Death Comes Ashore

by Corinne O'Flynn

  She could see the estates up in the hills from the valley near her home. They looked like tiny specks in the distance. “Fancy.” Corey stood and slipped on her jacket. “You ready to go do a notify? I’m driving.”

  He slipped on his sunglasses and flashed her a smile. “Then I call shotgun.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Cullens’ address on Hognose Road featured a medium-sized three-story home built into the side of the hill. It appeared to be newly painted in a muted green with crisp white trim. The grounds were immaculately landscaped with lush ferns and perfectly pruned berry bushes lining the perimeter of evergreens. Beyond the manicured lawn, overlooking the wide wraparound porch, the tops of trees and dense woods filled the sky, their thick boughs obscuring sight of any neighbors on all sides. The back of the house provided a spectacular view of the rugged, green valley that sprawled out below.

  Corey pulled her truck into the wide driveway and parked under the covered carport near the front door.

  Young took in the view and whistled. “Dang. Must be nice.”

  Corey put her keys in the pocket of her jacket and made sure her Glock .40 was snug in its shoulder holster. “Quiet down, Ethan. Her husband’s not coming back, remember?”

  Young folded his sunglasses and slipped them into the collar of his sky blue polo shirt. The color made his blue eyes shine. “You’re right. But, dang!” He looked around the property again as they climbed onto the low porch and Corey rang the doorbell.

  A petite woman in gray yoga pants and a loose fitting white t-shirt answered the door. Her long auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail. From the look of her red, swollen eyes and the wadded up tissue in her hand, it was clear she’d been crying. Did she already know? Corey glanced at Young, seeing the same question on his face.

  The woman looked from Corey to Young and back to Corey again. “Yes?” she asked, her green eyes bright with tears.

  Corey held up her badge. “I’m Inspector Corey Proctor. This is Inspector Ethan Young. Are you Della Cullen?” The woman nodded.

  “Mrs. Cullen, I wonder if we can come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”

  “Oh. Okay. Sure. What is this about?” She pulled the door open and waved them inside.

  Young stepped into the foyer. “I’m sorry. You seem upset about something. If you need to take a moment, we can wait.” Nicely done, Ethan.

  “What? Oh.” She touched her face, as if remembering that she’d been crying. “No. I’m sorry. I must look awful.”

  “If you’re sure…” Corey said.

  She nodded, pressed her hands to her eyes. “It’s just family stuff.” She waved her hand as if to dismiss whatever had caused the tears. “Can’t pick your family, right? Come in.” She shuffled across the tile floor and led them to the living room filled with overstuffed furniture in earthy hues, and an assortment of artfully mis-matched throw pillows.

  Mrs. Cullen sat on the couch, pulling a pillow into her lap and tucking her legs under her. Next to her, a pair of knitting needles hovered as they worked furiously clicking together as they weaved the yarn for a sweater.

  Corey and Young each took a chair facing her.

  Corey took out her notebook, opened to a new page. “We’d like to speak with you about your husband.”

  “Greg?” Della Cullen gripped the edges of her pillow. “Why? Has something happened?” The needles sped up as her agitation increased.

  “When was the last time you heard from your husband?” Corey asked, ignoring the question for the time being.

  She closed her eyes as if thinking. “Yesterday afternoon. We had lunch together. Then he had to pick up some attack wands from the shop in town. He needed them for a client appointment. At two, I think.”

  “Did he sleep here last night?”

  “What? Oh. Well, I take a sleeping potion sometimes. I took one last night. It isn’t out of the ordinary for me to be asleep before he comes to bed and stay sleeping when he leaves for the day.”

  “I see,” Corey said, trying not to imply anything with her tone. “The wands, you said they were for a self-defense client?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Do you have a way to find out who this client was?”

  “I suppose, sure. I can check his schedule. It’s inside.” She shifted in her seat. “Why are you asking me these questions? Is everything okay with Greg?”

