“I told the police that I thought it was a policeman’s uniform, but I wasn’t sure,” Valeria said softly.
“You didn’t see his face,” said Elena.
“A bit of profile, but it was raining and I had been raped. My eyes were full of tears. I couldn’t identify him and I only had the sense when he paused for an instant that he had a white scar right here.”
Valeria touched a spot just to the left of her nose.
“That’s all I know,” she said. “All I remember. Believe me. I have tried. I want him caught. If it were possible, I would like to personally kill him. I believe I could do it.”
“I believe you could,” said Sasha.
“Now, if there’s nothing-” she began, but Elena cut her off with, “And you told this same story to the police when it happened?”
“Probably the same words,” Valeria said. “Now, I should like to get back to work before I get questioned by my supervisor. I need this job. I have a child.”
“Not …?” Sasha began.
“No, not from the rape,” she said. “Before-he was an infant when it happened.”
“Thank you,” said Elena as Valeria turned to the door and said, “You’ll tell me if you catch him.”
“Yes,” said Elena.
A few minutes later Sasha and Elena stood on the street. The snow was still heavy but the sidewalk was clear. Only a touch of new snow had fallen during the night, but the temperature had dropped. Sasha shuffled from one foot to the other.
“She told the police,” Elena said. “Why isn’t it in the report?”
“I have one idea,” said Sasha.
“What?”
“The old woman was right. The rapist is a policeman. He has access to the files and removed any references to his description, probably weeks or months after the reports were filed.”
“So,” said Elena, “we look for a well-built policeman with a scar next to his nose?”
“First, we talk to the other victims and see what else they said that may have been removed from the files.”
Elena nodded.
“Tea?” she asked.
Sasha nodded an emphatic yes.
Iosef looked at the list before him on his desk and waited for the sound of Elena returning to the office. The list was long and the question seemed to take a while for each government office and business to answer.
Karpo was not in his cubbyhole. He was down in Paulinin’s laboratory. Paulinin had called about a half hour earlier saying he had more information. Iosef did not want to go back into the mixture of acid smells and staleness. Iosef had asked Karpo if it would be all right for him to stay at his desk and start making the calls.
“Paulinin may have information that will help with the calls,” Karpo had said, a pale, somber figure in black standing in Iosef’s doorway.
“If he does,” said Iosef, “I’ll call back the ones I reach.”
Karpo had nodded and Iosef knew he thought the son of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was simply trying to avoid the man known in Petrovka as the Mad Scientist of the Underground.
“As you wish,” Karpo had said, and left.
Iosef was on his eleventh call.
“Hello,” he said when a woman answered, “Karkov Enterprises.”
“I am a deputy inspector in the Office of Special Investigation,” he said. “My name is Iosef Rostnikov. I wish to talk to someone in charge who has been with your company the longest time.”
“Give me a number I can call to verify who you are,” the woman said.
Iosef gave his number. She called back.
“Sergei,” she said. “He was here when we were still part of the Bureau of Energy. You are a policeman?”
“I am,” said Iosef. “If you’d like to call back again and confirm at a different number …?”
He looked at his watch. The list was long.
“No,” she said. “But we have new partners in the company, French. I don’t want to lose my job.”
“I understand,” Iosef said. “I’ll make it clear to Sergei that I insisted on talking to him.”
The woman said nothing more. There was a click and a buzz. After about ten seconds a man’s voice came on, high and reedy like a clarinet.
“Sergei Ivanovich,” he said.
“Deputy Inspector Rostnikov,” said Iosef. “I have a few questions to ask you.”
“About?”
“Do you have any current employee who is suffering from an illness related to exposure to nuclear materials?” asked Iosef.
“Why?” answered the man nervously.
“It relates to an important investigation,” said Iosef, finding himself doodling in the margins of the list. He stopped doodling, realizing he was doing what his father did, only Iosef wrote names, ornately. He had written “Elena” four times with curlicues. He also realized that he had doodled with a pen and not a pencil.
“It is his business,” said Sergei with the reedy voice. “If he would rather the world not know …”
“It is a murder case,” said Iosef. “We don’t plan to harass innocent people.”
Sergei paused, coughed, thought.
“Hell,” he said finally. “I’ll be seventy years old. They’re going to boot me out on a pension I can’t live on anyway as soon as they’re sure they don’t need my memory anymore. It’s almost all on computers now. Then-”
“The sick person,” Iosef reminded gently.
“We had two,” said Sergei. “Last year. Oriana died. She and Alexi had accidentally been exposed to an improperly sealed container from Iran. The radiation dose was high. She was dead of radiation poisoning within three months. She was young, a very good worker. It’s all in the records, the reports I was assigned to fill out and submit to the Nuclear Power Committee where someone in the Kremlin probably filed it without reading it.”
“Alexi?” asked Iosef, looking again at the long list.
“He was across the room,” said Sergei. “Lower dose. Still high. He has not looked well since a few weeks after the accident. His behavior changed. He was always a little sullen. Didn’t talk much. Like his father. Then he stopped talking to almost everyone, and he has been missing a lot of days, calling in ill. He’s going to his own doctors if he is going.”
“Alexi’s last name?”
“Alexi Monochov,” he said instantly. “He’s not here today. Called in sick. He doesn’t get paid when he’s sick, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Lives with his mother and sister. I think they have money. They have a good address. I don’t believe in God. I lived my whole life under the godlessness of Communism. Even became a Party member. But there can be coincidental ironies that make you wonder, don’t you think?”
Iosef had the definite belief that Sergei of the reedy voice had very little to do at work and welcomed a caller, any caller.
“Yes,” said Iosef.
“It is an irony that Alexi’s father died of the same thing that may be killing his son,” said the man.
Iosef stopped doodling Elena’s name.
“His father died of radiation poisoning?”
“Yes,” said Sergei. “Caused a prostate cancer. Monochov was brilliant. Moody. Thought he wasn’t sufficiently appreciated, that others above him were getting credit for his work. To tell the truth, he was right. That was a long time ago. We weren’t so careful then. Deaths were almost common. Then his son comes to work here. Almost as brilliant as the father. And he may be dying of the same malady. Good thing Monochov isn’t married and doesn’t have a son.”
“His address,” said Iosef.
Without hesitation Sergei Ivanovich gave an address on Chekhov Prospekt.
“When Monochov returns,” said Iosef, “we would prefer that you not tell him about this call.”
