The Fairytale Killer : E&M Investigations Prequel

by Lena Bourne

  “Or he was in a hurry,” I say.

  But that’s yet another confirmation that the Pocahontas’ murder is different from the rest. And if Eva’s dangerous amateur sleuthing to find Mirela, who just happened to see another victim with a guy who matches all the other descriptions, is taken out of the picture, that case is also the only one that has any witnesses. An accident or design. It sure looks a lot like the latter. But if The Fairytale Killer is sending us a message, I’m not getting it. Yet. I hope.

  18

  Eva

  I spoke to the social worker in the living room the entire time Mirela was describing the guy she saw to the sketch artist in the kitchen. The gist of it was that, yes, they can set her up in a safe house, but they can’t make her stay there against her will. Mark and the short black-haired detective came in about halfway through my conversation and went directly into the kitchen. The look of quiet longing Mark gave me on his way there, cut right to my heart and I missed a whole section of what the social worker was saying just then.

  He came back in a couple of minutes later and asked for a word with me. In private. In the bedroom, which is still as messy as it was the morning he got that first call, and still smells of him, of us, of the reunion sex. It seems like it belongs in another life now. Though, to be honest, we were living on borrowed time then, enjoying a reprieve we both knew was temporary. We just pretended it wasn’t.

  What I feel for him as I close the bedroom door behind us and face him is like nothing I’ve ever felt for another person. It’s a mixture of love and devotion, care, and tenderness, along with the butterflies of desire all rolled into more than the sum of its parts. To say I love him doesn’t even come close to describing how I really feel.

  He pulls me into a loose embrace, his hands on my lower back. He needs a shave and sleep. His whole face is greyish with tiredness, even the bags under his bloodshot eyes. But his eyes are alert and alive with all those things I feel for him and more. He has the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen on an adult, usually, such pure mirth and innocence are only reserved for children. I’m amazed he was able to retain that after all he’s seen. I try to, but I know my eyes betray my bitterness and frustration at the world and what I’ve seen of it.

  “It’s not safe for you out on the streets, especially back alleys like the ones where you found Mirela,” he says slowly, hesitatingly. He’s afraid I’ll get mad. And any other time, I probably would.

  I smile instead and run my hand down his cheeks, the stubble prickling my palm.

  “I can take care of myself,” I say. “And I’m not really his target age or occupation.”

  He shakes his head slowly like he’s considering what to say. “We don’t know enough about this guy to be sure of anything. I’d rather you stayed safe.”

  “And I’d rather you did too, Mark, but you’ve got a job to do and so do I. This monster killed a friend of mine and I’ll do what I can to get him caught.”

  He gives me a sad little half-smile, his eyes full of worry he can do nothing about. Then he pulls me into a tighter embrace, holding me so hard it’s hard to breathe for a moment. I hold him just as tightly. Just holding him is rejuvenating, and as we break apart, I have no doubt it was the same for him. Some color has returned to his cheeks and there are sparks in his eyes that weren’t there before.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promise him. “But you be careful too. Starting with getting some sleep. Stay here with me tonight, after they leave.”

  He was going to tell me he can’t, I could see it in his eyes, but it was interrupted by shouting and cursing from the kitchen. Mirela is refusing to go with them. She’s threatening to jump out the window if they don’t let her walk out alone. He let’s go of me.

  “She’s a witness, and she is very likely in danger,” Mark says. “Once this guy realizes how much she knows, he will eliminate her. That much I can say for certain. He’s too methodical and precise to leave loose ends he knows about.”

  “I know,” I say. “But I doubt she’ll listen to me.”

  I open the bedroom door just as the front door slams behind Mirela, so I guess we’ll never know.

  Detective Schmitt shrugs at Mark, holding his hands out, palms out. “We have nothing to hold her on. We can put a tail on her, that’s all we can do.”

  “I say do it,” Mark says and Schmitt issues the instructions to the female officer who leaves right away. The social worker leaves with her, while the sketch artist is standing by the door, holding a large briefcase under one arm and an easel under the other. I never got to see the man Mirela described and I regret that now. But very likely the sketch will be all over the media, print, and broadcast, very soon. I’ll probably get sent a copy.

  “Do you want to come back to the station and interview the dog walker?” Schmitt asks Mark.

  Mark nods. “Yes, I’ll meet you there.”

  Schmitt leaves, ushering the sketch artist out before him.

  “I was serious, Mark, you need rest,” I tell him. “You look about ready to collapse.”

  He chuckles. “I’m not as far gone as that. But I’ll come right back here once I’m done at the station, I promise. Though it’s very important that we work this case while the trail is still hot.”

  There’s no use arguing, he’ll do what he needs to do just as I do what I need to do. Allowing each other that is the foundation of our relationship, and the fact that we can do that for each other is very likely the main reason we’re still together. That and the fact that I love him the way I’ve never loved any other man. Like family. I love him like family.

