Where Monsters Dwell

by Jorgen Brekke

  “I’m traveling far this time. I’m seeking happiness. But no matter whether I find happiness or misfortune, you will never see the boy again.”

  “Then it will have to be happiness,” said his mother.

  9

  Trondheim, September 2010

  Per Ottar Hornemann was an impulsive boss. Siri Holm had known that the moment he hired her. She had seen the applicant list for the position, and there was no good reason why she should have gotten the job other than that she was young and knew how to charm head librarians pushing seventy.

  Still, she stared in astonishment at the pudgy little man with the curly and surprisingly thick gray hair. He sat in his office, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, giving her a sharp glance in an attempt to fool her into believing that he wasn’t as amenable as he actually was. Still, she had never imagined that he would be quite this impulsive.

  “But there are plenty of other people who’ve been here much longer than I have, people you know better.”

  “That may be, but I’m giving it to you, starting today. You’re right out of school. Statistically that means you will stay here longer than all the rest of us. It’s important not to change the code for the vault too often. That’s why you’ll be in charge of it from now on.”

  “How can you tell that I’ll stay here for a long time?” she asked with a sly smile.

  “Of course, we can never know anything for certain, but people tend to stay here. For a librarian there’s no better place than the Gunnerus Library. It’s that simple. So now you have an office, and you’ve been given the code to the book vault. It’s time to get to work. I won’t keep you any longer.”

  Siri Holm gave Hornemann a flirtatious smile, without knowing whether such things had any effect on him, and she took a look around. The library, particularly the special collections, contained many treasures: first editions of all the great Norwegian authors; antique maps; a heraldic globe; telescopes from the 1700s. A boss who was a bit more pompous than Hornemann might have taken the liberty of decorating his office with some of these things. But not him. He just sat there with his glasses on the end of his nose, in an utterly bare room, and did his best to look stern.

  From the boss’s office she went to Jon Vatten’s door and knocked. It took several seconds before he answered and asked her to come in. He was eating lunch and actually smiled when he saw her.

  We’re making progress, she thought. Incredible what a little trumpet playing can achieve.

  “Guess who was given the second code to the book vault?” she said. “What do you say we open it tonight and make off with the most valuable treasures? A life of luxury in Bermuda awaits.”

  “I hear it’s a great place to disappear, both for ships and hidden fortunes,” he said with a laugh. “So, the new girl is entrusted with the code; not atypical of Hornemann, I’m afraid.”

  “I wouldn’t mind taking a tour through the book vault. Not a bad idea to find out what’s inside. Since I’ve become its guardian and all, I mean. I’m looking forward to seeing the diary of Johannes the priest. Did you know that I wrote my thesis on it in college, without ever touching it? It’s a strange book.”

  “We could go right now,” said Vatten, stuffing the last piece of sandwich into his mouth with an eagerness that was unlike him.

  “Gunn Brita, your predecessor, was also quite intrigued by Johannes the priest’s book,” Vatten said, as he punched in the code on the control panel of the book vault, after Siri Holm had done the same. They heard a click from the lock, and he slowly pulled open the door.

  A horrible stench washed over them.

  “What the hell?” Vatten said.

  Siri turned away, holding her nose.

  “What the hell?” he repeated. He opened the vault door all the way and took a step inside.

  Siri forced herself to look, peering over his back as he leaned forward, clutching his stomach. Inside the vault, in the middle of the floor between the shelves, lay a body. It was clothed from the waist down, but the torso was not only naked, it was without skin. And the head had been chopped off. But she knew at once who it was. She recognized the pants from Saturday. They belonged to Gunn Brita Dahle.

  What struck Siri was how unexpectedly slim Gunn Brita looked. The killer had not merely removed the skin, but also the layers of fat to reveal the muscles underneath.

  10

  Richmond, August 2010

  “Jesus Christ, is that what was in his stomach?” Felicia Stone stared openmouthed at a tumor the size of a grapefruit, which the forensic pathologist had just cut out of Efrahim Bond’s dead and flayed body.

  “Yep. The good Mr. Bond was a very sick man.”

  “So if he hadn’t been murdered…” she began hesitantly.

  “Then this would have done the job,” he concluded, holding the tumor up to the light of the work lamp and examining it as if it were a crystal ball with the answers to many of life’s riddles. Then he dropped it into a container next to the dissection bench.

  “Do you think he knew he had cancer?”

  “Impossible to say. He must have had symptoms: constipation, night sweats, things like that, but it’s incredible what people choose to ignore.”

  “I don’t know which is worse,” she said with a sigh. “Dying abruptly and brutally like this or being slowly eaten up from inside by cancer.”

  “Well, this is what gave him the big headlines.” The pathologist smiled laconically and nodded at the flayed corpse. He was the one who had picked up the body from the Enchanted Garden. Felicia Stone was still trying to remember his name. He was roughly her age and had worked in the investigative division about as long as she’d been with homicide. He was good-looking, tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. The type of guy who might make her feel embarrassed, even a bit dizzy and sick to her stomach in that dangerously churning way, if she’d met him in a bar and not on the job. She hadn’t had a lot to do with him for precisely that reason, but she had spoken to him enough times that it was too late to ask him his name without seeming dim-witted. She would have to look him up online when she got a little time to herself. Until then she had to be careful to avoid revealing that she didn’t know his name.

