Inspector Rolf Dresner and his men were being careful. They were closing in on a very dangerous man. Dresner had spent the last four weeks tracking down what the Americans called a serial killer who had made his way through Europe and had already killed two young people in the western Austria. The bodies of the two young victims had been found badly mauled with a knife and lying in a remote mountain stream. It was just luck someone had gone to check on a fence and saw them lying in shallow icy water.
For the past year the European press had been covering a string of similar murders ranging from the outskirts of Paris through Belgium and down through Germany. When the slain couple matched the description of the others, Dresner had pounced on the case. He was the lead inspector in the police department in Innsbruck. For the last sixteen years he had made it his mission to keep his community safe and peaceful. As a result, he was well known in law enforcement throughout western Austria and into southern Germany.
After the murdered couple was found, Dresner had begun collecting evidence, bit by bit, to make a case. There wasn’t much for them to go on. They had gotten a lead when caked dirt, blue cotton fibers and automotive grease was found in the mouth of one of the victims.
Without stirring suspicion, his men began checking around several of the garages in Innsbruck. There they heard about a young man who had recently arrived in Innsbruck and had gotten a job as a mechanic. This wasn’t new. With the Olympics coming in two years many young people were migrating there to get in on the boom and excitement. The owner of the shop was pleased with the young man’s work although he said the young man kept to himself. A further check through INTERPOL turned up nothing.
Dresner wasn’t convinced. Taking his own car into the shop for a routine service, Dresner noticed the blue cleaning rags used by the staff. When no one was looking, he grabbed one of the used rags lying on a bench and brought it back to the police station. Only yesterday did the professor at the university confirm the blue colored fibers from the rag matched the ones in the victim’s mouth. The automotive products matched as well. This particular shop was the only one in the area which used those type commercial rags.
This morning Dresner was called in when two young college students turned up missing from a study group. Going to the shop he was told the young man had taken a day off and had borrowed another mechanic’s cabin hideaway for a long weekend. Quickly assembling his men, Dresner led them to the cabin.
Using tactics he had learned as an army officer in the Second World War, Dresner spread the men out to approach the cabin from two different sides. By the time the men reached the two sides of the cabin their feet were nearly frozen from the snow. Using hand signals, Dresner motioned for the two men on the other side to try and see through the window. One of the men waved and began to move.
A muffled scream from inside the cabin startled all of them. Motioning for his men to move in, Dresner sprang towards the door. The officer with him was a large burley man with the agility of a fox. He plunged forward and hit the door with all his might, splintering it into a hundred pieces as he went through followed by Dresner and the others.
There were three people in the main room of the cabin. Two were tied to chairs and the third was between them. The middle man stood quickly and hurled something at the burley officer.
The officer let out a gasp and Dresner saw blood coming from a gash that appeared in the officer’s face as a straight razor sliced through his cheek. As Dresner turned back to the assailant, he saw the man had reached behind a couch and pulled out a shotgun. He was raising it to his shoulder.
Two shots rang out, shattering the quiet of the valley. The first shot of Dresner’s trusty Lugar went through the man’s mouth and out the back of his throat, taking with it one of his vertebrae and a portion of his spinal cord. The second went through his left eye and out the back of his head showering blood and brain matter all over the cabin wall. The young man’s lifeless body slumped to the floor like a sack of sand.
Suddenly everything was still. All that was heard were the sobs of a young girl tied to the right hand chair. The young man in the other chair didn’t move. Both were naked. The smoke from the two shots hung in the air creating a surreal scene.
Dresner turned to the injured officer who was holding a handkerchief to his bleeding face. “Are you alright?” he asked. The other man nodded. Dresner turned to the others. “Get back to the car and radio in for an ambulance and more help. Secure this place so we can gather what we need,” he said.
As one of the men went out the door Sergeant Betz began to tend the cheek of the wounded officer. Dresner stepped over the dead form and made his way to the young girl. He could tell by her eyes she was in shock. They seemed to dart in a panic between Dresner, the boy in the chair across from her, and the body on the floor. She cringed as he approached.
“Inspector Dresner, Innsbruck Police. Just relax, it is all over now,” he said quietly to her as he removed the blue gag from her mouth. Although she did relax slightly the harrowing experience remained. After finally removing the ropes around her arms, she began crying and reached around Dresner, hugging him closely. Dresner held her for a moment, whispering softly to her and patting her on the back.
The girl finally eased back in her seat. “Danny! He was hurting Danny,” she said looking toward the young man.
Danny was unconscious and tied tightly to his own chair. The chairs the two were tied to had been modified so that there was no bracing in the front. The man used that to have easy access to their bodies. As Dresner turned he noticed the blood dripping from the boy onto the floor. The young man’s genitals had been roughly shaved. But as the officers had entered, the garage mechanic had been slowly slicing into the young man’s scrotum to methodically castrate him. Grabbing a clean towel, Dresner stemmed the flow of blood. The others untied him and lay him on a sofa beside one wall. The young woman kneeled beside the young man trying to wake him until the officers found her clothes. They waited nearly half an hour before the ambulance and additional officers arrived. Betz continued to comfort the girl while gathering information.
“He was so nice,” she said. “He wanted us to see his valley yesterday afternoon. Then we stayed for dinner. I don’t remember much after that until I woke up in that chair,” she cried. The tears had almost stopped flowing by now.
“So he was going to take you back after dinner?” asked Betz as he wrote down every word.
The woman nodded. “Danny and I love hiking. He took us around this whole valley,” she said. “We had thought we would come back later on and hike some more. We had no idea…” she began to sob again.
Betz patted her arm. “There was no way for you to know. Most of our young men are very proud of their country and love to show it to others. Even I have taken visitors around to places I know. Now,” he said gently easing her back to talking, “what happened when you woke up?”
The young lady told him everything. She remembered waking to find her boyfriend tied naked to a chair in front of her. Their assailant had walked around in his underwear wielding the razor — not really making sense, but getting pleasure at seeing their suffering. When Danny resisted and told the man what he thought, he was struck with some sort of pummel and had remained unconscious ever since.