The Fairytale Killer : E&M Investigations Prequel

by Lena Bourne

  The secretary who called me earlier just told me to report to Major-General Thompson right away and hung up as soon as I confirmed the message. Clean and efficient. But the torrent of thoughts and fears it unleashed in my mind was anything but.

  The one thing I realized while wracking my brain all morning on how to get myself back to the case, was that I best cool off and take a step back. I’ll tell Thompson as much, and I hope he’ll listen. I don’t think they can court-martial me for visiting the crime scene this morning, but who knows. Nothing about this damn case is normal.

  “Come,” Thompson says curtly from behind the cracked open, double-sided, gleaming oak doors as the secretary announces my arrival.

  Followed by, “At ease,” as I enter and salute him. “Sit.”

  I opt for one of the green leather chairs facing his wide, dark brown-wooden desk. Most of the offices in this building have been fitted with modern furniture over the years, but not Thompson’s office. The floor is covered with a thick, dark red and blue Persian rug, the walls are lined with meticulously crafted cabinets of dark hardwood—oak, most likely, though I’m no expert—and they match the large desk that dominates the space. It’s as neat as always, even despite the crumpled, stained envelope lying sideways in the center of it. His office chair is black leather, shining as though it was assembled just this morning, though it most likely had been occupied by a Nazi or two since it was actually new. As was the chair, I’m sitting in, I’m sure.

  “You saw the body this morning,” Thompson says. Not a question, not a statement, but something in between. There’s no reason to deny it.

  “Detective Schmitt called me and I went there, yes,” I say. “But I took no part in the investigation.”

  Other than running like a madman through knee-high snow and messing up the already very little chance of getting a shred of evidence beyond what the madman wants us to find. I’ve been trying not to think about that part all morning.

  “Snow White?” Thompson asks in a defeated sort of voice. It’s not really a question, and that throws me for a full two seconds.

  “How did you know?” I ask. “Did the Germans alert you?”

  I find that hard to believe. I was the only go-between for the Germans and CID and I doubt that’s changed since we have removed ourselves from the investigation.

  He doesn’t answer, so I continue. “Yes, it was Snow White. And her little forest animals. Same as the others. Planned and staged perfectly. I doubt they’ll find anything. But I walked away. As per my orders.”

  It doesn’t do to get snarky with your superior officers, and my tone isn’t lost on Thompson. He looks at me sharply from beneath his bushy, dark brown eyebrows, which are speckled generously with grey. His short-cropped hair is thick too, but all grey. His dark eyes are always just sharp. It’s impossible to know what he’s thinking from looking at them.

  “I’ll let your insubordination this morning slide, Novak, because I’m rescinding my orders,” he says. “I got a letter this morning.”

  My eyes snap to the manila envelope in front of him. What I thought was dirt is actually fingerprint dust. And it revealed nothing. No surprise there. The envelope is addressed to Thompson in a flowing script, written with a firm, certain hand in black ink. There’s a stamp in the corner. A small denomination one. Local.

  “Open it,” Thompson says. “It’s already been processed.”

  The nausea that almost unmanned me when I found Snow White’s loyal forest creatures is threatening to do so again as I pull out the stack of photos from the envelope.

  Pocahontas, leaning on her canoe in the tall grass by a lake.

  Sleeping Beauty sitting by an old-fashioned spinning wheel, her dead eyes focused a single red drop of blood on the tip of her finger.

  Cinderella in her rags, cleaning a dusty fireplace, a man holding a glass slipper for her to try on.

  Snow White in her bed, a man in a white outfit, his back to the camera kneeling beside her bed, head bowed in defeat.

  “What is this?” I ask, looking up at Thompson, really wishing he could tell me, give me some rational, logical explanation. Not tell me what I already know.

  “This one,” I say pointing at Snow White. “She’s the one we found this morning. But there was no prince in white there.”

  The man in the photos is the same one, I’m sure of it. He has his back to the camera in both the photos, but it’s the same wide back and big biceps in both. The angle is such that it’s impossible to gauge his height since he’s kneeling in both photos. Maybe the forensics department has something, anything, to make him easier to identify. But I doubt we’re that lucky.

  “But what are the others?” I mumble, even though I already suspect.

  “We’re reopening the case,” Thompson says. “You’re back on it. And Otto Blackman is flying in tonight to help.”

  I snap my head up from studying the envelope, which has no return address, and no postage stamp. It was hand-delivered to Thompson. And very few people have that kind of access.

  “I can catch this guy,” I say. “I will catch this guy.”

  He nods. “I know you will. But Otto was you before he retired fifteen years ago. He knows his stuff. And we need all hands on deck as our Navy brothers would say, if we’re to catch this psychopath. Don’t you think?”

  Comparing Blackman to me is a huge compliment and completely undeserved. Colonel Blackman is a legend at CID. He’s solved more cases than any other US Military CID Special Investigator and maintained a solve rate of almost ninety-nine percent during his twenty-year career.

  I look back at the photos arranged on the desk in front of me. I don’t even remember laying them out.

  “Yes, Sir, you’re right. And Blackman caught two serial killers in his career if I remember correctly. The Colorado Hoarder and the Bangkok Strangler.”

