“You don’t ask any questions about Hans,” she said.

Hoffner half smiled and shook his head. “No.”

She ran her hand along his chest. “That’s good.” She kissed him.

An hour later, Hoffner dropped his pants and shirt at the foot of his bed and crawled in next to Martha; she hardly seemed to breathe. With the scent of Lina still fresh on him, Hoffner placed his arm around Martha’s back and was asleep within minutes. No dreams. Instead, for the first time in weeks, he slept through the night.

On his third time through the notes, Hoffner wrote: “No pleasure or purpose in it; no imperative; kills because he can.” Fichte was on his knees at the foot of the desk, busy with one more stack of papers that he had just pulled from his valise. He had come directly from the train and had been pleasantly surprised to find Hoffner in an almost buoyant mood. There was nothing to apologize for; van Acker had been right: best to get it all here as quickly as possible. Fichte had decided not to question his good fortune. For Hoffner, though, the clear evidence of van Acker’s hand in the choice of documents had been far more important than the speed. As far as he could tell, the Belgian had sent along everything they might need. Unfortunately, it would be another hour before Fichte would have the papers in any kind of presentable order, but at least they were here.

Unwilling to wait, Hoffner had started in on what looked to be the most self-contained and thus coherent of the packets. It was the transcript of van Acker’s first interview with Wouters, dated October 7, 1916, two days after Wouters had been taken into custody. Not surprisingly, it was making for some rather interesting, if disturbing, reading:

REPORT CASE #: 00935

SUSPECT: WOUTERS

INTERROGATOR: ACKERS

7 OCTOBER 1916

CI van Acker: So you killed your grandmother. Anne Wouters.

M. Wouters: Yes.

CI van Acker: Because of the way she treated you.

M. Wouters: Because I had the bristle.

CI van Acker: So you deserved the beatings?

M. Wouters: (Pause) I don’t know. I don’t think so.

CI van Acker: And you were pleased to kill her. As you said, to “watch the blood flow down her neck.”

M. Wouters: (Pause) I don’t think I understand.

CI van Acker: You liked watching her die.

M. Wouters: No. Why should I like watching her die?

CI van Acker: Because she had been beating you. Because of the scars on your back.

M. Wouters: I don’t think so. I don’t know. (Pause) Would it be better if that was why?

CI van Acker: If what was why, Mr. Wouters?

M. Wouters: Would it be better if it was because of the scars on my back? Would that be right?

CI van Acker: (Pause) Are you sorry your grandmother is dead?

M. Wouters: You’re asking the same question again.

CI van Acker: No, I haven’t asked that question.

M. Wouters: Yes. Yes, you did.

CI van Acker: I can assure you, I didn’t.

M. Wouters: Yes. You asked if I was pleased to kill her. “To watch the blood flow down her neck.” You see.

CI van Acker: (Pause) And you buried her outside the city.

M. Wouters: Yes.

CI van Acker: “In the soft earth near the Shripte factory.”

M. Wouters: Yes. The dirt smelled like coal, there.

CI van Acker: Like coal. I see. (Pause) So if there was nothing wrong with what you did, Mr. Wouters, why not tell the police when they asked you about her disappearance?

M. Wouters: Tell them? (Pause) They didn’t find the blood. I cleaned that. With a brush.

Hoffner reread the last line, then sat back and peered across at the map. He continued to think. “Kills because he can.” It was the same conclusion van Acker had drawn two years ago; Hoffner saw no reason to question it now. For Wouters, brutality carried no moral weight, no meaning beyond the act itself. His answers made that abundantly clear: there was no remorse, no pride, no delight in the killing. And yet, strangely enough, Wouters was neither cold nor detached in his responses. Van Acker’s notes said as much. It was as if Wouters had been genuinely confused by van Acker’s horror and disbelief.

CI van Acker: And, after that, you lived on the streets and in the almshouses.

M. Wouters: Yes. I moved about.

CI van Acker: Until the day you decided to kill another woman.

M. Wouters: Yes.

CI van Acker: You waited nine years, and then just went out to kill another woman.

M. Wouters: Yes. Nine. If you say it was nine.

CI van Acker: Nine years, and then three more women.

M. Wouters: Yes. Three more. One, two, three.

CI van Acker: And you decided to carve out these designs on their backs.

M. Wouters: Yes.

CI van Acker: I see. (Pause) Why so long, Mr. Wouters? And why so many at once?

M. Wouters: (Pause) It took time to find the ideal.

CI van Acker: To find the what?

M. Wouters: (Pause) It seemed the right thing to do.

It was that last answer the Belgian doctors had fallen in love with. To them, it had made everything crystal clear. Here was the created madman.

Hoffner was not so convinced. He had never cottoned to the theory that every beaten boy was destined for violence, or that every act of violence was traceable back to a beaten boy. People did what they did because they chose to. The motivations were ultimately irrelevant, inevitability merely an excuse. And yet, even in Berlin, the proceedings at the Reichstadt Court were beginning to sound more like medical seminars than legal prosecutions. In the hands of a clever attorney, the predilections for stealing, maiming, and raping were no longer criminally inspired; instead, they were all symptoms of some hidden disease. That disease, as far as Hoffner could make out, was called childhood. Luckily, most of the judges were, as yet, unwilling to accept the sins of the father as a legitimate defense: they still believed in the culpability of the individual.

Except, of course, when it came to a deeper depravity, that special brand of horror that tore at the very cloth of humane society. Then the judges, whether German or Belgian, were told to step aside so that the doctors could explain away the birth of psychosis. Hoffner imagined that it made them all feel so much safer to think that men such as Wouters could not simply be brought into this world; that, instead, they had to be malformed by it. Hoffner was not sure which painted the world in a more feeble light: the fact that it could not defend itself against a pure evil, or that it alone was responsible for every act of corruption.

Either way, it made no difference. The act itself was all that concerned him. That Wouters had killed Mary Koop-a young Mary Koop-clearly threw the doctors’ theories out the window. Wouters was not reenacting his grandmother’s murder. He was simply weak. And as the weak do, he preyed on the weak. There was nothing more profound to it than that. That he had found most of his victims in older, solitary women; that he had chosen to etch his markings onto the area where he himself had been beaten-naturally there was a link, but those elements could in no way mitigate Wouters’s decision to embrace his own infamy.

What they did provide, however, was a view into the logic of the killings. Wouters might not have had access to the rational world, but that did not mean that he had not constructed one for himself.

A few points were obvious: the drag marks at each of the murder sites made it clear that the placement of the bodies was essential; otherwise, why go to the trouble of bringing them out into the open? Wouters had buried his grandmother in the “soft earth.” He had meant for her to remain hidden. Not so with these women. Hoffner was hoping that van Acker could shed some light on the placement issue with some more information on the three victims he had discovered in Bruges.