Zons Crime: Fatal Puzzle Part 4

He realized now that the psychic hadn't revealed everything. He had made Bastian look directly at the constellation of the Raven without pointing out to him what he was really seeing: the constellation was a right-angled trapezoid, just like Zons.

"Well," Bastian continued, "the killer is obsessed with constellations and the power of the full moon. He chose Zons because his mother was from here and because the magician showed him that the shape of our city walls corresponds with the shape of the Raven." He jotted his thoughts down in his notebook while he spoke.

"Father, do you think he is so drawn to the symbolism of the Raven because it is next to Virgo? After all, he preys only on young maidens."

"I can't see how a simple farmer would have attained such astronomy knowledge. Maybe it's mere coincidence. After all, the psychic didn't mention the names of the constellations to you, either."

"I'm not sure I agree with you there, Father. The psychic told me that Dietrich h.e.l.lenbroich is obsessed with the stars and believes that magic forces are released by the full moon. That would explain the times of the killings, right?"

"That is true, both happened during a full moon. But I can't see a real pattern yet," the priest ruminated, "unless . . ." He trailed off, suddenly becoming animated and deftly drawing two crosses on the map.

"Take a look, Bastian. These spots mark the places where the women's bodies were found."

Bastian looked at the crosses. One was next to the city wall, the other at the banks of the Rhine. Elisabeth Kreuzer had been suspended on one of the towers at the Schlossplatz. With Gertrud Minkenberg, the killer hadn't gone to such lengths, abandoning her corpse in the Rhine. Either there was no pattern, or the killer had been disturbed during Gertrud's murder. The doctor had determined that Elisabeth, too, had first been tortured and raped at the Rhine before the killer suspended her dead body. Bastian leafed through his notes.

"Look here, these are the numbers and letters I found carved into the door in the Juddeturm," Bastian said, "and these ones were carved into Elisabeth's scalp. He wouldn't make all this effort if there's no meaning behind it."

The priest brooded over the killer's code. Indeed, it looked as if with every new victim, the killer presented yet another little piece of a puzzle. Every dead body completed the picture a little bit more. But how sick would someone have to be to kill young women in order to leave messages or complete a puzzle?

The fireplace in the corner crackled loudly and filled the small room with much welcome heat. Bastian, remembering how frozen he'd felt during his trip to Cologne, rubbed his palms against each other and stared into the dancing flames. Suddenly he had an idea and drew two more crosses on the map.

"Interesting." The priest contemplated the crosses.

"Right? Maybe the puzzle is not about the places where the bodies are found, but about where the girls live!" Agitated, Bastian sorted through his doc.u.ments. "I'm pretty convinced that each of the numbers 6 7 8 9 represents one side of the city wall."

The priest nodded in agreement. "The 6 signifies the shortest segment in the south, followed by 7 in the north, 8 in the west, and 9 for the longest segment in the east."

"Elisabeth didn't live close to the southern wall-though that's what we would a.s.sume, considering that h.e.l.lenbroich carved a 1, a 6, and the letter K into her scalp."

Bastian shook his head. Something didn't fit.

"What if the letter K represents her last name?" the priest said quietly.

"You could be right," replied Bastian. "I haven't looked at Gertrud's body yet. I will do that first thing tomorrow!"

With these words he rose to his feet.

"If we are right, she should have an M carved into her scalp-and," he paused, suddenly remembering something, "the presence of the M in the series on the Juddeturm door makes this even more likely!"

Bastian thanked his old mentor for the help and the wine, and he said good-bye. What he didn't say was that he was thinking about the future murders that were likely to happen. The city wall consisted of four segments. Did Dietrich h.e.l.lenbroich really intend to sacrifice one girl for each segment? The ghastly thought haunted Bastian as he walked, shivering, from the church to his house.

The following day, Bastian went to see Doctor Josef Hesemann in his house on Grunwaldstrae. Gertrud's body lay in the vestibule of Josef's house, for the bone-chilling January blasts made it impossible to conduct the examination in the courtyard as they had done with Elisabeth.

Josef had sent his wife and their little daughter Agnes to stay with the grandparents for a week. The risk of having sweet, wild Agnes storm through the house and happen upon Gertrud's body was too high. A month ago, she would have seen Elisabeth laid out in the yard if Bastian had not had the presence of mind to quickly block the innocent girl's view.