  Thompson nods. “Blackman is an expert on serial killers. He’s been teaching all over the world for the last fifteen years. Some say he left because he was burned out, though that’s not what he told me.”

  He pauses, a farseeing look in his eyes.

  “You and he are friends?” I ask, not even sure why.

  “Yes, he’s coming in as a favor to me. We were at West Point together,” he says, a half-smile on his lips like those were some great times he’s remembering. “I’ve wanted to bring him in since this mess started, but he told me he left CID because he couldn’t face another dead body or grieving relative. So I didn’t ask him. But now, I think we need all the assets we can find.”

  I nod even though it wasn’t really a question.

  The young women in the photos, posed as beloved characters from age-old fairytales and cartoons, are most certainly dead. And apart from Snow White, they’re not from any crime scene that we’ve found. Yet.

  6

  Eva

  What started as an early morning bomb of nerves, apprehension and anxiety turned into an absolute whirlpool of the same by the time evening rolled around. Mark hadn’t called, and he sent back a one-word text—Later—to my probing. The streetlights outside are twinkling in the moist winter air, people walking more leisurely, with more heart and purpose now that the grayness of day has turned into sparkling night. It’s usually like that on late winter nights when everyone’s absolutely fed up with the cloudiness and the cold.

  I settle down with a glass of cold white wine, Pinot grigio, lately my favorite, and open the novel I started reading back in late autumn. It’s by an up and coming literary talent, hailed far and wide, but to be honest, I have no idea what I’m reading. A book of the weirdest possible poetry would probably make more sense than this “story,” but I need to get out of my own head for a while. Out of my life.

  Every device connected to the internet I own starts chiming just as I make it through the first page of the convoluted prose. My two phones, my laptop, even the desktop computer in the corner of the living room I haven’t really used in over a year. I didn’t even know it wa
s on.

  I’ve expected something like this all day. Ever since Mark got that dawn phone call and left to look at a crime scene he then told me nothing about. But try as the police might to keep something like that a secret, the network of reporters that I’m a part of have their connections everywhere. I texted a couple of mine, but haven’t heard back.

  Now the internet is exploding.

  I left both my phones by my laptop on the kitchen table when I finally gave up trying to work. The screens are covered by notifications—emails, Twitter and Facebook messages, breaking news articles from news agencies who report only the facts as they become available, blog posts by amateur sleuths. I scroll down the screen to find the first notification, but they just keep popping up, faster and faster.

  What is this?

  I open a text message at random, from Kosta, my Macedonian ex. The two of us work much better now as friends. “Did you see? A body was found by the Havel river in Gatow. They’re saying it’s that Indian princess.”

  The next couple of messages show me fuzzy photos of the lakeshore, a canoe clearly visible, the long-haired woman in a light-colored leather dress not so much. Photos taken by gawkers and passersby. The bank of the Havel is a popular strolling spot, even in the clutches of winter.

  Then I open a crisp photo of a woman in a blue dress, her long white-blonde hair neatly curled in luxurious waves held back from her face by a scarf of white lace. She’s sitting in a straight-backed chair by a window, an old-style spinning wheel in front of her, a drop of red blood the only thing marring her porcelain skin. Sleeping Beauty at her spinning wheel.

  A body was found in an unused cabin owned by a Berlin banker in the woods near Eberswalde. Sources say it’s the work of the serial murderer known as The Fairytale Killer, but the authorities have not yet confirmed that, reads a short article by DPA, the German Press Agency.

  My stomach is a knot of nausea so deep and hard I doubt I’ll ever be rid of it by the time I’m staring at a picture of the peacefully sleeping Snow White, wearing the exact same outfit I remember from the storybooks of my childhood. Uncanny. Something inside me lurches, as though I’ve lost my footing stepping from that happy time to this nightmare even though I’m standing perfectly still, holding my breath.

  What is this?

  But I know what it is.

  Three new bodies. Three new deaths at the hand of The Fairytale Killer. Found in one day.

  He didn’t go away for six months. He wasn’t arrested. He wasn’t stopped.

  He was planning this.

  7

  Mark

  It’s not common knowledge that the basement of the command building at the base also houses a state-of-the-art forensics lab, which is responsible for processing most of the evidence collected by the CID in Europe. Evidence that’s connected to the investigation of our personnel, that is. Their services were made fully available to me while I helped Detective Schmitt and the rest of the locals investigate the first two murders. I stretched that clearance to the limit and aways beyond.

  But if I hadn’t, we probably still wouldn’t have known that the superglue used to seal the victims' wounds is manufactured in a small factory in Kentucky that lost the cushy contract with the US Army fifteen years ago to a much larger corporation that also supplies our field kits, laces, belts and medical field kits issued to all personnel, as well as all the spoons, forks, knives and plates and a whole vast array of everyday items too numerous to list. Although that finding did point at the US Military initially, none of the old super glue could be found in any inventory logs in Europe or the US. A small stock of it remains in Asia, on record at least, because when I asked them to find the actual box, none of them could. I seriously debated catching a flight to Bangkok and finding the damn thing myself, but then I was told to remove myself from the investigation.

