For the Dignified Dead Read online

  FOR THE

  DIGNIFIED DEAD

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2015 Michael Genelin

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 1941298877

  EAN 13: 9781941298879

  Published by Brash Books LLC

  12120 State Line #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Also by Michael Genelin

  Siren of the Waters

  Dark Dreams

  The Magician’s Accomplice

  Requiem for a Gypsy

  For my college sweetheart

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  The boy was frightened, still out of breath from his scrambling run through the woods. He peered out, looking for the men. They had scoured the area, but he was small and he’d picked a good tree with lots of snow-laden branches. The men could still be heard shouting to each other as they moved on to check other parts of the woods.

  The boy felt the wetness on his cheek, putting his hand on it, the hand coming away with blood. The cheek had been bleeding ever since he’d run from where he and his mother had been held prisoner. It had been cut on a nail as he’d slipped through the hole his mother had managed to dig. The cheek was bleeding less now, the cold somehow cauterizing the wound.

  His mother hadn’t made it out, but he remembered what she had told him. She’d been very strict, making him listen to her repeated instructions. “Run! Find a hiding place where they can’t see you! And no matter how hungry you are, stay hidden until dark.” Then her voice had become even stricter. “And never, under any circumstances, come back here.” She’d hugged him for a long minute then held him away from her, looking him in the eye. “Swear?”

  “I swear,” he told her.

  She went back to work on widening the hole, her fingers bleeding from scratching at the wall with her nails. Then she took a shoe off, wrapped it in a piece of her skirt so it wouldn’t make too much noise, and pounded on the edges of the hole, breaking plaster away from the rotting wood holding it together.

  “Wait until it starts to get dark and the bad people are no longer where you’re hiding. Then sneak closer to the river and go downstream until you reach a small town.” She let out a small noise as one of her nails broke away from her finger. After a brief examination, she went back to attacking the wall, ignoring the pain. “The bad men won’t be going to the houses in the town,” she told him. “People would remember them, and they don’t want that.”

  “You’re coming with me, right?” He searched her face, looking for a word of comfort that she would be staying with him.

  “Even if I can’t come with you, it is important that you do what I say.” She paused to hug him, a quick hug, immediately going back to work enlarging the hole, making sure her face was away from him so he couldn’t see the tears. “Remember, I love you, and I need to know that you’re safe.”

  He continued to hold on to his image of her, focusing on it to somehow push away the cold..

  From the shelter of the tree the boy heard a soft nose as if brush had been crushed underfoot.

  The boy tightened his clutch, trying hard not to make a sound, waiting for what felt like forever thinking about his mother’s instructions, focusing on her words as if, by themselves, they would keep him safe. He then checked out the area. There was no one. The boy relaxed slightly, thinking back to the last time he’d seen her.

  She had kissed him on the ear and told him how much she loved him. Then she’d patted his hair, making sure the blood from her fingers didn’t get on him. “What did I tell you to do when you reach the town?”

  “Find the nicest looking house and ask the people inside to use their phone.” He stopped, concerned. “What if they won’t let me use their telephone?”

  “You tell them you’re lost. Everyone wants to help little boys who are lost. They’ll even help you make the phone call.”

  She continued working on the wall, pounding it around the edges with her muffled shoe. “Do you remember the number I gave you?”

  He recited the telephone number.

  “You tell the person who answers the phone who you are and who I am, and my friend will then come and get you.”

  “You’re sure your friend will come?” he asked, seeking reassurance.

  “My friend will come,” his mother promised, then redoubled her efforts digging out the hole. She had to hurry. The men who had left her and her son were drinking in another part of the building. They would be coming back. And she’d heard enough from them to know that when they came back, they were going to kill her and then her son.

  Desperate to at least make the hole big enough for her son to get through, she began kicking at the sides of the hole.

  There was a noise at the door.

  “Quickly, out through the hole!” she urged her son.

  He started through the hole, going headfirst, suddenly letting out a yelp. A nail had caught his cheek, leaving a long gash that began bleeding profusely. He started to crawl back inside.

  “No!” she shouted. “Go through!” She pushed him ahead.

  As soon as he was out, she tried to force her way through the hole, panicked by the opening of the door to their room. Frantic, she kept trying to force her way through, but her shoulders and hips stopped her no matter how she squirmed. Then the men who had come in grabbed her legs.

