic, thumping beat, and the action on the screen was rhythmic, too. Andrey was soon surrounded by curious colleagues. It was obvious from the first frame that it was porn, but the man standing with his back—and thrusting buttocks—to the camera seemed strangely large compared to his partner. When the camera moved, someone next to Andrey gasped.

“But that’s just a kid!”

Andrey rushed to click “Pause.” The boy’s face looked strangely familiar, and Andrey tried to will away his nausea. It was one of the kids downstairs. He minimized the window and spotted two more behind it with the same sort of content.

As he saved them onto a flash drive, he noticed that each video lasted eighteen minutes. What had Masha said yesterday? They were past the fifteenth tollhouse. He didn’t want to tell her about this. But he knew that he’d have to eventually, so it might as well be now. Besides, he needed to consult her and the neat table in her notebook.

“Hey!” breathed Masha into the phone, in such a sleepy, gentle voice Andrey couldn’t help smiling. His whole heart felt warmer. Maybe he hadn’t been dreaming? Maybe everything that happened yesterday was real.

“Hi!” he answered, already regretting his next words. “We have another body. At Myasnitsky Gate.”

Masha took a sharp breath.

“Could you tell me again what the sixteenth tollhouse is supposed to be?”

There was a rustling of paper. “The Torment of Fornication. Inappropriate dreams or thoughts, lustful touches. Does that fit?”

“Yeah,” said Andrey, “but not completely. What’s the seventeenth?”

“Adultery, rape,” read Masha in her honor-student voice.

“Go on,” said Andrey.

“How many bodies do you have there?” she marveled, but obediently kept reading. “Eighteen is the tollhouse of Sodomitic Sins: miscegenation, masturbation, bestiality, and sins horrible and unnatural.”

“There!” declared Andrey. “That’s the one.”

“But that means—”

“That means he skipped two victims, or we missed them,” Andrey confirmed.

“I’ll be right there,” Masha said. “What’s the address?”

“You can’t tell Mama,” said Petya, the younger of the two boys. The older one had scowled with worry when Andrey told him Minayev was dead, and run off into the apartment.

“I won’t,” Andrey promised, and he meant it.

“Mama drinks. She’s not an alcoholic. It’s just because of the divorce is all. Papa left her the apartment,” the little boy told him, in a very dignified tone of voice. “And the car. But she sold the car,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “It was such a cool car! A Hyundai, with a really big engine!”

The apartment had been nice at one point, but a dozen small details—darker patches on the faded wallpaper where pictures must have hung, an awkward empty space on the TV shelf—made it clear that this household was not as well-off as it once had been.

“Tell me about Minayev,” he asked Petya.

“He’s Kolya’s best friend. Mine, too!” the little boy told him proudly. He wrinkled his nose again when he corrected himself. “Was our best friend. Kolya used to go watch movies at his place and he gave him books about ninjas. They’re these Japanese guys.”

Andrey smiled. “Yeah, I know.”

“He gave us food, too! Mama forgets to buy groceries sometimes,” he said with a disarming grin. “We hid it. It was fun. And we went to the planetarium one day, too. Kolya and him were friends. He went over there every day.”

“What about yesterday?” Andrey asked, trying not to react to the idea of “friendship” between Minayev and Kolya.

“Then, too. He left us some food, and Kolya said he had to go say thank-you. He didn’t take me with him. But I ate all the candy, see?” Petya pulled a handful of brightly colored wrappers out of his pocket.

“I need to talk with your brother,” Andrey said, standing up.

“But he doesn’t want to!” objected Petya.

“It’s okay, I need to try, anyway,” Andrey told him.

“Kolya!” called Petya, running off toward the kitchen, and Andrey heard a muffled conversation coming from behind the door.

Andrey walked into the kitchen himself, and found a woman with red eyes and matted hair spreading butter on slices of bread, which she followed, for some reason, with a layer of mayonnaise.

“You stay away from my kids,” she told Andrey, assaulting him with the stale booze on her breath. “He says he doesn’t know anything!”

Andrey paid her no attention. “Kolya?” he coaxed. “I just want to ask you one question: What did you see yesterday evening? You need to tell me so we can find out who killed your neighbor.”

Kolya turned silently to the window.

“I said go!” The mother pushed him toward the door. “Get out! Go figure it out yourself!”

Andrey turned and left. He could have insisted on interviewing the kid, but the idea made his heart ache, and besides, he was ashamed. Ashamed that nobody had identified the pedophile earlier, but even more ashamed that this was the kind of shitty world where a predator could be a lonely child’s only friend. Andrey walked outside and smoked a cigarette, thinking Masha should be there any minute.

The door banged behind him, and Kolya ran out, probably hurrying off to school. Andrey watched him carefully as he passed by, went maybe twenty steps, then turned around and ran back.

“I didn’t see anyone,” Kolya said. “But I heard something. The voice was, like, thin. He was saying something weird. Kind of in Russian, but I couldn’t understand it really.”

“Can you try to remember?” asked Andrey.

Kolya frowned. “Something about demons in dirt and stench. Do you know what stench means?”

Andrey nodded. “Yeah. It’s a bad smell.”

“Ah.” Kolya nodded. “Like it stinks?”

“Something like that. Do you think you could recognize that voice if you heard it again?”

Kolya, serious, nodded again. “Oh yeah. It was really squealy, like somebody was hurting him. Okay, bye, I’m gonna be late to school!”

Andrey watched the little figure run off. He probably needed a therapist more than he needed school. Andrey made a note to put a social worker on the case.

When Masha drove up, Andrey opened her car door to help her out, then pulled her close. They stood that way, pressed up against each other’s bodies in an attempt to share the last bit of heat they could muster. But somehow they both felt colder every minute. The problem wasn’t the execution methods, or how merciless the killer was proving to be. The problem was that the further they pursued the Sin Collector, the more horrible the whole world seemed.