Free Brooklyn Graves by Triss Stein

and a woman, dressed in business casual, anonymous-looking clothes; I knew the jackets they wore with their tailored slacks covered their guns. Officer Henderson was a medium-sized guy with a firm yet kind voice and nice clothes, and Officer Rooney was a chunky, fortyish woman with an air of suppressed energy and a great haircut.
    We sat in the small front room, which was dominated by a wall-size modern entertainment center, as in many Russian homes, and many family photos.
    Natalya chose a seat with her back to the photos, but I looked at them from the other side of the room. Alex’s birthdays. I remembered some of those. Natalya and Dima’s wedding, in Leningrad way back when, looking absurdly young. A family trip with Niagara Falls in the background. I wanted to get up and look more closely. Chris was probably in some of the birthday pictures.
    I had missed the beginning of the interview. Rooney was saying, “…so he checked in for his night job but then, very late at night, around two a.m., the card-reader shows he used his access card to open the gate and go out again. Was that normal?”
    â€œNo, no, I don’t think so. Perhaps—I don’t know—he left to get coffee? But I fixed him a thermos when he worked at night.”
    â€œThey told us the rules are that the watchmen remain on-site for the whole shift. Was your husband someone who would just ignore that? Was he a rule-breaker kind of person?”
    Her look was pure hostility. “He was the most responsible man alive. Never would he have walked away from his job.”
    â€œCould he have been meeting someone?”
    â€œAt two a.m.? Who? Who would he be meeting then? Up to no good at that hour? I should throw you out of my house.”
    â€œMrs. Ostrov, please…” The nice man spoke softly. “We must ask these kinds of questions to do our job. We all have the same goal, right? To find the killer. We truly do not intend to upset you.” He saw her angry glare and added quickly, “Or insult your husband’s memory.”
    I moved over to sit next to her and poured her a glass of tea from the pot on the table.
    â€œI am…not myself…” She sipped. “I will try to answer more questions better.”
    â€œYou won’t like this one either, but we must know.” The detective smiled apologetically. “Did he have any enemies? Was he in a dispute with anyone? Fight with a neighbor? Any kind of deal gone wrong?”
    â€œYes.” She said it firmly. “I told other cops. One enemy only, his brother, Vladimir Ostrov. Look, just go look in your police records. You will find him there, I think. He is no good, and he fought Dima all the time. You think someone did this? Who else could it be? Look at him.” Her voice rose with every word; then, when she stopped, she seemed to shrink back into her chair, exhausted.
    â€œI promise you were are doing that. We will know everything about him, large and small, that can be known. But we can’t rule out the idea that this is a message from an experienced criminal, like a gang. It does look like that.”
    â€œLike I said,” she muttered, “Volodya—no honest bones in his head.”
    â€œVolodya?”
    â€œVladimir. Volodya is the family name, like I am Natalya but Natasha at home. I forget American word.” She covered her eyes with her hand.
    â€œNickname? Mrs. Ostrov, please try to stay with us. We know this is hard, but everything you say will help us find the guilty person.”
    â€œI know. I know.” She shook her head as if to wake herself up. “Go on.”
    â€œSo, given that this looks very deliberate, again we ask, what was he involved in?”
    â€œMy Dima? Just what he was supposed to be—family, work, home.” Her eyes suddenly opened wider. “You think because we are Russian, he must be ‘involved’ in something?” Her voice added the quotation