Текст книги "The Devil's Garden"

Автор книги: Richard Montanari

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

FIFTY-FOUR

T here had been other suitors over the years, many interlopers in their lives. Once, in a small village in Livonia, a young boy had dared speak with him about his daughter, Marya. The boy claimed to be the son of the town’s bailiff. This was after the second siege of Reval. Led by Ivan the Terrible, there was a sickness in the air, a state of lawlessness that swept the towns of Dünaburg, Kokenhausen and Wendenthe, and Aleks had dispatched the boy with no consequence.

Marya had been nearly seventeen at the time, a young woman of incomparable beauty. As she and Anna flowered to womanhood, they had begun to manifest small differences, not only in their personalities, but also in their looks. From a few yards away, to most people, they were indistinguishable from each other – their honey-colored hair, their flawless skin, their clear-blue eyes. But a father knows his children.

And now this man. A man who claimed to be their father. Another intruder.

Aleks stood outside the church, a bitter wind cutting along the ridge that led to the banks of the river. Anna sat before him, wrapped in fur. At her feet was a bundle, a swaddled, stillborn infant.

Aleks looked at the imposters.

Next to the dead child sat the grey wolf; primordial siver eyes set deep into the smooth dome of his head.

“Do it now,” he said. “Or I will do it for you.”

The gray wolf bayed.

The man raised the weapon, and pointed it at the woman’s head.

FIFTY-FIVE

The building was a three-store commercial block on Ditmars near Crescent, home to a bodega, a dry cleaner, and the shuttered space on the end. There was a driveway to the right, leading behind the building. Next to it was a six-suite, two-story apartment building. Powell had been by this block many times, but like so much of New York, she hadn’t noticed it.

Above the storefronts were living quarters. Along the block the windows on the upper floors were open, some with sheer curtains billowing out in the warm spring evening, some with the sounds of dinner being prepared, the evening news blaring its tragedies.

Powell stepped up to the front entrance. It was covered by a rusted steel riot gate. The windows were soaped, all but opaque. Everything seemed benign, empty, peaceful. Had she been wrong about this? She had gotten reports from her teams every minute or so. There had been no sign of Michael Roman or the girls, no sign of their cutter.

Fontova came around the corner. He had gone to check the back entrance to the building.

“Anything?” Powell asked.

“The window in the back door is broken.”

“Recently?”

“Yeah. The glazing doesn’t look weathered.”

“Any vehicles?”

“No, but there’s no glass laying on the ground in front of the door.”

“It was broken from the outside.”

“Yeah. And it’s got blood on it.”

The two detectives looked at each other with understanding. “Let’s get some backup here.”

Fontova lifted the handset to his mouth, and called it in.

That’s when they heard the gunshots.

FIFTY-SIX

The blasts were deafening in the confined space. Michael was stunned at how easy it was to do what he had done, how little pressure was needed to pull the trigger, how short the journey between life and death. He had talked about it for many years, had sat in judgment and conclusion of those who had said things like “it just went off,” and “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” never having any understanding of the process.

Now, having pulled the trigger, he knew it wasn’t that hard. The difficult part was making the decision to aim the weapon.

Michael had pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired the rounds. He kept pulling the trigger, but it seemed that Aleks had told him the truth. There were only two bullets in the gun. Michael ejected the magazine and threw the two parts in different directions.

As soon as the echo of the gun blast began to fade, Aleks stood. Michael could see in his eyes a fierce determination to bring this all to a close. He strode with slow deliberation toward Abby, the knife at his side.

“You have made a mistake,” Aleks said. “You could have made this far less painful for your wife, for yourself, but you chose to defy me. To defy your destiny.”

He stopped in front of Abby, raised the knife. There was nothing Michael could do to stop him.

“Isa!” Emily screamed.

