Penny Criminal Case

Everybody scolded him, but none of the authorities had raised a hand to sign an order of dismissal: the man was stupid, but simple-minded. He did not do evil to anyone, because he did not do anything. Others did everything for him, so there was little harm from him. There was no harm. It was not for nothing Starkov remembered lines from one poetic tale: “And we have no court for fools for centuries!”

And only once did Starkov think it was, or in fact, he noticed it, as soon as the “brainless” eyes of the district policeman acquired an evil, intelligent and mocking look for a moment. Therefore, Starkov did not rule out that the inspector simply “entered the image” and did not intend to leave it: after all, “we have no court for fools for centuries!” Nobody saw how he was outside the police uniform. And he combined in his person Ivan the Fool and Emelya from the fairy tale “By the Will of the Pike” (two idlers, who are lucky to become rich).

Incredibly, according to his passport, he was called Emelyan Ivanovich Ivanov. By name and patronymic – hardly in honor of Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (leader of the peasant uprising in the 18th century). And if it was in honor of the leader, then only in the context of the setting “Let it be at least a day, but it will be my day!” And, perhaps, giving him a name, his parents hoped, that the treasured pike will help him – at least, in the amount of three desires…

“Where the hell was you?” Bessonov “welcomed” Ivanov more on the way. “And what is this with you: material evidence?”

The people, gathered around the major, burst out laughing: there was a huge, black cat with a white “collar” in the hands of the lieutenant.

Ivanov lowered and noisily pulled his nose, pulling the green snot out of her nostril.

“I heard… meows… Well, I and…”

“Did you find the main evidence?” Bessonov continued diligently “wiping his feet”. “Did you solve the crime alone?”

Since the answer was quite expected to re-noisy tightening snot, Bessonov only waved his hand irritably.

“Okay! Is it you, who find the corpse?”

Ivanov, with an incredibly idiotic expression on his face, silently nodded his head.

“Well, and whose is this corpse? Did you know its owner?”

Without answering the question, the district police officer returned to the snot service.

“Answer when I ask you!”

“I didn’t come close,” Ivanov sighed sadly.

“So come now… fuck you!”

The policeman sideways, with a slow step, approached the corpse and, without bending down, began to survey him from the height of his meter ninety. He observed slowly – like everything he did or did not do.

“Well?!” Bessonov could not stand.

Ivanov stretched his lips, making him even more like a hopeless client of a psychiatric hospital.

“Seem… this is… Tanya Kotova. I recognize her by the cat…”

Bessonov stared in awe at the lieutenant. What?!”

Bessonov stared in awe at the lieutenant.

Ivanov, in response, poked his finger into the cat’s neck.

“It’s their cat. So fat and black… with white – only they have.”

“Lieutenant, did you find a cat in the wasteland, or did you bring it with you?”” Starkov added his “legs” too.

“In the wasteland,” Ivanov did not even linger with the answer for some reason. “There.”

And he pointed to the “border line” between the districts.

Starkov suddenly stopped smiling. Looking at him, Bessonov left “footwork” too.

“Alex, you want to say, that…”

“The girl heard the meowing of a cat and went to look for him.”

Starkov pensive look went somewhere sideways.

“This was what our incognito needed…”

“He lured her deliberately, didn’t he?” Rubin joined.

“It seems so. The cat, most likely, was ‘privatized’ at the time. And, if so, then the killer knew in advance, that the cat runs away from home, and where he runs, and where he will be looked for…”

“Pre-planned murder?”

Bessonov paled: this kind of murder for years “hung” with heavy weights on the authority of the criminal investigation department. Starks sympathetically patted the major on the shoulder.

“Well, Victor, do not die before death… Lieutenant, do you know where these Kotovs live?”

“I know.”

“Lead us.”

Ivanov again hesitated.

“What else?”

“So their… this is… no home. They are at work… probably.”

“Ok, we’ll check it, Alex!” Bessonov waved his hand, frustrated by the prospect of “dead case”.

“Well then…”

Starkov glanced at his watch.

“It’s time to do the protocol. Ivanov… Although, as you were! Victor, invite witnesses!”

For half an hour Starkov produced a protocol for inspecting the scene of the incident. It remained only to sign the protocol, when suddenly…

“Alex, I have still found something!”

Rubin lifted a plastic bag over his head.

“What exactly?”

