Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery)

by Mims, Lee

  “Basically, I’m consulting, but I’m also invested through a private equity group.”

  Now Myers pulled out his notebook as well. Both men jotted for a moment, then he asked, “How long were you there?”

  “From mid-morning on Tuesday until the next morning. We had to stay over longer than anticipated due to high winds and severe thunderstorms.”

  Myers seemed to be comparing what I said to notes he’d taken earlier. “Did anything unusual happen while you were there?”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m asking you just to think back. We’ll be interested in anything that caught your attention, however small. Say, for instance, any … unpleasantness on board among crew members?”

  Now, I’m not squeamish about lying when necessary, but I have a preference for creative parsing of words. Carefully I said, “No. I didn’t get any bad vibes from any crew members and I didn’t see any fights.” This was sailing a bit close to the wind, I realized.

  “So, when you say you didn’t see a fight … what do you mean?” This, from Pierce.

  Oh dear, this wasn’t going well at all. “Uh, that I didn’t see one.”

  Pierce was less a fool than I’d thought him. “So you heard one, maybe?

  “Kinda.” I was aware I was squirming. Not only could this screw up my attempt to handle things on my own, but now I was beginning to wonder if I could be in trouble. Maybe I needed a lawyer. The problem was, I’d seen enough episodes of Law & Order to know that lawyering up meant you were probably guilty of something. Which I wasn’t, and I didn’t want to be perceived in such a way. Therefore, I decided now might be a good time to explain what happened. I told them in short concise sentences what I remembered about the attack. I ended by emphasizing that I had no way of knowing whether the man who attacked me was the same man who washed up on Atlantic Beach.

  Their response: dumbfounded gawking.

  Pierce was first to break the silence. “Why didn’t you report this immediately?”

  “I told you. I fainted. I wasn’t conscious immediately. Besides, it is not in my nature to whine and complain. What good would it do? I couldn’t identify the man. It was dark, it happened quickly. I didn’t see him …” I paused but then decided against mentioning the slew of shipboard rules I’d broken wandering about on my own in the middle of the night.

  “How did you get to your room?”

  “Again,” I replied patiently, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have any impression of the assailant at all?”

  “Other than he was big, hairy, and very strong, no.”

  “Is there anything or anyone who would help verify your story? Did you go to a doctor?” Meyers asked.

  Verify my story? Now I was losing patience. “I told you. I wasn’t raped. I was just bruised,” I said, lifting my hair on the right side and exposing the fading yellow bruise. I pulled up my capris and stretched open the neck of my T-shirt, exposing what was left of the discoloration on my shoulder and thigh.

  “Hold it there for a moment, please.” Myers took out his iPhone and snapped a quick succession of pictures.

  I hadn’t even told them I’d almost instantly taken myself and my assorted injuries, not to mention my shock and trauma, across state lines to Pennsylvania. But that could wait.

  Pierce chewed a hangnail, then said, “Where are the clothes you had on that night?”

  “In the laundry room,” I said. “Still at the bottom of the chute, I guess. I’ll go get them.” My companions jumped up to follow me.

  I opened the narrow door to the chute and looked down. Except for one hand towel, there were no dirty clothes. Turning back to face the detectives who were peering so closely over my shoulder we practically butted heads, I said with relief, “I guess my daughter washed everything. It’s one of my rules. You live here, you pitch in.” The thought of having to hand my undergarments over to these two guys was actually very creepy.

  They both shook their heads and Myers, scowling, put pen to notebook. “Describe your outfit.” I did as he asked, remembering to mention that the undershirt I wore home was not mine. Since I hadn’t been wearing it during the attack, however, they weren’t interested in it. On the walk back to the kitchen, Pierce asked, “You said you fought back, slapping, scratching, kicking, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think you inflicted any damage? Maybe a black eye, a fat lip?”

