Secret Target

The Noose is a series of detective novels about a woman detective. Protagonist Elena Petelina is a tenacious, creative and decisive woman with an unsettled personal life. Besides investigating crimes, she must solve the problems afflicting her loved ones and delve into the secrets of the past – all while she strives to love and be loved.

Book1: Secret Target

Book2: Dangerous Evidence

Secret Target. The Russian Investigative Committee entrusts its most difficult cases to Detective Elena Petelina. Now the detective faces yet another mysterious murder. Each person associated with the crime has his or her own secret, and somehow one of these secrets involves Elena’s own father as well as her brother who disappeared many years ago…

Copyright © Sergey Baksheev, 2019

1

What’s keeping her? How much longer till that skank gets back?

Pressed flush against the steering wheel, Inna watches the green gates to the private residence. The autumnal dusk helps conceal her car, as does the roadside brush she’s parked behind.

What if I got the address wrong?

She looks around frantically. The address post by the gates reads «24.» The street sign at the intersection reads «Dorozhnaya Street.»

This is the skank’s house alright. She’ll be back from work soon. Come on, what’s keeping her? And what if she’s working late tonight?

Inna checks her watch for the hundredth time. Its hands tick with the urgency of molasses and a new fear grips her tighter than the last.

Maybe it’s me who’s late and she’s home already? Then all is lost!

But at long last something stirs in the vacant, suburban street. Inna wipes the cold sweat from her forehead with the palm of her gloved hand and sinks back into her seat. Through her sunglasses and the steering wheel, her eyes follow the approaching xenon beam as it glides along the fence. A car turns onto the silent street. The tires rustle and the beam splits in two, tracing a smooth arc over the bushes until it comes flush up against the closed gates. Inna recognizes the Volvo’s silhouette. That’s the car she’s been waiting for. In the twilight it looks darker, but as the door opens, the interior light rewards her anticipation.

The car is red.

The automatic gates remain closed.

Everything is as it should be.

She’s so on edge that her body feels like a seated statue. Unblinking, she watches the woman emerge from the car. The headlights illuminate her little ankle boots, their thin heels, but Inna is not interested in such details. The woman presses up against the gates and begins pushing them open. Now she’s fully in the lights’ glare.

She’s a blonde! It all fits!

As sensation returns to Inna’s limbs, she slips her hand into her purse and feels cold steel through her the fabric of her glove. Her eyes scan the little street one last time.

It’s still empty. Now is the time.

Inna throws open the car door and makes her way toward the gates. Her gaze is drawn taut, riveted to the back of the woman’s head, and it’s like she’s been attached to some invisible cable, gliding toward her target with the implacability of a counterweight. As she approaches, her right arm rises shoulder-level and extends. Inna’s two, bloodshot eyes are now joined by the gun’s empty barrel – all three straining at the blonde’s neat ringlets.

The owner of the house is rolling back the unruly gate when, suddenly, she stops mid-motion. Surely she’s heard Inna’s rapid footsteps. Surely she will now turn and – but it’s already too late. Nothing will save her. Inna walks right up to her and takes aim at her head.

No words – just pull the trigger.

She squeezes. The shot is deafening. Inna shuts her eyes from fright. When she opens them, it’s all over. The blonde is lying on the ground, her head across the gates’ threshold. The toes of her splayed boots cast long shadows, while the headlights’ glare creeps crassly up her rumpled skirt.

You earned it, you bitch.

Inna backs away, drops the handgun and runs back to her car.

Away from here! Home!

The drive from Aprelevka back to Moscow passes as in a fog. But there at last is her street. She turns into her building’s driveway. She feels the car come to a stop, and as it does so, a savage chill seizes her. Inna begins to shiver. Tears stream down her cheeks. In her mind, she’s still there, outside 24 Dorozhnaya Street. Murky spots float before her eyes. A green gate, a red car, bleach-blonde hair and – a horrible gunshot. The memory strikes her like an electric shock – her tears, her shivers cease.

Gather yourself. You’re only halfway there.

She gets out of the car, walks to the front entrance, notices the trash bins.

Almost forgot! Dump the clothes – there’s gunpowder on them.

