Dangerous Evidence

Lisa Malyshko untied her sash dramatically and stuck out her breasts. Only a G-string and sheer stockings covered her naked body.

“Shut the door, you pig! I’m changing in here.”

Elena intercepted Marat’s curious gaze as it slipped down the young woman’s body. How incorrigible were men! Never happy with what they had! Petelina stepped in between Marat and the sassy girl.

“There’s no hurry, Lisa. Katya Grebenkina isn’t waiting for you any longer. She’s dead.”

“What? How?” exclaimed the startled girl.

“The same as Stella Sosuksu. Jumped off the roof.”

“Well, geez!” Lisa sank back onto the bed.

“I’m investigating these incidents. Which of these was Katya’s room? We need to examine her belongings.”

“The door on the right.”

Lisa’s rudeness had melted instantaneously. She remained sitting on her bed, blinking vacantly and looking forlorn, while the operatives worked over the apartment. She answered their questions passively and promised to go to the detective’s office as soon as she was called in. And yet, as soon as the operatives shut the front door behind them, the girl perked up, dashed over to the dresser and began to feverishly gather her things. An escape plan was forming in her mind.

Nothing bright. To hell with the miniskirt. No pins or boots!I have to melt into the crowd.Hair up in a ponytail, no makeup, no trace of sex appeal.What do we have here?Jeans, though embroidered along the back pockets.It’ll have to do.A white sweater with a lips print across the entire front. No matter – no one will see it under the jacket. I’ll throw on this blue down jacket over it – it’ll sparkle in the headlights but ordinary students wear these too. These simple shoes will do for footwear. And remember to grab the knit cap – I can use it to hide my long hair.How do I look? Lisa looked at herself in the mirror on the wall and came away satisfied. No mud duck, but no slut either.

Having finished dressing herself, Lisa grabbed her phone, dialed the number that she had just recently given to the detective, waited for an answer and then quickly blurted, “Boris, Katya’s dead. Jumped off the roof just like Stella. The cops came by, along with a detective. They’re looking for you. Get out!”

Lisa hung up. The pimp instantly called her back, but Lisa popped off the lid, dumped the phone battery and fished out the SIM card. She got a new SIM card from her purse and put it into the phone. The girl cocked her head and shut her eyes.

“What else? What else?” she whispered to herself.

Her memory gave her a hint. She darted to the dresser and found a photo album. She ran to the bathroom. Her little fingers with the newly-painted nails began pulling out photo after photo and flicking the lighter. As the fire consumed the girls’ faces – Katya Grebenkina, Lisa Malyshko and Stella Sosuksu’s – the photos’ singed corners tumbled into the toilet bowl. Having dealt with the last snapshot, Lisa flushed the toilet.

It was time for her to vanish too.

The girl peered into the front door’s eyehole to make sure that no one was waiting outside. Then, she slipped out of the apartment. Instead of calling the elevator, she decided to play it safe and began to descend the stairs as quietly as she could. After she had descended three floors, Lisa stopped and listened. No one. The young woman lifted a loose windowsill and extracted an ordinary envelope from the hiding place underneath it. Having made sure that its contents were in place, she put it in her purse and – now throwing caution to the wind – took off running down the stairs at full speed.

The police had left the courtyard, but the buildings’ residents were still discussing the unhappy event around the damaged car. Lisa paused for a moment and hesitantly glanced at the spot where her two friends had encountered their terrible ends. She did not want to pass near the bloody car. The girl pulled the jacket’s hood tighter over her head and hurried into the opposite direction.

As soon as she turned the corner and felt safer, someone grabbed her from behind. One arm wrapped itself around her belly, while the other painfully compressed her throat in the crook of its elbow. The girl flailed helplessly, unable to scream.

6

The taxi stopped at the gates to the hospital.

“Here you are. They won’t let me onto the premises,” the taxi driver warned the sullen passenger in the army field jacket.

Alex Bayukin thrust another thousand-ruble bill to the driver.

