“You are Henrik’s nephew?” Unger asked.
Alex wasn’t surprised. “I am.”
“How can I help you?” Unger’s English was thickly accented, but better than Alex expected.
“I received this today in the post. It was delivered to me at my Uncle’s home.” Alex shoved the letter and the opened envelope across the wood desk into Unger’s plump hands.
The officer read it, turned over the paper, observed the writing on the envelope, and then looked expectantly at Alex. “Someone doesn’t like you.”
“I gathered as much. I think I know who sent it.”
“Have you gotten other letters?” Unger asked.
“No. But there’s a woman who keeps following me around town. She stares at me.” Alex said. “Henrik says her name is Perchta.”
Unger laughed. “Did Henrik also tell you that Perchta isn’t right in the head? She’s too stupid to send letters.”
“I’m certain it’s her.”
“You’re certain, are you?” Unger continued to laugh. “Did Henrik tell you what Perchta does in town?”
“Yes, he said she sells wooden handcrafts to tourists,” Alex said.
Unger laughed. “She fucks tourists in between selling her wooden toys.” He waved the letter in the air. “She’s probably mad that you haven’t wanted her services.”
“What?” Alex gasped. The mere thought of having sex with her curled his toes. “Who on Earth would want to--”
“Fick das kuh?” Unger leaned forward, shoving the note back at Alex. “Lots. I think she makes more money fucking than selling her pathetic wood things.”
“So, you think she just wants to--” Alex made an obscene gesture.
Unger laughed uproariously. “You want my help? Buy her beer and weisswurt. You know, the big white sausages? Very good. Then give her American weisswurt, ja?
Alex grimaced. “Oh god. Thanks, but no thanks. So, what about my letter then?”
“What about it?” Unger spread his big hands and shrugged. “Some arschloch knows some history and is fucking with you. Throw it away. Don’t let it ruin your vacation.”
Alex frowned, but realized he was getting nowhere with this guy. “Danke, I think,” he said.
“Bitte schön. Viel glück!” Unger waived cheerfully.
Alex let the door swing shut behind him as he braced against the cold wind. Good luck? With what? Fucking the monstrosity known as Perchta or not getting himself killed by some madman? Great. So I’m no better than I was when I went in there for help.
He sighed. Looking at his watch, he thought about calling Gerd, but it was getting late and he didn’t want to interrupt his evening meal. He made a mental note to call Gerd later. Hands in his pockets, he walked uphill into the wind, wondering what dinner would be.
7
“Well, let’s plan on meeting for beer then, say tonight?” Alex said.
Kimberly walked into the room. “What?”
Alex pointed to his cell phone. Kimberly nodded.
“Ja. I’m sure Uncle Henrik would like to join us. Probably Kimberly too. She can drink a beer as well as the rest of us.” Alex laughed. Kimberly rolled her eyes.
“Okay then. Auf wiedersehen.” He slipped the phone into his pocket. “Gerd,” he said to Kimberly.
“I like him. He’s nice.”
“He really is. I’m glad Henrik has such great friends. Gerd insists we need to get out of town and see some more sights. Says we’ve seen all there is to see around this piss hole. His words, not mine.” Alex laughed.
“Oh my god. Is he serious? I could just sit on the balcony and look out at this town and the mountains for, I don’t know, forever?”
“Yeah. It’s rather picturesque.”
Gertrude came stomping into the room. “Herr Brandt!” she barked. The woman had a gruff nature. Classic German.
“Uncle Henrik is outside with the gardener, last I saw.”
“Nein. You Herr Brandt. Another letter!” she gasped the words. Then, she practically flung the envelope at Alex’s chest and rushed from the room, feather duster clutched in one hand as if she were brandishing a sword.
“—the hell?” The envelope was heavy. There was something lumpy stuffed inside.
Kimberly jumped from the chair she had settled into, hurried to Alex’s side and peered around his arm at the envelope. Same paper. Same scrawled writing. “Good lord. What kind of whack job is out there?”
