The Butcher's Theater

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The Butcher's Theater Page 59

by Jonathan Kellerman


  Is that something you’d be interested in looking at? Smiling. The tits jiggling as she talked.

  I guess so.

  She kept him waiting, went into the back room and came back pushing a trolley of file cases.

  Here you go. It can’t be checked out. You’ll have to read it right here.

  Thanks. You’ve been a great help.

  Smile. That’s what we’re here for.

  He wheeled the trolley to a table against the wall, away from everyone else, opened the cases, and found a treasure trove.

  Mein Kampf, in English. Gerald L.K. Smith. George Lincoln Rockwell. The Thunderbolt. The Klansman. And classic stuff: Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Der Stuürmer with those terrific cartoons.

  Truth-tellers.

  Their words gripped him, set off something inside of him that he knew was right and real.

  He wanted to eat all of it, chew up and swallow every book and pamphlet, infuse it directly into his genetic code.

  But not the liars’ books.

  Whiny, whimpering shit written by kikes and kikesymps about the SS, the death camps, Josef Mengele, M.D., Ph.D. Photos of twin victims, piles of bodies, supposed to repulse.

  But they turned him on.

  Among the lies, a find: a book on the Nuremberg trials written by some kike lawyer who’d been there. A list at the back, naming the defendants. Noble Herr Doktor Grandpa occupying a place of honor in the S column. His sweet name shining like a beacon.

  A fuzzy group picture of defendants at the docket.

  The same face!

  Hermann to Dieter to Dieter II.

  The seed lives!

  He returned to the library, again and again, got the trolley and wheeled it to a quiet corner—such a studious boy. Lived with the treasure for weeks while he copied sacred sentences into spiral notebooks, preserving the words, burning the truth into his mind.

  The kikes were behind the drug trade, world communism, diseases of the genitals. War and crime. Out to turn the world hook-nosed and filthy.

  Gerald L.K. Smith said so. So did George Lincoln Rockwell, Robert Shelton. They proved it with facts, exposed Holocaust lies, the kike-banker conspiracy.

  The Führer, persecuted. Grandpa Hermann, framed, dead in a prison cell.

  Daddy Dieter dead in a prison cell!

  Crucified by nigger-pimp-pushers and the kike drug bankers who bankrolled all of it.

  Heil Daddy! He felt like crying. . . .

  Thin fingers on his arm brought him back to the park, the night air. They’d reached the end of the pathway. Nightwing stroked his hair.

  “Come on, Dr. T., it’s cool, no patrols. Nothing to get freaked about!”

  He looked at her, through her.

  Stupid cunt had her mesh blouse unbuttoned, revealing her tits, hands on her hips, trying to look sexy. The moonlight hit her face, turned her into a skeleton, then back to a girl, then back to a skeleton again.

  Shifting layers.

  The beauty beneath the surface.

  “C’mon, cutie.” Pointing to a cave. Taking his hand and leading him into it.

  Dark, mildew-smelling place. She took a penlight from her purse, switched it on, revealing grooved rock walls, sloping rock ceilings. A June bug, momentarily paralyzed by the light, came to its senses and scampered for cover. Other insects wiggled in the corners of the cave—spiders and whatever. Ignoring them, Nightwing crawled to the far end, showing him her ass under her microskirt, the line of black panties splitting the cheeks. There was a filthy-looking army blanket wedged near the wall. She lifted it, dragged out a cheap vinyl suitcase and opened it.

  Watching her practiced movements, seeing the suitcase, he knew she’d been there before, thousands of times, with thousands of other men. Had shared the secret place with them, but not him.

  Stupid, unfeeling cunt! After all he’d done for her, she hadn’t trusted him enough to show him her little hidey-hole. Not until thousands of others had come up here first, filling her with their lies and their scuzzy jizz.

  The last straw. Be casual.

  “What’s in the case, babe?”

  “To-oys.” Licking her lips.

  “Let’s see them.”

  “Only if you promise to be a good bo-oy.”

  “Sure, babe.”

  “Prom-ise?”

  “Promise.”

