The Amsterdam Chronicles: Def-Con City Trilogy Part 1

by Brian Christopher

  The puzzle that confounded pathologist Jim Conver had now doubled in size. Two male bodies had come in late in the afternoon and both now lay on his stainless steel tables. Conver was on the phone to Ribb.

  "The specimens I took from the body in the bath are being examined as we speak, but so far we don't have a clue as to how it happened. By the way, I did eventually get the body back here." Conver looked over at the nineteenth-century bathtub sitting in the corner of the lab. "After I removed some more samples I used the solidifying agent, which turned all the fluid in the bathtub and the body into a very thick jelly. It won't be too difficult to get more samples if we need them."

  "Good idea." Ribb said.

  "But we have another problem."

  "What's that?"

  "I've got two more suspect deaths in front of me. I'm about to open them up, but if my suspicions are right we are looking at something similar to Carola Munk and Frank Brandsma."

  "Are you serious? Have you got their addresses?"

  Conver put on his reading glasses and opened up a file in front of him. "Jeffry Downes is from the van Baerlestraat, and George de Graaf a little further up."

  "Oh shit," Ribb moaned. "Can you send me the exact addresses right away and I'll get a team over there to seal off their apartments before someone decides to clean up like the last time."

  Ribb got up out of his chair with the telephone in hand and went to the large map of Amsterdam on the wall. He took a black marker in hand and extended the previous thick black line - which had stopped near the Overtoom and ran it through the van Baerlestraat right up to the Lairessestraat. It now covered a stretch of nearly one and a half kilometers. He stood back to get a better view and scratched his curly hair. A straight line cut across the city. He then put an X on the spot where they found Raemon Dort. His apartment was three kilometers south of the van Baerlestraat.

  Could all these be connected?

  Within a couple of minutes of speaking to Conver, Ribb called Bakker and canceled his leave. He dispatched a team to seal off the apartments and a forensics unit. There was no need for him to be present. His senior officers and forensics would do a thorough job.

  He decided to get another team to search all the mysterious deaths in the database, and look for anything similar to Bakker's previous findings. Maybe they could find something Bakker had missed though he thought it unlikely. Bakker did look as scruffy as hell, but his search techniques in digging for information, was better than most. Tomorrow he would be briefed on the searches to Downes and de Graaf's apartments. As he was about to leave the office for the evening, the telephone rang.