  I looked down at my hands. “Reasoning tells me my knuckles don’t look like I made any serious contact, plus my nails aren’t broken or chipped. I don’t know. I guess it’s possible I could have scratched him …”

  The detectives exchanged glances. Myers nodded as if reading Pierce’s mind. Pierce said, “I hate to ask, Ms. Cooper, but would you be willing to drive over to Chapel Hill and look at the body?”

  “It was in the water for several days, but nothing chewed on it,” Myers reassured me. “Now that it’s in the cooler, decomp’s arrested. It won’t be too bad.”

  My face must have conveyed my distaste.

  “The ME won’t get to him for a few days, and I’d like you to look at the scratches on his face,” Pierce said. “What I’m thinking is, maybe looking at them and his overall size and appearance, it would jog your memory. You’d possibly be able to establish him as your attacker. That would aid us not only in identifying him, but also in piecing together what happened to him.”

  Thinking it wouldn’t be wise to refuse whatever they requested, I agreed to meet them at the medical examiner’s office the next morning at ten thirty.

  I walked them out to their car. Pierce opened his door and put one foot inside. Myers stood at the passenger-side door directing a steady gaze at me over the roof of the car. Pierce said, “I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Cooper, there are large holes in your story.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. But I chose to reply by saying simply, “There are large holes in my memory, Detective.”

  Some things never change, and Chapel Hill and the endless construction on the highways leading there and the University of North Carolina’s campus streets are no exception. After making several detours around massive holes outlined with orange cones and workers leaning on rakes and shovels, I finally found, albeit a little late, the medical examiner’s office just before the appointed time the next morning. Not a part of the campus I’d frequented as a student all those years ago.

  You know how most detective novels have a scene at the ME’s office, a.k.a. the morgue? Well, this one smelled just as the novels said it would. It took more than a few minutes of stalling at the entrance before I was able to deal with the stench of something rotten overlaid by the heavy, cloying smells of formaldehyde and disinfectant.

  Pierce had told me where to meet him, so I made my way down the long tiled halls, following the overhead directional signs. He was waiting for me outside a surprisingly normal-looking office door, talking on his cell. Myers wasn’t with him. He held the phone against the lapel of his lightweight navy sports jacket as I approached. “Go on in,” he told me. “An assistant is waiting to show you the body. I’ll be right there.”

  No, thanks, I’ll be fine. You don’t need to go with me. I mean, I look at dead bodies all the time.

  Tentatively I pushed the door open and stepped inside a large room with industrial tile floors and white walls. The door swooshed closed behind me, trapping me in the stark space. I stood blinking in the blue-white florescent light, surrounded by vaults that I knew contained bodies. Jeez. Were they all occupied? Two stainless-steel autopsy tables complete with wash-down hoses, cameras, and suspended microphones stood silently on either side of the room, awaiting their next customers.

  “You Miz Cleo Cooper?” asked the only other person—well, live person—in the room, a young Asian man wearing a stiff white lab coat. He stood across the room in front of the wall of vaul
ts, his dark hair slicked back. His name badge read Larry Tan.

  “Yes. I’m here to make an identification—”

  “Over here please, ma’am,” he said impatiently, sliding out a sheet-draped body.

  I took a position opposite him, the body between us. I looked down, took a deep breath, nodded, and … Larry Tan’s iPhone rang. Incredibly, he actually answered it, holding up one finger as if that made it okay. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here, dude, hold on,” he said, flipping the sheet from the face of the corpse and retreating to the far corner of the room, where he continued his conversation.

  My first thought: who knew Smurfs got to be this big? My second was that besides the blue skin, he was in remarkably good shape for a dead person who’d been floating in the Atlantic Ocean for several days. At least his face was, and Lord knows I didn’t want to know if the rest of him was intact. I could tell he was a very tall, heavyset man. He had long black hair, heavy facial stubble, and thick lips.

  What caught my attention the most, however, were three long scratches on his left cheek. Pulling the sheet back just slightly from under his chin with two soon-to-be-scrubbed-clean fingers, I noted that they extended to his neck. Gingerly I lifted the sheet enough to expose his arm and hand. Just as I expected: very hairy, and his hands were huge. I let the sheet drop back in place and stood quietly beside.