She tosses her gray coat and gloves into the trash. The oversized sunglasses follow. Now she’ll buy herself some slim ones to change her look. She’ll have her bob trimmed short and buy a bright colored jacket. No one will recognize her.

Inna enters the building lobby and wearily ascends the stairs. One little pull of the trigger – but how exhausted it’s made her! Here’s her apartment. She already knows what’s inside and begins to grow afraid all over again.

But there’s no way back now. Have to make it through this too.

A deep breath – she holds it – then exhales. The door is unlocked. Inna crosses the threshold. Pop music blares from the television – starlets howling in unison about being humped and dumped – and Inna feels like screaming: «What’d you expect? A plastic doll?» But there’s a heavy lump in her throat that wants to come out, and it’s too early to start screaming anyway. She’s got to take at least a look first.

She takes three steps and comes across her husband’s slippers, lying forgotten in the middle of the hallway. And there is he who once wore them. Bare male legs stick out of the bath, heels up. The water burbles, the pop singers squeal and a dull drill hums tediously inside her head. Inna latches onto the doorjamb and peeks inside with rising horror. The back of her husband’s new blue bathrobe is smeared with whitish lumps of something revolting. Her gaze rises higher to the horrible gash on the back of his head. Dirty blood glosses the tile around the cleaver, little dried hairs stuck along its blade.

Inna wants to take a breath but cannot. The lump is choking her from within. Her eyes grow dim. She swoons and collapses onto the corpse – her hand flops into the pool of blood.

2

As Major Elena Pavlovna Petelina entered the lab, her heart tightened in rueful expectation. This is how it was each time some young man’s remains from the mid-’90s were uncovered. Eighteen years of searching. In the beginning, she would visit the morgue to identify the bodies. Back then, new ones would turn up as often as several times a week. She saw it all. By the age of seventeen, the gangsters’ cruel executions had been chiseled into the young girl’s memory not by the newspapers’ terse type but by the sight of broken bodies, gunshot wounds, burned flesh. And by the smell – of rot and decay. Thankfully, these days, the victims’ remains took on a more palatable appearance and were subjected strictly to DNA identification.

Mikhail Ustinov, the young forensic expert, was too busy fiddling with an electron microscope to notice the detective’s entrance. Unruly tufts of hair billowed out and over his large headphones. Misha rode his motorcycle year-round. His giant helmet, along with his brainy, longwinded explanations, which he inevitably introduced with the phrase «allow me to explain,» had earned him the jocular nickname «the Tadpole.»

Pushing away from the lab table, Misha rode his office chair over to the computer. His left hand grabbed a metal mug, while his right began to clatter on the keyboard. A DNA helix rotated in one corner of the large screen. All of the Tadpole’s equipment was connected to one network. There was even a cable running from the mug to his notebook, to keep the coffee warm.

Elena Petelina stopped beside the forensic expert. Mikhail noticed the detective and knocked his headphones down to his shoulders.

«The results look negative,» he answered her unspoken question. «This isn’t your brother.»

Elena’s eyes flickered uneasily as if she was looking for something. Her fingers tapped on Misha’s shoulder in distraction. Finally, she thanked him with a pat on the back and turned to go.

Her brother, Anatoly Grachev, went missing in July of 1994. He took the day’s receipts from their father’s store, got in his car and left. No one had seen her brother or the car since. Meanwhile, on the night of his disappearance, the police arrested their dad. Pavel Petrovich Grachev was found wandering along the main alley of Izmaylovo Park in a bloodstained jacket. He had suffered some broken ribs and a fractured skull. When they were putting him into the paddy wagon, he raved deliriously, «I killed Tolik. I killed him.»

Afterward, the doctor established that her dad had been hit by a car causing a concussion and temporary amnesia. But the investigators were more concerned with other details. The store’s workers told them of a quarrel between father and son that evening. Forensic experts discovered Anatoly’s blood on Mr. Grachev’s jacket. The detective working the case quickly slapped together a murder indictment and began to seek a plea bargain.

