found that the updated edition had been issued just last year.
Idly she flipped through the book and came across a photo section in the middle. Black-and-white photos—apparently the publisher hadn’t wanted to spring for color. Or maybe the somber monochrome was more appropriate to Faust’s subject matter.
The first photos were of Peter Faust as a baby, looking as innocent as any infant, then as a young boy and a teenager. By the time his picture had been snapped on the streets of Hamburg, he was playing the role of an itinerant artist, dressed for the part in a joyless black ensemble. His face, no longer boyish, had hardened into a cold mask. That face aged slightly in subsequent photos, taken during his arrest, at his trial, and upon his release from the psychiatric hospital, but in its fundamental quality of icy ruthlessness, it had not changed.
There was a photo of Emily Wallace, too, lifted from her high school yearbook when she was a graduating senior. That would have been only one year before Faust killed her. She was blond and pretty and looked impossibly young. Juxtaposed with the yearbook picture was a shot of Wiesbaden Army Airfield, where she had worked as a civilian employee. Abby didn’t know how or why the girl had ended up in Germany, and she doubted Faust would explain it in his book. To him, Emily Wallace was not a person, but only an item to be used and disposed of.
She turned the page, and the next photo, shocking in its abruptness, was Emily’s dead body on an autopsy table. No head, no hands—but those items had been found in Faust’s apartment and were displayed on the facing page. Emily’s eyes were open, her face purplish and bloated. The back of her left hand bore the mark of Faust’s branding iron—a backward Z with a short horizontal line slashed through the middle. A caption identified the symbol as a wolfsangel , meaning “wolf’s hook.”
Abby put down the book, switched her desktop PC out of suspend mode, and Googled wolfsangel . The mark, she discovered, was sometimes said to be an ancient rune, though actually it was first described in 1902 by a German mystic who saw it in a vision. The basic design was similar to that of a medieval snare used against wolves. The iron snare’s top hook, corresponding to the upper arm of the backward Z, was pounded into a tree trunk, and a hunk of meat was pinned on the lower hook. Any wolf that leaped up to take the bait would be impaled.
The Nazis adopted the symbol as part of their arsenal of neopagan lore. Members of certain SS units wore it on their collars. It was also associated with Hitler’s “werewolves,” a guerrilla force assembled in the closing days of the war.
She returned to her armchair and Faust’s book. At least now she understood his nickname.
Police evidence photos showed the leather strap that had strangled Emily, and the branding iron that had seared the back of her left hand. Abby wondered where Faust had obtained a brand like that, or if he’d made it himself, perhaps in a metalworking shop. The book might tell her. It was the kind of detail he would be happy to relate.
After photos of Faust’s trial came a shot of the hospital in Berlin where he had been institutionalized for less than three years. The sentence seemed preposterously short, but the German penal system was notorious for its lenience. The man who’d stabbed Monica Seles on a German tennis court had received only a two-year suspended sentence. More recently a German cannibal who killed and ate a houseguest was convicted only of manslaughter. With good behavior he would serve no more time than Faust had.
Faust had been a celebrity ever since his arrest, and his fame had only increased as a result of his flamboyant behavior at his trial. He was defiant and unapologetic, and on the witness stand he delivered contemptuous, haranguing monologues in response to the simplest questions. He styled himself as a rebel, a man who despised and flouted all
Idly she flipped through the book and came across a photo section in the middle. Black-and-white photos—apparently the publisher hadn’t wanted to spring for color. Or maybe the somber monochrome was more appropriate to Faust’s subject matter.
The first photos were of Peter Faust as a baby, looking as innocent as any infant, then as a young boy and a teenager. By the time his picture had been snapped on the streets of Hamburg, he was playing the role of an itinerant artist, dressed for the part in a joyless black ensemble. His face, no longer boyish, had hardened into a cold mask. That face aged slightly in subsequent photos, taken during his arrest, at his trial, and upon his release from the psychiatric hospital, but in its fundamental quality of icy ruthlessness, it had not changed.
There was a photo of Emily Wallace, too, lifted from her high school yearbook when she was a graduating senior. That would have been only one year before Faust killed her. She was blond and pretty and looked impossibly young. Juxtaposed with the yearbook picture was a shot of Wiesbaden Army Airfield, where she had worked as a civilian employee. Abby didn’t know how or why the girl had ended up in Germany, and she doubted Faust would explain it in his book. To him, Emily Wallace was not a person, but only an item to be used and disposed of.
She turned the page, and the next photo, shocking in its abruptness, was Emily’s dead body on an autopsy table. No head, no hands—but those items had been found in Faust’s apartment and were displayed on the facing page. Emily’s eyes were open, her face purplish and bloated. The back of her left hand bore the mark of Faust’s branding iron—a backward Z with a short horizontal line slashed through the middle. A caption identified the symbol as a wolfsangel , meaning “wolf’s hook.”
Abby put down the book, switched her desktop PC out of suspend mode, and Googled wolfsangel . The mark, she discovered, was sometimes said to be an ancient rune, though actually it was first described in 1902 by a German mystic who saw it in a vision. The basic design was similar to that of a medieval snare used against wolves. The iron snare’s top hook, corresponding to the upper arm of the backward Z, was pounded into a tree trunk, and a hunk of meat was pinned on the lower hook. Any wolf that leaped up to take the bait would be impaled.
The Nazis adopted the symbol as part of their arsenal of neopagan lore. Members of certain SS units wore it on their collars. It was also associated with Hitler’s “werewolves,” a guerrilla force assembled in the closing days of the war.
She returned to her armchair and Faust’s book. At least now she understood his nickname.
Police evidence photos showed the leather strap that had strangled Emily, and the branding iron that had seared the back of her left hand. Abby wondered where Faust had obtained a brand like that, or if he’d made it himself, perhaps in a metalworking shop. The book might tell her. It was the kind of detail he would be happy to relate.
After photos of Faust’s trial came a shot of the hospital in Berlin where he had been institutionalized for less than three years. The sentence seemed preposterously short, but the German penal system was notorious for its lenience. The man who’d stabbed Monica Seles on a German tennis court had received only a two-year suspended sentence. More recently a German cannibal who killed and ate a houseguest was convicted only of manslaughter. With good behavior he would serve no more time than Faust had.
Faust had been a celebrity ever since his arrest, and his fame had only increased as a result of his flamboyant behavior at his trial. He was defiant and unapologetic, and on the witness stand he delivered contemptuous, haranguing monologues in response to the simplest questions. He styled himself as a rebel, a man who despised and flouted all
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