Odyssey Into Darkness: The Heimo Kapeller Novels, #2

Chapter 1

They rolled in a gentle morning swell, yoked by the neck, eyeless in the sun but escaped from agony.

The trawler, chugging home after a night of fruitless fishing, was a few meters away before Paolo Abbeddi spotted the two dark shapes. He knew instantly what they were and throttled the ancient engine to idle.

Ahmed! he shouted through the open half of the pilot-house window.

The slim youngster heaving at the forward derrick straightened and looked aft.

Off the port bow. Paolo stuck his arm through the gap and pointed.

Ahmed turned the derrick handle to the bottom and locked it in place. He climbed over the dripping nets piled on the deck and stared at the greasy, green water, head scanning as he searched. He sighted the bodies after a moment and raised his arm, signaling Paolo to sail the boat forward and a little to port.

The engine stuttered as the captain eased it ahead, turning the wheel to miss the shapes by meters but knowing the current set in toward the shore. After a minute he retarded the throttle again.

Ahmed grabbed a grappling hook from the forward locker, checked that the line was securely attached, and waited. As the current arced the trawler inshore, he held the line in one hand with a few meters of slack and heaved the four-pronged steel across the bodies. It splashed into the crest of a swell on the opposite side and sank. Ahmed pulled the line in hand over hand. He felt the hooks catch and stopped for a moment, offering a silent prayer to Allah.

Paolo took his hand off the throttle and echoed the Muslim’s reaction with an automatic genuflection to his own deity.

The shapes floated toward the gunwale under the boy’s steady pull. When they were near enough, he secured the line around a cleat and picked up a boathook. He captured a loop of the fluorescent orange marine cable that tethered the bodies, then paused and looked back at the captain.

I can’t lift both in, Paolo.

The old seaman waved, throttled up to the lowest speed and sailed away from the rocky shore which drew the boat like a siren. Once he’d balanced the push of the current against the shove of the engine, he removed his phone from his overalls and thumbed a number.

Although the police station on Pantelleria was open, no one except the local islanders would have known it. The door was closed, there were no police cars, and the building was silent. But in an office to the left of the main counter, Primo Capitano Fedele Vaccaro leafed through administrative documents and crime reports from the mainland. He’d finished his first coffee and was halfway through the second as he settled his ample bulk in the leather office chair.

Junk mail from the Italian bureaucracy floated through his hands and into an open desk drawer leaving no impression on his mind. Most of the reports were unenlightening save for the occasional sex scandal. The only part of his brain that was awake checked each item for any mention of the island and disregarded everything else.

When the phone rang, he glanced up, then checked the clock on the wall. Only half-past eight. Frowning, he heaved himself out of the chair and trudged over to the phone.

Polizia.

Paolo Abbeddi growled, Good morning, Fedele. We’ve caught two migrants. Dead ones.

Where are you?

A hundred meters off the old lighthouse at Punto Spadillo.

Bring them to the police dock and I’ll meet you there.

Can’t. The bodies are tied together, and I can’t leave the wheel to help Ahmed get them aboard.

Wonderful. I’ll tell Lorenzo to meet you with the launch. Twenty minutes.

Paolo heard the police boat before he saw it. It was modern and powerful, a new design introduced to cope with the flood of North Africans fleeing their own continent. And it had special equipment including a small dive ramp.

The San Marco cut through the low swell, cleaving the waves without effort. Lorenzo Di Mauro, the launch’s one and only crewman, throttled back as he neared the trawler and steered to pass on the leeward side. He cut to idle when just a few meters short of the older boat’s port side and the launch drifted to a stop.

Ahmed threw a line across and Lorenzo grabbed it and lashed it to a cleat. He went aft to the helm and pressed a green button on the control console. The dive platform, rigged to the launch’s port side, slanted out on hydraulic pistons, flattened and sank into the water. It stopped fifty centimeters under the wave crests.

Lorenzo worked the wheel and throttles to sidle the launch toward the trawler. When he judged the position was correct, he tapped the green button again and the dive platform rose to the surface bearing the two sodden shapes.

Skirting around the auxiliary motor that operated the platform, he looked over the gunwale, then reared back. Mother of God! he muttered and crossed himself with a reverence he seldom showed at mass.

