Waking Hours (39 page)

“You mean like Super Bowl parties,” Tommy joked.

“Uh . . . no,” Carl said skeptically. “The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice as a way of telling the future. To answer the really big questions, they’d plunge a dagger into the heart of the victim and then watch how she thrashed about as she died. How that could predict the future, I have no idea. But predicting the future has always been a big part of black magic. Ever hear of alecromancy? It’s predicting the future by throwing corn to chickens and watching what order they peck the corn in.”

“It makes about as much sense as predicting the future using frog guts,” Tommy said.

“Or astrology,” Carl said. “Needing to predict the future is the opposite of true faith. True faith means believing in a future you can’t predict. Bear in mind, the people being sacrificed didn’t always object. The idea was that one person would sacrifice themselves so that the others could prevail. In a lot of cultures that practiced human sacrifice, including the Aztecs and certain Polynesian cultures, the victims went willingly. It was an honor to be chosen. You’d think we’d be more evolved today, but we had kamikaze pilots in World War II sacrificing themselves for the Emperor. I doubt any of this has anything to do with . . .”

“Julie Leonard,” Tommy said.

“I doubt any of this applies to her,” Carl said. “Do the police think she was sacrificed?”

“I don’t think they’ve used the word, but I don’t know,” Tommy said. “Thanks, Carl. You’ve been a big help. As usual.”

He called Dani, got her voice mail, and asked her to meet him at The Pub in an hour. He had one more stop to make first.

The East Salem police station was a house where Main Street met Route 35, next to the fire station and the highway department. There was a large parking lot next to the station where commuters with permits could park to catch the shuttle to the train station in Katonah.

When Frank DeGidio called him back to say the blood he’d found in the hollow stump was canine, Tommy had asked Frank to let him know if anybody found the missing dog he’d seen on the poster at the foot of the trail leading to Bull’s Rock Hill. At the police station, Frank led Tommy around back, explaining that two teenage boys were fishing and saw what they’d thought at first was a dead raccoon floating in Lake Atticus. They’d called animal control when they realized it was either a coyote or a dog.

“It’s a little hard to tell,” Frank said. “This thing is a mess.”

The carcass had been placed on the lid of the Dumpster. Tommy shooed away the flies and lifted the plastic garbage bag covering the remains. The animal had what appeared to be brown fur with threads of black in it. The fur was coarse and wiry, consistent with a coyote, or maybe a terrier. He tried to remember the poster he’d seen. He closed his eyes to quiet the visual noise.

“Any idea how long it was in the water?”

“You’re asking me?” DeGidio said. “People gas up and float anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on the water temperature and what was in their stomachs when they died. Dogs, who knows?”

“Ballpark guess?”

“Two weeks?” DeGidio said.

Tommy retrieved his evidence kit from the back of the Jeep, donned a headlamp and a pair of latex gloves, and then reached into the guts of the animal, feeling around. Frank wrinkled his nose in disgust. Tommy examined the skull and the teeth and what was left of the lower jaw, which came off in his hand.

“Arf, arf!” he said, jabbing the jaw at his friend.

“Very funny,” DeGidio said, flinching nevertheless.

“Can you grab the metal detector from the back of the Jeep?” Tommy asked.

“Why?” DeGidio asked. “You think this thing ate somebody’s watch?”

Tommy told DeGidio how to turn the detector on and then had him pass the dish over the mangled corpse while Tommy held it. The detector beeped as the dish passed over what Tommy assumed had to be the dog’s hip bone. He dug his fingers into the soft flesh, felt a lump, took out his Boy Scout knife, made an incision, and removed a small plastic vial about an inch long, capped at either end with a metal plug.

“What the heck is that?” DeGidio asked.

“It’s a microchip,” Tommy said, backing away from the corpse and shining his flashlight on the plastic vial. “They inject them under the skin when they’re puppies so that if they ever get lost or stolen, you can identify them if somebody turns them in. The vet or the animal control officer will have a scanner that can read the identification code. This dog’s name is Molly. The vet will be able to get you the owner’s phone number. When you call, just tell them she died of natural causes.”

“So what did she really die of?” Frank asked.

“See how the chip is melted?” Tommy said, shining the light on it, then on the carcass. “And this blackened tissue here. I think somebody lit her on fire. From the inside.”

He handed the microchip to DeGidio, who put it in his shirt pocket.

“Oh, man,” Frank said. He looked like he might be sick. “I swear, Tommy, the hardest part of this job is seeing what people do to animals.”

“If it makes you feel better, she was probably dead before he burned her,” Tommy said.

“It doesn’t.”

“Thanks, Frank,” Tommy said, pulling off his latex gloves and throwing them in the Dumpster with the carcass before getting back in the Jeep. “I owe you one.”

“You guys have any idea who did that?” DeGidio said, glancing toward the Dumpster.

“No,” Tommy said. “But we might be getting closer.”

34
.

