The Doves of Ohanavank (42 page)

He leaves painkillers, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory pills. He also gives me two other small pills. “These are strong sedatives. Give her one only if she is in a lot of pain and cannot sleep at night,” he says. “These are not for regular use.”

As he gets ready to leave, I ask him how much I owe him. He looks at me surprised.

“You owe me nothing, Miss Lara,” he says. “I hope your friend recovers soon. You have my number. Call anytime if she gets worse or if there are any complications.” And he leaves.

Then a horrifying thought crosses my mind. What if Anna did not know me? What if I did not know Edik, who did not know Dr. Suren? How many victims like Anna are there, who do not have a friend? How many die? How many are taken away, like I was, but never return? How many innocent lives are destroyed because a handful of criminals can operate with impunity? I remember Edik’s story about his sister Sirarpi. There were no fatal wounds on her body, he said. She had died of repeated beatings, rapes and malnutrition. What a way for a twelve-year-old girl to die.
It should not stand!

The idea of the shelter becomes more real as I think about this. I have not yet managed to visit any of the shelters. But I will. I still hope that I can take Anna with me.

Anna sits up and sips some tea. She has not eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch, but refuses food. Her face looks gruesome.

“I am so thankful to you,” she says.

“Hush, stop that talk. How do you feel?”

“My face hurts. My back hurts too, but I think less than yesterday.”

“You have to eat something, because you have a few pills to take. Then I’m going to call a specialist to come and check your nose. Dr. Suren moved it back in place last night, but wants a specialist to look at it.”

“I’ve put you through so much trouble, I’m so sorry.”

“Anna, stop that. We still have a lot to do to sort things out, so you can’t say something like that at every step.” I smile encouragingly and go closer to check her nose. “At least it’s not crooked like before,” I laugh.

I help her walk to the bathroom. She freezes at the sight of herself in the mirror. She had not seen herself since the incident, even though she had been to the bathroom.

“You’ll be prettier than ever. All this will heal and go away,” I say, hoping that it’s true. “Will you be okay alone in there?”

She nods. I shut the door behind her and go to prepare breakfast. She walks out after ten minutes, still looking shocked.

“How can I go to work looking like this?”

“You’re not going to work for a while,” I say. “I will ask Dr. Suren for a medical slip. The store will continue paying you, at least for a few weeks while you’re on sick leave.”

“I need to call and let Lucy know,” she says, panicked. “She needs to find a substitute.”

“We’ll call. The store isn’t even open yet. Come sit. You have to eat something.”

I have some warmed up bread, honey and cheese on the table. She finds chewing laborious and painful. But she manages to get something in her stomach.

“I have to go to my place,” she says. “I need to get some clothes, check things there.”

“We’ll go, don’t rush,” I say. “I want your nose looked at first. I’ll go get clothes from your room. The doctor said you should not move too much until the chiropractor checks your back. ‘She should not walk or go up and down the stairs unless it is absolutely necessary,’ he said.”

I give her an anti-inflammatory pill and a painkiller, and she goes back to bed.

Edik calls in the early afternoon. “I’m downstairs,” he says, “Can I come up?”

I check on Anna. She is still in bed, but is beginning to stir. I have gone to her place and gathered some fresh clothes for her. No girl would want to be seen by a man in her current condition. But I know Edik has a lot planned, and is anxious to see for himself what I’ve been telling him.

“Give me a minute,” I say. “I’ll call you back.”

I wake Anna up. “Edik wants to talk to you,” I say. “I have your clothes here. Come, put these on.”

“How can I see anyone looking like this?” she says in panic.

“Anna, it is okay. This is Edik. I
want
him to see you like this. Believe me, if I were you, I wouldn’t mind it. It is really okay.”

