by Blake Pierce
Eventually, Leoni nudged her and pointed at a toppled bough. The tree branch was long, but unruly.
Adele retrieved the branch with her partner. Still no sounds were forthcoming from the house. Clearly, Mr. Von Ziegler was hoping they would just leave him alone. But the author’s own words propelled her motions. She remembered what he’d written on his website. Rants against tourists. Vicious diatribes seemingly siding with the killer. Which, if their theory held true about Mr. Von Ziegler’s nighttime activities, would make sense.
Leoni broke off a couple of the more unruly side branches from the main shaft of wood. Then, together, in one of the strangest breaching efforts Adele had ever been a part of, they moved beneath the house, out from its shadow, and faced the rope ladder. Leoni poked the long branch up, snagging the rope and tugging it.
After couple of tries, the ladder tumbled over the edge and fell, swaying and swinging beneath the elevated home.
Adele held a finger to her lips and tapped Leoni’s service weapon, pointing up. Leoni drew his weapon, took a couple of steps back, aimed toward the door and the windows above, providing cover, and then nodded once.
Adele grabbed the rope ladder and began to climb, pulling herself up, feeling the rough texture of the binding beneath her fingers. The sunlight above kept peeking from behind the elevated home in rhythm with the swaying ladder.
Adele pulled herself up the last rung, grunting a bit from the unfamiliar motion of the precarious handhold. She pressed her palm against the firm wood of the floorboards above, and pulled herself onto the platform which elevated the treehouse.
After a moment, she stepped to the side, giving Leoni a clear shot at the door. She pulled her own weapon from her holster, feeling her fingers a bit numb from where they’d gouged into the rough rope. She winced, shaking out a hand, but then, readjusting her grip on her weapon, she pointed it toward the door.
Her eyes flicked to the nearest window. No movement. Darkened by a curtain within and a film of tint on the glass itself.
She pounded her fist against the metal frame of the door and shouted, “Mr. Von Ziegler, open up!”
For the first time, she heard movement. The sound was like a quiet curse, and then the patter of footsteps. But the door didn’t open.
“Adrian Von Ziegler,” she snapped. “Interpol. Open the door now!”
Leoni still had his weapon trained on the windows, and Adele was preparing to push through the door. But then, a second later, as she reached a hand toward the knob, the door sprang open, nearly knocking her off the platform. Her gun was sent skittering to the floor.
A blur of motion caught her eye, as she reeled back, trying to regain her balance. A figure flung themselves toward the rope ladder and began to scramble down. By the looks of things, they were wearing gloves, and slid down the rope with practiced ease.
Adele cursed and took two skipping steps to grab her gun, and then aimed over the rope ladder.
Mr. Von Ziegler was on the run, and barreled forward, heading toward the trees, ignoring Leoni.
“Stop!” Leoni shouted in English.
But the runner ignored him. Leoni aimed, sighted in—Adele’s heart skipped a beat—but then her partner cursed, stowed his weapon, and broke into a sprint, racing after the fleeing man. Adele couldn’t descend the ladder as fast as the culprit had. She wasn’t wearing gloves, and if she tried to slide, she would rip up her palms. So as she moved down, she could hear the sound of the fleeing man disappearing into the trees.
She cursed. She reached halfway, then dropped, landing with a dull thump on the ground. She took a moment to catch her bearings, glimpsed the form of Leoni’s suit as he raced through the trees, and broke into a sprint herself.
She stowed her own weapon and raced across the detritus-scattered floor. Small branches cracked underfoot, the smell of fresh leaves and earth filling the air. She ducked beneath branches, moving deeper into the sparse undergrowth of the more maintained section of forest. The further they went, the harder it would be to move.
She heard shouting now, yelling.
She spotted Leoni, his gun raised, pointing it at a man whose back was pressed to a tree. It looked like he’d caught his sweater in a tangle of thorny shrubs, and was wincing and wailing, trying to extricate himself without doing damage.
“Stop!” Adele shouted. She hurried forward, her own gun rising.
