S.V. Redkin – The Great Conductor (страница 1)
S.V. Redkin
The Great Conductor
Movement I: Adagio
Chapter 1
“Music killed my parents.”
Perhaps it was not the best answer, but there it was.
“Excuse me,” Dr. Korpacheff said, peering over her horn-rimmed glasses. “Christine, did you just say that music—”
“Killed my parents. Yes. That’s what I said . . . well, it was sort of one of the reasons why it happened,” Christine said, fiddling with the jade beads on her wrist before closing her eyes. “You asked me about my parents, and I answered your question.”
Christine Heart, a thirty-five-year-old homicide detective, did not want to be in the shrink’s office in the middle of July while her colleagues were busy solving criminal cases with hardly any time for lunch in a stuffy office sometimes overwhelmed by BO. Granted, the air-conditioning in the doctor’s office was way better, and it felt really nice to be in the room.
The Homicide Investigation Division, which she had requested to be transferred to only two years ago, was no place for slacking and taking personal leaves. It was like the army—if you signed up for it, you had to be there day in and day out no matter what. Today, though, Christine felt like a high school student who had been sent to the principal’s office for a trivial offense, wasting her time explaining her behavior while the rest of the class depended on her in some extremely important sports event. It was an absolute waste of her time and taxpayers’ money.
“Is that why you’re here?” Dr. Korpacheff asked, adjusting her spectacles.
Christine looked at the big, fancy clock on the wall—five past two in the afternoon. She had been in the doctor’s office for only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity. She had nothing against Dr. Korpacheff. In fact, Christine kind of liked her demeanor when they had met before the session: friendly, professional, and soft-spoken.
The doctor was approximately her age, perhaps a couple of years older than Christine, who had not had time to celebrate her birthday a couple of months ago. Dr. Korpacheff had smooth, tanned skin and sported a very nice, expensive-looking beige pantsuit. Christine’s skin had not seen much sun even though it was the middle of summer—too much time in the office during the day and long, tedious hours sitting in the car during evening stakeouts. Christine’s jeans and shirt, even though clean and tidy, had been in her possession longer than she wanted to admit—no time or desire for shopping.
Christine noticed that Dr. Korpacheff kept her immaculately manicured nails short, and her forearms, which were not covered by the rolled-up sleeves of her silk blouse, looked strong.
“No, I’m here to work on my anger management skills in the workplace.” Christine shifted in the chair.
Christine had had a few issues with a couple of male colleagues—Detectives Kozminsky and O’Hara—who did not believe that she was capable of doing a good job and had tried to make sure she was assigned cases they did not want. Those poor excuses for colleagues had a good relationship with the detective sergeant who was in charge of assigning cases when he received calls from uniformed units.
Despite these attempts to undermine her, Christine had a good record of solved cases and had been pulled from the usual rotation onto some priority cases at her supervisor’s—Lieutenant Whitehead’s—discretion. That hadn’t sat well with the other detectives, and they had continued to spread antagonistic rumors about her alleged incompetence around the office, which had led to a shouting match with a lot of profanity (on their side) and a bit of body pushing (from Christine). Being in good shape, it had not been hard for Christine to put the two overweight, middle-aged men to shame. She probably should not have done that, but those jerks had deserved it.
“Do you think the reason why you are here is related to your parents?”
Christine pondered this for a second. “Well, perhaps everything that happens in anyone’s life is related to their parents one way or another. Do you think so?”
Dr. Korpacheff looked at her notes and nodded. “Well, why don’t you tell me about them? What did they do?”
Christine glanced at the doctor. She already regretted mentioning music—a subject she had been avoiding since she was fourteen years old. But as her lieutenant had told her, she needed to “go all the way and hold nothing back from the doctor to get better . . . or else” (whatever that meant), and it seemed that she had no choice but to share the pain she had been carrying inside for twenty-one years.
Christine closed her eyes and instantly imagined her mom and dad, who would always be young and healthy in her mind. She remembered her mom’s soft voice and warm hands in the evening and her dad’s upbeat demeanor in the morning. He was an early bird and used to make breakfast for everyone, humming happy tunes under his breath.
Christine opened her eyes and saw an encouraging smile on the doctor’s face.
“They were both engineers and were partners in a small company that made and did maintenance on elevators. They actually founded the firm right after they graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. My dad—Oliver Heart—studied engineering, and my mom—Connie Heart, née Brooks—studied math.” Christine smiled. “My grandparents told me that they were a couple of geeks who had been made for each other.”
Dr. Korpacheff reciprocated with a smile and nodded.
“I used to . . . um, play the piano. And . . . I was very good at it.” Christine shook her head and took a deep breath. Touching her self-made stone bead bracelet on her left hand gave her a sense of peace—she liked to feel the stones with her fingers. “I started when I was four and got to grade eight when I was six and was ready to get to advanced levels, which was . . . um . . .”
“Impressive?” Dr. Korpacheff ventured a guess.
“I mean . . . usually, kids get to the next grade every year, so . . . I guess I was going through those grades faster than others. And . . . when I was seven, I performed my first solo concert.”
“Did your parents want you to play the piano?”
Christine’s mind went to the cozy and sunny living room of the house where she used to live with her parents. They had an old Charles M. Stieff piano that miraculously came with the house when they moved in. She could see herself sitting on the bench—her feet dangling, too short to reach the floor—chewing her lower lip while doing scales time after time.
“No,” Christine said. “I wanted to do it. As soon as I realized what that big brown wooden thing was and how it made sounds—my dad could play a bit—I just wanted to make those beautiful sounds myself. It’s like . . . the piano talked to me through those sounds, and I didn’t want that conversation to end. So . . . um, I kept banging the piano keys until my parents couldn’t take it anymore and got me a teacher who showed me how to play it properly.”
Christine took a sip of water from the glass that Dr. Korpacheff had poured for her at the beginning of their session. The glass had been placed on a coaster with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. The doctor’s glass was sitting on a similar coaster but in a different color—the pair was probably a set, and they didn’t look cheap.
“Music was the only thing that mattered to me. I played when I was awake and dreamed about playing when I was asleep. It was like an obsession. I wanted more of it and never felt satisfied,” Christine said.
“Did your parents support you?”
“Oh, yeah, but . . . at some point, I think they were a bit scared of the intensity with which I was tackling challenging music pieces. I would never stop before I was sure I could play some particularly difficult part correctly. Even my teachers would sometimes tell me to take it easy, but I wouldn’t listen to them. It was like . . . I had a target in front of me that I had to hit no matter what or how long it took.”
Christine took another sip. Her throat was parched, and she felt like her face was on fire. She put down the glass and turned it on the coaster so that the Eiffel Tower would point directly at the doctor, to see if Dr. Korpacheff would notice. Her father used to do that to her—
“Then, one of my teachers suggested I participate in contests to hone my skills against other kids, to see how good I objectively was.”
“And?”
“Well, I did, and I was.”
“Was what?”
“I was much better than the rest of them,” Christine said and took another sip of water. Her throat was still dry. Was the air-conditioning still on? “Anyway, I was getting to the point when I was ready for serious international competitions and . . . um, I needed money to travel, and my parents did everything they could to make it happen for me.”