  I had every reason to believe this was my attacker, and yet, I couldn’t be sure. I had gotten no sudden insight, no flash of clarity at seeing some feature I’d blanked out.

  Atop the corpse’s ankles rested a large manila envelope and a clear plastic bag with a drawstring. John Doe’s clothes were folded in the plastic bag, but I couldn’t see what was in the envelope. I looked to Tan. He was still in the corner, his back to me, engrossed in conversation. The buddy he was talking to must have been a real comic because the guy’s shoulders were shaking with laughter, “Get out, man! Twenty feet? Just a two-liter diet soda and a Mentos?”

  Good grief. Not wanting to interrupt their critical professional exchange, I decided it would be all right to open the envelope, which revealed only a cheap, drugstore watch.

  There was something about the watch. I lifted it from the envelope. It had a link bracelet band in some type of polished silver metal, dented and scratched. I laid it against the scratches of my arm. It could have been what made them—hard to tell—but there followed no sudden burst of clarity. Well, maybe a little twinge of it, a flashback of trying to pull loose from a vise-like grip. Then I noticed something lodged between two of the links of the band that sent chills down my spine.

  “Don’t touch that!” Detective Sergeant Pierce commanded, banging the door open.

  I jumped like a startled rabbit. The watch slipped from my fingers and dropped back into the envelope.

  “Sorry,” I managed to squeak.

  “That’s police property.” His expression was disapproving as he glared in Tan’s direction, then shouted, “Hey!”

  Tan spun around, slapped his phone shut, and visibly paled. “Sir?” he croaked.

  “What the hell are you doing way over there? Bodies are never to be viewed unattended!”

  “Well, the exterior preliminary is over. Samples have been taken and the body’s been thoroughly photographed, so I thought—”

  “You thought you’d just change the rules to fit your social life?”

  Tan grimaced but wisely chose not to respond.

  “I’ll be filing a report on you,” Pierce said, then turned to me.

  I wordlessly handed him the envelope, and he pulled out the watch. “Huh. I didn’t notice this when I first examined the body on the beach.” He removed a pair of tweezers from the pocket of his khakis along with an evidence bag, then pulled a small scrap of bright orange fabric from the underside of the watchband. It was no bigger than half a dime, but I was pretty sure the moment I saw it that I’d seen the fabric before. The bright orange hibiscus on Bud’s lucky shirt flashed before my eyes.

  He held it up eye level to me. “What color did you say your T-shirt was?”

  Brushing invisible lint from my blouse, I made sure my face was deadpan before inspecting the tiny scrap. “I believe the Boston Proper catalogue described it as soft blush, certainly not Halloween orange,” I sniffed.

  “You didn’t have on anything orange?”

  “No. It’s not my color.”

  “Well, I guess we just have your word for that, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  Pierce glanced at the body, then back up at me, and shrugged. “So, what do you think? This the guy who attacked you?”

  “I’m not trying to be a smart aleck here, Detective, but how about a wallet? Didn’t he have one with some ID in it?”

  “Would we be here if he did?”

  Well, it was a dumb question, but I’d been thrown off my game by the scrap of fabric. Except for the buzz of the florescent light overhead, the room grew quiet.

  Then, in a slightly kinder tone, he asked, “So, again, is this the guy who attacked you?”

  “Look,” I said, “I know you were hoping for some definitive answer here, but I just can’t be sure. I’m sorry.”

  “Actually, since I last talked to you, Captain Powell has confirmed that one of the crew members who operates a remote robot on the ship is missing. The guy hasn’t returned home and there is no record of him flying out of any of the local airports. So, we’re pretty sure this is Mr. Nuvuk Hunter, who did not report to work Wednesday. We’re having two of his coworkers flown in to give us a positive ID.”

