a ride home. She didn’t want to believe that her instincts could be so wrong. But no matter how she shaped the ideas in her mind, she couldn’t shake Flann’s reasoning. Flann might be jumping to conclusions, but the possibility had to be pursued, especially when she considered Charlie Dixon’s other troubling comment. “Dixon said that Becker was slacking on Tatiana’s murder case from the very beginning, before his partner was killed. Apparently they were working their other cases just fine.”
“That doesn’t jibe with what Becker told us.”
“I know, and it does a lot to explain that train wreck of a murder notebook he left behind. It bothers me.”
“One of us needs to look at Becker’s old files for comparison. See if he really did bury Tatiana’s case.”
“I’ll do it,” Ellie offered.
Flann shook his head. “You won’t know what to look for. This is your first homicide case.”
“Fine. You do it. But promise me you’ll run anything by me before you whisk off and arrest him or something, okay?”
“Aye, aye.”
“I’ll go out to Brooklyn to talk to Tatiana’s sister again. See if she knows anything about the deal with the FBI. If there’s time on the way back, I might stop by MDC to see Lev Grosha.”
On the way out of the precinct, Ellie used her telephone to send the digital photograph of Charlie Dixon to Jess’s e-mail account. She followed up with a text message: “See if anyone at Vibrations knows him. Start with the manager. C U 2nite.”
31
IN THE NARROW, WHITE-TILE HALLWAY THAT LED TO ZOYA Rostov’s apartment, Ellie recognized the familiar baby’s cry and toddlerlike squeals of happiness she’d heard on her first visit to Tatiana’s sister. She wondered if perhaps children were born with fixed temperaments, one sibling content and playful while the other fussed stoically. But when Zoya opened the apartment door and Ellie glimpsed the young faces of the baby and the boy, she realized how inchoate their identities were; their current emotional states fleeting – just momentary phases in a child’s development of days, weeks, and years. These two little lives had so much more to experience before anyone could guess what their future adult selves might become.
Zoya invited Ellie in, then locked the door behind her, securing the chain in place.
“Your husband isn’t here?” Ellie asked.
“Vitya is working.”
“What does your husband do for a living?”
“He is a security guard at a storage warehouse. He usually is on night shift, but lately he has overtime to work.”
“Staying home with both of the kids all those hours has to be hard,” Ellie offered.
“I never see my children as work. Other people’s children – that was work. In Russia, I was a schoolteacher. The children, they were good, nice children. But every day, I thought, how much work it is to take care of all of these children in one little room. Keeping them from hurting themselves, getting them to behave – that was all work, let alone trying to teach them anything. Now that I have my own? I cannot imagine anyone else thinking of them as work.”
“Did you ever think of being a teacher here in the United States?”
Zoya nodded. “Of course. At first. But I found nothing. Not even teaching Russian. Too many licenses and requirements. I looked for other work. Some girls, they learn how to style hair or become house servants. I was offered a job at a massage parlor, but I could see from one visit what went on there. I made the mistake of telling Tatiana about it. And now here we are.”
“What do you mean by that?
“I got lucky. I marry a good man, a good father. I have children and am happy. Tatiana, she worked at massages and never got lucky like I was. Now she is dead. She never even got to meet her little niece. Her name is Tanya,” she said, jiggling the calmed baby toward Ellie. “It is like a nickname of Tatiana in Russian.”
“That’s really nice, both the name and the sentiment.”
“Vitya, he fought me on it. He made jokes that he did not want our daughter to turn out like Tatiana. But I told him this is what I wanted, and that was the end of it.”
Ellie noted the sound of pride in Zoya’s voice and decided it was well deserved as she pictured this tiny waif of a woman standing up on behalf of her sister’s good name.
“You probably figured out by now that I came back to talk to you about Tatiana.”
Zoya nodded.
“Did you know that she was an informant for the FBI?” Zoya’s eyes widened, and Ellie pulled out the booking photograph of Lev Grosha that she’d received from Charlie Dixon. “Do you recognize this man? His name is Lev Grosha. He’s in prison based in part on information that Tatiana gave to the FBI.”
Zoya held the picture and stared at it blankly.
“I take it you had no idea how serious her legal problems had gotten.”
“This man is in prison because of
“That’s my understanding. We just heard about it ourselves.” Ellie pulled her phone from her waist, flipped it open, and showed Zoya the picture she’d taken of Charlie Dixon. “This was the FBI agent she was working with.”
Ellie could not read Zoya’s silence, but it seemed more troubled than surprised.
“This man,” she said, jutting her chin toward Ellie’s phone, “he is an agent for the police?”
“Well, not for the police, but for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They’re-”
“Yes, I know what is the FBI. I just say police. But he works for FBI?”
Ellie nodded, and Zoya worked her lips nervously between her teeth. Her eyes moved between the grainy digital photo of Dixon and the booking photo of Lev Grosha.
“Have you seen the FBI agent before? With your sister?”
“Yes, I think so. She came here, not long before – she came and asked for some money, just a little bit, like always. I have to ask Vitya, you know. But we give her some money, and then she leaves. Vitya and I, we go out a few minutes later to take Anton to the park, back when we had just the one child. A car passed us and Tatiana was inside. Vitya, you know, he was bothered, like she had come asking for money but was running off with some strange man anyway. He made a big fuss over it is why I remember. This man on your phone, I think he was the man who was driving.”
“I can imagine what your husband must have thought when he saw her in a new car with a man who was probably wearing a suit and tie. But he wasn’t a client. She was providing information to law enforcement.” Ellie kept her suspicions about the nature of Charlie’s relationship with Tatiana to herself.
“Did your partner know that?”
“Excuse me? My partner?”
“The man you came here with before. Mr. Becker, right? Did he know my sister was working with the FBI?”
“No. He’s retired now. He couldn’t have known she was an informant for the FBI. They’re totally separate from the city police. What about the man in the other photograph? Do you recognize him? Lev Grosha?”
Zoya shook her head but still looked rattled.
“Can you think of how your sister might have known Lev Grosha? She told the agent that he was part of a larger criminal conspiracy. Grosha was arrested for credit card fraud, but there was also heroin dealing involved, maybe money laundering.”
They both jumped at the sound of a key in the lock. Zoya pushed Grosha’s photograph back into Ellie’s hands. “You must go.”
“What’s wrong, Zoya?”
“Nothing. I told you, I saw my sister with that man on your phone, but I did not know who he was. Now, please. Do not cause problems.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