Anatoly was nineteen back then. Elena was seventeen. She had just graduated high school and been admitted to the university. She wanted to major in chemistry. But that one tragic day brought her family’s happy life crashing down. Her mother fell ill, leaving Lena to struggle with the detective assigned to the case on her own. The girl kept trying to convince him of a grave error, but the experienced old hound would just grin and send the meddling girl around the morgues to identify bodies. That year was blessed with an ample harvest of corpses, young and old, and the detective had figured that the girl would throw up a few times and then think twice before showing up at the prosecutor’s office again.

But the grim lesson had the opposite effect on the stubborn girl.

«It’s no wonder you have so many unsolved murders. It’s all because of people like you.» Such was the reproach Elena flung in the detective’s face. «Instead of finding the real culprit, you just lock up the first person you come across!»

«Why don’t you step into my shoes and give it a shot?» The detective slammed a stack of cases against his cluttered desk, sending a cascade of folders fanning to the floor. Elena was silent for half a minute. In this time she managed to calm herself and reach a fateful decision.

«I will give it a shot,» she said, helping him pick up the folders. «Tell me where to apply.»

The next day, Elena Gracheva said farewell to her beloved chemistry and submitted her application to the criminal investigation program at the police academy.

Her dad was released a year later – no body, no case.

«He lucked out,» said Detective Kharchenko without a grudge. «It’s a big park – we can’t search it all. But you, Elena, don’t get complacent. That corpse can show up in five years and then… Well, as good of a student as you are, you know yourself what’ll happen.»

Her father had changed. He looked older and had grown taciturn. He never said a word about the day that Anatoly disappeared. His wife interrogated him, tormented him with suspicions, begged him to tell her what had happened to Anatoly. But the father stayed silent and the family fell apart. Pavel Petrovich Grachev left Moscow to live in his mother’s house in the country. In the meantime, with her newfound skills and learning, Lena would return to that fateful day a hundred times in the course of her career – striving to finally get to the truth of what had really occurred.

This week was no different. During the demolition of some garages in the Izmaylovo District, the remains of a male corpse dating to the mid-’90s had been uncovered. Elena asked Misha Ustinov to run some DNA tests, but the results had come back negative. And yet, for Detective Elena Petelina – née Gracheva – there was nothing negative about it: For, this meant that there remained some slender chance that her brother Anatoly was still alive.

«Detective Petelina!» the Tadpole called her back. «What about the remains? Should we keep working with them?»

«Of course, Misha. Maybe someone out there is looking for him too,» said Petelina. Then, her hand already on the door handle, she turned back. «Almost forgot – I didn’t come here just for this. You better get your stuff together. We have a new case. A body’s been found in an apartment.»

3

Captain Marat Valeyev heard out the dispatch on his phone, slammed the receiver into its cradle and aimed a crumpled piece of paper at his partner.

«Wake up Vanya – you don’t get to Major by sleeping.»

The paper ball struck Senior Lieutenant Ivan Mayorov square in the forehead. It was not for nothing that Valeyev was famous for his shooting at the firing range – there were even some women out there who knew that the captain could kill with but a look.

«I – I was just thinking about something,» explained the drowsy lieutenant, flapping his eyelids. No sooner had Ivan set foot in Homicide and introduced himself as «Lieutenant Mayorov,» than jokes referencing the rank of major had begun to fly thick and fast at the fair-haired giant. And though it was all in good fun of course, there was a hint of mockery in them too.

«We’ve got a murder. Let’s go.»

The operatives grabbed their jackets, shut the door to the office and set off down the stairs. Marat Valeyev, trim and limber, descended first, adjusting his sidearm in its holster. Behind him trudged the brawny and laconic Vanya Mayorov. At the landing, without slowing his stride, the captain pinched busty Galya Nesterova, who ran the passport desk, and whispered something in her ear. The girl in the tight-fitting lieutenant’s tunic blushed and remained standing for a long while, waiting for the raven-haired captain to turn and flash his impertinent, bright smile. In the end, only Vanya turned to look at her – which fact, the girl utterly ignored.

In the car, the senior lieutenant could no longer contain his curiosity. He had already spent hours agonizing over the best possible reason to stop by the passport desk and say something to the lovely little donut with red lips. The captain had crippled these reveries without missing a stride.

