Chapter 49

 

Dmitry arrived at work on Tuesday morning feeling like a zombie. He had lost his appetite and had hardly eaten anything since the weekend. His mother was convinced he had some kind of serious stomach virus and urged him to go see a doctor, but no doctor could cure what was ailing him.

After the big news that Buturovich’s car and body had been recovered and that his dental records were being examined, there was suddenly a complete lack of information available to the public. The police had clamped down on any communication with an iron fist—not a word about the case was being released out to the press. Even the journalist that Dmitry had been following just kept repeating the same old information in new ways.

There was one exception. Buturovich’s wife, Ilona, gave a brief, teary-eyed interview to one TV station where she adamantly told the reporter that her husband was a “legitimate businessman,” had nothing to do with any bank robbery, and—even if he had—would never leave her and her two children over something as trivial as money. She then all but accused Slavik Morozov of murdering him, pointing her perfectly manicured finger at the camera and saying, “You know you’re behind this, Slavik—admit it!”

Dmitry could guess what was going on at the police station. The cops highly suspected, or somehow knew for certain, that Buturovich’s dental records had been switched with someone else’s, and they were trying to determine exactly how that trick had been pulled off and who had been involved.

Yet, later in the afternoon, there was one bit of hopeful news. Morozov had been released from jail. Apparently, they did not have enough evidence to charge him with anything and had to let him go, even operating under the new powers Yeltsin had granted them.

That was indeed good news.

But it did not last.

At four-thirty that afternoon, Dmitry was installing a crown on the decaying molar of a seventy year old pensioner whose teeth looked like they regularly chomped on gravel.

Just as he was shaping the tooth for the fit, he heard car doors closing out on the street.

For some reason, he knew they were coming for him.

He set the grinder down on the instrument tray, rose from the stool, and looked out the window.

Three police cars had converged on the front entrance, their lights flashing, but sirens off.

“Mm-gg-rrr-umm,” the elderly patient in the chair said, his mouth stuffed full of equipment. Translation: is something wrong?

“You could say that,” Dmitry muttered.

He turned away from the window and calmly pulled off his rubber gloves, then took off his white lab coat and hung it on a wall hook.

About the time he finished he heard commotion out in the reception area, and a deep voice demanding to know which office was Dmitry Durov’s.

Two uniformed cops appeared in the doorway along with a man in a suit, a badge dangling around his neck.

“Dmitry Fyodorovich Durov?” the man in the suit said.

“Da.”

“You’re under arrest for breaking and entering, tampering with evidence, accepting bribes from organized crime members…the list takes up a whole sheet of paper.” He grabbed hold of Dmitry’s wrist while another cop quickly frisked him. “Let’s go.”

The old man in the exam chair was staring, wide-eyed, unsure of what to do.

One of the cops addressed his concerns on the way out. Coincidentally, the cop used exactly the same ominous words that had been uttered by the thugs who had barged into his office only a few short months ago.

“Your appointment is over.”