by Kim Knight
Goddammit Madeline,
What are you doing? Leave it to the police to catch this guy. The surveillance outside your house will follow you. You’re lucky I have them already assigned.
I don’t have the resources in my department to be gallivanting with you on dates with these men. Send his online contact information my way. I can’t believe this!
Detective Janssen
Madeline ignored Janssen’s rant. Instead, she tried to focus on the news report. Her mind drifted and swirled around the possibility that a man she had almost fallen for had made her suspicious. And now, someone wanted her to keep away from the recent crimes in the city.
The fear she felt evaporated and turned into determination—determination to close in on whoever was responsible for the poor women’s fates.
Pulling up the profile of the man who had contacted her, she studied his picture and profile in detail. She noted he was in his mid-thirties, a white male, with dark hair and eyes.
Could this be a fake picture? She read over the details he had listed.
He was a self-proclaimed entrepreneur around the city, never married, loved dogs, and being out in nature.
“Oh, my gosh.” She placed a hand to her cheek. “That’s how we met, out by the woods—surrounded by nature. And he had a dog.”
She thought back to her first meeting with Chris, when her car broke down.
This is more than a coincidence, surely?
With that thought she got up, double checked her front door was locked again, then got into bed with a feeling of dread. But she remained hopeful that her ‘date’ with the guy from the Sugar Daddy website would reveal who Noah was.
All night, she tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position to sleep. And every little bump, creak, clack, and sound, made her eyes spring open. When she finally got out of bed and checked her phone, it was five in the morning.
Instead of struggling in bed, she decided to get up, do a bit of laundry, tidy up a bit, and then took a lift to work. True to the detective’s word, a couple of men followed her to the newspaper building, then stayed. Several times, she peeked out the window to check, and the officers remained in the same spot. She continued her day at work as usual, and worked late at six thirty that evening, she powered down her computer and slipped into the toilets to change, and get ready for her date.
Her phone buzzed, and she checked the screen, noting the time. It was the detective.
Knowing her, she’s gonna tell me to go home, she thought, but I need to know.
Is it Chris, or someone else?
Madeline slipped out the back of the newspaper building and made her way to the waystation. Dusk brought with it, the dim light of night. A crowd of people, some heading home and others just going to work, lined the streets, sidewalks, and other parts of the city.
She made her way along the foot path next to the station not quite sure where she was headed. Stopping, she pulled out her phone, and checked for messages. Other than a pissed off message from the detective, there was nothing else.
Pulling the website chat app where she met Noah, she tapped out a quick response.
I’m here.
Where are you? Where shall we meet?
Several responses from the app came back within a few seconds. She lost count after the third one. Her stomach muscles tightened, and she focused on staying calm.
It’s the right thing to do, she coached herself. I gotta give the working girls a voice.
Make your way towards me. I’m running a little late.
Exit the station. Then head down Stratz Avenue. I’ll meet you halfway.
I am coming.
Madeline looked down at the responses and chewed her lip, nerves built up within the pit of her stomach again. She pushed the feeling to one side and focused on the task at hand.
I have to find out who this is, she reminded herself.
Glancing around her, nothing seemed out of place. Commuters made their way along the footpath and the evening seemed to be as it usually was at this time.
She doubled back toward the station then took the turning for Straz Avenue. The road was less busy that the main street she was just on. None the less she held her head high to remove the fear of who she was about to meet and kept walking.
What the hell am I doing? Why have I even done this? This could be an innocent guy looking for love. But if he’s not, what do I do? What if it is… her imagination ran wild. Then again, maybe it’s not?
Her thoughts moved back and forth, and she tossed doubt around in her mind.
As she ascended down the path, she noticed the noise of the main road disappeared behind her. The only audible sounds became the leaves that crunched under her feet and the hammering of her heart.
A lone car cruised by her, then turned out of sight, leaving her on the narrow side road in the dim light.
Footsteps drummed lightly behind her, so she turned to see who travelled the same stretch of road she did.
As she turned to glance over a shoulder, a hand cupped the lower section of her face, covering her mouth and part of her nose. And an arm wrapped around her waist, nearly lifting her feet off the ground. Twisting and turning, she clawed with her nails at the hand over her mouth.
“Get off me,” Madeline screamed. “Let me go!” But his hand covered her mouth once again, stifling her cries.
A sharp edge poked her spine, and she came to a standstill.
“You just couldn’t keep away,” whispered a man, “could you?”
His breath had a rancid odour of stale cigarette smoke, and telltale signs of bad oral hygiene.
“What do you want? I don’t have any money,” Madeline’s muffled whines struggled to be heard by anyone within earshot.
“Money? You think I want money?” He tightened his grip on her. “Keep moving. Walk, you dumb bitch.”
Madeline did as she told. She shuffled along the road, one foot in front of the other. She tried to steal a glance at the man, but she could only turn her head so far under the force of his hand.
