Proofreader/Editor: Itane, Hwarang
“Give me back my police badge.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t feel like joking around, give it.”
He put his hand out as if his annoyance had reached the top of the mountain, and the young man with the gentle face smiled. He moved his hand, that was on the armrest, in a circle, and a dark covered police badge appeared. Alvin handed the badge with a clean movement and smiled again looking at Jude with a stunned face.
“You told me to give it to you, why do you look so surprised?”
“I didn’t think you would give it to me that easily.”
“You know it’s not me.”
You lardy-dardy bastard. Tsk, Jude clicked his tongue once and turned his head.
He did turn around to see Alvin when he first saw the corpse of the child, but he already knew that the chance was very low. This young man sitting next to Jude, does not kill a person that vaguely. If he needed it, he would probably have killed him in one strike, or if he did it for his entertainment, he would probably slowly put his effort and experimenting spirit into it and killed the life. The twisted joints and sliced throat was definitely horrible, but it was in an awkward position that does not belong to any of the two sides.
Decisively the child’s corpse had useless and unnecessary emotions that was attached to it. That was not just ‘a corpse,’ that was ‘a murdered’ corpse. But there is no way to figure out if the reason was hate, regret, or panic.
“Who, who are you?”
The stewardess who was trembling nearby the scene weakly, asked Jude who came to the scene. He showed the police badge that he just got back and said apathetically.
“I’m a New York police. I’ll investigate.”
“Ah, you, you are a police? P, please take a look……”
“Kyaaaaaaaak! Elllll! Oh, my god! El!”
When the stewardess stepped back deeply exhaling like a diver who just came out from the deep sea, there was a piercing scream in the airplane. All the attention got focused to one place.
A woman with red hair looked inside the restroom and collapsed on the spot. And the person who supported her was the dead boy’s older brother who Jude saw a moment ago. A brown short hair young man’s lips were trembling from the scene in front of him. He bit lips his pale lips, like he’s barely holding in his scream, and supported his mother that sat down on the seat.
The talk will be better after those people calm down and come back to their senses a little bit. He lightly decided and lightly nodded his head and went inside the restroom. He smelled the smell of red blood.
“…..Let’s finish this fast, kid. I’m not in a good condition right now. My mentality is not stable enough to drag this case long.”
Jude mumbled not letting people outside hear anything and looked around the dead body. The deep cut through the neck was over flooded with dried blood stains. Looking at how the cutted side was not that clean. Did he use some dull knife like a letter opener? No, looking at the small mark of an ink on the neck, it might be a metal pen. Jude was looking carefully at the cut part and tilted his head. What is this sense of incompatibility? What is the strange part of a corpse that died from sliced throat?
The smell wasn’t that stronger than he expected. If he died like Mrs. Zejens, throat sliced, the blood would probably over flood the restroom floor, and on top of that the airplane supposed to be filled with that disgusting odor. But the bled mark only wetted the cover of the bag, and when he looked inside the bag, he did not see any intense bloodshed. To simplify, the blood was too little.
“……Then what, how did he die…..”
Since there is no necropsy, I should do it by myself. Jude complained quietly and carefully took out the small body from the bag.
Literally, it was like a broken doll. The body was pale because it lost all the blood, a white light hit the body. There were some traces of bruises and necrosis from the broken places due to twisting of the joint. But it didn’t look like fatal damages. But he could faint from pain. Jude who slightly touched the skin that was like a dead fish’s stomach, looked carefully at the area around the sliced neck and solar plexus. There was a bruise that looked black, it was even worse than the bruises from twisted limbs.
Jude suddenly raised his head and looked at the child’s mouth. There were bruises around the mouth too. And just by looking at those cuts, did he get beaten up or pressed down? His lips were all cut and purple colored.
“……The cause of death is……”
Rattle! While he was putting his thought together, he leaned his head on the wall of the restroom, the small place shook, and he lightly bumped his head. In an instant, Jude who sat on the floor and tried to catch his breath fiercely at his situation right now ‘I’m so annoyed that I rode an airplane, but of all occasion why did this kind of incident happen? A murder in an airplane, does it happen often?’ He tried to calm down his goose bump on his back.
The smell of blood that he usually didn’t care about, suddenly disgustingly irritated his stomach. ‘I don’t remember ever throwing up in the scene.’ It felt like a rude stick was swinging his brain.
Jude barely opened the door of the restroom and came out. He staggeringly walked to his seat and sat down. He felt little overwhelming at the sound of the woman crying in front of his seat and people staring at him, but catching his breath was the most important thing. While he was exhaling ‘Hoo- hahh-‘ like a pregnant woman, he heard a soft voice from his side.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Lie.”
