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“What?” Tearing his all-seeing eyes away from me, Sascha looks back at Mani, who is still sitting stoically in front of him.
I don’t stop walking.
I want him to be on edge.
“The victim was a woman,” Mani clarifies.
“Oh, yeah?” Sascha laughs, and the sound is enough to have me gritting my jaw and turning away to feign interest in the collection of leatherbound volumes tucked neatly on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. Taking one of the volumes off the shelf, I pretend to examine it. It’s a newer copy ofTreasure Island, the sleek faux leather spine uncracked.
“So, what?” Sascha holds his palms out. “Some bitch gets killed and you wind up on my doorstep?”
“Word on the street is you knew her.”
I have my back to the room, and although I cannot see Sascha’s face, I hear the slight dread in his voice when he says, “I fuck a lot of women.”
“Her name was Elizabeth York,” I say, turning suddenly.
Sascha’s gaze snaps to me. His eyes are wide. His nostrils flare. His booted feet fall to the floor with a heavy thud. “What the fuck did you say?”
I shrug and turn away, seemingly disinterested in his reaction. But my heart is racing in my chest, and I can feel a trail of sweat running down my spine. As I put the book back, I use it to slide the tiny RF bug that was in my hand to the back of the shelf—right under Sascha’s gaze.
“The fuck did you say to me!” Sascha screams, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape.
“Sit down!” Mani shouts.
But Sascha doesn’t hear. He scrambles with the top drawer of his desk, his hands frantically searching.
Mani and I react at the same time, drawing our weapons in equally fluid movements and training them on Sokolov. “Stop!” Mani shouts.
Sascha raises his head and looks at us with feverish eyes. When he sees our weapons trained on him, he blinks and then pulls out a cell phone from his top drawer. Without paying us any mind, he dials someone and waits for them to answer.
He is sweating.
And shaking.
His face is pale.
I recognize the signs of shock, but I don’t intercede. I holster my weapon and nod my head toward Mani, telling him to do the same.
When Sascha speaks, he surprises me by saying, “Antoinette…” His voice breaks and he trails off. For a moment he just stands there, the phone at his ear, his other hand flat on the desk as if he’s trying to hold himself up. His chest heaves with deep in-out breaths. “Lizzie?”
Toni must confirm what we’ve told him. Because he crumples back into his chair, his body seemingly devoid of bones. “No.” He shakes his head. Tears run down his face freely. “No, no, no.”
***
Mani and I are silentas we drive back to the station an hour later.
I had thought, before going to see Sascha, that he would have already known about Elizabeth’s death. Even up to the moment right before when he’d said, “I fuck a lot of women,” I thought he’d play it off, play her off as just some girl he occasionally slept with. A whore. An easy lay.
So, it is humbling in its own way to know that even monsters are capable of feeling such things as love and loss and pain. Today, seeing Sascha fall apart, was my reminder to keep the perspective I am so intent on imparting to Catherine.
I am jaded. Necessarily so, sure. But the degrees of separation dividing the different states of the human condition are too close for someone like me to judge.
“Every time I think I’ve got a handle on this case, something pops out of the woodwork and bites me on the ass,” Mani says.
Using my thumb and forefinger, I rub my eyes. “Fuck, man.”
“I was so sure too,” he carries on. “So sure we’d get something out of him.” He slams the base of his palm against the steering wheel. “Butthat?”