Alex scowled and tore open the envelope. He unrolled a length of tissue paper and moved the contents of the small bundle around. He read the letter. This one was written in broken English, as if someone had looked up the words in a German-English dictionary and pieced together the sentences.
“What’s it say?” Kimberly asked.
Alex sat down. “Just go get my uncle.”
Kimberly was a bit pissy, but went to fetch Henrik. Alex listened to her run through the hall toward the back of the house, to the kitchen. He found Gerd in his contacts on his phone and punched the number.
“Hello, Gerd,” he skipped the German courtesies. “Alex. I got another letter. This one has, well, something you should examine. Can you come over now?”
“Certainly.”
“Thanks.” Alex hung up. Kimberly came back into the room followed by a huffing Henrik.
“What is it? Kimberly says you received a second letter?”
“I called Gerd.”
“My goodness, what does it say?” Henrik shakily pulled his glasses from his cardigan pocket and perched them on the bridge of his nose.
“It came with extras,” Alex pointed to the unfurled tissue bundle now resting on the table by the window.
Henrik looked over the letter. “This at the top. This is the date your sister went missing. The night your friends were slaughtered.”
“I caught that.”
“What does it mean?” Henrik asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s meant to scare me?”
Kimberly poked around at the black, shriveled sausage-like things lying on the tissue paper. “What the hell are these? They look like my cat Caesar’s little turds.”
A knock sounded at the door and they jumped. Kimberly laughed. “This is making us all crazy.”
Gertrude did not come to answer the door.
“Good grief. I’ll get it,” Kimberly left the room, annoyance resonating in her voice.
It was Gerd. She let him into the house. He came into the parlor, taking off his hat.
“Thank you for coming. I got another letter. This one only has the date my sister went missing written on it, and this bundle was included--”
Gerd picked up one of the “cat turds.” He turned it over in his hand, sniffed it, put it back onto the tissue paper, and lined the five black lumps into a row. “When we recovered the bodies of your friends they were found in a burlap bag. They had been mangled and dismembered as if devoured by a wild animal. Their innards were dumped together at the bottom of the bag in one wet puddle. On top of the ghastly mess were the broken limbs, skulls – all in so many pieces.” Gerd paused and shut his eyes as if remembering that day – or attempting to force the images from his mind. “The coroner identified all of the bones, except the hand bones. None of the hands were found in the bag.”
Alex frowned. “What do you mean? Their hands were gone?”
“Ja. All of them. No hands. No fingers. Not in the bag or anywhere else at the crime scene. We decided the killer had kept them as some sort of grisly souvenir.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake--” Kimberly began, but Alex held up a finger, silencing her.
Gerd raised his eyebrows, but continued. He poked around at the little black sausages. “It appears these are the fingers of a long dead child. Mummified. Black.”
Alex fell back into a chair. “Whose fingers?”
“Can’t say without tests, of course.”
“One of Alex’s little friends?” Henrik asked, softly.
“Seeing how they
came together with this letter marked with this date, that’s a pretty good bet. No one but the Polizei working the case and the killer knew this detail. We didn’t even tell the boys’ parents. It was one of those details kept back to help us if we needed it in the future.” Gerd said, and then sighed loudly. “Which would be about now.”
“This is fucking great.” Kimberly stood and paced the room. “I did not sign on for this full blown crazy, Alex.”
“Sit down,” Alex said.
“Excuse me?”
“Please. I need to think. You’re welcome to go upstairs if you don’t want to be involved.”
Kimberly slammed her hand on the table causing the little black fingers to jump around on the tissue. “I can’t take much more of this insanity, Alex. It was a stretch me coming here to begin with – all the way to frickin’ Germany. This was supposed to be long dead and over – except in your crazy head.”
Gerd and Henrik respectfully remained quiet, casting disapproving glances at one another and staring at their feet as if they really wished they were not a party to the discussion.
Alex sat with an amazed expression.
“I’m going home.” She turned and stomped from the room.
The three men stared at each other. Henrik started to say something, but Alex interrupted. “Let her go.”