«Marat, what’d you say to her?» asked Vanya.

«Who?»

«Galya Nesterova. Back there, on the stairs.»

«Ah, Galya… I don’t recall. I just kind of blurted something.» Valeyev sat at the wheel, watching the road.

«What do you mean you don’t recall? She…» Vanya’s creaky brain had trouble grasping how someone could be so careless with such miracle-working words.

«Must be nice to have titties on your mind right now. It’s not like we’re going to a murder or anything.»

«Who got killed?» Vanya banished from his mind a vision of Galya’s legs beheld from an inappropriate angle.

«The Police Patrol Service found a male corpse in an apartment. They’ve detained a woman at the scene.» The Captain flew through the intersection on a fading yellow. «It’d be good to get there before Elena.»

«The Noose?»

The Noose was Homicide’s nickname for Senior Detective Elena Petelina. Homicide didn’t come up with the name – the felons had. And it wasn’t just because her last name sounded like petlya – the Russian word for «noose.» As a detective, Petelina was meticulous, cerebral and severe. If she sensed a murderer, she’d latch on and never let go. Inch by inch, she’d tighten the evidence round the suspect’s neck. She hassled field ops and forensics to no end, but her cases never fell apart at trial and were never rejected for further investigation.

Vanya had noticed that Valeyev always tried to work with Petelina. Rumor had it that they had been classmates, but the captain didn’t like to talk about his younger days. He was always informal with the detective, even though she was his senior. But that didn’t mean anything. Ladies liked the captain. His shameless approach could shatter the ice encasing the hearts of beauties you wouldn’t believe. And yet when it came to Petelina, Valeyev never seemed as sure of himself. Around her, he might as well have been some high-school milksop in the presence of a supermodel.

Vanya could not comprehend the captain’s fascination with the detective. Of course, she was an interesting woman, but she had such a cold gaze and strict voice, and her figure lacked all those nice curvy bits. Basically, she was just like – a noose! Yuck! And therefore not in the least like lovely little Galya from the passport desk. Little lips, little cheeks, little eyes and everything in the right place – front and back! Vanya had been lucky enough to witness firsthand the running exam portion of Galya’s fitness evaluation. Since then, the lovely vision of her in a taut T-shirt had, on more than one occasion, appeared to him in his dreams.

Vanya took a breath and glanced sideways at his senior officer. He really hoped the captain wouldn’t get it in his head to take things further with Galya. He was the kind that could after all.

«We’re here,» said Valeyev turning into the driveway to a Stalin-era apartment building.

He parked snuggly between the ambulance and a police cruiser. Slithering out like an eel through the cracked door, the captain offered a cigarette to a loitering beat cop, exchanged a few words and called to Ivan through the windshield.

«What are you, stuck? Petelina ain’t here yet. Let’s get to work Senior Lieutenant Mayorov! Service stars don’t just fall out of the sky.»

Vanya tried to open his door, assessed the width of the crack – no more than a pack of cigarettes – and, grunting, began to clamber over to the driver’s side.

4

Elena Petelina walked into the lobby of the apartment building.

The crime scene had attracted the typical hubbub. Cops stand smoking in the stairwell, quietly panning some soccer player. She does not know them but as soon as she appears, fists close over cigarettes, stomachs are gathered in and something like «Good evening, detective!» echoes in her wake – to be replaced by a respectful whisper once she has passed: «That’s her – that’s the Noose.» Elena doesn’t take offense. As Colonel Kharchenko puts it, only the best detectives are given nicknames.

Detective Petelina always tries to visit the crime scene herself. Evidence gathered in the first hours of the investigation is always the most precise. Better see for yourself than sift for it later among barren reports.

She ascends the stairs to the apartment where the corpse was discovered. The Tadpole, still wearing his motorcycle helmet and toting a heavy backpack, can barely keep up behind her. Through the half-open apartment door, she catches a momentary glimpse of a shoulder draped in a familiar jacket. The glimpse is accompanied by a confident gesture, curtly pointing somewhere – and she’s recognized him. Elena is pleased to find Captain Marat Valeyev working the crime scene – and this is not simply because they had once made out at their senior prom and she still remembers going hot all over from his slightest touch.

