At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(57)

Addie was silent, no doubt turning all this over in her mind.

“What did you say his name was?” Evan asked. “This ásatrú leader?”

“Sorry. It’s Hank Helskin.”

“Hold on. Did you say Helskin?”

“You’ve heard of him?”

Evan filled her in on what he’d learned about Hank Helskin and his crew at Ragnar?k Axes.

“It’s got to be the same man!” Addie exclaimed. “Helskin’s ásatrú and a reenactor. And an ax thrower. Remember that Talfour’s skull was broken with a sharp instrument.”

“It’s almost certainly the same man,” Evan agreed. “But that doesn’t make him our killer. Our murderer is smart. And meticulous. Helskin’s crew sound more like slipshod Viking reenactors and neo-Nazi Neanderthals. Odious. Possibly even violent. Certainly capable of co-opting the ásatrú religion to serve their vile purposes. But I can’t see them writing Old English poetry—not even mediocre Old English poetry. And I doubt they’d know a bog body if one rang the front bell.”

“But Rhinehart said the killer was ásatrú.”

“He did. And maybe he’s right.” Evan tried to hide his skepticism. He knew Addie needed to keep an open mind. “But men like Helskin don’t fit the profile. Not based on what I know of him so far, anyway. They’re too disorganized. If they’re slapdash in how they portray themselves as Vikings, I doubt they’d be so painstaking with a corpse. Or be knowledgeable enough to have written the poetry. That writing suggests someone deeply immersed in Nordic culture and Old English literature. Not a casual Viking wannabe.”

“He’s still my top person of interest.”

“I understand. And according to Diana, there is a member of the group who is perhaps smarter and more serious about the whole Viking thing. A guy they call Raven, presumably because of his tattoo. There might be something there.”

“Even better.”

Evan took a healthy swallow of his drink, returned to the table, and stared at the version of the poem he’d written out. Hell.

“Evan?”

“Give me a second.”

He picked up his pen, slashed out one of the letters he’d added to line twenty-six.

“Addie,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“You’re not planning on doing anything rash, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re just driving by Helskin’s house, right? You’re not going to pay a visit.”

“Not unless I see him dragging a body around his front yard. Why?”

“Viking poets—or scops, as they were called in England—loved to include riddles in their poetry. A favorite type of riddle was to hide someone’s true name.”

“Okay,” she said. “But what does this have to do with me driving by Helskin’s house tonight?”

“When Rhinehart translated the poem, he wrote h-e-l-l.”

“Okay.”

“I did the same thing just now,” Evan said. “But the proper line is as follows: His suffering was thus that he thanked the hel guard. Hel with one l. Pronounced like heal. Hel is the Viking underworld.”

“And you think maybe the hel in the poem refers to Helskin? That the killer planted that as a clue?” Her voice had risen with her excitement, each word like a bird soaring into the ether. “It seems—” Her voice dropped. “It seems . . . subtle.”

“Subtle is what the scops were all about. Imagine a world without movies or television or computers or smartphones. Your sole source of entertainment was stories. What made a scop’s story better than your grandmother’s folktales was not just the poetry of his lines. It was the riddles contained inside the lines. And all the inside jokes that a Viking audience would appreciate. And which we have little hope of understanding.”

“Give me your best guess, Evan. Does the word hel refer to Helskin?”

Evan’s eyes swept through the lines of the poem again, searching. There it was, in line nineteen. Skin-sinner. This skin-sinner is second of five. He palmed the back of his neck. Was this another possible clue? Had the killer buried his own name in his poem? Was Helskin their killer? Had someone committed an offense against the man and paid for it with his life?

“Evan? Is he naming Helskin?”

“I don’t know.” He was uncomfortable with the idea of Helskin or his crew as sophisticated killers. “We also have the word skin. But that and the poet’s use of hel could be a coincidence. Regardless, why not wait until daylight? Go with Patrick. And backup. Arrest the man for being an offense against humanity. That’s a crime, isn’t it?”

“No, no, we’re onto something. Helskin was in Talfour’s shop. He wanted a custom ring. A ring carved with the runes for Odin’s thane, whatever that means.”

“Addie, I have a runic ring.” He told her about the ring that the officers had found in the park. “This one says God’s spear. Perhaps our Viking Poet killer was in Washington Park.”

“The Viking Poet killer,” she murmured. “It has a ring to it. So get this. When Helskin came into the shop, he was wearing a vest with the double lightning bolts that Rhinehart mentioned. The next day, one of Talfour’s attackers was caught on camera wearing the same vest.”