frightening pallor or his almost religious zeal. He had heard the nicknames and he had not been bothered. In fact, he had felt that such nicknames helped to establish the relationship he wanted to have with the rest of the world. Rostnikov, whom Karpo admired with reservations, was known only as the Washtub, which somewhat accurately described the chief inspectors body but did not account for his strength or his puzzling attitude.
Karpo moved resolutely through the station without looking around at the decadent upturned glass chandeliers, the arched columns, and the curved white roof with decorative designs. He had seen the station thousands of times on his way from or to his small apartment and had long since decided that he preferred the more modern, efficient stations of the outer metro lines to this reminder of an earlier decadence. To Karpo, Russia meant sacrifice. The revolution was far from over, might never be over. There was only the struggle, the dedication, the small part one could play in the bigger picture. There wasn't necessarily a victory to be achieved. Life was a series of tests, challenges that one was either prepared for or would be worn away by. Since hardship was inevitable, it was best to condition oneself to it. Discomfort was welcome. Pain was the ultimate test. A weak individual could not function. There was a way in which one lived, as Lenin had lived. Emil Karpo was intelligent, unimaginative, determined, a zealous Marxist and an investigator in the Office of the Procurator General whom criminals feared with good reason.
Karpo walked slowly, deliberately clenching and unclenching his left fist as the surgeon who had operated on the arm had told him to do. The arm was, after three weeks, beginning to respond, and the doctor, a Jew named Alex who was related to Rostnikov's wife, had announced only the day before that Karpo would be using the arm and hand normally within four months. The entire incident had puzzled Karpo. The initial injury to the arm had been sustained after a fall from a ladder in pursuit of a minor confidence man. It had been reinjured in a terrorist explosion and dealt a further blow in a rooftop scuffle. Soviet doctors, three of them, had declared that Emil Karpo would never use his hand and arm again. He had resigned himself to this, considered his alternative values in Soviet society, and rejected Rostnikov's urging him to see Alex. But Alex had seen him, had promised results, had delivered. Karpo knew the system was not without its incompetents and fools. After all, that was why the police existed. But to have the medical system fail him so completely had given him some brooding hours.
A short walk later Karpo entered his apartment building. Though it was less than thirty years old, it smelted of mold and mildew and was not properly maintained. Karpo walked up the five flights of stairs. He would have done so even if there had been an elevator in the building, which there was not. As he always did, Karpo paused in the fifth-floor hallway, listened, waited, and then approached his door. Though he had no reason to expect intrusion, he checked the thin hair at the corner of the door just above the hinge to be sure no one had entered the room while he was out. Satisfied, Karpo inserted his key and stepped into the darkness.
It would have been dark in the room even if it were not a rainy morning, for Karpo always kept the black shade drawn. There was nothing out there he wanted to see. Out there was only another building across the courtyard. Windows, people, distractions.
Karpo moved to the center of the room in darkness and willed his left arm to reach up for the light cord. His arm told him that it was ridiculous, that the pain was not worth the satisfaction, but Karpo had dealt with the reluctance of his body before. In the darkness he clenched his teeth gently, held tightly to his notebook, and willed his left arm up. And up it went, feeling as if it had been dipped in hot metal. Slowly, up, up, and Karpo felt the cord on his fingers. He closed the fingers and demanded that his arm come down slowly, slowly, and it obeyed until the light came on, revealing the small room, nearly a cell, where Emil Karpo slept, worked, and occasionally ate. His brow was damp from his effort, but Karpo did not wipe it. He moved to the solid table desk in the corner, put down the black notebook, and turned on the desk lamp. Behind him was his bed, little more than a cot, neatly made. Next to the bed was a small table with a hot plate. Flat against one wall was a rough oak dresser. And that was it except for the bookshelves filled with black notebooks just like the one Karpo had placed on the desk. Each notebook was filled with reports, details on every case he had ever investigated or been part of. At night, when others slept, played, wept, drank, or laughed, Karpo went over his notebooks, studied the still-open cases.
