Chapter 52
Ajit left the dead security officer’s body where it lay and turned the thermostat in the storeroom as low as it would go.
He shut down the crew bar completely for the rest of the night and assigned two security officers to guard the doors until the ship docked in Juneau. The FBI would take over from there.
Cutter and Lola walked the length of the hidden run behind the bulkhead but found nothing beyond a couple of cigarette butts and, as the bartender had predicted, a used condom.
Ajit distributed photographs of Leo Bouchard to every crew member on the ship, along with a strict warning that he’d likely been the one to murder Malosi. Anyone who spotted him was to contact the nearest senior officer at once, but not to approach.
Under ordinary circumstances, locating anyone on the ship would have been a simple task. In taking the ship’s security cameras offline, Abraham Malosi had in effect helped his own killer get away with murder—for the time being.
The entire Video Management System, or VMS, had been destroyed.
Several key components needed to be replaced when they docked in Juneau.
The big cheeses at company headquarters decided there was nothing to gain by alarming The Polar Star’s passengers about the cameras being out, or that a killer was hiding somewhere on the ship.
Ajit blushed when he told Cutter of the corporate decision but reasoned that as long as people thought the cameras were operable, most of them would stay on their best behavior.
It was almost nine thirty p.m. by the time Cutter and Lola reached their cabin. Ajit had walked with them, discussing the ship’s security and contingency plans along the way.
Cutter pulled up the camera feed for Joellen’s cabin door. “Ajit, would you mind posting a security officer?” he asked. “I’d feel better if there was someone physically present in that hall.”
“Yes, of course,” Ajit said. “She is by far the most likely to be under any threat from—” A soft knock interrupted him. He smiled, as if he’d been expecting it. “You had to leave in such haste, I took the liberty of having The Steak House remake your dinners.”
Lola’s face popped around the corner. “Sweet as, Ajit! I thought I might have to eat my own arm.”
Cutter opened the cabin door to find their Ukrainian server with a covered cart. A somber look crossed her oval face. She introduced herself again.
“I am Polina Kolisnyk,” she said. “From Lviv, Ukraine.”
Lola motioned her in, bouncing on her toes like she might burst with curiosity at any moment.
Polina rolled the rattling food cart into the room and then stood back, hands clasped at her waist. “Ajit told me why you had to leave so abruptly.”
“The food can wait.” Lola motioned toward the sofa. “Please sit down.”
Polina shot a nervous glance at Ajit, who gave her a polite nod and excused himself to attend to his duties. She smoothed the front of her blouse with both hands and took a seat on the end of the sofa nearest the door.
“Back in a flash,” Lola said, disappearing into her room.
Cutter pulled one of the small dinette chairs closer and took the piece of yellow cedar from the pocket of his fleece.
“Mind if I work on this carving while we talk?” he asked. “It helps me think.”
Polina gave a wan smile, hands clasped in her lap. “This is your cabin, sir.”
Lola came back with the manila case folder and plunked the sketch of the mysterious brand on the table. She took a seat on the couch beside Polina.
“You were saying at the restaurant that this isn’t a wolf?”
Instead of answering directly, Polina took a deep breath and said, “Do you know of Oprichniki?”
Lola shook her head.
Cutter stopped carving and looked up. “Oprichniki,” he said, trying out the word. It sounded familiar.
“Some called them the Cromeshnina—the selected. The handpicked guard of Ivan the Terrible. There are those in the old Soviet Union who believed the KGB’s goon squad were the modern embodiment of these enforcers. The KGB did nothing to suggest otherwise.”
“So, the brand,” Lola said, pointing to the drawing. “What is it, then?”
“A dog and a broom,” Polina said.
Cutter glanced up from his carving.
Lola frowned.
“What?”
“Oprichnik swore a solemn oath on the Cross to sniff out any hint of rebellion against the tsar. Their commission was to sweep it away, blood and bone. They were said to have dressed in long black robes and ridden black horses with a severed dog’s head and a broom tied to the saddle.”
“A severed dog’s head,” Lola mused. “I’ll take the grossest thing you could think of for three hundred, Alex …”
Polina furrowed her brow, missing the Jeopardy! reference.
“There are stories of Oprichniki fitting the skin of the dog’s head over iron jaws so the teeth would snap open and shut as they galloped after their quarry,” Polina said.
“These men hunted, tortured, and murdered anyone who stood in their way, guilty or not.” She reached for the drawing. “May I ask about the murdered woman?”
Lola looked at Cutter for guidance. He raised his brow and gave a slight shrug. This was her show.
Polina spoke again. “I am guessing there was more than one?”
“That’s right,” Lola said. “And I’m guessing there’s something else you came to tell us.”
“How many women?”
“Six,” Lola said.
“All branded?”
“Yes,” Lola said. “And one man that we know of. Most of them seemingly unrelated to one another.”
“How did you know it’s a brand?” Cutter asked. “This is a pencil sketch.”
