Festival of Fear (29 page)

The kettle started to whistle, piercingly. At the same time, her phone began to play
I Say A Little Prayer
. She took off the kettle and picked up the phone and said, ‘Foxley.'

‘I didn't wake you, did I?' said Klaus.

‘What's this?
Déjà vu
all over again? No, you didn't wake me. I'm way too tired to sleep.'

‘I've just had some old guy walk in from the street, says he can help us with You-Know-Who.'

‘You have him with you now?' She had picked up on the fact that Klaus had deliberately refrained from saying ‘Son of Beast.' The Investigations Bureau had never released the information that the Moms-To-Be Murderer had left roller-coaster tickets at every crime scene, nor what they called him.

‘Sure. He's still here. He says he needs to speak to you personally.'

‘
Me
? Why does he need to talk to me?'

‘He says you're the only person who can do it.'

‘I don't understand. The only person who can do
what
?'

‘He won't give me any specific details. Look –' he lowered his voice – ‘he's probably a screwball. But we're really clutching at straws, right, and if he can give us any kind of a lead . . .'

Helen tugged at her hair. Her reflection in the kitchen window tugged at
her
hair, too, although Helen thought that her reflection did it more hesitantly than she did. ‘OK,' she said. ‘I'll be cross-town in twenty minutes. Buy your screwball a cup of coffee or something. Keep him talking.'

She drove across to Cincinnati Police headquarters on Ezzard Charles Drive with her windshield wipers flapping to clear the snow. Klaus was on the fourth floor, sitting on the edge of his desk and talking to an elderly man in a very long black overcoat. The man had a shock of wiry gray hair and rimless eyeglasses. His face was criss-crossed with thousands of wrinkles, like very soft leather that has been folded and refolded countless times. An old-fashioned black homburg hat was resting in his lap, and his hands, in black leather gloves, were neatly folded on top of it.

Klaus stood up as Helen came into the office. ‘This is Detective Foxley, sir. Foxley, this is Mr . . .'

‘Hochheimer,' said the elderly man, rising to his feet and taking off his right glove. ‘Joachim Hochheimer. I read about the murder of the pregnant woman in the
Post
this evening.'

Helen didn't take off her coat. ‘And you think you can help us in some way?'

‘I think it's possible. But as I have already said to your associate here, it will require a considerable sacrifice.'

‘OK, then. What kind of considerable sacrifice are we talking about?'

‘Do you mind if I sit down again? My hip, well, I'm waiting to have it replaced.'

‘Sure, go ahead. Klaus – you couldn't buy me a coffee, could you? I think I'm beginning to hallucinate.'

‘Sure thing.'

When Klaus had left the office, the elderly man said, ‘Young lady – you may find it very difficult to believe what I am going to tell you. There is a risk that you will dismiss me as senile, or mad. If that turns out to be your opinion, then what can I do?'

‘Mr Hochheimer, we're investigating a series of very brutal homicides here. We welcome any suggestions, no matter how loony they might seem to be. Well – sorry – I'm not saying that
your
suggestions are loony. I don't even know what they are yet. But I'm trying to tell you that we appreciate your coming in, whatever you have to tell us.'

Mr Hochheimer nodded, very gravely. ‘Of course. I consider it an honor that you are even prepared to listen to me.'

‘So,' said Helen, sitting down next to him. ‘What's this all about?'

He cleared his throat. ‘As you know, hundreds of German immigrants flooded into Cincinnati in the middle of the nineteenth century, to work in the Ohio River docks and pork packing factories. Among these immigrants was a family originally from Reuthingen, deep in the forests of the Swabian Jura. They were refugees not from poverty, but from prejudice and relentless persecution.'

‘They were Jews?'

‘Oh, no, not Jews. They were a different sort of people altogether. Different from you, different from me. Different from the rest of humanity.'

‘How – different?'

‘Their bloodline came originally from Leipzig, from the university, which is one of the oldest universities in the world. In the fifteenth century, several physicians at the university were carrying out secret genealogical experiments to see if they could endow human beings with some of the attributes of animals, or fish, or insects.