  The “toys” were predictable: novelty-shop S&M props, the stuff seen in the ads at the back of fuck books—whips, chains, spiked boots, an oversized black dildo studded with bumps, a leather domination helmet with straps and buckles all over it.

  Yawn.

  She put on the boots, lifted her leg to give him a beaver shot while she did it.

  Double yawn.

  Took off the mesh blouse, put on a leather bra with holes cut out for the nipples.

  Borrring.

  Then she pulled out the hat. Black silk Nazi officer’s hat with a shiny black brim, the SS death’s-head insignia above the center of the crown. Under the grinning skull, the double lightning bolts that stood for:

  Schwann-Schwann.

  “Where’d you get that? Babe?”

  “Some-where.” Leaning close and running a long-nailed finger down the side of his arm, thinking she was turning him on when all she was doing was shoving hot needles into his flesh.

  Putting on the hat. Raising her arm in salute.

  “Heil, Nightwing! Da dum, da dum.” Putrid smile. Bad German accent: “Vont me to poot it on ven I do you, little Adolf? I giff grreat hat!”

  Keep cool. Stay in control. “Sure, babe.”

  “Hey, feel that! You like this Nazi shit, don’t you? Thought so.” Salute. “Heil blow-jobs!”

  Touching him, unzipping him.

  “Look at me, Fraulein Adolfa Titler, ready to suck you all the way to the Fourth Reich. God, you’re hard. You really love this, don’t you? I found your thing!”

  He could have done her the same way he’d done Fields and the nigger, but that was wrong. She deserved better.

  Gluing his jaws together, fighting back the noise, acid tears, he said: “Sure do, babe.”

  She gave a death-eating smile, went down.

  They went to the cave three more times after that. The third time, he put sheets, soap, a bunch of water bottles, and the knives in the trunk of the car. The dope was in her purse. He knew from her leg tracks that she’d developed a heavy Jones. Wasn’t surprised to find out she was carrying blatantly, disobeying him. Because that was the way a junkie functioned. As addicted to sneakery as the needle.

  When he pulled her works out of her purse, she was scared shitless. Relieved—grateful—when he didn’t get angry.

  Downright orgasmic when he said, “No sweat. I’ve been too uptight about your getting off, babe. You want to fix, go ahead.”

  “You’re sure?” Already breathing hard.

  “Sure, babe.”

  Before he finished talking, she’d jumped on the works, was panting, fixing, smiling, nodding off.

  He waited. When she was totally out of it, he walked back to the car.

  The morning after his last date with Nightwing, he woke up with a new sense of purpose, knowing he was ready for bigger and better things. After he’d touched himself to the accompaniment of new real science pictures, he went to work at the hospital, delivered the mail to the Surgery Department, and cornered Doctor in his office.

  “What do you want?”

  “Been a long time, stud. Cash-in time. I want to go to med school.”

  Kikefuck was blown away.

  “That’s crazy! You haven’t even finished two years of junior college!”

  Shrug.

  “Have you taken any science courses?”

  “Some.”

  “Are your grades any better?”

  “I’m doing fine.”

  “Sure you are—oh, great. Terrific. Straight D’s and you want to be a doctor.”

  “I’m going to be a doctor.”

  Fucker slammed
his hand on the desk. His eyes were popping out of his ugly purple face. Mad because an Aryan warrior was breaking into the kike medico conspiracy.

  “Now you listen—”

  “I want an M.D. You’re going to fix it for me.”

  “Jesus Christ! How the hell do you expect me to pull something like that off!”

  “Your problem.” Stare-down, melting the fucker by being totally cool.

  He walked away with a spring in his step, ready for a bright new future.

  CHAPTER

  58

  Saturday, seven forty-three P.M. Daniel had just finished praying ma’ariv and havdalah, bidding farewell to a Sabbath that, for all practical purposes, had never existed. Talking to God with all the devotion of a nonbeliever, his mind on the case, chewing on the new information as if it were fine filet steak.

  He put away his siddur and had started to assemble his notes for the staff meeting when the operator phoned and said a Mr. Vangidder was on the line.

  Unfamiliar name. Foreign. “Did he say what it was about?”

