Death Comes Ashore

by Corinne O'Flynn

  Corey nodded. “Yeah, and Dr. Harwing said the body wasn’t in the water for that long. Very little swelling, nothing in the lungs.”

  “That’s what I was thinking with the Coast Guard. Maybe they have a record of any boats that were out.” Young flipped the page on his notepad. “I also talked to the bartender at the ‘dane bar, Jimmy’s, where all the friends met last night. Ellen’s story checks out.”

  “Yeah. She posted a few pictures online from the bar. Did anyone see Nikki or Alicia there?”

  Young shook his head. “Not that I found. The bartender’s a friend of Alicia’s, said she hadn’t come by last night.” He took another bite of pizza. “What about the guy in the harbor? The one on the other boat. You check him out?”

  Corey nodded. “Dr. Marcus Horatio Wingate. He’s definitely a ‘dane. Retired veterinarian out of Pascagoula, Mississippi. He’s the registered owner of the Penumbra. I’ve got a call in to the local PD to verify, but he looks clean.” Corey wiped her fingers on a napkin and sipped her soda. “Okay. Let’s walk it through. What are you thinking?”

  Young sipped his drink and shook the ice. “The two girls meet up outside headquarters next door, around three. They go back to Nikki’s apartment so she can change. Roommate Mike sees them. Then they drive over to the marina to see the boyfriend. He’s not there, he doesn’t get back until…”

  “He doesn’t go back. Says he crashed at a friend’s place after getting pizza and doing a repair across town,” Corey added, consulting her notepad.

  “Really? Does that check out?” Young asked.

  Corey shook her head. “Not yet. Can’t find the friend. But Cooper says he was there alone, all night.”

  “Okay. That leaves a hole in the timeline.”

  “And it leaves the boyfriend with no alibi,” she said.

  Young nodded. “Okay. So, the girls leave their note on the boyfriend’s boat and head out. Doctor Harwing puts time of death between seven and midnight.”

  “Nikki posts pictures of her and Alicia online at six fifty-two, and another at seven thirteen,” Corey said.

  “So, sometime after seven thirteen, our two girls get into trouble. Either they drive to Bass Point Beach Park or someone drops the Jeep there. Either way, the Jeep’s there when the storm hits. It was covered in leaves and broken branches, and there was sand washed up around the tires.”

  “Good. You check the weather from last night?”

  Young swiveled his chair and pulled a sheet of paper from the pile on his desk. “It rained on and off most of the afternoon, but the real storm started around seven forty, stopped around four this morning.”

  Corey nodded. “My gut says the Jeep was dumped. Someone left it there for the local PD to get into. Tossed the wallets.”

  “Okay,” Young said, playing devil’s advocate as they walked through theories. “Why? What makes you think it was dumped?”

  “Because you can’t launch a boat from Bass Point. It’s all sea wall. Our girl was dumped at sea…”

  “Okay. How many boat launches are there on the island?”

  “Let’s check that.” Corey jotted a note on her pad. “Wait. How’d they get back?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever dumped the Jeep—assuming it was dumped—how did they get back to their boat? The techs said there was no magic used at the scene.”

  Young thought for a moment. “Jeep had a bike rack on it, it was empty. Maybe her bike was there before? The bike path runs right by the park. There’s also the bus. And they could have hitched a ride, or had someone with them, or maybe they just ran down the beach and then portaled back, to throw off any magical trace. I mean, there was definitely magic involved with the body.”

  “Yeah. Guess none of that is going to help.”

  A woman’s voice called out from the hallway. “Knock knock! Anybody home?”

  Corey looked at Young and arched an eyebrow. They both stood and peered over the cubicles toward the wide entry of the Inspector’s department.

  “Helloooo?” Dr. Polly Harwing bounced through the entryway, her purple hair bobbing as she walked.

  “Dr. Harwing?” Corey said.

  Dr. Harwing’s eyes went wide as she spotted Corey and Young. “Inspectors! You’re here. I knew it. Good. I was worried I’d never find your desks. This place is deceiving from the outside, don’t you think?” She walked through the warren of oversized cubicles and stopped in front of the one shared by Corey and Young, a folder in her hand. “I was going to leave this for you, but since you’re here, I can tell you all about it myself.”

