The Fairytale Killer : E&M Investigations Prequel

by Lena Bourne

  Some time between finding the fourth body early this morning and talking to Otto Blackman, I came to the conclusion that the best way to go about solving these murders is to focus on one and dig. I was going to suggest that to Schmitt at the park, but then we found the eyewitness. We already wasted a good part of these first twenty-four hours by visiting the different crime scenes, conferring with lab techs, and generally doing too much busywork.

  Gatow, the area where we found the body is a good distance from the city center even when there’s no real traffic, but this is the evening rush hour so it takes us almost two hours to arrive at the station even with taking all the back roads Schmitt knows.

  Jakob has moved on to cursing us in his native language by the time we reach the station and Schmitt wastes no time getting a couple of uniforms to take the kid inside the station.

  I follow them inside, up the five concrete steps, which are awash in blue and white colors reflecting from the large sign over the door, proclaiming this building as a police station. It’s the biggest one in the city, more a headquarters building than just a station, but that’s not what the Germans are calling it. It’s housed inside a tall, narrow but long, boxy building of the type that was architecturally so popular in the 1950s. It rises ten stories, with 30 offices per floor. The Homicide unit takes up the entire third floor. The entrance to the building is made up of three revolving doors and two large freight doors on either side. I follow Schmitt though the left most revolving door into the reception area, which is dominated by a long counter with five uniformed police officers manning it. To the left and right of it are three rows of wooden benches for those waiting to be seen. There’s not that many today. A man with jet black hair and wearing a rumpled, but expensive dark blue suit with no tie and the front of his white shirt unbuttoned, is alone on the left side of the reception counter. A dark grey coat, also expensive-looking, is taking up the two seats next to him, thrown on there so haphazardly that a third of it is trailing on the floor. A woman in a long, military green parka is sitting on the other side of the waiting area, along with a group of six distraught, frightened-looking tourists talking in hurried Italian, and a dwarf off by himself. The police station proper can be accessed by two sets of black steel doors also on either side of the counter, which can only be opened with a code.

  “Detective Schmitt,” the uniformed woman sitting in the center spot behind the counter calls as we pass her on the way to the doors.

  Schmitt’s facial expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes tells me beyond doubt that he resents this interruption.

  “What is it?” he asks the woman sharply.

  “There’s two people who want to see you right away,” she says.

  “Why? Who?” Schmitt asks. He’s never one to waste words.

  The police officer nods at the woman in the green coat. “That’s the one who found the body in Gatow yesterday. She says she remembered something that can’t wait.”

  Then she nods in the other direction. “And that man is convinced one of the victims you found last night is his daughter. His name is Vladimir Alexeyev.”

  I turn to look at the man more closely, recognizing the name. He’s the head of the most prominent Russian mob family working in the city, the leader of a syndicate of Russian mobsters, actually. If he wasn’t here alone and if his hair wasn’t messed up like he’s been running his fingers through it all afternoon, I’d probably recognize him.

  Schmitt merely glances at him. “Send them both up after us.”

  Then he continues walking to the door.

  “Are you Detective Schmitt?” the man bellows, his German accented but clear. “Are you the one investigating the murders?”

  He gets up and strides towards us, and since there’s no way to ignore him, Schmitt turns and faces him. “Yes, I am.”

  “I demand to know if one of the victims is my daughter,” the man says. “I’ve been kept waiting for two hours and I won’t wait a minute longer. Is this her?”

  He pulls a photograph from his right pocket, showing us a picture of a fifteen, maybe the sixteen-year-old girl in a dark blue school uniform. She has bright dark brown, almost black eyes, and long, straight black hair, which is shorter than our Pocahontas’. But that’s only because this picture is a few years old. It’s the same girl, and it makes me very sad that she’ll never smile this brightly again.

  Schmitt glances at the photo and then me, and it seems that’s all the answer to his question the man needs.