Bastian looked pale, and, knowing how he took every crime case to heart, Josef suspected that he had been up all night brooding. Josef held Bastian in high esteem and always believed what he said. But in the past few weeks, even Josef couldn't stand Bastian's dark premonitions about h.e.l.lenbroich any longer. Like most of the townspeople, convinced that Dietrich h.e.l.lenbroich was long gone, he had simply stopped listening. Josef would never have guessed that the killer would strike another time. Unfortunately, Bastian had been right all along.

Never before had Zons seen two murders in just one month. The young, ambitious city guard had antic.i.p.ated the second murder yet had been helpless to prevent it, and his torment was engraved in his face and evident in his entire demeanor. Bastian's blond hair was even more disheveled than usual, and there were dark circles under his eyes. On his unshaven face his lips were pale, almost bloodless. Yet, with his high, aristocratic-looking cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes, Bastian attracted women from every tier of their small society-Josef knew this from his cousin. But Bastian seemed blithely unaware of his attractiveness and had always remained faithful to his one love. Josef smiled to himself. As a young lad, he would certainly have been different, had G.o.d given him those smashing good looks. Instead he had had to come up with the silliest stunts if he wanted to approach a maiden. The doctor shook his head, bemused, but then checked his reveries and readied himself for the grim task ahead.

They inspected Gertrud's body. She had been such a happy, cheerful girl with sparkling blue eyes and a full head of golden blonde curls. Now, all her beauty was snuffed out. Her dead eyes looked upward, a look of desperate panic frozen within them. Nothing was left of her long blonde locks-the killer had shaved them off completely, as he had done with his first victim. Dried blood was smeared all across her scalp.

"First I want to look for any carvings on her scalp," Bastian said. Carefully, he began to soften the crusted blood with a damp linen cloth.

A few minutes later they had cleaned the bloodied scalp, and Bastian nodded to Josef in confirmation that what they expected was evident.

The pattern repeated itself: the men found two new numbers and another letter. This time the carving read: 1 7 M. Now Bastian was convinced that M stood for the first letter of Gertrud's last name, Minkenberg. The symbols on Elisabeth's head had read 1 6 K, and K was the first letter of that victim's last name, Kreuzer. It just had to be right! For each segment of the wall, the killer sacrificed one girl. The letters had to refer to the girls' last names. Bastian flipped through his notebook until he found the sketch he had made of h.e.l.lenbroich's carvings in the Juddeturm's heavy wooden door. Bastian read out loud: 1 6 K 1 7 M 1 8 Z.

"I still don't understand in what order he operates, but in case the letters really stand for the girls' last names, we have to protect all the girls in Zons whose family name begins with a Z." Breathless, Bastian glanced at Josef. "I'll leave you to continue here and see whether you discover something that will lead us to this disgusting monster. Remember to tell me anything you find. Anything," he emphasized.

With these words he threw the blood-soaked linen cloth into a wicker basket next to the door and pocketed his notebook in the depths of his heavy, sleeveless leather jerkin. Bastian left Josef's house and headed directly to the church.

"Johannes, where are you?" His excited call echoed through the small church.

"Bastian, my dear son. What brings you here at so unusual an hour?" The hoa.r.s.e voice rasped from behind the altar and Father Johannes appeared. Moaning, he rubbed both hands across the back that had grown hunched over the years.

"Seems like I am getting old, my dear friend," Johannes sniffed. "I can't take more than two goblets of red wine at night. So please, do me a favor. Don't raise your voice when you speak to a shepherd of the church-and especially one who is suffering from a little overindulgence."

Painstakingly, Father Johannes sank down on one of the church benches.

"I don't think it's red wine," Bastian replied, "I think you shouldn't spend all day in the church in this infernal cold, that's my opinion. Winter is not good for your aching back. Staying near a warm fire would serve you much better."

"I know, dear Bastian, but how could I not follow the call of duty? As a diligent servant of the Lord, I must make sacrifices."

Bastian sat down next to Johannes and asked him for a list with the family names of all the young girls of Zons.

The priest got up, again with considerable effort, and with a short nod motioned Bastian to follow him. They entered a small vestibule where Johannes began searching through a big trunk. After a while he produced a huge book and leafed through it.

"This church register has a record of every birth, baptism, wedding, and death in Zons. If you go back far enough, you will find all the names you need and can copy them."

He handed the heavy book to Bastian along with a blank piece of paper and a quill pen.

