“I can’t officially recognize you as a victim,” the detective said. “Legally speaking, you’re not family…”
“I get it,” Ivan replied, trying to figure out which of them looked more exhausted. He was worn down by grief and emptiness, while the detective seemed buried under the weight of cases cluttering his office—and the dozens of tragedies behind them. The detective was seasoned, dressed in plain clothes, so it was hard to guess his rank, but he definitely wasn’t a rookie lieutenant. They were in the city’s investigative department, not some local precinct. “Honestly… I half-expected you to pin this on me. I’m the easy target, right? I get it: a guy whose girlfriend gets pregnant… obvious motive. And when… the body is found in his own place…”
The detective seemed neutral toward him. No pity, no sugarcoating, but no pressure either. He wasn’t playing “good cop” or “bad cop.” Just tired. Now, he shrugged.
“You did file for a marriage license, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, we did,” Ivan said, rubbing his forehead with his palm. “Would that really stop you from suspecting me? You could’ve thought it was a setup, a way to fake… especially after what happened four months ago.”
“Well, back then, you’ve got an airtight alibi!” The detective almost cracked a smile.
“I figured you’d check.”
The detective printed out the interrogation transcript and slid the pages across the desk to Ivan.
“Read through it and let me know if there’s anything you want to change.”
Ivan scanned it quickly, and after a few minutes, he said, “No issues.”
“Then write here: ‘Recorded accurately from my statement, read by me.’ And sign it.”
Ivan thought to himself that even his handwriting had gone to hell lately. No surprise there. He did as instructed, but added, “So, I figured you’d…”
The detective’s gaze shifted suddenly. From indifferent to sharp, a professional sizing up his subject. It lasted just a few seconds before the man behind the desk spoke again.
“Ah, to hell with it… If you’d managed to get married, you’d be considered a victim, and you’d know anyway…”
“Know what?”
“This… isn’t the first murder like this. Same method. It’s been going on for over a year now. And we can’t… not just catch him, but even figure out a motive. We don’t know who this is—a maniac, someone mentally ill, or if there’s some other goal… His victims are completely random. There was a schoolgirl, an old man. Some he kills at home—like your girlfriend—others on the street… We’re trying to keep this under wraps because the first victim was a judge. But… it doesn’t look like a ‘business’ hit. Still, this started when… you weren’t even in Kyiv yet. And at least one of the incidents happened almost at the same time as what happened to your parents. Right when you were laid up in the ICU, hooked to oxygen… By the way, I was… working on that case too.” Maybe it was the shared pain of loss that made the detective open up. “That’s why we checked so thoroughly… So, we know for sure it’s not you. Same as with your parents.”
And my sister, Ivan wanted to add, but that case was handled by different people in a different city.
“Thanks for that,” he said instead. The detective understood exactly what he meant: thanks for trying to find the real killer instead of pinning it on the “convenient” suspect.
“We can’t afford to mess this up. Not with a case like this… Whoever he is, he’s not stopping. There’ll be more bodies. I’ve never seen anything like it… A real devil!”
A devil? Well, if you believe in that sort of thing… But Ivan knew what the detective meant. With a case like this, you can’t just arrest the first guy you come across. Because the real killer will keep killing. Each victim is his calling card, and every new victim after an arrest becomes an alibi for the wrongfully detained, who’d have to be released anyway. Devil or not, Ivan thought as he walked through the corridors of the city police department a few minutes later, this killer was a real pain in the neck for the investigation. They had to do the job right, find the actual culprit, not just beat a confession out of some random person. But did they even know how? The detective himself admitted they didn’t even know if they were dealing with a maniac, a lunatic, or someone with a specific agenda.
Well, at least they didn’t seem to be planning to arrest him, he thought as he stepped outside. Near the entrance to the police department stood a bizarre sculpture—a robotic-looking cop made of metal parts, accompanied by a matching dog. Weird creation, but someone out there had that kind of imagination… One person’s imagination was about decorating the city. Another’s was about death, Ivan mused as he turned the corner of the building. The underground parking lot where he’d left his car was a few blocks away. It wasn’t about the money—he just couldn’t get used to the fact that every time he went somewhere, he had to walk at least a hundred yards from his destination to his car. Ridiculous! Isn’t the whole point of owning a car so you don’t have to walk? He couldn’t adjust to this—or to a lot of things in Kyiv, for that matter.
He pulled his smartphone from his pocket and saw a message: “Everything okay?” He understood his friend’s concern—Kostyk probably figured they might suspect Ivan too. But he didn’t feel like talking, not to anyone, not even his closest friend. So he just replied, “Yeah, all good!” Ivan knew Kostyk would get the subtext: “As good as it can be.” But the response came back: “Call if you need anything.”
Well, he could only be grateful to Kostyk. The guy wouldn’t leave him hanging, but he also knew that sometimes the best help was giving someone space to be alone.
