The Devil's Garden (25 page)

Go to the police
,
Michael
.

He grabbed his keys, headed for the door.

As he rounded the platform he saw a shadow cross the stairs below. Someone was blocking his way.

It all fell into place. It had been nagging his conscious thought for the past few minutes. Nick St Cyr had told him that Edgar Rollins & Son was really only one man, that Edgar Rollins’s son had been killed by a drunk driver in 2007, and the old man didn’t have the heart to take the name off the business. St Cyr had represented the old man in a lawsuit against the drunk driver.

The man who called himself “Bobby Rollins” was not a painter at all. He now stood in front of the door leading to the street. He had shed the painter’s overalls, removed his painter’s cap. He had also removed his latex glove.

He was now pointing a weapon at Michael’s head.

In his other hand was a cellphone. He handed the phone to Michael. For a moment, Michael couldn’t move. But the insanity of the moment soon propelled him forward. He took the phone from the young man, put it to his ear.

“His name is Kolya,” Aleks said. “He does not want to harm you, but will if I give him the order. His father was a corporal in the federal army, and a vicious man. A sociopath by all accounts. I have no reason to believe that the apple has fallen far from the tree. Do you understand this?”

Michael glanced at Kolya. The young man lowered the gun slightly, leaned against the door jamb. Michael took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“I am most pleased to hear this. And, if it puts to bed your fears for the moment, let me say that your wife and your adopted daughters are just fine, and they will remain that way, as long as you do what I say.”

Your adopted daughters
, Michael thought.

“May I please speak to my wife?”

“No.”

Michael wondered what had happened to the real painter. He shuddered at the possibilities. He tried to calm himself, to tell himself that there was only one job: getting his family back.

“Are you ready to listen?” Aleksander Savisaar asked.

“Yes,” Michael said. “What do you want me to do?”

S
ondra Arsenault stared at the television, an icy hand squeezing her heart. In the past twenty-four hours she had not eaten, had not left the house, except to get the mail, and even then she had all but run back to the front porch and slammed and locked the door, as if being chased by invisible demons. She had not slept a single minute. She had alternated between pots of black coffee, vitamins, scalding showers, and runs on the treadmill. She had taken her blood pressure a dozen times, each time registering a higher reading. She had cleaned the refrigerator. Twice.

Now, watching this news report, she realized her fears had not only been justified, but horribly understated. There was a good chance that, before the day was over, her world would end.

At six o’clock James walked through the door, his briefcase bulging at the seams, a pile of papers under his arm. As one of the newer teachers at Franklin Middle School he not only taught English but also a fourth-grade civics class, and served as the school’s soccer coach. In the past three months he had lost fifteen pounds from his already tall and lanky frame. At fifty-one, he was beginning to walk with an old man’s slouch.

James kissed Sondra on the top of her head – Sondra was nearly a foot shorter, and they had fallen into this routine years earlier – put his case and papers on the dining-room table, and crossed into the kitchen.

The kids were staying with Sondra’s mother in Mamaroneck for a few days, and the house was preternaturally quiet, a state made even more pronounced to Sondra by the savage beating of her heart. She could swear she heard her diastolic pressure rise and fall.

James reached into the cupboard over the stove, took down a bottle of Maker’s Mark. It had become a ritual for him. One drink before retiring to what passed for a den in their three-bedroom colonial. He would mark papers for an hour before dinner, catch up on his e-mail. If something unusual happened at school that day, this would be the ten-minute window in which he told his wife.

This was one of those days.

“You’re not going to believe what happened today,” James began. “One of the kids in my civics class, this big fourth-grader who thought it would be a good idea to bring a pair of chameleons to school –”

“I have something to tell you.”

James stopped pouring his drink, his shoulders sagging. All the dark possibilities of what might be coming his way danced across his face –
an affair, a disease, a divorce, something happened to the kids.
As long as Sondra had known him, he had never faced adversity well. He was a good husband, a great father, but a warrior he was not. It was Sondra who was always on point in every conflict they had faced as a couple, as a family. It was Sondra who stared down the dangers and misfortunes of their lives.