In that second – a moment where Emily cried out the word father in Estonian –Aleks turned, looked at Emily. Michael knew there would never be another moment. He ran at Aleks, hitting him full force in the side, knocking him backwards. The two men crashed into the drywall with a bone-jarring force. Aleks righted himself, and lashed out with his fist, catching Michael high on the left side of his head, stunning him, showing him flashes of bright white light behind his eyes. Michael went down to the hardwood floor, but was able to roll, absorbing most of the impact with his shoulder. He sprang to his feet, and was now face to face with Aleks. Aleks slashed at the air between them, closing the distance little by little. The blade came in high, but Michael sidestepped. He caught the blade flat on his upper arm.

Michael backed across the room, toward his daughter. In the background he could hear Abby screaming into her gag, the sound of the metal pipes clanging as she struggled ferociously to break free. Michael was breathing hard, the blows he had taken to the head were clouding his vision. Aleks slashed at him again, this time slicing open the back of Michael’s right hand. As Michael pulled away, he stumbled over something on the floor, momentarily losing his balance.

Aleks lunged toward Emily. With all rational thought beyond him, Michael righted himself and threw his body between them. The knife carved into the left side of Michael’s stomach, slicing away a large flap of skin and flesh. Michael fell back into the wall, the pain a searing lava flow down his right side. He felt his leg go numb, slid down the wall, his hands groping for purchase. He found one of the dismantled table legs leaning in the corner.

As Aleks moved again toward Emily, Michael struggled to his knees, clawed his way to his feet. He raised the table leg high, and brought it around in an almost complete arc, hitting Aleks on the side of his head, stunning him. The sound of the impact was loud, the long rusted bolt fastened at the top of the table leg cut deep into Aleks’s scalp. Aleks’s eyes rolled into his head as he staggered back and went down, blood now seeping from the head wound. Michael brought the bludgeon down twice more, all but shattering Aleks’s right knee.

Michael limped across the room, lifted his cuffed hands over Emily’s head, picked her up, the right side of his body now grown ice cold. He glanced behind them, at the front door of the bakery. It was locked with a deadbolt, secured by iron bars. No exit. Aleks was between them and the back door. He was trying to get to his feet.

Michael looked at Abby. Her eyes told him all he needed to know. She wanted him to get out with Emily while he could.

Filled with a suffocating fear, with no way out, Michael held Emily close, and lurched toward the steps leading to the second floor. He angled his body against the handrail for balance. One step, two, three. Each effort drained him of energy, leaving slick scarlet footprints on the worn treads. Moments later he heard Aleks mount the stairs behind them, dragging his fractured leg.

“You will not take her!” Aleks screamed.

The knife came down, splintering the dry steps, just inches behind Michael’s feet.

“She is my daughter!”

Again the knife descended, this time tearing at the hem of Michael’s jeans, the hot blade cutting through the heel of his shoe.

When the two wounded men reached the top, Aleks swung the knife in a whistling arc, nearly taking off the newel post on the landing. The blade missed Emily’s head by inches.

Michael turned the corner at the top of the stairs, his sense memory propelling him down the short hallway to his old bedroom. He burst through the door, ran toward the window, nearly slipping in his own blood.

He put Emily down at the far side of the room. He knew the door had a slide bolt, and if he could just make it back, he could bolt the door, and it would give him a few precious seconds to break the window and get the attention of someone on the street.

But when he turned back to the door, Aleks was there. He lunged at Michael, the knife out front. At the last second Michael was able to dodge the full force of the blade, but it sliced into his left shoulder. Michael shrieked in pain as Aleks turned and came at him again. This time Michael warded off the blow as Aleks slammed into him, the momentum of the attack propelling them both into the closet door, knocking it off its hinges, choking them in the dust and soot of decades. The two men fell to the floor, struggling for control. Michael grabbed his attacker by the wrist, trying to hold off the knife, but Aleks was too strong.

As Aleks brought the blade ever closer to his throat, Michael sensed something brushing his cheek, something in the debris on the floor of the closet. He flashed on a mental image, the drawing Emily had made in the dust, the crude sketch of a little house, a cottage with a chimney and smoke.