8
She didn’t wait for dinner. She didn’t wait until morning. The taxi arrived at Henrik’s house within the hour. Alex sat in the parlor with a view to the door, thinking she might come to say goodbye. She didn’t. She yanked open the big wood door without even a sideways glance into the next room. He heard the car doors open and shut, and then the car drove away. And that was Kimberly Yerina walking out of his life. Goodbye to just over one year of an almost-normal relationship and goodbye $1700 bucks round-trip airfare. Alex leaned his head back and stared up at the ancient ceiling. He closed his eyes.
“I saw the girl off,” Henrik came into the room talking.
“Thank you.”
“Damnedest thing, when I was standing on the steps out front, I found these chains strewn over the stairs. Heavy chains. They don’t make them like this anymore.” Henrik mumbled, holding two lengths of rusty iron chain in his weathered hands.
Alex opened his eyes and looked at Henrik. The chains were dirty, covered with black soil. “What?”
“Found these chains on the steps.”
“I heard that. They’ve never been there before?” Alex asked.
“Why would there be chains on my front steps?” Henrik raised one eyebrow.
Alex shuddered. “They remind me of--”
“Krampus’s chains. Already thought of that, my boy.” Henrik laughed obviously trying to force a better mood with everything that had happened. “Mummified boy fingers, threatening letters, now rusty old chains. Maybe you’re not insane after all, Mausi.”
Alex smiled. “No one has called me Little Mouse since I was a boy.”
“I’m sorry. It must have slipped out. I always called you Mausi. You were such a quiet boy. Always with your nose in a book. A good boy.”
“A crazy boy?”
“Nein. Not crazy. Crazy things were done to you, ja. To your friends. To your sister. But--” Henrik shook the chains in Alex’s direction. “But, you are not crazy.” He paused. “Now that girlfriend, eh – maybe.” He laughed. “Spoiled. Probably crazy. You know women.”
Alex laughed. “I wish I did. I seem to be dismally unsuccessful with them.”
Henrik waved a chain. “Ja. Runs in the family. You don’t see one around here, do you? Well, there’s Gertrude, but --” He laughed again and put the chains in the nearest chair. “I’m an old man. This has been too much action for one day. I’m taking supper in my bedroom. I hope you don’t find that too rude of me?”
Alex waved him away. “Absolutely not. In fact, I think I’m going to borrow one of your bottles of Steinhager and call it a night, myself.”
“Gute nacht, Mausi,” Henrik winked at Alex and went in search of Gertrude with his dinner request.
Alex rubbed his temples and let out a loud sigh. With Kimberly gone, he was second-guessing his decision to come back here in the first place. It was nice to see Uncle Henrik again though. It was almost as if he had never left. Alex walked to the wet bar, picked up a bottle of Steinhager, and switched off the light on his way out the door.
A hot bath and fresh flannel pajamas later, he felt somewhat more relaxed. The gin helped with that, too. The bed linens were folded down in anticipation of his arrival, and Alex slipped between the cool sheets with his e-reader in hand. Kimberly had recommended a book by James A. Moore; and he had downloaded it while they were in the airport back home. He turned on the reader and waited. He read throughout the night, finally nodding off, his reader tucked into the crook of his arm.
Clang. Clang. Clink. Clang.
Alex rolled onto his back, restlessly. Noises stirring him from his dreams.
And then – horrified screams.
Alex bolted upright, the bedside table lamp still illuminating the head of the bed with a soft glow. He set his e-reader on the table and threw off the covers. Grabbing his bathrobe from the end of the bed, he ran to the door. The screams continued.
It was Uncle Henrik.
Alex ran through the dark hallway, colliding with Gertrude in her matronly navy blue robe. Together they rushed to Henrik’s bedroom. The door was closed.
“Uncle Henrik!” Trying the doorknob and finding it locked, Alex pounded on the door. Something metallic and heavy beat against the interior, causing the door to jump on its hinges. Alex sprang backward from shock. Henrik’s shouts grew faint. “Damn it!” Alex rammed his shoulder into the wood, but the old solid construction held fast.
