Last Violent Call (Secret Shanghai, #3.5)(65)
Maybe it was the blond hair creating that effect. Benedikt was still hovering at the compartment entrance, thinking hard. When a full minute passed, Marshall glanced over again, shaking his luggage case around to make more room.
“Ben,” he prompted. “You are worrying me a little.”
“Isn’t it a little strange,” Benedikt mused, finally articulating his thoughts, “that Yeva wears a Y on her necklace when there is no presence of that letter in the Russian spelling?”
Marshall looked confused. “I’m confused,” he stated.
“Yeva,” Benedikt said out loud, still mostly talking to himself. “Spelled Е-в-а. Mr. Portsmith said she doesn’t speak English, so what are the chances that she would represent her name that way?”
“I feel like you’re getting to something, Ben. Should I keep making insubstantial remarks until you reach the grand conclusion? That usually works. Maybe she is trying to learn English. Maybe she speaks French instead. Maybe her husband gifted it to her. Maybe—”
“Oh my God.”
Marshall startled at Benedikt’s sudden exclamation. He startled even further when Benedikt rushed toward him and grabbed his shoulders. “Oh my God, Mars, I know what this is. Come with me. Quickly.”
Benedikt scrambled through their messy surroundings to find the passenger list, scribbled to near incoherence with their notes. He identified the compartment number he needed, then practically dragged Marshall out, skidding into their carriage’s passageway and into the next one over.
“This way, this way.”
Benedikt found the compartment. There was humming from inside, stopping only when he knocked quickly, his hands practically shaking as his knuckles came down.
Marshall was right. He and Yeva did look a bit alike.
We met this girl who resembled Alisa to an eerie degree. Roma’s voice echoed over from a few months ago, the phone signal staticky. I figure it was the universe telling me I needed to help her.
“Your name isn’t Yeva Mikhailovna,” Benedikt said when she opened her door. “It’s Mila Yu.”
12
Irkutsk’s station was fast approaching. The train was about to stop.
“Lev!” Marshall called, spotting the boy as he dragged his bags into the entryway of his compartment, setting them there on the chance they needed to make a rapid exit. “Lev, where is your uncle?”
Lev pouted. “He is in hard-class assuring everyone they can disembark soon. He told me not to listen if you try to persuade me to find him.”
“This is incredibly important.” Marshall finally got the bags to stand upright, practically gasping for breath from the exertion. He needed to start jogging as a hobby when this was all over. He used to be able to chase rival gangsters across half the city while dodging bullets. These days he apparently couldn’t even lift a luggage case without sweating up a storm.
“He also warned me against the lines you would use. This is more important than anything else. This is a new investigation path. This is a great find—”
“This is the answer,” Marshall cut in, waving his hands to erase the other lines Lev had been parroting at him. “Actually, forget your uncle getting his answers. You should want to hear this so you can write about it. My partner is fetching the last puzzle piece.”
The boy clearly hadn’t been expecting this. He had been standing at the end of the passageway before, but now he hurried closer, his hands coming around his camera eagerly. “Really?”
“It will be the article of the century, I promise,” Marshall said. “You might even win an award. ‘Train Murder Runs Off the Rails with Unexpected Outcome.’ There—I thought up a headline for you.”
Lev’s eyes were big. The bait was set. Marshall just needed to haul the line in.
“No journalist has ever written something like this before. Get your uncle, Lev. Before everyone is forced to disembark and we don’t get our resolution.”
Without another word, Lev shot off in the other direction. Marshall grinned to himself.
* * *
Benedikt ushered everyone into the dining carriage. Irkutsk’s snow-covered landscape cast an intense reflective glare outside the large windows, surrounding the train in white as it came to a complete stop.
“Ten minutes, that is all I ask,” he said to Vodin, pushing the train officer by his arms. Perhaps he was overstepping his bounds just a tad, but they were so close now. He had really only wanted to get Vodin and Lev into the dining carriage—Vodin to report to and Lev so he could get his photos and article content—but other passengers were hearing the commotion in the passageway and were stepping out from their rooms to hear the conclusion of the investigation too.
An audience was fine, Benedikt supposed. He signaled for Marshall at the back of the crowd, and Marshall grinned brightly from where he stood, indicating that they were good and he had the movement under control.
“The police are waiting—”
“And they can board very soon,” Benedikt said. “You decide when the doors open, right? They will understand that you need a moment to get everything in order. No matter what happens after I explain everything, they can board. I ask that you just listen to me first. We have spent most of this journey investigating. Ten minutes is all we need now. Please.”