The Netscher Connection

by Estelle Ryan

  “The killer’s first victim,” Andor said.

  “The first we could find.” The captain paused. “Well, I did an even deeper search and couldn’t find anyone else who matched our victimology. So I’m pretty sure this is the first victim.”

  “Palya says she was a teacher.” Manny’s interruption indicated his impatience.

  “That she was.” Captain Palya took a sip of water and carefully placed the glass in front of his plate. “She was born in Budapest, studied here and worked in three different schools during her career. She left the first school after only a year and a half, the second after three years, but then stayed with the third school for more than twenty years.”

  “What was wrong with her?” I asked.

  “She was quite the racist.” He pushed down on his top lip when his levator labii superioris muscle raised it in disgust. “She was fired from her first school because she refused to touch an African child when the kid fell on the playground. She left the second school voluntarily when they privatised and actively started marketing to include foreigners. It seems like she was luckier in her third school. Despite the numerous complaints against her, she never received any reprimands. When I spoke to the current director of the school, she said that the previous director told her that Ms Taikon was one of the best teachers they had.”

  “She wasn’t,” Andor said as if he knew the answer.

  “No, she was not. The new director told me that this Taikon woman only spoke to white, Christian, Hungarian children in her classes. If you were anything but that, she wouldn’t answer your questions or address you in any way.”

  “God, people can be awful.” Francine pressed her lips tightly together and shook her head. “We’re all humans, regardless of race, gender, religion, anything. And to do that to children? Awful.”

  “That’s why the new director asked Ms Taikon to resign.” His moustache twitched in an almost-smile that held no humour. “She died before they could reach an agreement. There was even a small protest at her funeral. That’s how not loved she was.”

  “I don’t get why people are like that.” Francine’s hold on her knife and fork tightened. “I mean intellectually I get it, but I really don’t understand how anyone can think that they are superior to others.”

  “Says the computer snob.” Vinnie raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t say that.” Francine shook her head. “Being a snob when it comes to using technology and software does not put me in the same category as these people.”

  “You’re right, Franny.” The contrition on Vinnie’s face was sincere. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, so we know that the first victim was a horrid racist.” Manny looked at Andor. “What about the other victims?”

  Andor’s brows pulled together as he looked down at the printed pages in front of him. “I didn’t find anything like that in the backgrounds I’ve been able to build on the other victims. Doesn’t mean that it isn’t there though. I just haven’t found any mention of racism like that.”

  “What did you find?” Captain Palya asked.

  “Nothing substantial connecting them.” Andor smiled when his captain said something in Hungarian. I didn’t understand the words, but the captain’s expression alerted me to his annoyance. Andor controlled his smile and tapped on the papers in front of him. “I looked at their histories as far back as I could track them digitally. A few went to the same university, but at different times or at different faculties. Another three went to the same high school, but also different years. There is no one thing or one place that connects them all.”

  “But there is something.” Captain Palya leaned forward. “Stop working up to it, Garas.”

  “The boosters,” Andor said. “All of them had Három wifi boosters and they were registered.”

  “That’s how we found these names in the first place,” Colin said. “We need something else that connects them.”

  “There is one more thing.” Andor glanced at his phone lying next to the papers. “I confirmed it with my friend’s dad. All fourteen people had received their boosters as a prize or a gift or as some marketing gimmick. With it they also received a lifetime membership to the highest tier of service.”

  “Who gave them the boosters?” I needed that name. This could be the killer.

  “Huh. I didn’t ask.” He reached for his phone. “I’ll do that now.”

  “Hold your horses,” Manny said. “Let’s first get all the data. Maybe we have a few more questions for this man.”

  Andor nodded and put his phone down on the table.

  “I’ve been speaking to Rox.” Vinnie’s smile was gentle. “She’s been looking at the medical records of the victims. Well, not all the victims, only those Andor was able to send to her. And Rox says that all those deaths are completely viable. With the medical histories, she wasn’t surprised that doctors didn’t suspect foul play. For example, she said that the third victim died of kidney failure. This guy was in hospital with kidney stones twice.”

  Vinnie stopped when Andor coughed and took almost a minute to ease his breathing. Vinnie pointed at him. “Like that. I think Rox said it was victim seven had a history of asthma and died from an asthma attack.”

  “I don’t have asthma.” Andor inhaled deeply and pulled his shoulders back. “This is just bleeping seasonal allergies. This year has been particularly bad.”

  “Just sayin’, dude.” The corner of Vinnie’s mouth lifted, causing Andor to laugh. I never understood the need for macabre jokes. Vinnie sobered when he looked at me. “Rox said that she wished she could help more, but without an autopsy, she wouldn’t be able to tell if there had been foul play or not.”

  “Well, I think Genevieve and I found the smoking gun.” Francine shook her shoulders like she usually did when she was boasting.

  I frowned. “We didn’t find any weapons.”

  “Oh, but we did.” She winked at me, then looked at the men. “Our genius friend here got me to delve into the victims’ families. We first checked into their parents, but found nothing that connected them. We knew the grandfathers are connected from the photos, so we looked for more connections than just their pretty pictures.”