“Wait here,” he ordered.

The ex-captain pushed his insulated cap down onto his forehead, walked up to the security booth beside the boom gate and asked how to get to the morgue. The haggard guard took a slurp of tea from his large mug and pointed in the needed direction without betraying the slightest bit of courtesy. Alex stomped off into the depths of the fenced-off area.

Bayukin Sr. had propitiously remembered that Katya, the prostitute who had pilfered the envelope, always used the same taxi service. Sometimes the general would watch from his window as the girl got into a car with an easy-to-remember phone number on its door. The general knew that anytime the dispatchers took a request, they would ask for the destination address. Having called the dispatcher, he announced his address and requested that he be taken to the same destination where his “daughter” had been taken that same morning.

This was how Alex Bayukin found himself in front of the same sixteen-story building where the tragedy had occurred. He instantly noticed the car with the dented roof. The girl’s body had already been taken away, but the impressionable housewives were happy to describe the deceased and even provided her name – Katya!

Alex called his father. The general spent a long time swearing, then ordered Alex to make sure that this was the same thief who had robbed him. To this end, he revealed a distinguishing feature of the girl to his son.

One call to the emergency services and Alex Bayukin found himself at the doors of the morgue he needed.

Alex felt his anger roiling inside of him, and he didn’t feel it necessary to hide his mood from the lanky orderly in the blue scrub cap and the bespattered oilcloth apron.

“My girlfriend was brought here today. She fell off a roof.”

The lanky orderly perked up.

“For sure. Do you want to arrange a funeral? I know a great funeral parlor – here’s their business card!” He offered Alex a black card embossed in gold.

“I’d like to see her,” Alex squeezed through clenched teeth.

“For sure. We can arrange that. How do you want her prepared? You want the premium job or the regular?”

“What?”

“Premium costs more, but the client will look like a perfect peach. As for regular… well, regular is more like a carrot from the vegetable patch.”

“I want to see Katya right now!” Alex could barely contain himself.

“For sure,” shrugged the orderly. It seemed that this phrase suited anything that happened in his life. “Go on through. Though keep in mind that before we’ve had a chance to work on “em, the clients, they don’t look so great.”

The mortuary cold chamber – with once-white tiled walls, drains in the floor and dim dome lights on the painted ceiling – exuded a suffocating smell of formaldehyde. The orderly pulled on rubber gloves as he led Alex over to a metal gurney on which rested the body. He pulled the sheet from the head of the corpse. The girl’s lusterless face revealed a swollen eye and a dried trail of blood emanating from her contorted mouth.

“I warned you,” the orderly apologized, noticing the visitor’s initial reaction.

Alex suppressed the spasm in his stomach and ripped the entire sheet from the body. Despite the internal fractures and the splotches of hematoma, he could appreciate the girl’s body. Dad’s bouncing around with young girls – the dog – while I’m forced to hit on some fat-ass sales girl.

“Flip her,” Alex nodded to the orderly.

“For… are you sure..?”

“Flip her, I said!” Malice flashed in the visitor’s eyes.

The orderly groaned a bit but did as he was told. Alex was trying to avoid looking at the fractured head and the legs which were positioned unnaturally relative to the torso. His eyes fixed on the tattoo on the girl’s lower back. He aimed his phone and took a large photo of the butterfly.

“Where’s her clothes?” Alex asked, once they had emerged from the cold chamber.

“She’s not going to catch a cold in there, you know,” scoffed the lanky orderly, unhappy with having had to flip the bag of bones.

His abrasive reply, however, was the final straw for the already-irate Alex. He punched the orderly in the stomach. The orderly sighed and doubled over and Alex brought his joined hands down on the back of the poor man’s head. The orderly collapsed. Alex began to kick the fallen man, demanding he show him the girl’s clothes.

An unshaven and muscle-bound orderly came running in response to the racket. Striking Alex from behind, he knocked him off his feet and twisted his arm, stiffly pinning him with a knee to the back.