She opened her coat and pulled down the collar of her sweater to expose the tops of her breasts. “Look!” she demanded. “Look where he burned me.” She showed me three button-sized scars, the likely result of hot cigarette ash. “And here . . .” She pulled her collar around to expose her shoulder blade. Again more small circles. “I have many more.”
She closed her sweater back around her neck, and her eyes took on the faraway stare of someone replaying a memory. “My husband is my captor. Mikhail delivered me to him, and I went to Reece willingly. I wanted to prove to Mikhail that I would do anything for him—even this.” Then she looked at me with incredulity. “You could never understand. You see only a whore. You do not live in my world.”
“I’m trying to understand,” I said. “But if you hate Whitton so much, why did you go to the club to kill Mikhail and not your . . . not Reece?”
“Because my sister is dead and it is Mikhail who will pay for that. You should not have stopped me. I would have killed him even if I had to tear out his throat with my bare hands.”
“Why Mikhail? How is he involved?”
Her gaze turned suspicious. “You will not help me. You are a policeman, like Reece. You do not care for women such as me. You only get in the way.”
“I’m a cop, that’s true enough; but I am not like Whitton. I want to get these guys as much as you do. I want them to pay for their crimes. I understand what you want, I do, but I need your help. Tell me about Mikhail and about your sister.”
“My sister . . .” I thought Anastasia was going to cry again. She tightened her lips and drew in a shaky breath. Then she asked, “When did Zoya die?”
“Four years ago.”
Anastasia’s breath halted in her chest. The answer caught her off guard. “Four years?” Her lips began to quiver, but she held it together. “How did she die?”
I hesitated, then said, “She was beaten and then drowned. We don’t know exactly where it happened or how, but that’s what the autopsy showed.”
“And then?”
“And then they threw her body into a dumpster.”
With that, Anastasia began to cry again.
“I’m sorry.”
Her cry grew until she gritted her teeth and screamed into her fists. “God damn him.” Hot breath shot through her lips in hissing bursts as she spoke. “I’m going to kill Mikhail. I don’t care if you arrest me. I don’t care about anything. I will kill him and no one can stop me.”
“Please, Anastasia. I’m not here to arrest you. I’m here to help. You’ve got to believe me. We need to work together. We need to trust each other.”
Again, she looked at me with suspicion in her eyes.
“I prefer Ana,” she said. “Not Anastasia.”
“Okay, Ana.”
My phone rang. I looked at the number and recognized it. Reece Whitton. I answered.
“Yes?”
“Where’s my wife, Rupert?”
I looked at Ana and put a finger to my lips to tell her to remain quiet. Then I switched the call to speakerphone. “Ana’s here with me. We’re having a chat.”
“What kind of game are you playing?”
“Game?” I started to get angry, the memory of his voice planning my wife’s death boiling up inside me. “You think this is a game, you piece of shit?”
Now it was his turn to hesitate. Then he said, “I think we should meet. Hash this out.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ll be on the top floor of the LaSalle Court parking ramp.”
How fitting that he would choose a parking ramp for our meeting, just as he chose a parking ramp to meet Jenni all those years ago. Quiet, isolated. The kind of place where one can do very bad things away from the prying eyes of a city. He couldn’t have picked a better location.
The poetic justice of it all brought a slight smile to my face, and I said, “I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER 31
Up North
He’s not in the snow-nest when I get back.
I’m a dozen yards away when I see that he’s gone, and a spark of panic flairs in my chest. I charge back to where I’d left him, dropping my bundle of rocks in the snow at the edge of the circle. My panic skitters to a halt when I see a path of matted snow about thirty yards long and leading to where he’s lying on his back, writhing and covered in snow. He rolled to get away from the nest, and his trail looks like it had been laid down by a drunken walrus. I bend over to catch my breath. Without the rocks, my arms feel light enough to float away and my shoulders ease back into their swollen sockets.
He is facing away from me, unaware of my presence. I take a few steps toward him and squat to watch. His snowmobile suit is partially unzipped, which I think must have been loosened in his attempt to roll away. But then I see him working his hands up and down over his abdomen, his face creased by pain. I take a few more steps and he sees me.
“You fucking psychopath,” he says. “I can’t feel my fingers. I think I have frostbite.”
I walk up and kneel down beside him, ignoring his insult. Even with his elbows strapped behind his back and his hands tethered together, he has somehow worked his coat’s zipper down to his waist. At first, I’m not concerned, but then I notice that he’s been sawing the cotton cord up and down against the zipper. The teeth of a zipper aren’t sharp, but given enough time and enough motivation—and I suppose there’s no shortage of motivation here—those teeth could cut a cotton cord.
I had doubled the cord when I tied his wrists, and to my surprise, he’s managed to saw through one of his bindings and has notched a gash into the second.
“Impressive,” I say. “I must have been gone longer than I thought.”
“You’re insane. Let me go, you fucking nutjob.”
There’s not enough drawstring to retie the section that he cut, but one strand should be enough to hold him—besides, I have the belt around the elbows as a backup. I’ll just have to keep a better eye on him from now on.
I grab the collar of his snowmobile suit and drag him back to the nest as he curses and threatens me. Before I start to dig the fifth hole, I tug his zipper back up to his neck. “Wouldn’t want you catching a cold,” I say.
“How can you be so glib?” he asks with swelling anger in his voice.
I set the auger into the fifth starter hole and my body stiffens as it prepares to greet the pain. The first turn of the shaft awakens the tattered muscles in my chest and arms again. Four more holes to go. I’m only halfway done and it feels like I’ve been at this for days, not hours.
As I drill, the man works on me the way he’s been working me the whole day: prattling on about the terrible mistake I’ve made, threatening to have my job, offering to forgive me if I stop now. His words fall into a thick, blurry hum, as if he’s talking to me from the bottom of a swimming pool.