The docks, almost deserted, glistened in the morning sun as the launch rounded the harbor wall. One old fisherman sat on a piling and watched with sleepy interest as the sleek craft nosed its way through the channel to a mooring with the word ‘Polizia’ outlined in white on the sea-wet stone quay.

Vaccaro stood by the gangway with thumbs hooked under his paunch, staring into the boat. He couldn’t see anything because Di Mauro had covered the bodies with a tarp. An officer on the jetty grabbed the line the helmsman heaved over and secured it to a bollard, then trotted to the aft of the boat and did the same with another line. Di Mauro stepped nimbly over the gunwale and walked up the gangway.

Vaccaro watched, eyes unreadable through his sunglasses. When the launch officer reached him, he searched the weather-beaten face for a moment. Bad?

Di Mauro nodded. Worst I’ve seen.

They heard the ambulance rumbling down the quay and watched as it stopped a few feet away. The driver, a paramedic in a Red Cross jacket, opened the rear doors to extract a gurney. His passenger, casually dressed in chinos, hoodie and deck shoes, stopped in front of the policemen, surprised by their uneasiness.

Fedele, Lorenzo, good morning. What’s wrong?

Di Mauro took a long whistling breath. It’s a kid, doc, a boy. Black. He’s tied by the neck to a white man. They…they’ve been tortured. He gulped. No eyes.

The physician stared. He’d examined a hundred migrants in the last two months, most of them black, all of them emaciated. They’d drowned in the dancing waves of the sunlit Mediterranean. Are you sure?

Di Mauro nodded. And it wasn’t the fish that did it.

The paramedic waited with the gurney, and the launch officer helped him bump it over the gangplank to the edge of the boat. He muttered something to the medic who paled, and both stepped onto the launch. Di Mauro pulled the tarp away.

The medic put his hand to his mouth. The doctor joined them, his single expletive puncturing the morning calm.

Together they loaded both corpses onto the gurney and trundled it up to the jetty.

Vaccaro watched the operation without offering help or comment, but when the gurney reached the ambulance, he said, I must check them, doctor.

He ran his hands over the sparse clothing worn by the white man. The damaged face looked more Arab than anything else, but immersion in seawater had not made his features clearer. Vaccaro found nothing in the clothing. One foot still wore a laced-up shoe. The policeman pulled it off. A small silver case was wedged between the first and second toes. Vaccaro borrowed a latex glove from the paramedic and carefully pulled the object free. They stared at it, but it revealed no secrets to their anxious eyes. He slid it into a plastic bag.

There was nothing to be found on the boy. He was coal black, perhaps ten years old, naked, and someone with a yen for sadism had worked on him for some time.

Vaccaro waved the gurney into the ambulance and turned away. He stared out to sea for a time, silent but raging inside. Just before he turned back, he saw Abbeddi’s trawler chugging up to the breakwater.

Chapter 2

Heimo Kapeller scratched the bristly white hair covering a scar over his ear. He balanced a half-full mug of coffee on his stomach and stared at his feet which were propped on the desk in a space specially cleared for them. Inspector Josef Felsbach, newly transferred to Homicide from Fraud, tended to drone when he got well into his subject, and, although Heimo tried to focus, the monotone made it difficult.

I studied the postmortem report thoroughly, Felsbach said, and I talked to Doctor Wassnig three times. Unfortunately, he cannot supply a definitive differentiator that would classify the death as either suicide, homicide or accident.

What the hell was a ‘definitive differentiator’? Heimo opened his eyes and sipped coffee. And the keys?

Josef nodded. The one unusual feature of the case. We have not been able to find them, although four searches of the car, the parking area and Traunig’s home have been completed. There are no fingerprints or other indicators to be found, and Hallegger says they have been thorough.

What’s your next step?

Well…I’m not sure. We have accomplished the usual items, but there seems to be no answer.

Heimo grunted. Cristina, his partner, had reserved a table at a new Italian restaurant in St. Veit. The thought of food and wine and her lovely self only highlighted the banality of Siegfried Traunig’s death. Take me through his background.

