The Woods

“Go on,” Sosh said.

Kokorov was a drunk. He had always been one, but in his youth, it almost worked to his advantage. He was strong and smart and drink made him particularly vicious. He obeyed, like a dog. Now the years had crept up on him. His children were grown and had no use for him. His wife had left him years ago. He was pathetic, but again, he was the past. They had not liked each other, true, but there was still a bond. Kokorov had grown loyal to Sosh. So Sosh kept him on the payroll.

“They found a body in those woods,” Kokorov said.

Sosh closed his eyes. He had not expected this and yet he was not totally surprised. Pavel Copeland wanted to unearth the past. Sosh had hoped to stop him. There are things a man is better off not knowing. Gavrel and Aline, his brother and sister, had been buried in a mass grave. No headstone, no dignity. It had never bothered Sosh. Ashes to ashes and all that. But sometimes he wondered. Sometimes he wondered if Gavrel would rise up one day, point an accusing finger at his little brother, the one who’d stolen an extra bite of bread more than sixty years ago. It was just a bite, Sosh knew. It hadn’t changed anything. And yet Sosh still thought about what he’d done, the stolen bite of bread, every morning of his life.

Was that how this was too? The dead crying out for vengeance?

“How did you learn of this?” Sosh asked.

“Since Pavel’s visit, I’ve been watching the local news,” Kokorov said. “On the Internet. They reported it.”

Sosh smiled. Two old KGB toughies using the American Internet to gather information—ironic.

“What should we do?” Kokorov asked.

“Do?”

“Yes. What should we do?”

“Nothing, Alexei. It was a long time ago.”

“Murder has no statute of limitations in this country. They will investigate.”

“And find what?”

Kokorov said nothing.

“It’s over. We have no agency or country to protect anymore.”

Silence. Alexei stroked his chin and looked off.

“What is it?”

Alexei said, “Do you miss those days, Sosh?”

“I miss my youth,” he said. “Nothing more.”

“People feared us,” Kokorov said. “They trembled when we passed.”

“And what, that was a good thing, Alexei?”

His smile was a horrible thing, his teeth too small for his mouth, like a rodent’s. “Don’t pretend. We had power. We were gods.”

“No, we were bullies. We were not gods—we were the dirty henchmen of the gods. They had the power. We were scared, so we made everyone a little more scared. That made us feel like big men—terrorizing the weak.”

Alexei waved a dismissive hand in Sosh’s direction. “You’re getting old.”

“We both are.”

“I don’t like this whole thing coming back.”

“You didn’t like Pavel coming back either. It’s because he reminds you of his grandfather, doesn’t he?”

“No.”

“The man you arrested. The old man and his old wife.”

“You think you were better, Sosh?”

“No. I know I wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t my decision. You know that. They were reported, we took action.”

“Exactly,” Sosh said. “The gods commanded you to do it. So you did. Do you still feel like such a big man?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“It was exactly like that.”

“You’d have done the same.”

“Yes, I would have.”

“We were helping a higher cause.”

“Did you ever really buy that, Alexei?”

“Yes. I still do. I still wonder if we were so wrong. When I see the dangers freedom has wrought. I still wonder.”

“I don’t,” Sosh said. “We were thugs.”

Silence.

Kokorov said, “So what happens now—now that they found the body?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe more will die. Or maybe Pavel will finally get the chance to face his past.”

“Didn’t you tell him that he shouldn’t do that—that he should let the past stay buried?”

“I did,” Sosh said. “But he didn’t listen. Who knows which one of us will be proven right?”

Doctor McFadden came in and told me that I was lucky, that the bullet went through my side without hitting any internal organs. It always made me roll my eyes when the hero gets shot and then goes on with his life as though nothing ever happened. But the truth is, there are plenty of gunshot wounds that do heal like that. Sitting in this bed wasn’t going to make it any better than resting at home.

“I’m more worried about the blow to your head,” he said.

“But I can go home?”

“Let’s let you sleep awhile, okay? See how you feel when you wake up. I think you should stay overnight.”

I was going to argue but there was nothing to be gained by going home. I felt sore and sick and achy. I probably looked like hell and would scare Cara with my appearance.

They had a found a body in the woods. I still couldn’t wrap my brain around that one.

Muse had faxed the preliminary autopsy to the hospital. They didn’t know much yet, but it was hard to believe that it wasn’t my sister. Lowell and Muse had done a more thorough examination of missing women from that area, seeing if there were any other women unaccounted for who could possibly fit this bill. The search had been fruitless—the only preliminary match for the computer records of the missing was my sister.

So far the coroner had come up with no cause of death. That wasn’t unusual in a skeleton of this shape. If he had sliced her throat or buried her alive, they probably would never know. There would be no nicks on the bone. The cartilage and internal organs were long gone, the victims of some parasitic entity that had feasted on them long ago.

I skipped down to the key item. The pitting of the pubic bone.

The victim had given birth.

I again wondered about that. I wondered if that was possible. Under normal circumstances, that might give me some hope that it wasn’t my sister they’d dug up. But if it wasn’t, what could I conclude exactly? That around the same time some other girl—a girl no one can account for—had been murdered and buried in the same area as the ones at that camp?

That didn’t make sense.

I was missing something. I was missing a lot.

I took out my cell phone. There was no service in the hospital but I looked up York’s number on it. I used my room phone to make the call.