This was one of the reasons she had not said anything about what had happened. Now she had no choice.

“Is everything okay?” James asked, his voice trembling. “I mean, the
kids
 . . . are the kids – ?”

“They’re fine, James,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Your mom?”

“She’s good. Everybody’s good.”

Sondra walked over to the sink, eyed the coffeemaker. She couldn’t have another cup. Her nerves were frayed as it was. Her veins felt like electrified copper wire. She began to make a pot anyway. She needed to do something with her hands.

As she circled an entry point to the story she had to tell her husband – a challenge that had run through her mind constantly for the past twenty-four hours – she considered how she had gotten to this moment.

The only child of Laotian immigrants, the cherished daughter of a celebrated mathematician and a forensic anthropologist, Sondra had grown up in the rarefied world of academia and applied science. Fall in New England, summer in North Carolina, at least three birthdays spent in Washington DC.

She met James at an all-nighter on the campus of Smith College, where he was one of the younger teaching assistants, and she was a grad student coasting to her MISW. At first she found him bookish and a little too passive, but after their third date she rooted out his charm, and found herself falling for this quiet young man from Wooster, Ohio. They married a year later, and although both would admit privately that their courtship and marriage did not burn with the heat of any grand passion, and that their inability to conceive was a source of sadness and disappointment, they both staked out, and claimed, contentment.

In the eighteenth year of their marriage, when they decided to adopt, the two little girls from Uzbekistan who bubbled into their lives caused a reaffirmation – perhaps even a true discovery – of love for each other. Life was good.

Until this moment.

James floated slowly over to the dinette table, pulled out a chair, drifted down to the seat, as if he were weightless. He had not yet taken a sip of his bourbon.

Sondra sat across from her husband. Her hands began to shake. She put them in her lap. “Something happened last night,” she said.

James just stared at her. For some odd reason Sondra noticed that he had missed a large spot on his neck when he shaved that morning.

Despite all her careful preparation, she just told him what had happened in one long sentence. She told him how she had been doing the laundry, how she had just put the towels in the linen closet on the second-floor landing. She told him how, at that moment, she had been thinking about their upcoming trip to Colonial Williamsburg, and whether or not the girls would like it. They were bright, inquisitive children. When it came down to a trip to Disney World, or a trip to a place with real history attached to it, it hadn’t taken long for them to decide.

When she opened the door to the girls’ room, it suddenly seemed as if all the air in the world had changed, had become red and overheated. The girls were sleeping, the nightlight was on, and everything was where it was supposed to be. Except for one thing.

“There was a man standing in their room,” Sondra said.

James looked gut-punched. “My God!” he said. He began to rise to his feet, but it seemed his legs would not support him. He eased back down to the chair. His skin turned the color of dried bones. “He didn’t . . .”

“No. I told you. The girls are fine. I’m fine.”

She told him what the man said, and how he had slipped out of the window like a wraith in the night. One moment there, the next moment gone. She went on to tell James what she had seen on the news. The Russian lawyer was dead.
Their
Russian lawyer. Murdered in his office. And it looked like files had been stolen.

For what seemed like hours, but was in reality only a minute or so, James Arsenault did not say a word. Then: “Oh no.”

“I’m going to call the police,” Sondra said. She had rehearsed these six words all day, concocting what seemed like an infinite variety of phrases, and now that she’d said them she felt an enormous sense of relief. Although, as soon as the words crossed her lips, she wondered if she had spoken them in English or Laotian.

A few moments later, when Sondra Savang Arsenault picked up the phone, her husband was still sitting at the table, his drink untouched.

In the background, the coffeemaker began to brew.

M
ichael figured Kolya to be around twenty-three. He was short and solid, powerfully built, definitely a weight trainer. Michael had about six inches in height on him, and they probably weighed the same, but that was where any similarities ended.

Then there was the gun.

