Already His by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blake Pierce
Published: 2022-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What can you tell me about the history of the region?” Laura asked, leaning on the display case. When the middle-aged, frumpy-looking woman who sold the tickets at the museum entrance frowned pointedly, she stood up straight again. “Is there anything that would put you in mind of what’s happening now?”

The ticket seller frowned and shook her head. She had horn-rimmed glasses with mother-of-pearl inlays that flashed slightly in the light. “No, not really. I mean, not with murder. But with ships in general around the world, there are some comparisons one could draw.”

“Like what?” Laura asked. She almost wished she had asked Nate to stay with her instead of going to interview the other two employees. The woman was intimidating, in that school lunch monitor way. She had the constant feeling that she was about to be sent to the principal’s office.

“Well, figureheads are a very common feature on old ships, and you could almost say that the killer is creating his own figureheads,” she said. Laura got a shiver down her spine. She was talking so casually about a case that involved someone she actually worked with daily. “And punishment on ships is very common in history as well. Like keelhauling, for example.”

“Keelhauling,” Laura muttered. “I think I’ve heard the term, but…”

“It was a form of punishment made famous by pirates, though how much it actually happened historically is debatable. Sailors would be chained and dragged from one side of the boat to the other under the water. It was done fast, but there was still a chance they would drown. And if they didn’t, well, the underside of the ship was covered in sharp barnacles. It was a brutal way to go.”

“But that has nothing to do with the figurehead, does it?” Laura asked.

She tilted her head slightly. “You could consider what happened to pirates, prisoners, or other unsavory individuals,” she said. “It was a common practice to display the bodies of those whose punishment was death. It was considered a deterrent. I would not be surprised to find a historic source of someone being hung, dead, in a cage from the front of a ship, in front of the figurehead.”

“What do the figureheads mean?” Laura asked, suddenly realizing she didn’t really understand that, either. And the killer must understand it, in order to have come to this method of display. She thought they were decorative, but perhaps there was more to it.

“They’re usually connected to the name of the ship,” she said. She sounded like she was reciting a textbook. “So, for example, if your ship was named after a woman, you might get a carving to resemble her. Or if your ship was named after a figure from mythology, then you know what to carve. But in terms of what they represented—the Vikings thought they warded off evil spirits, the Greeks and Romans thought that carvings symbolizing attributes like speed or fierceness in battle would endow the ship and sailors with it, and some

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