The Strangler's Waltz

by Richard Lord

  “I was hoping you could give us some assistance now. I fully appreciate that you can’t divulge anything about Frau von Klettenburg, but now we have two other victims. And we’re working on the assumption that the killer in all three cases is the same person.” He stopped and turned. “This killer isn’t one of your patients, is he?”

  “I should certainly hope not!” Freud pulled his cigar away abruptly and used it to emphasize his next point. “I can assure you, Inspector, that none of my patients has confessed to me that he’s been going around strangling young women.”

  “Good; then we might be able to make some progress here.”

  “This time, I will try to give you all the help I can.”

  “You’re familiar with the three murders? The circumstances and such?

  “I am. I’ve read everything I can about the crimes in the newspapers. And not the boulevard press either – the serious journals.”

  “Good. Some of the reports were wildly inaccurate.”

  “So I surmised. Let me tell you, Inspector … as the first of the victims was not only my patient, but also a woman I had a great deal of respect and admiration for, I have been following these cases even more closely than is my wont. And I do generally have an interest in manifestations of a sick mind in crimes.”

  “So have you fashioned any theories about the killer in these cases?”

  Freud pursed his lips tightly before commencing. “As you may be aware, the human mind is a series of labyrinths and caverns, connected by bridges that … don’t always connect. Sometimes because those bridges have been intentionally destroyed. So until I would actually have the killer sitting in front of me, where I could speak with him at length, it’s all just a theory.”

  “Of course.”

  “But an educated theory. So, I would say that this killer is filled with a deep animosity towards women. That sounds all too obvious, I imagine, but this would be a special strain of animosity. I suspect that our killer has sexual problems, severe sexual problems. He may be … how shall I put this … unable to perform under normal circumstances.

  “I would not be surprised to discover that he actually achieves sexual arousal when he gets his hands around the woman’s neck. This is his version of physical intimacy. And the choking sounds his poor victims make, their enlarged eyes as they are strangled, he would take this as the female responses to their ‘couplings’. This is the kind of man you might be dealing with here.”

  “I see.”

  “And you should also be looking for a man who had problems with his father. And then problems with his mother. He may have been abused by his father and turned to his mother for protection or solace. When she was unable to give him all he needed, he saw this as a betrayal. He would probably then feel that his mother was part of a pact with his father.

  “He may have even caught his parents in the act of sexual intercourse and seen this as part of the unholy pact they had formed against him. So when he assaults these women and begins to strangle them, he feels he has usurped his father’s role and is, at the same time, taking revenge on both his mother and his father.” He flicked away five centimeters of ash and took a deep drag from his cigar. “It’s all rather complicated.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And I imagine that all three victims resemble each other physically?”

  Stebbel tried to recall the three faces along with the additional information he’d seen. “Not really. No, three rather different types, I’d say … though each one attractive in her own way.”

  “Oh.”

  Having just been jolted by this bump in his smooth theorizing journey, Freud felt it best to switch tracks to another subject.

  “Tell me, Inspector, do you think you’ll be able to catch this man? Before he strikes again?”

  “We certainly hope so.”

  “And what if you can’t? Or at least, not for some time?”

  “God help us.”

  Freud took a long draw of his cigar, then blew the smoke out slowly.

  “Do you believe in Him? God?”

  “I should.”

  Freud smiled. “I’ll take that as a gentleman’s way of saying ‘no’.”

  Stebbel turned to him and returned the smile. “Better to take it as a police inspector’s way of saying he should believe.”

  Freud held up his cigar. “I should stop smoking as much as I do. But I don’t believe it’s ever going to happen.”

  “My relationship with God is a little more complicated than that. I still go to mass. Not all the time, but … more than can be considered mere courtesy.”

  “And confession?”

  “All the time. At least once every fortnight.”

  “Ah … now that’s very interesting. It shows again that religion still fulfills some important functions even for an intelligent modern citizen like yourself. The need to go and talk about one’s problems to someone who is said to have magical powers.”

  “It’s not that. Well, that might be part of it, but that’s not the whole story.” Stebbel drew a short drag on his cigar and let the next words ride out on the light cough that followed. “I’m not sure about God, but I still believe in sin. And evil. And guilt. And punishment.”

  Freud shrugged. “Except for the sin, that’s very much what one would expect a good policeman to believe in.”

  “But for me, sin is the most important thing.”

  Freud pursed his lips and nodded. This was something that did not fit all that neatly into his skillfully constructed system. He was about to dissect the subject of sin more thoroughly, but first consulted his watch and decided this was a subject that would take more than the few minutes he could spare yet.

  Stebbel, meanwhile, was already thinking of how he was going to deal with this when he filled in the casebook.

  “So let’s be clear: you really believe that this man could be getting sexual thrills out of killing these women. Killing them the way he does?”

  A morose look filled Freud’s face. “I am a doctor, you know. A fully qualified physician. Went through all the stages of medical training. And did quite well at every stage, I might mention.” Stebbel nodded; he had no doubt that Freud had been an exemplary student.