“Wanna know your fate?” a voice suddenly called out from his left. “I’ll tell you everything, sweetheart! Won’t hide a thing…”
Ivan stopped short in front of a stout, dark-skinned woman wearing a headscarf. Strange—he hadn’t seen street fortune-tellers like this in ages, not back home and not here in Kyiv. Even when he’d come across them on the streets, he’d always walked past, but this time, something made him stop and look straight into her dark eyes.
“Why would I?”
“To know what’s coming, sweetheart!” To her, it was obvious. Her voice carried surprise. Ivan figured she’d probably dealt with people curious about her predictions, others who didn’t believe and ignored her, some who cursed her out, and plenty who just walked by without engaging, wary of “gypsy hypnosis.” But someone asking why anyone would want to know the future? That was probably a first in her “practice.” “You gotta know…”
“Or maybe it’s better not to. You’re not gonna tell me anything good.”
“I don’t guess. I see,” the woman said. The expression in her eyes shifted subtly. “I see you’re carrying a heavy burden, that’s why you talk like this. Three deaths and one more around you. So… go your way. You’ll come to me anyway, sweetheart. Not as the person you seem to be now. You’ll remember my words.”
She turned and walked off in the direction Ivan had come from. He glanced after her but decided not to follow. After all, a lot could be explained. These fortune-tellers were often good psychologists, and figuring out he was struggling… probably all it took was a look into his eyes, and everything became clear. That’s what he told himself as he descended into the underground parking lot.
But that didn’t explain how she’d nailed the exact number of deaths.
Olenka hadn’t wanted to live outside the city. She wasn’t used to it back home, and she didn’t want it here either when she moved to the capital with Ivan. They’d had a choice, and she’d insisted on a city apartment… And that’s where she met her end. She hadn’t wanted to go with Ivan to yet another meeting about the inheritance, choosing to stay behind and wait. But she didn’t wait for him. Instead, someone broke into the apartment—there were no security cameras in the old building—hit the woman, who still didn’t feel at home there, over the head. And then… sealed her lips and nostrils with some modern, fast-drying glue. The killer probably stood there, watching her agony, watching her suffocate, dying from lack of life-giving oxygen. Maybe he demanded something, or maybe Olenka herself… tried to save herself in a last desperate way, because Ivan found her in the hallway, half-naked. He found her and, of course, immediately called the police and an ambulance, though it was clear there was no help to be given.
Stepping into the apartment, he felt like he was seeing it all over again… No, this was impossible. Luckily, he didn’t have much stuff here, and what Olenka had brought with her could stay for now… Would he ever want to come back here? Ivan couldn’t answer that question, though he thought about it as he packed. Finally, he grabbed his suitcase, locked the door, and headed down to his car. He got behind the wheel, tapped the right spot on the GPS, and the computer obediently mapped out the route. Forty minutes later, he was pulling through remotely opened gates onto the property of a private house. He parked under the carport, got out, unlocked the door, and carried the suitcase inside. Then he remembered, went back to the yard, and plugged in the charger for the electric car. After that, he hauled the suitcase up to the second floor. Which room to pick…? He couldn’t get used to the fact that… this foreign life was now his, these foreign things now belonged to him. There was a sense of tragedy here too, but the former residents of this house had died somewhere else entirely. His not-so-steady legs carried Ivan to what used to be his father’s bedroom. Of course, it had been cleaned up—several months had passed since the people who lived here simply didn’t come back one day. But still… Life goes on, he told himself, and started hanging his clothes in his father’s closet.
Kostyk, ever the cynic, had remarked about a month ago, “You and your dad had the kind of relationship where… someone else might’ve been thrilled about the inheritance…”
What kind of expression had Ivan worn then? Could it even be called a smile? Maybe halfway. Olenka, though, wasn’t impressed, and she shot back, “Why don’t you just say he should thank the killer…”
She gave Kostyk a look that made him drop the subject. Instead, he shifted the conversation to the late family’s taste in cars—all of which now belonged to Ivan. And not just that…
Either way, Ivan couldn’t get used to it… It wasn’t just that he’d grown accustomed to the arguments that ended every conversation with his parents—over anything from how and with whom he lived, to his job (which, in his father’s eyes, was a loser’s job), all the way to politics. Those fights weren’t just familiar; they’d become like a drug, and now he was going through real withdrawal.
But the real issue was something else. His father, for all his dictatorial tendencies, loved life and took pleasure in it. Even in doing things differently from everyone else. Take, for instance, ditching the Mercedes for a Tesla and refusing to drive anything else… Not to mention this house… and everything from food to travel, even mushroom-picking trips—one of which turned out to be the last for the whole family. Even when life imposed limits, his father, as he put it, tried to breathe deeply, right to the very end… And someone took all that away. Not to mention his sister—she’d always done her best to stay neutral, which in itself took a lot of strength… But…
One thing Ivan was sure of: the killer—or killers—would likely never be found. This was something… beyond comprehension. Just like what happened to Olenka, he thought as he wandered through the empty rooms of the large house—now his own. Something just as horrific, but… completely different, utterly unlike. Opposites.
Three and one death, he recalled the street fortune-teller’s words. He put the groceries he’d bought on the way into the fridge—he wasn’t hungry. Didn’t feel like watching TV either. Or reading. He had no work here, and now, he didn’t even need to.