  “What’s up?” Young asked.

  “Well, it’s about that crescent-shaped burn on Soto’s right ankle. The one I didn’t like?”

  “Didn’t like?” Young asked.

  She waved the folder at him. “Oh. I just get all sticky inside my head when I can’t figure out what caused something on a body like that. And this one really got me.” She waved her hands in front of her face. “Woo boy, it sure did. Took me all night to figure it out. But you never know what’s going to be important in a case like this, so I wanted you to have it as soon as I could get it over to you. And lucky day, here you are.” She pushed the file at Corey.

  Corey opened the folder and found close-up images of the burn mark on the outside of Nikki’s right ankle. She glanced at the typed report that had been clipped to the folder flap. Nothing popped out at her. Corey shook her head. “What am I looking at?”

  “Oh, here, let me show you.” Dr. Harwing jumped into action. She took the photo from the folder and held it up so they could all see. “The mark on the victim’s ankle, I think it’s a key.”

  “What? A key? How would that work?” Corey said.

  “Well, I mean, it’s meant to work as a key. Maybe a key is the wrong word. It’s like a membership card.” Dr. Harwing closed her glittery eyelids and tipped her head from side to side, her fingers moving as if counting. “Yes. Right.”

  Corey and Young exchanged a glance.

  “Good,” Dr. Harwing said. “Yes. Right.” As if speaking to someone they couldn’t see and everything had finally been made clear.

  Young opened his mouth, closed it again, clearly at a loss.

  Corey said, “Doctor Harwing? You were going to explain?”

  “Oh! Right. Sorry. Where was I?” Dr. Harwing asked.

  “The wound that’s a key?” Corey offered.

  “Yes! So, I did a spectral analysis of the magical content of the fluid inside the blisters, and I discovered it was made with a pairing potion. It’s meant to turn on whenever it’s near its pair.”

  “I am not following you.” Corey said, turning to Young, who shrugged.

  Dr. Harwing nodded. “That’s all right. It will make more sense in a moment. Let me explain. I was thinking about cows.”

  “Cows?” Corey asked.

  “Cows,” the doctor said.

  “I’m sorry Doc. But now I’m really lost. Cows?” Young said.

  “Have either of you ever spent time at a farm, Inspectors?” Dr. Harwing asked.

  Both Corey and Young shook their heads.

  “This mark is similar to how cattle and other livestock are branded. Not in the mundane world, but here. It’s done with a special branding spell, made to appear on the skin in the form of whatever that ranch’s brand is. When it heals, the scar takes the shape of the brand, right? But this is one step better. Old fashioned burn branding used in the mundane world wasn’t perfect because if you wanted to steal a branded animal, you only needed to find a way to brand something over the original brand, incorporating that brand into a new design. But this one has pairing magic within it. So even if it is changed, the initial mark would remain intact. And, if paired with the matching potion, it would glow. It’s impossible to fake it, alter it or conceal it.”

  “So, Nikki Soto was branded with this mark?” Corey asked.

  “I think so, yes.”

  “But why?”

  Dr. Har
wing clapped a hand on Corey’s and Young’s shoulders. “That’s your job, my friends. I just get you the facts.”

  Chapter Ten

  Corey drove slowly down the narrow road that curved into the Forest River valley toward home. The Toyota’s headlights were the only illumination this far back in the valley. It was almost midnight and Kojak, her police-trained Belgian Malinois, had been home alone since she left this morning. She felt bad leaving the dog for so long, but at least Kojak was free to roam the spacious yard encompassing their small cottage. Kojak woofed softly and wagged her bottom as Corey unlatched the gate.

  “Hey, girl. Sorry I’m so late. I missed you.” Corey bent to rub Kojak’s chest. The dog licked her face and rolled onto her back. “Oh, you want belly rubs, I see. It’s the least I can do for being gone all day.” She scratched the dog’s belly as the animal panted and her tongue lolled to the side. “Who loves ya, baby?”

