Authors: John Connolly
‘Even if you’re right,’ he said softly, ‘and you may be, I don’t think I could work within those constraints again, and that assumes I could even nail the medical. You see my hand?’ He raised his left hand. ‘Take it.’
‘What? Are we dating now?’
‘You know, you’re a homophobe. If you want me to sign something before you touch me, I will.’
‘If anyone I know sees me, I’ll tell them it was assault,’ said Walsh, but he reached over and took Parker’s hand loosely in his.
‘You feel that?’ asked Parker.
‘This gets weirder.’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘Yeah, I feel it, but barely. You’re squeezing.’
‘That’s all the strength I have in that hand, but compared to what it was, it’s like being able to bench two-fifty with it. Without pills, I get maybe two or three hours of interrupted sleep a night. I have pains in my gut, my back, and my head, and I can’t tell which of them are real and which are phantoms, but all I know for sure is that they hurt the same.’
He released his grip on Walsh, who seemed relieved to get his hand back.
‘The offer still stands,’ said Walsh.
‘And it’s appreciated,’ said Parker. And it was, even if he felt, rightly or wrongly, that there was an undertow of charity, maybe pity, to it. He forced the feeling away. He had no intention of taking up Walsh’s offer, but deep inside him, at the edge of his awareness, the first of a series of connections had been made that would ultimately lead him to New York, and a conversation with the FBI.
An abandoned copy of the
Bangor Daily News
lay on the next table. The search for Oran Wilde still dominated the front page, just as it did the news cycles on TV.
‘What do you think?’ asked Walsh.
‘I only know what I’ve read in the papers.’
Walsh gave him chapter and verse, but it wasn’t much more than Parker had already gleaned from the news reports, apart from one recent development: Oran’s friend Clyde Marshal had received another message from Oran’s phone, letting him know that he was okay and everything was not the way it was being painted in the news. Oran also claimed in the message that Richie Benoit had tried to assault him, which was why he’d been forced to hurt him, but he hadn’t meant to kill him. Other than that, Oran had remained under the radar, avoiding a massive police search operation.
‘Oran Wilde appears to be smarter than any sixteen-year-old boy has a right to be,’ said Parker.
‘That’s what we’re starting to think, too.’
‘An accomplice? Someone who’s protecting him?’
‘Maybe, but I don’t see how it fits with Wilde stabbing Richie Benoit. Well, I can, but it involves this other party standing back and watching him do it. And if someone is helping him, then why has Wilde been reduced to rolling and killing homeless junkies? That kind of help is kin to no help at all.’
‘It’s odd that he stayed in the state,’ said Parker. ‘Accomplice or no accomplice, it would make sense to put some serious miles between him and Maine.’
‘Could be a question of resources. He is still a kid, smarter than average or not.’
Walsh scratched himself again, and gazed out the window, seemingly lost to the world. The detective watched him.
‘You don’t think Oran Wilde did it,’ said Parker.
Walsh barely reacted. He didn’t even turn his gaze back to Parker.
‘Why would you say that?’
‘I can see it in your face.’
‘You’re wrong, or just half-right,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy the accomplice: if Oran Wilde did it, then he didn’t act alone. And all of this bullshit about him being a disturbed child? It’s just smoke. He’s no more disturbed than I was at his age, and the thought of shooting my family never crossed my mind, even though my old man was a bastard. But I’m starting to wonder if Oran didn’t fall under someone’s influence, if he wasn’t groomed to do what he did, like that shooter down in D.C., curled up in the trunk of a car with an older man. The more I find out about Oran Wilde, the less I see him having it in him to kill anyone, and yet here we are, tearing up the Northeast looking for him.’
‘Anything on Facebook or social media?’
‘Nothing so far. If he met someone, it wasn’t online.’
They knocked it back and forth for a while longer, but Parker couldn’t help. He was outside looking in, and even allowing for what Walsh had shared with him, he was still removed from all of the fragments of the investigation. A conversation in a coffee shop wasn’t worth a murder book.
‘I have a favor to ask,’ he said, as Walsh looked set to leave.
‘And there I was thinking that it was just because you wanted to hold my hand over coffee.’