Polina pushed the drawing across the coffee table with trembling fingers, then leaned back against the sofa.
She folded her arms tight across her chest. “I have worked aboard ships for nine years,” she said.
“I keep to myself. Send most of the money I make home to my mother in Lviv. I do not want to cause any trouble.”
She stopped talking, leaving nothing but the hum of the ship’s systems and the hushed hiss of the sea slipping by outside.
Lola knew enough to let the silence do the work. Polina had come to them. She wanted to talk. She just wanted to do it on her own terms.
“This is my eighteenth Alaska cruise,” she finally said, like a dam bursting.
“We take turns for liberty ashore but get to know the locals after enough trips to the same port. The Polar Star only goes as far north as Skagway, then turns for Seattle, but many of my contracts took me much farther up. Two years ago, I shared a few drinks with a bartender at the Yukon Bar in downtown Seward. She is about my age, easy to talk to. Anyway, Roxie told me once of a Russian girl named Irina who had gone missing. Irina was one of those Seward transients who come to work the fishing charters. No family, few friends. The ones she did have reported her disappearance to the police, put up flyers. You know bars. Some said Irina was abducted by aliens. The police assumed she’d returned to the Russian Old Believers settlement above Homer, where she was from. Wherever she went, she’d just vanished.
“An entire season went by before I got another rotation ashore in Seward. According to Roxie, Irina came back while I was gone—three months after she’d disappeared.
The poor girl had been terrified of something—everything according to Roxie.
She refused to sit near a window, was jumpy at the slightest noise.
” Polina leaned sideways, as if confiding a secret to Teariki.
“Worse yet, the poor thing was skin and bones, missing teeth, stringy hair. And she had a brand on the nape of her neck.”
“A severed dog’s head,” Cutter said. “And a broom.”
“Exactly,” Polina said.
Lola moved to the edge of her seat.
“Where had she been?”
“Roxie begged her to tell,” Polina said. “She got nothing.”
“Hang on,” Cutter said. “Were you able to see her?”
“I’m sorry. No.” Polina gave a resigned sigh. “She’d gone missing again by the time I returned to Seward. This time apparently for good. I was there as recently as last September. She was still missing then.”
“She didn’t give Roxie any indication that she was going to leave?” Lola asked.
“She left a letter. It was mostly in English, but a small portion was Russian. Roxie asked me to translate it. I’ll never forget the words. She closed her eyes and recited from memory.
Lola glanced at Cutter, then said, “They will kill me. They will kill you. They will kill my family. They will kill your family …”
Polina’s head snapped up. “Wait! You speak Russian?”
“I do not,” Lola said. “But we’re all too familiar with those words.”
“The thing is,” Polina said, “Russian can be a very specific language. I feel sure Irina meant exactly what you said, but she used the first person, as if parroting the one who made the threats to her. The meaning is essentially the same as what you say, but is … what is the word … colloquial.”
“What did she say literally?” Cutter asked.
“Zamochim tebya … is like … we will soak you, but is understood to mean we will kill you. Regular people would never use this threat as a joke. Like clean your room or I’m gonna kill you.
Bratva—criminals speak this kind of Russian.
Zamochim tebya—we will soak you … is like, we will make you bleed. ”
“Wet work,” Lola said.
“Yes!” Polina said. “Wet work like in your American spy movies. I have to ask. Is this dog’s head brand related to Malosi’s murder or the man hiding on the ship?”
“Completely separate,” Lola said. “I know you’re extremely busy, but would you mind giving us your contact information?”
“Of course.” Polina took a card out of her pocket.
“We’ll need to get Roxie’s last name,” Lola said. “And Irina’s, if you know it.”
“Sorry. I’m a girl who stops in unannounced to drink a beer with her every few months. Ours is not a last-name friendship. I have no idea about Irina.” She stood. “I need to get back to work. The restaurant closes in half an hour, and I should check on my staff.”
Cutter got to his feet and stuffed the knife and cedar in his pocket before extending his hand. “Thank you very much, Polina,” he said. “You’ve been extremely helpful.”
She nodded, then turned to go.
“One last thing,” Cutter said. “You mentioned people at the bar had theories about where Irina went the first time. What about when she disappeared again?”
“The same, I suppose.”
“What about Roxie?” Cutter asked. “What was her suspicion?”
“It’s foolish,” Polina said. “Silly stories you tell around a campfire to scare your friends.”
“Like the Oprichniki?” Lola said.
“Roxie thinks there are boats,” Polina said.
Cutter cocked his head, interested. “Boats?”
“Slave boats,” Polina said. “Like floating …” She smacked herself in the forehead with an open palm. “It’s late and I can’t remember the word … where women are sold.”
“A brothel?” Lola said. “Where women sell sex.”
“Of a sort,” Polina said. “But in Roxie’s story, these women aren’t selling anything. On these boats, they are the product.”