  Corey cleared her throat. “Mrs. Cullen, I’m afraid I have some bad news. We found your husband’s body this morning.” Corey watched the wife’s face, searching her reaction.

  Della Cullen’s eyes opened wide and her mouth dropped open. She looked at Corey as if not understanding. “What? Greg? No.” She seemed genuinely surprised. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  “I’m very sorry,” Young said. “We’ve got a confirmation from his military records. The magical scan and fingerprints match, but we will need you—or someone else in his family—to come and identify—”

  Mrs. Cullen crumpled, sobbing loudly. The knitting needles stopped working and fell to the floor. Corey and Young waited for her to compose herself. She caught her breath and pressed her ragged tissue to her eyes. “What happened to him?”

  Corey looked at her notebook, though the page was blank. “He appears to have been attacked.”

  “I don’t understand.” Mrs. Cullen’s breathing became rapid. She touched her chest, gasping for air. “Attacked how? By whom?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out. We’re going to need to ask you some more questions about the people your husband was involved with.”

  “Involved with?” She seemed confused. “My husband taught self-defense. He wasn’t involved with anything.”

  “Of course he wasn’t. But it would help us immensely if we had the full picture. All the facts,” Young said.

  She nodded, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Of course. My God. Greg. I can’t believe it.”

  Corey and Young finished their interview and waited by the front door for Della Cullen to find her husband’s calendar. She crossed the living room and handed Young a small leather-bound journal with tabbed pages denoting the months of the year. “Everything should be in there. All of his appointments.” She pointed to a card she’d slipped into a pocket on the journal’s cover. “This is his assistant’s contact information. If you have any questions about any of Greg’s clients, Josh can help you better than I can.”

  Young smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Cullen. We’ll give you a call later, send a car to bring you down to the mor — to ID your husband… officially.”

  Back in the truck, Young clicked his seatbelt across his lap. “Poor woman.”

  “Hmm mmm.” Corey put the truck in reverse and pulled down the driveway.

  Young opened the leather book in his lap and turned the pages until he found yesterday’s date. He ran his finger down the line of appointments.

  On the way back to the station. Corey followed the road, watching the lines and the guard rails race by, wondering how someone with such a seemingly organized and put-together life ended up dead in the grass under a bridge. Her mind kept filling with the image of Della Cullen’s face, with her swollen tear-filled eyes. Something itched in the back of Corey’s mind.

  “We never asked her,” Corey said.

  Young looked over. “Asked who what?”

  “Della Cullen. We never asked her what happened. Why she’d been crying before we got there.”

  Young wrinkled his brow. “Yeah, I did. She said it was family stuff.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Corey made a note to dig into this more when they spoke to Della Cullen again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Corey and Young split up at the MCU headquarters. Young went upstairs to their office and Corey took the elevator down to the morgue. She knocked on the door to Dr. Albarexi’s office and waited to be buzzed in. Once inside, she made her way to the autopsy room, ignoring the almost sour smelling combination of industrial cleansers and bleach. Sh
e took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she was about to see.

  Visiting the morgue was a necessary part of any detective’s life, but Corey wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to seeing what happened to the human body after death. The impersonal procedures, the way the bodies seemed both weighted and empty at the same time.

  Corey stopped at the counter outside the autopsy room and pulled a new pair of disposable booties from the box on the shelf.

  Dr. Albarexi pushed the swinging door open with his back and held it open for Corey to enter. “Hello Inspector. I’m just wrapping up with Mr. Cullen.”

  Corey wiggled her fingers into latex gloves and stepped into the autopsy room. “Thanks for calling over to the station. You said you found something?”

  “Yes, indeed. But I’ll be damned if I know what it means.”

  Corey followed Dr. Albarexi to the metal table in the center of the room. The body of Wizard First Class Gregory Cullen lay face-up, the top half of his body covered by a white drape. The lower half of his body appeared waxen, almost fake. The overhead lights glowed harshly on the stark fabric and bare skin.

