XXV.

Present

So the killer chose his victims on the basis of their locations and not their last names! Aside from the absence of rape, there were no deviations from the historic killings, really. The victims were women who lived in the houses closest to the respective city gates and towers, and the lengths of the wall segments determined the order in which he attacked them. He had begun with the shortest and had intended to work his way up to the longest segment, but never did. What if the current killer wanted to accomplish Dietrich h.e.l.lenbroich's incomplete ghastly "masterpiece"? Oliver glanced nervously at the upper-right corner of the city wall.

"Rheinstrae 4. Theoretically, that's where the next victim lives," Oliver said and looked at Emily.

She swallowed hard and her face turned deep red. "It's Anna's house! Oh my G.o.d, it's Anna's house!" She jumped to her feet and implored Oliver, "Tonight is the full moon. The killer always attacks at full moon. We need to go to Anna's right now. There's no way she can stay alone in her apartment tonight!"

With trembling fingers, Emily searched the contacts on her phone and called her friend. d.a.m.n it, it went straight to voice mail. The phone was switched off. Panic squeezed her chest and throat. She ran to Oliver's car while he followed her and alerted his partner. She prayed they wouldn't be too late!

Anna was exhausted. Her job at the big Dusseldorf bank was so stressful these days. Many of her coworkers had been home sick with the flu, so their clients' files had landed on Anna's desk. She parked her car in the lot behind the Zollturm and decided to go for a short walk before pa.s.sing out in bed.

She thought about Martin. It was nuts, all the things that had happened over the past few months. Not only had he suddenly come out as gay, but now he was also a murder suspect, wanted nationwide? Anna still couldn't make sense of it. She had been with this man for many years, had wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, but apparently she hadn't known him at all. Her feet found their way to her favorite bench at the Rhine, and she sat down. She recalled falling asleep here a few months ago and meeting Bastian. He was attractive, kind, and extremely courteous. He seemed to hail from a different world.

She looked up into the night sky, admiring the full moon and the brightness of the stars. Here in Zons, undisturbed by the city lights of Dusseldorf or Cologne, one could still admire the stars in the sky and see how bright they really were.

But enough ruminating when her warm, lovely bed awaited! Anna shivered in the February cold, stood up, and hurried back to her apartment. She had already reached the Zollturm and was fishing for her keys when she saw someone waving at her about twenty yards away. She stopped and took a closer look. It was Bastian.

"Meet me at the Muhlenturm!" she heard him say in a loud stage whisper.

"Why, don't you want to come up and have a cup of tea at my place?" Anna replied.

Bastian shook his head; he had already headed off. "Trust me. See you at the Muhlenturm!"

Anna watched, confused, as he disappeared into the darkness. While she certainly didn't feel like walking through the cold anymore, it seemed like fate that he'd come along just as she was recalling their strange encounter by the Rhine. And she was glad to see him again. So without thinking about it any further, she turned around and headed toward the Muhlenturm.

He peered nervously at his watch. It was late. She should be home by now. Where the h.e.l.l was she? He groped his way through the darkness of her apartment. He had planned everything so perfectly. As soon as she walked through that door, his trap would snap shut. All the work, planning, and maneuvering he had invested over the months, for just this one moment; the antic.i.p.ation alone was killing him. So far, everything had worked out just fine. n.o.body had seen through him.

"d.a.m.n it, where is that b.i.t.c.h?"

Frantically he tore at his brown hair. He was waiting for her behind the door. All he had to do was move in quickly, covering her mouth so that the neighbors didn't hear her scream while he prepared her for his ritual. He would accomplish what had begun in Zons more than five hundred years ago!

Half an hour later he finally heard the building door open. Every muscle in his body tensed up. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. With each step up the stairs, she drew closer to him. A key was inserted in the lock and then twisted. Softly, the door opened and a woman entered. With her right hand, she fumbled for the light switch. But he was prepared and had turned off the fuse.

Just another tiny step closer, you b.i.t.c.h. He held the gag in his left hand and a sharp knife in his right. As if she had heard him and obeyed, she took another step.