  Inside the cottage, Corey poured herself a glass of white wine and slid her feet out of her black running shoes. She arched her back and stretched her shoulders as she moved to the couch. Kojak padded along next to her, happy to have her home.

  She and Young had spent the last few hours typing up the interview reports and getting everything entered into the file online. Young’s keyboard typed away without him touching it, as Corey typed her reports by hand. Her hands still ached from the strain of all that time on her keyboard.

  After Dr. Harwing left, she’d spent half an hour searching the Magical Crimes Unit database for anything relating to crescent-shaped burns. She got all kinds of results from case details entered by other investigators before her. There were magic spells that used a crescent-shaped swoop of the wand, evidence like crescent-shaped knives, missing persons named Crescent, even stolen property… the MCU was a storehouse of digital information relating to magical criminal activity around the globe.

  Corey queried the system for anything she could think of that might be related to the Wanika Soto case. She looked up bodies wrapped in fish netting and dumped at sea, crescent-shaped burns, paired potions used in branding… She didn’t get any hits. Not a thing.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Kojak’s ears perked up at the disturbance and Corey rubbed the dog’s head. “It’s okay, girl. Who you think’s calling this late, huh?” When she looked at the number her stomach dropped. It was Bronwyn Turnkey. She’d forgotten to call her back.

  “Dammit.” She tapped her screen to accept the call. “Hey, Bronwyn. I am so, so sorry. I forgot to call you. I’ve just been so caught up in this case.”

  “Hi, Corey. Sorry to call so late. It’s just… any word on Alicia? I keep checking my phone, expecting to see that she called and I just missed her.”

  “Nothing yet, but we’re still looking.” Corey’s chest grew tight. She couldn’t imagine what Bronwyn was going through. Didn’t want to tell her anything that would make this worse, but as Alicia’s mother, she had every right to know. “Hey, Bronwyn? Remember the girl we found this morning, on the beach?”

  “Yes?” Alarm rose in Bronwyn’s voice. “But you said it wasn’t Alicia.”

  “Oh, no… Bronwyn, it isn’t Alicia. But thing is, it was her friend, the one who picked her up last night?”

  Bronwyn gasped. “Oh my God. Nik? Nikki is dead? Oh, stars! Do you know what happened?”

  “No. Not yet. But, Bronwyn… We’re pretty sure Alicia was with her all night.”

  The woman’s cries rang through the phone like a siren.

  “Look. We have every reason to think she’s alive. We’re going to find her. I’m going to find her. I won’t stop until I do. I promise.”

  Bronwyn sniffled into the phone. “Thank you, Corey. Oh God. My poor girl.”

  “I’m sorry this is happening, Bronwyn.” Corey didn’t know what else to say. There were no words that would make this right. The only thing that would get close to fixing this would be to find Alicia, alive, and bring her home. Trouble was, Corey had no idea how or where to find her.

  “I know you’ll do everything you can, Corey.”

  “I will, Bronwyn. I’ll call you tomorrow. Try to get some sleep.”

  Corey lay in bed, staring at the moon shadows as they stretched across her ceiling. Her thoughts were a whirl of Alicia Turnkey and Nikki Soto and the terrible things people do to each other.

  She was no stranger to the dark side of humanity.

  Her kidnappers, Miranda and Darby Paul, had made their appearance in her life when she was just eight years old—too young and afraid, unable to escape them and their ever-watchful gaze. Too small to protect herself from the man they worked for. The man who wore a gold mask with twisted horns who told her she was his “Special Dolly”. He had a strange accent and spoke slowly, almost gently, as he soothed her and stole her magic away. People preyed upon the vulnerabilities in others every single day. They exploited them, used them to fill their own twisted desires.

  Special Dolly. The term made her skin crawl.