The man snared in the shrubs glanced desperately from Leoni to Adele, his wide eyes bugged out from wrinkled features; his hair was slick without a single strand of white. His hair was that of a young man, but his features were that of someone in their sixties. He had moved far too quickly, though, in Adele’s estimation, to be much older than forty. Those were the wrinkles and lines of a man weathered by the weight of the world. Worry lines.
Mr. Von Ziegler was shouting now, trying to shake his tangled arm, but wincing as the thorns ripped through his sweater and skin.
“We’re with Interpol,” Adele said, firmly. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
The Austrian author turned from Leoni to regard her. He was trim, with the proportions of a runner, but his wrinkled, worried face was tinged with red. He tried to speak and slurred his words, suggesting perhaps he’d been drinking. In lightly accented English, he replied, “What do you thugs want from me?”
“To talk,” Adele said, firmly. “Lower the branch.”
His free hand had snared a sharp stick, which wasn’t large enough to be used as a club, nor sharp enough to be used as a skewer, but she didn’t want to take any risks.
Mr. Von Ziegler glanced desperately between the two agents as he finally managed to rip his sleeve from the snaring thorn bush, but then, when he glanced over his shoulder toward the deeper parts of the forest, he realized the futility of trying to run through the trees. There was nowhere to go without overgrowth and underbrush.
At last, he sighed, his cheeks still rosy, his eyes bloodshot. He tossed his branch off to the ground and slowly raised his hands.
Leoni and Adele moved in quickly, and, within seconds, they had Mr. Von Ziegler cuffed and began leading him away, back beneath the shadow of his treehouse and toward the waiting vehicle with the Austrian police officer.
“What’s this about?” Mr. Von Ziegler said, his words slurred.
“I think you know,” said Leoni, pushing the man forward, not roughly, but with a guiding hand toward the waiting cruiser. They managed to maneuver the cuffed man into the back seat of the squad car, and waited for the Austrian police officer to take his driver’s seat again. Leoni would sit in the back with the suspect, and Adele in the front. Before she shut the door, though, Adele looked at Mr. Von Ziegler. His bloodshot eyes gazed out at her, equal parts scared and belligerent.
“You’re fools, all of you. I didn’t do this, whatever you think I did. I’m not a criminal!”
Adele frowned. “Perhaps not. But you have intimate knowledge of three crime scenes where we found bodies. According to your website, it almost seems like you’re glad the victims were killed.”
His bloodshot eyes blinked a couple of times, and his rosy cheeks twitched. Then his eyes suddenly widened in a slow, snail’s pace of realization. His words were still slurred as he said, “The Monument Killer? You’re joking. That wasn’t me!”
“We’ll talk down at the station, watch yourself.”
Adele slammed the door shut, cutting off Mr. Von Ziegler before turning and moving around the hood of the car toward the front seat.
He fit the bill. Was he the killer, though? And if he was, would she be able to prove it?
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The interrogation room they’d been provided in the Austrian precinct was large enough for Leoni to pace the back of the room, while Adele sat in the chair opposite their travel expert. They had confirmed Mr. Von Ziegler’s identity, bringing up a picture from a previous arrest record for a drunk and disorderly.
“Mr. Von Ziegler,” Adele said, softly, “I appreciate you com
ing in with us.”
He snorted, but didn’t comment.
“We wish to talk to you about some of your more recent website posts. Are you the author of Days Away: A Travel Guide to Europe?”
Mr. Von Ziegler crossed his arms and glared out at her from beneath hooded eyes. His wrinkled features were stretched, and his bloodshot gaze had narrowed. “So what if I am? It’s not a crime. It’s just like the government to try and censor speech! That’s what this is. You’ll hear from my lawyer!”
“We hope to,” Adele said. “But we’re not interested in the book. We’re interested in the comments you made about the Monument Killer’s victims. We’re wondering what you have been doing over the last few days.”
