by Inger Wolf
"Yes, I do."
She slammed down her coffee mug. Who the hell did this idiot think he was, judging other people's emotional state? "What kind of attitude is that? Maybe you should read the deceased Mr. Holm's book, Daniel. Maybe you'll learn to keep your mouth shut about something you obviously don't know shit about."
To her surprise, he laughed. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard him do that before, but in this context, it sounded like a definite insult.
"You surprise me, Miss Kornelius. You've got some fight in you."
That only made her angrier. "Just shut up, okay?"
He stared in amazement as she shoved her coffee away. She realized she was going too far, but his intolerance was too much. Before her boss could answer, she stood up and left.
She ran into Jacob in the hallway. She was still in a rage, but he probably wasn't the right person to talk to about it.
She took a deep breath. "Would you like to go out for a glass of wine later?" She surprised herself, daring to ask him out. She could hear her own voice, more gentle. More Lisa, less detective.
"I promised Trokic I'd have a beer with him this evening."
"Okay," she said, lamely trying to hide her disappointment. That morning, after sending her niece off to school, she'd looked at a dusty bottle of '95 St. Emilion in the wine rack, a gift from her thirtieth birthday, two years ago. And she realized she wanted to share it with him, alone. She wondered if there was something wrong with her. She resisted the temptation to run to the bathroom to check her hair. Maybe it was time for a change.
"Well, I guess…" She fumbled with a button on her jacket.
"Another day, Lisa," he said, staring into her eyes. "I'll let you know. And it'll be soon, you can count on that."
He squeezed her arm. She stood there, feeling the warmth spread throughout her body, watching him disappear around the corner.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lieutenant Detective Daniel Trokic drove too fast. A traffic cop would probably consider clipping his driver's license, but it was Jasper sitting beside him. And he made no comment. Showing consideration for his colleague, Trokic had given Rammstein a breather. The German band wasn't popular among the people he spent his time with. A musical personality disorder is how Jasper put it. Instead, Spleen United was out on the field, kicking ass with its dark electronic rock. Long runs of heavy synthesizer and shadowy minor chords. He smiled to himself. Live the dream, stay in bed, with heroin unlimited.
It was all about stimulants nowadays. A young girl had called in connection with the case and had made a serious accusation. About drugs.
He'd seen enough powder and pills during his childhood as well as his time on patrol. Drugs, like small pearls of nothingness on a long chain. He often wondered: how much different was he from the dregs of society? The ghetto's bleakness clung to him, and he couldn't muster up any sense of reproach when he saw people lying around stoned. He could feel the holes inside them.
"Take a right here," Jasper said, pointing to a shortcut.
The girl in front of them lived in a mess that seemed to be a goal in itself. The neon-green walls stood in contrast to the piles of dirty clothes, bags of advertisements, makeup, gossip magazines, and CD covers on the floor. Three cacti were drying up in the windowsill, together with a few apple cores and a lemon.
She was only one of the countless many who had called, but for some reason, Jasper had insisted they talk to her, even though Trokic thought they were wasting their time. He'd never seen anyone with so many piercings. Chains of them in her ears, her eyebrows, her tongue, and lips. A black Mohawk dyed red at the bottom stood like a crown over her pale skin. He'd thought that had gone out of style fifteen years ago. Her name was Randi.
"I don't quite understand…" Trokic tried to not look at the black vinyl dildo on the floor. "Why do you think your drug use has anything to do with our case? As far as I know—"
"The paper this morning said the dead guy did research in antidepressants…and, well, I tested some pills for a guy like that. This spring. I met him at a private party. They hang out with all of us now. Maybe it was him, the dead guy."
Trokic raised an eyebrow. Jasper sat beside him, absentmindedly picking at two snuffed-out tea candles.
"Are you saying Christoffer Holm had something to do with the sale of illegal drugs? He was a respected scientist; that's a serious charge."
