Against a Brightening Sky (37 page)

Gabe didn't need to ask why he prayed or who Aleksei's prayers were for. Father Pashkovsky's body was nailed up behind the altar, the light gone from his milky eyes. In death, the priest looked younger, a man closer to Nureyev's age and who might have been a boyhood friend. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Blood splattered the wall beneath the crucifix. More blood stained the altar, splashed the carpeted steps and the runner down the center of the aisle. Square-headed spikes, the kind used for railroad ties, were driven through Pashkovsky's palms. More spikes were used to secure his wrists and shoulders, and through his crossed ankles. That explained much of the blood, but the knife driven into the center of his chest was what killed him.

The way Eve Rigaux's body had been laid out was only the start of the killer's message; this was the ending flourish. She'd been killed quickly, even gently, in comparison. Only a blind man would miss the symbolism in this, or a stupid man miss the hate.

Aleksei Nureyev was neither blind nor stupid. One look at his face told Gabe he understood.

Baker moved his camera a few feet to the left, taking more photographs. The flash reflected off gilt carvings of saints and statues of the Virgin Mary set into niches along the back wall. A carving of Jesus, torn from the crucifix before Pashkovsky was nailed up in its place, lay in pieces.

Gabe took it all in and came to the same conclusion Randy had. Aleksei wasn't the killer. The man who'd attacked Annie and Connor was responsible, just as he'd been responsible for the riot at the Saint Patrick's Day parade and killing Alina's guardians. Proving that, and catching the killer, was an entirely different matter.

He skirted around the blood on the floor and slid into the pew next to Aleksei. Gabe glanced toward the altar and tried not to flinch. Details revealed themselves in the light of Baker's flash. A gag had cut into the corners of Father Pashkovsky's mouth and dribbled blood into the priest's beard. From the front row, Gabe could see echoes of pain in Father Pashkovsky's eyes; the suffering set into his face. The priest had hung there for a long time before the killer stabbed him and ended his agony.

Gabe leaned back, resting an arm along the back of the wooden bench. “Who did this, Alek? I know you didn't kill him. Help me find the man who killed your friend.”

“I have no friends, Captain Ryan. Sasha Pashkovsky was the last.” He shut his eyes and crossed himself again. “Josef has turned all of them into ghosts.”

“Josef?” The killer's name sent cold trailing down his neck and set off a flurry of whispers in his ear. Gabe couldn't help hearing. What he heard made him ill. “Who is he?”

“A man I shot and left for dead in the Ural Mountains. God have mercy on my soul, I shot him and drove off. I discovered later he'd already betrayed us.” He crossed himself again, but didn't turn away from the blank, accusing stare of Father Pashkovsky's eyes. “Josef works for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Killing him was the only way to keep him from following us, but I failed even at that. I've failed at so many things.”

“Start from the beginning.” Gabe twisted in his seat to face Nureyev. “You weren't alone on that road. Who else was with you?”

Aleksei shuddered, forcing his eyes away from the corpse on the cross. “A young officer in the Red Army came to me with news of where the tsar and his family were being held by the Bolsheviks. He'd put together a desperate plan to save the grand duchesses, but he needed my help to pay a hired assassin known as Josef the Undertaker. I'd heard rumors about what this man was capable of, but this young lieutenant had already agreed to his price. Backing out meant losing any chance of freeing the family, so I went along.”

The distant, detached cop inside him needed to collect details, to know what freeing a tsar's daughter cost. Another part, the man who'd sat up in a darkened sitting room, gun in hand while his wife slept, flinched from knowing. That man didn't want to know, but he asked anyway. “What did it cost the young lieutenant to free Alina?”

Nureyev glanced at him, but didn't seem surprised that Gabe knew. “Josef's currency is death, Captain, and he demanded payment in people's lives. I didn't find out what Dmitri had agreed to until it was too late. Alina was the only one of the family to leave with us.”

Baker was finished with his photographs. Randy Dodd and Marshall Henderson stood with the deputy coroner, arguing about the best way to remove the body. Getting Nureyev away from here before they started was for the best. He considered himself a somewhat hardened detective, but the thought of watching the coroner pry the spikes out of Pashkovsky made Gabe's stomach flip. The idea of forcing Aleksei to watch hit him even harder.

