Fairstein, Linda - Silent Mercy

“Let me have your phones,” Mike said.

“I don’t have one.”

“Bullshit. Both of you, give me your phones.”

Yuri held out his arms to the side. He was wearing the classic bodysuit of an acrobat or dancer — a leotard and tights, with a zippered sweater over them. “No pockets, Detective. I use the satellite phone only,” he said, pointing to the nightstand next to his bed.

“Coop — take her into the other bedroom,” Mike said, pointing to Oksana. There was no hope of getting information unless we separated them. He was giving me a shot at the weaker link.

“Why don’t you come with me?” I said, smiling at the terrified woman. “Is your room next to this one?”

She didn’t speak, but she nodded.

“You can just do this?” Yuri asked. “You know we’re Americans.”

“Oh, yeah, we can just do this. I don’t give a damn if you’re flying Martians. There are cops from here to Sarasota looking for your brother, and if you want to see him alive, you’d better put on your thinking caps.”

Oksana slipped between Mike and the door without protest and took me into the adjacent compartment she shared with her husband.

“You understand why we have to find your brother quickly?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about the women who’d been murdered. “If we can save the woman who’s missing, maybe Fyodor has a chance.”

“It’s not his fault, Ms. Cooper,” she said. “None of this is his fault.”

The most tired lines in the perpetrator phrase book. I didn’t care to think about who Oksana would blame. “When is the last time you heard from your brother?”

“I’m not sure. Yuri probably knows.”

“Did you see him this week?”

“This week? What day is today? Maybe Yuri remembers.”

“Here’s the thing, Oksana. Yuri is talking to Detective Chapman, so whatever Yuri knows, he’ll eventually tell. When the train stops in Providence, all your friends will get off and stretch their legs, go out for a drink, get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow’s matinee. If you haven’t answered my questions — and Yuri plays the same game — you’ll both go to the police station and sit there, handcuffed to chairs, until your memories improve.”

She had the turned-out foot position of a ballet dancer, feet planted firmly on the floor. I held the back of the chair to keep myself balanced as we hurtled forward along the tracks. She dabbed at her eyes and bent her head toward the wall, trying to make out the conversation between Yuri and Mike.

“Did you see Fyodor this week?” I raised my voice a notch.

“I think so.”

“Yes — or no?”

Oksana pouted.

“Sit down.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable, Ms. Cooper.”

She was so much better balanced than I that she was probably counting on me lurching over at the next bump on the tracks.

“I asked you to sit.”

Her fear was morphing into defiance now, like it was the Zukovs against the world. Slowly and with the graceful movements of her art, she pivoted and sat on the edge of her bed.

“Did you know that in the state of Georgia there’s still a death penalty, Oksana?”

I wasn’t sure whether she flinched at that prospect or at the tone of Mike’s voice coming through the wall.

“There are more than a hundred murderers on death row there, most of them likely to be burned to toast in the electric chair.”

There were moments I knew I had spent too much time in Mike Chapman’s company.

She swallowed hard. “Georgia? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Your brother killed a man in Georgia.”

Oksana crossed and then uncrossed her long, slender legs. “That’s absurd.”

“The mayor of New York City is going to hold a press conference any minute now. Your brother’s name and picture will be broadcast all over the country. Armed police officers, trained bloodhounds, and gun-happy vigilantes hungry for reward money will be looking to track him down.”

“I don’t even know what you want him for. I don’t know what he did.”

Every time I thought we would be moving forward, Oksana took a step or two back.

“I guess you haven’t had the TV on for very long, have you? If Fyodor’s still in New York — New Jersey — he’ll have a better chance. You can convince him to turn himself in. He’ll be safer in the long run.”

She tilted her head and stared at me, trying to divine the truth. Meanwhile, Mike was getting nothing from Yuri, as I judged from the noise level next door.

“Did you see him this week?” I asked again.

“Yes. Yes, we saw him.”

“Where, Oksana? What day did you see him and where?”

“Tonight’s Friday, right? It was yesterday. Thursday morning.”

“Where?”

“In Manhattan. Where we were rehearsing, at Madison Square Garden.”

“He called one of you?”

“Yuri told you the truth. We don’t use cell phones.”

“How did Fyodor get into the Garden?”

