Some of the consensus seemed to be that he got into drugs, thus resulting in this downward spiral, the brightening light burned out before it could reach its peak, but that explanation does not entirely sit well with others who may better understand the psychology of a serial killer. He may definitely be into drugs, but that would not be the cause.
Still, his involvement in such a ‘hobby’ had allowed them to eventually pinpoint information about the parts of town he frequents and where he might live, and it had not proved too difficult at that juncture to locate his room here at this dingy hostel.
Pasztor looks at Mahler, giving a sort of simmering expression of exasperation, then pounds again, his fist giving forth a loud thump, and he keeps at it much longer than before. The door finally opens, the emaciated young man looking out, eyes squinting as though he were peering out into the sun from some cave. He doesn’t even say anything, just looks at the two.
“Ernst van Zyl,” Mahler says, not a question, “I am Detective Mahler. This is Detective Pasztor.” They both hold up identification, which Ernst proves disinclined to inspect, “We’d like to come inside and ask you some questions, if you don’t mind?”
He looks the two over, briefly, his expression one almost more of passivity than any indication of being bothered, and he steps back, leaving the door ajar. The two Homicide Detectives exchange another curious glance, then head inside.
The small space is a picture of dusty neglect. It is not trashed, but it is obvious that its occupant feels no great compulsion to clean. There are some bits of refuse, but the trained eyes of the detectives spot a waste basket, bearing of some items, along with a white trash bag in the kitchen area. Its top hangs open, like a drooping aperture, about as listless as the room’s occupant, just waiting for more to occupy its innards. Pasztor wanders over, bending down for a sniff. It doesn’t smell as bad as he had expected, certainly not reeking in a way to suggest the decay of human parts.
Some of the room’s corners are occupied by spider webs, areas of discoloration or punctures showing in the sheet rock walls. The only area that has any personal touch at all is the small part that is meant to be the ‘bedroom’, judging from the closed notebook, open soda can, and other small items that must belong to the occupant, all cluttered together on the tiny side table near the glorified cot.
“How long have you been here, Mr. van Zyl?” Mahler finally asks, after they have let some silence ferment from their ambling in and observing the surroundings.
Ernst has taken a seat on the side of the bed, and Mahler pulls one of two chairs over from a small table in the kitchenette, seating himself near the young man. Pasztor continues to look around, peering in cabinets, but there is not much to see, no closets, no private bathroom. The seasoned detective notes that the man appears to not shit where he lives, literally or figuratively.
“Uhm,” Ernst finally speaks, his eyes blinking once, slowly, licking his dry lips, then lapsing into a silence that makes Mahler wonder if he’ll continue, , “A few months,” he says, still not looking either of his visitors in the eye.
“A few months?” Mahler repeats, “Do you not know how many? Two … six?”
Those pale blue eyes finally look at the speaker, boring into him with a casual study, and then the head slowly nods, “Yes. Two.”
They know they can get this information from the desk clerk, but they’re here to question van Zyl. Two months, if that is precise, would not have him here long enough to be responsible for all the killings, but they don’t give his answer that much credit.
“What brought you here from Switzerland?”
And with this question, Ernst looks over at Pasztor, the man having ended his brief search and now just standing nearby, hands on his waist. He did not ask the question, but he seems to be getting a much deeper draw of those haunting eyes than his partner. After a moment of silence, the two detectives exchange a glance. Something is amiss with this guy, that much is obvious, but he is not displaying the exact sort of signs they’d expect from someone under the influence of intoxicants. He acts more like someone unable to fully wake from a deep sleep.
“I had to come,” he finally says, having moved his eyes away and now just slowly pitching words out for anyone.
“What do you mean you ‘had to’?” Mahler presses, “Did you get a job? Are you employed, Mr. van Zyl?”
“No,” Ernst answers, his eyes back to Mahler.