The victim, a well-known and well-connected industrialist, had been found in his car on the top floor of a parking garage. A hose attached to the car’s tailpipe and running to a rear window made the conclusion of suicide by CO2 poisoning obvious, and the autopsy had confirmed that cause of death. But the car’s engine was off, and the keys were missing. Had he therefore been murdered, and it made to look like suicide, or had someone discovered him, turned off the engine with the idea of resuscitating him, then walked away with the keys?

It was Felsbach’s first real case since joining the Homicide team, and Heimo wasn’t sure if he was going to succeed. The rotund detective had been in the LKA for ten years in the Fraud and Commercial crime units, but he lacked the lurid imagination needed to put himself into the mind of a killer.

Traunig, Josef said, was wealthy and acquainted with many of the important people in the province. I have looked through all the records I can find, but there is no suspicious information.

Traunig had no large debts, scandalous associations, shady dealings or questionable enterprises. Heimo was sure his new detective would have discovered anything in those categories worthy of note. But years of experience told him no one got to such a position without cutting the odd corner. That there was no documentation only confirmed his intuition.

What were his politics?

He was a member of the OCP and had been for eighteen years. He served as the party’s provincial treasurer for seven years.

A tiny bell pinged in the back of Heimo’s skull. Mehringer’s party - wouldn’t that be lovely? The provincial Vice Governor was an ancient enemy and never far from his thoughts. But he closed his eyes for a moment, drew a shallow breath, and moved away from it.

Any dicey campaign contributions or undue influence with his businesses?

Josef shook his head, thinning strands of black hair floating out of their carefully placed comb-over. I investigated, but I could not find anything out of the ordinary.

Heimo rubbed his nose. The corrupt learned caution and found myriad ways to hide their nefarious activities.

Family?

Married with two children, a boy of nineteen and a daughter of twenty-three. She’s at university. The wife is well known for giving large parties.

What kind of parties?

Expensive ones. She held a fashion show last year at the Schloss Hotel in Velden and apparently spent over ten thousand euros on it.

Heimo finished his coffee, swung his feet off the desk, and stretched. You have, of course, considered the possibility of a domestic dispute.

Yes, but the wife and children have excellent alibis.

Contract killer?

Josef’s eyes opened wide. But I’ve found no motive.

Heimo sighed. And no answer. We’ll have to do more digging. Tomorrow morning, the three of us will go through everything and see if we can find the end of another thread that hasn’t been followed.

His phone, buried under a mound of paperwork, clamored for attention. After shoving things around for a moment, he located it and was pleased to see the caller ID: Veronique.

Hello, daughter, how are you?

Although it had been more than a year since Heimo discovered he had a child, he felt the same frisson of pleasure every time he talked to her. She was French, the product of a long-ago liaison during his youthful walkabout through Europe. And, as she worked at Interpol in Lyon, they often had interesting professional discussions.

Hello, papa. I am OK, but something has happened, and I don’t know what to do.

Without being aware of it, Heimo gripped the phone and leaned forward. What is it?

Mama has had two letters, anonymous letters. They are strange. The writer does not actually threaten anything, but the…I suppose you would say the tone, is making me worry. Mama says it is nothing, but I am not sure.

What did they say?

I have not seen them, and I cannot go home for a few days. But according to Mama, the letter says a great wrong has been committed and must be put right. I asked what this wrong is, but Mama does not know, and the writer does not say. What should we do?

Take the letters to the Gendarmerie. They will trace them to wherever they were mailed. If Paulette knows the place, she may be able to figure out who the writer is.

Veronique was silent for a minute. I will suggest it Papa, but I have the feeling she will not listen. You know how strong she is.

We can only try. Would it be a good idea for Cristina to talk to her?

His daughter’s voice brightened. Oh, yes, I did not think of that. Mama would feel much better talking to her. Maybe there are legal things Cristina could tell her. His partner had recently been promoted to a senior position in the Prosecution Service.

As soon as I get home, I’ll ask her to call.

Thank you, Papa. Her voice went shy. It is very nice to have a papa to talk to.

Don’t think you can twist me around your finger, my girl.

She laughed, her voice again light and silvery.

