The Strangler's Waltz

by Richard Lord

  * * *

  Later, deep in the night, Carina was again out on the streets looking to sell her charms to whatever man was interested in leasing them for an hour or two. But as there was no one else around, she turned and headed into a dark nook. Suddenly a man approached out of the darkness. In a deep, soft voice, he greeted her: “Servus.” She smiled and asked him if he was lonely. “Very lonely,” he replied.

  The man was large, broad-shouldered, with powerful arms. Carina reached out to touch his arm gently, as she had touched Stebbel’s earlier in the evening. But the man suddenly lurched at her, seized her throat in his two vice-like hands, squeezing tighter and tighter, he actually lifted her off the ground as he pressed his hands deeper into her neck.

  She was choking, her lovely face caught in shock and pain, she tried to use her hands to pull his off her throat, but she was totally outmatched. The man pulled closer to her, his own face only inches away from hers now. It was him, the face in the sketch, the man who had been seen after the first murder. But now the face was filled with unbridled fury.

  Carina’s hands now dropped, as she knew resistance was useless. The man kept squeezing her throat, getting more and more and more forceful. Somehow, despite the force, she was still alive, still trying to somehow beg for mercy, but choking more and more. At that point, the man looked up, and for the first time noticed that there was a large mirror mounted on a post just above Carina’s head. Without any relaxing of his grip, he stared up into the mirror.

  And then he saw the face. It had changed – Stebbel now saw his own face, it was his face and his hands that were strangling this lovely young woman. Fear was hung as strongly in his own face as in the girl’s.

  Suddenly, there was a jolt. He must have hit her body against the post: the mirror came loose and started to crash down onto him. It was coming straight at his face and then it smashed into his face, breaking up into a hundred jagged splinters, and then he heard a screaming. Horrible screaming …

  It was Stebbel’s own screams, though they were nowhere near as loud as they had just been in the dream. He sat up in his bed, breathing heavily. It was a dream, all a dream, just a very, very bad dream. He felt that he was sweating now, though the bedroom was rather cool. Only gradually did his breathing slow down to normal. And only gradually did the ache in his head start to subside.

  He threw his head back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. He wanted to look at the clock near his bedside, but was afraid to. He knew it was late. Much too late.

  Chapter 25

  Dörfner was having some trouble with his leg that morning, so he was later getting to the office. That, and the fact that he had stopped off at a nearby bakery for a couple of fresh Buchteln sweet buns dusted with cinnamon sugar.

  When he arrived, he found Stebbel at his desk, reading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Dörfner strode by and stole a peek, then raised his eyebrows.

  “That must be a good read. From our revered High Priest of Perversion, no less.”

  “It’s an interesting book, Karl-Heinz. Some fascinating theories. If you like, I’ll lend it to you when I’m finished.”

  “No, thank you. I already know what he says there.” Stebbel raised his eyebrows skeptically. “If you dream about meeting a tall woman, you want to have sex with your mother; you dream about a smaller woman, you want to have sex with your sister; you dream about meeting a man, you want to have sex with your brother. And if you dream about flying, you want to have sex with a pigeon.”

  Stebbel just smiled and shook his head at this.

  “Well, I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I haven’t come to that part yet. I’ll let you know when I get there.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to that. In the meantime, we’ve got ourselves three nasty murders to solve here.”

  “Yes, I remember something about that.”

  “So what do we do today? Where do we go from here?”

  Stebbel just looked at him helplessly, then shook his head. This deflated Dörfner’s light mood immediately.

  Where could they go from there? Just sit around and wait for the next time the strangler struck.

  * * *

  The next murder was not long in coming. In fact, this one came less than a week after Gertrud Prestel was killed. The victim was again a streetwalker, and it occurred at the edge of the redlight district.

  Friends in the street trade identified her soon after the pulleys had arrived at the scene: Sonia Dinescu, a Romanian girl from Bukovina, then a border district of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By the time Stebbel and Dörfner again made the slow trek to the morgue, Dr. Gressler had assembled a roster of facts. He first read from a chart, running down the casual details, such as name, height, and body build.

  “Listed age is 22, though I suspect she was lying about that. A lot of workers coming from the provinces do lie about their real age. Anyway, as you’re about to see, she looks younger than what’s listed in her records.”

  As Gressler and an assistant eased the slab out, Stebbel turned his back. He had seen enough of these murders. He would just listen to Gressler’s rundown and let Dörfner be the visual witness.

  “Same modus operandi. Almost certainly the same killer. Look at the arrangement of the bruises.”

  “Not as brutal this time though,” Dörfner remarked.

  “You’re quite right. My guess would be that this one put up little or no resistance, so the killer didn’t have to put as much energy into the enterprise.”

  Without turning to look, Stebbel gave his take. “Or else he’s just getting better at his work, and he doesn’t need to expend as much energy.”

  “That’s another explanation. Anyway, the chances are extremely high that this is the same killer. The full autopsy report hasn’t been completed yet, but I’ll get that to you as soon as it’s ready.”

