by Willow Rose
I looked at my co-worker who waved her arms around like windmill while talking firmly to the person on the other end of the phone.
“Keep me posted on what’s going on with him we stick together at this paper. We help each other,” he said before he hung up.
I looked at Sara who now gave me two thumbs up.
“We got one,” she said and hung up. “A really good one, too.”
I took in a deep breath. I was so relieved.
“Good job.”
Meanwhile I had an idea for how we should pursue the serial killer angle. When I was in Iraq I got to know an American named James Wickham who worked at the base as a psychologist for soldiers in crisis. I knew that he had gotten a job at the FBI to work as a profiling expert. Over the years he became an expert in serial killers and how their brain worked. I had used him previously for another article about the condition of the soldiers when they returned from war. That’s when he told me about his new job. They knew a lot more about serial killers in the U.S than we did, so I thought he might teach me something about them.
I called him at his office in Washington DC.
“Rebekka Franck? I never thought I would hear that beautiful voice again.”
I loved Americans. They were always so positive and always gave compliments. Very different from the Danish Jantelov, as we called it, most popularly described as the belief that people shouldn’t think they are somebody, because they’re not. It was a way of thinking that often kept us from complimenting others and led to a low self-esteem. It was a way of thinking that we Danes had a hard time escaping.
“Well you did,” I said blushing.
“What can I do for you?”
“I think we might have a serial killer on the loose.”
“In Denmark? I can’t believe it. Well it’s about time you guys grew up, right?” He laughed.
“You might be right. The thing is we have very little experience with how this type of killer thinks or acts. The reason for calling you today is I want to do an article about serial killers.”
“Oh, okay. That shouldn’t be too hard. I mean no two killers are alike, but there are the general characteristics on how they think and such. I can certainly help you with that.”
“Thanks.”
“First, I would like to give you a short definition of a serial killer as we use it here at the FBI. According to our definition a serial murder is the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender or offenders, in separate events.”
“We’ve got that. That’s for sure.” I said leaving out that the police didn’t think that it was the same offender. Not yet at least. Not until I had proven them wrong.
“Okay, what else can you tell me about the killings?”
I explained the case to him in detail and he was quiet for a little while afterwards.
“I see. So you have a killer who kills in the same way by ripping his victims open so to speak? And he has killed three people so far?”
“Yes, that’s right. Also, all the victims know each other from the school. So what kind of a psychopath do we have here?”
“It sounds to me like what you have here is a very organized offender. Everything is planned to perfection. He leaves no trace of committing the crime and he generally kills by the same methods. Generally, the organized offender commits well-planned and well-orchestrated offenses, whereas the disorganized offender commits more poorly planned and poorly executed offenses.”
“What does that tell us about him?”
“The more organization demonstrated by an offender, the more likely the offender will be intelligent, socially competent, capable of skilled employment, conscious of evidence, controlled, and able to avoid identification while accounting for a greater number of victims. They lack feelings of guilt or remorse and view their victims as mere objects that they can manipulate for their own perverse satisfaction and sense of power, control, mastery, and domination. Organized serial murderers may kill in such great numbers due to fantasies that feed their predatory desires and lead them to compete with themselves in a perverted contest of ’practice makes perfect.’ In other words, they continue to kill, in part, due to a desire to improve upon their last murder. In addition, they understand their misbehavior, know the difference between right and wrong, and can choose when and where to act upon their urges.”
“So who is he? What kind of person are we talking about?”
“On television and the silver screen, serial killers are usually white males and dysfunctional loners who really want to get caught. Or, they’re super-intelligent monsters who frustrate law enforcement at every turn. That’s not the case though. Serial killers are not all dysfunctional loners. Some have wives and kids and full-time jobs and active in their community or church or both. This man lives in your midst as a normal person. He does things that normal people do. He goes to the bar to have a drink. He goes to restaurants the same as we all do. Nothing in his everyday behavior will indicate that he is killing people.”
I wrote in my notebook while the thoughts of Giovanni kept messing with my mind. He seemed perfectly normal. He was intelligent and very good at manipulating. He seemed like a fit for the profile. But then again so did Sune.
“So what kind of a person becomes a serial killer? Someone who has experienced childhood abuse?” I asked.
“Many individuals have experienced childhood abuse, and the vast majority don’t become criminals, much less serial murderers. Most abused children adjust and, as they mature, progress past their traumatic experiences. However, those individuals who become serial murderers do not adjust and put the trauma and its influence in the past. They ruminate about their mistreatment; dwell on their past experiences; and become frustrated, angry, and depressed.”
“Is he a psychopath?”