  “No.”

  Probably some foreign reporter. Despite Headquarters’ blackout on Butcher information, journalists were being their usual persistent selves. “Take his number and tell him I’ll call him back.”

  He hung up, made it to the door when the phone rang again. He considered ignoring it, let it ring, finally answered.

  “Pakad?” said the same operator. “It’s about this Vangidder. He says he’s a policeman calling from the Netherlands, says you’ll definitely want to speak to him. It has to be now—he’s leaving tonight for a one-week holiday.”

  Dutch police? Had the Interpol man finally done his job?

  “Put him on.”

  “Okay.”

  He waited anxiously through a series of electronic bleeps, hoping he hadn’t lost the call. In light of what Shmeltzer and Daoud had found at the Amelia Catherine, information from Europe could narrow the investigation.

  The bleeps were followed by a serenade of static, a low, mechanical rumble, then a high-pitched, cheerful voice, speaking in flawless English.

  “Chief Inspector Sharavi? This is Joop Van Gelder of the Amsterdam police.”

  “Hello . . . is it Chief Inspector?”

  “Commissaris,” said Van Gelder. “It’s similar to a chief inspector.”

  It was, Daniel knew, a rank above chief inspector. Joop Van Gelder was unassuming. Instinctively, from thousands of miles away, he liked the man.

  “Hello, Commissaris. Thank you for calling and sorry for the delay in putting you through.”

  “My fault, really,” said Van Gelder, still cheerful. “I neglected to identify myself as a police officer, was under the impression that your Interpol man had passed my name along.”

  Thank you, Friedman.

  “No, I’m sorry, Commissaris, he didn’t.”

  “No matter. We’ve got more important things to chat about, yes? This morning, your man passed along some homicide data that so clearly matched an unsolved murder in our city that I knew I had to get in touch with you. I’m off-duty, packing for a holiday to England. Mrs. Van Gelder won’t tolerate any further postponements, but I did manage to find the file on the case and wished to pass the information along to you before I left.”

  Daniel thanked him again, really meaning it. “When did your murder take place, Commissaris?”

  “Fifteen months ago.”

  Fifteen months ago. Friedman had been right about the Interpol computer.

  “Ugly affair,” Van Gelder was saying. “Clearly a sex killing. We never cleared it up. Our consulting psychiatrist thought it had all the characteristics of the first in a series of psychopathic killings. We weren’t certain—we don’t often get that kind of thing.”

  “Neither do we.” Or didn’t.

  “The Germans do,” said Van Gelder. “And the Americans. One wonders why, yes? In any event, when no second murder occurred, we weighed two alternatives: that the psychiatrist had been mistaken—it does occur, yes?” He laughed. “Or that the murderer was someone passing through Amsterdam and had departed to do his killing elsewhere.”

  “Traveling psychopath,” said Daniel, and told him about the FBI data.

  “Horrifying,” said Van Gelder. “I began an inquiry into the FBI files myself. However, the Americans were less than helpful. They put up bureaucratic barriers and when a second murder didn’t occur, given our work load . . .” The Dutchman’s voice trailed off, guiltily.

  Knowing it would be rude to brush off the lack of thoroughness, Daniel said nothing.

  “We can check suitcases for bombs,” said Van Gelder, “but this kind of terrorist is harder to spot, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Daniel. “A person can buy knives anywhere. Even if he uses the same ones over and over, there are ways to transport them that can be legitimately explained.”

  “A doctor.”

  “It’s one of our hypotheses.”

  “It was one of ours too, Chief Inspector. And for a while I thought it would help solve the case. Our records check revealed no matching homicides in the rest of the Interpol countries, but an almost identical crime did take place in September of 1972 in Sumbok—it’s a tiny island in the southern region of the Indonesian complex that used to be a Dutch colony. We still consult to the local police in many of the colonies—they send their records to us biannually. One of my clerks was sifting through the biannual reports and came across the case—an unsolved mutilation homicide of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  “At first we thought there might be a tribal link—our Amsterdam victim was an Indonesian—half-Indonesian, really. Prostitute by the name of Anjanette Gaikeena. It seemed possible that her murder might have been related to some primitive rite or revenge plot—an old family score to settle. But her family turned out to have no connection whatsoever to Sumbok. The mother is from Northern Borneo; the father is Dutch—met the mother while serving in the army and brought the family back to Amsterdam eighteen years ago.