“Then why did you have to come here?” he keeps pushing after waiting a moment and realizing the man does not seem prepared to speak further.
“I had to,” comes the eventual reply.
Mahler closes his eyes for a moment, taking in a breath.
“Why did you have to, huh?” Pasztor asks with more intensity, eyes boring into Ernst, brow furrowed.
“They made me.”
“Who made you?” the more forceful officer continues.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Ernst?” Mahler speaks, gently, and the young man looks over. “You don’t mind if I call you Ernst, do you?”
Van Zyl takes a moment to give a slow shrug of his shoulders, his eyes still rather droopy, “No.”
“Ernst,” Mahler carries on, “I’d like to understand,” and he tries on a warm smile, “Would you help me understand?”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Why isn’t it a good idea?” Pasztor pushes, his tone of voice very much marking him as the ‘bad’ cop, if the two are engaging in such a routine.
“You don’t want to know the things I know.”
“Well, you’re wrong about that, Ernst.” Mahler picks up the ball, still wearing that curve to his lips that implies he is just looking out for the sickly youth. “I do want to understand you, and if I can, I’d like to help you.”
“You can’t help me.”
“Why can’t I help you, Ernst?” he asks with utmost sincerity.
“Because you don’t understand.”
Mahler looks over, receiving rolled eyes from his partner. He glances back, noting Ernst’s gaze, and though it still lacks any intensity, it is quite locked onto the detective.
“I’d like to understand,” he tries.
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Now, how do you know that, Ernst?”
“Because I know what you’re asking, and you don’t,” the ill-looking man replies.
Another moment of silence stretches between them, as though Mahler has lost his own voice from the steady stare of the young man he is questioning.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pasztor takes another turn, his inflection still much more demanding.
He finds the aspect of van Zyl to be very discomfiting, especially with that silence on the part of Mahler. Mahler is good at interrogating people. Pasztor has seen enough of that to know, and though he sometimes may play the ‘bad’ cop or even get too heated for his own good, Mahler generally handles these sorts of things quite well. He takes a couple of steps closer to the young man, and as he does, Ernst slowly turns his eyes to look up at him.
“You don’t want to know the things I know.”
“Oh, stop talking in circles,” Pasztor throws out his hands, showing his growing frustration.
“Not a circle,” Ernst says, speaking in a somewhat musing tone, “Circles are too simple. It’s all an interconnected sphere, like a round web that spins back upon itself.”
“Here we go,” Pasztor comments, rolling his eyes again.
“Have you heard about the serial killer in the city, Ernst?” Mahler interjects, and this gets more of a reaction from the young man as he looks back over with more speed and focus than he has evinced thus far.
“Yes,” he says, his voice still sounding flat, but obviously uttered with more firmness of intonation.
It is apparent to both detectives that they may have hit a nerve.
“What do you think about that, Ernst?” Pasztor chides. “Some guy going around cutting up those poor, def
enseless girls, even taking their blood? Maybe he’s some twisted, messed-up person who thinks he’s a vampire.”
“It’s …” Ernst begins, “It’s horrible,” he says, and the sincerity in his voice is evident to Mahler, and he notes that the fallow-looking fellow has suddenly grown agitated, his body displaying some animation now as opposed to the almost zombie-like aspect he has shown up until now.
“It is,” Mahler agrees, nodding, gathering Ernst’s attention. “We’re working on the case. We’re trying to stop him.”
“You won’t be able to.”
“Why not, Ernst?” Pasztor asks, and the young man looks up, his attention now lobbing back and forth between the two, his own indicative body language and small movements of tension growing. “Why won’t we be able to stop him?”
“You won’t,” he pushes back, his tone taking on something of a challenge, “You just won’t. You … you can’t.”
Pasztor makes ready to say something, but Mahler raises a hand. Once his partner has held his tongue, he looks back at the other.
“Ernst?” he bids, getting that attention returned to him, “Why can’t we? What makes it impossible?”