But when the call finished, his face hardened. In the space of a few months, Heimo had acquired a large, diverse family. And, without realizing it, he’d grown over-protective. Cristina and Paulette Florian, his long-ago lover, had somehow become friends, and both mothered Veronique. The ease with which they all fitted together, as though they had known one another for years, still amazed him.

He analyzed what Veronique had told him, and it was razor-thin as evidence. The rational detective part of his mind counseled caution. There could be a dozen harmless explanations for the letters. But the atavistic patriarch in him wanted to shred somebody with a rusty tin opener.

Felsbach’s voice cut into his turmoil. Is everything OK, Heimo?

He jerked himself out of France and back to his job. A few family troubles, you know how that goes. And immediately regretted it.

Felsbach had been divorced for six months. He had no children or siblings, only an elderly mother who was in a Senior’s home. Heimo knew from his own experience that the bachelor life didn’t suit most middle-aged men.

Felsbach only muttered, Ah, and turned away to pick up the beeping office phone. After a moment, he said, Yes, of course, I’ll tell him.

Colonel Greiml wishes to see you in his office.

Heimo glanced at his watch and grimaced. It was 1630, and he didn’t want to get involved in administrative discussions. But he had little choice.

As he started down the hall, he had to smile at the changes the new head of the LKA had wrought. His predecessor, Walter Meierhofer, seldom called the staff on the phone, preferring to bellow down the hallways. He’d run a loose and comfortable police agency without formality. Max Greiml was at the other end of the spectrum.

When Heimo got to the office, he waited. The secretary called the boss and said, You may go in, Chief Inspector. Meierhofer’s secretary used to simply jerk her head in the direction of the door.

The Colonel stood perusing a large, color-coded organizational chart dominating one wall, hands behind his back. Impeccably dressed in an expensive suit, he contrived to look as fresh and relaxed at the end of the workday as he did at the beginning.

Ah, Heimo. How are you coming along with the Traunig case?

We’re not. Everything still points to suicide except for the car keys. We can’t find anything questionable in his background, his businesses or his personal life. There is no reason to suspect homicide, and nothing to suggest why he’d want to kill himself. We’ll dig a bit more tomorrow, but I doubt if we’ll find anything worthwhile.

Greiml nodded. A shame, he was quite well thought of. An unsubtle allusion to Greiml’s connections to the provincial power structure. However, you won’t be able to work on it tomorrow. We’ve had a suspicious shooting death near Hermagor. He handed Heimo a sheaf of printouts.

Terrific. A night investigation to ruin his evening with Cristina. He was slightly ashamed of the thought, but there it was.

He sat down on Greiml’s new leather sofa to read the report. A sixty-six-year-old male named Kurt Schuster had been found shot to death on his farm. It had been reported by the man’s son who apparently did not live there himself. The wound was described as low on the abdomen, and the local police speculated the gunshot had not been instantly fatal. They’d sealed the area and called the LKA.

Heimo looked up. Has Forensics left yet? They usually got the initial call to make sure the crime scene was maintained.

Greiml shook his head. I haven’t notified Hallegger. You can tell him and coordinate your activities. He glanced at his watch. I’m due at a function shortly. Call me if you need to, otherwise I’ll get the details tomorrow morning at briefing.

Heimo nodded. A ‘function’. He reckoned if he did call, he’d find Greiml’s mobile phone was off.

On the way back to the office, he stopped at the Forensic lab. Karl Hallegger, as usual, was peering through a scope.

Don’t you ever get eye strain? Heimo asked.

Hallegger leaned back and adjusted his glasses. My eyes are so bad, I’m not sure. I need a new prescription every year. What brings you to the abode of science?

Heimo passed him the printouts and waited as he scanned them. After a moment Karl looked up. Not much to go on. Sounds like the locals think he was shot elsewhere and bled out. He glanced at his watch. And a wonderful time start looking for evidence. Dark, in the snow, and probably up in the bloody mountains.

It’s what we signed up for, Karl. Adventure, fighting crime in the wilderness, righting wrongs.

Hallegger stuck his tongue out. I am not a boy scout. And I’ll have to recall my troops since they’ve already gone home. You go ahead. I’ll call you with an ETA as soon as I get things together.