Dani was waiting for Tommy in The Pub, staring at the fire blazing in the large stone fireplace, when her phone rang. She’d just ended a long call with Stuart and thought he was calling her back. Davis Fish had filed a petition stating that Logan would be unable to give testimony due to a medical condition. Dani had wondered out loud if “guilty conscience” qualified as a medical condition.

She glanced at her caller ID; it said “Unknown Caller.”

“Danielle Harris,” she said.

“Ed Stanley,” the man said. “I’m a friend of your grandfather’s.”

“Oh yes, sure,” she said. “From the State Department. Thank you for getting back to me.”

“You had a matter you asked me to look into,” Ed Stanley said. “You e-mailed me about an orphanage in Moscow.”

“Yes, I did,” Dani said.

“Well, I’m happy to help,” he said, then paused.

“If it would be easier for you to e-mail me . . . ,” Dani offered.

“No, no,” the man said. “It’s just that . . . well, you work for the government in Russia for over thirty years, you think you’ve seen everything. But this is a little disturbing.”

“What did you find out?”

He told her he’d contacted a Russian politician he’d known who still wielded enough influence to get answers other people might not be able to get.

“You can waste a lot of money in Russia if you don’t know the right people to bribe,” Mr. Stanley told her. “I gave him the names and the identification numbers you gave me, and he made some inquiries. He said it wasn’t easy. Tell me—do the people who adopted the boy you mentioned know anything about his story?”

“Just what I told you. They haven’t tried contacting the orphanage. I think Amos’s adoptive parents were afraid his birth parents might try to get in touch with him if they knew where he was.”

“Well,” Mr. Stanley said, “you can tell them they don’t have anything to worry about. Do you have something to write with?”

“I’ve got it,” Dani said, finding a pen and a small notebook in her bag. “Go ahead.”

“Amos was born Alex Kalenninov,” Mr. Stanley said. “His father, Sergei, was a low-level KGB goon. State files had him as an alcoholic. He lost his job because of it, and believe me, if you lose your job in Russia because you drink too much, you
really
drink too much. The mother, Sonya, was a drug addict. Or still is, if she’s still alive, but my source thinks she’s not.”

“And the father? Is he alive?”

“No.”

“But?”

“The father abused his children,” Mr. Stanley said. “In pretty much every way you can imagine. ‘Horrible’ only scratches the surface. Alex had three older brothers. One was murdered a few years ago, one committed suicide shortly after that, and the third is currently a guest of the state, for carrying on the family tradition. I’m not about to defend the Soviet penal system, but for every innocent Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Mikhail Trepashkin in the Gulag, there’re ten others you wouldn’t want anywhere else.”

“What happened to the father?” Dani asked.

“Alex killed his father, Dani,” Mr. Stanley said. “When he was five. The KGB element in the government, and that goes all the way up to the Kremlin, buried the details to protect one of their own and farmed the brothers out to separate orphanages.”

“May I ask how he killed his father?”

“He hit him with an ax. Repeatedly. While he was sleeping. And when he was done . . .”

It was clear that the man did not wish to continue. Dani recalled an old nursery rhyme about Lizzie Borden.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t think the details are important.”

Ed Stanley explained that the KGB never revealed why they left five-year-old Alex Kalenninov on the orphanage’s doorstep. At the time, the number of people waiting to adopt children from the Soviet Union was far greater than the number of available children. Placing Alex in a home in America was easily accomplished. The adoption agency didn’t know Alex’s history when the Kasdens chose him.

As the older man spoke, Dani saw Tommy in the doorway and waved to him. When he sat down, Dani put her thumb over the microphone of her BlackBerry and whispered that she was talking to the man from the State Department. Tommy asked if he could have a word with him when she was done.

“You’ve been very helpful,” Dani said finally. “This is useful information.”

“May I ask,” Mr. Stanley said, “is Alex in trouble?”

“We’re not sure,” Dani said. “He may be connected to something. I have a friend who wants a word with you.” She handed her phone to Tommy.

“Real quick,” Tommy said, “I just wondered if you knew what the Russian word
igun
means? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Thanks.” He hung up and gave her back her cell. “Tell you later. You eat already?”

“Not hungry,” she said. “Are you?”

“A little.”

The Pub was just off the square in an old mill building next to a manmade waterfall. It was as fancy as the Miss Salem Diner was plain, but at the same time, it was a gathering spot where horse people and CEOs and celebrities could find a dark corner of their own or mingle with the auto mechanics and soccer moms. The decorations were equestrian, saddles and bridles and riding crops and carriage traces and whippletrees on the walls, mixed with framed engravings of horses and horsemen in hunt clothes.

When the waitress approached, Dani ordered tea. Tommy asked for a cup of coffee with cream and two Sweet’N Lows and a slice of pecan pie.

“Two forks?” he asked Dani.

“Why not?”

She filled him in as to what Ed Stanley had just told her, how Amos had been abused, how he’d killed his own father with an ax, and how the adoption agency appeared to have either covered up his origins or else were ignorant of the facts of Amos’s early childhood. When she’d finished, Tommy leaned back in his chair to make room for the waitress to set down their drinks and dessert.