“You,” he begins, and Mahler sees a sudden flutter of eyelids before those pale orbs are back open on him, and the tension spikes, tendons rising up on the parts of Ernst’s frail, thin body that can be seen within his dirty clothes, “You don’t want to know.”
And another roll of the eyes comes forth from Pasztor, and he scoffs, then begins to talk, “Yeesh, Ernst, we’re ti-,” but he is cut off by the continued speech of the one under interrogation.
“Protect your sanity,” he warns, “Protect your souls. Stay blind to it. Once you walk through that door, you can’t go back. You don’t want to get lost in the fog ... with them.”
“Ernst, what are you talking about?” Mahler tries, his brow furrowed, his own genuine desire to understand etched on his features.
“I know who’s doing it.”
“What?” comes Mahler’s surprised response.
“You know who’s responsible for the serial murders?” Pasztor as quickly asks.
And the sickly-seeming man nods, “I do.”
“Is that a confession?” Pasztor quips, and he gets a disapproving cut of the eyes from his partner.
“What?” Ernst throws back, his head snapping to Pasztor with a bird-like quickness.
“You say you know who did it, so I say you did it.” He points an accusing finger at Ernst.
“I didn’t kill those people,” he says, eyes widened, his spine stiffening as he somewhat rises in place, still sitting there on the side of the thin mattress, then he looks back at Mahler, “You don’t think I killed them, do you?”
“We don’t know yet who killed them,” Mahler tries to placate, “But you said you do, Ernst.”
And a slow, steady nod emerges, “I do.”
“Well?” Mahler bids into the growing silence, “Who was it?”
“I-,” Ernst begins, and just as it seems he has gone back to being a statue, he shakes his head, and a pained look wrinkles onto his skeletal-like visage, “No.”
“What do you mean ‘n-?” Pasztor begins.
“No!” Ernst looks back over, raising his voice, and it looks like the young man is about to burst forth in tears.
“Ernst,” Mahler tries to summon the attention back to himself, but now the stressed man is just looking at Pasztor, his head slowly moving side to side, “Ernst?” He looks back over, “Just calm down, okay?”
“No!”
Pasztor takes another step closer, much more threatening now, and again, Mahler halts him with a raised hand.
“Ernst, if you know who did this, we have to get that information from you, and it would be much better if you helped us willingly, don’t you think?” comes out the very calm question.
“No!” and Ernst is all but trembling, his head still moving back and forth, lips curled up in a grimace, teeth bared, not signs of anger but abject fear.
“Now, look-,” Pasztor steps closer.
“No!” Ernst repeats, holding up his arms, palms shown, an obvious instinctive attempt at warding off a perceived attack, “Stay away from me!” he yells, scrambling back into the corner against which his bed is placed, hugging his knees up, now openly trembling, eyes wide and looking between the two men.
“Whoa, whoa!” Mahler stands, his hands now out, placating, and he gives his partner a ‘look’, then he transfers his eyes back to Ernst, “We just want to help-” And he stops, peering.
One of Ernst’s legs has dropped, still bent at the knee, but now angled out from his body, the other still up, though it is obvious the arms holding it do not possess the same tension they did a mere moment before. The eyes are still open, but the face now looks smooth, blank, mouth slightly agape, and a length of saliva drools out.
“Ernst?” he tries, and there is no response.
It is obvious the young man is breathing, but he just sits there, unblinking.
“Shit,” Mahler curses, going over, “I think he’s having a mild seizure.”
And just then, there is a knock at the door.
“Who the hell could that be?” Pasztor asks, looking back, not too perturbed by the developing situation, but he does not know that no one ever knocks on Ernst’s door, that is, until today.
“You see who it is. I’ll call for medical,” Mahler says, and he pulls out his mobile phone.
When Pasztor gets to the door, opening it, there is no one there. He is obviously perplexed, so he steps out into the hallway, looking left and right, then further out, looking up and down the staircase, but there appears to be no one about.