  “Body temperature taken at the scene puts the time of death around eight to nine hours prior. The corpse was in almost full rigor when we arrived, and it’s become set in the time since. This isn’t the most reliable method for pinpointing time of death, but it fits with the temperature and livor mortis.” Dr. Albarexi removed the drape, revealing Cullen’s face. His mouth hung open in what seemed a painfully wide scream. All of the teeth in the front of his mouth appeared to be chipped and broken. The swelling and the raised welts on his face and neck looked obscene in the hard light.

  Corey cringed. Cullen’s face was frozen in the form of the violence that killed him. With all the dark bruising, and swelling, he looked nothing like his military photo. Something about that made Corey feel horrible for his wife. She imagined Della Cullen standing at the viewing window, in tears, not wanting to believe as this sight seared itself into her mind.

  Dr. Albarexi waved his hand and the body floated off the table. He pointed to a thick, dark bruise line extending along the body from the back of the head and neck, down the torso, and into the feet. “Lividity is fixed along the back in an almost perfect plane. I could probably calculate the slope of the riverbank based on it.” He looped his hand and the body turned in the air as if it were a block of wood, revealing the dead man’s back. “Pale points in the skin of the buttocks, calves, shoulder blades and the back of the head suggest the victim was not moved. I would argue he died exactly where you found him and wasn’t moved until we got there this morning.”

  Corey leaned in to examine the areas where Dr. Albarexi indicated. “All of this seems pretty routine, Doctor. What is it that you wanted me to see?”

  Dr. Albarexi walked around the table until he stood on the opposite side, next to the dead man’s face, which was still eye level. “This.” He picked up a thin metal instrument and used it as a pointer, indicating the corpse’s cheek. Corey stepped around the metal table and stood next to Dr. Albarexi. From this angle, Mr. Cullen’s face appeared torn to shreds.

  Corey flinched in surprise. “Jeez. What caused that?” The blood at the scene had obscured all of this damage.

  “More like who,” Dr. Albarexi said. “These cuts were made with a razor blade, or a surgical knife, like this one.” He held up a small instrument, no larger than a paintbrush. “The blade that did this couldn’t have been much wider than mine. And, he was alive when it happened.” He glanced at Corey, his eyebrows arched. “But there is so much bruising, it is hard to see in the flesh. Come here.” He waved at the body and it lowered itself to the table.

  They walked over to the counter where Dr. Albarexi had laid out a series of close-up photographs taken under a red light. Corey picked up the first photo, tilting it to either side, trying to make sense of what she saw.

  “What is that? A word?”

  “I’ve been at it all morning. I think it reads M-O-J-I with a number 4, a letter A and number one, or I, again.”

  Corey’s brow furrowed. “Moji 4A1? What does that mean? Is it code for something?”

  “Search me.” If you look closely, you can see the start of another cut, after the 1.” He pointed to a thin scratch in the victim’s skin, right over the cheekbone. It is of equal depth and as precise as the others, but it feels incomplete somehow.”

  Corey squinted at the faint line in the dead man’s skin. “Maybe they weren’t finished cutting. Got interrupted?”

  Dr. Albarexi shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. You can take those, I have copies.”

  The door to the autopsy room swung open and a petite woman with hot orange and black polka dot scrubs and violet hair walked into the room.

  Corey gasped. “Dr. Harwing? What are you doing here?”

  “Inspector Proctor! What a nice surprise.” She walked over and hugged Corey, rocking them both from side to side.

  Corey smiled and hugged her back, despite herself. “I figured I wouldn’t see you until the trial.”

  Dr. Harwing pulled open a drawer and slammed it shut, pulled open the one below it. “Dr. A., I’m looking for small-toothed forceps. You got any lying around in here? The ones I brought with me have disappeared. Can’t find them anywhere.” She threw her hands up and shrugged.

  Dr. Albarexi smiled and pointed a finger absently toward a cabinet near the door. A drawer opened and a pair of tiny tweezers flew from the drawer and floated across the room.