Good night, my little nupp.

It was something that lived in Michael’s heart, his memory: his mother on the fire escape, a warm, summer evening, the skyline of Manhattan before them like a glittering promise.

Next to him was his mother’s knitting basket. The basket with the Estonian cottage embroidered on its side.

Michael felt the knife tip nearing his Adam’s apple. With all his strength he pushed Aleks away from him, buying seconds. His hands still cuffed, he tore the knitting bag open, groped inside, felt the needle, the vintage twelve-inch Minerva steel needle his mother used for lace.

As Aleks came in for the kill, Michael summoned the final vestige of his strength. He did not have time for thought. He swung the needle up with all his power, plunging it into Aleks’s left temple.

Aleks screamed and staggered back, blood gushing from the wound.

Michael tried to stand, to cross the room to Emily, but his legs would not hold him. A darkness began to descend. The last image Michael had was Aleks staggering across the room, red eyes bulging in their sockets, spinning wildly, blood spraying the walls, his voice a rutting animal sound.

I’m sorry, my love, Michael thought as the last of his strength left him, the light wavering, then falling dim. I’m sorry.

FIFTY-SEVEN

Abby pulled furiously at the copper pipe. The tape had dug deep into her wrists, and she could barely feel her hands. But she could not stop. The rusted pipes moaned and groaned under her efforts, but she could not seem to break the welded fittings.

She recalled her training, the resource of how to face crises, how to pull a twenty-four-hour shift, from where to summon strength and energy and focus. She closed her eyes, saw Charlotte and Emily in their little cribs on that day in South Carolina, the look on Michael’s face.

With one last burst of force she broke free. The severed copper pipe sprayed water high into the air. She pulled the duct tape from her wrists, her mouth, ran across the room searching frantically for something, anything she could use as a weapon. She spotted Aleks’s shoulder bag in the corner. She fell upon it, tore it open. At the bottom were four loose bullets, the rounds Aleks had taken from the magazine of Kolya’s gun. Abby pulled them from the bag, then began to search the nearly dark room for the weapon. She crawled on her hands and knees, more than once slipping in the blood. The sounds had ceased coming from upstairs, and the silence was even more terrifying than the sounds.

She soon found the .9 mm pistol underneath the old oven. She tried to remember where Michael had thrown the magazine. She couldn’t recall.

Think Abby.

Think!

Michael had thrown the weapon to the right, the clip to the left. Abby stood where Michael had been standing, followed the trajectory with her eyes. To her left was a stack of wooden moving pallets. She ran across the room, began lifting the heavy pallets, pushing them to the side, her fear and frustration coursing through her like an electric current. When she lifted the last pallet she heard the metallic clank. In the dim light she saw the magazine. She fell to her knees, loaded the bullets into the magazine, her fingers slick with blood and sweat.

“Isa!” Emily screamed again from upstairs.

“Oh, my baby!” Abby said. She jammed the magazine into the gun, chambered a round, ran up the steps.

When she reached the second floor, and looked into Michael’s old bedroom, she saw a tableau she knew would haunt her forever. The room was covered with blood. Emily sat in the corner, just beneath the windows, her hands folded in her lap. She was shaking. Aleks was slumped against the wall near the closet, a long needle protruded from his temple, leaking blood. His eyes were closed.

Then there was Michael. Michael was on the floor, face down. The back of his shirt was covered in blood. Abby ran over to him, put down the gun, and tried to put pressure on the wound, but it felt too deep.

Oh God, Michael! Please don’t die! Please!

From somewhere in the distance she heard sirens, shouting. Perhaps it was in another world, another life.

The phone, she thought. Aleks had a phone. She crossed the room, began to rummage in Aleks’s coat pockets. She went through them all, found nothing. It must have fallen out downstairs. Before she could get to her feet Aleks opened his eyes. He rocked forward, struggled to his feet, lifted her high into the air. He threw her into the wall. Plaster crumbled, exploding into the room in a cloud of dust.