They were driving east on the Long Island Expressway, Michael at the wheel, Kolya next to him.

Michael thought about Viktor Harkov’s body. He had seen his share of carnage over the last decade. He had gotten a brutal introduction of his own that horrible day at the Pikk Street Bakery.

Michael considered what a physical confrontation might be like. It had been many years since he’d had to fight anyone. Growing up ethnic in Queens, it was a weekly occurrence; everyone had their corner, their block. He’d had his share of scuffles in and around courtrooms over the years, of course, but nothing that progressed much beyond the shoving or shirt-bunching stage.

The truth was, he had been hitting the gym with regularity. On a good day, he could put in an hour on the treadmill, lift free weights for another thirty minutes, and work the heavy bag for three full rounds. He was in the best physical condition of his life. But that was a long way from physical violence. Could he handle himself? He didn’t know, but he had the dark feeling that his condition was going to be tested, and soon.

As they passed through Flushing Meadows, Queensboro, and Corona Park, Michael thought about the man who called himself Aleksander Savisaar. How did the man know so much about him? Would he really hurt Abby and the girls? Michael had no choice but to believe him.

In the meantime, he knew he had to remain calm, play this cool. He would find an opening. Until then, the lives of his wife and daughters depended on it.

“Look, you look like a smart young man,” he began, trying to keep the fear out of his tone. “You’re name is Kolya? Short for Nikolai?”

The kid remained silent. Michael continued.

“You’ve got to know that this is going to jam you up for the rest of your life.”

The kid still didn’t say a word. He’d probably heard the routine before. After what seemed like a full minute of silence, Kolya responded. “What do you know about it?”

Here it was. As much as Michael wanted to drive the SUV into a guardrail, take the gun from the kid’s belt and put it to his head, he had to take another tack. For now. He took a deep breath.

“You know I’m a prosecutor, right?”

The kid snorted laughter. So he hadn’t known.

Even before he said it, Michael knew it might be a mistake. Telling a criminal you were a ADA could open a lot of possibilities, most of them bad. If this kid had been to jail – and Michael was fairly certain he had – a prosecutor had put him there. Michael had gotten his share of jailhouse threats over the years.

The kid mugged. “A prosecutor.”

“Yeah.”

“Un-fucking-real. Where at?”

“Queens.”

The kid snorted another laugh. He was clearly from another borough. Michael would bet Brooklyn. He had to keep him talking. “Where are you from?”

The kid lit a cigarette. For a few long seconds it appeared he wasn’t going answer. Then on a trail of smoke, he said: “Brooklyn.”

“What part?”

Another long pause. “So, what, is this where we have a heart-to-heart? The part where you tell me that I really don’t want to hurt anybody, or that if only my mother could see me now she would be ashamed of me?” The kid looked out the window for a moment, back. “My mother was a fucking whore. My old man was a sadist.”

Michael had to get off this subject. “This is my family. Do you have family of your own?”

Kolya didn’t answer. Michael stole a glance at the kid’s left hand. No ring.

“Why are you doing this?” Michael asked.

The kid shrugged. “Everybody’s got to have a hobby.”

“Look, I can get my hands on some money,” Michael said, his stomach turning at the thought of ransoming his family. “Serious money.”

“Don’t talk.”

“Whatever he is paying you, it’s not enough.”

The kid looked over at him. Michael could not see his eyes. All he saw was his own face reflected in a fish eye view in the kid’s wraparound sunglasses. “What he’s paying
me
? What the fuck makes you think this isn’t
my
idea?
My
play.”

It hadn’t occurred to Michael, and with good reason. It seemed impossible. When he first looked the kid over – something at which he was skilled, an ability he developed in his first years in the DA’s office on those days when he had to chair three dozen preliminary hearings in a single day and had to read a defendant in ten seconds flat – he noticed the dirt under the kid’s nails, the smell of axle grease and motor oil in his clothes. This kid worked in or around a garage, and Michael was willing to bet he was not servicing his own fleet of classic sports cars.