The captain quickly walked to the open door of the “UAZ”, in the womb of which Starkov designed the protocol.

“Here, take a look!”

In a small plastic bag there were two cigarette butts: one from a filter cigarette, the other from a cigarette “Belomorkanal”.

“Look, Alex: the crumpled cigarette sleeve is characteristic!”

“It’s typical for most of those, who smoke Belomor,” Starkov said with curved cheek. “I myself crush the liner in the same way, so that the crumbs of tobacco do not pour into the mouth along with the puff. So what?”

“What are you, Alex?!” Rubin put his hands on his chest. “Am I talking about you??! I… ‘in general sense’!”

“In general sense…”

Starkov looked around at the cigarette butts again.

“Don’t you think, captain, that these cigarette butts are too clean and dry after the rain, which lashed the whole evening until midnight?”

Zarubin puzzled brow.

“God knows, Alex… Actually, I found them under a piece of bark. Probably, the wind dragged it, it caught hold of the garbage and covered the cigarette butts.”

“Both in the same place?” Starkov shook his head incredulously. “It’s too good to be true… And in general: there are too many material evidence. And all some… from different people… You know, I somehow happened to read one Polish detective story. It is called ‘Too many clowns’. And here it is: too much evidence… Yes, even more such disparate… Yes, there will have to seriously deal…”

Starkov wrote a couple of lines on the found cigarette butts in protocol, gave it to the signature for the witnesses, packed the evidence and quickly sketched the “escort” to the Kirov prosecutor. Formally, this was a violation of the instructions: everything, that was acquired at the scene, was required to be transferred to the city prosecutor, so that he, in turn, redirect it to the prosecutor of Kirov district. But, having received a reprimand from the regional prosecutor, the city prosecutor recognized, though not immediately, the prompt transfer of materials – immediately to the district prosecutor.

“Sir Peter!”

“I am listening to you!” the Kirov prosecutor responded from his “Moskvich-412” (the gift of the “area” to the district prosecutors).

“Accept a gift, so to speak, from a pure heart!”

Noisily puffing, Kirov prosecutor reluctantly got out of the car and glanced reproachfully at Starkov.

“This is a bad joke, dear Alex… Ok, give it to me…”

The prosecutor signed the second copy, made for a carbon copy, and, sighing heavily, went to “Moskvich”. Starkov looked at his watch, at parting sympathizing with Bessonov.

“It’s half past four am. Maybe I can still sleep, at least, half an hour…”

“Forget it!” the elderly “UAZ” driver did not hesitate “to please” the authorities. “They they are now on the radio reported: hangman in the Soviet district. So, get ready for a trip, sir… I don’t know how to get there: gasoline is at zero… Though on yourself drag a car!”

“Next time it will be so!” never discouraging Rubin “was in place” as always. “If you will “make us happy” once again, you will drag a car on yourself!.. By the way, Alex, I’ll be a bit late here: I’ll help the local man. I hope the hanged man will not be offended at me, because I did not honor him, so to speak, with my personal presence?

“You may hope,” Starkov frowned.

“And you? You do not mind, do you? Will you get along with the dead without me?”

“What are you asking me?” Starkov sighed. “I’m not your boss. If you consider it necessary, you may stay here: we will manage without you… Okay, let’s go. A sleep, as I understand it, is canceled for today and is postponed for tomorrow…”

CHAPTER THREE

Until the morning, as “prescribed in the statute”, Starkov could not even lie on the couch for a minute. Until half-past eight, without stopping by the police department, Starkov “landed” from one place of the incident on the other. But the “program of the day” had not yet been exhausted, although Alex himself learned about the “success” that had befallen him, only upon arrival at his “native land”.

Without going home and barely having time to rinse his hands and face with water from a spring at the last place of the incident, Starkov went to work. (The duty on the city was not considered as such – at least, by the district prosecutor). Having barely crossed the threshold of the office, he was invited by the head of the office to the district prosecutor. And since the call took place early in the morning, boss invited him clearly not “for tea”.

Without even asking the senior investigator, how the duty went (why be interested, when this is not his own?!), the prosecutor spread his arms out of the way – for some reason with a dejected look.

“Bad things, dear Alex…”

“I didn’t understand,” Starkov did not sin against the truth. Knowing the tendency of his boss systematically fall in spirit for any reason and without them, he was in no hurry to be alarmed.