“Tütred!” Aleks screamed as he fell back to his knees, and began to creep across the room, toward Emily. He crawled on his stomach, using the knife, sticking it in the floor, pulling himself forward in a sheet of glossy blood.

“Em!” Abby shouted. “Come to Mommy. Run!”

Emily was frozen. She did not move. Abby looked around frantically, found the gun in the morass of her blurred vision. She picked it up as Aleks edged ever closer.

“No!” Abby yelled. “No!”

Abby held the gun out in front of her, hands trembling. Sweat salted her eyes. Aleks was now just a few feet from Emily.

“Stop!”

Aleks brought himself to his knees. Choking back blood, he raised the knife over his head.

The booming roar of the gun shook the room, stealing all sound. The bullet slammed into Aleks’s back, blowing a large hole in his chest. He fell to the floor, driving the long needle deep into his skull. The metal snapped. He rolled onto his back, his eyes wide, feral, disbelieving.

At the moment his eyes drifted shut, Abby saw something creep over his face, something dark, like the passing of a violent storm.

HE WAS CROSSING OVER, becoming. He smelled the wet fur, felt the warm breath on his face. He turned his head. The grey wolf sat next to him – young and strong and full of life.

Behind the wolf was the gate to his home. The gate was open, the road to the house covered in pine needles, the air sweet with the fragrance of cornflower. He knew that if he could just get inside, Anna, Marya, and Olga would be waiting for him.

He saw a shadow near the gate. A man in a black leather coat, a garment a few sizes too large. The man was young, but not so young that he had not already crossed the devil’s path. There was a finger missing from his right hand. In the dying light Aleks could just make out the young man’s face, and in it he saw himself.

In it he saw eternity.

ABBY SENSED SOMEONE else in the room. She spun around, gun raised. Behind her was a woman in an attack stance, holding an automatic weapon. From the barrel of the woman’s pistol curled a thin ribbon of smoke. Abby pointed the gun at the woman, but the woman did not back up, did not recoil. Neither did she lower her gun.

The woman spoke to her. In the aftermath of the thundering echo of the gun blast, Abby could not make out the words.

Somehow Abby knew the woman, the voice, but she could not place her. All she knew was that this was not over. The woman was there to take her daughter.

“No,” Abby said. She cocked the pistol. “You can’t have her!”

“It’s okay,” the woman said. “You can put the gun down.”

A man stepped up behind the woman. Abby could see the man, too, had a weapon in his hand. He held it at his side. He was nervous, and his eyes shifted back and forth.

“It’s over,” the woman said softly, lowering her weapon. She slipped it into her shoulder holster. “Please, put down the gun.”

The sirens drew closer. More footsteps. They were coming up the stairs.

“Please,” the woman repeated. “Put the gun down, Mrs Roman.”

Abby looked at the woman’s eyes, heard her words.

Mrs Roman.

DETECTIVE DESIREE POWELL took a few steps forward, never taking her eyes off the pistol in Abby Roman’s hand. To those whose only experience with a moment like this was watching Law & Order or reading about it in a book, Powell had a message. The longer you stare into a steel barrel, the worse it gets. No one ever takes it in their stride.

She gently eased the weapon away, handed it to Fontova. She heard the young detective exhale loudly.

“It’s over,” Powell said softly. “It’s all over.”

Abby Roman slid to the floor. She gathered herself to her trembling little girl with one arm, positioned her body to protect her husband. Powell had seen a lot of carnage in her time, a lot of fatal and near-fatal injuries. Michael Roman did not look good.

With weapons secured, Fontova stepped out the door. As paramedics rushed inside, Desiree Powell found her own way to the floor. She’d had two guns pointed at her on this day. She’d like to say she was getting used it, but she hoped she would never reach that place.