  “Yeah. But I convinced Dr. Albarexi here that he could really use the extra hands, you know?” Dr. Harwing gave Corey an overt wink, as if letting her in on a secret that wasn’t a secret.

  Corey was surprised at how glad she was to see Dr. Harwing. Her expertise and keen eye for detail when she worked on Nikki Soto’s autopsy was instrumental to finding Alicia alive. “How long are you in town for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They gave me the week to come here to testify.” Dr. Harwing tilted her head as if listening to a voice no one else could hear. Corey had forgotten how much energy the woman exuded. “Right. The trial. But you won’t hear me complain. It was snowing back home when I left.”

  Corey shrugged. “I don’t know. Some snow sounds like it would be nice.”

  “The grass really is always greener across the fence, eh? But between you and me, I’m hoping the case drags on a whole lot longer than a week. I just love it here.” She winked again, her eyes moving to the photos. Dr. Harwing tilted her head left and then right, then left again. “Hey, what have you got there?”

  “Pictures of some cuts on our victim’s face.” Corey indicated Cullen’s body on the table. “We were just discussing what it could mean. M-O-J-I, Moji 4A1.”

  Dr. Harwing laughed. “Moji? Is this another one of your tests, Dr. A.?” She bobbed her head, waiting for an answer. The overhead light played with the violet hues in her hair.

  “A test?” Corey asked, looking to Dr. Albarexi.

  “Or a trick?” Dr. Harwing narrowed her eyes and smiled coyly, as if she really thought they were pranking her. “No…?” She smiled at Dr. Albarexi, still unsure.

  He arched his eyebrows at Corey as if Dr. Harwing had just announced she was leaving medicine for the circus. “I can assure you that we are not playing games with you, Polly. Please, enlighten us.”

  “Okay…” She reached for the pictures, smiling the whole time, as if waiting for the punch line. “Well, that’s not M-O-J-I-4-A-1. Those aren’t English letters and numbers.” She glanced at Corey and nodded. “It’s M-O-El-Che-Ah-Te.” Her voice took on a thick quality as she sounded out the letters. “It’s Cyrillic. That’s the start of a word in Russian.”

  “Russian?” Corey gaped at Dr. Harwing.

  The small woman nodded. “My grandmother grew up on the wendigo farms outside Moscow. She lived with us my whole life.” She wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t speak one word of English.” She walked over to a white board mounted on the wall,
grabbed a blue marker, and wrote the characters out so they were lined up and properly formed. “I’m guessing at that last character. The cross bar isn’t actually there. But if I’m right, this is what that is.”

  MOЛЧAT

  Dr. Albarexi approached the white board, enthralled. “Do you know what it says?”

  “Well, phonetically, it says ‘molcha’, but that isn’t a word. Not a complete word, anyway.” She walked over to the corpse, inspected the cut side of his face and compared it with the photo. “Hey, Dr. A. You see here? There’s the start of another line. Like there would have been more.”

  Dr. Albarexi nodded. “Yes. I was just sharing that with the Inspector. Can you think of what might come next that would make a word?”

  “Well, sure.” She moved her lips silently as if ticking off different options. “I mean, you can conjugate it depending on the subject.” She flinched as if startled by her own thoughts and gaped at the body. “Of course!” She grabbed the marker, jotted a few more characters on the board, the marker squeaks echoing off the tiled room. She erased a few times and wrote again, then stood back, her hands on her hips and a satisfied smile on her face.

  Moлчaть

  Dr. Albarexi adjusted his glasses. “Well? What does it say?”

  Dr. Harwing glanced at the body of Greg Cullen.

  “That poor man.” She frowned. “It says ‘Molchat`’. It means ‘Keep silent.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Corey placed the photos of the message in Greg Cullen’s cut up face on Young’s desk in a wide row. Her partner inspected each one, turning them at different angles in an effort to understand what he was seeing. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s Russian.”

  “Really? How’d you get that?”

  “Dr. Polly Harwing was at Albarexi’s office. Did you know she grew up with her Russian grandmother? Didn’t speak a word of English.”