Self-discovery

“Well, that's it. We don't have to wait for the Moscow professor to give a visual ID — and he probably wouldn't anyway. Your fingerprints, citizen Krivoshein, correspond completely to the prints that I took at the scene of the crime. Here, see for yourself!” He handed the form and a magnifying glass to Krivoshein. “So let's drop the game. And remember that your flight to Moscow and the fake papers only make things worse. The court adds three to eight years to a sentence for premeditation and the attempt to confound the police.”

Krivoshein, his lip extended, was studying the form.

“Tell me,” he said, raising his eyes to the detective, “why can't you allow for the fact that there are two men with the same fingerprints?”

“Why?! Because in a hundred years of using this method in criminology, such a thing has never happened once.”

“Lots of things have never happened before, like Sputnik, hydrogen bombs, and computers, but they exist now.”

“What do sputniks have to do with this?” Matvei Apollonovich shrugged. “Sputniks are sputniks, and fingerprints are fingerprints, incontestable evidence. So are you going to talk?”

Krivoshein gazed deeply and thoughtfully at the detective and smiled gently.

“What's your name, comrade investigator?”

“Matvei Apollonovich Onisimov, why?”

“You know what, Matvei Apollonovich? Drop this case.”

“What do you mean, drop it?”

“Just like that, the usual way, cover it up. How do you phrase it: 'for insufficient evidence' or 'lack of proof of a crime. You know, 'turned over to the archives on such and such a date…. “

Matvei Apollonovich was speechless. He had never encountered such brass in all his years on the force.

“You see, Matvei Apollonovich, you'll continue with the varied and, in usual cases, certainly useful activity of questioning, detaining, interrogating, comparing fingerprints, bothering busy people with your videophone.” Krivoshein developed his thought gesturing with his right hand. “And all the time you'll keep thinking that any second now you'll have the truth by the tail. Contradictions will smooth out into facts, the facts into evidence; good will triumph, and evil will get a sentence plus time for premeditation.” He sighed sympathetically. “The hell these contradictions will smooth out! Not in this case. And you will never hit on the truth for the simple reason that you are not ready to accept it at your level of reasoning.”

Onisimov frowned and his lips compressed into a huffy pout.

“No, no!” Krivoshein waved his hands. “Please don't think that I'm trying to put you down, that I want to demean you, or cast aspersions on your qualities as a detective. I can see that you are a tenacious and hard — working man. But — how can I explain this to you?” He squinted at the sunny yellow window. “Oh, here's a good example. About sixty years ago, as you undoubtedly know, the machinery in factories and plants was powered by steam or diesels. A transmission shaft went through the workshops with driving belts running from it to the machine pulleys. All this spun, buzzed, and hummed, its wild noise bringing joy to the director or owner. Then electricity came on the scene — and now all that has been replaced by electric motors, built into the machines.”

Once again, like last night, when he had interrogated the lab assistant, Matvei Apollonovich was seized by doubts: something was wrong here! Quite a few people had been in his office, polishing the chair with their squirming: taciturn teenagers who had gotten into trouble through stupidity; weepy speculators; overly — casual accountants caught through a routine check of the books; and repeat offenders who knew all the laws. But all of them realized sooner or later that the game was over, that the moment had come for them to confess and hope that the record reflected their clean — breasted repentance. But this one. just sat there as though nothing had happened, waving his arms and explaining at a simple level why the case should be closed. “This lack of game playing is throwing me off again! But no, I'm not going to slip twice in the same place!” he thought.

Matvei Apollonovich was an experienced investigator and knew well that doubts and impressions did not build a case — facts did. And the facts were against Krivoshein and Kravets.

“Now imagine that in some ancient factory the changeover from mechanical power to electricity took place overnight instead of taking years,” Krivoshein went on. “What would the owner of the factory think when he got there in the morning? Naturally, that someone had swiped the steam engine, the transmission shaft, the belts and pulleys. For him to understand that it was a technological revolution and not a theft he would have to know physics, electronics, and electrodynamics. And you, Matvei Apollonovich, figuratively speaking, are in the position of such an owner.”