  Mark

  I didn’t find out much more than Schmitt did from the dog walker who found Pocahontas’ body, and she was quite agitated at having to wait around the station for six hours by the time I finally got to her. She took her time looking at the composite sketch the artist made on Mirela’s instructions, and after about twenty minutes confirmed she is as sure as she can be that it’s the same man she saw in the park. By then, the light grey walls of the station were flickering before my eyes and I no longer trusted my judgment on anything, because of my tiredness, which went right past the sluggish phase into the stage where my whole body prickles like my blood is on fire.

  But we still had to decide what to do with the sketch.

  The man Mirela described has a narrow forehead and prominent brows under thick eyebrows, which she says are darker than his hair, which is long enough for waves of it to fall into his eyes. The eyes are deep-set, big, and spaced quite far apart. Bright blue, according to Mirela. He also has a straight nose, not too small and not too big, nicely-shaped lips, and a prominent jaw with just a hint of a cleft in his chin. The more I look at the picture, the more I start to believe that Mirela really liked the look of this guy and she described him more favorably than she would have if that wasn’t the case. He’s clearly a good looking guy, which would make sense since his victims seem to not only go with him willingly, but enjoy spending time with him. But for everything on his face to be this symmetrically and perfectly shaped, he’d have to be a model, not a soldier.

  By midnight, when even Schmitt was having trouble keeping his eyes open and finishing his sentences, we decided to get a couple hours’ rest. First thing in the morning, I’m taking a copy of the sketch to Marisa at CID’s forensic lab and having her check it against service photos. And Schmitt will dispatch officers to canvas all the known prostitution spots and show the photo around. Only if all that leads nowhere will we go public with the image. Until then, it’s best that this guy doesn’t know we’re coming for him.

  Eva’s hair is a frizzy mess around her head and she can barely keep her eyes open as she leads me to the bedroom, where she’s asleep again by the time I undress, take a quick shower and get in bed with her. The sheets are wonderfully warm from her body heat, and I barely muster the energy to pull her into my arms before drifting off to sleep. It’s easy not to worry or fret when I’m with Eva. That’s how I know she
’s a keeper.

  19

  Mark

  When I woke up, snow was still coming down in clumps as big as my fist, making it seem lighter outside than my six AM alarm clock suggested. Eva slept right through the alarm clock I set the night before, but she was sitting up in bed rubbing sleep from her eyes when I emerged from the shower cleanly shaven.

  She looked young and kind of lost as she tried to wake up enough to speak. But I saw all that as through a pane of thick, not very clear glass that somehow sprouted in my mind during the night. I recognize it as detachment, and it always happens when I’m overwhelmed. A defense mechanism, which I’m not sure is a good response, but at least it allows me to view things more clearly.

  “I’m going to the office,” I tell her. “You should get some more sleep.”

  I walk over to the ancient mahogany dresser by the window. It’s shiny like it’s brand new, but that’s just good craftsmanship and matches the massive king-sized bed and two closets that are overflowing with Eva’s clothes. I have two drawers in the dresser for mine. We haven’t discussed moving in together yet, but she did let me have that space for a change of clothes and I have a whole set of toiletries neatly stacked in a small area to the left of the sink in the bathroom. I’ve gotten further in some of my past relationships, but it never felt as natural as this does.

  She stretches and gets up, the comforter sliding off her and landing on the floor where she leaves it. I love how free she is in everything she does. It lets me be free around her.

  “I thought I’d try to find Mirela and convince her to go to a safe house,” she says, looking around the room until she locates her lavender cardigan under a pile of clothes on the armchair between the two huge closets. “Because she’s not safe on the streets anymore, is she? Not after you release the sketch to the media. Not if the man she described is this killer.”

  She’s talking fast, trying to convince me, trying to justify it, because she’s clearly reading the tightness that formed in my chest on hearing that plan off my face. She walks over, wrapped in her cardigan.

  “It’s the middle of the day,” she says. “I’ll be safe.”

  I brush a lock of her hair that’s fallen over her bright, summer sky eyes back behind her ear. “We won’t be releasing the sketch yet. But you have to do this, don’t you?”

  She gives me a look that’s so full of gratitude and love that some of it filters through the glass pane in my mind. “Yes.”

  I hug her close then, kiss her because it’s the only thing I want to do, for the rest of the day, for the rest of the decade, for the rest of my life.

  But there’s no time for that now.

  “Just be careful, all right? Promise me.” I say as I break away.

  “I always am,” she says, no edge in her voice.

  Much too soon I’m dressed and we’re saying goodbye by the door. And it’s hard walking out into the chilly, snowy street after the warmth of her.

  The thick curtain of snow masked most of the sound on my drive to the base, as though wrapping everything in cotton, giving a very false sense that everything is just fine. It’s not. The CID building rose as drab and uniform as ever behind that curtain, and the inside was still very quiet and subdued. Until I reached the corridor leading to the forensics lab. There, the bustle could be heard before I even reached the main room.

  In there, I was greeted by ten of the crime techs, including Ross, who I still want to talk to at some point, and Blackman. He was sitting in the exact spot where I left him yesterday, in the middle of one of the longer sides of the table, and if he didn’t look rested, his dark eyes alert, I’d think he hadn’t moved.