  “No! Not my Nadia!” he bellows with such raw grief I feel it too. Painfully.

  “Come with us. We’ll talk upstairs,” I tell him instinctively, despite the fact that I’m just an observer here and have no ability to make any such decision. But Schmitt confirms it and walks to the door, punching in the six-digit code to open it.

  The elevator ride up to the third floor is the longest and most uncomfortable one I’ve ever taken. The man is looking at the photo, clutching it so hard his knuckles are white and I can literally feel his struggle not to start screaming.

  “This way,” Schmitt says once the elevator opens and then leads us to a small, informal interview room at the end of the hall. Inside it, there’s a round table with a white plastic top and six blue chairs around it, and it smells of old polyester carpet, plastic, and stale coffee. Clearly, no one has opened the windows in here for quite some time.

  “Mr. Alexeyev, please sit,” Schmitt says, and the man does, looking grateful that he can. And defeated. His hands are still clutching the photo, but they’re shaking now. “I can’t confirm that we found your daughter’s body last night,” Schmitt continues in that monotone, almost robotic voice of his, but it’s spot on right now.

  “We did, however, find several bodies, I am sorry to say, some of which we have yet to identify. If you tell me why you suspect one of them might be your daughter, I can arrange for you to go and try to identify her,” Schmitt continues, handling the situation perfectly, as far as I’m concerned. We won’t get much out of Alexeyev if he’s stricken with grief over his daughter’s death, and he clearly knows something, else he wouldn’t be here.

  “Yes, good,” Alexeyev says and visibly relaxes. He even lays the photo down on the table, smoothing out the wrinkles he caused as he clutched it.

  “What made you think your daughter’s body has been found?” Schmitt asks.

  I take a seat to Alexeyev’s left and Schmitt follows suit, taking a seat to the man’s right.

  “Nadia, my daughter, she’s been acting out lately. She just turned eighteen last December, and she thought she was grown now and in charge of her own life. Even though she’s still in school. We fought, she ran away, and I haven't seen her in almost two weeks. I had my men out looking for her, but they couldn’t find her anywhere. Then I get a call from the station telling me that you did.”

  “Who called you?” Schmitt asks, a little too sharply perhaps.

  “Someone I know,” the man says evasively.

  It stands to reason that a man as powerful as Alexeyev would have informants in the police. I can see that Schmitt is about to go down that line of questioning with him, and I forestall him by asking, “Where was your daughter last seen?”

  Alexeyev fixes me. “In one of those filthy squats in Friedrichshain a week ago. Two of my men found her there, and they almost managed to catch her and bring her back, but she was with a guy. Military, by the sound of it. He took out both my guys and ran away with my daughter.”

  Schmitt and I exchange a look.

  “A tall, muscular guy?” I ask. “American?”

  Alexeyev nods to all my questions. “A regular Hercules the way my two useless men described him, though I figured they were just making most of that up to explain how one man could beat both of them up.”

  “Can we speak to these men?” Schmitt asks. “Get a clear description of the man they saw?”

  The man’s dark eyes—same eyes as his daughters—go so cold I clearly see the
endless winter of his soul. “They no longer work for me.”

  I have no doubt they no longer work for anyone. Maybe they’ll find their bodies washed up by the river Spree come Spring or maybe no one will ever see them again.

  “Did your daughter ever work as an illegal prostitute?” I ask.

  “No!” the man yells, banging both his fists against the table. “How dare you ask that? Who are you anyway, what’s your name?”

  He asks in a way that makes me think my body might or might not be washed up by the river come spring.

  “I’m Special Investigator Mark Novak,” I tell him. “I work for the US Military.”

  The cold look in the man’s eyes goes from dangerous to deadly. “Yes, the man who took my daughter was American. Most likely a soldier. Are you here to cover up for him?”

  It’s not really a question, it’s a statement, and I doubt anything I say will convince him otherwise. “No, I am here to help find your daughter’s killer, whoever he is. This man she was with is definitely a suspect, one we’d like to find as soon as possible, so a description of him and where he was last seen would be very helpful.”

