12

The apartment where Nico’s mother lived was decorated tastefully in a contemporary style. But it also highlighted her heritage. Psankas, the renowned Ukrainian Easter eggs, gleamed in an elegant showcase. What irony, Nico thought, as he picked one up: a pagan symbol that had become a central part of the Christian rite of Easter, a springtime celebration invented by worshippers of the sun god, Dazhboh. They believed that birds were Dazhboh’s chosen species, because they could get close to him. Eggs, a magical source of life, had become a symbol for the resurrection of Christ.

Anya had turned Nico’s bedroom into a library, where she spent her winter evenings reading and rereading her favorite authors. That way, she said, she would always feel her son’s presence, as when she had told him the stories of Kiev and Russia and recited lines from novels and poems to help him sleep. She still kept a copy of the Stories of Times Past, a book of legends, in this room. “Here are the stories of times past, from the land of Russia, whose kings first ruled in Kiev, where the Russian lands started.” And Nico would never forget. Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev, was converted to Byzantine-Rite Christianity in 988, subordinating the entire Russian Church to the patriarchate in Constantinople, bringing orthodoxy forevermore to the Slavic lands, and banishing the old pagan beliefs to darkness. It was the history of his ancestors engraved in his soul.

In the kitchen, Nico found the oversized matryoshka nesting doll inherited from his great-grandmother. Everything was in its place. An entire tsar-cut smoked salmon and a container of caviar, both from Petrossian, were on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Anya liked to nibble salmon and caviar while sipping vodka from a champagne flute. He tried to imagine her back in this apartment soon, with her books and caviar.

Nico walked out on the balcony on the building’s sixth floor. Before him lay the grandest view of the capital, or so his mother claimed: the Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral on the Rue Daru. Each of its five spires was topped with a gilded onion dome and the Russian Orthodox cross with three horizontal crossbeams. The pediment’s face bore a Murano-mosaic representation of Christ, a halo around his head. The Savior was sitting on a throne, blessing the world with his right hand and holding the Gospel open on his left knee. Nico recited his mother’s favorite verse. “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” As his voice rose, he felt close to tears. That was his entire childhood right there.

Back inside, he ran his fingers over the blooms on the snowball tree. The white flowers were already bursting in large umbels. The tree was a national symbol of Ukraine, symbolizing both love and marriage. It had inspired the famous song “Kalinka.” Anya hummed it whenever the family gathered for dinner. Even Dimitri knew the naughty words by heart.

Memories and images were flooding back. Nico closed his eyes for a few seconds and saw his son sitting on his tricycle, watching as colorful balloons, which had escaped his grasp, began floating away. He saw Dimitri urging him to catch them before they rose any higher. He heard Dimitri laugh, and when he looked back, he saw Anya, who had been with them that day, with tears running down her cheeks. She had been crying and laughing at the same time. That scene had occurred just a few weeks after his father had died, and she had still been grieving for him.

Anya, with her warmth, good cheer, and generosity, had always been the matriarch in the best sense of the word. His father had called her something else, a tarpan: the storied wild horse that roamed the Ukrainian steppes by the Black Sea. It was said that a similar horse roamed Poland’s forests. And so these two indomitable personalities—Anya and his father—seemed fated to join forces. The story always made Nico and his sister smile.

Nico’s thoughts turned to Tanya; they’d both been in a fug since the day before. Their text messages were their link to one another as they waited until six o’clock, when they could be back at Anya’s bedside. They wanted to be there when she woke up. Nico was furious that he couldn’t do anything more than wait.

Nico ruminated as he watched the play of light on the cathedral’s domes. Anya had her faith. Maybe she was right. He looked at the cross and called out, “I’ll find Cassian’s murderer. You save Anya.”

His phone vibrated. He hoped it was Caroline.

It was Commander Maurin.

“I’ve just left the medical examiner’s office,” she said. “We’ve got a cause of death for Mathieu Leroy: the penetrating wound resulted in a hemopneumothorax. Both air and blood rushed into the pleural cavity. The pain would have been unbearable. Cardiac and respiratory failure was inevitable. The wound was inflicted by a knife. It was a characteristic stab wound with clean edges. Given the appearance of the wound, the blade probably had only one sharp edge.”

“An ordinary knife,” Nico said, irritated that there wasn’t more to distinguish it.

“Okay, that won’t help us find the murderer. The victim didn’t have any cuts on his hands or arms; all evidence suggests that he didn’t try to defend himself.”

“The aggressor was dominating his prey.”

“A man? The knife was thrust in the torso with quite a bit of force.”

“The crime itself would suggest as much. What did Professor Vilars make of the shoulder?”

“The criminal hacked away the trapezius muscle after death and took a piece about two and a half inches square. It wasn’t a pretty sight. And it wasn’t a professional who did the cutting. It was done in a haphazard way. We can’t even tell if he was left-handed or right.”

“Did Professor Vilars notice anything unusual about the body?”

“Nothing at all.”

“And anything from the forensics lab?”

“Not just yet. The hairs we found at the crime scene are synthetic. They came from a wig.”

Nico frowned. “A disguise,” he said. “What do we know about Mathieu Leroy?”

“Not much about his past. His friends at school liked him. He was a bachelor. We’ll keep looking.”

“He was found in the middle of the night in the Parc de la Villette, the victim of someone—probably a man—who was wearing a hairpiece. We’ve got plenty to do. Keep looking.”

Nico and Tanya stopped at the nurses’ desk before going into his mother’s room.

“How’s she doing?” Nico asked.

The nurse looked at her computer screen and read off her vitals.

“Her heart rate is still high, and her blood pressure’s low. We’ll have to get her stabilized a bit more before we can take her off the ventilator.”

Nico thanked the nurse and slipped his hand into Tanya’s. She was really more than a sister. She was as good as his twin. She had been with him through thick and thin. And she was with him now, in this small corner of Bichat Hospital, where Death eagerly watched its prey.