But the prosecutor was in no hurry to “confess”.

“How many cases do you have now, Alex?” he went to the senior investigator from afar.

“Do you really want to ease the burden?!” Starkov allowed himself to grin.

“And yet, how much?” the prosecutor, who usually surrendered without command, did not surrender.

“Fifteen. I will transfer fourteen cases to the court with an indictment: five to the regional, nine to the district. One I will stop in the absence of corpus delicti.”

“Hmm… hmm…”

The “shyness”, permanently inherent in the prosecutor, was clearly beginning to “overflow”. And Starkov did not hesitate to ask about the reasons – in his characteristic spirit.

“Boss, what happened? Is the auditor going to us? Is he incognito with secret prescription?”

The prosecutor, who was not the greatest connoisseur of elegant literature, but at one time at school “passing through” Gogol, smiled faintly.

“No, dear Alex, an auditor…”

“He has not reached us yet, has he?”

“Well, yes… That is… In general, the case you went to yesterday… that is, tonight…”

“Which one exactly?” Starkov was wary: “the girlish shyness” of the prosecutor was beginning to like him less and less. “I served eight places of the incident on duty. Which one?”

With trembling hands more than usual, the prosecutor began to shift papers from one edge of the table to the other. At other times, Starkov would have laughed in his heart over the “role of a loader”, which boss had enough for the whole day, but now somehow didn’t have enough mood. The behavior of the prosecutor – the eternal coward and alarmist, although not a bad person (deep in the soul) – he liked less and less.

Finally, the prosecutor finished the “movement of goods” by organizing an even greater mess on the table, than he had before “time X”.

“No, then… the Kirov case… with the murdered girl.”

Starkov honestly lengthened his face.

“What’s wrong there?! I ‘made’ all the required measures, the material I submitted to the Kirov prosecutor with the accompanying information, indicated the ‘bright path’ to the Kirov ‘cops’ – what else?”

“Hmm… hmm…”

“Boss,” Starkov could not stand it, “as one character in Sholokhov’s “And Quiet Flows the Don” said: “If you swung, then hit!”

Proceedings in the course of the novel: “I will hit you!” did not follow, but the prosecutor unexpectedly cut the road to the truth – and “went to confess”.

“This case was given to us, dear Alex…”

“What does it mean?!”

No, Starkov was not stunned by surprise – such a reaction is inherent in the heroes of the novels – but the format of his face has clearly undergone even greater changes.

“What the fuck, boss?!”

“By territoriality, dear Alex,” the prosecutor moved his eyes further away.

Starkov could not resist and grunted.

“And what, boss, overnight there were changes in the administrative-territorial division of the districts?! Now this wasteland will add us mileage, doesn’t it?!”

“I would have joked myself,” the prosecutor sinned against the truth: he could not joke from birth, “but…”

“Zarathustra does not allow?” Starkov joked instead of the authorities grimly.

Boss was clearly not acquainted with Zarathustra, which was proved by the unexpectedly interested look of his sad-dull eyes.

“No, dear Alex, this one… as his…”

“Zarathustra.”

“…Yes… he had nothing to do with it.”

The prosecutor boyishly sniffed.

“It turned out, that the murder was committed on our side of the wasteland…”

“And then he was ‘transferred as a Christmas present to the dearest patron’?”

Starkov joked, but with every joke, it became less and less vigorous: comprehending the inevitable had a bad effect on nerves and facial muscles.

“You guessed, dear Alex.”

“And who so pleased us?” Starkov immediately showed a gloomy face: the jokes were over, despite all their traditionally inexhaustible stock.

“Someone… someone… I can have a look right now…”

The prosecutor dived his head into the pile of papers he had constructed and removed a thin folder with a red police cover from it.

“Here: Rubin.”

“Rubin?!”

Starkov ran with his hand over his overgrown chin: he intended to shave in his office, with an old electric razor “Berdsk”.

“And how did he find it out?”

Instead of answering, the prosecutor handed Starkov a thin folder.

“Take a look, dear Alex.”

The case – this is only due to the exceptional thinness – consisted of the Starkov’s incident report, the decision to open a criminal case, the extremely laconic protocols of interrogations of the medical examiner Tarsky, an expert-criminalist Pavlovsky, lieutenant Ivanov and the senior authorized officer of the City Department of Internal Affairs captain Rubin. The scheme and photos from the scene were attached to the case. The last document in the case was the resolution on the transfer of the case on a territorial basis and the “highest” resolution of the city prosecutor of the “Let it be!” Format.