  After they lost the contract, the Kentucky firm took their vast supply of the glue and sold it to be used as generic drugstore brands. Walmarts and Kmarts and who knows who else are now selling it nationwide at steep discounts.

  My keycard won’t open the stainless steel double doors on the corridor that leads to the lab. Knocking on it won’t be heard by anyone, nor will calling out and banging is out of the question. Even in my agitated state, I know that. I’m fumbling with my phone, trying to find the number of the lab head, a Major Stanley, when the door opens on its own and the woman in question is standing in front of me. Her long, dark brown hair is securely fastened into a bun in the back of her head and her vibrant dark brown eyes are shooting fire even as she greets me quite properly.

  “We were told to expect you, Sir,” she tells me.

  I almost got her discharged when I lied to her about having clearance to test Detective Schmitt’s DNA against the sample from Cinderella’s crime scene. The first Cinderella crime scene? But no, I won’t start thinking about it that way until we’re sure. It didn’t match, and I didn’t have the clearance. I was grasping at straws and I almost took a lot of people down with me. This time, I’m doing it by the book.

  “Marisa will take care of your access codes. Give her your keycard,” she says over her shoulder as she walks briskly to the other set of double doors at the end of the short corridor. This door opens into the main room of the crime lab. It’s dominated by a large rectangular table, two meters long and one across. The table is higher than a regular table and can do many things, including project detailed maps, which is what half of it is being used for now. Sargent Ross, or simply Eager Ross as I like to think of him, and timid Wanda are poring over it, their backs to me as I enter, so I can’t see what they’re looking at.

  Ross, in his eagerness to help as much as he could on the case, revealed to my superiors all the interviews and evidence gathering I had him doing for which I technically didn’t have the authorization, but which I figured were essential. These included everything from interviewing army personnel who had no clear connection to the case to using the Army’s resources to trail Detective Schmitt for a couple of days. Ross helped me with a lot of this, not knowing it wasn’t by the book. So I don’t blame him, but he almost cost me my job when he reported to Thompson and got me taken off the case much too soon.

  The wall over the table, across from the door is covered by a large screen which can also be used for a number of things, but right now it’s showing the blown-up images of the five photos Thomason received and which I’m clutching in the envelope in my right hand. The table and the screen are controlled by the wall of computers behind which I can just make out a part of Marisa’s cornrowed head. She’s in charge of intelligence gathering and everything related to computer work, and she’s amazing at what she does, and I’m truly very sorry she also got caught up in my ill-advised investigation of Detective Schmitt.

  The lab has over fifty full-time staff, but the team I worked closely with for the last two murders are all in this room. The others, probably working in evidence rooms behind the closed steel doors lining the left side of the room, I met only in passing, some not at all. The right side has the four glass-walled cubicle offices, the largest Marisa’s lab room, the next largest Stanley’s office, and the third and fourth shared by all the rest.

  None of them seem particularly overjoyed to see me.

  “What have you found so far?” I ask, opting not to make any apologies for the fact that I’m here again, or any promises that I won’t jeopardize their careers again. I already made those apologies and I mean to take better care from here on in, but I also mean to catch this madman. Now more than ever.

  They all fidget, glancing from one to the other, mostly at Stanley. She clears her throat.

  “No prints on the envelope or the photos, no DNA either. We’re looking into the origin of the envelope, but it looks to be a standard type that can be purchased at any post office or stationery store,” Stanley explains. “Seeing as only one of the crime scenes depicted in the photos have been discovered so far, Ross and Wanda are working off the photos to
try and pinpoint the most likely locations of the others.”

  “And there was a single, long strand of hair in the envelope with the photos. Light blonde, not dyed,” a man says behind my back. Major Wyatt, the DNA tech. “Unmistakably female. We’re waiting for DNA and then I’ll run it against the victims. And I assume the Germans will want to run it against their databases as well. You’ll be the contact point for that?”

  Full cooperation with the local authorities, those were Thompson’s orders when I first started working on this case. If it’s one of ours behind these sadistic killings, we will not shelter him, were his exact words. The man is nothing but just and fair. Which is why I couldn’t quite understand the vehemence with which he wanted me off and away from the case two months ago.

  “Yes,” I say. “The Major-General has given me the necessary clearance.”

  A single strand of female hair. Seemingly the perfect clue, but I bet it’s just going to be another wild goose chase. Like the transparent shoe and the diamond ring on Sleeping Beauty’s finger. Both looked like they could break the case. Both were monumental dead ends.

  “Any luck on pinpointing the locations?” I ask as I walk over to Ross and Wanda, making eager Ross turn to me sharply and timid Wanda shiver.

  “We’ve been focusing on Pocahontas,” Ross explains hastily. “There’s the most detail in it, we thought it’d be easiest, but there are so many canals and lakes and rivers around here and this kind of grass grows alongside at least a part of all of them.”

  They have the photo of Pocahontas blown up and attached to the table, with the interactive map of a lakeshore below it. It’s touch operated and they’ve been scrolling along it trying to find the matching piece of shore.