  “I’ll get you a description,” the man says, pulling out his phone and dialing someone on his speed dial. Then he proceeds to issue instructions in hurried Russian, which I have trouble following. I only have a middling knowledge of Russian, but I can understand enough to know he’s telling someone to go do something, and I hope I was wrong about the two men ending up in the river.

  “You will get your description,” Alexeyev says. “My men were beaten very badly while trying to save my daughter. Now I would like to go make the identification. Perhaps all of this is not even necessary.”

  The longing in his voice is overwhelming, and I hope nothing to kill it is showing on my face. He stands up laboriously as if he’d rather not, and his face is such a hard stone expressionless mask, I know he’s about to go face his worst fear, no matter how much death he’s already seen. I’m as sure as I can be that Pocahontas is his daughter Nadia.

  “I’ll see to it,” Schmitt says and walks to the door. “Follow me.”

  I remain seated since I have no desire to witness this man’s grief. What I’ve seen so far is already clouding my already clouded focus on this case. So much sadness, so much grief, such a twisted depraved maniac we’re hunting.

  “Another thing my men said,” Alexeyev says, turning to me from the door. “My daughter called him Russ or Ross. She apparently said to him, “Be careful, Russ, they’re killers,” while my men were fighting him.”

  My mind snaps straight to Eager Ross. He’s tall and he’s fairly muscular, but I doubt he could take two Russian Mafia thugs and live to tell about it.

  “Thank you,” I tell him and he grunts, nods and leaves.

  As unlikely as it is that Ross has anything to do with this, I’m going to interview and investigate him, anyway. I’m not leaving any stone unturned, not when there’s already so few to turn in this case.

  17

  Mark

  Eva calls me just as I turn onto the avenue that will lead me to the gates of the base. I’ve been saving calling her as the last thing I do today, knowing I won’t want to go anywhere else after I’m with her, in her cozy, if a little drafty, apartment. I’ve also been hoping she’ll stay inside all day, waiting for me to stop by. It’s the only way I know how to force her to do that. She doesn’t take kindly to me questioning her independence, which she is fiercely protective of. Not that I mind. Not at all. I need my silences as much as she needs her freedom, and she doesn’t call me out on those. Much. Just enough so I know she cares.

  I’d like to get the interview with Eager Ross over with as soon as possible, but I hardly think twice before pulling over to the side of the road and answering her call.

  “Are you OK?” I ask before saying anything else, the fear that she’s not bubbling to the surface so strong the question just spills out.

  “Yes, I’m fine, but you have to come to my apartment right away,” she says. “I found someone who knows the man Selima was last with. You have to talk to her.”

  The adrenaline that starts pumping through my veins at what she said makes me see double instead of clearing my head. It’s been a long day after an even longer night, and I don’t know how much excitement I can still take today. I used to be able to go four days on a case before I collapse. Lately, as I started getting older, that’s shortened to two, three if I really push it.

  “Tall? Muscular? American?” I blurt out.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she says. “And she can describe him to you. But you have to come now before she changes her mind.”

  “On my way,” I say, pulling out without signaling and making a U-turn in the middle of the avenue to the sound of other cars’ screeching brakes. By sheer luck, like I haven’t yet experienced in this case, no one crashed into me.

  I had planned on focusing solely on Pocahontas or Nadia Alexeyeva, but this lead is too good to pass up. If Eva’s friend describes the same man as Alexeyev’s thugs and Jakob, then we’ll have the first solid lead since these murders started. One that might actually lead us to a man. The man we’re looking for? It’s much too early to hope for that. But I kind of am as I drive to Eva’s home through slowly, but thickly falling snow. The fat clouds that have been threatening snow all day finally broke, and I hope that’s an omen signaling a break in the case as well. That would be right in keeping with Pocahontas’ backstory.