“He still has his identification card. He knows our practice schedule. He showed up, that’s all I know.”

“How long did you talk with him?”

“I didn’t. Just to say hello. It was Yuri he wanted. For money, for Yuri to give him money.”

“Did Fyodor say what the money was for?”

She hung her head and answered. “No. But it must have been for food. For everything. I don’t know how he’s been living. I’ve been so worried about him.”

“And Yuri gave him cash?”

“Yes. Almost three hundred dollars.”

“But Yuri doesn’t have any pockets, I thought. Where did he get the cash?”

Oksana didn’t like my sarcasm. “His gym bag. Fyodor was in the back row of seats, sort of in the dark. I saw him first. It’s where one of us usually sits to spot the others when we’re on the wire. Yuri went up to talk to him and came back for the money. He only let me say hello for a minute. To ask how he was feeling.”

I tried to sound empathetic, as hard a stretch as that was. Maybe she’d be more forthcoming if I showed interest in her brother’s health condition. “What’s wrong with Fyodor? Why did he have to give up the act?”

“He — he won’t tell me. He’s embarrassed, I think. He’s the first one in the family in more than three generations to cause — well, to have a terrible injury happen to a partner. I thought he was going to kill himself that first night.”

“Is he being treated by doctors?”

Rabbi Levy told us that Naomi talked about meeting a friend — probably Fyodor — at Bellevue, shortly before she was killed. Maybe it was psychiatric treatment that he was undergoing, as we had speculated.

“I don’t think he has any use for doctors. He said they can’t help him.”

“Did he tell Yuri where he was staying?”

“No,” she said, getting weepy again. “If they arrest Fyodor in Georgia, are you sure they could put him to death?”

“I’m sure. A hideously painful death.”

Oksana was biting the inside of her cheek. “But not in New York?”

“Not in New York.”

She was struggling with whether to confide in me, maybe encouraged that the conversation in Yuri’s room sounded like it had taken a more civil turn.

“I don’t know where Fyodor has gone, Ms. Cooper. But he doesn’t have friends in New York. He doesn’t really know people here.”

“That’s very helpful, Oksana. Are there people he trusts somewhere else? People in whom he confides?” Was she telling me that she believed her brother would be on the move to the South?

“It used to be that he told Yuri everything. It used to be they were very close. When you work together like this — when you do what all of us do — you practically have to read the other guy’s mind. It’s instinct and trust. What wasn’t passed on to us by our parents, we learned by spending our whole lives in each other’s hands, literally. But then — the accident changed things.”

“I’m sure it did,” I said, not wanting her to register my impatience. “You know who his friends are? Can you tell me their names and numbers?”

We were deep into southeastern Connecticut. Long, wooded areas bordered the tracks as we steamed toward Rhode Island, engulfing the colorful train in total darkness, broken by an occasional set of lights at the crossings.

“I don’t know their names.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Oksana. I get the feeling you’re wasting my time. I’m going to step out for a few minutes and then—”

“May I come too?”

“No, no. You stay right here.”

“But I’m being honest, Ms. Cooper.”

“Where are these friends, Oksana? Are they in Florida?” I asked, but got no response. “Do something to help your brother. If you don’t care about the missing girl, do something to help Fyodor.”

“I told you it’s not his fault. It’s these guys he got mixed up with after the accident.”

“At home?”

“No, no. In Georgia. At home, in Florida, he’d have had the church. Our priest would have helped him through anything. He was a deeply religious boy, Ms. Cooper. Our whole family is religious.”

“I have great respect for that.”

“It was only his faith,” she said, and I shivered at the thought of Chat’s sister, waiting out this dreadful ordeal back at the seminary, “that got Fyodor through his adolescence.”

“But now?”

“He rebelled when he was a teenager. Hated my parents’ accent — he so wanted to be an American kid. Hated everything about the circus and our traditions. Rebelled at any chance he had. With no provocation. It was our priest who found a place for him.”

“What do you mean by ‘a place’? Did Fyodor go to jail?” Maybe she was trying to tell me something about a criminal history after all, something that would be useful in our efforts to find Chat.