  “Did you check just the Szabo, Szell, Koltai and Udvaros grandpas, or did you check the fifth grandpa too?” Andor asked.

  “Oh, we checked all five of them, Grandpa János Nagy included. And guess what?” She looked around the table waiting for a response. Manny’s scowl brought a bright smile to her face. “We found that four of the naughty old men had a business registered in their names. Grandpa János Nagy had his own leather business and wasn’t part of the other business.”

  “Holy hell.” Manny leaned back in his chair. “What business?”

  Francine paused. She was being melodramatic and it annoyed me. I put my knife and fork down. “An art dealership.”

  “No!” Francine’s wail made me jerk back. She slammed her hands on the table. “I was going to present it. With a picture.”

  “Doc was faster.” Manny only lifted an eyebrow when Francine turned slowly and gave him a faux-aggressive look.

  “Shit.” Colin turned to look at me. “That’s... that’s quite a connection. What’s the name of this dealership?”

  “Rubique Art.”

  “No. Can’t be.” Some colour left Colin’s face and he blinked a few times. “I did two authentications for them many years ago. I thought they were a French company.”

  “They are,” Francine said. “These photos were taken between the two world wars. In that time the grandfathers registered their business in France. I have a few theories about why they did that, but Genevieve won’t indulge me by entertaining them.”

  “Then please don’t tell us.” Manny sounded bored.

  “And what if I’m right?”

  Manny looked at me. “Is there any viability to her theories?”

  “They are comparable to her theories about alien abductions.” I’d been most irritated when Franci
ne had wasted time spouting one such theory after the other.

  “You are all cold-hearted unbelievers.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Anyhoo... the four grandpas started their business in 1936. The records we managed to dig up showed two to three transactions a month. Between 1936 and 1940 they seemed to have done legitimate art deals. Roxy and Olivia found newspaper articles in the archives about their business. The translation program is mostly correct, so I feel safe to say that the journalist was highly impressed by these men and their flawless reputation.”

  “What happened during the Second World War?” Colin asked.

  “Their business dealings increased exponentially. They expanded their client base to America, Canada and China. They sold a lot of masterpieces to extremely rich people in those countries.”

  “Shit.” Colin’s masseter muscles bulged as he clenched his jaw. “I just know where this is going.”

  “We haven’t had enough time to confirm our suspicions yet.” And I hated speculating. “But in this case, I agree with Francine’s theory that this art dealership sold Nazi-looted art.”

  “Holy bloody hell, Doc!” Manny rubbed his hands hard over his face. “How did no-one see this before?”

  “Because there were just too many artworks stolen from people whose entire families had been killed by the Nazis.” Colin was no longer the suave poet. His anger made his voice hard, his lips pulled in a thin line. “In many cases no one even knows these artworks were taken by the Nazis, because there was no one to report it. Only in accidental cases did someone do a bit more homework while authenticating a piece or checking its provenance and find red flags. There are still an estimated hundred thousand works of art missing, of which we have no idea how many are lost forever.”

  “Such awful destruction.” The corners of Andor’s mouth were turned down. “Even though I learned about this in school and my grandparents told me stories, I’m still horrified every time I hear about this.”

  “Was your family affected by the Holocaust?” Francine asked.

  “No.” Sadness pulled at his eyes. “But my grandmother always talks about her best friend who lived next door to them. The friend and her husband were Jewish and they were rounded up quite early in the war. My granny never saw or heard from her friend. Apparently they’d been like sisters.”

  A grave silence settled at the table. I never allowed myself to analyse the actions of the Nazis too closely. Unlike my studies into abnormal and criminal psychology, merely thinking about the atrocities the Nazis committed brought a feeling to my chest that I had come to recognise as dark horror. This would morph into panic which would send me into a lengthy shutdown.

  It was for this reason that I redirected my thoughts back to the case. I thought about everything Andor had revealed about the victims and their memberships of the wifi booster company. Then I analysed the information Captain Palya had uncovered about the first victim. I reached for my tablet and started looking at the details we’d been able to find about the other victims. A few things caught my attention and once again I wished for the fifteen monitors in my viewing room.

  In lieu of that, I pulled my notebook closer and started making new notes. Soon I lost myself in this new line of thought. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that I’d been making notes for almost an hour. And I’d filled eight pages with graphs, tables and mind maps.

  Colin was still next to me, busy on his tablet. Vinnie was standing by the door, speaking quietly on his phone. His expression told me he was speaking to Roxy. Francine was furiously working on her laptop, Andor sitting next to her, whispering something every now and then. Manny and Captain Palya were looking at something on the captain’s computer monitor.

  “The...” My voice came out hoarse and I cleared my throat. “The killer is in his or her late twenties or early thirties.”

  Manny’s head jerked up. “What the hell, Doc?”

  “Start explaining.” Captain Palya moved his laptop to the side, his attention fully on me.