"It's been a while since you last practiced writing. This will function as a long-needed exercise for you!" He patted Bastian's shoulder and waved him over to a small desk in a corner.

Bastian obliged. Numerous names and events were listed in the book, and he knew it would take him several hours to compile the list. But that didn't matter, when the time and effort could save the next girl's life-or, rather, the next two girls' lives. Even though h.e.l.lenbroich had only carved three numbers into the door of his prison cell, Bastian was convinced that he intended to kill four girls. Just like there were four segments to the city wall, there had to be four dead girls in order for h.e.l.lenbroich's murderous madness to come to fruition.

"Josef?" Bastian looked up from his writing to see the doctor, Josef Hesemann, appear in the doorframe of the church's small vestibule.

"I figured I would find you here. You told me to tell you if I found any clues, and I wanted to share an important detail I came upon while examining Gertrud's body."

Bastian stretched his sore right hand and rubbed his reddened eyes. The candles didn't provide enough light in this dark room, where the air was dry and dusty. Having spent hours here, he was almost done with his list and so absorbed in his task that he had forgotten his plea to Josef.

"Listen, Josef. I've compiled almost all the relevant names. So far, there are five girls whose last names begin with a Z."

"That sounds good." The doctor encouraged him with a smile before he continued, grabbing Bastian's upper arm. "Listen, Bastian. I found something odd bound within the folds of the linen gown wrapped around Gertrud, and when I saw this, I examined the gown Elisabeth was wrapped in."

Josef showed Bastian the two linen gowns. The one that had been wrapped around Gertrud had clumps of something doughlike within the creases.

Bastian frowned as he tried to make sense of this. He recalled what the old psychic had told him on h.e.l.lenbroich's farm, about h.e.l.lenbroich's obsession with the walls and towers of Zons. He held the candlelight closer to the clumped material on the cloth.

"Come here, Josef," Bastian said excitedly. "See for yourself. I'm sure these clumps are made of flour." As a miller's son, Bastian certainly knew the substance in all its permutations.

"Yes, indeed," Josef replied, and he rubbed his finger through one of the drier, caked bits of fabric to see the substance crumble into a floury pile.

"But why on earth would h.e.l.lenbroich be dragging a body through the mill?" asked Josef.

"Or maybe the tower next to the mill, the Muhlenturm," Bastian said. "The old clairvoyant expected h.e.l.lenbroich to climb up on each of the four towers."

Bastian kept thinking. Why, of course. The killer would need to visit each one of those towers. Young Gertrud happened to live next door to the Muhlenturm. He had probably killed her in the vicinity of her house, wrapped her corpse in the linen gown, and dragged her down to the river. The ground around the Muhlenturm was white from all the fine flour dust, which is why the flour had collected in the folds of the fabric as poor Gertrud's body was dragged across the ground there. Then, when she was dunked in the Rhine, the flour remnants must have formed into these doughy lumps.

"If he really picks the girls according to their last names, he must plan his crimes meticulously. Maybe in his twisted mind he thinks he needs to bring his sacrifices-the girls-as close as possible to the respective tower in order to awaken some kind of divine powers."

"But how are the numbers related to the killings?" Josef asked.

"I a.s.sume he wants to kill four girls. The first victim represents the shortest segment of the wall. She has a 6 carved into her scalp. The second victim gets a 7. The 1 could mean that he brings one sacrifice for each segment of the wall. Or, more precisely, for each of our city wall's main towers. It's from the towers that he hopes to receive the divine powers on the nights of the full moon."

"So we have three weeks to find the killer," Josef concluded.

"Right. The night of the next full moon. That's when he will prey on one of these five girls here on my list. Let's track him down before that happens, so help us G.o.d!"

The cold made Bastian miserable. It was early February and more bitter and raw than ever. He began to wonder why he had been crazy enough to volunteer to tiptoe along the city wall in the middle of a freezing winter night, without even a torch to warm him and light his way. But he'd taken on the task because he was convinced that Dietrich h.e.l.lenbroich had left no stone unturned when he'd planned his murders, and that he would decide to visit every single house owned by a family whose last name began with a Z and who had a daughter. There were five potential victims, and Bastian wanted to sense what the killer sensed when inspecting the five houses at night. Maybe this way he could antic.i.p.ate h.e.l.lenbroich's next moves, while watching out for the victims at the same time.