Randi stared at a poster of Ozzy on the wall. "I didn't buy anything. The guy gave it to me. But he didn't tell me his name."
She lit a cigarette she'd rolled herself; a sharp odor spread throughout the small room. Jasper brought out a photo from his pocket. "Is this him?"
She glanced at the photo. "Nope."
Trokic and Jasper both sighed.
"He gave me enough for a few weeks. Test the quality, he said. I was feeling like shit, so I did it."
Jasper looked up and nodded to the side, checking to see if Trokic thought it was time to go.
"Test the quality?" Trokic said.
"Oh, yeah. One every morning, he said."
"And you did what he said?"
"Of course. Listen. I felt like shit. I took them, goddamn right I did."
"And how did they work?" Trokic was curious.
She puckered her pierced lips and thought that over. "First, I didn't feel a thing. After a few days, though, I felt so great."
"How, exactly?"
"Well, you see how it's…sort of a mess in here?"
They nodded.
"I cleaned everything up. I ran every evening. Had sex like you wouldn't believe and slept three hours a day."
"Some type of ecstasy?"
"Yeah, but some new kind, like I never had before. It lasted a lot longer, and it builds up kind of slow. It's scary shit. I read that monkeys get brain damage from taking ecstasy just once. The brain can't make the stuff that makes you happy anymore." She stared at her fingernails, bitten to the quick. "He said it was pure Kamikaze."
Her voice was emotionless, and Jasper and Trokic stared at each other. Narcotics was going to be interested in this.
"Believe me, I've tried it all," she said. "But…"
"But what?" Trokic said.
"Then I ran out of it."
"And that's when everything turned messy again?"
"Even worse. I got really strange. It wasn't me anymore; someone else was living inside me. Someone I really didn't like."
"What do you mean? You felt sick? Depressed?"
"You see that cage over there?"
She pointed at what looked like a small birdcage. It was empty. Trokic nodded.
"I strangled my gerbil." She had tears in her eyes.
"Did you see him again?"
She shook her head and looked thoughtfully at Trokic. "Did you ever see the seven suns?"
"Seven suns?"
She looked away. "They're all black. Now I'm on normal antidepressants. But they don't make me feel like picking up."
Ten minutes later, Trokic drove Jasper home. "What do you think?" Jasper said.
"With what we know about Christoffer Holm? I don't think he had anything to do with this, and she said herself the photo wasn't of him. And besides, there's lots of kids experimenting with their own little formulas. Maybe she needed some attention, too. She's a sad case."
"But there are new drugs out there," Jasper said.
"Yeah, we'll pass this information on tomorrow."
Trokic jumped the curb in front of Jasper's red apartment building and stopped. The day was over for many people, including the young detective. But Trokic decided to have another look at Anna Kiehl's apartment. There must be something he'd missed.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
He parked the car and locked it. The feeling hit him when he opened Kiehl's apartment building's front door, and he jogged to her door. Chills streamed through his body when he saw the seal on her door had been broken. Had one of his colleagues stopped by? Hardly. No one he knew would leave the apartment open like th
at. Instinctively, he touched his gun and carefully pushed the door handle down. The unlocked door opened soundlessly. He pulled the gun out of its holster and entered with his back to the wall, peering around the apartment. Nothing looked suspicious. He glanced into the kitchen; it was just as dim and empty as the last time he'd seen it. The apartment, though, suddenly felt cold, different. It was colder, by several degrees. And that odor…
Something metallic rattled loudly behind him, and he crouched and whirled around, but it was only the metal buttons on his coat scraping against a radiator. He breathed out and squeezed his gun. Alert now, he walked further inside. Someone else was in the apartment, he could sense it, smell it, the odor of a human being and some sort of weak, neutral perfume he didn't immediately recognize. He wasn't sure if it came from the bathroom with its long row of perfumes on a shelf. It seemed familiar; where had he smelled it before?
