Chapter fifty eight

After we quickly vacated the hotel room we split up like usual, Delilah assumed my identity and went to tour Oslo some more, establishing an alibi for me in the process while I donned my baseball cap and large sunglasses to hide my blond hair and most of my face making me impossible to identify.

I walked to my ford and made my way towards the community center where there was another meeting happening today. Since the meeting wouldn't start in a while I started to do research on the 'councilor' that organized the battered women support group, Brenda Serafino.

I turned my attention to the ultimate source of knowledge, the all knowing and mystical sage called the internet. Thanks to a certain application that Kazimir had given me I could go through most 'secure and private' government files and according to the files I found Brenda Serafino was the adopted daughter of a wealthy financial broker called Clemente Serafino who originated from southern Switzerland but made most of his fortune in Norway and so had decided to relocate to Oslo. The man had married one of the locals before adopting an eleven year old Brenda but his new wife had mysteriously died of an unexplained disease whose only symptom seemed to have been a very high fever which was ultimately the only thing listed on her cause of death as the the post mortem examination found absolutely nothing wrong with her. Her death was deemed a freak act of nature and everybody had felt sad for the grieving widower who was now left alone to raise the young Brenda.

There were a couple of things that I found extremely suspicious about the story. For example there was almost nothing about Brenda before she was adopted by Clemente. This would be very normal in most countries but Norway was one of those countries that kept extensive records about paperclips let alone their citizens. An orphan would at least have an orphanage listed but even that was missing from her threadbare record. Hell the only thing there was the fact that she was born eleven years before she was adopted. It's almost like she just popped out of nowhere and got adopted by Mr Serafino.

The sudden demise of Ms Serafino was another thing that threw up a red flag for me. When I compared the dates I found out that Mr Serafino had started the adoption process before he was actually married. It was almost as if he got married to make the adoption seem more legitimate, while a single man adopting an eleven year old girl would be suspicious ,a married couple adopting her would be much more acceptable and not a month after the adoption had been officially confirmed Ms Serafino develops an illness that couldn't be diagnosed by any of the very expensive doctors that the 'concerned' husband had hired, something was definitely wrong with the whole story.

Well whatever the case maybe the young Brenda had been homeschooled until she went to a local university to earn her degree in psychology. She earned her PhD with her paper on abused women and the complex relationship they have with the person abusing them .The paper earned her world wide recognition and it was declared to be the most insightful look into the subject in a long time. Brenda refused multiple offers made to her from prestigious organizations such as Harvard and instead took a job in the local psychiatric institution. When asked about her choices by psychology quarterly she explained that she had taken the job close by to take care of her aging father.

From everything I had just learned and the fact that she had a soul that indicated that she had been abused her whole life I came to the conclusion that Brenda's adoptive father had probably abused her as a child. But what I didn't understand was why she would still stay with him. Was it some form of Stockholm syndrome or was there something more sinister going on?

My musings would have to wait because Brenda and the rest of the women had arrived. The meeting happened exactly like last time so I had to spend the rest of the day listening to her go on and on about how men were the scum of the earth and the source of all things bad. I had to pretend to be enthralled like everybody else in the room. After her speech had ended and everybody had dispersed to go to their homes I decided to follow Brenda.

I followed her little Toyota Prius to a secluded residential area where we passed one large mansions after another. I continued to tail her until she drove towards a particularly large mansion surrounded by a large clearing of land that was enclosed by a large fence that looked like it should be around a prison not a mansion, it even had barbed wire on top and a sign that said that trespassers will be shot.

I parked close by and observed as someone buzzed Brenda in through the big gate which automatically closed behind her. From the glimpse I got of the inside there were no guards and the garden was overgrown and full of weeds.

If my suspicions were correct then there were no gardeners , guards or any staff at all. The Serafinos had a secret so bad that they were too afraid to hire anyone for their mansion. What could be so bad that they wouldn't even let anyone into their house?

What could those high electrified fences be hiding?

A.n. owwww.......hangover+sunlight = :(