  “Now the reason I became a doctor was to heal people, to remove – or at least relieve – the suffering of my patients. But after some time, I came to realize that some of the worst suffering, the greatest torments, were lodged not in the body, but in the mind. And that’s how I was slowly drawn into psychiatry.”

  “I can understand that,” Stebbel replied.

  “But always – always – foremost in my goals was to heal my patients. To relieve their suffering wherever possible. I thought it could be like carrying out a medical examination, coming up with a diagnosis, writing a prescription or recommending some physical therapy.”

  He shook his head sadly. “And some of what I do is just that, and at the end, I feel that I have helped the patients. But more and more, as I explore the human mind, I find things about the human being that I wish I had never discovered.

  The two men stopped walking, and Freud turned to face Stebbel directly. “Inspector, I see things in the human soul that make me shudder. Literally shudder. I go to write something down, maybe a prescription, and I see it looks like a child’s scribble because my hand is shaking so much.”

  Freud then wrapped his left hand around his right and the two started rubbing each other, as if trying to calm them just from the memory of these frightening cases.

  “The horrible murder of Frau von Klettenburg. And now these two other victims, both younger than Frau von Klettenburg. How does one even begin to explain things like that? There’s only way to explain it: something dark in the human psyche, something indelibly dark and destructive.”

  The doctor then swept his hand across the boulevard to indicate some of the more imposing structures gracing their Vienna. “Look at this wonderful civilization we’ve created here over the many centuries of t
he human enterprise. But there is something at the core of many of us, perhaps most of us, that would tear it all down if given the chance.”

  “You may be right, Doktor. I have seen some terrible, terrible things myself.”

  “I’m sure you have.” He took another puff of his cigar. “So, Inspector, I hope some of what I’ve told you can be helpful.”

  “All of it is helpful,” Stebbel replied. “I just hope that some of it will lead us quickly to the killer. Before he strikes again.”

  “I must confess, Inspector, I’ve been feeling deep tugs of guilt since our last meeting.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I keep asking myself if I couldn’t have told you more, couldn’t have offered some theory, some advice. Perhaps if I had come in earlier, with more information, these last two young ladies would still be alive.”

  “I wouldn’t blame myself if I were you, Herr Doktor. There’s probably little any of us could have done at that early stage. We even thought then it was all about Frau von Klettenburg, that she was a targeted victim.”

  Freud pulled out his watch and glanced at it. “Sorry, Inspector, it’s not that I don’t find our conversation rewarding, but my break time is almost over. My next patient should be arriving in ten minutes, so I have to get back.”

  “Of course; I understand completely. I’m grateful for the time and the help you were able to give me … even though I arrived without an appointment.”

  Freud gave a gruff chuckle and took another puff of his cigar.

  “Don’t hesitate to ‘drop in again’ if you need some more help. I, too, want to see this killer caught and his string of crimes brought to an end. Very much so.”

  “And I appreciate your offer, Herr Doktor.”

  The two shook hands and Stebbel started walking away. He hadn’t gone ten meters when Freud called out to him.

  “One other thing, Herr Inspector.”

  “Yes?”

  “Frau von Klettenburg had … fantasies.”

  “Fantasies?”

  “Fantasies that might not be considered that healthy.” He suddenly looked away as if the recall of those fantasies had caused him physical pain. He turned, stepped out to the curb, and flagged down a taxi.

  “Such as?”

  “I’m sorry, I … I can’t tell you any more. I probably shouldn’t have even told you that much.” The taxi pulled up and Freud opened the rear door. “But I’ll see what help I can give you. There must be some more that I can do. We’ll talk again before long.”

  He climbed in; the taxi door swung closed. As the cab pulled off, Stebbel took two shallow puffs of the cigar while he savored that last revelation Freud had let slip out.

  * * *

  When Stebbel arrived back at his desk, Dörfner had still not returned from checking out the other people living in Gertrude Prestel’s building. Glad for the respite, Stebbel slipped into the chair and pulled out his notepad. He wanted to copy the scribbled notes there into the larger casebook he had in his drawer. He found the casebook and began writing.

  “Spoke to the eminent scientist Sigmund Freud this afternoon.” As he finished writing that sentence, a broad smile slid across his face. He could just imagine Dörfner cringing when he read that ‘eminent scientist” bit. He thought of underlining those two words, then decided not to stick it in too deeply.

  “Doktor Freud has a rather interesting theory about the case. He speculates that our killer is driven by a deep animosity towards women in general. He suspects that the killer has severe sexual problems. In fact, in Doktor Freud’s opinion, the killer may be unable to perform under normal circumstances. Freud told me he would not be surprised to – ”

  He stopped in mid-sentence. He had just hit another stump of theory. He quickly rose and stepped over to the large files on the cases. He hauled own the first file and brought it back to his desk. Flipping back to the first murder, he came to the autopsy report on Anneliese von Klettenburg. He pulled it out of the file, then flipped back to the other two autopsy reports. He pulled those two out as well and then scanned through all three. There it was. He again jumped out of his seat and headed towards the door.

