The Mute Swan: A Thriller Read online

  The Mute Swan

  Nick Twist

  Cameron Jace

  Storybook CJ & NT

  Contents

  Free Book

  The Mute Swan

  Foreword

  Facts

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by Nick Twist

  Also by Cameron Jace

  Contact Me

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  About the Author

  Copyright@2020 Cameron Jace / Storybook Publishing 2020

  This is a work of fiction. Though based on accurate historical locations and historical facts, this is still a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictional manner.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. Not part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Free Book

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  Or wait until the end of the book, so you’re sure you want to delve deeper into the mystery.

  Blurb

  History’s Darkest Secret Will Be Revealed…

  Two centuries ago… the sisterhood formed a pentagram around a small-sized grave. The pact had been made and the bloodline had been protected. They called themselves the Six Swans, a society of only women. Their secret would be passed down from this generation to another until…

  Today…

  The murder of a nineteen-year-old girl in the small German town of Lohr leaves the police clueless. The staged scene, with tones of occult practices and riddles, suggests connection to the town’s darker history, which is known to the world as a fairy tale. Only the descendants of the Six Swans can help, and they send the only man they trust.

  John Sailor is called to scene. He is no detective, but he has certain knowledge about the ancestry of both the victim and the killer. His motives are personal and he shares them with no one.

  But when he arrives at the scene, Sailor realizes that to catch the killers, he will have to confront demons of his past… and lies everyone of us told our children at bedtime throughout history.

  The Mute Swan isn’t a fantasy. It’s gritty and dark and realistic thriller. It takes place in locations never visited in books before — and is based on facts.

  The Mute Swan

  by

  Cameron Jace & Nick Twist

  www. cameronjace.com

  Foreword

  Even though I’ve been traveling and researching this series for the last two years, the books couldn’t have happened without my generous and enthusiastic editors Patricia Poulin, Greetje Wijnstok, & Faith M Baldwin. Thanks to your keen eyes, long late night debates, and caring for the story and its characters.

  Facts

  The events in The Mute Swan (and its subsequent novels) take place in real life locations, and are based on factual research.

  Larger maps and details offered by the authors through their mailing list

  Prologue

  Kassel, Germany, 1812

  Dorothea stood in the center of a pentagram formed by five other women wearing black cloaks. She gripped a shovel in one hand while her boots were half buried in the snow. An unforgiving cold slapped at her face on a night that wasn’t black enough to shroud their secret.

  A trail of blood exposed their crime as swans screamed by the Fulda River nearby. Shrills loud enough to rival the drones of war in the distance.

  Napoleon’s troops had arrived at the border, and soon the grave in the middle of the pentagram would be lost among the piles of corpses of women and children.

  Dorothea dropped the shovel and pulled back the hood of her cloak to face the others. In spite of her pale complexion framed by black hair, her lips remained as red as the ripest of apples. A faint ray of moonlight traced a tear trickling down her cheek.

  “It’s done,” she said in German. “May our mothers forgive us, and our daughters avenge us all.”

  The women nodded in silence, hands clasped in front.

  All except the youngest.

  At nineteen her lips quivered. Not only from the freezing cold or their recent deed but because of the chilling cries of swans. She rubbed her arms against the cold, “Why are the swans screaming, Dorothea?”

  “Folklore has it that swans sing before dying,” said Dorothea, “and scream when secrets are buried.”

  The girl’s eyes moistened, “Are you telling me they will never stop?”

  Dorothea approached and took her nimble hands in hers. Virgin hands, unstained by the blood of ancestors yet. Hands that belonged to a girl who still believed in fairy tales. Two decades older, Dorothea was mature enough to know the tales were lies.

  History’s most morbid, malicious, and darkest lies.

  “Not until our daughters correct the path,” Dorothea told her then addressed the others. “We are the Six Swans. We’re mortal. The swans in the lake will be our eternal voice.”

  Chapter 1

  Lohr, Bavaria, Germany, 2020

  John Sailor’s ringtone was “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd, a song close enough to his heart that sometimes he let it play instead of answering. This call was important, though.

  He sat in his driver’s seat while rain drizzled on his SUV’s window, offering him a translucent vision of the night outside. Funny how barriers with darkness never distanced him from it. His came from deep within.

  He continued staring at the ringing phone on the dashboard.

  Hardly a fan of life on the mainland, let alone driving among homo sapiens, he was coerced to rent a car tonight. Another girl had been murdered and he had reluctantly left his fishing boat by the ocean.