He needed something to occupy his mind so it wouldn’t melt down, spinning in idle overdrive.
Ivan went downstairs and entered a room that could be called a library. This was pretty much how he’d imagined a library in a house as a kid, reading books about “good old England.” With adjustments for a more modern design, of course, and the fact that, besides books, the shelves held compact discs (not exactly cutting-edge either), and three laptops sat on the desks. Where the light-painted walls weren’t covered by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a few paintings hung. Behind one of them, Ivan already knew, was a safe. One of the keys fit it—the amount of cash in dollars and euros inside surprised him, but he knew his father had been well-off. At least now he didn’t have to worry about money for living… But the painting itself drew attention. It depicted a chess problem, and copies of it hung in every other room of this big house. Why? He’d already checked—there were no surprises, pleasant or otherwise, behind the other paintings, including the copies of this one.
The chess problem caught his eye. What did it mean? His father, of course, had been a chess enthusiast—Ivan knew that from childhood; he himself played decently but couldn’t be called a fan of the game. Still, identical paintings of the same chess problem in different rooms—that was probably overkill.
After standing in front of the “chessboard” for a while, he sat at one of the desks and powered up a laptop. Then he caught himself—he’d chosen the oldest and cheapest of the three in the room. Why? Was he ashamed to use the newer ones, not yet used to the fact that… all of this was now his? Subconsciously worried he’d… cause some damage? Or that his father would start another argument? But he did drive the Tesla—until recently his father’s car—though there were two other, cheaper cars here. Yet somehow, his feet had carried him to the desk with the cheapest computer.
He shook his head, as if shaking off a spell… But he wasn’t about to turn off the computer just to switch to another one on purpose! For what he wanted to do, he didn’t need a powerful machine. He just opened Google and started typing search queries. Within a few minutes, he was reading an article about the murder of a judge over a year ago.
Valentyna Kravets was forty-two and had worked at one of the capital’s district courts for about ten years. People said and wrote all sorts of things about her—there’s always someone unhappy with a judge’s rulings. But she kept working, handling cases, and a few times a week, before heading to the courthouse, she’d go for a run in the wooded area near her home. She lived with her husband and fifteen-year-old daughter in Novobilychi, on the city’s outskirts.
On that warm August day, she didn’t come back home to change, grab her car keys, and head to work. Her husband started to worry and was just figuring out who to call for help when police sirens echoed through the neighborhood… A neighbor, out walking his dog in the woods, found a half-naked body and, of course, immediately called the police.
The article mentioned that the victim had several bruises and signs of a struggle, but the cause of death was asphyxiation. No details. But—if the detective said this was the first murder, and the latest (or was it?) was Olenka’s death—then Ivan had to conclude that the asphyxiation resulted from someone sealing the judge’s mouth and nose, leaving her unable to breathe or scream, dying within minutes.
A monster. What had the detective called him…? A devil…? What would I do, Ivan thought, if I found out who it was? He didn’t know. And he certainly didn’t know how to find out. But he caught himself feeling a strange relief just from mentally asking the question: “How?”
Shutting down the computer, he got up from the chair, stood for a few minutes staring at the chess pieces on the painting, then turned off the light and left the room.
“So, what do you think?” asked a middle-aged man. The stout, dark-skinned woman, who had now removed her bright headscarf, let down her long, graying hair.
“If you ask me—almost…”
They, too, had to adapt to circumstances. To shuttered coffee shops, even outdoor ones. To the inability to blend into a crowd. But those who did the same work centuries ago faced far more serious challenges.
“Almost ready?”
“Yeah. Just… will he hold it together or crack? I don’t know, could go either way.” Now she spoke without the faint accent. And she definitely didn’t call this companion “sweetheart.” “That’s if we’re talking about his nerves…”
“And everything else?”
“That’s up to you,” the woman dodged a direct answer. She’d only made initial contact, and that wasn’t the only thing needed to make such a decision. But the man had already made up his mind.
“We’re taking him. Especially with a last name like that… You lead. As always. Since, as usual, you made contact and piqued his interest, right? And I’ll back you up.”
“I’m not sure he’s interested. He said it’s better not to know the future…” The woman shook her head. “Like I said, he’s struggling, he might crack…”
“That’s your job—to make sure he doesn’t. First and foremost,” the man said.
“And how can you help?” Besides what was needed for their work, the fortune-teller relied on the usual skills of her kind. Her companion didn’t share her background or her people’s ways, but he had other talents.
“We don’t operate like we did two hundred years ago,” he said with a smile. “If… modern tools are being used not just by our enemies but by regular folks, then we’ve gotta use them too! At the very least, to know where and when to show up to… make contact again. So, you lead him… and I’ll lead you. Got it?”
A few minutes later, she cautiously stepped out of the building’s entrance—it wouldn’t do for anyone to see such an unusual guest with her companion. But there was no observer. If there had been, they’d have been even more surprised to see a woman with the look of a typical street fortune-teller walk up to a small Chinese-made car, get behind the wheel, and drive off.