They didn’t know that force was me. They thought the system had worked. And the four station employees who had known what was happening and kept quiet filed retirement papers or quit and disappeared from town so fast it was as if the devil himself were after them.
In a way, he was. Alina was never mentioned in any of the reporting. Her name, her face, even the fact of her detention were scrubbed from every document, report, and database so thoroughly it was as if that night had never happened.
Timur handled the digital trail. Zhora handled the paper trail. I handled the people who might remember. The desk sergeant who had seen Alina that night received an offer he was smart enough not to refuse. Early retirement and relocation to another state, on my dime.
He agreed immediately, because he understood that an offer from me is not the kind of offer a man sits around thinking about. Denis gave a statement on the third day after he was taken. He was not tortured and he was not beaten.
There was no need. He was simply told he had two choices. Tell investigators everything and get a sentence that would eventually end, or stay quiet and never leave the basement he was sitting in.
Denis chose the first option so quickly the investigator could barely keep up. He gave up Volkov, Igor, Maxim, Sychev, and even tried to give up Peshkov. But the investigator, working under the supervision of the Internal Affairs colonel, carefully steered the conversation away from the deputy prosecutor.
Peshkov needed to stay free until he had fulfilled his part of the arrangement. Igor broke during questioning and admitted guilt. Maxim—the cautious Maxim—cut a cooperation deal and became the prosecution’s star witness.
He told everything. How they picked victims, how they planted drugs, how they filmed the videos, how they blackmailed the girls. His testimony was so detailed and so ugly that the judge, an older woman with thirty years on the bench, called recess twice because she could not keep listening.
Volkov kept trusting Peshkov until the very end. He believed the deputy prosecutor would keep his word and secure a lighter sentence and protected placement. He wrote the confession exactly as instructed.
He cooperated exactly as instructed. He behaved in court quietly and obediently, exactly as instructed. He did everything right—if the man on the other side of the deal had been honest.
But the man on the other side of the deal was Peshkov. And Peshkov, in turn, was my puppet. Every promise he made to Volkov was a lie I had placed in his mouth…
