| EYEBROW KILLER. CHAPTER 3 She wasn’t beautiful. Maybe she had never been beautiful, and everyone only thought she was because of the thick layer of her daily makeup. Instead, under the tons of cream, powder, and blush, Maryssa Goldsmith was hiding an ordinary, childish face. Gail slightly touched the victim's hair, clearing the way for the light from the magnifier lamp. He stood in the post-mortem examination room of the VU Medical Center and felt like part of a strange puppet show. It should be suicide, he’d told himself many times in the last twenty-four hours. He knew it was the only way to keep his little Guusje—his Augusta—away from trouble. He didn’t want to drag her into a story involving drugs or death. He wanted it to be a simple accident so that it would be sent to another division and quickly forgotten. Gail despised himself for that wish, but it was the only way to protect his daughter. His mother, Aefre, always told him he had a heart like an akara—he could go through fire and remain calm. This is precisely what he planned to do. Gail sighed: he wasn’t a perfect father. He never knew how a good father should behave in a situation like this. He didn’t even know his father’s real name. “What nonsense! It can’t be suicide…Gail will surely understand that as soon as I explain why.” Enni Hakala's voice forced Gail back to the present. Enni was quite loud for her age and size, but she was also quick-thinking, hardworking, intelligent, and happy most of the time. Nura Cocasse winked at Rocco and rubbed her hands, “Don’t make us wait.” “The victim is a fit young woman, sexually active. Died between 11:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 11. Looks like an overdose, heroin in that syringe, by the way. No fingerprints. She was tortured by fire. She could feel the pain, but perhaps not as much as we think. Come closer. I’ll show you…Do you see the strange marks on her hands? I believe the killer wanted her conscious but unable to move or run away.” “Can you guess what he used to burn her hands?” Rocco asked. “It was some kind of butane gas lighter; we haven’t found it at the apartment. Butane flames can reach high temperatures. Holding your hand in or near the flame for even a short period can cause serious thermal burns, such as second or third-degree. In her case, it caused immediate skin damage and some blistering. I don’t know the reason behind that action; it is your job. All I know is that the killer came well-prepared. It was premeditated.” Enni paused. “Her face wasn’t taped so that she might be screaming…” Nura nodded, inviting Enni to continue. "The victim's eyebrows were carefully shaved. She wasn’t raped or sexually assaulted before her death, so I think…” “…the killer could be a woman?” Nura asked. “Yes, it could be. But it’s unlikely.” Enni nodded. “Why? Because women are weak and typically don't enjoy the torture?" “It should be a screwed-as-hell woman.” “We’ll see later about that... What about the cases from Bern and Stockholm?” “Not sure. It might be the same murderer, but there’s a gap of one year between them, which is strange. There are slight differences also. For example, the case in Stockholm is the first one—2021, October. I don’t know if the time of year is significant… A female, Ida Berg, fifty-six, owned a bookshop in the historical part of the old town. She had a daughter, Astrid, twenty-four years old at that time. She was a student at Stockholm Business School of Economics, and on the night of the murder, Astrid was on campus with her friend Xiu—from Tokyo, part of an exchange student program. The victim, Ida Berg, had been married three times, and a year before her death, she was in a relationship with a much younger man,” Enni paused. She checked her whitelines on the computer screen, “I don’t remember his name, but it’s in the files somewhere. Anyway, he was cleared because he’s got an alibi for the night of the murder. What is significant in this particular case is that the killer shaved only one eyebrow. The cause of death is hemorrhagic shock, stabbed in the abdomen with scissors twelve times.” “She didn’t put up a fight? Toxicology report? Was she dragged?” Rocco asked. “No, she wasn’t. Her wrists were tied behind her back with tape, and her mouth was sealed.” “Could one person do all that? It might be difficult,” Nura asked. “Don’t get too excited, Cocasse. With such speed, we’ll get two serial killers on our backs. Or perhaps a group of criminals. Because why not?” Gail made a joke, but no one smiled. He thought it was charming, or maybe he tried too hard to change what was inevitable. ”It might. As you often say, ‘Go with your intuition,’” Nura replied to dissolve the tension in the room. “What about the second case, Enni?” “The second case happened in Bern. The victim is a male, Joseph Rayo, a pharmacist, forty-three, single. The same burns and two brows shaved. What is interesting is that he died from strangulation, but the toxicology report shows an overdose, too.” Enni paused again. She looked exhausted. “I don’t know what to say, but after analyzing all three cases, I have to admit, they are possibly the work of one person, but they are disconnected and quite random.” “This is exactly what I’m thinking, Enni. It can’t be a serial killer. Okay, maybe a murderer or two? But a serial killer? Really?” Gail noticed the frown on Nura’s face across the examination table but continued. “We imagine things. We make links between cases, but those connections don’t exist. Facts are more important than our hopes.” “What if there’s a reason for that? What if there’s a connection between all three victims, but we can’t see it yet? We can hold it in our unit for forty-eight hours; we’ll drop it if we can’t find those important threads between the cases by then. Okay?” Nura said. “We can, Nuralain, my dearest, but don’t we have enough on our plate? Hello, guys, it’s Amsterdam! If not today, then tomorrow, some depressed wanker goes berserk, and there you have it—a serial killer delivered to us on a silver platter!” Gail shouted. “I hope you didn’t come here to fight... I have one