“That’s not bad for one night and a piece of morning,” Starkov approved colleagues through teeth and gnashing of teeth. “Although you can immediately see, how the guys were in a hurry to get rid of the work… Hmm… Well, what did Captain Rubin confess here?”

The interrogation protocol of Rubin, like the other “defendants”, fit on one sheet of the standard prosecutor’s office form of interrogation of a witness. It was felt that the readings were minimized and fixed with only one purpose: to “make happy” colleagues from the Central district in shock terms.

Starkov quickly looked through the sheet. Rubin confessed that, while developing a version of the senior investigator Starkov about a pre-planned murder, he, waiting for the dawn, decided to examine the part of the wasteland, from which local policeman Ivanov brought the cat to the deceased girl. Preliminary Ivanov oriented him in place.

“Did Ivanov orient him in place?!” Starkov grinned out loud. “What a progress! Yes, he himself must be oriented, and not only in that place, but also in the place in life! No other way, now he will be transferred to the detectives, and at the same time from fools to clever people – for their ingenuity!”

Concisely “admiring” with lieutenant Ivanov, Starkov returned to the case file. Then Rubin said that within a radius of several meters from the location of the cat indicated by Ivanov, he noticed brown spots on the ground. They stretched in a broken chain towards the part of the wasteland, where the corpse of the girl was found. Soil samples with brown spots on them were taken by the investigator of the prosecutor’s office of the Kirov district to the forensic medical bureau for a forensic biological examination, and it turned out, that this was blood, which coincided in group with the victim’s blood.

“Quickly!” Starkov shook his head. “And the blood is it, and the blood type is known… Too fast! It takes days to establish both ‘in peacetime’!”

In conclusion, Rubin found on the October side of the wasteland bloody women’s panties with initials on the inside of “TK”. Being presented to the identification of the mother of the victim, they were identified as belonging to her daughter.

“And where is the identification protocol?”

Starkov quickly leafed through the sore business: there was no protocol. Probably, they just waved with panties in front of the face: the usual police disorder of the format “That’s not bad, but who really needs it – let it rework!” And “comrades from the Kirov district” were in such a hurry to “move the clamp from their neck to someone else’s”, that they did not even bother to draw up an inventory of documents, not to mention the identification protocol.

Starkov closed the folder and placed it in front of him on the console to the table, behind which, hunched over and pressed his head into the shoulders, the prosecutor sat – not at all in the image and likeness of the high authorities.

“Well, what do you say, dear Alex?” the prosecutor faltered in his voice.

Starkov threw up his hands.

“And what can you say? We will not go to refute these facts and beg for the ‘city’ to get the case turned back to the Kirov district… The deed is done… Well, in the sense that it is now with us, and we cannot get away from it… Although the Kirov ‘comrades’ could have merged these cases: because they have two almost similar corpses… And what the city prosecutor thought, hell knows…”

Suddenly he shook his head, which had already acquired a mine of bewilderment.

“It is not clear, why such maneuvers? Who needed to drag the corpse from one area to another? For what purpose? It would seem, is it not one hell, on which part of the same waste ground will a corpse be found?!.. So, not one… I am – in the sense of “one hell”… So, there was a goal. But I cannot understand what. If you wanted to throw a corpse to us, why drag it to the Kirov side? It’s unclear…

“Well, here, dear Alex, reveal this crime!” the prosecutor suddenly “came to life” – even his face, of parchment color, slightly got rosy. “Take this case to investigate!”

“Why me?!”

Starkov was clearly not in a hurry to share the bosses’ enthusiasm.

“This week, Meshkov is on duty in the district, so all the dead are his ‘booty’. I have nothing to do with this! Moreover, he has only four cases in production! No, boss, whatever you want, and I disagree!”

“Dear Alex…”

The prosecutor with a combined expression on his face: confusion plus embarrassment – turned the palms of his hands “inside out”.

“Well, you know that Meshik is no investigator! He has already He ruined those three unpretentious cases, all with a judicial perspective – what, then, can we speak for this case! It is too tough for him, dear Alex! Well, think about it yourself! And you, after all, are already aware of this case! What do you say?”

