Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

Rube didn’t want to look down, but he’d earned the right. On top of the kelp now, he could see more. Her hair was long and darkened by the sea, but her eyes were open and light, the color of green he remembered from old Coke bottles in his youth. They stared up but past him with a look of accusation and shock, a “how dare you look at me like this” look that made him glance toward the dog. The dog started to whine.

Rube started to whine, unknowingly, a soft whimper that sounded angry with the gentler sounds of the sea. He’d seen death before, but all of it in hospitals, where the smell and sights were antiseptic. Everything controlled, everything nasty beneath sheets. Her body lay tangled in the kelp, but it was bloated, the flesh too pale to be real and alive, the look from her eyes changing in the twinkling morning light, a look that filled him with sorrow, then shock as he saw the gaping hole between her breasts. Rube heard it then, the sound he made, a sound he remembered until the last: piteous and sorrowful and low and moaning — a sound like a worshipper at the wailing wall, a sound almost prehuman, a whimper of such mixed emotions that he felt lust and hate and fear all wrapped up into one. Rube shut his mouth and the sound died.

The dog whined again.

Rube opened his mouth to shush the dog but once again heard the moan start from his own mouth. He clamped his teeth together, reopening the cut on his lip. “I shoulda gone to Florida,” he said to the dog.

The dog hung his head but stopped whimpering.

Her dress was in tatters, little left... no blood though, just the ugly gaping wound. Rube felt the strangest compulsion to reach out and touch—

Those peripheral senses again, intruding. Rube heard the crunch of big tires on sand, and he smelled something not of the sea, or of death, but of machinery. He jerked his head up.

The Jeep was almost touching him, a big chrome bumper near his face. Rube could smell the hot radiator and see the specks of rust on the front fenders.

He heard the door shut. Heard the crunch of sand beneath hard soles.

“Don’t move, mister.”

Somewhere close there was a crackling sound of voices, and Rube realized it was from a radio transmitter. But he couldn’t focus on what the voices said. He was too busy looking down the barrel of the gun.

Waves crashed behind him. The air smelled of salt and... bloat? No. The body didn’t have an odor. The kelp did. It smelled of decay, as if the ocean were dying.

Rube found his voice while he stared down the bore of the gun. “We found her in the surf. Well... he did, actually.”

“Figures,” said the man holding the gun. “Old Buddy’s always into something he shouldn’t be.”

Rube shook and sweated in the warming sun. “You have to point that thing at me?”

The sheriff’s face creased, almost a grin. “I guess not.”

The sheriff knelt down beside Rube.

“Jesus,” he said, looking at the wound. “Woulda killed two her size.”

The sheriff’s office was a corner of an already small building on Main Street, and it smelled bad. Rube was tired by now; they’d stood around for an hour waiting for the forensics team before the sheriff would leave the scene.

“Have a seat,” the sheriff said as they entered the room. Rube saw that the paint was new, some neutral pastel between beige and cream in color. A painting of an old windmill hung crookedly behind the steel desk and leather executive chair. A wooden-backed straight chair stood in front of the desk. There was no carpeting, just a hard-textured floor, as if thinly veiled, wood-covered concrete.

Rube sat. The paint stank and Rube’s legs ached. Jesus Jehoshaphat, what a mess. He wanted to slip off his shoes. He’d put them back on at the beach, but they were wet inside. They squished slightly when he wiggled his toes.

“Damned painters,” the sheriff muttered. He filled the leather chair arm to arm. He sniffed. “Makes my nose run.” His face was wide and almost chinless, the lines smoothed out with flesh, but there was a hint of hollowness beneath the deep-set brown eyes. The plaque on his desk said SHERIFF JOHN BOGGERT. Nothing more.

“You wanna go over it one more time, Mr...?”

“Rubekowski,” Rube said. “And no, I don’t. I told you how I found her twice, and that’s all there is. My story won’t change with a third telling.”

Sheriff Boggert muttered something about tourists, how they were more trouble than—

“I live here,” Rube said. “I’m not a damned tourist. And I’ve told you all I know. Book me or let me go.”

Sheriff John glared at Rube with his haunted eyes. “Oh now, don’t get excited and swallow your gum. This is just procedure until I get the coroner’s report.”

Rube stood. “Which is it to be?”

“You live here, huh? Funny, I don’t remember seeing you around town.”

“Just moved,” Rube said. “A week ago.”

“Current address?”

“Three fifty East Main, that old house back by the creek.”

The sheriff scribbled on a pad. “Yeah, the old Huffinton place. You renting or buying?”

“Renting. For now. Why?”

“Just curious.”