Jonathan Kellerman - Twisted

It was, Teller concluded, “a great puzzle of medicine and characterology, in that Retzak’s entire anatomy, including his brain, has been examined by learned physicians and found unremarkable. This has included detailed measurement of his cranium by practitioners of the discipline called phrenology, now considered of questionable scientific merit by some, but employed in the hope of ascertaining basic truths about the fiend. That analysis deciphered nothing out of the ordinary, as did all other analyses. One can only hope that exposure to the twisted workings of this monster’s soul as put forth by this humble tract will benefit mankind. That is, in fact, the purpose of The Author.”

At the age of eighteen, Retzak made his way to San Francisco, where he was hired as a deckhand aboard the steamer Grand Tripoli bound for the Orient. The ship made a stop in Hawaii, where Retzak took shore leave and abandoned his post.

“In Honolulu, Retzak embarked on a course of drunkenness and debauchery with numerous women of ill repute. Soon, he was living in common law with a prostitute, a fallen Alsatian girl named Ilette Flam, spectral and pasty as such types tend to be, and an opium addict. Retzak appointed himself Ilette’s procurer and for a period of nearly one year, sustained himself with her ill-gotten earnings.”

On Retzak’s nineteenth birthday, Ilette threw a party for him at a waterfront dive. During that celebration, she made an offhand remark that annoyed Retzak and when the two of them returned to their flat, an argument ensued. Retzak claimed not to recall the precise manner in which Ilette Flam had offended his sensibilities. However, when challenged by myself on this point, he owned up that “it was something about my being lazy. The sow was hazy with dope and booze and believed my intake of rum would dull my thinking and allow her to insult me with no consequence. Just the opposite! My senses were heightened and every stupid remark from her flapping sow lips served to inflame me further! When she uttered another taunt- perhaps it was something that challenged my intelligence- a definite thought crossed my field of vision like a beacon: your sow brain is that of a mindless animal.”

Waiting until Ilette had fallen into a drugged stupor “because she’d earned me a fair bit of money and for the most part she wasn’t all-bad,” Retzak put her to bed, turned her on her stomach, picked up an iron pry bar and bashed the back of her head.

“The skull cracked like an egg and gobbets of brains seeped out, accompanied by a clearish liquid, then some blood. The sight of it thrilled me as nothing had thrilled me before. New feelings took hold of my mind and I maintained a focused wielding of bar against bone. Specks of the tissue sprayed out like the finest mist and adhered to the walls. When a large brainy clot slipped down the back of her dress, I stared at it, amazed that this ugly grayish pink gelatin might very well house what Christian fools considered the seat of the soul. Could there be anything more hideous? Just one look at the cloudy mucus would inform any logical man that religion is rot. Suddenly, I was awash in calm and sat gazing at my handiwork with rapture. It was a new feeling and I quite liked it. I fetched my tablet of drawing paper and some pens I’d stolen from Berringer’s Department Store in Waikiki. As the sow lay there, leaking and seeping and Demonstrably Dead, I drew her. For the first time I was able to capture the human form with a degree of accuracy.”

It was, Retzak concluded, “a fine birthday present.”

Isaac’s throat had gone dry. His hairline ached. Swallowing and gulping, he tried to stimulate saliva.

Klara said, “This has to be it.” Her voice was thick.

He nodded. But he was thinking something else:

June 28 had been a double anniversary for Otto Retzak. Commemoration of his birth and the date of his first murder.

His first victim, a common-law wife.

The L.A. killer had begun in 1997. Commemorating the centenary of Retzak’s birth.

His first victim, a wife.

Marta’s friends were sure Kurt Doebbler had killed her. Sometimes things were just as they seemed.

Isaac turned the page.

Upon finishing the drawing of Ilette Flam’s mangled corpse, Retzak wrapped it in a bloody sheeting, packed a duffle, walked to Honolulu Harbor, and got himself a job on an oil tanker bound for Venezuela.

“All the way there, the memory of what I’d done to the sow burned in my brain like a sacrament. The ability to extinguish the flame, the power. As I swabbed decks and emptied slop buckets, I barely thought of anything else. I was much more than a deckhand. I had danced a dance few men can hope to know. At night, as I lay in a bunk surrounded by snoring swine, it was all I could do not to bash them all. But cunning prevented me from such rashness for the ship was a prison at sea, with no chance of escape. It was on shore in Caracas, months later, that I allowed myself the next delicious indulgence. The proprietor of a beer-house, a foul-mouthed old Mestizo, got on my wrong side and I decided he’d be the one. Waiting until he’d closed for the night and retired upstairs to his personal lodgings, I snapped the latch on the rear door of his establishment and surprised myself to find him awake and eating a late supper of pork and rice and some such swill. As he started to curse, I picked up a frypan resting atop the stove. A lovely cast-iron implement it was, with agreeable heft and a stout handle. Within seconds, gray half-breed gelatin had leaked into that Hispanical dinner. No different did it look from the sow’s and as I sketched the scene, I got to thinking that all persons are but pathetic sacks of flesh and gristle and disgusting fluids. Our delusions of cleanliness and nobility are the basest of lies, the world teems with hypocrisy and falsehood and loosing the pitcocks of humanity in order to free the fluids is the greatest honesty of all. It was my destiny, I decided, to bring about Truth.”

Once again, Retzak jumped ship and hid out in South America for several months. Eventually making his way back to the States, he tramped across the country stealing and doing odd jobs, finding employment as a menial laborer, a short-order cook, or a night clerk at shabby hotels. His off-hours were spent brawling, overindulging in alcohol, opium, marijuana, and patent medicines, seducing and raping prostitutes, sneak-thieving, butchering wild and domestic animals at whim.

Murdering five more human beings.

The third victim: a matron walking her dog in Le Doux, Missouri, an affluent suburb of St. Louis. Nocturnal walk; she’d been surprised by a handsome, strapping fellow with a mutt in tow.

“I’d watched this one for days, a sturdy sow she was, and I admired her form and her walk, believed her someone I’d enjoy knowing in the biblical sense. But then the urge came over me to go beyond that merest intrusion and I stole an old yellow cur from a front-yard in her neighborhood, a wretched mongrel so old and blind that he put up no resistance when I lifted him over the fence. Fashioning a leash from a length of rope, I set out to see if he’d cooperate and he did, though in a clumsy, halting manner. I offered him a slab of meat and he regarded me as a religious fool might regard a Savior. That night, I stationed myself outside the sow’s house and she emerged, as always, at nine p.m. with her fluffy little annoyance tethered by a satin cord. As she strolled from her house, she began humming a jaunty tune and that inflamed me further. I followed her at a distance until she entered a dark section of her street, then hurried after her, carrying my borrowed mongrel. When I was sufficiently close, I set the dog down, walked past her, stopped several yards ahead and pretended to be tending to the cur. My possession of a canine companion caused her to see me as trustworthy and she approached without hesitation. Within moments we were chatting idiotically and I sensed that she found me gentlemanly. After an exchange of polite utterances, she turned to leave and down came the ax handle I’d secreted in my coat. The gelatin! Her little fluffy thing began whimpering and for dessert, I stomped it. Its gelatin appeared no different to my eye than hers and I found that quite amusing. When I was finished recording the scene in my tablet, I picked up the yellow mongrel, carried it a half mile away, to a wooded place. It looked up at me with affection as I twisted its neck. After inspecting its vitals, I kicked it under a tree.”