  “Thank you, Herr Doktor. We really need every little scrap we can get.”

  Gressler’s cool scientific demeanor softened a bit as the slab was pushed back into its darkness.

  “It must be really difficult for you two, dealing with all these murders. A real string you’ve got here. And the press raising such a big stink about it. Blaming the police. It must really be difficult.”

  “It is. Very difficult.” Stebbel then started walking away. Dörfner thanked the doctor and joined his partner, moving as quickly as he could with his gimpy leg to catch up. The only communication between them as they left the morgue was an extended look of helplessness.

  A short time later, there was a knock at the door of the inspectors’ office. It was one of their assigned assistants, announcing that they had a visitor: Dr. Gressler from “down below”.

  This was not only unusual – it was the first time Gressler had ever paid a visit to their office. Dörfner noted the occasion with a chirpy greeting.

  “Gruss Gott, Herr Doktor! Did you finally decide to come up from the bowels of the building and enjoy a little bit of the view we enjoy all the time?”

  “That as well, Herr Inspector. That as well.” At Dörfner’s invitation, Gressler walked over to the window and gazed out. Their view was not onto the Ringstrasse, but was impressive nonetheless.

  “Yes, a very inspiring vista. I imagine it’s one small compensation for the difficult tasks you have.”

  He turned and stepped back towards the inspectors’ desks.

  “But the main reason I came up here was to personally deliver the autopsy report on our latest victim.” He placed the report on Stebbel’s desk. Dörfner stood and took his post at his partner’s shoulder. “There’s a very interesting discovery we made. If I may draw your attention to the middle of the second page, gentlemen.”

  The two inspectors started reading, trying to find what the doctor was referring to. They hoped whatever it was, it would allow them to make a big breakthrough. Stebbel quickly found something interesting, which he pointed out to Dörfner.

  “You discovered opium in the victim’s
bloodstream?”

  “A rather significant amount. Which suggests that Frau Dinescu had been indulging in the drug not long before she encountered her killer. And she must have been smoking a substantial amount. She would have been in a deep state of opium intoxication.”

  “And what would that mean?”

  “Well, it explains why there wasn’t as much bruising this time. She wasin such a thick opium haze, I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor girl was smiling at her assailant until shortly before he put on the final squeeze.”

  “That must have made him feel good,” said Stebbel. “And saved him some effort.”

  “I imagine it would have,” the doctor said.

  After another few minutes of discussion and explanation, Doktor Gressler said that he had to get back “to the bowels” to take care of a few other matters. The two inspectors thanked him for bringing the report personally and helping them push their investigations forward a little. Dörfner walked him to the paternoster.

  When he returned to the office, Stebbel gave him the raised eyebrow salute.

  “Opium,” Stebbel said.

  “I’m familiar with the substance.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. A prostitute using opium, that points the finger in one direction.”

  “The Turk?” Stebbel nodded. “Steb, the Turk’s not the only pimp in Vienna. Or the only one in town with access to opium.”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “I don’t know, it just seems that you’re anxious to pin everything on him. But I don’t think that he has anything to do with this. For one thing, it doesn’t make good business sense, and before everything else, the Turk is a businessman.”

  “Well, you go see the Turk and tell him that his business is in danger because of all the heat caused by these killings. And tell him that until we catch this killer, the heat will just keep getting worse and worse and worse.”

  “I will take care of that. And I’ll ask him to help us in any way he can.”

  Chapter 26

  Dörfner met the Turk at a café near the Ottoman embassy. Before their coffees arrived, Bahadir raised both hands high and swore that he was not Sonia Dinescu’s pimp. He also said he himself did not supply her with the opium. But he did have something juicy to give Dörfner: he had spoken to some of his “associates” and turned up three of Sonia’s streetwalker friends who were with her the night she was murdered. And, as a bonus, the Turk had arranged for Dörfner to meet these three friends early that evening, before they started their regular shift on the streets. Stebbel could come along too, if he liked.

  Bahadir smiled the smile of a man doing favorable calculations in his head. He knew he could add this to the “Favors” side of his ledger with the Inspector.

  The meeting took place at a bar on the scuffed edge of Spittelberg. Knowing that whores had a flexible notion of punctuality, Dörfner himself arrived a little late. The ladies had not yet arrived.

  The seedy pub reminded Dörfner of the dives he used to frequent during his army days. Just a few minutes waiting for the three friends to show up reminded him why he didn’t miss those days and those dives.

  Sonia’s three friends arrived together. To warm them up and lubricate their tongues, Dörfner offered to buy them all a drink. They were ready to accept some cheap British gin, but Dörfner insisted that they order wine instead. It was, he said, a point of honor for him that he treat ladies well. (But when the barkeep held up the wines on offer, the inspector quickly pointed to the cheapest one.)

  One of the friends, who went by the name of Estella, took the lead. She told Dörfner that Sonia had shown up for work already buzzing from an opium-smoking session. She was so clearly out of it, they told her she couldn’t perform that evening. After a mish-mashed argument, they convinced her to go back to her room and sleep it off. They walked her to the corner of Siebensteingasse, then saw her head off to her place. And that, they all said with tears, was the last they ever saw of her.