  “Run,” she screamed to her son. “Run!”

  Her son could hear her screams as he ran.

  The boy shifted in the tree, snow coming off the branches around him. He touched his cheek, the blood still oozing out of the wound, pulling his hand away when he heard t
he snap of a branch. He sat for a moment then decided to look, parting the branches. There was a man staring up at him.

  “Hello, boy.” The man deliberately talked with a casual voice. “You must be cold up there.”

  The boy nodded.

  “I’m also cold,” the man acknowledged. “Come down so we can go somewhere that’s warmer.”

  The boy shook his head. The man half smiled. “It will be okay. Your mother and I know each other.”

  “I don’t believe you,” the boy told him.

  “Before you ran from the building, didn’t your mother tell you to telephone someone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you promise to come down if I tell you the telephone number you are to call?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The men will be coming back soon. They’re the ones who want to hurt you. You can’t sit up in the tree forever. They will eventually find you.”

  The boy eyed the man. “What’s the number my mother gave me?”

  The man recited the number.

  The boy continued sitting in the tree. “You’re not going to hurt me if I come down?”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  The boy began to climb down. He slipped suddenly when he neared the bottom, the man catching him as he fell.

  “Are you okay?” he asked the boy.

  “Yes.”

  The man put the boy down. He stared at the boy’s cheek.

  “How did you get the cut?”

  “When I was trying to get away.”

  The man took off a scarf he was wearing and held it out to the boy. “Press this on your cheek. It will slow the bleeding. When we get to where we’re going, I’ll get it fixed.”

  The boy took the scarf and held it to his cheek.

  “Time for us to go now.” The man pointed ahead. “We’re going that way.” He began walking then stopped as the boy stayed where he was. The man half turned back to him. “We have to go now, or they’ll catch us both.”

  The man turned back in the direction he’d been going, trudging on. The boy hesitated then realized there was a rapidly growing distance between the two of them, making his decision to hurry after the man.

  They walked along the river, the boy thinking that the man was taking them to the houses that his mother had told him about.

  The boy reached up and took the man’s hand as they walked.

  ONE

  Jana Matinova walked into the office dripping wet and mildly irritated at the world. It was freezing outside, the snow alternating with sleet. A wet residue ran down the back of the jacket and shirt of her dress uniform, soaking it through her greatcoat. She took off the greatcoat and walked toward her office, following the muddy path the other officers had left on the office floor with their still-wet boots. Jana eyed the mud on the floor and toyed with the idea of issuing a directive that officers were required to take off their boots before entering the office complex, then immediately rejected the idea. Police commanders in Slovakia do not issue edicts regarding housekeeping affairs.

  The officers and clerical personnel of her homicide unit had made a small effort to decorate the office by stringing small plastic lights and tinsel around the area. The decorations were still up even though it was past the Christmas season, and things now just looked wilted. The lights had several bulbs out, one of them flickering as if reluctantly giving off its last noel. The lights collectively interacted with the dust in the air, producing a foglike effect that gave the walls a vague and somber cast.

  Several officers saw her come in, some raising a hand to acknowledge her. Others nodded, and still others were too busy with their own work to notice her entrance. Pavol, one of her investigators, passed her, giving her a barely perceptible smile in greeting, then turned and followed her for a few steps.

  “How did the review go at the academy?”

  “We moved it to the gym.” She rubbed her arms to get the cold out. “It was frostier in the gym there than it was outside. The new class looked like every new class, one cadet indistinguishable from the other.” Jana momentarily warmed herself at a portable heater that was ineffectually trying to make up for the bad central heating endemic to all the government buildings in Slovakia.

  Pavol nodded. “I’d like to talk to you about the Antalik case.”

  Jana checked her watch. “Give me thirty minutes. At 1400 hours.”

  She continued down the corridor to the door of her warrant officer’s cubicle and poked her head inside. Seges wasn’t there, his coat gone, which meant he was possibly still at the scene where the body had been recovered. The man should have been back long before now. He’d had at least six hours to check the area. Considering the weather, it would have made her chronically lazy and self-serving adjutant eager to come back to the relative warmth of the police building as quickly as possible. Not being in the office meant he was out doing his own private business. So much for his being responsible for the division while she was gone.