She still argues with me about being seen ‘like this.’ I ignore her. I lay her underwear on the bed. “Get dressed,” I say. “He’ll be up soon.” And I leave to tidy up the kitchen. I return to the bedroom and help her with jeans and a sweatshirt with a wide-open collar. “I’m going to call him,” I say. “Go comb your hair.”

Edik does his best to hide his reaction. Showing alarm only increases their anxiety, he explained to me later. We sit at the kitchen table.

“I have spoken with Thomas Martirosian,” he says. Anna looks confused, as if she does not remember the name. “Your lawyer,” says Edik, “the one who’s been working on your divorce. We will give him a signed account of the events of last night, along with some pictures of you. He will file a formal complaint against Hov with the police.”

“I don’t want to file a complaint with the police,” Anna whispers.

“Anna, don’t be silly. You have to do this.” Edik is shocked, but he knows that most domestic violence cases do not get reported.

“I just want him to leave me alone.”

“Then you have to file the complaint. In the very least, Martirosian will get a restraining order, so if he ever comes near you again he will be arrested. He’ll also push forward the divorce papers. If we’re lucky, Hov will also end up in jail, but I am not optimistic about that, given similar cases.”

“Why wouldn’t he go to jail for what he did?” I ask.

“Because we may not be able to prove that it was him. He’ll deny it. It will be his word against Anna’s. I didn’t think to ask you to postpone Anna’s bath until after Dr. Suren had seen her. He could have taken a vaginal swab, which would leave no doubt as to who raped her. Anyway, the
judge will meet us half way and issue a restraining order, but he may not go as far as arresting him without proof.”

Anna sits there, hands shaking.

“In the meantime,” says Edik, “don’t go back to work, and don’t sleep in your apartment. We’ll have to look for a new place for you. Still close to Lara, but a different place.”

“Why don’t I leave my place too,” I say, “and we’ll find a two bedroom apartment to rent together.”

Anna’s eyes light up, and she tries to smile. “Really? We can do that?”

“I’m sure some of these apartments have two spare bedrooms to rent out. We’ll find one.”

Edik questions Anna and takes notes, going over details of the incident. He spends some time on the identity of the attacker, reiterating statements testifying that she saw his face clearly, heard his voice, and that there could be no mistake about his identity.

“You couldn’t have seen the person driving the car when it hit you,” he says. “You probably were in shock and couldn’t be one hundred percent sure of the identity of the person who then threw you in the back seat of the car. It was dark, after all.” He notices that Anna is getting agitated.

“I am one hundred percent sure who threw me in the car,” she says curtly.

“Anna, bear with me, these are the types of questions that his defense will throw at you. They’ll make a convincing argument to the judge that it was dark and you were just hit by a car and had smashed your face on the hard ground. Now, inside the car, when he was raping and hitting you, you obviously had a clear view of his face from up close. They will still argue that it was dark and you were in shock, but their argument will be less convincing. I want to make sure that your testimony sounds plausible. Because if there is one sentence that does not sound reasonable, the entire testimony will lose credibility.”

He works with her for over an hour, taking copious notes. Then he questions me as well, from the point where I went to get her. “I’ll pass these on to Martirosian,” he says at the end. “He’ll draft the statement for your signature. Then we’ll add Dr. Suren’s report and the photos, and we’ll have a pretty strong case.”

On his way out, Edik leans over my shoulder and whispers. “I need to see you alone. It is urgent. Can you leave her for a few minutes and come down with me?”

I take Anna back to my room and go with Edik. We sit in his car. He stays quiet for a while, and I wait, watching him. He looks tired.

“You were right about something,” he says at last. I wonder what I could have been right about. I don’t recall saying anything about Anna that would make him say that.

“You remember how I was complaining about being in the dark, and you said let’s sit back and watch how things play out?”

“You mean after Yuri was killed?”

“Yes.”

“What does that have to do with Anna?”

“Nothing. I’m not talking about Anna. When I was waiting down here for your call, Gagik called. Carla is the prime suspect in Yuri’s murder. She hasn’t been arraigned yet, but is under house arrest until the police investigate further.”