“The relationship between psychopathic and serial killers is particularly interesting. All psychopaths do not become serial murderers. Lucky for us, because there are a lot of them out there. But serial murderers may possess some or many of the traits consistent with those of a psychopath. Psychopaths who commit serial murder do not value human life and are extremely callous in their interactions with their victims. This is particularly evident in sexually motivated serial killers who repeatedly target, stalk, assault, and kill without a sense of remorse. However, being a psychopath alone does not explain the motivations of a serial killer. Psychopaths are not sensitive to themes such as sympathy for their victims or remorse or guilt over their crimes. They do possess certain personality traits that can be detected, particularly their inherent narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs.”
I had to take a deep breath to calm down. All he said fit perfectly on Giovanni. The narcissism, the vanity, the manipulation, and the selfish needs.
James continued, “If a violent offender is psychopathic, he’s able to assault, rape, and murder without concern for legal, moral, or social consequences. This allows him to do what he wants, whenever he wants. The way he kills is an indication of who he is. It’s clearly a ritual to him and has a special meaning to him, though we don’t know what the meaning is. He knows the meaning and maybe his victims do too.”
“So how do we stop him?”
“Unlike what they say in the movies, the serial killer does not want to get caught. Over time, as he kills without being discovered, he will get careless during his crimes.”
“So what you are basically telling me is that we have to wait for him to make a mistake?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
I wrote the article and found a nice picture on the Internet of my American friend to put next to the story. Then I pressed the “send” button and mailed it to my editor. I leaned back, satisfied with myself. I had left one part out of the article, though, something James told me
just before we hung up. A serial killer often had a “cooling off period.” Often he would commit his first murder and then have a long period maybe of ten or more years before he would kill again. That substantiated my theory that Bjorn Clausen didn’t commit suicide but was killed by the same perpetrator. But I had no documentation to prove it. So I left it out of the article.
But I still kept thinking about Sune. In my book there was no way he could be the killer. He was only three years old in 1987. But as long as the police didn’t recognize the connections between the killings, that argument would do him no good.
I sighed and looked at Sara. She had gone back to listening to the police scanner again while she typed on her laptop. She had a half-eaten piece of cake on her desk.
Then I looked back at my own desk and my eyes caught a little yellow sticky note that Sune must have put there some time before he was arrested.
It was the address of Christian Junge-Larsen.
The last guy in the picture.
26
Christian Junge-Larsen looked at himself in the mirror.
“My God, I look like I could be dead.”
Not that it was that big of a surprise to him since he hadn’t slept in days. He didn’t even know what time it was any longer, whether day or night outside Marienlyst Casino. He remembered this morning he went home to his apartment in Elsinore—the famous city of Shakespeare’s Hamlet—and got a few hours of sleep. Dead drunk, he collapsed over the bed. But it didn’t erase the circles under his eyes or give him the color back in his face. He looked like he hadn’t seen the sun in days, which he actually hadn’t. The dimmed light in the bathroom of the fancy casino was kind to him, he knew. He looked much worse in real light.
He splashed some water on his face and washed it with the casino’s hand soap. It smelled like lemons and with that, he thought he was ready for another couple of hours by the blackjack table or at the roulette. The casino wouldn’t close until four in the morning.
He went out and sat with the other men just like him. Men with a feverish look with eyes that wouldn’t let go of the ball around the wheel. Christian Junge-Larsen put everything on red 9 knowing deep down in himself that he was about to pave another mile of his road straight to hell.
He saw the wheel spin and the ball jump and dance around and, like so many times before, he didn’t win. The croupier mechanically swept his bets off the table with that same professional look every croupier had. The look didn’t change even if a player was sobbing and crying and telling him that this was his life savings, his last money. The same look that didn’t distinguish between a hundred-dollar win and a million.
Things had gotten really bad over the last couple of months. He had lost everything, including his lucrative job as a CEO of the company his father had built. Over a period of five years he had stolen about ten million dollars from the company without them knowing it. But over the years he had gotten too careless, and one day he got caught. Because it was his father’s company, they didn’t turn him over to the police, but threw him out instead.
Maybe he would have been better off in prison, he often thought to himself.
The big mansion on the water was next to go, then the car and finally the wife and the kids left. Now he lived alone in an apartment where he hadn’t paid the rent in two months. No housekeeper, no gardener, and no chauffeur. It was just him and his own damn mess.
Fuck them, he thought. Everything was about to change. It had to. He just needed to get his luck back. Then maybe one day he would get his beloved wife back too. She had tried to stand by him, but it was like living with a drug addict. He would promise he would stop, that this time was the last time. And then he would stay away from the casino for a couple of days until he felt the urge again, that alluring and deceitful feeling that this time he could actually have a win, that it was possible. He knew it was, because in the beginning he had won several times. And he always would win a little when he first sat down at the table. He would also lose a little, but mostly win. And then he wouldn’t know how to stop. He always just needed one more try and then he would lose. Then one more and he would eventually lose it all. That was his curse.