  “Any new developments?” I ask the room at large, but mostly him.

  The crime scene photos we received in the mail had been replaced by the ones our techs had taken, and he’s got a number of other documents arranged all around them. As far as I can tell from a distance, he has it all arranged by case, with a picture on top, then the documents and reports related to it cascading down. It seems like a lot of stuff, but I bet nothing we’ll be able to follow anywhere. That’s how it was on the first two cases.

  “Our German colleagues have sent us many samples they collected from the bodies and surrounding area and we’ve been analyzing them all night,” Eager Ross answers. “So far it’s been determined that the superglue used to close the incisions is the same as before, the DNA found matches across all the cases and the crystal shoe is made using an ancient glass blow method used only in the Veneto region of Italy. We’ll be trying to trace the purchase to a specific shop today as soon as they open for business.”

  I nod.

  “And the Germans found a DNA sample under the fingernails of one of the victims, which does not match the other DNA collected,” Blackman says and Eager Ross grimaces. I can see why. He really should’ve led with that information, but he’s nothing if not organized in his reports. The problem is, it’s some sort of organization only he understands and usually starts with the least important bits first.

  “Run it through our database to see if we come up with a match,” I say.

  Several heads turn to me, including the lab boss’. She clears her throat. “You mean the external databases we have access to?”

  I shake my head. “No, I mean the database of military employees.”

  She winces, and several of them exchange glances, wondering if I’m once again overstepping my bounds. I’m not ready to reveal what we’d found last night to everyone. I’ll keep it on a need to know basis until we find the man Mirela described.

  “It’s warranted,” I add since she looks like she might start arguing.

  She nods and tells Ross to do it.

  I finally take off my coat, which I clean forgot to do as I entered, and hang it over a vacant seat around the table.

  “I have decided that the best course of action is to focus on the Pocahontas victim. She doesn’t fit with the others. Her name is Nadia Alexeyeva, and she is, was, the daughter of a big-time Russian mafia lord, who heads a syndicate of mob families here in Berlin. She wasn’t an illegal prostitute at any time. And what is even more interesting is that of all the victims so far, she was not bled.”

  “But she had the super glued cuts,” Ross interjects as I pause for breath. I wish he hadn’t.

  “Yes, she was cut in the same places as the others, but these cuts were not used to empty her body of blood,” I answer.

  “I believe this killer is trying to send us a message through this victim,” I continue. “And we were also able to locate a witness of sorts.”

  Several of them gasp as I reveal this, Blackman included.

  “It’s only a very vague description, so not enough to pin hope on just yet,” I say, not liking the need to deceive them like this, but secrecy is necessary right now. “But the Russian mobster is also looking for two of his men who might have seen this same person with his daughter shortly before she died.”

  Blackman nods and picks up one of the documents related to Pocahontas. “I did wonder about this one and thought it’d be best to look into her more closely. She doesn’t fit with the others because she’s not a fairytale princess like the others. And her character is based on a real historical figure.”

  Somehow, hearing him, a legend among CID investigators, and an expert on serial killers confirm my thinking on this fills me with something very similar to pride.

  “I’d like one of you to prepare a report on Pocahontas as soon as possible. Everything you can dig up,” I say.

  “Wanda, would you,” the lab head says, and timid Wanda nods while looking down at the floor.

  “Email it to me by this evening, or as soon as you have it,” I tell her and she nods and leaves for one of the offices to our left.

  Marisa is in her office too, her chair pushed back from the wall of computers so she can follow our conversation better.

  “All right, that’s it for now,” I tell them. “If you find anything or get a D
NA match, let me know right away.”

  They all nod or voice their assent then go back to doing what they were doing before I interrupted them.

  “Come with me,” I tell Blackman, avoiding Ross’ gaze. The younger man clearly wants to ask me something, but it can wait. It’s time to do what I came here to do.

  I lead Blackman into Marisa’s office and close the door behind us. She’s looking at me with one eyebrow raised as I turn back to her. Blackman’s gaze is equally questioning, but in his case, it’s all in the eyes and not in the actual expression on his face.

  “We have a sketch of a possible suspect,” I tell them, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. “And a general description that strongly indicates he’s US Military.”

  “You have been productive,” Blackman says appreciatively. “This is all from the witness you found at the Pocahontas crime scene?”

  I shake my head. “No, the witness who gave the description is tied to one of the other cases. Sleeping Beauty, to be exact. She was also able to provide us with a name. Or part of a name.”

  Blackman keeps nodding and I don’t think he’s aware of it. Marisa looks impressed and determined like she usually does.

  “The first name is Russell, she was sure of that, but I fear she might have gotten the last name wrong,” I say.

  “What is it?” Blackman asks just as I was about to say it.

  “She’s says something like Parcibal, but supposes it could also be Percival,” I say and pull my phone from my pocket, turning to Marisa. “I’m sending you the sketch now. Then I’d like you to run it against the database and see if any of our personnel looks like it.”

  She nods, grabbing her mouse and looking at the screen. A few moments later, the printer to her side whirs, and a moment later it spits out the composite sketch.