The Murmurations of Vienna Von Drome
JEFFREY FORD
Pellegran’s Knot, in spring and summer, appeared an idyllic city. There was the shore, a vast park with hiking trails and, in the center of its enormous lawn, a working carousel. There were excellent restaurants, an historic district with a Pre-Empire cathedral (Saint Ifritia’s) and secret tunnels, an observatory, museums, a modern street car, and reasonable lodgings city-wide. The place was off the beaten track in the best of ways. As I noted above, the Knot, as we called it, “appeared” idyllic. There were, though, two very glaring aspects that disrupted its claim to quaint tranquility. One was disturbing in a kind of wonderful way, the other in a decidedly horrible way, and the truth was they were inextricably intertwined.
There was, in the Knot, a history of murder. Once every few years a body was found, always in the winter months, always after a fresh snow, the face shredded as if by claws, the abdominal cavity split open in a crude fashion and the spleen removed. Remnants of the partially devoured spleen were usually found near the victims but sometimes as far away as a half mile. My predecessors in the constabulary had determined that all these brutal killings had been carried out by the same person. The scenarios were identical. There were clues—long white hairs found upon and in the vicinity of the bodies. Strange dental marks in whatever remaining piece of spleen might have been recovered.
I came on the scene at the age of fifty, after having spent twenty years as an officer of the constabulary. It was a surprise promotion—head investigator for the third of the brutal murders. There was no way to sugar coat it: we had a serial killer living in our midst, someone all us citizens no doubt passed at one point or another on the street. Eventually, the newspaper dubbed our malefactor, the Beast. We locals discussed the existence of the maniac only among ourselves, keeping the tourists out of it. Everyone knew to keep mum in spring and summer. The newspaper never dared print a word about it each year until the leaves had turned orange. Even the killer acquiesced and killed well after the last of the bathers, sightseers, gourmands, had left for home.
. . .
