Secret Target

2

As Major Elena Pavlovna Petelina entered the lab, her heart tightened in rueful expectation. This is how it was each time some young man’s remains from the mid-’90s were uncovered. Eighteen years of searching. In the beginning, she would visit the morgue to identify the bodies. Back then, new ones would turn up as often as several times a week. She saw it all. By the age of seventeen, the gangsters’ cruel executions had been chiseled into the young girl’s memory not by the newspapers’ terse type but by the sight of broken bodies, gunshot wounds, burned flesh. And by the smell – of rot and decay. Thankfully, these days, the victims’ remains took on a more palatable appearance and were subjected strictly to DNA identification.

Mikhail Ustinov, the young forensic expert, was too busy fiddling with an electron microscope to notice the detective’s entrance. Unruly tufts of hair billowed out and over his large headphones. Misha rode his motorcycle year-round. His giant helmet, along with his brainy, longwinded explanations, which he inevitably introduced with the phrase «allow me to explain,» had earned him the jocular nickname «the Tadpole.»

Pushing away from the lab table, Misha rode his office chair over to the computer. His left hand grabbed a metal mug, while his right began to clatter on the keyboard. A DNA helix rotated in one corner of the large screen. All of the Tadpole’s equipment was connected to one network. There was even a cable running from the mug to his notebook, to keep the coffee warm.

Elena Petelina stopped beside the forensic expert. Mikhail noticed the detective and knocked his headphones down to his shoulders.

«The results look negative,» he answered her unspoken question. «This isn’t your brother.»

Elena’s eyes flickered uneasily as if she was looking for something. Her fingers tapped on Misha’s shoulder in distraction. Finally, she thanked him with a pat on the back and turned to go.

Her brother, Anatoly Grachev, went missing in July of 1994. He took the day’s receipts from their father’s store, got in his car and left. No one had seen her brother or the car since. Meanwhile, on the night of his disappearance, the police arrested their dad. Pavel Petrovich Grachev was found wandering along the main alley of Izmaylovo Park in a bloodstained jacket. He had suffered some broken ribs and a fractured skull. When they were putting him into the paddy wagon, he raved deliriously, «I killed Tolik. I killed him.»

Afterward, the doctor established that her dad had been hit by a car causing a concussion and temporary amnesia. But the investigators were more concerned with other details. The store’s workers told them of a quarrel between father and son that evening. Forensic experts discovered Anatoly’s blood on Mr. Grachev’s jacket. The detective working the case quickly slapped together a murder indictment and began to seek a plea bargain.

Anatoly was nineteen back then. Elena was seventeen. She had just graduated high school and been admitted to the university. She wanted to major in chemistry. But that one tragic day brought her family’s happy life crashing down. Her mother fell ill, leaving Lena to struggle with the detective assigned to the case on her own. The girl kept trying to convince him of a grave error, but the experienced old hound would just grin and send the meddling girl around the morgues to identify bodies. That year was blessed with an ample harvest of corpses, young and old, and the detective had figured that the girl would throw up a few times and then think twice before showing up at the prosecutor’s office again.

But the grim lesson had the opposite effect on the stubborn girl.

«It’s no wonder you have so many unsolved murders. It’s all because of people like you.» Such was the reproach Elena flung in the detective’s face. «Instead of finding the real culprit, you just lock up the first person you come across!»

«Why don’t you step into my shoes and give it a shot?» The detective slammed a stack of cases against his cluttered desk, sending a cascade of folders fanning to the floor. Elena was silent for half a minute. In this time she managed to calm herself and reach a fateful decision.

«I will give it a shot,» she said, helping him pick up the folders. «Tell me where to apply.»

The next day, Elena Gracheva said farewell to her beloved chemistry and submitted her application to the criminal investigation program at the police academy.

Her dad was released a year later – no body, no case.

«He lucked out,» said Detective Kharchenko without a grudge. «It’s a big park – we can’t search it all. But you, Elena, don’t get complacent. That corpse can show up in five years and then… Well, as good of a student as you are, you know yourself what’ll happen.»

Her father had changed. He looked older and had grown taciturn. He never said a word about the day that Anatoly disappeared. His wife interrogated him, tormented him with suspicions, begged him to tell her what had happened to Anatoly. But the father stayed silent and the family fell apart. Pavel Petrovich Grachev left Moscow to live in his mother’s house in the country. In the meantime, with her newfound skills and learning, Lena would return to that fateful day a hundred times in the course of her career – striving to finally get to the truth of what had really occurred.

This week was no different. During the demolition of some garages in the Izmaylovo District, the remains of a male corpse dating to the mid-’90s had been uncovered. Elena asked Misha Ustinov to run some DNA tests, but the results had come back negative. And yet, for Detective Elena Petelina – née Gracheva – there was nothing negative about it: For, this meant that there remained some slender chance that her brother Anatoly was still alive.

«Detective Petelina!» the Tadpole called her back. «What about the remains? Should we keep working with them?»

«Of course, Misha. Maybe someone out there is looking for him too,» said Petelina. Then, her hand already on the door handle, she turned back. «Almost forgot – I didn’t come here just for this. You better get your stuff together. We have a new case. A body’s been found in an apartment.»