The eccentric travel expert snorted, leaning back in the metal chair. He tapped his feet against the floor and muttered a few choice insults beneath his breath before saying, “I need a drink. You want me to talk, I need to clear my mind.”
Adele glanced at Leoni, who gave a small shake of his head. She looked back at Mr. Von Ziegler and said, “Tell us what we want to know, then you get you a drink.”
“Something strong,” he said.
“Water,” she retorted.
“Then I’m not talking.
“Are you sure you don’t want to? Is this you?” She reached to the table, picked up her phone to the prepared screenshot, and began to narrate from the most recent post on Mr. Von Ziegler’s website. “…and while taking the life of anyone might be frowned on by most, only a couple hundred years ago, such treatment of places like this would end in a far more painful death than what these sheep suffered.” She looked up. “Was that you?”
He glared back at her, seemingly caught between his boycott of questions until he was given something to drink and a flicker of recognition at his own web post.
Even half drunk, the author seemed to realize it didn’t paint him in a particularly good light.
“You’re a heavy drinker, sir,” said Leoni, stopping his pacing long enough to lean over Adele and look across the table at their suspect. “You had several public outbursts in the last few months, drunken tirades against tourists if I’m not mistaken.”
The man shrugged. “Just because people are disrespectful, stupid, doesn’t mean I kill them.”
Adele shook her head. “Well, I still would like you to tell me if you were anywhere in the last week or so. As an author, I imagine it’s easy for you to go weeks without seeing anyone.”
He grunted and stared at his fingers, crossing them in front of each other.
She waited and could feel Leoni pacing again behind her.
“So what?” he said. “I was at home. Getting my work done. That’s not a crime. No more tourist books,” he said, grunting. “Fiction now. Thrillers.” He smiled in a gritted teeth sort of way. “Can’t deal with tourists anymore. Selfish, self-absorbed, littering, obnoxious bastards. All of them.”
Adele swallowed. She hadn’t expected him to be so forthcoming. For someone who prided himself on his ability with words, he sure wasn’t careful with them.
“Are you telling me you have no alibi for the last week?”
“I’m telling you,” he said, his voice still a bit slurred, “that I am an author.”
He said the last word with a flourish of his voice, as if presenting something fascinating, or alluring, like the climax of a magic trick.
Adele was unimpressed. “So you were cooped up in your home, writing, is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t chase the muse, the muse chases me,” he replied.
Adele was beginning to dislike him for entirely separate reasons than the potential of being a suspected murderer. “Right, so no alibi. A history of tirades against tourists, and direct ties to victims of the last three murders. You wanted to see them dead. You practically gloated.”
“I did not gloat,” he snapped.
Adele scrolled to the next screenshot on her phone, quoting again, “A noose is far too good an end for such desecraters as these. Were I the one to snuff their lights, it would be with the full vengeance and fury of Ares…”
“I don’t remember that,” he said, surly now.
Adele pushed away from the table. “If you have no alibi, no explanation for those posts, I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep you here for little bit longer. Your place will be searched.”
“Bah!” he snapped. “You won’t find anything there.”
Adele hesitated, frowning at this odd phrasing. You won’t find anything there. Not I have nothing to hide. Not you won’t find anything. Rather, he’d said, You won’t find anything there.
“Where might we find something then?” Adele said, cautiously.
But Mr. Von Ziegler seemed to realize he’d said too much. He just snorted in her direction and then dipped his head into his hands, his fingers pushing against his dyed locks, tangling in the thin mess.
“Mr. Von Ziegler,” Adele said, quietly. “You need to talk with me. Help me clear your name.”
No response, just quiet muttering about a drink.
“Mr. Von Ziegler?” she prompted.
But he no longer reacted to her words, still stooped, still muttering at the metal table.
Adele shared a look with Leoni, shrugged, and the two of them stepped away from the table. They waited to see if the motion would elicit an action from Mr. Von Ziegler.
You won’t find anything there.
But he kept his head dipped.
“We’ll be back soon, Mr. Von Ziegler,” Adele said.
