“Information, opinion,” said Tkach, who knew, as did every other MVD investigator and uniformed police officer, that Kostnitsov was probably a bit mad, certainly offensive, and possibly the best forensic scientist in the Soviet Union.
“Information. You have the man’s name, the make of the weapon that killed him,” said Kostnitsov, moving to his desk, pushing away some papers, and picking up a cup of tepid liquid, which he put to his lips. There was a bright glow in the scientist’s eyes as he looked at the two detectives.
“The victim was about to struggle when he was shot,” Kostnitsov said. “His right hand was still in a fist, and judging from the calluses on his hands, he was right-handed. From the path of the bullet, it is clear that he was just rising from a sitting position when the bullet struck. The shot surprised him. He didn’t turn away.”
“Go on,” said Tkach when Kostnitsov paused and looked at Zelach, who was standing near the door, as far from the scientist as he could get.
“The man was shot on a bus,” said Kostnitsov.
Tkach was suddenly quite alert.
“How …?”
Kostnitsov opened his mouth and pointed to his teeth before he spoke.
“When he died he pitched forward, hitting his teeth on chrome. I have a small piece of chrome I took from his tooth. The report said this might have something to do with a stolen bus, so I got a sliver of chrome from a bus seat this morning. Same. But more. Our victim slumped or was pushed down after he was shot, and the open wound in his chest scraped along the bus seat picked up bits of plastic, inferior quality. That, too, I checked by getting a sample from a bus this morning.”
Kostnitsov paused and looked at both detectives, waiting.
“Karpo should have this case,” Kostnitsov finally said when he had no response, no applause. He finished his drink and put the cup down on a pile of precariously balanced books and papers. “He knows how to appreciate professionalism.”
“Your conclusions are remarkable and quite helpful, Comrade,” said Tkach.
“I know that. I know that. I know that. You know how small the particles are that I had to work with? And do I have decent equipment?”
He looked around the laboratory, as did the two policemen.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Tkach.
“No,” said Kostnitsov. “I do not. Can you imagine the miracles I could perform with an electron microscope? Not that I can’t do almost impossible things now.”
“Can you tell me who killed the man on the bus?” Tkach asked.
“Yes,” said Kostnitsov with a grin, showing most of his ill-treated teeth.
“Then make our jobs easy. Give us his or her name and we’ll get a nice commendation from the party secretary,” said Tkach.
“The person who pushed the victim down may not have fired the gun,” said Kostnitsov. “The person who pushed him down was about forty-eight years old, a man, probably medium build, white and pale, dark hair with a bit of gray in it. If you find a suspect I will give you a definite identification.”
Zelach, in spite of himself, laughed, then wished he had not. Kostnitsov advanced on him.
“DNA,” hissed the blue-smocked wraith in Zelach’s face. “Do you know what that is? It is in every cell of your less than adequate body. You identify a spleen and don’t know what DNA is. Is there hope for such an unbalanced creature?”
The medicinal smell of the lab was beginning to make Tkach ill, that and the memory of a recent knish. He had a sudden internal flash of Kostnitsov opening his stomach and examining the contents, including the knish, to determine the precise moment of his death. Tkach wanted to flee.
“DNA is the genetic material,” Tkach said.
Kostnitsov nodded and turned to him.
“Each person has his own pattern,” the scientist said, moving to his desk, pushing papers away in search of something as he spoke. “It is better than fingerprints. The odds of duplication are almost nonexistent. Every cell in the body has this print. Our dead man grasped the wrist of the man he was about to strike. He picked up a few surface cells and even a trace of hair. You bring me even a strand of hair of this man and get me into an electron microscopy laboratory and I will identify him.”
“Amazing,” said Tkach, which was just what the scientist wanted to hear. Kostnitsov found what he was looking for on his desk, a pad with notes and numbers scratched on it. He brought the pad to Tkach, who asked, “Can you tell us anything else?”
“Other people handled the body,” Kostnitsov said, pointing to the pad in front of Tkach’s hand. “One of them, was a woman. All of them except the first man are young, relatively young, younger even than you. At least three of them, including the first man, were Turkistani.”
“Turkistani?” Zelach asked before he could stop himself.
“Conjecture, conclusion, but almost certain,” Kostnitsov said, still taking his pad back from Tkach. “Tobacco bits on the victim. Someone who carried him. Turkistani tobacco. Also one small thread of a jacket made with wool dyed in Turkistan. Wool not sold in Moscow. No one would want it if it were. Inferior material. But who knows what people will wear?”
“You are sure?” said Tkach.
“No, I am not sure, but the weapon is one that has been linked in reports-number ten twenty-three, January last year; number four thirty-two-eleven, Kirov, April this year; four others all linking the Stechkin with clashes involving Turkistani separatists. Look at the computer. Madmen and madwomen.”
Zelach couldn’t imagine anyone nearly as mad as Kostnitsov but he said and did nothing to betray his thoughts.
“We are looking for a medium-height Turkistani about forty-eight years old,” said Tkach.
Kostnitsov nodded and looked at his pad.
“Do you read poetry, Comrade Inspector?” the scientist asked.
“Occasionally,” Tkach said, which was true primarily because Maya thought it was romantic to be read poetry to late at night. If the conditions were right and Lydia were not snoring too loudly in the other room, and the baby wasn’t restless, Maya would …
“Good,” said Kostnitsov. “Because facts are of no use without poetry. It is poetry that makes sense of facts. You understand. Get me an electron microscope and I’ll make real poetry. I’ll see into the very soul of a chromosome, the secret segment of a twisted thread of the very fabric of human existence. I’ll imagine myself into the smallest piece of evidence and give you the very face of criminal and victim. Is that not poetry?”
“It is poetry,” Tkach agreed.
“I have work,” Kostnitsov said with a sigh, turning away from the policemen. “Next time send Karpo.”
The scientist moved to a white metallic box on his lab table. The box was marked in ink with the words “Clopniki Investigation-Foot.”
Zelach and Tkach departed before the box was open.
There is a point, Rostnikov knew, at which you must stop pushing or the balloon will break. When he was a small child, he had heard about balloons, thought they were the most amazing things imaginable, wanted desperately to see, touch one. Finally, one morning when he was no more than five or six, he was walking to the market on Herzen Street with his mother and saw a man with balloons, white balloons. There were slogans written on the balloons, and children were flocking around the man. There was no helium, no gas of any kind in the balloons, but they jostled upward and back in the wind.
Porfiry Petrovich’s mother had watched her son turn his head to the balloon man as they passed, and though they were late and the lines would be so long at the market that they would have to wait many hours for whatever food, if any, was available, she let him stop, let him join the other children.
Porfiry Petrovich had reached over the shoulder of a little girl to touch a single, stray balloon that dipped toward him. He had stretched, strained, and finally, when the balloon fluttered down over the heads of the screaming children, Porfiry Petrovich and the little girl had both touched the balloon. The little girl had grabbed the sphere and smiled at Porfiry, and the two of them had explored the soft, strange thing while the balloon man chatted, encouraged the other children, and held the balloons aloft out of their reach.
And as Porfiry and the little girl touched the balloon that they held between them like a magical bubble, it