He stood and got a hand under Nureyev's elbow. “You can tell me the rest of the story in my office.”

“Are you arresting me, Captain Ryan?” Aleksei paused before stepping into the aisle, looking back toward the altar and crossing himself again. He didn't resist as Gabe led him away. “Josef will find me in a cell as easily as on the street or in the union office. I'll be dead by morning.”

The hair on the back of Gabe's neck rose. He believed him. “You're not under arrest. And I've no intention of letting you die in my jail. I have the means to protect you if necessary.”

“You mean Mikal's widow, Isadora.” Alek pulled himself up straighter. “Thank you, Captain, but no. She has too many people to protect as it stands. You and I will talk, and once we're finished, I will do my best to disappear. Maybe I can lead Josef away from San Francisco and buy you some time. I don't hold much hope he'll follow, but he's fooled me before.”

They stopped just inside the front doors, giving Aleksei time to button his overcoat and flip up his collar. Gabe thought about the crowd outside, the press of bodies and the reporters shouting questions. Every instinct he had told him not to parade Nureyev past the photographers.

Gabe put a hand on Aleksei's arm to keep him from stepping outside. “I've changed my mind. You're not going back to the office with me, you're leaving now. I know from experience the coroner carries extra coats and caps in his van. No one should look twice if you go out the back dressed like one of his men and drive away with them. I'll square things with Dr. West. Call it a head start if you like.”

Nureyev smiled, the first real smile Gabe had seen from him. “Thank you, Captain Ryan. For a police officer, you have a very devious mind.”

“My partner says the same thing.” Gabe stuffed his hands deep into his pockets, thinking. “I need to ask something before you go. I can understand Josef wanting revenge against you for shooting him. But why kill Eve Rigaux, or Father Pashkovsky?”

He stopped short of asking why this man had Jordan Lynch shot, or killed entire families, or why all the children that haunted Gabe's dreams had to die. Once he started asking why, stopping might be impossible.

“Do you know much about Russian history, Captain?”

Gabe shrugged. “No, not a thing.”

Nureyev pursed his lips and nodded, as if he'd known the answer all along. “Russia has been ruled by an emperor or an empress for centuries. Rightly or wrongly, all the ills that befall Russia are blamed on our rulers. That has always been true, but Lenin and his thugs won their revolution by making Nicholas appear to be an unfeeling monster. From there, it was but a small step to seeing the entire aristocracy as vermin, needing to be trapped and killed. Lenin loosed Josef on the world. I don't know if he can be called back.”

Gabe chewed his lip for a few seconds, thinking. “Then we need to find a way to stop him once and for all.”

“I wish you luck with that, Captain. Be very very sure when you shoot him that Josef dies. Don't make the mistake of showing any mercy. Alina's life, and the life of my son, depend on you.”

Gabe stared, ready to argue that there were other ways to stop Josef and that he was sworn to uphold the law, to see justice done, not gun down criminals in the street. He couldn't get the words out. In his gut, he knew Aleksei was right. Isadora would likely agree, however reluctantly.

He gripped Nureyev's shoulder. “I'll do my best, you've my word on that. Now, let's get you on your way.”

By the time Gabe went out the front door, Aleksei Nureyev was blocks away, riding in the back of the coroner's van. If anything, the crowd outside was thicker, the shouts from the throng of reporters more insistent. He ignored them all, striding to his waiting car and climbing inside.

He watched people from the safety of the backseat, scanning each face, looking for a sign he hoped he'd recognize.

Josef could be any one of them. That he'd never know until it was too late made Gabe's skin crawl.

Delia

Gabe got home long after supper, exhausted and discouraged. He told me about Father Pashkovsky's murder and his conversation with Aleksei Nureyev. I assured him that having a name for this man, whether Josef was his true name or not, was a good thing. Names opened new ways for Dora and me to search for him. Our chances of finding him had increased enormously.