“Whoa!”

“Indeed.”

“But how?” I ask, flabbergasted. “How did they build a case against her so fast?”

“The details are sketchy. But apparently a package arrived at the police station yesterday. It contained a CD and a note. The CD had a twelve second video clip, showing a woman shooting a man in the back of the head in an orchard. It is dark, and everything is fuzzy. There is a dark figure next to the woman, but his face is turned away from the camera. The note says: ‘This is how Carla Ayvazian shot Yuri Avetisian.’ They are analyzing the tape. If they can prove the woman is Carla, she’ll be arrested.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

C
arla can think of only two possibilities of how the video could have been recorded. Either a nosey passerby that they did not notice, or someone planted there by Ari himself. She thinks of the angle—whoever recorded the twelve seconds was facing Yuri. She shot him from the back, and was facing the same way as Yuri. They were well into the orchard, at least twenty meters off the road. There was a dense line of tall poplar trees along the road. There were no houses nearby. She had not noticed any lights.

So the person who recorded the tape had to be inside the orchard, which rules out a random passerby. Who knew they were going to be there? That’s when, against all her instincts, she starts suspecting Ari.

But Ari has been attentive and helpful. His explanation is that hunters of wild boar often keep watch from trees.

“It is easier and safer for them to spot approaching boars, and more difficult for the boars to detect their scent if they’re perched in a tree,” he tells her. “The picture is taken from above your level, which confirms this. He must have been there by pure coincidence.”

“And by our dumb luck,” says Carla curtly.

“I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” says Ari. “It was too dark. No one can be recognized from the tape. Even Yuri’s face is not clear, let alone yours.”

“So what about the note? How could this hunter name both me and Yuri?”

“Remember that he watched the whole thing from the tree, so he may have recognized you, even if your face is not clear in this twelve second tape. And I bet he read about Yuri’s death. It was in the papers and on many news sites.”

“What are the chances, Ari? Honestly, what are the chances of all that coming together?”

“I don’t do chances, Carla. Relax. There’s nothing we can do right now.”

Carla doesn’t like where she is at all. Ari has acquired a patronizing air, and some of her other underlings do not seem to respond to her as they used to. She feels her authority eroding and, with it, her sexual appeal. She misses the days when she used summon Yuri to her bedroom on a whim.

She calls the lawyer that used to work for Ayvazian to check on the progress of the police investigation. She instructs him not to discuss the case with anyone but her, which offends the lawyer. She does not want Ari to be in any way involved in her defense. The lawyer follows up with the police regularly, but has no new information. He is told they are using the latest technology to reconstruct the images from the tape. He has to wait. There is no way to rush a murder investigation.

Ari calls the next morning to say that he has to fly to Moscow for a couple of days.

“How can you leave in the middle of this?” she asks.

“It’s important. Personal matter,” he says dryly. “Will be back after tomorrow. Nothing will change in the next two days.”

Thomas Martirosian has gone to the police with a large file. He has the signed testimonies of Anna and Lara, and a detailed medical report from Dr. Suren. His file also contains pictures of Anna’s injuries.

He has pressed charges against Hov Samoyan on behalf of his client for aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and rape. He has also filed for a restraining order and presented the divorce papers signed by Anna.

The evidence is strong enough for the police to issue a summons for Hov to appear for questioning. But Hov is nowhere to be found. Stepanavan police have checked his apartment, and questioned some of his associates. No one has seen him for at least twenty-four hours. A check at Yerevan airport border security finally reveals that Hov Samoyan boarded an Aeroflot flight to Moscow the night before. Aeroflot records show that he had a round-trip ticket with an open return date. A request is sent to Moscow police to help find Hov, giving his identity card details, photograph and description. But they are not optimistic that Moscow will make this a priority. Had the crime been a high profile murder, or had it involved narcotics, it would be different.