  “He certainly did get headlines,” she said, thinking of all the commotion in the past twenty-four hours. The morning had barely started before the case had been snatched up by the national press; it had been the top story for several hours on Fox News and the biggest Web sites. The bloggers had immediately started writing about the latest serial killer in the States, despite the fact that there hadn’t been a similar murder anywhere else. Loads of theories had already been presented. Most of them naturally drew connections to Edgar Allan Poe’s literary world, but also discussed as possible sources of inspiration for the murderer were American Indian ritual killings, Roman execution methods, and animal slaughter. The press conference at police headquarters didn’t seem to put a damper on the public imagination. And this in spite of the fact that both the police chief, Ottis Toole, District Attorney Henry Lucas, and investigative team leader Elijah Morris did their best to present the murder as an isolated event that would be investigated the same as any other homicide case in the city.

  This had been Morris’s main point at the so-called war council in a stuffy meeting room with bad air-conditioning, where Patterson, Laubach, and Stone were present.

  “We can handle this,” he’d said. “We can’t get sidetracked by all the blood and butchery in this case. This is a homicide like any other, and we know how to investigate homicides.”

  Morris was a tall, middle-aged man. His hair was close-cropped to camouflage the deep inroads in his hairline. He had a big furrow in his forehead that never went away, not even on calm days, when he could doze off in his desk chair. He was a sensible man, a practical man, somebody who didn’t lose his head even if the murder victim did. After talking for fifteen minutes he had managed to convince the others that the Poe murder, as the media had begun calling it, w
as a case that could be solved, and that the solution would presumably be found where it usually was—somewhere in the life of the victim.

  “It would definitely surprise me,” Morris said, “if the perp hadn’t been in contact with Efrahim Bond somehow. As in all homicide cases, first we have to look at the immediate family, then at any love affairs and colleagues.”

  After this speech by Morris, the investigative work almost felt routine. Felicia Stone now stood next to the autopsy table waiting to get a verbal and very preliminary report. She’d done this several times before, and she knew exactly what to ask.

  First things first. The deceased had been hit on the head with a blunt instrument, possibly a crowbar or a metal pipe. He had survived these blows but was probably knocked unconscious. Then the killer had flayed the skin off his torso before tying him to the Poe monument and cutting off his head. This sequence of events was fairly certain. Death occurred sometime during the night.

  “Can you say anything about the decapitation?” she asked the coroner, thinking she might have gazed too long into his blue eyes. She wondered how she would have felt about him if he weren’t always standing next to a corpse when she talked to him. Imagine if he were the kind of man she had once hoped to meet? Someone who could hold her so that it felt good all over her body, even in the pit of her stomach.

  “This is not a model decapitation, if you can say that,” he replied.

  “Amateurish, in other words.”

  “Yes, I might say that, but there aren’t many professional decapitators left nowadays, are there?” Again that sardonic smile.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, not amused. “Has he done it before?”

  “It’s hard to say, but if you force me to give an opinion, I’d say no. If his intention was to separate the head from the body quickly and efficiently, then this killer didn’t know what he was doing. He used the wrong tool—an ax that was much too small, I think, and a very sharp knife that still wasn’t sharp enough. He also used the wrong technique. It looks like he used the knife to hack at the neck instead of slicing.”

  “So the killer had no idea how to decapitate a person before he arrived at the scene. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Either that, or he wanted to take a long time cutting off the head. There’s a certain pattern to all the cuts and chops. As if he were enjoying it.”

  “But what about the flaying?”

  “There was nothing precise about that either. He probably used the same knife he used for the neck. In many places he cut a little too deeply into the flesh. But the fact that he managed to flay a man’s torso while leaving the skin on the arms and legs indicates that he must have had some sort of experience. Maybe we’re dealing with a hunter, or someone who worked as a butcher. A doctor is also a possibility.”

  “So in general you don’t think he got this experience from earlier murders?”

  “I’ll leave that sort of conclusion to you experts.”

  Stone nodded.

  “Can you put a rush on the autopsy report?” she asked.

  “Today I’m eating lunch in the office,” he replied. “But promise me that you won’t tell anybody.” He did a rather good imitation of a mad scientist, both in voice and expression. He looked like a character in an old horror movie.

  She laughed. And it struck her that it was probably the first time she had laughed in that room.

  On the way out the door she also remembered his name. Knut Jensen. Scandinavian, she surmised. A rarity in the South.

  * * *

  The press conference was over, the first interviews of the staff at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum were finished, and the crime scene investigation was well under way. The verbal autopsy report told them nothing new. Even though the city news desks were jumping, the Internet was overflowing with sensational reports, and her stomach was churning with an inexplicable nausea that came and went, things were getting back to normal at the police station. It was time for a lengthier, more in-depth meeting. They needed to map out the long-term plans for an investigation that could potentially become extensive. Besides Stone, Morris, Reynolds, Laubach, and Patterson were at the meeting. The five of them made up a special investigative team. For the time being this case would be handled locally, and Morris would wait to seek reinforcements from the FBI, at least until something new turned up. Stone knew that meant it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Morris didn’t like outsiders.