  “Yup,” he put the phone on speaker whilst rolling a blunt.

  “You’re late.” Mother, his supervisor, said.

  “Nah. Been here for a few minutes.”

  “Why didn’t you call, then?”

  “It never hurts to say a little prayer before entering the scene of the crime,” he stuffed cannabis into the rolling paper.

  “You don’t do prayers, Sailor.”

  “I lied, sue me,” he licked the tip of the rolling paper. “I scanned the perimeter by the way. No threats. I’m parked in the lot outside.”

  “You see a German police car?”

  “Yup. Local. Same plate numbers you sent me.”

  “Good,” she said. “We made a deal with the officer inside. He’ll let you examine the corpse for an hour before the German federal police arrive.”

  Though their work was clandestine in nature, many people owed Mother favors all around the world. She was a resourceful boss. He said, “Why are federals coming?”

  “They started to see a pattern for the murders over the years. They want to know what’s going on.”

  “Two centuries late, fellas,” he used his saliva to tip the joint with pre
cision and attention. “So the officer inside thinks I’m who exactly?”

  “A German profiler,” she said. “Last time I checked your German was on point.”

  “Will the officer ask too many questions?”

  “No. Things should go smoothly,”

  “Things never do,” Sailor smiled at the joint in his hand. Back in his boat, he would put on the song “Light My Fire” by the Doors and stare at the ocean for hours. No ocean on the mainland. Only greed and death. “Tell me about the dead girl.”

  “A local. German. She is dressed in…”

  “I meant her name, Mother,” he sighed. “Start with her name.”

  “Ah, let me see. Hannah. Nineteen years old.”

  Too young. His smile dimmed and his fingers left a dent on the sides of the joint. “Cause of death?”

  “The usual,” Mother said. “Apple poisoning.”

  Mother meant cyanide poisoning. Large amounts of apple seeds, when properly prepared and mixed into food, were toxic enough to kill after digestion. The killers preferred this method. It had context. “Anything else?’”

  Mother hesitated,“There is a slight twist this time.”

  “When the twisted twist, that’s one hell of twister,” he gently slid the joint into a fish whistle dangling from his necklace. The whistle had been a crucial instrument when at sea. He had even carved enough holes in it to use it as a flute. It served as a smoking pipe on the mainland, only he liked to roll joints with his hands too. “Listening.”

  “The dead girl in the museum is wearing a white dress.”

  “Wedding dress, you mean?” Sailor lit up his joint.

  “That’s what you’re about to investigate.”

  “Why change their ritual this time? Girls never wore particular outfits before.”

  “I have a feeling they’re sending a message.”

  Sailor began singing “Message in a Bottle” by the Police. He let out a wheeze of smoke, watching it spiral in loops and rings before his eyes.

  I’ll send an SOS to the world... Message in a Bottle.

  Rain still drizzled like the ghosts outside his bedroom window back in the houseboat. He lived with ghosts on a daily basis. They were either people he killed, or killers who killed people he loved.

  “Sailor?” Mother crackled from the speaker.

  He killed the joint on his yellow fisherman’s jacket and grinned, wondering if it would accidentally catch fire and be the end of the whole mess.

  “Sailor?”

  “Yup,” he pulled out his Sig Sauer and attached the silencer to it.

  “Are you high?” Mother said.

  “Not enough, yet,” he looked in the mirror and combed his beard. At thirty-nine, he was too young for all this white. His wife had always joked about him seeing ghosts. How ominously ironic that a year ago she ended up as one.

  Chapter 2

  The Bayer Watchtower, Lohr, Bavaria, Germany

  The man in the tower wore a black suit and gloves.

  He stuck his head out of the eighteenth-century arched window and fiddled with his night-vision goggles mounted on his helmet. His grandfather had told him stories about the tower when he was a child. The last remaining of the city walls since World War II, it had been named after the former tower guardian family Bayer. Led by Napoleon, when France had conquered most of the German south, this was the highest tower in Bavaria. The same year the Brothers Grimm published their so-called fairy tales.

  He zoomed in and saw John Sailor leave his car. At six foot-two, Sailor had grown a noticeable dad bod. A year ago, the fisherman used to be as fit as an MMA fighter. The man with the gloves wondered if the yellow raincoat was a subconscious suicidal gesture, as it made Sailor an easy target.

  His eyes followed John Sailor approaching the main door.

  Once a small castle from the 18th century, the museum was also known as the Schloss or the Snow White House. It was one of Germany's smallest, most neglected tourist attractions. The locals believed it to be the castle where a real Snow White once lived.