  I took a moment to organise my thoughts and took one sheet of notes. I laid that on the table. “I looked at the victims’ lives. We know that Hanna Taikon, the first victim, taught at schools. We also know the exact years she was there. So I started looking at how these victims could form a timeline. Well, when victim two was a student at university, victim four was a professor at the same university. Victim three was working at a shop that made photocopies for students. He worked there at the same time victim two was a student and victim four was a professor.

  “Victims seven and nine were at the same school where Hanna Taikon taught. At the same time she was a teacher there. Victim five was a dance teacher close to that school—at the time when all the others were there. Victim six worked at a recruitment agency during the university time and for two years after that. Victim eight was the human resources manager at a graphic design firm. He was responsible for the hiring of new employees. And then we have the last four victims who we’ve connected to the photos of their grandfathers.”

  Colin pulled the sheet closer to him. “So if we take this timeline, the killer was taught by Ms Taikon. Those two victims did something to him at school. Most likely bullied him. The same with the students and the professor. The copy-shop guy pissed him off or gave him bad service. The recruitment agent sent him to bad interviews and the HR guy didn’t hire him. And this timeline would put him in the age range Jenny said.”

  “If the killer is a him.” I was beginning to strongly doubt it, but had nothing concrete to support my qualms. “And you’re creating scenarios that have no base.”

  “All hypothetical, love. Just to give an idea of where our killer’s motivations come from.”

  “Well, bleep it.” Andor’s eyebrows were raised high. “This would definitely be completely screwed up, but would explain that the killer is taking revenge on these people for something they’d done to wrong him. Or her.”

  I hated speculation. Truly hated it. But I’d come to understand and even value the importance of brainstorming and evaluating numerous possible theories. So I pulled my shoulders back and took a deep breath. “I furthermore posit that the killer is of Roma descent. Knowing what I was looking for made it easier to find information to support my theory. I discovered that both Ms Taikon and the professor had complaints against them for racism. Especially for vicious discrimination against Romani students. Victim eight, the HR manager, was fired because it had come to light that he never hired anyone who wasn’t white and Hungarian. And victim seven ran an online forum dedicated to Roma hate.”

  “Holy hell.” Manny slumped in his chair.

  “This is going to cause a furore.” Andor looked at Captain Palya. “The media is going to go nuts over this.”

  “Then we’d better get this son of a bitch before they start publishing crap.” Captain Palya looked at me. “So? How do we find this man?”

  “Or woman,” Andor added.

  Colin leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “If this killer is Roma, it would explain why King’s name came up.” He straightened and looked at me. “Somehow Koltai knew what his grandfather had done, knew who the killer is and how his grandfather is connected to the killer. But how would King help us make that connection when he doesn’t know István Koltai? And he doesn’t know anything that could help us?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know what he knows,” Andor said. “We should—”

  “Woohoo!” Francine’s loud exclamation startled me. She punched both fists in the air, then pointed repeatedly at her laptop monitor. “I got you. Got you, got you, got you.”

  Manny got up and walked around the conference table. “What have you got?”

  “I’m hacking the hacker-killer-man-woman.” She swivelled her chair to look at us. “I saw Genevieve looking at the victims and it gave me an idea. I only have access to the online activities of eight of the fourteen victims, but it was enough. I was looking for a footprint the cyber-stalker might have left whi
le hacking and stalking them. And I must say, he-she is good. The footprint was miniscule. But I found it.”

  “Do you know where this person is?” Captain Palya put his hands on the table as if to push himself up.

  “Nope.” Francine’s frustration was obvious. “But I have a start. If I follow the little breadcrumbs he-she leaves while cyberstalking, I might be able to plant a virus that will then give me access to him-her.” She wrinkled her nose. “We need to establish whether the killer is male or female. It’s awkward saying him-her the whole time.”

  I agreed with her. Not for the reason she stated, but because it would influence how we search for this person. Even though I would never make the mistake of approaching this killer as a typical male or typical female who was neurotypical, there were still certain traits that were mostly male or mostly female.

  “Why can’t you just hack this person?” Captain Palya’s hands fisted and he pressed hard against his thighs.

  “Because this person is really, really, really good. I’ve already told you that.”

  The captain’s nostrils flared, but his response was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He looked at the screen and his eyes immediately closed, blocking whatever or whoever he was about to confront. He swiped the screen and lifted the phone to his ear.

  Andor snorted the moment Captain Palya spoke in a gentle tone. I didn’t need to understand Hungarian to know that he was guilty of something and most likely speaking to his wife or someone very close to him. There was a moment of quiet while he listened.

  When he replied, Andor snorted again and looked at us. “He’s in the dog house. He was supposed to take his wife to dinner to celebrate their anniversary. She’s at the restaurant and he’s not.”

  “Don’t ask about the dog house, Doc.” Manny looked at his watch and swore. “It’s time for all of us to go home in any case. It’s almost eight o’clock.”

  “We haven’t found the killer yet.” There was no way I could leave now. We had to find and stop this person.