‘For example, they tried to inseminate women with the semen from salmon, to see if they could produce a human being who was capable of swimming underwater without having to breathe. They tried similar experiments with dogs, and horses, and even spiders.

‘Today we think such experiments are nonsense, but we should remind ourselves that in fourteen hundred and thirty, people were still convinced that a pregnant woman who was frightened by a rabbit would give birth to a child with a hare lip, or that an albino baby was the result of its expectant mother drinking too much milk.'

‘Go on,' said Helen.

‘Almost all of the experiments failed, naturally. But one experiment – just one – was what you might call a qualified success. A young serving-girl called Mathilde Festa was impregnated with sperm from a horseleech. The idea was that her child, when it was grown, could be trained as a physician, and suck infected blood from its patients' wounds itself, without the necessity for leeches.'

What a nutjob
, thought Helen.
To think I got out of bed and drove all the way across town to listen to this.

‘Forgive me,' she said, trying to sound interested. ‘I thought that leeches were hermaphrodites, like oysters.'

‘They are, but they still produce semen. Some species of leech have up to eighty testes.'

‘Eighty? Really? That's a whole lot of balls.'

Mr Hochheimer closed his eyes for a moment, as if he were trying to be very patient with her.

‘I'm sorry,' said Helen. ‘I'm kind of frazzled, that's all. I haven't slept in thirty-seven hours. And I'm beginning to wonder what point you're trying to make to me here.'

Mr Hochheimer opened his eyes again and smiled at her. ‘I understand your skepticism. I told you that this wouldn't be easy to believe. But the fact is that Mathilde Festa gave birth to what appeared to be a normal-looking baby, except that his skin was slightly
mottled
in appearance. He was also born with four teeth, which were rough and serrated, like those of a leech.

‘After his birth the physicians at Leipzig kept him concealed, because the university authorities and the church would have been outraged if they had discovered the nature of their experiments. But when he was four years old, the boy managed to escape from the walled garden in which he was playing.

‘The physicians found him two days later, in the attic of an abandoned house close by, in a deep coma. Beside him was the body of another small boy, so white and so
collapsed
in appearance that they couldn't believe that he was human. Mathilde Festa's son had bitten this small boy, and had sucked out of him every last milliliter of blood and bodily fluid and bone marrow, until the unfortunate child was nothing more than an empty sack of dry skin and desiccated ribs.

‘What was even more remarkable, though, was that Mathilde Festa's son had grown to nearly twice his size. He had been only four years old when he escaped from the garden. Now he looked like a boy of eight.'

‘This is beginning to sound like something by the Brothers Grimm,' said Helen.

‘A fairy story, yes. I agree. If they had strangled Mathilde Festa's son there and then, as they should have done, that would have been an end to it, and nobody would ever have believed that it really happened.'

‘But they didn't strangle him?'

‘No – at least two of the physicians were determined that their life's work should not be lost. They believed that the death of one small boy was a small price to pay for successfully interbreeding one of God's species with another. They smuggled Mathilde Festa and her boy to Munich, and from Munich they took him to Reuthingen, deep in the forest, where he grew up as a normal child. Or as normal as any child could be, if he were half human and half leech. Mathilde Festa christened him Friedrich.'

‘I hate to push you, Mr Hochheimer, but it's getting kind of late and I'm very tired. How exactly is any of this relevant to the Moms-to-Be Murderer?'

Joachim Hochheimer raised one hand, to indicate that Helen should be patient. ‘When Friedrich was grown to manhood, he took a wife, a very simple-minded farmer's daughter who hadn't been able to find any other man to marry her. They were very happy together, by all accounts, but they were persecuted by other people in Reuthingen, because of the strangeness of Friedrich's appearance and also because of his wife's backwardness. Children tossed rocks at their cottage, and whenever they went out people shook their fists at them and spat.

‘One day, when she was walking home from the village, a gang of young men attacked Friedrich's wife. She was pregnant at the time with Friedrich's first child, almost full term. The young men dragged her into a barn and one of them raped her. Or
tried
to rape her.'