He stumbled, allowing her just enough movement to partially face him.
“Mr. Fitz? Is t-that you?”
His fingers gripped the back of her head, then clasped a fistful of hair.
“Keep moving.” He forced her forward, toward a car parked a few paces away. When she slowed, he jabbed something against her lower back again, which she assumed to be a knife.
“Stop no, please! Someone—”
Madeline’s cries were drowned out by the sound of sirens. An unmarked car approached them from behind, and another was coming head on. She forced her head to turn toward the closest car and glanced over her shoulder.
With the car still moving, a man jump out of the passenger side. He was a tall black man, handsome in a rugged way. He lowered his hood and flashed his badge.
“Let her go and don’t move,” he yelled out in Dutch.
The force of the man’s hand, and the sharp object held to her spine, both disappeared. She grabbed her neck and gasped for breath.
Mr. Fitz had taken off on foot, abandoning the car he had tried to push her into.
Two more men jumped out of cars and followed him on foot, while another one jumped back behind the wheel and screeched off with the sirens blaring.
Madeline was frozen in the same spot Mr. Fitz left her, wide eyed and breathless.
What the fuck just happened?
She looked around and hurried back the way she had come from. An official Politie marked car rounded the corner at the top of the road.
Narrowing her eyes into thin slits, she watched it speed down the road toward her, then screech to a halt.
“Madeline, are you okay?” a uniformed officer called out to her. “Get in.”
Her throat was dry, and she swallowed hard, she tried to control her erratic breathing.
Glancing up and down the road, she hesitated, not sure what to do after what had just happened.
“You can tr
ust me.” The officer flashed his badge. “I heard the call come in over the radio. I’m here to take you home. Now, get in.”
Nodding Madeline climbed into the car slowly and eyed the officer.
“Oh, my God.” She placed a hand over her beating heart. “It was Mr. Fitz.”
“Mr. Fitz? Who’s that?” The officer asked with a serious face.
“My uhm…” She held his gaze. “He’s, my landlord.”
34
Exhale
Detective Janssen
Two weeks later…
The heavy door slammed closed behind her, and Detective Janssen flinched. Her prior interview with the man her officers had captured—the one who tried to abduct Madeline—revealed a lot more than she had expected.
I need to be sure it’s him. So, this second interrogation before the case went to trial was her only option. And now, I am, sure that is.
Walking out of the room, she left him handcuffed in the interrogation cell.
A new air of confidence, and a wave of relief that the Red Light Girl’s mystery had finally ended, flooded through her veins.
“So, what’s next?” Gibson headed back to her office with her. “You satisfied now?”
“Yep, as best I can be. The hair DNA evidence on Suzy’s body, the websites with fake profiles all coming from his damn laptop, the name changes, everything adds up,” she told him with confidence.
At her office door, Janssen turned to Gibson. “I’ll get an update from the criminal psychologist and let you know what the outcome is. Either way, he’s going down for the Red Light Girls, and Madeline’s attempted kidnap.”
Gibson nodded, gave her a playful salute, then made his way down the hall to his own office.
Janssen pushed the door open, walked over to the kettle, and flicked the switch. She grabbed a teabag, then poured hot water into her mug.
Slumped down in the chair behind her desk, she took a moment to let it all sink in. After a bit, she looked out the window. Her eyes rested on the view of the busy city below.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, focusing on the money tree plant on her desk.
Amsterdam’s a safer place now that the Red Light Girl’s mystery’s solved.
The jury couldn’t possibly be swayed into believing the so-called ‘Mr. Fitz’ was an innocent man.
Not likely thought, she scoffed.
Janssen’s eyes moved over to the board on the wall and all the pinned pieces of information. The faces of all the young women murdered, reported missing, and then finally found after a confession, stared back at her.
Jezzz, what a psycho!
Her eyes landed on the mugshot of the man now held in a cell downstairs, and she smirked, knowing she had caught her man.
Ring.
Ring.
Janssen reached over and picked up the phone.
“Hello.”
“Detective,” said a familiar male voice. “Hi.”
“Dr. Fountz, sorry I just got back and was about to call you.”
“It’s all right. I figured you may have been done wiv’ ‘em by now.”
Janssen smiled at Dr. Fountz’s strong German accent. “Okay, so what’s your take on him.”
“‘Vell, he isn’t a very well man, from our sessions together over the last few weeks he has a history of sexual abuse as a child by his father.” Dr. Fountz paused a moment. “His mother abandoned the family because of the father. And the continued abuse from his paternal parent, and mother’s disappearance are key to his predatory behaviour.”
“Damn, it’s sad but explains a lot,” Janssen added. “From the background check, he escaped Germany after he was registered as a sex offender. He changed his name and set himself up in Amsterdam in property management. Did he say anything about this?”
“No, he wouldn’t speak about the past much. But he did admit to the unsolved murders in Germany a few years back.”
