squeezing through the throng of police in his way.
“Owner of the car,” clarified Egorov in reply to the detective’s questioning glance.
“Let him through,” Petelina ordered.
“Who’s going to pay for this? I just had her fixed!” the man clamored. “A month ago it was another bitch. They want to drive me into the poorhouse!”
“Calm down please. Have you seen this woman before?”
“I’ve seen this whore here a billion times! They’ve got a whorehouse up there in the fourth unit.”
“What whorehouse? Are you saying the dead girl was a prostitute?”
“Of course! That other one last month was her friend. What do they have against my car?”
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare insult my Katya!” Igor Grebenkin began trying to get at the car’s owner. Vanya Mayorov, who was about ready to knock the irate man flat on his back, held him back by his jacket’s hem.
“Ah! So she was yours! You can pay then!”
From personal experience, Elena Petelina knew that men, like children, could be jolted from their tantrums by an abrupt change of topic.
“When is the last time it rained here?” she asked the wranglers in a very serious tone.
“I just got here from Saratov,” Grebenkin remembered after a short pause.
“Rain? It was snowing here a week ago,” mumbled the Skoda’s owner.
“Excellent,” Petelina praised the two stumped men. “Could you recall now please which one of you approached the girl first?”
“I did,” said Grebenkin dully.
“Misha, deal with him. And you, sir plaintiff,” Petelina took the car owner by the elbow, “show us where the girl’s apartment is please.”
“It’s the entrance to the fourth unit over there, apartment number 180. I already tried to get damages from them. Waste of time!” The unhappy man jerked his arm away.
“A police officer will take your statement.”
Petelina handed the auto enthusiast over to Detective Egorov. She and the operatives headed for the fourth entrance. As they were entering the building, she remembered the paper she had found in the passport. She unfolded it. The page, which looked to have been ripped out of a notebook, was covered with uneven lines of the same sentence: “Boris is a jerk. Boris is a jerk. Boris is a jerk…”
A banal suicide caused by unrequited love, flashed through the detective’s mind.
In the meantime, back at the scene of the incident, Mikhail Ustinov had offered Grebenkin some chewing gum.
“For the nerves. It’s supposed to help.” He waited until Grebenkin stated chewing mechanically and asked, “Could you recall please what position you found the body in?”
“The head was here. Katya had long hair. I pushed it back to make sure that…” Grebenkin frowned as he looked at the bloody spot, then spit out the gum and pleaded, “I’ll show you on another car.”
“As you wish,” Ustinov agreed and, once the man had turned his back, retrieved the discarded gum.
5
Marat Valeyev was about to ring the doorbell to apartment No. 180.
“Hold on!” Petelina stopped him. She flashed the keys she had found in the girl’s purse. “Let’s see if these work.”
The key slid smoothly into the lock and turned twice. The detective opened the door and hung back while the operatives, guns drawn, entered before her.
“Katya, is that you?” A woman’s voice came from a nearby room.
Valeyev pushed its door, scanned the room through his iron sights and lowered his sidearm.
“Whoa,” came the silent exclamation.
A young woman in a satin gown with a dragon print was sitting on an ample bed which took up most of the room. She had been painting her nails. Her eyes and mouth gaped in surprise, while her splayed fingers remained suspended before her chest. Elena Petelina was compelled to agree with the bit of male wisdom that observed that the most helpless moments in a woman’s life occur while her nail polish is drying.
Elena flashed her badge and introduced herself.
“Senior Detective Elena Pavlovna Petelina, Investigative Committee. Anyone else in the apartment?”
The girl shook her head. While the operatives began looking over the apartment, Petelina decided to have a seat beside the woman.
“You like bright colors?”
“The clients do.”
“So you admit that you’re engaged in prostitution here?”
“Oh please. I just fall in love easily.” The woman smiled sardonically having recovered from her initial shock.
“Today it’s one, tomorrow it’s another.”
“I’m a hopeless romantic.” The woman fanned her wrists to dry the nails faster.
“Prostitution does not concern me.”
“Awesome. “Cause you cops have screwed me half to death with all your raids. So what do you want?”
“What’s your name?”
“Lisa. Elizaveta Malyshko.”
“When’s the last time you saw Katya Grebenkina?”
“Why, she’s upstairs on the roof waiting for me this very moment.”
Petelina walked over to the window and peeked through the stiff curtain. The window looked out on the street instead of the courtyard where Katya Grebenkina had fallen. Lisa got up as well. Elena looked her over: black spiraling hair tucked into a bun, black eyes, alluring lips, a nice figure, a naïve face but a certain sexuality in her movements that would have no trouble lighting the fuse of male desire.
“What’s happening on the roof?”
“We’re going to commemorate our girlfriend. It’s been forty days since Stella threw herself off the roof. The three of us lived together.”
“How did you get roof access?”
“We got the engineer to give us a key. It’s a good place to have a smoke. And if some stalker starts creeping around, you can go down another stairwell and out another entrance.”
“Do the creeps often stalk you?”
“It happens. Birdless Boris takes care of those.”
“Boris?” Petelina