Starkov reproachfully looked at the prosecutor and shook his head.

“Eh, boss… You twist the rope out of me!”

“Help us out…”

“…our Savior?” Starkov finished with a wry grin, very far from optimistic. “Okay, boss: you are now indebted to me…”

Holding the folder under his arm and pretending to sag under its “weight”, Starkov left the prosecutor’s office. “Life has become better, life has become more fun”…

CHAPTER FOUR

Returning to his office, Starkov opened the safe and threw a folder on the bottom shelf, where he traditionally defined a “legacy to descendants” in addition to the old “dead cases”, that went to him – also by inheritance – from previous office residents. He identified the folder there, not because it would not have found a place among the “living” cases on the shelf a little higher. The senior investigator just had a good feeling, that the case about this dead person was from the category of “non-living” itself. He will collect all the necessary waste paper of course, but no more…

Ten minutes after Starkov finished smoking the second cigarette for this “decade”, he remove the case from the depths of the safe. This was a clear indication of the “rehabilitation” and “reanimation” of the red skinny folder.

Without opening it, Alex twisted the disk of a bulky antediluvian phone, probably of the “Stalin’s bottling”.

“Is it the prosecutor’s office of the Kirov district? I would have a senior investigator Yun.”

“Stop making fun, Alex!” the tube responded with the guilty voice and a very loud bass – one of the few advantages of the Stalinist apparatus. “I would ‘thank’ anyone for such a ‘gift’ myself… But, honestly, Rubin did it all! I have already accepted the case for production, when he decided to work as explorer!”

“I’m calling you on another occasion, Vlad,” Starks smiled.

“I listen to you, bro!”

The voice on that end instantly became optimistic and even joyful. It always happens, when “the cat feels whose meat has eaten”, even if the situation was different from the classic one.

“Bro, those two, who were killed on your ‘sponsored’ territory… well, with the genitals cut off… are they your ‘wealth’?”

“Yeah…”

The enthusiasm in Yun’s voice disappeared as quickly as it appeared. It was felt, that the “wealth” was already pretty “fed up” with the “honored”.

“Do not share?”

“Do you want to combine in one production?” Yun re-revived.

“No,” Starkov laughed, “just asking you to ‘confess’.”

“A-a-a-a…”

And the Kirov senior investigator “died” again. A short pause followed the lingering, sorrowful sigh.

“Well, what can I tell you, bro… ‘Dead case’ is the most suitable words for defining the current state at the current moment.”

“Nothing?” Starkov “delighted” also. “Really?”

Anticipating the answer, Yun additionally “reassured” the counterparty with a secondary woeful sigh. This moment of “mourning ceremony” in itself and in the case ended with a sound, even by telephone, identified as the loud joint work of the nose and handkerchief.

“Well, what can I say…”

“Speak as it is!”

“There is nothing, but corpses, bro. We didn’t even find the genitals cut off…”

“What was cut from the vagina?”

“As stated in the conclusion of the forensic examination, the large and small labia are removed. Surgically.”

“Surgically?”

Starkov’s face immediately acquired an “otherworldly” expression. He even took the phone away from his ear for a few seconds.

“It is interesting.”

– Nothing interesting, bro!”

Even on the phone it was “visible”, as the counterpart on the other end of the line “waved an arm in disgust”.

“At first, we also grabbed this trace: a maniac has to do with medicine.”

“And?”

“No shit!”

Yun’s anger on hopelessness has already “overflowed its banks”.

“In the city there are four clinical hospitals, eight clinics, a hell of a lot of emergency centers – and surgeons work everywhere not in the amount of one piece! And also there are a medical institute with a surgical faculty, an institute of plastic surgery, four morgues with pathologists, a forensic morgue, a medical examiner bureau…”

“Did you include the bureau?”

Starkov was not so much surprised, as he was on his guard: there was something in this “something”.

“From happiness,” Yun grinned into the phone. “And then ‘one familiar uncle’ told me, that the list was incomplete. It turned out, that it is necessary to include here also workers of the meat processing plant, working on cutting carcasses, and butchers from the shops, and their colleagues from the ‘Fish Fridge Refrigerator’, and the criminal element, noted and not noted by the ‘arts’ along this line, and the craftsmen of art craftsmen on bone, on wood – even on metal! And all this is not only in the city, but also in the region!”