“Don’t ask if you know, it’s annoying.”
Somehow Alvin was able to hear the voice that was covered by the woman’s crying, and he quietly laughed. Jude deeply sighed once and stood up and approached the woman, and sat down next to her. The woman who was crying, breathed out and stared at Jude blankly with her unfocused eyes.
My skill of dealing with the bereaved is not sensitive. Jude desperately felt the need of his partner next to him and uncomfortably scratched the back of his head.
“Uh- First, I’m a New York police. Are you the mother of the dead child?”
“…………Yes, yes…… I, I’m Rosaline Travis……..”
“Yes, Mrs. Travis. Did you come with your family for this trip?”
“I, I lost my husband one year ago….. I was on my way to relative’s house with my children….. I only have Roy and El…. Oh my god, how can this……. God…..! How can this happen, this horrible thing……!”
“Ah- Um- Ma’am, calm down first……”
“Does it make sense to calm down right now?”
There was a gruff and mad voice. Brown haired Roy was glancing at Jude holding his tears.
“He’s only 11 years old, who would do this kind of a thing? Who!”
Roy’s face got red and he stood up from his seat and screamed as if he’s going to grab Jude’s collar. Looking at his robust body, is he playing football in his school? Jude turned his head and sighed perplexedly and guessed that showed something negatively. Roy breathed heavily and bit his teeth.
“To you, it’s just a kid that died, right? To you, this is just one of the many cases that you dealt with, right! You are annoyed? Are you annoyed? How can you sigh?”
“Roy, stop……”
“Aren’t you mad, Mom? El….. El is dead……!”
“Stop!”
A hysterical voice rang in the air. Jude frowned at the lady’s real anger instantly appearing on her face. Roy who glared at Jude’s green eyes as if he was going to pierce it, chewed his lips a few times and sat down again. Jude rubbed his chin for a second and turned to the woman who had a dark ghastly face.
“By any chance, did you notice anything suspicious? Like seeing some stranger that kept looking at this way or a person who holds a grudge against took this flight….”
The red hair woman closed her eyes and shook her head.
“No, there was no such a person. If there was, I would be the first person to notice. I’m pretty sensitive at people staring at my kids. Why, why did that nice kid…..”
The woman bit her lips, and Jude glanced at it once and crossed his arms. He shortly expressed his condolences and stood up and went back to his original seat.
Something is not quite right.
The blond haired detective tilted his head with his bored face and touched his hair with annoyance. He knew he didn’t have an ‘intuition’ as a cop that much, but he smelled something unusual about the talk he just had with the bereaved.
Unusual?
Why?
The tears and scream, it was similar as usual?
What was the first word to hear from the bereaved when I first meet them?
Normally bereaved, especially mothers, what was the first word that Tim said to calm them down?
-Calm down first.
That’s what I said.
-We are still on the investigation. For detail, we need to look more…..
I didn’t say this. What do the mothers usually scream before this?
“It’s not that fun. It looks like it’s a little complicated though.”
Right after a low voice rang next to him, Jude stopped his thought for a moment and looked at Alvin. Alvin had no expressions as if he was watching a really boring movie with his hands held to each other.
“What is this, you’re saying you know everything?”
“There’s always a understanding of a person’s emotion after the murder, that’s inevitable. I’m probably sure Detective, you got some sense, too.”
“……Is it that, that simple?”
“I think so. The reason is pretty simple, I guess. It might have been an accident.”
“You think shoving the body in a bag look like an accident?”
“Ahaha, I don’t mean innocent way of accident, it’s more like an accident of a mind. It’s not that great. It wasn’t even that meticulous. You felt that something was weird a moment ago, right?”
“…….I forgot because you talked to me.”
“The smell of murder doesn’t go away that easily, Detective. Either disconnect by talk or disconnect by body, everyone had a faint smell. There was that kind of smell since a while ago, and I was curious, but it turns out it wasn’t even a big deal. If you think a little bit in the front and end, it’s too obvious.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Do you want me to tell you? I don’t really have an interest in ‘solving’ the case.”
“No thanks. Am I some kind of *Clarice Starling? Asking you about the case. Just stay quiet, so I can think.”
Jude ignored the bright laughter and started to think again.
The first thing the victim’s mother shouted at the police right away, that was……
Who!
A flame splashed my head. The voices I heard dozens of times, but didn’t take that seriously, rang dizzily in my head.
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Yes who killed the kid! Not.... not the mother...... Right?
*Clarice Starling - A FBI Academy student in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal
I didn't watch the movie or read the book... Who knows what The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal is? I heard they are really scary...
Continue to Part 17
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