‘You hear about the body that washed up in Boreas?’
‘I saw the bulletin. What of it?’
‘The weight is toward suicide or accidental drowning.’
‘Let me guess: you don’t buy it. Your viewpoint has been tainted by experience.’
‘I think the chief up there, Cory Bloom, is starting to agree with me.’
‘That place is small, and she’s trapped in close quarters with you. You could probably convince her that day is night, given time.’
‘Come on, man …’
Walsh relented. ‘Give it to me. One minute.’
And Parker did. Spoken aloud, it didn’t sound like much: the absence of maps or GPS; no computer or phone; and the distance Perlman had traveled from Florida to Maine only to end up washed ashore on a remote beach. He also mentioned Epstein’s visit, and Lubsko.
‘Lubsko,’ said Walsh. ‘That fucking Engel, they should drown him in a tub. Odd that the name Lubsko should come up again so soon, but then we could be looking at cause and effect: Engel was in Maine, so Perlman the amateur Nazi hunter decides to poke a stick into the hole to see what else he might scare out.’
‘And if he did succeed in scaring someone?’
‘Seriously? Perlman’s shoelaces were tied together, but his hands were free, and even your friend the rabbi says he was shaky. And have you seen Engel? He’s, like, a hundred years old. If any of his buddies are living up here, then they’re ancient too. They’d have trouble getting themselves in and out of the tub, never mind dumping a middle-aged man in the ocean.’
‘His car was found parked at an overlook south of Boreas. At high tide, it’s a straight drop into the sea. Wouldn’t have taken more than a push to put him in.’
‘So what do you want?’ asked Walsh.
‘An autopsy. Bloom has been told to keep him on ice until the Wilde thing comes to an end, but that could be weeks at the current rate of progress, even assuming that Perlman is fast-tracked.’
‘The ME’s office has been told to hold off on all non-essential cases. You know how hard it is to conduct an autopsy on burn victims?’
‘Almost as hard as it is to do one on a body that’s spent days in the sea, and more days on ice.’
‘The Wilde thing has already sent the ME’s office over budget, and it’s only April.’
‘There’s more to Perlman than a simple drowning. The Lubsko angle alone raises a flag.’
‘Has Bloom asked?’
‘She got the party line.’
‘Shit, I’ll see what I can do. The best – and I mean the
best
– case scenario might be to grab an assistant ME, but I can’t guarantee that they’ll be able to give you much on a floater, not without a battery of lab tests, and you won’t get those.’
‘Anything would be a help.’
Walsh extended his hand, and Parker shook it.
‘Good seeing you, he lied,’ said Walsh.
‘And you.’
‘For somebody’s who’s all shot up, and recuperating, and reconsidering his role in life, you do seem very curious about a body that washed up on a beach.’
‘Old habits.’
‘Yeah. Well, don’t give up on them all, not yet.’
He said goodbye, and Parker watched him cross the street, chased by the shadows of clouds.
22
M
arcus Baulman stood at his front door as the visitors walked back to their car, the woman dressed in the kind of fitted dark blue suit that gave the impression of curves where there were none. He had recognized her the instant he opened the door, from closely following the news reports about Engel and Fuhrmann. She was Marie Demers, the attorney with the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section of the Justice Department responsible for prosecuting the two old men. He tried to think of the appropriate description for her. He rarely spoke German any more, not even among other German Americans. He had made that decision many years before, and had worked hard to remove the rough Teutonic edges from his accent.
Eine dünne Fraulein
: was that it? No, not quite. It didn’t capture her sharpness, her angularity, the danger that she posed. The man with her didn’t worry him quite so much, although he was not entirely without threat. She had introduced him as Toller, a historian and researcher with her section, and maybe that was what he was, but he was a researcher who could have punched a hole in a wall, if he chose. Nevertheless, it was clear that it was Demers who was in charge.