He scribbled a few details from the printouts and handed them back.

When Heimo walked into his office, Felsbach was typing something into the computer. We’ve got a new case, Josef.

Felsbach turned, surprised. Really? And looked at his watch.

Heimo grinned. Yep. Murderers are terrifically unpunctual. I can’t remember the last time one happened during business hours. Get the gear together and we’ll take my car. The location is a farm near Hermagor.

He called Cristina. When she answered, she said, I’m not going to like this, am I?

You’ll be thrilled - we won the lottery.

Who gets to spend the ten euros, you or me? She sounded annoyed or irritated, or something Heimo couldn’t quite identify. What’s happening?

I’m sorry, but I’ve been handed a case. It’s way the hell up by Hermagor, so I probably won’t be back until late.

Bugger. I had my mouth all set for linguine vongole and a liter of Chianti.

Me too. Are you OK?

More or less. There’s something odd going on and I can’t figure out what it is. Annoying more than anything else. In her new position as Senior Prosecutor, Cristina was involved in administrative matters she loathed, but couldn’t escape.

He told her about Veronique’s call. Would you mind talking to Paulette and see if you can offer any advice?

Of course. We’ll drink wine and it will be almost like a party.

He shrugged into his heavy coat and wondered what could have ruffled the calm atmosphere of the Prosecutor’s office.

Chapter 3

When Heimo told Josef to check the printout for the local police contact, he learned Johann Thurner still held the position of Chief of Station. He’d worked with Thurner five years previously on a domestic axe murder and remembered him as slow-moving but sharp witted.

He set the car’s GPS for the location where the crime had been reported and pushed the speed up once they were on the autobahn. Traffic this far out of the city was light except for the interminable trucks heading for the borders of Slovenia and Italy. It was already close to freezing and there had been two snow showers in the past three days. The old-timers predicted a hard winter, but Heimo reckoned they said the same thing every year.

They turned off short of the Italian border and headed west, climbing somewhat and noticing more snow stacked in the medians by the plows. Although it had been awhile since Heimo had been to Hermagor, he remembered most of the landmarks. Several kilometers outside the town the GPS told him to turn south onto a smaller road headed up to the mountains. Ten minutes later they spotted the blue flashers of a police vehicle and pulled up.

Heimo lowered his window and showed the officer his ID.

Evening, sir. If you turn left at the speed limit sign, it’ll take you straight up to the farm. It’s only about twelve hundred meters but watch the black ice.

Thanks. Is Inspector Thurner there?

He is. We’ve already taped off the area.

The lane was asphalt, but it hadn’t been plowed recently. A two-centimeter skim of snow on top of a thin layer of ice made driving interesting. But Heimo’s car, equipped with computer-controlled four-wheel drive, was equal to it. Ahead they could see another set of flashers on the side of the road. Heimo stopped in the center but left the engine running.

By the time he and Josef were out of the car, the driver of the police car had also gotten out and leaned against his door. Johann Thurner was as bulky as Heimo remembered and looked even bigger in his heavy coat. He stuck out a mittened paw.

Hello, Heimo, I wondered if it’d be you.

Still me, Johann. How are you?

Freezing. We’ve just come back to thaw out. Temperature’s dropping fast, so it’s going to be fun trying to collect evidence.

How far is it?

Only a hundred meters. We need to get the vehicles up there, but I didn’t want to mess up any tracks.

See anything on the road that might be helpful?

Thurner shook his head. Just the tracks of Schuster’s son’s car. He was the one who found the old man. My people stopped here and walked up.

Heimo peered ahead as far as the headlights from the cars would let him and decided there was unlikely to be anything helpful on the track itself. The light covering of snow was too thin to provide good tread indications, and anything that might have been there had probably been obliterated by the son.

What’s the parking like at the farm? he asked.

No problem, Thurner said. The house is on the left and the barn where the body is, is on the right. You follow me.

Heimo noticed that Josef, who listened intently to the exchange, started to dance about trying to keep warm. It was a little unfair, but Heimo couldn’t resist. Another thing about murderers. They pick the most god-awful places to shoot people. Josef nodded vigorously as though