And so it went this night just like every other night. He lost and by four o’clock in the morning he would leave the casino drunk and out of money. The worst part was he knew the casino wouldn’t open again until six in the evening the next day.
He had to walk home. He was cold in his white shirt and black Armani jacket he always wore when he went to gamble. Once he used to own hundreds of suits like this. But now he only had the one left. He kept it clean and nice so it would always make him look like he still had a lot of money. Otherwise they wouldn’t let him into the casino.
He had borrowed some money from his brother who had complained a lot but eventually given him ten thousand dollars to get back on his feet again. Then he had told Christian he had reached his limit. The money would have been enough to pay his rent and patch up a number of critical emergencies with his financial situation—like paying off that scumbag Brian who kept stalking him for the money he borrowed six months ago and kept threatening to send a couple of Hell’s Angels rockers after him. But Christian never paid off his debt with the money from his brother. Instead he spent it in the casino under the excuse that he was attempting to make more.
But his fate was always to see others strike gold. He never failed to be there if someone got one of the big wins. The ones, they all were longing so desperately for. The kind which just might have hit him instead if only he had been at the right place at the right time.
It started to rain just as Christian reached his apartment lobby. He got inside just in time. Maybe he hadn’t totally run out of luck, after all.
Inside the apartment he sat down on his bed. He looked around. He still couldn’t believe that he lived like this. He, who grew up never having to do anything by himself. He, who had gotten a Porsche when he turned eighteen, when he could get his license in Denmark. He, who was friends with some of the richest and most influential people in the country, or at least he used to be. He, who used to be the one bossing people around, telling them what to do. He, who used to have people respect just because of who he was, just because of his name.
“Forty-six years old,” he murmured while he rested his exhausted body on the bed. “I might as well be dead.”
27
“Seven, eight, better stay up late … “
The voice whispering in Christian Junge-Larsen’s left ear was gentle and familiar. He was still lying on the bed fully clothed. He thought it was just a part of his dream. His breath was calm and peaceful. Then the voice was there again with that song. His dream suddenly changed. Indecipherable images agitated his sleep.
He is alone in a dark place. Then he hears voices, singing and laughing. Singing that same old song from the movies they used to watch at the boarding school when the lights were out and everybody was supposed to be a sleep.
That is where he is, he figures. In one of the dorms. And these are the voices. He knows them. They have been haunting him.
All of a sudden he sees a light and he walks towards it. It is a door that leads into another room. He opens the door and sees what he believes are his friends. He can’t really see them or their faces. They stand in the middle of the room with their backs turned toward him. They are looking at something on the ground. Or is it someone?
He walks closer. An anxiety rises in him. He can hear his own heavy breath. His friends are hitting and kicking someone on the floor. The screams are horrible. He stops and wants to run away and suddenly he is climbing stairs, running up and up while his friends are beneath him. Still laughing and singing, almost chanting. The stairs continue and seem like they will never end. A light shines at the top, but he doesn’t seem to be able to ever reach it no matter how hard he tries to climb the steps.
He looks down and feels like the stairs are floating in the air. The height makes him dizzy and he almost falls but g
ets his balance back just in time. The voices from beneath are getting louder and louder as does the screaming and the beating. The sound of fists hitting flesh, breaking bones and crushing lives. The worst sound in the world.
Christian is running again. He climbs another step and tries to get away, to get to the top. Away from the laughing and beating and the screams. But every time he succeeds in climbing another step three more appear at the top. Then four, then five. His breathing gets even heavier as he climbs reluctantly.
He sees the light at the end and runs even faster up the stairs. He sees a door at the end and reaches for the handle. He can almost feel it in his right hand as he tries to grab it. He can feel the warmth of the light behind the door that is about to greet him and give him the peace he so desperately needs.
But instead he slips and falls.
All the way back down the stairs. Hitting every step on the way that he had just climbed. Bruising his back and the head.
Why? Why? he keeps thinking.
And then he finds himself on the floor in the dorm. Surrounded by all of his friends. They are still singing and laughing and now he knows why.
He is their victim. He is the one they are kicking and beating.
Christian woke up. His hand raised in the dark, reaching for the floor lamp. He turned it on and a dim light was spread through the bare room.
The voice came at once from the man sitting in front of him.
“Today is a good day to die, don’t you think?”
Christian got up from the bed and ran past the man sitting in the chair. Just like in the dream, he ran for his life, feeling the door handle, but never reaching it. Instead he felt an arm grabbing him from behind, throwing him on to the floor and then he was kicked in the face. Christian opened his mouth to scream but the man covered his mouth with his gloved hand and the sound leaving Christian’s mouth was now more of surprise and fear.