The bathroom door creaked loudly when he pushed it open. Adrenaline shot through him and he gripped his gun even harder. The bathroom was empty, with no sign of it having been disturbed. He turned, and now, several feet away, he noticed a faint light in the living room. A bluish glow on a small, round table.
"Hello," he yelled. "Police."
No answer. He walked over, pushed the living room door open, and cautiously stuck his head inside and glanced around the room. He blinked. Something was wrong here, all wrong.
All at once, the back of Trokic's head seemed to explode. He fell forward and took a lamp down with him. The lampshade crackled under his weight. Something was dribbling down through his hair as he began fading out. His neck hurt, the pain from the heavy blow was blinding as he turned on his side and fumbled around in panic for his gun. His sight cleared up for one short second, enough to notice the silhouette in the doorway—a figure with a hood over his head, looking down at him and waving Trokic's gun around in his right hand. A cold, enraged movement. Then, the figure threw the gun down and ran out of the apartment. Trokic collapsed and lost consciousness.
The pain woke him up. Judging from the light outside, he sensed he'd only been out a few minutes. He looked around the room in panic, fully aware of his vulnerability, but the apartment was silent again. He crawled over and reached underneath the coffee table for his gun. He felt around on the back of his head; it was wet and sticky with blood, but there didn't seem to be an open wound. He fumbled around in his pocket for his phone, and a few seconds later he called Jasper and told him to come over with a tech from Forensics.
Slowly, he sat up and looked around. The bulb in the lamp was broken; small shards of glass lay all around. The flattened lampshade was close by. He noticed a small, smeared pool of blood. Not enough to be concerned about. As he got to his feet, he saw what had hit him—an African figure a foot and a half tall, made of ebony. A Masai warrior with a spear in his hand. One of Anna Kiehl's knickknacks. He felt dizzy, and he walked into the bathroom. There had to be a medicine cabinet or a first aid kit somewhere. He found a bandage in the third drawer by the sink, and he wrapped it around his head to stop the bleeding.
The second he stepped back into the living room, he noticed it lying in the glare of the lamp hanging over the small table in the corner. A startling sight. He tried to make sense of it as he carefully stepped around the glass and approached the table. It looked almost like a museum piece. An exhibition. Trokic glanced around one more time to make sure he was alone.
It was a hand. A dried hand, gnarled and twisted with its palm turned upward. He nudged it. Though he had absolutely no knowledge of anatomy, it wasn't necessary. Anyone would say it was a chopped-off human hand.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jasper stared at the absurd object. "This is crazy, I've never seen anything like it. Who the hell put it there? You didn't see him?"
"No."
He checked out Trokic's wound. "You're going in to get this sewn up. What do I have to do to get a few hours to myself? I just get my bathtub filled up and you call."
"I'll go by the doctor on call later."
Behind them, a tech dropped the dried hand in a small plastic sack. The tech and Jasper had discussed its origin, but in truth, there was no doubt about the species.
"Emergency room," Jasper said, his voice firm. He clapped Trokic on the shoulder and took a good look around the room.
Trokic was about to leave when the tech grunted. "There's something on the other side, scratched into the skin." He spelled the word out loud.
"Eudaimonia," Trokic said. Silently, he let that sink in. This wasn't just a game here; this was deadly serious. He turned to Jasper. "It's the Greek word for happiness. Or actually, a type of happiness."
It was almost dark when Trokic parked at a small rest area and grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight from the trunk. In a half hour, he wouldn't be able to see his hand in front of his face. Jasper had insisted he stop by the emergency room. Maybe he would. Or maybe not.
Slowly, he walked along the trail to the pond. Could there be more bodies buried around here? He needed to check for any digging close to where Anna Kiehl had been found. A jolt of pain followed every step. The officer posted to keep an eye on the area the past few days had been reassigned. Scattered patches of cold fog filled the forest. A young guy whizzed by on a mountain bike, swerved dangerously around a curve, and disappeared on the trail leading east.