In her twenty-four years on the NYPD, she had drawn her weapon four times, fired it twice. Today was her first kill. She was kind of hoping to make it one more year without reaching that milestone, but it was not meant to be. When she had gotten out of bed that morning, she did not know that by the end of her tour she would be part of this exclusive club.

While the paramedics tended to the living, Powell closed her eyes.

Outside the window, the city of New York went about its business; traffic swept along, oblivious, heading toward the majestic bridges – the Triborough, the 59th Street, the Williamsburg – toward the island of Manhattan with its steel and glass riddles, dark fingers in a gloaming sky. Powell had read once that more than forty million people came into New York City every year, each with their own dreams and thoughts and ideas on how to solve the city’s many mysteries.

Some, Desiree Powell knew too well, by the grace or wrath of God, never leave.

FIFTY-EIGHT

The street was crowded with kids and parents. Easter in Astoria was a magical time, a time when Michael’s father would relent and let him go down to La Guli’s, the legendary pastry shop on Ditmars near 29th Street. Once there, money in hand, Michael had to make a decision between a pignoli tart or a sfogliatelle. Life was never easy.

On this Easter Sunday Michael lay in bed, eyes closed, the maddening aromas of baking ham, new potatoes, and peas with mint owning his senses.

When he opened his eyes he was more than a little startled to see a woman leaning over his bed. She was going to kiss him. It wasn’t Abby.

Instead of kissing him, the woman lifted his left eyelid, shone a bright light in.

He was in the hospital. The horrors came flooding back.

The girls.

Michael tried to sit up. He felt a pair of strong hands on his shoulders. As he eased back down, images came floating toward him. The paramedics loading him on the ambulance, the sound of the sirens, the lights of the operating theater. He recalled the pain coming and going, felt the weight on his chest and abdomen. He saw his wife and daughters sitting on a bench at Cape May. Behind them a dark wave rose.

He slept.

THE ROOM WAS FILLED with flowers. Abby stood at the foot of the bed. Tommy was next to her.

“Hey,” Tommy said.

Tommy looked older. How long had he been gone? Years? No, Michael thought. It was just the stress. Abby’s face was drawn and pale, too. Her eyes were rimmed in red.

Michael closed his eyes for a minute. He saw the monster standing over Emily, the knife near her throat.

“The girls,” Michael said weakly. His voice was barely a whisper.

Abby looked away for moment. Michael’s heart turned to ice. She looked back. “They’re . . . they’re fine. They’re staying with my brother. They don’t seem to remember much.”

Michael wished it were the case for him. “Is that good or bad?” Each word seemed to drain an equal measure of his energy.

Abby paused for a while. In the hallway people in blue scrubs were running somewhere. “I don’t know.”

“The man,” Michael managed. “Aleks.”

“He’s dead.”

“Did you . . .?”

Abby’s eyes were wet. She shook her head. “No.”

It was enough. Michael slept.

MICHAEL FELT NEW needles in his arms. He tried to swallow, and realized it was easier than it had been . . . when? Before. Earlier. What had been in his throat was gone.

He slept.

TWO DAYS LATER THEY raised his bed. He dozed for a while, and when he awoke he swung his gaze to the chair by the window. For some reason, Desiree Powell was sitting there. Her right arm was in a sling. Michael knew enough to know that there were going to be many legal complications from what had happened. He was fully prepared for the consequences of his actions. The dead man at his house, the two police officers on the street. Omar. But maybe not. Maybe Desiree Powell was just an hallucination.

No. The drugs weren’t that good. She was real.

“Counselor,” she said. “Welcome back.”

Michael nodded at the glass of water on his tray. Powell looked out at the hallway, back. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to have water. She stood, and with her good hand lifted the straw to his lips. The cool water was every desire Michael had ever known.

“I thought you were dead,” Michael said. His voice was weak and raspy.

“No such luck.”

Another sip. “What happened?”

“I’ll spare you all the details for now. But what put me in this device – which, by the way, doesn’t go with any of my outfits – is that I took four in the vest. Broke two ribs.”

“In my house?”