Gertrude fumbled in a drawer in a nearby hallway desk for a spare key. “I know I keep extra keys here in this drawer. I don’t know where it could be!”
The clanging ceased and Henrik was silent.
“Uncle Henrik? Are you okay? Uncle?” Alex rammed the door once more. It burst open, and Alex tumbled into the dark room. Gertrude fumbled on the wall for the switch and flipped it.
Henrik laid on the floor, near the bed, the heavy, rusty chains he found earlier on the steps, twisted tightly around his frail neck.
“God! Henrik!” Alex fell to the floor beside him and quickly removed the chain. He checked for a pulse and found none. “Gertrude call the doctor – the police – whoever it is you call for emergencies!” He wanted to say 911 but knew that meant nothing to her.
Gertrude rushed from the room in search of the phone.
Uncle Henrik’s flesh was cold and blue as Alex began CPR. He cringed every time he compressed his uncle’s bony ribs, but knew a broken rib or two was better than the alternative: death. The old man did not stir.
“Come on, uncle. Come on. Damn it!” Alex blew into Henrik’s mouth. He heard sirens coming closer to the house. He heard heavy footsteps running up the stairs, through the hall.
“My god. What happened, Alex?” It was Gerd. He dropped to the floor beside Alex and took over the compressions.
An ambulance crew and doctor bustled through the door at last. They waved Alex and Gerd away while they also attempted – without success – to revive Henrik Brandt. Unfortunately, he was finished. The doctor called the time of death and they pulled a white sheet from Henrik’s bed over the motionless body.
Alex sat on the end of Henrik’s bed next to Gerd and watched as they wheeled the body on a gurney from the room and rumbled through the echoing hall. Emotional pain swelled in his chest, clouding his vision with tears.
Two Polizei stood near the door, but Gerd waved them out.
“What the hell happened here tonight?” Gerd asked.
Gertrude was wailing in the hall.
Alex pointed at the discarded rusty chains, cast onto the floor, half covered by Henrik’s pajama shirt. “Henrik found those on the step earlier today. Chains. Rusty chains just like the chains Kramp
us carries.”
Gerd frowned and put his finger to his lips. He cast a nervous glance in the direction of the waiting Polizei. “When they ask. Tell them the door was locked. Henrik called out and you think there was an intruder. Do not say anything about Krampus. You and I will deal with this without you becoming a suspect in your uncle’s murder.”
“Murder?”
“He was strangled with iron chains, was he not?”
Alex nodded tiredly.
The Polizei came back in at Gerd’s invitation and questioned Alex. Satisfied that his story corroborated Gertrude’s, they took their notes and gave Alex a business card. A police photographer materialized from outside in the hall and snapped photos of the room – the crime scene – after they herded Alex and Gerd to the downstairs parlor. The doctor prescribed poor Gertrude a sedative and the loud wailing coming from her bedroom finally stopped.
Alex shuffled around the parlor in his bare feet and pajamas like a zombie while Gerd brewed some strong coffee in the kitchen. Gerd entered the room carrying only one mug. “This is for me. I’m staying here while you go sleep. The house has been checked out and I’ve asked a man to sit out front tonight. Whoever it was that killed your uncle is sure to have fled – and at any rate, isn’t fool enough to return tonight.”
Alex opened his mouth as if to protest.
“Go to sleep, Alex.” Gerd said. “We’ll deal with everything in the morning.”
“My god. What a disaster this trip has been. I shouldn’t have come. All this wouldn’t have happened. It’s all my fault. Poor Uncle Henrik.”
“He was an old man. He lived a good life. Now, go get some sleep so you and I can help catch the bastard that did this to Henrik.” Gerd started a fire in the grate.
“I--” Alex started, but was too exhausted and drained to say anything further. He turned and slowly made his way to his room, pausing briefly at Gertrude’s room to listen to the heavy snoring drifting beneath the door.
The Devil Behind Me Page 4