Still no response.
Adele sighed and moved out from behind the interrogation desk, across the spacious room and to the door. She tapped on the window, and it unlocked from the outside, allowing the two of them out into the Austrian precinct, as the door clicked shut behind them.
As Leoni and Adele moved toward the sliding doors at the end of the precinct, past the sergeant’s desk, Leoni said, in a low tone, “He seems like he might be the guy.”
“Seems like it.”
“No alibi. All the motive in the world. And definitely has the means.”
“Yep. He does seem like it.”
“So, how come you don’t sound convinced?”
Adele opened her eyes wide, as if testing against a headache from the bright lights in the precinct. She winced a bit, but then glanced toward Agent Leoni and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, softly. “No reason. No good reason at least.”
Leoni returned her gaze. “Well, he’s the suspect we have. I know my higher-ups at AISE are going to want to speak with him. You might want to call your people. Keep them in the loop.”
Adele breathed heavily, but nodded. She didn’t love the idea of having to contact Ms. Jayne so soon. But what else could she do? The man had all but admitted to the crime. No alibi, no defense. Not even an attempt to gloss over the violent words he’d spewed on his website. It wasn’t a good look. And yet, somehow, she couldn’t shake the horrible sensation they were missing something.
Still, she lifted her phone, dialed Ms. Jayne’s number, and waited for an answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
“Yes?” she said, trying not to bite her tongue.
“Agent Sharp?” came Ms. Jayne’s voice, louder than usual, with background noise like the sound of a churning fan. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes?” she repeated, deciding not to ask about the noise. Ms. Jayne’s business was her own.
“I’ve been notified you have a suspect in custody. He looks good for it, yes?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
“No, Adele, he does. I’ve been briefed. Good work, Agent.”
Adele gnawed on her lip, moving out of the precinct now and taking the steps to the parking lot in search of a bit more privacy. She neared her parked car in the darkening evening, keys jingling as she pulled them from her pocket.
“I—I don’t think we have the right angle, Ms. Jayne.”
The background noise grew louder and the Inter
pol correspondent responded, but Adele couldn’t make out her words. She winced and said, “What was that?”
Ms. Jayne’s voice came crackling and disrupted, but Adele made out the words, “Nonsense. You’ve done well. Make sure they keep him overnight, understand?”
“Yes, I will. But look—”
The loud noise suddenly cut short, the phone began to beep. Adele blinked, said, “Hello? Hello, Ms. Jayne?”
No response.
“Damn reception,” Adele muttered, sliding into the front seat of the car all the same and rolling down the window.
Adele sat in the parking lot outside the Austrian precinct, beneath the glowing yellow of a curved safety light above the asphalt. She reclined in the car, the seat leaned back, her head pressed against the cushioned headrest. Her arm poked out the window into the cool evening air. The summer had gone, slipping away and conceding to night. The darkness in the sky spread out over the city, over the precinct, consuming shadows and settling thick.
Adele stared through the windshield, facing the precinct. A couple of officers also came down the stairs, one of them with a briefcase slung over her shoulder, and another brushing a long strand of hair behind her ear, as she then hefted her heavy belt with tools and weapons and cuffs, and adjusted her uniform, preparing to go on night patrol.
Leoni was still in the precinct, working on paperwork and communicating with the higher-ups in Italy.
As for Adele, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d missed a step.
Everyone seemed to agree. Ms. Jayne had agreed. Leoni agreed. Leoni’s higher-ups had agreed. Authorities from Paris, Italy, and Greece all seemed to agree.
They had their man. They’d captured him.
No questions asked. Simple.
And yet, Adele wasn’t convinced.
The killer had been smart. One step ahead. Mr. Von Ziegler, though an author, the sort that might be good enough with words to create riddles, was a drunk. A blowhard. The sort of person to scatter their thoughts across the Internet for everyone to see. He didn’t even have an alibi for the murders. And when he tried to run when they’d shown up, there hadn’t even been an escape plan. He’d caught himself on thistles.