3

Captain Marat Valeyev heard out the dispatch on his phone, slammed the receiver into its cradle and aimed a crumpled piece of paper at his partner.

«Wake up Vanya – you don’t get to Major by sleeping.»

The paper ball struck Senior Lieutenant Ivan Mayorov square in the forehead. It was not for nothing that Valeyev was famous for his shooting at the firing range – there were even some women out there who knew that the captain could kill with but a look.

«I – I was just thinking about something,» explained the drowsy lieutenant, flapping his eyelids. No sooner had Ivan set foot in Homicide and introduced himself as «Lieutenant Mayorov,» than jokes referencing the rank of major had begun to fly thick and fast at the fair-haired giant. And though it was all in good fun of course, there was a hint of mockery in them too.

«We’ve got a murder. Let’s go.»

The operatives grabbed their jackets, shut the door to the office and set off down the stairs. Marat Valeyev, trim and limber, descended first, adjusting his sidearm in its holster. Behind him trudged the brawny and laconic Vanya Mayorov. At the landing, without slowing his stride, the captain pinched busty Galya Nesterova, who ran the passport desk, and whispered something in her ear. The girl in the tight-fitting lieutenant’s tunic blushed and remained standing for a long while, waiting for the raven-haired captain to turn and flash his impertinent, bright smile. In the end, only Vanya turned to look at her – which fact, the girl utterly ignored.

In the car, the senior lieutenant could no longer contain his curiosity. He had already spent hours agonizing over the best possible reason to stop by the passport desk and say something to the lovely little donut with red lips. The captain had crippled these reveries without missing a stride.

«Marat, what’d you say to her?» asked Vanya.

«Who?»

«Galya Nesterova. Back there, on the stairs.»

«Ah, Galya… I don’t recall. I just kind of blurted something.» Valeyev sat at the wheel, watching the road.

«What do you mean you don’t recall? She…» Vanya’s creaky brain had trouble grasping how someone could be so careless with such miracle-working words.

«Must be nice to have titties on your mind right now. It’s not like we’re going to a murder or anything.»

«Who got killed?» Vanya banished from his mind a vision of Galya’s legs beheld from an inappropriate angle.

«The Police Patrol Service found a male corpse in an apartment. They’ve detained a woman at the scene.» The Captain flew through the intersection on a fading yellow. «It’d be good to get there before Elena.»

«The Noose?»

The Noose was Homicide’s nickname for Senior Detective Elena Petelina. Homicide didn’t come up with the name – the felons had. And it wasn’t just because her last name sounded like petlya – the Russian word for «noose.» As a detective, Petelina was meticulous, cerebral and severe. If she sensed a murderer, she’d latch on and never let go. Inch by inch, she’d tighten the evidence round the suspect’s neck. She hassled field ops and forensics to no end, but her cases never fell apart at trial and were never rejected for further investigation.

Vanya had noticed that Valeyev always tried to work with Petelina. Rumor had it that they had been classmates, but the captain didn’t like to talk about his younger days. He was always informal with the detective, even though she was his senior. But that didn’t mean anything. Ladies liked the captain. His shameless approach could shatter the ice encasing the hearts of beauties you wouldn’t believe. And yet when it came to Petelina, Valeyev never seemed as sure of himself. Around her, he might as well have been some high-school milksop in the presence of a supermodel.

Vanya could not comprehend the captain’s fascination with the detective. Of course, she was an interesting woman, but she had such a cold gaze and strict voice, and her figure lacked all those nice curvy bits. Basically, she was just like – a noose! Yuck! And therefore not in the least like lovely little Galya from the passport desk. Little lips, little cheeks, little eyes and everything in the right place – front and back! Vanya had been lucky enough to witness firsthand the running exam portion of Galya’s fitness evaluation. Since then, the lovely vision of her in a taut T-shirt had, on more than one occasion, appeared to him in his dreams.

Vanya took a breath and glanced sideways at his senior officer. He really hoped the captain wouldn’t get it in his head to take things further with Galya. He was the kind that could after all.

«We’re here,» said Valeyev turning into the driveway to a Stalin-era apartment building.

He parked snuggly between the ambulance and a police cruiser. Slithering out like an eel through the cracked door, the captain offered a cigarette to a loitering beat cop, exchanged a few words and called to Ivan through the windshield.

«What are you, stuck? Petelina ain’t here yet. Let’s get to work Senior Lieutenant Mayorov! Service stars don’t just fall out of the sky.»

Vanya tried to open his door, assessed the width of the crack – no more than a pack of cigarettes – and, grunting, began to clamber over to the driver’s side.

4

Elena Petelina walked into the lobby of the apartment building.

The crime scene had attracted the typical hubbub. Cops stand smoking in the stairwell, quietly panning some soccer player. She does not know them but as soon as she appears, fists close over cigarettes, stomachs are gathered in and something like «Good evening, detective!» echoes in her wake – to be replaced by a respectful whisper once she has passed: «That’s her – that’s the Noose.» Elena doesn’t take offense. As Colonel Kharchenko puts it, only the best detectives are given nicknames.

Detective Petelina always tries to visit the crime scene herself. Evidence gathered in the first hours of the investigation is always the most precise. Better see for yourself than sift for it later among barren reports.