more interesting finding. It is about that blue wig. I pulled the DNA from a hair sample, which was a 99% match with Leye Ogundamisi. She’s in our database because she’s a journalist and had trouble with the police before. I guess you can start with her.” Enni Hakala showed the picture of a slim, beautiful woman in her thirties on the screen. “You are awesome, Enni!” Nura placed her palms together. “Good work. She is the one we saw on the CCTV footage. Maybe she'll tell us more about that other woman we couldn’t find yet, if they shared the same wig… ” Rocco was excited. “Good idea. Can you take it?” Nura asked. “Sure, I’ll get on that right away,” Rocco said. He was already on his phone talking with Zanna. Gail disliked the finding, but most of all, he hated that Rocco Benedetti supported Nura. He knew that Rocco tried to impress her not because she was his boss but because he was secretly in love with her. Rocco was too sharp, and if they continued to dig, the two of them could quickly figure out that his Augusta was the last person to speak with Maryssa Goldsmith. Gail wasn’t worried much about the cases in Stockholm and Bern: he believed his daughter. He trusted her words. No matter how often her lies had burned him, he retained a strong faith in her stories. She was his blood, and it was his way of protecting her from the world. Gail muttered, “Okay, I’ll help Rocco,” and left Nura with Enni at the post-mortem examination room. Gail arrived at the office after 4:00 p.m. He could tell something was wrong—the office was eerily quiet. He stood in the middle of the Aisle of Death—the path to the Chief’s office—and looked at the crowd gathered outside Panetta’s room. The walls of the Chief Inspector’s room were made out of transparent glass; it offered all the privacy one needed without actually providing any. Inside this glass box stood the man himself and their commissioner; they were both shouting in disagreement. Gail could tell that what they were discussing was significant by the way Frankie and the others ogled the glass box. Gail wasn’t interested in whatever it was; he was cross after visiting Enni Hakala. He moved down the aisle and took a left to his table, which faced away from the commotion. Gail wished he could switch off all the background noise and focus directly on his desk and the massive pile of paperwork he never had time to finish. As he reviewed his daily notes again, Gail wondered why Panetta and the Commissioner were having such a heated discussion, especially when the box did little to keep the argument private. Why even bother closing the door? You might as well leave it open and shout into a megaphone for all the help the glass box provides, Gail thought. He never drank at work; it had been his golden rule for the last fourteen years; however, right now, he needed his Kapuka vodka, not to drink, but to hold. Knowing that the bottle of Kapuka was waiting in the back seat of his car gave him a reassuring feeling that everything was alright; the world was still spinning around the sun. Gail let his mind go idle while his hand doodled a pattern across the thin strip of paper that ran from one edge of his desk to the other. As counterproductive as it sounds, Gail often did this when he needed to recharge. After another fifteen minutes of somewhat muffled arguments, the door to Panetta’s office finally swung open and produced Commissioner Eggert, red and sweaty. Eggert was a sixty-three-year-old man with a shining bald patch in the middle of his reddish hair. Every inch of his body looked sixty-three, from the wrinkles on his face to the spider veins that spread across his hands. It did not help that Eggert was tall and skinny. It made him look like a generic template an author might use for the boogeyman. On a typical day, Eggert’s snail-like words were long, reminding Gail of the sound of small coins dropping into a well. After all, removing each coin from the pocket took time, and even longer to hit the bottom of the well. That’s why Gail was surprised that Eggert’s speech pattern was ramped up today. It seemed no one in the office could tell the reason for the disagreement, but Gail noticed that Eggert’s voice sounded urgent, and his face looked like an angry bear on steroids. Gail watched as Eggert bumped into Nura Cocasse near the elevator and cursed. She quickly moved to the side and hid behind the coffee table where Frankie was standing—smiling and chewing gum. Gail waved to Nura from his desk, but Panetta intercepted her in the middle of the Aisle of Death. He invited her into his glass box and closed the door. Gail immediately jumped out of his chair and ran to Panetta’s office. He opened the door without a knock and entered the room on his tiptoes with a finger near his mouth. Panetta frowned. “I spoke to Eggert. We agreed that the call about the suicide victim we got yesterday was just that: a suicide. And thanks to Sergeant Gail here, we can confirm this suspicion of suicide to be true.” Nura was shocked. She glanced at Gail for support. “If there was anything else to this case, I believe we would have found it by now, Cocasse. There has been no unsolved murder in the months preceding this, and this will not be the first one. Let’s not make a serial killer case out of a suicide, especially not with the annual TCS Marathon coming up; we do not want to scare away tourists and athletes who are on their way to our country. Okay?” “But sir, we just got back from Enni, and you said—" Nura was about to explain, but she was interrupted. Panetta raised a finger in the air as though he was testing the direction of the wind and shouted, “ --that’s all, I said. Out! Now!” When Gail and Nura were near the door, Panetta squeezed out a few tired words, “Wait, Cocasse. We need to discuss your latest report.” The woman rolled her eyes, and Gail chuckled. He walked out of the office without any reason to suspect that the chief inspector had something else in mind. After all, his Kapuka vodka waited patiently in the car... It was time for his daily celebration. | 
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