  I couldn’t help myself, I snorted exasperatedly. “Then you didn’t need me for identification at all.”

  “Correct. But keep in mind, Ms. Cooper, my job is to find out not only who he is, but also to ascertain what happened to him.”

  “Maybe he just fell overboard and drowned.”

  “You mean after he attacked you?”

  “No. I agree he’s a highly likely candidate for my attacker, but like I said, I can’t be positive. Moreover, the medical examiner hasn’t ruled on his cause of death, since they haven’t even done the autopsy yet. He could have died of natural causes, a heart attack, an aneurysm—hell, I don’t know.”

  Having ushered me across the room, Pierce nodded to Tan, who was now off his phone, and opened the door leading to the hallway for me. I walked through, expecting him to make arrangements for another meeting. He didn’t. Instead he headed off in the opposite direction.

  We were about twenty paces apart when Pierce, in true Columbo fashion, called out to me, “Oh, by the way, Ms. Cooper?”

  I turned back to him. “Yes?”

  “You aren’t planning on leaving town anytime soon, are you?”

  My throat suddenly felt very dry and tight. “For the most part, I’ll be in Morehead all summer. I do have a few consulting jobs that will take me away for several days at a time, but they’re right here in North Carolina. Should I … inform you if I go anywhere?”

  “Yeah, that’d probably be a good idea.”

  EIGHT

  My Jeep, having been parked in the full sun for a little over an hour, was two degrees above Hell inside. Cranking the air conditioner to high, I exited the parking lot, still processing the fact that my attacker was more than likely dead and I would not be extracting any revenge. Was this cosmic retribution? Maybe. Right now, however, Bud Cooper retribution seemed the more reasonable explanation. Or, at least it would be in the eyes of the law—not by me. In my eyes, Bud Cooper might be a take-no-prisoners kind of business man, but I’d never seen him so much as harm a fly. I hit speed dial for him on my iPhone.

  “Babe,” he answered quietly, as if I’d caught him in the midst of something important.

  “Uh, am I disturbing you?”

  “Actually, I’m in a meeting, but we’re about to break up. It’s five thirty here. Can
I get back to you?”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Paris.”

  “Paris? What?” I was incredulous. “I just talked to you yesterday! You didn’t say anything about France. Why are you in Paris?”

  “Can I … can I call you back?” he asked with his quiet voice again.

  “Never mind, it’s not important. Just tell me when you’re coming back.”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you then.”

  I clicked off and made a beeline straight for Wrightsville Beach and Seahaven, Bud’s old family beach house.

  Lifting the third conch from the left in a line of shells that marched along the back porch railing, I shook it, holding my palm to catch the key Bud always kept there. Slipping in the door, I went straight upstairs to his room and carefully went through his closets and drawers looking for the horrid Hawaiian shirt he’d worn on the day of our tour of the Magellan. The one with the grotesque orange hibiscus blossoms all over it. I had to know if it was a match for the small scrap of material I’d seen twisted in the watchband of the corpse.

  Downstairs, I flipped through the dirty clothes pile. Towels, hand cloths, and a few dish cloths, but no lucky shirt. My ex wasn’t one to leave clothes lying around—one of his better points—so there was no point going through the other rooms. Before I left, however, I did check the wastebaskets and kitchen garbage. No luck there, either. Finally, I locked the house back up, still racking my brain as to where the shirt might be. I doubted, somehow, it was with Bud in chic Paris.

  I crossed the long expanse of dunes via the raised wooden walkway, then trotted down the steps to the parking area by the road. Before getting back in my Jeep, I decided to check the trash can waiting for pick-up. Its contents included a pair of old sneakers, a mildewed boat cushion, and a full bag, which I rifled through to no avail. Then I headed to Morehead City with an uneasy feeling. If I had found the orange shirt, inspected it, and discovered no tear that looked like it could be filled by the small scrap from the watch, I would have felt better. I’d have known for sure Bud had nothing to do with the death of another human being because of me.