It was way past midnight, and not a living soul was out. In this stark cold, even the soldiers from the city guard didn't patrol after midnight. They sat in the small chambers above the city gates, where, close to warm fires, it was easier to get through the night shift.

The night was utterly silent. On some days the smacking of the waves of the Rhine, rolling over the pebbled banks, was clearly audible, but this night was as noiseless as it was dark. Bastian could hardly discern his own hands in front of his face and had to concentrate not to stumble and make missteps that would echo in the eerie quiet. Each carefully tiptoed step reached his ears at such a brutal volume that he feared he'd startle all the inhabitants of Zons from their sleep. But he knew very well that one could imagine all sorts of things at night, and he calmed down. Most likely, n.o.body heard his steps, which was good because Bastian had resolved to climb the closest tower, the Zollturm.

Down on the street, Bastian couldn't hear or see anything in the impenetrable dark. Even the night's shadows seemed frozen. The chilly nocturnal air seeped under his jerkin, and he felt himself growing colder with every step. Cautiously, he walked up the stairs of the Zollturm, trying to glide as softly as a cat. When he had almost reached the top he saw a shadow moving, and for a moment his heart stopped beating.

What was that? He reached for the sword tucked into his belt and silently pulled the blade. He crouched on the remaining steps to the top. The platform was empty. But Bastian was sure he had seen something. He walked to the edge of the tower and glanced down.

At precisely that moment, he heard a loud cracking and felt a leather whip fly around his neck. He almost choked as the whip tightened, relentlessly pulling him to the ground. With all his force he resisted the pull and tried to sever the leather with his sword. But the sword was too long and got stuck between the bricks of the wall. He tried to loosen it but couldn't move backward. Then Bastian suddenly saw a figure detaching itself forcefully from the tower. That devil had been waiting for him, hanging on the outside wall of the tower. That's how he had surprised Bastian.

Now the other man stood behind him, pressing his own sword against Bastian's back.

"Are you following me, Bastian Muhlenberg?" a hoa.r.s.e voice hissed in his ear.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Bastian demanded.

"I could ask you that very same question!" the voice answered, putting even more pressure on the sword pressed to Bastian's back.

Trying to focus, Bastian took a deep breath. He twisted around abruptly and knocked the sword out of his aggressor's hand.

It sailed down the first upper steps of the stairs. The two men dove to the ground in an attempt to grab it. Violently entangled, they fell down the staircase. Where the staircase made a curve, Bastian dashed against the wall at full speed. The last thing he saw was a limping person lifting a sword, prepared to strike and tumbling toward him. Then he lost consciousness.

Bastian was dreaming. He had fallen down the Zollturm and smashed hard against the floor. He waited to confront death, but death didn't come. Instead he saw a wonderful young woman. She was sitting on a bench at the Rhine and had fallen asleep despite the cold. Her face was placid and magnificently beautiful, with dark lashes on her closed eyelids and voluptuous, curving lips. A faint shimmer of melancholy lingered on her face, and he could even see tears making their way down her cheeks. The soft sadness touched Bastian's heart; he simply had to protect her even though he had never seen her before. He had never set eyes on any other woman but Marie-but this sad, sleeping girl stirred up a longing inside him that he had never felt before.

Her head was moving slowly; she seemed to be waking up. Bastian withdrew quickly into the shadows and watched her. When she opened her eyes, Bastian was startled at their color-green, and gleaming in the dark like two sparkling emeralds. How could he possibly recognize the color of her eyes, from such a distance and in this darkness, he wondered. Suddenly, a sharp pain brought him back to the ground at the foot of the Zollturm. Puzzled, Bastian looked about. Where did the emerald-eyed maiden go? His dreaming self returned, and he felt himself lifted from the ground and soaring. His body felt hot, but a comfortable draft of cool air soothed his sweating skin. With bewilderment he realized he was floating in a blue summer sky. Bastian gazed up at the welcome sun, and the blazing sunlight dissolved his consciousness.

"He is dreaming, but he's alive. He will live." Josef Hesemann comforted the sobbing young woman who was sitting at Bastian's bed holding his hand.

"Are you really sure, Josef?" she asked warily, her eyes filled with tears.

"Absolutely, Marie. I promise you, he'll be back in good shape just in time for the wedding. He was d.a.m.ned lucky that he didn't break his neck when he fell."

XIII.

Present

Emily was working against the clock. Well, actually, the clock had already won. She had to submit her article in one hour.