  Not only did Eva’s prostitute friend describe the man in detail, but she also provided a name. Russell Parcibal. An odd name like that should be easy to trace. Only thing is, I doubt she heard it right. When I questioned her, she said it could’ve been Percival, maybe, or something else altogether, but she was sure it started with a P.

  The whole time I spoke to her, she looked everywhere but at me with fear-filled wide brown eyes, wiping her sweaty palms on the skirt of her fake leather dress, which couldn’t have helped much. I did all I could to make her feel at ease, smiling as much as I could, talking as slowly as I could, but she kept glancing at Eva and the door, and I counted it a win that I got as much out of her as I did.

  For almost an hour, she absolutely refused to go to the police station to work with a sketch artist, and nothing either Eva or I said changed her mind. In the end, I called Schmitt who agreed to bring a sketch artist to Eva’s place. I could’ve gotten someone from the base to do it, but everything right now is pointing to an American soldier as the person we’re looking for and rumors of that will spread like wildfire at the base. I don’t want to give this man any forewarning that we’re coming for him.

  Schmitt arrived within half an hour of getting my call, bringing a female officer and a social worker along with the sketch artist. I tell Eva to stay inside with Mirela while she describes the man and motion for Schmitt to follow me out into the hall.

  The stairs leading from one floor to the next in this building are interrupted by a small landing in the middle. A window stretches across it and the radiator under it is cold as ice. Outside, snow is coming down so thickly all I see is white.

  “She says his name was Russell and she wasn’t sure of the last name. Maybe Percival, maybe Parcibal, though I’ve never heard that word before,” I tell Schmitt.

  “Russell? That would be Russ for short,” Schmitt muses. “Like the Russian said.”

  I nod. I suppose that takes Eager Ross off the hook since the physical description doesn’t match him either. Ross has black hair and black eyes.

  “Did the Russian come back with the men who saw this Russ?”

  Schmitt shakes his head. “I doubt those men are still alive. Pity, now that we’ll have a sketch. To show them.”

  I’d rather not dwell on that, so I won’t.

  “What new information did the woman who found the body provide?” I ask.

  “She only saw two other people on her walk that evening. An old man walking with a cane, and a tall athletic American jogger. H
e yelled aggressively at her dog to get away from him in English but ran away when she challenged him. She only got a very brief glance at his face, but she’s sure he’s got blue eyes and she’s convinced herself that he was trying to keep her dog away from the riverbank even though the incident occurred about a kilometer away from the spot where she eventually found the body. At first, I was skeptical. There’s plenty of joggers in that park. But the description she gave matches the others. She’s working with a sketch artist too. Do you think we’ve found our man?”

  Skepticism is thick in his voice as he asks it.

  I shrug. “Maybe. Hopefully. He ticks a number of boxes on the list of traits we’re looking for with this killer. Strong enough to carry a body up the stairs in the broken tower. Attractive enough to not arouse immediate suspicion in his victims. American. A soldier.”

  Schmitt nods pensively. “Sure, sure. But all these leads after six months of nothing. He was never this sloppy before.”

  I shrug. “He had to stage four bodies in a very short time so we’d find them all in one day. Maybe he just couldn’t help being sloppy this time. Maybe he bit off more than he could chew.”

  I say the last in English since I don’t know the equivalent phrase in German and chuckle, but my own words sound very thin to my own ears. For a methodical killer like the one we’re hunting to get this sloppy in the middle of his spree is not something I’d have expected.

  “You may be right,” Schmitt says. “All these people who might have seen him are so random, so unexpected and unconnected that we’re damn lucky we found them all. And we were very much overdue for some luck in this case.”

  “We sure were,” I tell him.

  “Oh, and the medical examiner called me before I left the station,” he says. “Pocahontas—Nadia—she wasn’t bled like the others. Her wrists and neck were cut and superglued together, but she wasn’t bled. Maybe he’s changing his MO.”