Suddenly her neck was squeezed in the crook of someone's arm, and at the end of that arm was a gleaming knife blade. At the same time, the intruder's other hand worked at shoving a piece of cloth into her mouth. Instinctively she turned her head to the side.

In the certainty of having trapped his victim, he groaned triumphantly-but his triumph was cut short when a beam of light shone through the darkness and pooled on his face. For a moment, he was blinded.

"Drop the knife and slowly raise your arms!" a male voice commanded.

Confused, he dropped the knife and held his hands over his head. He was still wondering who could have possibly accompanied Anna home, when the room lit up. Someone had found the fuse box and flicked the power back on.

He blinked at the woman who'd fallen to the floor when he had released his grasp. That wasn't Anna! It was Emily!

Oliver helped Emily onto Anna's couch while Klaus handcuffed the killer. Oliver's first thought had been that it was Martin Heuer, but then a horrified Emily had screamed another name: Christopher. Christopher Wormann.

The young man seemed just as staggered. He had been waiting for Anna, who just now was stepping through the door to her apartment, her eyes wide.

"Christopher? Emily? What the h.e.l.l is going on here?" Startled, Anna stood in her door frame and tried to make sense of what she saw. Christopher was handcuffed and stood facing the wall in her living room; a police officer was frisking him. Emily, her face ashen, sat on the couch next to that detective, Oliver Bergmann, who had questioned her about Martin. When Anna entered, everyone looked up at her.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Anna, why didn't you pick up your phone? I've been desperately trying to call you!"

"It wasn't intentional; my battery was dead. What are you all doing in my apartment?"

"He is the killer!" Emily pointed her finger at Christopher.

Christopher stared crazily at Anna. "Do you think the other two made such a scene?" he hissed at her.

"What do you mean, the other two?"

"Oh, think hard for a moment. And just try to imagine how difficult it was for me to get that besotted Martin away from you so I could complete my plan!"

Anna's heart raced up into her throat. "What did you do to Martin, Christopher?"

"What did I do to him? Do you really think we were dating? G.o.d, how pathetic you are!"

"Shut your trap this instant. We'll take you to the precinct." Klaus handed Christopher over to two officers who had arrived at the scene. Then he turned to Anna.

"We understand you're confused and upset-you have every right to be. Just give us some time to sort out every detail at the precinct. For now just be happy that you're still alive."

The next morning, Emily and Anna went to the precinct. After all the commotion, they had both spent the night at Emily's apartment in the student dorm in Cologne. Oliver Bergmann and his partner had given them a ride and made sure they were safe and sound before the detectives headed to the precinct for a first interrogation of their suspect.

In the precinct, Oliver Bergmann was already expecting Emily and Anna. He escorted them into his office. Doc.u.ments about the Zons murder cases, then and now, were piled high on his desk.

"Well, Frau Richter, I need to pay you my sincere compliments. You have saved your friend's life," he said and smiled shyly at Emily, who already felt he was speaking too formally to her. He looked very much in love.

"We have interrogated Christopher Wormann through the night," he continued. "He is responsible not only for the murders of Mich.e.l.le Peters and Christiane Stockhaus, but also for the murder of Martin Heuer. The two women victims fell prey to the same geographic bad luck that doomed the victims Kreuzer and Minkenberg five hundred years ago: they just happened to live where lunatics-separated by five centuries-had set their sights."

Anna wasn't following Oliver's words about the female victims. All she heard were the words "Martin Heuer." She moaned, "My G.o.d, Martin is dead?"

Tears welled up in Anna's eyes. No, please let this not be true.

"Before you proposed to Martin Heuer in the small cafe in Zons, Christopher Wormann had blackmailed him and forced him to reject your proposal. He threatened he would kill you if Martin did not follow his instructions."

Anna recalled how she had mulled over the right words for days before meeting Martin. Christopher had helped her significantly with the proposal during their many telephone conversations.