  She tried to imagine what her life might be like today had she not been born a Proctor. Had not been kidnapped. Had she never had her magical soul stolen from her. Had her mother not taken her own life. Had her father never touched a drink…

  She hated thinking this way. She didn’t want pity—not her own or anyone else’s. Everyone had their own fucked up life to carry. She wasn’t special. And she wasn’t weak or hopeless either. Even so, it was hard not to wonder what if…

  At the time of her kidnapping, she was the youngest and only female descendant of the famous Giles Corey and John Proctor families of the Salem Witch Trials fame. They hadn’t been friends in life, those two men, but they had huge families, and somewhere in her personal history, the families had merged. Her mother thought it was the coolest thing; being so connected to the Salem Witches. “We have a powerful lineage, Corey. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  When they took her, the Pauls had been working for someone else, the man in the gold mask with the twisted horns, who was never found. From what she could remember, they believed Corey was the key to unlocking their own magic and used her in experiments to find ways to tap into her “essence” and make it their own.

  They’d taken her blood, cut her hair, sliced away her skin on her inner thighs—the scars still visible—and once even laid her out on an altar in the woods, chanting to some spirit to guide them. When none of that worked, Mr. Paul suggested that maybe their leader needed to have Corey.

  She didn’t remember much from that time in her life, her psychologist is certain she blocked the most horrible memories out, but she’d never forgotten the creeping menace that moved over her body as he said that. She didn’t understand at the age of eight what he meant for his leader to do, she didn’t know if anything happened. That entire chapter was gone from her mind. But her adult knowledge, coupled with the few child memories she did have chilled her through and through.

  Corey did a relaxation breath. She filled her lungs with the night air and tried to picture that other life—the alternate reality where she grew up with two functioning parents and her existence was one of light and peace, untouched by dark magic and evil intent. Tonight, she couldn’t make the vision come. Her breath left her in a rush of defeat. That was a reality for another world. Not her world, not here.

  She tried to focus on the sounds in the room. The flutter of toads mingled with the sounds of the river rushing behind the cottage, filling the air with soothing night music. It was a song of life and movement. Corey closed her eyes and summoned the tiny edge of her magical soul that remained inside her. She willed it to pull together enough energy to send a wish out into the air that wherever Alicia was, she was alive, holding on until she could be found.

  “We’re looking for you. Hang on,” she whispered.

  She visualized the wish leaving her heart, floating across the room and out through the open window. Heat pulsed in her belly as panic set in again. She needed to get a handle on herself. Ever since she’d
seen Wanika Soto on the beach, it was as if the door she’d shut in her mind between her old self and her current self had been pushed open, and a little of the crazy had seeped through. She was not in danger. She was not a prisoner of the Pauls. The man in the gold horned mask wasn’t lurking, and she was not going to lose her mind.

  The buzzing of Corey’s phone wound its way into her dream.

  She was walking the pebbly beach in a storm. Dark clouds loomed over the ocean as the relentless waves pushed themselves ashore, cooling her feet, moving sand between her toes. Rain and wind teased her loose hair into a fury. Corey continued walking. She didn’t know why, but it was important to keep walking. In her dream, something up ahead glowed bright sunlight yellow.

  Buzz-buzz.

  She squinted. There was something up ahead, something dark in the sand, up near the dunes where tufts of heavy heather grass covered the sand. What was it? Was it driftwood? She shielded her eyes against the biting rain. The yellow glow reached out to her, drew her in, gave her a line to follow.

  Buzz-buzz.

  Icy dread filled her chest as the wafting yellow light guided her. She knew. There wasn’t much time. Corey ran across the beach, toward the low dune, her feet fighting for purchase in the moving sand. The storm was coming. She had to hurry.

  Buzz-buzz.

  Nikki Soto laid on her side, trapped in the sand, alive, clawing with her one free hand to dig herself out. The waves lapped over Nikki’s face, the seawater filling her mouth, making the girl sputter.

  Corey dropped to the ground to help, pulling scoops of cold sand away from Nikki Soto, trying to free the girl’s body from the millions of tiny grains that kept moving in and holding her down. But the waves grew rough. With every handful of sand Corey removed, the ocean brought two more and knocked her off her feet.

  Nikki Soto stopped fighting and looked at Corey, her dark eyes pleading. Then her face was covered in a familiar gold mask with twisted horns. “You’re my Special Dolly.” The voice coming from Nikki Soto’s mouth sounded like her kidnapper’s and suddenly Corey was eight years old again. She was thrown back away from Nikki, slammed hard onto her back.