The only connection that she could really think of was the fact that there were figureheads at all. The killer could have chosen any boat in the harbor. He could have tied his victims to masts or anchors or the posts along the walkway that smaller boats were tied to. He had his pick of locations. So, why the figureheads?
It was the figureheads he was reading about in her vision.
Maybe she needed to do the same.
Laura turned and saw the old building of the local library looming up behind her. In this age of the internet, she wouldn’t have normally thought it the best place to go to trace what a killer was thinking. But this wasn’t a normal case. She knew he was reading it all in a book.
So, a book was what she would look for too.
Laura walked to the library and climbed the three steps to get inside, pushing the wooden doors open to find herself in a space that instantly put her in mind of her childhood. The smell of dusty old books permeated her nostrils, the stacks of them in all directions seeming to offer infinite possibilities for reading.
There was only one section that she wanted to browse, however. She crossed quickly to a section appointed to ships and maritime books, one of the largest in the library to no particular surprise and started tracing her eyes over the titles.Piracy in the British Isles—Smuggling in Early Maine—Boat Maintenance for Beginners—Sailing Around the World. Each title flashed under her attention and was discarded, in search of something more fitting.
Kaboutermannekes: Sailors’ Myths and Stories.
She didn’t know why the title jumped out at her, given she didn’t even understand the first word, but it did. She pulled it down from the shelf, letting it fall open in her hand.
It fell open on what had to be either the most-used page or one that it had been propped open to recently enough for the pages to remember.
A page of text in a hand-written style with an illustration of a figurehead halfway down it.
A page that Laura recognized only too well.
She grabbed her cell phone out of her pocket. She dialed, the line connecting after just one ring. “Nate,” she said, not giving him any time to argue or get mad at her again. “Come to the library on the shorefront. I’ve got it.”
She ended the call. While she was waiting for him, she took the book over to one of the quiet reading tables and sat down.
***
“What is it?”
Laura looked up to see Nate grabbing the chair opposite her and sitting down, out of breath from having rushed over to her.
“The book,” she said, placing it down and sliding it toward him. “It’s the one from my vision.”
“You found it?” Nate stared down, tracing a finger over the illustration of the ship. “It’s just like you said.”
“And it gives me more than I thought it would,” Laura said. “This text, it’s about this thing called kab-kabouternekkes, or something.”
“Kaboutermannekes,” Nate said, reading it fluently off the page as though it was something from his native tongue.
“Right,” Laura said, refusing to get annoyed about it. “They’re supposedly these tiny fairies or spirits that live inside figureheads. Sailors believed that they would guide the ship to safety—or deliver your souls to the afterlife—depending on how much you appeased them.”
“How would you appease them?” Nate asked.
“By building them a lovely figurehead to live in and taking good care of it.” Laura tapped the page. “This illustration is one that was carved with a shape of a small sailor in a yellow costume on the side. It was kept painted fresh because this was a representation of the little fairies. If your ship sank and you didn’t have any of them on board, because they had abandoned you, then you would be trapped as a ghost forever haunting the seas, unable to pass on to the afterlife. It’s pretty terrible stuff.”
“What does that have to do with our killer?” Nate asked, frowning. “All of the murders have happened on dry land, correct? Even those that took place in the harbor weren’t on ships that were sailing. These little kaboutermanekkes wouldn’t be any use if the ship wasn’t sailing.”
“I think you’re right,” Laura said. “But maybe the killer has assigned some extra kind of meaning to them. I guess, if they look after your ship and stop you from coming to harm when they like you, then what might happen if they don’t?”
“Are we thinking general bad luck, or something specific?”
Laura thought for a moment. “Something specific,” she said. “It would have to be. Otherwise, you wouldn’t go as far as killing people—not just to stop yourself from having bad luck. It has to have been triggered by something he wants or doesn’t want to happen.”
“But what?” Nate asked. “That’s always the question, right?”
“I know,” Laura said. She picked up a second book, one that she had taken from the shelf while she waited for him to arrive. “But I have more. The carving that I told you about, the one that I saw on the shelf. I’m pretty sure it was one of these.” She opened the book to show a full-page photograph of a carving that looked, at first glance, like a gnome. It was, in fact, a kaboutermanekke, complete with his yellow coat—though the one she had seen had been unpainted.