Powell nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

Powell shrugged. “Just another sunny day in paradise.”

Although it was not the time or the place for it, Michael had to know. Over the past twenty-four hours he had envisioned ten futures. Nine of them were bad. “What’s going to happen?”

Powell took a few moments. “That’s a question for your office, not mine, Michael. But I can tell you the forensics are all coming back good. It was the bad guy’s knife that killed Nikolai Udenko. We found GSR on his hand, his prints on the grip of your wife’s pistol. Plus we have a dozen witnesses who saw what he did on the street with the two officers.”

There was going to be more, Michael knew. Powell was nothing if not thorough.

“Get better,” she said. “We’ll talk.”

Powell stood, walked over to the window. After a few moments she turned back to him. Michael noticed that, for the first time since he had met her nearly ten years earlier, she was wearing jeans and an NYPD sweatshirt. It must have been casual Friday. If it was Friday. “You’ve been through this before,” Powell said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, with that car bomb and all. Almost getting your ticket punched.”

Michael nodded.

“So, let me ask you something.”

“Sure.”

Powell walked back across the room, sat down. “How many times can you cheat the devil?”

Michael glanced out the window. The trees were in full bloom, the sky was a crystal blue. In the distance the river sparkled with diamonds. He looked back at the detective. There was only one answer. “As many times as you can.”

When Powell left, Michael slept. When he awoke, it was dark. He was alone.

OVER THE NEXT TWO months Michael Roman grew to hate physiotherapy. More so, he came to hate the physiotherapists. They were all about twenty-six, perfectly fit, and they all had names like Summer and Schuyler. On any given day, after his fifth set of power squats, he had a few other choice names for them.

Slowly, he began to regain his strength and balance, returning to a form that was probably in many ways better than he was before.

During his convalescence, they stayed at Abby’s parents’ estate in Pound Ridge. They hired a company to come in and clean the Eden Falls house, but both Michael and Abby knew they would not be able to live there again. Whatever had been there for them was gone, dissolved in an acid of evil and darkness that no amount of disinfectant could mask. Michael had no idea what they were going to do, or where they were going to go, but for the moment that was secondary.

The Ghegan trial went forward in early July, helmed by a third-year ADA. Michael briefed the young man on the case and, with about an hour before opening statements, Falynn Harris showed up in courtroom 109. Two days later, after only four hours of deliberation, the jury retuned a verdict of manslaughter. Ghegan was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. It wasn’t what Michael had hoped for, what the city deserved, but Ghegan was off the street. The young ADA came to see Michael the day after sentencing. In his eyes Michael saw so much. Mostly himself, a few years ago.

IN MID-AUGUST MICHAEL returned, alone, to the Eden Falls house. He was still using a cane now and then, but for the most part he was independent. As he approached the house he saw something attached to the column next to the front door. His heart fluttered. Closer inspection revealed it was a decal, a stencil in the shape of a bright yellow daisy. Michael glanced around. There were no other decals, just this solitary, cheerful plastic flower on the column. Next to it was taped a small envelope. Michael opened it. Inside was a note card and a photograph. Michael looked at the picture first, an image of a young couple sitting on the stoop of a brownstone. By the look of the cars on the street it was probably the mid-Nineties. The man, who wore a Cleary green florist’s smock, was lean and handsome. He had a twinkle in his eye. The woman had fine features, light-brown hair pinned up with plastic barrettes. The baby – a toddler, really – sat on the man’s knee. There was no mistaking those sad eyes.

Michael looked at the note. On the back was a slip of paper. He turned it over. It was a receipt for the daisy decals. He had to laugh. She was informing him that she hadn’t shoplifted these. He read the note.

I just wanted to tell you that I think I know what it means, now. Zhivy budem, ne pomryom. (I looked up the spelling.)

It means that everything is going to be all right.

Be well all of your days.

Falynn xo

Michael folded the note, put it into his pocket.

After a few long moments he turned, and walked away from the house. He never went inside again.