“Never jail. No. But my parents sent him away for two years. To a really tough school. Far away from home, and sort of like a reform school, I think it was. He was placed there instead of a juvenile jail. He was grateful to come home, to join the troupe, to have a family that cared to take him back and embrace him again. But I think always bubbling beneath the surface was this rage. These new friends must have seen that side of him. Encouraged it. I can’t think what else it could be.”

“Who are these guys, Oksana? These new friends?”

“Fyodor met them at the gym, where he was working out.”

“You know where the gym is?”

She hung her head. “Yuri does. It’s near Atlanta. After the accident, my brother had to find a place to build up his strength again. That’s what our trainer told him. That’s why I think it’s all their fault.”

“Who?”

“These guys. Really crazy guys. They got Fyodor into very dangerous stuff,” Oksana said. She held her hands up at me and twisted them back and forth. “We really need to be strong in our work — our hands and wrists especially — but these guys were teaching him to fight. Like that was a way to build strength.”

“Martial arts?” I asked.

“Exactly. But crazy. Really extreme. Like for combat, he told Yuri.”

Like the Russian combat sport, sambo, and other deadly ways to bring an opponent down that had been demonstrated to us that morning, at the X-Treme Redeemer.

“And church? Did Fyodor give up the church?”

“The Orthodox church, yes,” Oksana said, fingering the cross she wore around her neck. “He told Yuri these friends had a stronger church. That he could only get his life back if he fought for it. That fighting could make him a better person. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“I agree with you.” Totally insane. “Why don’t you rest for a few minutes, Oksana? Let me ask Detective Chapman if there’s anything else we need from you right now.”

I wanted to get the information about the Georgia Pentecostal connection off to Peterson. I wanted to see if there was a juvenile record in Florida that had been resolved with an alternative sentence at a reform school, and where that might have been.

Oksana sat back on her bed and I returned to Yuri’s room. He and Mike still seemed to be facing off against each other, seated and at arm’s length. The questioning was contentious and I guessed that Yuri had held his ground more firmly than his sister did.

“You want to step out for a minute?” I asked, sweeping the small room with my eyes.

“Sure, kid. This prick needs a good tune-up with a barbell to make him talk. Short of that, he doesn’t care that his brother’s headed for the end of the line.” Mike stood up from the desk and started after me, then turned back. He reached for the telephone and yanked out the wire that connected it to the wall.

Yuri Zukov just laid back on the bed and laughed.

I stood on my tiptoes and grabbed the gym bag that was stashed on the luggage rack over the small sink in the corner.

Yuri leaped to his feet and tried to grab it from me, but Mike pushed him onto the bed again.

“Take this, Detective,” I said, passing the gym bag to him. “His sister says he keeps his valuables in it. Of course he doesn’t care if you rip the phone out of the wall. I’m betting he’s got his cell right in there.”

“HERE’S the cell phone information for the perp’s brother, Loo. Get somebody to run with it,” Mike said, then hung up with Peterson. “Nice grab on that gym bag, blondie.”

It was after ten thirty and we were working out of a small office in the headquarters of the Rhode Island State Police. Several patrol cars met the train when it reached the freight track at Providence Station an hour earlier. Local cops and troopers had orders to sweep it from end to end, talking to all the troupe members, searching for evidence of a crime or signs that Fyodor Zukov had brought any of the women on board.

Mike and I had trailed the officers through the compartments for a first look at every possible place to conceal anything from a weapon to a body, then left them to their work. Daniel Gersh rode with us to headquarters, in case there was any way he could assist in the ongoing search. Yuri and Oksana Zukov were separated for the ride, and a prosecutor had been called in to discuss whether they could be held overnight as material witnesses.

“No sightings of Fyodor or the truck on the highway?” I asked.

“Nothing yet. You trust that broad?”

“Not entirely. She swore to the lie Yuri told about not having phones. But when we started to talk about Georgia’s death penalty, she really got nervous.”

“So you think he’s headed south?”

“I guess we wait to see if there’s any info on Yuri’s cell,” I said, opening the door to a cop who had brewed a fresh pot of coffee for us and handed mugs in to me.

The television was on in the main squad room, and all the news channels — local and national — were interrupting broadcasts to show photographs of the man wanted for the abduction of Chastity Grant and the possible murders of five other people from Georgia to New York. MANHUNT FOR CLERGY KILLER was the continuous crawl running at the bottom of the screen.