“There was no one-” He announces as he walks back into the room, but he stops, eyes widening in shock, and he jerks out his firearm, aiming it at the form of Ernst who looks to have not moved at all since the onset of the petit mal seizure, “Don’t move!” Pasztor orders, and were in not for the crumbled body of Mahler on the floor, leaking a profuse amount of blood from his open neck, it may seem comical.
There is a large, arced spray of blood on the wall, obviously having erupted from the hideous wound as the detective had been preparing to call for medical emergency. Pasztor does not know if he completed the call, or if anyone is coming, so he keeps his pistol poised on the immobile form of van Zyl, trying to stop any potential trembling in his hands, as he reaches for his own phone.
“That won’t be necessary,” speaks a very deliberate-sounding voice, the words delivered in a cultured, Transatlantic accent.
Pasztor whirls, moving to face the direction from which the voice emerges, trying to point his gun in that same angle, but he is stopped, the pistol removed from his hand. It transpires so fast that it takes him a moment to realize what has happened, and just as he comprehends that the black-suited figure has deeply sliced his wrist with a straight-edged, single blade knife, pain not quite caught up to him, though he is bleeding profusely, the same weapon is expertly moved again in an arcing flash. The detective tries to clutch at his own open throat, trying to stifle the forced ejection of his vitality, only one hand working properly. The awkward, quick clutching of his hands to his neck just redirects the jettison upwards, and after a terse moment, he collapses.
Denman Malkuth watches the man as he dies, then he just as calmly looks over at the only other person in here who still draws breath.
“They almost discovered our secret, didn’t they, Ernst?”
There is no answer from the young man on the bed.
“But we still have more work to do, don’t we?”
And so said, he reaches for his own phone.
*****
She brings up the mug, its contents steaming, having a sip of the vanilla-flavored black tea. She wonders if she ought to make something more stimulating, maybe brew up a pot of coffee. She’s been at this for only one hour, and she can already feel the boredom setting in.
She then again wonders why she is even
doing this. What has compelled her to want to watch this security footage? She didn’t know if her position in the library would even permit it, but she did not see the harm in asking, she is the Head Curator after all, and the security personnel had appeared more surprised by the novelty of any request at all as opposed to having any caution at giving out copies of the video. So, here she sits, wearing comfortable pajamas, sipping her tea, watching a very boring show of the camera angled onto the display case of the library’s most valuable books.
She looks down at the sudden noise, Dali looking up at her, and she gives him a warm smile, leaning over to scratch behind his ears.
“Kiskiskis,” she says, patting her lap, “Dali, hyppää,” and the large cat springs up onto her, “Miau,” she coos to him, scritching more behind his ears, and he responds in kind as she pets over his back, and he rises up into it, his purring quite loud.
He eventually settles, making himself comfortable there, and she keeps up the somewhat absent-minded affection as she watches the video, letting it play on its fastest speed. If it were not for the rapidly advancing numbers in the bottom right corner, it would almost seem like a still photograph.
Her thoughts wander to him and their recent experiences together, and the curl to her lips slowly changes from something a bit dreamy to more of a suggestive smirk, her eyelids becoming a touch heavier. She thinks on their more erotic adventures, also pondering her own exploration into it. She likes being his submissive, his pet, especially because he does not expect her to lose her own identity and strength in doing so.
She had asked him if he wanted that all the time, wanted her to be so completely subservient to his will, and she had been worried when she asked, hoping he wouldn’t take it negatively. He had not, understanding her point. He explained that some people do indeed engage in such a relationship to that depth and constancy, but even then, it is not meant to compromise one’s Will. The submissive has just as much power, if not sometimes more so, than the dominant, he had explained, again mentioning the safe words and signals.
You have the power to stop it, anytime. You are just as much in control as I am, he had said to her.
Dance of the Butterfly Page 28
