Free Where Monsters Dwell by Jørgen Brekke

had a lot to do with him for precisely that reason, but she had spoken to him enough times that it was too late to ask him his name without seeming dim-witted. She would have to look him up online when she got a little time to herself. Until then she had to be careful to avoid revealing that she didn’t know his name.
    “He certainly did get headlines,” she said, thinking of all the commotion in the past twenty-four hours. The morning had barely started before the case had been snatched up by the national press; it had been the top story for several hours on Fox News and the biggest Web sites. The bloggers had immediately started writing about the latest serial killer in the States, despite the fact that there hadn’t been a similar murder anywhere else. Loads of theories had already been presented. Most of them naturally drew connections to Edgar Allan Poe’s literary world, but also discussed as possible sources of inspiration for the murderer were American Indian ritual killings, Roman execution methods, and animal slaughter. The press conference at police headquarters didn’t seem to put a damper on the public imagination. And this in spite of the fact that both the police chief, Ottis Toole, District Attorney Henry Lucas, and investigative team leader Elijah Morris did their best to present the murder as an isolated event that would be investigated the same as any other homicide case in the city.
    This had been Morris’s main point at the so-called war council in a stuffy meeting room with bad air-conditioning, where Patterson, Laubach, and Stone were present.
    “We can handle this,” he’d said. “We can’t get sidetracked by all the blood and butchery in this case. This is a homicide like any other, and we know how to investigate homicides.”
    Morris was a tall, middle-aged man. His hair was close-cropped to camouflage the deep inroads in his hairline. He had a big furrow in his forehead that never went away, not even on calm days, when he could doze off in his desk chair. He was a sensible man, a practical man, somebody who didn’t lose his head even if the murder victim did. After talking for fifteen minutes he had managed to convince the others that the Poe murder, as the media had begun calling it, was a case that could be solved, and that the solution would presumably be found where it usually was—somewhere in the life of the victim.
    “It would definitely surprise me,” Morris said, “if the perp hadn’t been in contact with Efrahim Bond somehow. As in all homicide cases, first we have to look at the immediate family, then at any love affairs and colleagues.”
    After this speech by Morris, the investigative work almost felt routine. Felicia Stone now stood next to the autopsy table waiting to get a verbal and very preliminary report. She’d done this several times before, and she knew exactly what to ask.
    First things first. The deceased had been hit on the head with a blunt instrument, possibly a crowbar or a metal pipe. He had survived these blows but was probably knocked unconscious. Then the killer had flayed the skin off his torso before tying him to the Poe monument and cutting off his head. This sequence of events was fairly certain. Death occurred sometime during the night.
    “Can you say anything about the decapitation?” she asked the coroner, thinking she might have gazed too long into his blue eyes. She wondered how she would have felt about him if he weren’t always standing next to a corpse when she talked to him. Imagine if he were the kind of man she had once hoped to meet? Someone who could hold her so that it felt good all over her body, even in the pit of her stomach.
    “This is not a model decapitation, if you can say that,” he replied.
    “Amateurish, in other words.”
    “Yes, I might say that, but there aren’t many professional decapitators left nowadays, are there?” Again that sardonic smile.
    “You know what I mean,” she said, not amused. “Has he