Page 13 of Protected By the BRATVA Grump

The corner of the lot under the oak holds a dark patch where his engine sat long enough to drip. He parked nose out, facingthe exit, in the one space the lamp doesn't reach. I photograph the oil, the tire impression in the softer ground at the edge, and the tree where I put him, where a strip of bark the size of my palm has come away.

The bottle and the syringes rest against my ribs the whole drive back over the bridge, wrapped in a napkin from her counter.

Demyan answers on the second ring without saying hello. I give him the plate, the make, the scrape down the driver's side deep enough to be showing primer. He asks whether I want it fast or quiet. Both, I tell him, and he makes a sound that means he'll manage one of them by lunch.

The scrape is the part that will finish this. A car like that is a man's only car, and a man who parks nose out under a tree at the dark end of a lot is a man who worries about being able to get away quickly. He'll need the panel done before the rust sets in, and he'll want it done cheaply, which means the two yards on the eastern road out of the city rather than a dealership. Mechislav has a friend has been painting cars on that road since before I could drive.

By eleven I'm parked outside the second of them with a cooling coffee in the cup holder, which is when Delilah's message arrives.

A photograph of a Victoria sponge, taken at an angle that suggests she was holding the phone in one hand and something hot in the other. The top is perfect. Underneath it, sent eleven seconds later, a second photograph of the same cake from the side, where the bottom inch has gone the color of a burnt match.

Beneath that: three attempts. THREE.

My thumb flies over the phone’s keyboard, deletes, starts again, and eventually manages: save me the burnt end.

The reply comes back before I've locked the screen. Kimmie’s already claimed it, but, you can have the previous two.

The next photo makes me laugh out loud, surprising me. I can’t remember the last time I actually laughed.

Her underwear is still in my jeans pocket, which I noticed when I dressed in her bedroom this morning with her humming in the shower on the other side of a thin wall. My hand slips in every few minutes, rubs the fabric between my finger and thumb, then pulls out again when I scold myself for being distracted.

I head in to ask my questions.

The smell of spray paint hangs thick in the air all around the building and I shake my head. Their ventilation must be crap, I can’t imagine the headaches they’ll be dealing with all the time working here.

Gio recognizes me as Mechislav’s cousin immediately, walking over to me with a smile and his hand outstretched.

"Federov," he says, pumping my hand. "How can I help?"

I ask about the gray car, the dent, the owner. Gio nods once and leads me over to a desk covered in papers and rags. He pushes a few items around before revealing a diary.

"Yes," he says, stabbing the column under Tuesday next week. "I remember him. He argued about the estimate but paid in cash anyway. John Smith."

John Smith. Paid in cash.

I don’t bother holding in the sigh.

I thank him, hand him a fifty for his assistance, and sit in the car with my hands on the wheel until my pulse comes back down to something usable. I find my hand is back in my jeans pocket, fondling the milky cloth, thinking about the way she tastes. Then I start the car and move on to the next part of my day.

The library on Foster Street keeps the regional papers going back two years. The woman at the desk is happy enough to let me sit with them because I ask about the local history section first and mean it enough to sound convincing. Three assaults in five weeks, Bill said, and Bill reads every page of the daily paper the way other men read scripture.

Only I know that sometimes, cases like these don’t get linked together as quickly as they get reported on.

The first one didn't make the regional paper at all, only the city edition, four lines under a story about a school funding vote. A woman on the canal towpath in February, walking home from a late shift. The second in March, a park in Bellingfell on the near side of the bridge. The third and fourth both here, three weeks apart, both on the north path of Community Park between eight and half past nine in the evening.

He is moving outward from the city in a widening arc and coming back to the places that worked. Every one of the victims was a woman alone, on foot, after dark, on a route she used often enough that somebody could learn it.

I sit in the quiet of that room with my hands flat on the table and let myself understand it properly.

He came back to Community Park a third time. He parked in the space without a lamp. He waited with a syringe already prepared, and he got out of his car when Delilah came down onto the path at the same time she comes down onto it every night.

She was next. It’s not even a vague possibility. She was the next one, and the only thing between her and that hedge was a man who happened to arrive early because he'd wanted the extra minutes.

The librarian asks if I'm all right. Apparently I've been sitting without moving for some time. I tell her the print is small andshe laughs and offers me a magnifier. I take it and read four more pages I don't need to, so she has something ordinary to remember about the man at the table.

Eduard's kitchen at four o'clock smells like toast and washing powder.

There's a padded mat on the floor by the doors. Lilah is on her back on it under a plastic arch with birds hanging from it, working extremely hard at getting one foot into her mouth, and Eduard is standing at the counter shoveling cold leftovers into his mouth.