  A few minutes later, he was at the morgue door. He tugged anxiously at the cord that rang the bell. A few moments later, a morgue assistant opened the door.

  “Yes, please?”

  “I must talk to Dr. Gressler. Right away, please.”

  The assistant seemed confused. “I’m not sure if he’s still here. If you can wait, I’ll check and see.”

  Having been in the police department for almost a decade, Stebbel was familiar with this game. “Please tell him that it’s Inspector Stebbel calling. The lead investigator in the serial murders cases. The strangler murders.”

  It was as if he had just clicked the ‘On’ switch in the assistant. The assistant nodded, then replied, “Actually, I think the doctor is still here. Let me see if I can get him. Would you like to come in and wait?” Stebbel gave a nub of a smile as he stepped in.

  He looked around. The smell of various chemicals seemed to be stronger now, the entire atmosphere of the place even colder than on his typical visits.

  The assistant had quickly disappeared into a rear nook from where, several moments later, Gressler emerged, looking polite and flustered.

  “Inspector, how can I help you?”

  “Herr Doktor, I’m so grateful that you could find the time to see me. I’ll make it quick: I have a question about the autopsy reports on the three victims.”

  This knocked the doctor off his guard. “Oh? I don’t think we made any mistakes there. What were you thinking of?”

  “No, no, I’m sure you didn’t make any mistakes. I was just struck by the fact that in the reports on the last two victims, there was no mention of semen in the vaginal tract.”

  “Well, I guess that means that we didn’t find any.”

  “So there was none at all?”

  “Well, perhaps a few traces, nothing more. We’re not perverts here, you know.”

  “But if a report says that there was semen in the vaginal tract, that would mean …?”

  “A significant amount.”

  “Yes; good. A significant amount.” He then tried to latch this to another thought. “Which would indicate that the victim would have …?”

  “She would have had sexual intercourse not too long before she was killed.”

  “Yes, I see. Yes … yes.”

  He again thanked the doctor for having seen him at no notice and left. He rushed back to his office and the casebook. The page was still open to where he had left off.

  “Freud told me he would not be surprised to discover that the killer actually achieves sexual arousal when he gets his hands around the woman’s neck. This is his version of physical intimacy. That could well explain why his victims are all prostitutes – or those he believes to be prostitutes – and also why there is no evidence that he has actually had sexual intercourse with these women.”

  He pressed in a full stop and set his pen down. He saw no need to add that Frau von Klettenburg was the exception: she clearly had had sexual intercourse shortly before her murder. This simply confused things, and he didn’t want those who might read the casebook later to slide into the confusion. Let them solve the case completely, and then they could fill in all the gaps.

  But those reflections and revelations coming out of Stebbel’s chat with Doktor Freud were more like isolated flashes of light in an otherwise murky landscape. Nothing else the two inspectors were able to come up with helped them advance in a fruitful direction. Every “lead” was just a desperate grab at getting something meaningful. But at the end of every interview, every trip, every bit of research, they seemed to be exactly where they were right after the murder of Gertrud Prestel: not far from square one.

  The way Stebbel now viewed it, this case strongly resembled the sketch of the troubled human mind as Freud had described it: any leads they had were just a series of bridges that didn�
��t connect, that all stopped somewhere in the middle.

  Even more alarmingly, the case was looking like a labyrinth, with the two inspectors just feeling their way blindly through the caverns of that labyrinth. And no matter how many paths they explored, after all their gropings, all their maneuvers, they seemed to always end up back in the same place: a cold place, smothered in shadows.

  Chapter 23

  The day had been as busy as it was frustrating for Stebbel and Dörfner. It was mid-afternoon when the two returned from their latest round of pointless street interviews. Dörfner had stopped off at the toilet on the way to the office, so Stebbel walked in alone, mulling the day’s events. The young policeman at the Reception desk signaled him over. He leaned forward and half-whispered the news.

  “See that man over there?” He pointed furtively at a man perched on the visitor’s bench. “He claims to be a witness.”

  “Witness?”

  “To the murders. All those strangler things. He says he knows who did it.”

  Stebbel turned to view the man. “Oh, does he? Well, this should be interesting.”

  Just then, Dörfner trudged back in. Stebbel called him over.

  “Karl-Heinz, we have somebody who claims to be a witness to the killings.” He indicated the man with a slight jerk of the head. “Over there on the bench.”

  The desk-duty policeman, Henninger, added, “And his is the third time he’s been in today. Every time I told him you two were out, he said he’d come back because he had to talk to you.”

  Dörfner looked at the thin man with the robust moustache. “Looks to be a little bit loony.”

  “He does indeed,” replied Stebbel.

  “Tell you though, some of the best information I’ve had as a police officer came from informants who were half loony.”

  “Well, we’ve not going to turn him away. Let’s see what he has to say.” He turned back to the young officer. “What’s the fellow’s name?”

  “Hitler. He also claims to be from Vienna, but he doesn’t sound that way.”

  “Well, please tell our Herr Hitler that the two inspectors handling the case will speak to him in a few minutes. We’ll go and arrange a room.” The two started to walk away, when Stebbel suddenly turned back.