She had proposed on a beautiful autumn day. Anna had picked the small cafe in the heart of Zons because it seemed especially fit for this romantic occasion. But as soon as she popped the question, Martin disappeared to the bathroom-and when he came back with a pale face, she knew immediately there was not going to be a wedding. At least not between the two of them! Martin said he needed some time to think, but his answer was visible then and there. Three days pa.s.sed, and then Martin came out to her as gay. He wanted to spend his life with her best friend, Christopher. The next day, he was already on his way to Berlin with Christopher. Since then she hadn't heard a word from him.

She'd had her heart broken once; it now broke her heart again to learn the truth. What Martin had done, he had done out of love in order to save her!

"Why did Christopher do this?" she asked.

Oliver frowned and embarked on an explanation.

"When Emily Richter began researching the historic murder cases, Wormann had already developed his mania. When we searched his apartment last night, we found evidence that he had been obsessed with the fatal puzzle and the killer for several months. The officers seized abundant material about the historic events and the solution to the puzzle. The entire apartment was filled with related doc.u.ments, copies of ones he'd somehow borrowed from the Zons archive without leaving a record of his visit, and others he got on interlibrary loan from Berlin.

"Since he knew how the killer had chosen his victims back then, Wormann followed suit. You were to be the third victim, because you live in the house where Marie Dunnbier lived. Marie was almost h.e.l.lenbroich's third victim.

"Wormann knew that if you married Martin Heuer, Martin would have moved in with you, and then it would have been extremely difficult to a.s.sault you in your apartment. Or you would have moved in with Martin, leaving your place vacant and ruining that crucial piece of the puzzle. So he saw the engagement as something to be prevented at all costs. Initially, his plan seemed to work out. Martin agreed to break up with you. But after three days, Martin Heuer changed his mind and wanted to reunite with you. He was on his way to visit you when Wormann ambushed him, killed him, carefully burned his fingertips, and discarded him in the patch of forest next to the A57. Now that he has confessed, we can close the file on all those cases. Unfortunately, the missing-persons report wasn't filed until our chief of police issued one, and it took us a long time to identify the Body in the Woods. Otherwise we might have linked the cases far earlier.

"In any event, you should be grateful that you came home so late last night-otherwise he would certainly have killed you. He wanted to complete h.e.l.lenbroich's murderous puzzle at any cost. As Emily wrote in her article, and as Christopher must have found in the historic doc.u.ments, Dietrich h.e.l.lenbroich did not manage to sacrifice one girl for each tower-and in the sick logic of his hallucinations, that deprived him of the divine powers of a Lord's Warrior. It seems that Christopher Wormann worshipped h.e.l.lenbroich as a saint of sorts. In his apartment we even came across an altar decorated with old writings and drawings. Apparently he wanted to re-create the atrocities of his idol as faithfully as possible in order to catapult his master to fame and glory once again. He had even returned to Zons to scope out his planned murder sites. It remains to be determined during the trial whether Wormann is liable for his actions or legally insane. But one way or another, whether in prison or a psych ward, he will be locked away for a long time."

As she took in the detective's explanation, Anna's glance fell onto a photograph. It was a photo of an oil portrait from the 1500s, of a young man and a young woman. Anna recognized Bastian immediately. She grabbed the photo and stared at it.

"Who is this?"

"Bastian Muhlenberg. Five hundred years ago he was doing my job, so to speak. He chased the killer and tried to solve the fatal puzzle. The woman is Marie Dunnbier, his fiancee. h.e.l.lenbroich abducted her, but Bastian rescued her."

Anna couldn't believe it. Had she only imagined meeting Bastian Muhlenberg? She was a banker, a job where concrete, rational business was the rule. Each day she demonstrated that she could think clearly. Never in her life had she suffered from hallucinations or any mental instability. And yet she could have sworn that Bastian Muhlenberg had stood in front of her in the flesh.

Anna was at a loss. She looked over to Emily, who shrugged her shoulders helplessly. It was the strangely formal man named Bastian who had delayed Anna's arrival at her home. She had waited for over an hour at the Muhlenturm and was bitterly disappointed when Bastian didn't show up. Had he not diverted her there, she would have gone straight home and to her certain death. Whether it was real or imaginary, it didn't matter. Bastian Muhlenberg had saved her life!

XXVI.