He hesitated, and squeezed his hands together as if he couldn't decide if he ought to continue. His leather gloves made a soft creaking sound.

‘Go on,' said Helen. ‘I deal with sex crimes every day, Mr Hochheimer. I've heard it all before.'

‘This, young lady, I don't think that you
have
heard before. As the young man forced his way into Friedrich's struggling wife, her waters broke. Her womb opened and the baby inside her seized her attacker's penis with his teeth.

‘The young man was screaming. His friends helped him to pull himself out. But the baby came out, too, its teeth still buried in his penis, and even when his friends battered the baby with sticks, it refused to release him. He fainted and his friends ran away.

‘The next morning, Friedrich found his wife lying in the barn, desperately weak, but still alive. Close beside her, sleeping, lay a young man, naked, almost fully-grown. Beside him, amongst the bales of straw, lay something that was described as looking like a crumpled nightshirt, except that it had a face on it, a face without eyes, and tufts of hair.'

Helen sat back. ‘Well, Mr Hochheimer, that's quite a story.'

‘A description of what happened was written in great detail by one of the physicians from Leipzig, and his account is still lodged in the university library. I have seen it for myself.'

‘You think it's true?'

‘I assure you, it is completely true. The descendants of the family of which I spoke are still here in Cincinnati.'

‘Well, it's a very interesting story, sir. But how can it help us to solve these murders?'

‘It said in the
Post
that you have been unable to track down your suspect in spite of a wealth of evidence. It said that you have even tried decoys pretending to be pregnant, but your suspect seems to know that they are not genuine.'

‘That's correct.'

‘Supposing a decoy
were
to be genuine.'

‘That's impossible,' said Helen. ‘We can't possibly ask a pregnant woman to expose herself to a serial killer. What if something went wrong? The police department would be crucified.'

‘Ah! But what if the pregnant woman were quite capable of defending herself? What if her unborn child were quite capable of protecting her?'

Helen suddenly understood what Joachim Hochheimer was suggesting. It made her feel as if she had scores of cicadas crawling inside her clothes. At that moment, Klaus came back with a cup of coffee in each hand.

‘
Foxley
?' he frowned. ‘Are you OK? You look like shit.'

She ignored him. Instead, she said to Joachim Hochheimer, ‘You're seriously suggesting that some woman gets herself pregnant with one of these – leech babies? And allows the Moms-to-Be Murderer to rape her . . . so that it . . .?'

She imitated a biting gesture with her fingers.

Joachim Hochheimer shrugged. ‘There would be no escape for him. Perhaps you think of it as summary justice, but what choice do you have? To allow him to continue his killings? To allow even more innocent young women and their unborn babies to be slaughtered?'

‘Jesus,' said Helen.

Klaus put down the coffee cups. ‘You want to explain to me what's going on here? What's a goddamned leech-baby when it's at home?'

Again, Helen ignored him. ‘Why me?' she asked Joachim Hochheimer. ‘Why did you come to see me?'

‘I read an interview with you, the last time a young pregnant woman was murdered. You are young, you are unattached, you have an award for bravery. I don't know. I suppose I just looked at your picture and thought, this could be the one.'

‘And how were you proposing that I should get pregnant?'

‘The Vuldus family have a son who is only two years younger than you. Richard Vuldus.'

Helen stared at him. The desk lamp was shining on his eyeglasses so that he looked as if he were blind.

‘It's impossible,' she said. ‘Even if I believed you – which I don't – it's totally out of the question.'

Joachim Hochheimer stayed where he was for a while, nodding. Then he stood up and said, ‘At least you know about it now. At least you have the option to try it, if you change your mind. Here – take my card. You can usually reach me at this number during the night.'

He put on his homburg hat and left the office. When he had gone, Klaus said, ‘What the hell was
that
all about?'

‘You were right,' said Helen. ‘He
was
a screwball. One hundred and ten percent unadulterated FDA-rated screwball.'