Janssen stood up from behind her desk and walked over to the board to face the mug shot of the so-called Mr. Samuel Fitz.
“You are kidding me, right, Doc?”
“No. I’m not.”
“So, he confessed to them?”
“Hmm, yes, he did.”
Janssen heard Dr Fountz shuffle through some papers, more than likely his notes. “Just wun second. Let me look…”
Janssen waited impatiently.
“Yes, he did Detective. He named girls, dates, but he showed no remorse at all as expected for a psychopath.”
“You have this recorded or some kinda evidence for the jury to see?” Janssen frowned at the picture on the wall.
If they’d locked him up, she thought, none of the working girls would be dead.
“Of course, all recorded, some on audio, and other recordings on both audio and video. When I tried to ask a little later in the session about this, well, and his past, he denied he had admitted to any murders.”
“Really?”
“He completely flipped the script on me. The man has a personality disorder at the stronger end of the spectrum, cold-hearted, little remorse, lack of empathy, callous. Overall a psychopath, a dangerous man.”
“Did he mention anything about Madeline?”
“He just wanted to warn her off, take her to dinner, and give her back her bra,” Dr. Fountz confirmed.
“Warn her off? Yeah right,” Janssen sniggered, “finish her off more like it. And her bra? What did he mean? I can’t believe he was her property manager. This could have ended so differently for her.”
“Exactly, the man is dangerous. He has a past. No doubt, you have all the evidence you need to tie him to the Red Light Girls. As for the girls over in Germany, you can follow up on the report you’ll receive from my office.”
Janssen nodded. “Okay. Thanks. I look forward to the full report.”
Janssen ended the call in disbelief. She had expected Dr. Fountz’s clinical report would be grim, but not this grim.
The upside was that the murders over in Germany that she was not aware of, now had new evidence.
She made her way back over to her desk, then pulled up the Politie database.
Pulling up a browser window, she started to search through the Interpol’s international police’s database for the contacts over in Germany, to let them know some evidence would soon come their way from Amsterdam, regarding the murders they may now have a conclusion for.
35
Forever Friends
Madeline Sloane
At the sound of the announcement, Madeline stopped typing an article and looked away from the laptop and toward the television.
“Shit, you crazy ass,” she muttered under her breath.
Her face pinched up at the painful memories of her so-called property manager, Mr. Fitz, now confirmed as Jonas Schmitdt from Germany.
Her nightmares were ongoing. And it was always the same one—him as he tried to force her into a car with a knife held to her spine. His rancid breath, stale stench of body odour, and the physical roughness had plagued her memories over the last two weeks, ever since the attempted kidnapping had happened, and the Politie finally took him down.
Madeline watched the news update on his case with great interest. The charges, and the interconnecting links made to all the Red Light Girls who had disappeared, as well as the missing or dead girls cases across Germany, splashed across almost every news channel all day.
She turned up the volume on the television just in time to listen to a live report.
“DNA evidence found on Suzy Chan’s body confirmed Jonas Schmitdt had taken her life on the Amsterdamse Bos,” said the female news reporter. “During the psychoanalysis carried out with professionals, he admitted to the murders of the other women over the last eight months, and across Germany. When pressed further, he denied he had admitted to a single thing.”
Madeline’s eyes widened. She shook her head and moved from the table over to the sofa in disbelief.
“Liar,” she yelled.
&
nbsp; She plopped on the lumpy sofa and listened closely as the reporter confirmed details of the murders he had carried out in Germany.
“Three years ago, three fucking years ago, you did that? My God, you sick monster,” she yelled at the screen.
The reporter announced the names of the unsolved cases, surrounding six women in Berlin, Germany.
Madeline switched off the television, rose to her feet, and made her way over to her laptop on the table, then focused on the half-written article.
I’ve got a deadline this week. She groaned. One I can’t afford to miss.
Fleur, her boss, had been really understanding when it came to her emotional state and withdrawal over the last two weeks. But still, she wanted to show that she could keep up with the workload.
Ring.
Ring.
Madeline looked at her phone.
Chris’ name flashed across the screen. She ignored him at first, letting it ring and ring. The phone silenced for several seconds, and then rang again. Hesitating, she picked it up with a shaky hand.
“Hello, Chris.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Chris sighed into the phone. “For a moment, I thought you’d ignore my call again. It’s been weeks I’ve, uhm, I’ve…Madeline, I’ve really wanted to speak to you. I m-miss you.”
“I don’t know what to say, Chris. I’m sorry I pulled you into this mess. I—”
“Don’t be sorry! You did what any woman would do if they suspected they were dating a murderer. Forget all that, anyway, how have you been?”
“Okay, I guess.” Madeline lied through her teeth.
“Are you sure? I doubt after everything you’ve been through there’s much truth in that.” A brief pause hit the line. “C’mon, Madeline.”