  “When I read about a sex murder there, I was puzzled, Chief Inspector. Sumbok really is an insignificant little bar of sand and jungle—a few rubber plantations, some cassava plots, no tourist trade at all. Then I remembered that a medical school once existed there: The Grand Medical Facility of St. Ignatius. No connection to the Catholic Church—the ‘saint’ was used for its official sound. It was a fourth-rate place at best. Unaccredited, the barest of facilities, but charging very high tuition—a money-making scheme, really, run by unscrupulous American businessmen. There was a dispute about taxes; the Indonesian government closed it down in 1979. But back in ’72 it was functioning, with over four hundred students—mostly foreigners who’d been denied acceptance anywhere else. I managed to obtain a ’72 faculty list and student roster, ran a check with our passport files during the time of the Gaikeena murder, but unfortunately found no match.”

  While Van Gelder talked, Daniel had pulled out the list of American homicides from the FBI data bank. Shehadeh: March ’71. Breau: July ’73. The Sumbok homicide fell neatly in between.

  “Do you have that roster handy, Commissaris?”

  “Right here.”

  “I’d like to read some names for you, see if any of them appear on it.”

  “Certainly.”

  None did.

  “Too easy,” said Van Gelder. “It never is, yes?”

  “Yes. I’d like to see the roster anyway.”

  “I’ll cable it to you, today.”

  “Thank you. Tell me more about your homicide, Commissaris.”

  Van Gelder described the Amsterdam killing: Anjanette Gaikeena’s savaged body had been found in a fish-cleaning shed near one of the docks on the northeast side of town.

  “It’s a rough part of the city,” said the commissaris. “Just above our famous red light district—have you been to Amsterdam, Chief Inspector?”

  “Just once, last year, on stopover. What I saw was beautiful, but I had no real chance to tour. However,
I did see the district.” No chance to do anything but wait out a two-day sentence of house-imprisonment in an apartment suite, babysitting half a dozen Olympic rowers and football players. Listening to the athletes’ nervously rowdy jokes with half an ear, one hand wedded to his Uzi. The athletes had grown irritable and difficult to manage, had finally been allowed a single excursion. Unanimous choice: the famous whores of Amsterdam.

  “Everyone sees the district,” said Van Gelder, somewhat sadly. “However, the part of the dock where Gaikeena was found isn’t one of our tourist spots. At night it’s deserted, except for prowlers, drunken sailors, and other undesirables. The shed was left unlocked—nothing to steal but herring bones and a warped old table. She was on the table, laid out on white sheets. The wounds match your first one precisely. Our pathologist said she’d been anesthetized with heroin, at least three knives were used, sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, but not necessarily a surgeon’s scalpel. What impressed him was how clean she’d been washed—not a trace of fiber evidence, no semen, nothing for serum typing. A local soap had been used on the body and the hair, the brand most commonly provided by many hotels, but millions of bars are sold each year here—that’s not much of a lead. We tried to trace the purchaser of the sheets, with no success.”

  “Was she killed on the spot?”

  “Unclear. However, she was definitely washed and drained there. The shed contained a large trough for gutting and washing fish, large enough to hold a woman of Gaikeena’s size. It ran out to sea, but there was a bend in the pipe before it reached the sluice gate. Traces of human blood were found mixed in with the fish waste.”

  Thorough procedure, thought Daniel. But useless.

  Van Gelder was thinking the same thing. “We reviewed our list of known sex offenders and knife-wielders, put every one of them through hours of interrogation, talked to the girl’s habitual customers, interviewed every prostitute and procurer in the district to see if they remembered who she went off with that night. There was no shortage of leads, but all were false. Given what we know now about this traveler, it was a waste of time, yes?” The Dutchman’s voice lost its cheer and took on a sudden intensity. “But now you may have him, my friend. We’ll work together.”

 

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