Life had separated them since that night and only reunited them last year when Valeyev was transferred from the Organized Crime Unit to her district. It was a demotion. But following the death of Valeyev’s partner during an attempted arrest – a death that was caused by Valeyev’s actions – he could consider himself fortunate. Elena never asked Marat about that tragedy. She was confident that he was an excellent officer. He never complained about all the assignments she gave him, was always willing to work on weekends – just as she was – and knew how to get results in a way that would move the case forward. Not every detective knows how to do that. It’s not hard to work with your fists and wave your gun in people’s faces – the problem is that any evidence obtained that way will be crushed to dust by the lawyers at trial.

And the fact that she sometimes catches his masculine gaze lingering upon her – that’s just flattering, no more. She is a woman after all.

«Hello Marat.» Petelina paused long enough to catch his eager but disciplined smile. «What’s the situation look like?»

«Hi Lena. The situation here is looking thusly: A wife patted her husband on the head with a cleaver and the poor guy didn’t find the joke very funny.»

«Alcoholics?»

«God no. Middle class, decked-out apartment, wife’s covered in diamonds. To be fair, there’s an open bottle in the kitchen – but it’s genuine cognac, not the cheap stuff.»

«I hope you haven’t touched anything?» Mikhail Ustinov, the forensic expert, barged into their exchange, moving the captain aside as he entered.

When the Tadpole went to a crime scene, he always brought with him a large backpack stuffed full of cutting-edge electronic devices which he referred to as his gadgets. These enabled him to set up a mini-laboratory on site. Misha pulled off his helmet and passed further into the apartment.

«Nothing but the money and the valuables,» Valeyev grumbled after him.

«Have you examined the windows and the balcony?» asked Petelina.

«Of course. Everything is locked from the inside. There’s nothing in the apartment but the corpse and the murderer.»

«The murderer? That fast?»

«Come on, Lena. We weren’t born yesterday. You’ll see for yourself. Open and shut case, a domestic dispute.»

The detective made her way down the hallway. Ustinov was already fiddling around next to the corpse in latex gloves, taking pictures and bagging evidence. Petelina carefully examined the dead man lying in a bathrobe with a staved-in head.

«The blow came from behind. Unexpectedly. The murder weapon has been left for us as a parting gift,» she stated.

«Simple female imprudence,» Valeyev rushed to explain. «It’s a normal thing with them: a fit of rage leading to a momentary weakness.»

«You’re quite the expert,» Elena smiled wrily.

Valeyev flushed.

«She’ll confess. I’ll bet you anything.»

«That doesn’t mean we don’t have a job to do. Where’s the suspect? What’s her name?»

«Inna Maltseva. She was discovered unconscious right beside the corpse. Here’s her passport. She lives with her husband, Dmitry Maltsev. Or, to be accurate, she now lives without him. At the moment, the little lady is in the other room with an EMT. There’s a PPS sergeant watching over her.»

«Which room?» the Tadpole stirred. «I need to take her fingerprints.»

«There’s the door,» pointed Valeyev.

«And who made the call?» asked Petelina.

«The neighbor. An old bird. A very curious elder lady. I reckon that she’ll be happy to tell us everything she knows.»

«Then she’s the one I’ll start with,» Elena decided. «Take me to her.»

Before they could leave the apartment, however, a disgruntled-looking EMT appeared in the hallway.

«Are you the detective? We need to go. We’ve got other calls to attend to.»

«A couple of questions and you’ll be free.» Petelina wrote down the number of the ambulance and asked a few rudimentary questions: When did they get the call? How quickly did they get to the scene? What did they see? What condition was the suspect in?

«At the moment the lady is alright,» the medic came to the end of his story. «She suffered from a severe loss of consciousness resulting in delayed reactions, but she doesn’t need to go to the hospital. As for the victim – obviously a fatal case. Instant death. We didn’t even touch him. Can we go now?»

Petelina nodded. She spent the next half hour talking to the Maltsevs’ neighbor and the PPS unit that responded to the call. The neighbor had noticed one inconsistency. The police confirmed it. The inconsistency required prompt verification and so Elena sent Valeyev on an urgent assignment.