Leonberger stood in front of a narrow old apartment building in upscale Zamoskvarechye, looking up to the third floor, where, a month ago, Anna Usurov had either put her head in her oven or had it forced in. He’d already made some calls and learned that Usurov’s place hadn’t changed hands after her death—a distant brother was trying to get ownership, and it was going to court. Sofia Marinov still hadn’t called him back, so all he had to go on was this apartment. Afterward, he would drive out to Pokrovsky Hills to check on Joseph Keller’s family.
Getting inside the building wasn’t hard. The front door’s lock was broken, and as he walked up the concrete stairs, keeping an eye out for the old women who always guarded buildings like this, he wondered if the lock had been broken the same night Anna Usurov fell asleep in her oven. At the third floor, he passed a heavy woman in a smock carrying a mop bucket downstairs, and when he greeted her with a smiling “Zdrávstvujte,” she rolled her eyes at him.
“You’re heading upstairs, I guess,” she said.
“Am I?”
“That’s where the whores are. Fifth floor.”
“Then I guess I am. Thank you, darling.”
She grunted, shook her head, and continued down the stairs. A small-time prostitution ring wouldn’t stay hidden in a building like this with that old battle-axe on the prowl. Leonberger gave it a week, maybe two, before the cops arrived to demand their cut.
Once she was out of sight, he knocked on Usurov’s door and waited. Nothing. He took his tools out of his jacket and unwrapped them. He knocked again, waited, then crouched and got to work on the lock. It was an old Soviet model he knew well, because it secured most of the doors in this neighborhood, barely. In a minute and a half he was inside.
He had to fight the urge to air out the place; it was humid and stank of something putrid. In the kitchen, all signs of death had been cleaned away, and the oven was closed. So he got to work in the other rooms, opening drawers and rifling through papers. Her computer, unsurprisingly, wasn’t here. Nor were any phones.
He tried not to rush, but so much here was junk—bills and ticket stubs and an unopened pack of Marlboros that he pocketed—and when he reached the bathroom he discovered the source of the smell. A cat had been trapped inside and died of starvation. The rats had taken pieces away, but enough remained for him to make a positive ID.
He started at the sound of a ringing phone before realizing it was his own. He cursed himself for not putting it on silent, then answered with a whisper. “Allô?”
“You called me,” said a woman’s voice.
It was Sofia Marinov, he realized. “Yes, thank you for returning my call. I’m interested in speaking with you about Anna Usurov—she was a colleague of yours.”
“Why?”
“I’m writing an article on journalists who have … well, you know.”
She was silent for a moment, then: “Let’s meet.”
Her acquiescence surprised him. He’d expected to have to talk her into opening up to him, and the hope of a face-to-face conversation had been beyond his expectations. “That would be great,” he said.
“Do you know La Bohème? It’s a café on Tito Square.”
“If there’s only one, I’ll find it.”
“It’s next to the pharmacy. Can you be there tomorrow morning?”
“Sure. Nine o’clock?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice sounding pinched and strained.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine. How will I know you?”
“Big, old, and ugly. I saw your picture on your website, so I’ll find you. Thank you for your help on this. I appreciate it.”
“Okay,” she said, and hung up. He took a moment to stare at the phone, wondering about Sofia Marinov, the young journalist who was willing to meet a complete stranger. She was either brave or incredibly stupid. Or perhaps she had something that she really needed to share—one could hope.
He searched in vain for a couple of hours before starting to tidy up, and that was when he saw that the power outlet under the desk had slipped half a centimeter out of the wall, as if it had been removed and put back poorly. He got on his knees under the desk, his back aching, and gave it a tug. It came out smoothly, leaving a rectangular hole in the wall. Though his hand was big, he was able to squeeze it inside and feel along the inside of the wall, touching wood frame, wires, rat turds, screw heads, and … what felt like a flash drive. He caught it between his index and middle fingers and withdrew it. He blew off dust and turned it over in his hand. Red, with a single white stripe down the side. In marker, someone had written the letter P. Whether it was a Latin P or a Cyrillic R he didn’t know. What he did know was that it was important.
He slipped it into his pocket, checked to be sure the place looked untouched, and out of morbid curiosity looked inside the oven. Other than a few spots of old, burned sauce, it was clean. Only as he was closing it did he register the most striking detail: It was an electric oven, not gas.