even respond to the initial request for assistance from the local police department. Of all the crimes which Mike Reilly had worked, those were by far the worst, the sort after which you retired to the local FBI bar -- every field division had one -- and had a few too many as you sat quietly with equally morose and quiet colleagues, with the occasional oaths that you were going to get this mutt no matter what it took. And, mostly, the mutts were apprehended, indicted, and then convicted, and the lucky ones went to death row. Those convicted in states without a death penalty went into the general prison population, where they discovered what armed robbers thought of the abusers of children. “But I see what you mean, Oleg Gregoriyevich. It's the one thing you have trouble explaining to an ordinary citizen.” It was that the worst thing about a crime scene or autopsy photo was the sadness of it, how the victim was stripped not merely of life, but of all dignity. And these photos were particularly grisly. Whatever beauty this Maria Ivanovna Sablin had once had was only a memory now, and then mainly memories held by men who'd rented access to her body. Who mourned for a dead whore? Reilly asked himself. Not the johns, who'd move on to a new one with scarcely a thought. Probably not even her own colleagues in the trade of flesh and desire, and whatever family she'd left behind would probably remember her not as the child who'd grown up to follow a bad path, but as a lovely person who'd defiled herself, pretending passion, but feeling no more than the trained physician who'd picked her organs apart on the dented steel table of the city morgue. Is that what prostitutes were, Reilly wondered, pathologists of sex? A victimless crime, some said. Reilly wished that such people could look at these photos and see just how “victimless” it was when women sold their bodies.
“Anything else, Oleg?” Reilly asked.
“We continue to interview people with knowledge of the deceased.” Followed by a shrug.
“He offended the wrong people,” an informant said, with a shrug of his own that showed how absurdly obvious the answer to the preceding question was. How else could a person of Avseyenko's stature turn up dead in so spectacular a way?
“And what people are they?” the militiaman asked, not expecting a meaningful answer, but you asked the question anyway because you didn't know what the answer was until you did.
“His colleagues from State Security,” the informant suggested.
“Oh?”
“Who else could have killed him in that way? One of his girls would have used a knife. A business rival from the street would have used a pistol or a larger knife, but an RPG...be serious, where does one get one of those?”
He wasn't the first to voice that thought, of course, though the local police did have to allow for the fact that all manner of weapons, heavy and light, had escaped one way or another from the coffers of what had once been called the Red Army into the active marketplace of criminal weapons.
“So, do you have any names for us?” the militia sergeant asked.
“Not a name, but I know the face. He's tall and powerfully built, like a soldier, reddish hair, fair skin, some freckles left over from his youth, green eyes.” The informant paused. “His friends call him 'the boy,' because his appearance is so youthful. He was State Security once, but not a spy and not a catcher of spies. He was something else there, but I am not sure what.”
The militia sergeant started taking more precise notes at this point, his pencil marks far more legible and much darker on the yellow page.
“And this man was displeased with Avseyenko?”
“So I have heard.”
“And the reason for his displeasure?”
“That I do not know, but Gregoriy Filipovich had a way of offending men. He was very skilled at handling women, of course. For that he had a true gift, but the gift did not translate into his dealings with men. Many thought
“Anything else, Oleg?” Reilly asked.
“We continue to interview people with knowledge of the deceased.” Followed by a shrug.
“He offended the wrong people,” an informant said, with a shrug of his own that showed how absurdly obvious the answer to the preceding question was. How else could a person of Avseyenko's stature turn up dead in so spectacular a way?
“And what people are they?” the militiaman asked, not expecting a meaningful answer, but you asked the question anyway because you didn't know what the answer was until you did.
“His colleagues from State Security,” the informant suggested.
“Oh?”
“Who else could have killed him in that way? One of his girls would have used a knife. A business rival from the street would have used a pistol or a larger knife, but an RPG...be serious, where does one get one of those?”
He wasn't the first to voice that thought, of course, though the local police did have to allow for the fact that all manner of weapons, heavy and light, had escaped one way or another from the coffers of what had once been called the Red Army into the active marketplace of criminal weapons.
“So, do you have any names for us?” the militia sergeant asked.
“Not a name, but I know the face. He's tall and powerfully built, like a soldier, reddish hair, fair skin, some freckles left over from his youth, green eyes.” The informant paused. “His friends call him 'the boy,' because his appearance is so youthful. He was State Security once, but not a spy and not a catcher of spies. He was something else there, but I am not sure what.”
The militia sergeant started taking more precise notes at this point, his pencil marks far more legible and much darker on the yellow page.
“And this man was displeased with Avseyenko?”
“So I have heard.”
“And the reason for his displeasure?”
“That I do not know, but Gregoriy Filipovich had a way of offending men. He was very skilled at handling women, of course. For that he had a true gift, but the gift did not translate into his dealings with men. Many thought
Similar Books