  The meeting started where the last one ended, with one important change: A janitor had finally fixed the air-conditioning, so now it was possible to think without sweat running down their temples. Morris had already touched on the important issues. They would start with the assumption that the victim was not chosen at random. There had to be some sort of connection between Efrahim Bond and his killer; it was crucial to find out what that connection might be.

  “I don’t really think it’s any of the museum staff,” said Morris. “What do the rest of you think?”

  “Nobody stands out as a hyperviolent killer among the ladies on staff,” said Reynolds. True to form he didn’t look directly at anyone, and he chewed gum as he spoke. Reynolds was a methodical guy, indispensable because of his precision, but not a great thinker. The big breakthroughs in a case seldom came as a result of anything he had deduced, although they might emerge from the basic work he had laid down. It was Reynolds who’d been assigned to talk to the people at the museum this morning. By “the ladies” Reynolds was referring to the fact that all the museum employees except for Efrahim Bond and one external conservator were women between the ages of twenty-four and sixty-three. He had spoken with all of them. There weren’t that many: two ticket sellers, who worked alternate shifts; one person who worked in the gift shop; three docents (all master’s students in English, who worked there part-time); Bond’s secretary; and the curator, who actually worked at the University of Richmond but came in one morning a month to tend to the collection of books, furniture, and rarities.

  “But doesn’t it tell us something about Bond, that he hired only women?” said Stone, keeping her tone neutral.

  “Sure, it shows he was a man,” said Patterson with a laugh. “And that he had business sense,” he added a moment later. He tilted his chair back and gave her a boyish grin.

  “Naturally I asked all of them what sort of relationship they had with Bond,” Reynolds went on, “and the whole bunch said that it was good, but professional. It seems like he was a fair and knowledgeable boss, but slightly reserved. Of course, one of them could be covering something up. There might have been some other type of relationship going on. But I don’t think all of them would lie, and he wasn’t exactly the Casanova type. In fact, one of the employees … I think it was the one who works in the gift shop,” said Reynolds, as he paged through a notebook. “Yes, it was Julia Wilde. She claimed that Bond seemed to have no further interest in women after he and his wife were divorced years ago.”

  “No interest in women? If you ask me, that just raises suspicion that he was hiding something,” Patterson sneered.

  It irritated Stone that he felt it necessary to behave like a jerk. But she did think he might be on to something. As a rule, a controlled exterior concealed something underneath.

  “I believe we can make more progress by starting close to the bone,” said Morris. This was one of those rather oracular statements he came up with from time to time.

  “You mean closer to the victim than his workplace?” Stone asked.

  “Precisely. The man had a family. It’s the natural place to start.”

  “The problem is that everybody I’ve talked with so far claims that Efrahim Bond no longer had any contact with his family. His parents are dead, he had no siblings, and his kids all live in other parts of the country and didn’t visit him even on Thanksgiving. His ex-wife moved out of state long ago to live closer to her grandchildren up north somewhere.”

  “So we have to do some digging. No man can completely escape his family,” s
aid Morris.

  Stone groaned. Everyone in the room looked at her as if she had something important on her mind.

  “We’re starting with a rather empty slate here,” she said. Then she turned to Reynolds. “Didn’t anything concrete come out of your morning at the museum? Has anything special happened in the past few days?”

  “Zip. Things have been absolutely normal. The only thing is that the secretary and the cleaning woman both thought that Bond was a tad more introverted than usual. The cleaning woman described him as secretive. And there could be something else. Bond’s secretary got a message to send a piece of leather from one of the book bindings to the university for examination. I didn’t write down which book. He wanted to know what sort of animal the leather came from. I think she found it a rather strange request, and that’s probably why she mentioned it. But I have no idea if it has to do with our case.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Stone said, casting a glance at Morris. She would do anything to get out of flying north for a series of depressing interviews with long-lost relatives. She also had a hunch. From the beginning she thought that this murder had some connection to the museum: not necessarily to the people who worked there, but to the museum itself, to the objects it contained, or to Poe’s work. She didn’t know whether it was odd to take samples from a book binding to determine what sort of animal the leather came from, but since the secretary had bothered mentioning it, she felt it shouldn’t be ignored. It might be important.

  “Okay,” said Morris. “We’ll concentrate on the family first. Reynolds and Patterson will track down the whole clan, make contact with the police where they live, and prepare to take some trips. Stone, you follow up on what we have locally. Ask the museum people for more details. Find out what you can about that piece of leather. Laubach, before we adjourn, can we have a report from you and your team?”

  “At present we’re still gathering information. The murder scene was spread over a relatively wide area, and it’ll take time to comb through all of it. Three sets of fingerprints were found in Bond’s office, but I’d bet anything they belong to the secretary, the cleaning woman, and Bond himself. We haven’t received the final analyses yet. Otherwise, plenty of people have touched the marble bust of Poe, which is a sort of relic for the most faithful fans. There are no complete sets of prints on it. I doubt that the perp would have left any. I think we’re dealing with a very careful man.”