Leo delays reporting the boy’s body. He fears that revealing a second murder will simply result in Varlam Babinich being blamed for both crimes, so he hopes to establish Babinich’s ignorance of the second victim before announcing the discovery. He persuades Nesterov to authorize a joint questioning and a wider forest search in case there were other victims. During the delay, Leo suffers nightmares in which the abandoned boy becomes Arkady, while Raisa struggles with the urge to warn local parents.

The organized search fails to locate the body because the team in the correct area dismissed the tracks—made by the killer, the victim, Leo, and Raisa—as evidence of a family outing. When junior officers refuse Leo’s order to follow the suspicious tracks, he declares that he will go alone. Nesterov accompanies him and recognizes Leo’s footprints in the forest; Leo admits that he found the body two days earlier and explains why he didn’t report it.

They locate the body together. Though Nesterov agrees that Babinich is innocent of this murder, he then declares that the two cases were committed by different killers. Leo argues they are linked, citing the string around both victims’ ankles and bark stuffed in both mouths. Nesterov counters that Babinich confessed to using soil, not bark, and that the different crime scenes indicate different perpetrators. He insists that no single person would rape both a girl and a boy. Though Leo points out that the girl was not sexually assaulted, Nesterov continues to argue that the crimes are unrelated.

Aleksandr closes his ticket booth for the evening. Five years earlier, he had been his school’s fastest sprinter, but after failing to make the cut at Moscow’s Central Army Sports Club, he abandoned running and settled into station work. Though others view his job as disappointing, Aleksandr finds comfort in it, along with the family apartment above the station—a significant privilege, complete with plumbing and hot water, despite the requirement to be on call around the clock.

After dinner, Aleksandr tells his parents that he is going to the cinema but instead walks to Victory Park, where he meets another man through a silent, cautious ritual practiced by the town’s hidden network of men who have relations with other men. He brings the stranger to his locked ticket office for privacy. Suddenly, the man begins hammering on the door and calling out. Outside, General Nesterov reveals that the encounter was a trap: The other man is a militia officer. Nesterov threatens to arrest Aleksandr and inform his sick father of his activities unless he cooperates. Under coercion, Aleksandr agrees to compile a list of every man in town who engages in relations with other men. When Aleksandr asks what will happen to those on the list, Nesterov provides no answer.

Aleksandr’s list leads to the arrest of 150 men; Leo has personally arrested 20. The investigation is the largest murder hunt in Voualsk militia history, but because it targets a population viewed as an “aberration,” there is little political risk.

Improvised holding cells fill headquarters. Officers work 12-hour shifts interrogating suspects, and Leo—convinced of their innocence from the start—mechanically repeats the same questions. Most acknowledge their sexual relationships under pressure but insist that they know of no killer among them. When the local MGB authorizes torture, three men break and name suspects, but each identifies a different person. Exasperated, Nesterov begins prosecutions against all 150, charging them with political subversion. Leo protests their innocence, but Nesterov insists that they are all guilty—the only question is “which one is also guilty of murder” (238).

That evening, Raisa finds Leo hunched and defeated. She realizes that he genuinely believed his investigation could achieve justice but instead “unleashed terror” and ruined lives. She also realizes that he never acts cynically; he must have also believed in their love for one another. Envious of his capacity for hope, she sits beside him and takes his hand.

Leo and militia officer Moiseyev visit Orphanage 80, a converted factory housing around 300 children aged four to 14. The main hall is filled with children eating watery cabbage soup; most lack spoons and must wait or drink directly from their bowls. The elderly director, deferential upon seeing their uniforms, admits that he cannot account for all the children. New ones arrive constantly, and his small staff struggles with paperwork. He acknowledges that the older children likely engage in activities including sex work, though he neither sanctions nor profits from it. His primary responsibility is ensuring that they eat and have shelter.

In the boys’ room upstairs, Leo displays photographs of arrested men and asks if any approached them for relations. The boys remain silent until Leo offers money. One boy then points to a photograph of a man; this man didn’t proposition the boy, but someone who resembled him did. After further payment, the boy reveals that the man works at the hospital.