Five Hundred Years Ago.

The sails of the mill were buzzing in the wind. Many months had pa.s.sed since Bastian had rescued Marie from the dungeon. Now he was idling in a meadow in the sunshine and chewing on a blade of gra.s.s. He was very pleased with himself. They may not have arrested h.e.l.lenbroich, but they had thwarted his megalomaniacal master plan and prevented more killings in Zons.

Bastian leaned back on his elbows and blinked at the hot summer sun when he suddenly heard a loud humming nearby. His comfortable quiet disturbed, he sat up reluctantly and looked in the direction from which the roaring noise seemed to come. Startled, he sat up. He couldn't believe his eyes.

To be continued . . .

Author's Afterword.

Dear Reader, I want to thank you for purchasing and reading Fatal Puzzle. I hope that you have spent some entertaining, suspenseful hours with my first book.

All the places that I describe in the thriller do exist in reality. The map that I drew and that you can find at the very beginning of the book shows you the historic city center of Zons. Should you ever come and visit our medieval town, this is exactly what you will find. They have a similar map at the tourist information center across from the regional museum, at Schlossstrae.

Most locals of Zons refer to Burg Friedestrom as "Castle Friedestrom." I guess it is because they prefer to have a castle rather than a fort. Also, the street running right in front of it is called "Schlossstrae" (Castle Street), not "Burgstrae." I have, however, chosen to stick with the official name.

Some readers have asked why I refer to four towers in Zons; the city map only indicates three. If you count the Schlossturm at the southeastern corner of the wall, you have four towers in four corners.

The origin of the name Krotschenturm is uncertain. In old German, "Krotsch" meant something like "sickly," which is why people a.s.sume that in times of the plague and other epidemics, the sick were locked in that tower to keep them away from the healthy population. It's also possible that the tower got its name from the surrounding gardens, the so-called Kreuzgarten. That's actually the field's name to this day. "Creutzthurm" could have become "Creutzschturm," and then "Krotschenturm." Unfortunately, there aren't any preserved doc.u.ments to answer this question.

There is no historically proven connection between the constellation of the Raven and the layout of the city wall. I simply happened upon this similarity while I was researching and took the artist's liberty to create the code based on this coincidence. However, historic events mentioned in the book, like the authorization to levy customs tolls granted to Zons by Archbishop Friedrich von Saarwerden of Cologne, did indeed take place.

The characters in my book are fictional and invented. I cannot rule out that one or another character might bear a certain resemblance to persons living today-however, this is not intentional.

Should you have questions about my book or if you would like to send me your personal feedback, you are welcome to contact me via email at

Yours, Catherine Shepherd.

About the Author.

Thriller author Catherine Shepherd was born in 1972 and lives with her husband in the medieval town of Zons on the river Rhine, the setting for her first book, Fatal Puzzle.

After graduating from a German high school, Shepherd, who uses a pen name, studied economics and went on to work for a major German bank for many years. Having started writing as a teenager, she dedicated herself to writing seriously in 2011 and published her first thriller in April 2012. It didn't take long for her e-book Fatal Puzzle to hit #1 on the German Amazon bestseller list, under the t.i.tle Der Puzzlemorder von Zons.

Her second thriller was released in March 2013 under the German t.i.tle Der Sichelmorder von Zons, and in December 2013, Shepherd published her third book, Kalter Zwilling.

For more information about the author and her thrillers, visit her website at www.catherine-shepherd.com or check her out on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Puzzlemoerder and www.facebook.com/catherine.shepherd.zons or you can find her as @shepherd_tweets on Twitter.

About the Translator.

Julia k.n.o.bloch is a translator, writer, and producer. She has been living in the US for four years and translates fiction and nonfiction for AmazonCrossing and individual clients. Fatal Puzzle is her first fiction translation from her native German to English. Julia's doc.u.mentaries on explorers, adventure expeditions, and WWII history have aired on the National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, ABC, and German public broadcasting. Her writing has appeared in major German and Argentine newspapers and magazines and online with Open Democracy and The Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Brooklyn and has just finished her first poetry ma.n.u.script.

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