Baulman had denied it all, of course. That was the first rule, the one they had learned in the immediate aftermath of the war. Deny, deny, deny. No, I am not this man, this Kraus. I am Marcus Baulman. This is my family history. I can trace it back for generations. Yes, I have some records, some documents, although they are, regrettably, incomplete. So much was lost in the confusion after the war. You could not understand, for you are young. Our cities were bombed to rubble. Papers were burned, reduced to ash. Yes, I fought. I was proud to fight. I believed what I was told, at the start. Later, though, this changed. But I fought in the
Wehrmacht
. I never went anywhere near this camp you speak of, this Lubsko. Look, here is my
Wehrpass
. I kept it safe, along with my identity disc. No, I do not know why there is a discrepancy between my Wehrpass and the copies of the
Soldbuch
that you are showing to me. A mistake must have been made. As I told you, so much was lost, so much burned …
He could tell that they did not believe him. They would not have traveled from Washington on a whim. Perhaps they expected him to break down, to confess, but he did not. In a sense, he had been preparing for many decades for just such a moment. He would practice answering questions just like the ones they had posed, watching himself in a mirror, composing his features into the appropriate expressions: surprise, shock, righteous indignation, even a little fear, because an honest man would be afraid.
The car started up. The woman put on her sunglasses. He could not tell if she was watching him or not. He raised his hand, although it was a hesitant gesture. He thought that this, too, was what an honest man would do.
Extradition was a complicated business. First of all, the German government would have to be convinced of its obligation to accept him: as of now, there was no German warrant for his arrest. The Germans were also notoriously reluctant to allow former Nazis back into Germany. If they accepted a suspected war criminal from the United States, and then failed to follow through with their own investigation and an effort at prosecution, then they risked being branded a safe haven. But Baulman believed that a deeper psychological malaise, a national illness, underpinned the Germans’ reluctance to act. It wasn’t stated publicly, and it was possible that even those involved in such matters were either unaware of it or chose not to acknowledge it, but they were all simply waiting for the last of the old Nazis to die, so that their crimes could safely be consigned to history. As long as they lived, they remained a marker for old evils waiting to be called in, an embarrassment to the new Germany. Nobody wanted to be reminded of their continued existence.
But set against this was the acknowledgement that time was running out for prosecutions. With every week, every month, that passed, the possibility of bringing old men and women to justice grew slimmer and slimmer, and so the pressure on the authorities to act when evidence of wrongdoing was discovered grew commensurately greater. The Americans were particularly diligent in their efforts, although such things were relative. In a little over three decades the Americans had managed to file legal proceedings against no more than 140 or 150 former Nazis, resulting in the expulsion of fewer than half of those involved through extradition, deportation, or voluntary departure. Over twenty more had died while their cases were still pending, and it was decided not to continue proceedings in the cases of that many again because of ill health.
Yet even the Americans were compromised. After all, their counterintelligence services had recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans, and confirmed collaborators in an effort to bolster their own anticommunist efforts. They helped Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, flee to Argentina in return for his cooperation. They permitted Mykola Lebed, the Ukrainian sadist and Nazi collaborator believed responsible for the murders of an unknown number of Jews and Poles, to work for American intelligence in Europe and America until the 1980s. And that was without mentioning the former Nazis who were given safe haven on the grounds that they were fleeing communist persecution in Europe. No, the Americans were in no position to point a finger at anyone.
Baulman wondered if the young woman from the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section knew any of this, or cared about it if she did. When he watched her on the news, he saw in her the fanaticism of the true zealot. Her actions might have been linked to personal ambition, but she was also convinced of the justice of her cause: these were evil people, and they deserved to face the full force of the law for their crimes. Baulman knew that this was part of the fascination that the young had with the Second World War. It appeared to have no nuances, no gray areas. There were only good guys and bad guys. The bad guys even wore black, and decorated their uniforms with skulls. How much easier could they have made it for others to brand them as evil?
When he had first heard mention of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, Baulman had not been aware of what it was. He was familiar with the old Office of Special Investigations, which had spent so long hunting his kind, until natural mortality caused it to seek other targets – war criminals from the former Yugoslavia, from Rwanda – to salve its collective conscience. He knew that the hunters had not gone away, although he had somehow missed the fact that, in 2010, the OSI had been merged with the Domestic Security Section to form a new unit within the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. It just showed, he supposed, how lax he had become, how certain he was that he had escaped their notice and would see out his last days in peace.