The barrier tape at the crime scene hung loose between the trees; it flapped in the wind a few places where it had broken. He searched the ground painstakingly with the help of the flashlight, but it looked no different from before.
Finally, he sat on a nearby tree stump and lit a cigarette. Did the killer have a special connection to this place? He knew how that felt. When the sea air filled your lungs, and the wind tugging at you became a background, a mood that defined you. Places could change your perception of reality.
He glanced around. Two people had been found dead here. Could there be a third? Tomorrow, he was going to assign a small team of officers to go over every inch of the area again.
Eudaimonia. Another cryptic message referring back to classical Greece. But how? Eudaimonia wasn't a private, individual happiness. It referred to respect and recognition and strength. It was a status. For some, he thought, it may be the only happiness. Something told him the killer had never had it, had never been happy. In any form. There was something melancholic and weighty about it, though he couldn't say exactly why. Among many other things, he and Jacob had discussed it during the many evenings they'd spent at cafés in Zagreb. The perception of happiness, what drove people to war. The various types of happiness people were willing to kill for.
A limb cracked deeper in the forest. It was nearly dark now, and he stood up to get his bearings. He glanced over his shoulder frequently as he made his way along the trail to his car. Maybe the emergency room wasn't such a bad idea after all.
The car pulled hard to the right as he started to drive away. Oh, no, he thought. He got out with his flashlight; both right tires were flat. His thoughts raced as he peered around in the dark. He crouched when he heard a rattling, metallic sound behind the trash can to his right, then he grabbed his phone in his pocket. It beeped every five seconds—just enough battery left to call.
"Yes?"
The voice on the other end sounded surprised. He whispered as softly as he could into the phone, then he hung up. Though Jacob was on his way, he felt only a hint of relief. Should he stay by the car or take off down the asphalt road through the forest? He heard the rattling noise again, twenty yards away. If someone wanted to get rid of him, why didn't they make their move? Had they been following him since he left Anna Kiehl's apartment? A rock landed at his feet—now he was convinced, someone was watching him. He drew his gun.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The minutes passed. One, two, five… The darkness surrounded him now. He leaned back against the car, his 9 mm Heckler and Kock pointed outward. Where the hell was Jacob? It felt like ages since he'd heard any movement. His breathi
ng was rapid, shallow—was he alone, or still being watched, about to be attacked?
When Jacob's white Ford turned into the rest area, Trokic collapsed in front of his car from sheer exhaustion; the pain and stress had drained him.
"What the hell's going on?" Jacob said after they were in the safety of his car.
Trokic briefly explained what had happened.
"Falck's coming to pick your car up. Something's all wrong here." Jacob thought for a few moments. "This is about control. Power. It's about breaking you. It's a common military tactic, so you can't analyze the situation. So you lose focus. Someone's working on you."
Another pause. "It's your attitude," Jacob added.
"What do you mean by that?"
"You never take anyone at face value. And that pushes people's buttons, people who are used to being in control."
Trokic leaned his head against the window and studied Jacob. They had both loved the same woman. Not in the biblical sense, but she had been a part of their lives. Small and thin, with green eyes and a compassionate character remarkable for such a young woman. She was Trokic's cousin, Sinka, a younger sister of the cousin he'd lived with for two years during the war in Croatia. Trokic and Jacob had forged a trust in each other during that time, despite the war. Jacob wanted Sinka to return with him to Denmark, and everyone had been happy for them. But it wasn't to be. One day, Sinka went swimming on an island, Krk, and she never returned. She disappeared like so many other women during the war, and though they had searched for her, she was never found. It was a horrible loss for both men. The thought about what happened to her, into whose hands she'd fallen, enraged him. And it was too painful to talk about. But the two men had remained close and in touch.
They turned onto the southern beltway.
"Where are you taking me?" Trokic said.