  Dörfner was beginning to doubt that this interview was really worth his time, not to mention his outlay on the three glasses of wine. This account was interesting, even touching, if you were in the right frame of mind, but it didn’t lend the investigation any new worthwhile information.

  But then one of the girls, Marta, added something that was potentially valuable: she had seen some strange guy prowling the area not too long before Sonia showed up for work. The other two girls immediately backed up her recollection.

  She went on; she was standing alone then. This guy had started approaching her, but when the other two girls stepped out of the doorway, he stopped, turned and walked off. Most guys, the ladies all agreed, would come up and check out all three and see which one he might like to spend a little time alone with. But this guy seemed to be after something else.

  “So what did he look like, this strange guy?” Dörfner asked. The answer he got hit him like an electric jolt.

  “He was big … pretty tall,” said Marta.

  “And burly? Like me?” As he asked that, Dörfner stood fully upright and threw his shoulders back. The three ladies studied his pose for several moments before one of them answered.

  “Even bigger,” Estella said, and the other two nodded in agreement.

  “Anything else strange about this guy?”

  “Oh yes,” Marta said. “The singing.”

  “Singing?”

  “Humming really,” Estella added. He was humming as he approached Marta, stopped when the other two appeared, but started humming again as he walked off.

  “And what was he humming?” Dörfner asked.

  * * *

  “A waltz?”

  “That’s what they said. He was humming some waltz tune. They weren’t sure which one, but it was one of the popular numbers.”

  It was the next morning, back in the office, and Dörfner was reporting every detail of the previous evening’s meeting – gleaned from either his notes or his memory.

  “A waltz. This whole thing is like … sport to him,” Stebbel said in disgust. “He’s playing a game, he’s having fun. He’s killing young women and it’s all sport to him. Like dancing a waltz.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was our guy they were describing. They saw him, but they didn’t know who he was.”

  “Did you show them the picture? Herr Hitler’s sketch?”

  “Ja, but it didn’t do any good. All three admitted they didn’t see enough of his face to make any reliable identification.”

  “Well, at least we know that he likes his waltz music. That should narrow it down to just under a million people here in Vienna.”

  “Sorry; I tried to get as much useful information as I could.”

  “No, no, you did good work there. I don’t think anyone else could have done any better. And we did learn that he leaves the scene when the ladies show up in a group.”

  “He’s always trying to find one who’s all alone, no one to protect her.”

  “Maybe we can convince the streetwalkers to only work in groups of three or four. Tell them it’s a matter of their own survival.” Stebbel paused. “But I wonder if they would stick to that.”

  Dörfner shook his head. “They probably couldn’t take the competition. You know: one whore offering a cut-rate price and snatching a john from her partner.”

  “Well, we certainly don’t have enough hooks in the department to look after their well-being. That’s for sure.”

  “Of course, we could always get the Imperial Guard to escort them around. The way I hear it, most of those ginks do nothing for most of the day, then do a little more nothing at night.”

  “Good point.” Suddenly, Stebbel stopped. He looked up. “Yes – the Imperial Guard.”

  “I was only joking, Steb. There’s no possibility that – ”

  “No, I don’t mean that. It’s … the Imperial Guard.” He pushed back his chair and started tapping his desk nervously. He stared into space as if trying to focus on an image fo
rming in the air. Dörfner just stood watching, a little concerned.

  “Yes, that’s it: the Imperial Guard.” He spun around. “Now I remember where I’ve seen that face before.”

  “What face?”

  “The one in the sketch. Herr Hitler’s. It was the Imperial Guard.”

  “What??”

  “A few years ago, I was at a special event at the Hofburg. There were several of us from the division there. When we got to the palace, they put us into this one room and assigned a handful of imperial guardsman to look after us, make sure we behaved ourselves. And … and one of those guardsman was, I believe, the man we’ve been looking for.”

  “You’re shitting me!”

  “No. No, I’m not. I’m most certainly not.” Stebbel jumped up and clapped his hands in triumph, like a joyous child. He then started walking around the office excitedly. “Yes, the more I think back on that evening, the more I think we’ve found our suspect. Or at least we know where to find him.”

  “We just go and check out the Imperial Guard?”

  “That’s it. I think we’ve got our big breakthrough. Thanks to you, Herr Colleague. Thanks to you.”

  Chapter 27

  It was not at all difficult arranging an appointment to speak to the official Master of the Guards. Evidently, the palace itself had taken an interest in the case and wished to see everything cleared up as soon as possible. So when Dörfner explained that they needed to check on somebody in the guards, an appointment was set up with no further explanations needed.

  They arrived mid-afternoon at one of the side gates. As they stepped in, a guardsman stepped out of his booth adjacent to the gate.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” he asked. But the way he said it, it came off as more of a challenge than an offer of assistance.

  Dörfner knew this type all too well. He decided the easiest way to proceed was to show this fellow they actually outranked him. They opened up their police IDs and thrust them forward.