The one truly bright spot in his afternoon was finding Pastor Grant alive and well, and confused about why the police came looking for him.

He used the parlor phone to speak with Dora while I dished out the food I'd kept warm for him. We went to bed as soon as he'd finished eating.

I'd covered the dressing table mirror earlier. Gabe offered to turn the mirror to the wall, but draping it with an old sheet was just as effective. I couldn't fall asleep with all three princesses watching me, especially knowing where my dreams led and what I might see.

Being accustomed to seeing ghosts, to knowing that the restless dead were always a part of my world, was far, far different from watching someone die. In all my years of dealing with spirits, I'd never before been forced to witness a death or the events that led to a last moment. A last good-bye.

The watcher had changed that for me. I understood the necessity, but I didn't thank her for the experience.

I struggled with sleep, fought hard against drifting away from the comforting warmth of our bedroom into the forbidding chill of that far distant mountain house. All the dreams were vivid, stark in their harshness and the terror that made my heart pound before waking. But I always knew before dreaming what I'd remember and what would pass away.

This dream I'd remember.

*   *   *

After that first night, the commandant ignored us. He slept in the village each night, coming to the house only to make sure we were being fed and that the guards hadn't abandoned their posts. I heard one of the guards call him Yuri or I might never have learned his name. When he did speak to us, it was to deliver lectures, reminding us again and again we were citizens of the state now, with no more status than the village girls scrubbing pots in the kitchen.

As spring ended, a few of the younger guards gossiped where I could hear, raising my hopes that I'd see my parents soon and that the whole family would board ship for England. Exile might be a different kind of captivity, but one I'd welcome.

Commandant Yuri's next visit crushed even that hope. In the midst of his lecture, he made a point of telling us the English king, my father's cousin, had refused us asylum. Lenin could have washed his hands of us if we'd gone as penitents to England. The flatness in Yuri's eyes and the finality in his voice stole my last bit of hope.

By the time my parents and my brother arrived at the end of June, I'd given up all thoughts of leaving the mountain house alive. My father was thinner, my mother barely able to walk or stand for more than a minute, but the family was together. I was grateful, no matter how short the time we had left.

Papa refused to believe the Bolsheviks would go so far as assassination, but I'd overheard the guards talking and I saw the way they watched him. He couldn't see the hate while I saw little else. My thoughts were full of nothing but ways to escape, elaborate plans to save my family that had no chance of success.

More soldiers, more strangers, arrived. We hugged our parents and laughed with our brother and I tried to be happy. All seven of us were together in the same house for the first time in more than a year. Dinner was in the downstairs dining room that night. There was fresh milk and cake, and Papa told stories of when he was a boy.

Twice I thought I saw Dmitri standing with the guards in the hallway, and again as we went upstairs to bed. Each time I looked again and the face belonged to an older man, a stranger with a scarred face and a crooked nose.

I lay awake thinking about that. He'd been my only friend here, the only one to show kindness. Dmitri had gone so far as to smuggle in a cake for my birthday, something I'd not forgotten. I decided that seeing his face among a crowd of strangers wasn't so odd.

Midnight was long past when insistent pounding on our door woke my sisters and me. Yuri and three guards stood in the hallway when I pulled the door open. “Get dressed and pack your belongings. I've had word that fighting with the White Army is moving this way. You're to be moved tonight.”

“Tonight?” My throat tightened and for an instant I couldn't speak. “Where are you sending us? We've barely had time to see each other.”

He smiled and touched his cap. “The family will stay together. Now, hurry. The trucks will be here before dawn.”

Yuri's smile frightened me more than leaving in the middle of the night, but we did as he said. Guards came and gathered our bags, carrying everything downstairs. The family, my brother's doctor, and the few servants that had followed my parents into captivity gathered in the hallway to wait. My younger brother was ill and couldn't walk, so Papa carried him. I picked up my sister's little dog to keep her from racing around our feet.

A minute or two later, Yuri returned with five or six guards, all of them new men I'd not seen before now. One was the stranger with the scarred face and crooked nose. I avoided looking at him for fear my mind would play tricks on me again.