Leo and Moiseyev arrive at the apartment of Doctor Tyapkin. He has been absent from work for a week, corresponding with the start of the arrests. When Tyapkin opens his door, he is wild-eyed, disheveled, and gaunt with worry.

Moiseyev breaks Tyapkin’s nose with his gun. Tyapkin confesses that he propositioned a boy from the orphanage, reasoning that an orphan’s word would count for nothing. He claims that he paid the boy but could not go through with the act and walked away. Moiseyev demands to know if he killed the boy; Tyapkin, screaming in pain, insists that he murdered no one and begs them to wait for his wife before they arrest him so that his infant son is not abandoned.

They allow him to tend to his injuries in the bathroom with the door open. While his back is turned, Tyapkin expresses hope that they will catch the real killer and then plunges a syringe into his arm. As Leo rushes in, Tyapkin collapses, dead. At that moment, his wife returns home and sees the body.

Aleksandr closes the ticket office for the evening. His life appears normal—customers show no suspicion, and his parents remain proud of him. Nesterov kept his promise that Aleksandr’s activities would remain secret. However, he is burdened by guilt over the arrested men and is afraid to go into town for fear of encountering officers who know his secret.

After finishing his work, Aleksandr walks to the station platform. As the train approaches, he lies down across the tracks. He has left a note blaming his death by suicide on never recovering from his failure to become an athlete.

Nesterov and his family live in a run-down house that the general has given up hope of ever leaving. Now, Leo shows up at his door. News of Aleksandr’s death has left him furious at the destruction his investigation has caused, and he relays the information to Nesterov, who dismisses Aleksandr’s death as the suicide of a sick man. Leo accuses him of bearing responsibility and notes that they can now conveniently blame future murders on Alexsandr. Leo also reveals what he knows of Arkady’s death, expressing remorse for his role in covering it up and arguing that the state is enabling the killer to continue. Nesterov refuses to accept the claim and orders him to leave. Leo punches him, but Nesterov, larger and more powerful, overpowers Leo and beats him severely. Each time Leo falls, bloodied and barely able to see, he struggles back to his feet, repeating that they have solved nothing.

Finally, Nesterov catches Leo as he collapses and brings him inside. His wife provides warm water for Leo to clean his injuries. Over vodka, Leo admits that he was exiled to Voualsk for refusing to denounce his wife as a spy. He proposes that Nesterov travel to towns between Sverdlovsk and Leningrad, collecting murder records involving cases of children with bark-stuffed mouths, missing stomachs, and string around their ankles, likely found near railways or public spaces (Leo has deduced that the murderer likely travels around the country by train). Nesterov has the militia connections Leo lacks, but the risk is severe: He would have to lie about his purpose, and both he and his family could be arrested or killed. Nesterov refuses.

Seven-year-old Petya wakes before dawn, excited to buy a stamp for his collection, which he keeps in a wooden box his father built. He has breakfast and then walks to town.

At the railway station, Petya waits for the stamp kiosk to open. A well-dressed man with thick glasses and a black case sits beside him. Learning that Petya collects stamps, the man reveals that he was also a collector as a child and offers to give Petya his entire collection, kept at his dacha (summer house). Petya, thrilled, promises to care for the stamps properly. The man, who introduces himself as Andrei, buys Petya a ticket, and they board the train, exiting at a stop in the middle of the woods. Petya follows him deep into the forest. When Andrei bends to open his case, Petya looks around for the dacha but sees none.

After knocking Petya out, Andrei undresses him, folds his clothes, ties a string around his ankle, and unrolls the rest of the string along the ground toward a fallen tree. “Excited” about what comes next, he begins “the last of the preparations”: chewing a twig into mulch (264).

Petya regains consciousness, naked, bleeding, and lying on the cold ground. He begins to run away but trips when he reaches the end of the string’s length. Petya lubricates the string with mud to free himself and then continues running. Andrei gives chase; he considers putting his glasses back on but doesn’t because “he’d never had that option as a child” (266). He catches Petya and pins him down. Petya raises his arms protectively and closes his eyes, imagining himself in his parents’ embrace as Andrei stabs him until he stops moving.