'Vienna Blood' Season 2, Episodes 3-4 Recap: "The Devil's Kiss"

Vienna Blood is set in Vienna in the Edwardian era, but Victorian-style street urchins are universal in mysteries. The episode starts with one who stole a watch (Dajana Rajic). She leads the police on a merry chase through Landstrasse, ending with finding a dismembered body, missing a hand. Reinhardt is called in, accompanied by Sgt Haussmann, and determines the decomposing victim is Emil Schwaiger; he then heads to the archive and Fraulein Lindner, to hunt up any missing persons filed on him. However, when she finds it, the report isn't a couple of days old; but a couple of decades.

Mendel: That's psychology, isn't it?

Reinhardt meets Max at the opera before heading to the lab to check out what Dr. Jager has on the slab. But on arrival, Schwaiger's sister (Brigitte Karner) tells them this isn't Emil. That's odd; the official records Lindner pulled have the victim's photo in the identification papers. Since a traumatized street urchin is the only lead, Max brings the girl to his mother to look after. (Not the anniversary present she wanted.) As Max settles her in, Reinhardt's former boss, Strasser (Simon Hatzl), now Director of Secret Service, pulls him from the case. Oskar returns to his office frustrated, only to find a personal message with the victim's name — Anton Resch — and a corvus feather.