  Jana walked to her own office, hung her coat up, then took a quick glance at herself in the mirror hung on the wall behind the clothes valet. Still decent-looking, although there were lines she couldn’t hide anymore. She grimaced, then sat down at her desk checking her messages. The only important one was from Colonel Trokan. He was still in Vienna and would call her at 1445 hours. She flicked a glance at her watch. Jana had another hour and a half to wait for his call. She heard the noise of a door opening and then closing, the sound coming from Seges’s office. He was back. Jana picked up the phone and dialed his extension; Seges came on line almost immediately.

  “Have you finished with the scene?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Bring your notebook with you when you come in.”

  Seges entered a moment later, carrying his briefcase. Jana pointed to a seat, the man pulling his notebook from the briefcase as he sat. She eyed Seges, taking into account his relatively dry clothes.

  “Wherever you were last, it was indoors.”

  “I was at the scene of the suicide, Commander.”

  “Suicide?”

  He corrected himself. “Drowning.”

  “The coroner concluded the cause of death was drowning?”

  “Not yet. But it seemed obvious.”

  “Did you examine the body yourself?”

  Seges hesitated. “It was frozen.” He made an attempt at humor. “She was like a big ice cube.”

  Jana ignored the attempted humor. “So you don’t know how she died?”

  Seges realized that he’d made a mistake by jumping to his conclusion that she was a suicide.

  “An informed guess, Commander.”

  “Not so informed if you have nothing to inform you.”

  “Commander, I have the obligation to run the division when you’re gone, deal with the records, evaluate investigator performance, assess case dispositions, review procedures, lots and lots of administrative details. Warrant officers should make use of their experience as supervisors. Not poke about with suicides.”

  “I understand. Winter wind is even colder when it comes off the water. Wet cold. You didn’t want to go where the body was pulled out. This kind of cold is, unfortunately, uncomfortable. Nonetheless necessary, since everyone else was occupied.”

  “The woman was already dead. I didn’t need to spend much time with her.”

  “The dead don’t want us to just saunter in, then quickly leave.”

  “She didn’t reveal any impatience.” He chuckled at his humor.

  “That’s because you’ve never been able to read the signs. The lady was hauled out of the river. It’s an ice-covered river at this time of year. She was laid out exposed to the elements. Snow was piling on top of her without mercy. Strange people gathered around looking down at her corpse, onlookers prodded her with their shoes just to see what a dead woman feels like. No privacy. No place to hide from view
. Just a piece of cold meat on the frozen ground.”

  Jana saw she still wasn’t getting through to Seges. “Protocol calls for one of us to go to the scene. We give the deceased their dignity back, at least in part, by paying heed to their need for attention. Who’s there to be considerate to the dead but the police? The powers that be have nominated us to care for them.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Seges’s words agreed with her all the while his face gave the lie to his words. She folded her hands on her desk. It was always the same with Seges. He wanted less work, less responsibility, and more appreciation from her and the rest of the men, even though most of them, including Jana, wanted him out of the bureau.

  She heaved a silent sigh then got down to business. “Tell me about the dead woman.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  There was a long silence. Jana seethed inside, wanting information and not getting any. “You’ve reached a quick conclusion, which may or may not be true. I want to know what you saw.”

  “I took pictures.”

  Jana slowly swiveled her chair in a 180-degree turn so she was facing the back wall, wanting to physically shake the man, all the while trying to contain herself. She took a deep breath then turned back to face him. “I want you to use words. Tell me what you observed.”

  Reluctantly, he consulted his notebook.

  “A female, about thirty-five, 165 centimeters, blond hair dyed black, no marks on her that would indicate violence. No wounds, but the face somewhat disfigured. A crushed cheekbone. My guess is she was hit by an ice floe or tree when she was floating. I think they were postmortem, because there was very little bruising. No other distinguishing marks that I could see. In the water for some time, but unsure how long.” He closed the notebook with a snap. “That’s all.”

  “Slovak?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No identification?”

  “None.”

  “Clothing?”

  He looked at her with a vacant, slightly panicked expression, aware he had been caught in something. “What about her clothing?” he got out.

  “Any indications on the clothing about the brands or where they were bought?”