  John Sailor vanished behind the museum's door, and the man with the gloves glanced at his Blaser R93 Tactical sniper rifle.

  Chapter 3

  The Spessart Museum, Lohr, Bavaria, Germany

  Earlier, on his drive to the city, John Sailor googled the obscure museum to refresh his memories. A small three story castle with sloping roofs and turrets that made it look welcoming enough to lure children inside. The insides looked more like an elegant farmer’s house than a museum, The main reception hall was stacked with most of its precious artifacts though.

  Entering, he thought about other museums like the Louvre, and it baffled him why tourists flocked to these buildings when historians knew that the grander discoveries in history had been found in smaller places. Abandoned churches, old houses, and archaic libraries.

  “Herr Sailor?” A voice echoed in the hall.

  Sailor turned and saw a man in a police uniform approaching and offering a hand, “Markus Wolfe.”

  Sailor nodded and scanned the area with his eyes. He then looked over Wolfe’s shoulder, glimpsing a younger officer standing a few feet behind.

  Portraits hung on the wall on the far left. Beneath them stood a row of wooden tables with small ancient looking items like music boxes and keepsakes. The far right was blocked with a large rectangular column.

  High or not, Sailor trusted no one and favored suspicion over handshakes and social etiquette.

  Wolfe stared at his empty hand.

  “John Sailor,” he finally shook the man’s hand. “Profiler.”

  “I’ve been told,” Wolfe said, accepting Sailor’s formality. In Sailor’s experience, Germans appreciated that. “Let me show you the body.”

  Following Wolfe’s footsteps, Sailor observed more of the museum’s artifacts. They were placed and presented without care. Not recklessly, but without shiny representations you normally see in museums. People didn’t make a lot of money here. If Sailor could go back in time, he would have taken his daughter to this museum, showing her the colorful fairy-tale vibe. No murder should’ve been committed here.

  A mirror on the wall caught his eye. It was one he had read about. The museum's most treasured item, though most people would laugh at its significance. It was the Talking Mirror, the actual mirror that Snow White’s psychologically disturbed mother talked to.

  The younger officer wore 50's classic nerd glasses and nodded at Sailor. He seemed tense and appalled by what he had seen, and pointed at the girl.

  “You didn’t kill her, did you?” Sailor said in a way that implied both a joke and interrogation. The young officer stood perplexed, unsure how to react.

  Stopping before the corpse, Sailor realized the drugs hadn’t fully kicked in yet. Numbing himself wasn't easy. He needed to separate himself from the emotions that could prejudice his investigation.

  Lowering his gaze, he saw a young girl sprawled on the floor.

  Chapter 4

  Hannah was as pale as her expensive dress, which Sailor doubted she could afford.

  The lower part of the dress was intricately tailored with feathers in a circular fashion. A bit too short for a wedding dress, unless the killers enjoyed that peculiar fetish. Spaghetti straps slung over the girl's shoulder. The dress could pass for a ballerina, too. Had she not been barefoot, Sailor could have interpreted the matter from her footwear.

  Two things Sailor knew: that the killers definitely dressed her up after murdering her, and that this scene was carefully staged. Mother was right. This time there was a twist. And possibly a hidden message.

  In the past, the crimes usually insinuated metaphors and ideologies. The killers were fond of statements, not just murder. This was their wicked version of art, and they dared brag about it. A trait that drove investigators crazy and forced them to follow misleading breadcrumbs in the end. Who in their sane mind would have imagined the history behind these killings?

  Sailor didn’t want to think
about it now. Whatever he knew only scratched the surface of the deeper secrets.

  The white dress bothered him. He was certain it had the most glaring clue but he could not figure it out. Weddings celebrated new beginnings to a future ahead. It didn’t fit the killers’ motives whose grandest concern was the past.

  “Such a poor girl,” Officer Wolfe considered.

  “Her name is Hannah,” Sailor said. “You know that already.”

  Wolfe looked puzzled at his assistant.

  “Hannah Holle,” the younger officer said, “I reported it.”

  “How did you know her name, Officer Kopke?” Sailor said after reading the nametag on his chest.

  “Wallet,” Kopke lifted a transparent evidence bag with the item inside. A pink padded wallet with rusted metal clasps. Too late for Sailor to inspect it. He wouldn’t tamper with packed evidence.

  Sailor looked back at the girl, “Didn’t know wedding dresses had pockets.”