"d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n!" she hissed. Initially she'd planned to reveal the solution of the puzzle at the beginning of her article, but she still hadn't managed to actually solve it, despite all the doc.u.ments from the county archive. Her idea was to launch right into the explanation of how the constellation of Corvus was linked to the layout of the city walls in Zons, and that the medieval killer had chosen his victims according to that pattern. She wanted to do something different and unusual, shifting the end up to the beginning, but so far she was struggling with it.

It seemed she did have to deliver the solution to the fatal puzzle in the end after all. Fortunately, the other two parts of her series were already finished. Each described the murder of a young woman. The first one dealt with Elisabeth Kreuzer and would be published in a few days. This part was the one the Rheinische Post expected in less than an hour for copyediting. She stopped ruminating about the puzzle's solution and instead went over her style and spelling one last time. She thought she had done a really good job and hoped that the article would draw a lot of interest. After reading a first draft, her editor had been impressed with her writing and promised to place the text prominently. In fact, he had a.s.sured her she'd get an entire page.

She thought, a little smugly, about how proud she'd be once all her cla.s.smates had read the article. Having a major paper devote an entire page to a first article was not a given. Most young journalists had to start far more modestly. Worst-case scenario, they had to cover local sports; thank G.o.d that was not her lot.

An hour later she hit "Send" and sighed in relief. She poured herself a gla.s.s of pinot noir and sipped it happily. Now she had the rest of the evening to spend finally solving that d.a.m.ned puzzle.

After a whole bottle of pinot, however, Emily was still chasing the solution. It bothered her that the decisive piece was still missing. The map of the city of Zons was spread out in front of her. Meticulous by habit, she had marked all the places where bodies had been found plus the first letters of the two victims' family names. But she still couldn't understand why these two women specifically had been attacked first.

Bastian Muhlenberg's scribblings were hard to decipher. Sometimes she could only guess the meaning of a word. She was quite good at reading old German script, but Bastian Muhlenberg surely had never won a prize for beautiful penmanship.

Irritated and exhausted, she shoved the map to the side and switched on the TV. She zapped through a few channels and got stuck with N24, a public TV channel airing a doc.u.mentary about the forty-eight constellations of cla.s.sical astronomy described by Ptolemy.

And suddenly, she knew the solution. Why, she should have seen this a while ago! Again she skimmed Bastian's notes, now comprehending more of his chicken scratch. She started up her computer and downloaded a map of the constellations in the northern sky. Then she printed out the constellations of the Raven and Virgo. She laid the map of the constellations on top of the city map, which she turned clockwise. But still she didn't see what she had hoped to see. Then a new idea crossed her mind.

She stood up and walked over to her bookcase, which had a giant old reference book on astronomy, one she'd kept since childhood. Next she went to a drawer of sketchbooks and art supplies to fetch some tracing paper. The book's index quickly led her to a map of Ptolemy's constellations. She laid the book flat and pressed the paper against it, tracing a map of the stars. Again she laid the transparent map over the city map, which she turned clockwise once more-and then she saw it.

The numbers 6 7 8 9 represented the order in which the victims were killed. But the letters still wouldn't fit. Argh! She'd have to plow through the last pages of Bastian's notes after all. She had hoped to avoid it, but it seemed she had no choice. Still, at least she'd begun to understand the chronological order of the murders. She had solved a part of the puzzle!

Emily's triumph gave her a second wind. Concentrating deeply, she looked at the dot on the city map that marked the house of the third victim. Something about it seemed familiar. But between that bottle of wine, the stress over the copyediting deadline, and the late hour, she couldn't seem to force to the surface the idea that was percolating in her mind. Only when she was already in bed and dreaming peacefully did the revelation shoot into Emily's consciousness. Abruptly she sat up and opened her eyes.

"It's Anna's house!"

Oliver Bergmann's sleep was rudely interrupted by the loud ringing of his cell. He blinked. What time was it? Only half past six. Who dared to call so early in the morning? He could have slept at least another half hour. It was probably his mom, who was simply too excited about the imminent weekend. What could she want now? Oliver sighed. He got up and walked to his phone.

It wasn't his mother but Klaus, speaking quickly and urgently. "Oliver, come to the precinct as fast as you can. The boss just called me. He told me to get you here on the double. We have a body in Zons, a woman, and we're putting together a special commission as we speak."