It was Karpo's goal, though he knew he could never achieve it, to close every case in those black books, to catch and turn over for punishment every criminal. He reached up, took down a series of notebooks, placed them in a neat pile next to the one he had brought in, and removed a sheet of paper from the desk drawer, a sheet on which he bad neatly ruled lines and filled in dates. It was not only his method, it was also his comfort. The room was a cool tomb where he could lose himself in his work, will himself to put everything in order. The books in front of him told Karpo that there was a killer on the streets of Moscow, a killer who had struck eight women in a little less than six years. The books told him that there was a pattern. Perhaps he did not have enough of the pattern yet to act, but a pattern was there, and tonightor next month, or next year, or in ten yearshe would find that pattern and find the killer.
He sat up straight, closed his eyes, concentrated on the moon he imagined, concentrated on nothing but the moon, watched it grow small as it moved away from him, and when it disappeared in the distance of his imagination, Karpo opened his eyes and went to work.
CHAPTER TWO
The baby was crying. Sasha Tkach rolled over and looked at the small crib next to his and Maya's bed. Then he groped on the nearby table for his watch. His right hand touched it and knocked it to the bare wooden floor, where it hit with a thunk barely heard over the baby's crying.
'What time?' Maya mumbled sleepily.
Sasha found the watch and tried to turn it so that he could read its face by the dim street light coming through the open window.
'I think it's two-twenty or maybe three-twenty,' he said.
This revelation, or the sound of its parents' voices, made the baby cry a bit louder.
'She's hungry,' said Maya, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
'Hungry,' agreed Sasha, flopping back on the bed.
He watched Maya rise, her full brown hair uncombed, the white American T-shirt she slept in clinging to her. Sasha smiled and closed his eyes. He could change Pulcharia's diaper, and was quite willing to do so, but he could not produce milk. Besides, Maya was on maternity leave and could sleep late if the baby let her.
In the weeks before the baby was bom, Sasha's mother, Lydia, who slept in the next room, had loaded the pregnant Maya with old wives' tales and reasonable advice.
'Long walks, every day,' Lydia had repeated, and Maya had agreed, walking to work in the early days of the pregnancy. 'And no sweets. Sweets make the skin itch.'
Maya had nodded with a tolerant smile at Sasha. Before the pregnancy, Maya had begun to show signs of irritation with her mother-in-law. Sasha well understood. During the day they were all at workLydia at the Ministry of Information, Sasha at Petrovka, and Maya at her most recent job, a day-care center for the workers at the Ts.U.M. department store on Petrov Street. But in the recent mornings and evenings, Lydia, who was growing increasingly deaf and increasingly irritable, made it difficult for the expectant parents to keep smiling. With only two rooms in the apartment, it was difficult to get away from each other, especially difficult to get away from Lydia's loud voice.
Sasha, eyes still closed, heard Maya pick up Pulcharia, coo to her. He opened his eyes and saw the dark silhouette of Maya, cross-legged on the floor, lifting her T-shirt to offer her full breast to the tiny girl named for Lydia's own mother, a concession Sasha thought was more than Maya should accept but to which Maya had readily agreed. She liked the old-fashioned name and really had no one in her family or in history or in literature that she particularly felt like naming her child for. Pulcharia seemed perfect to her.
Before the birth, Lydia had also announced, from her own experience and that of her few friends, that oxygen was essential to pregnant women. 'So breathe deep when the contractions come and rub your stomach in circles like this. The pain will be like no other you have imagined.'
'Thank you,' Maya had said, smiling at Sasha.
When the baby did come, it was in the hospital, in a large delivery room from which Sasha was barred. Two other women were having babies at the same time. Maya had remembered the pain abstractly even when she told Sasha about it. She remembered the white, loose gown they had put on her and tied at the neck. She remembered
