Authors: John Connolly
49
G
ordon Walsh sat at the back of the conference room as Lieutenant Driver, the newly appointed commanding officer of Major Crimes Unit-North gave details to the assembled reporters of progress in the continuing search for Oran Wilde and the associated killings, which amounted to none at all. He tried to disguise it as best he could behind the usual platitudes about following a number of lines of inquiry, but the appeal for fresh information gave him away. Behind Driver, in a gesture of support, stood the commander of MCU-South plus assorted uniformed officers and members of the Violent Crimes Task Force, along with a pair of FBI agents who were there simply to fill up the room and put some kind of governmental gloss on the whole mess. All present bore the expressions of men and women who wanted to be anywhere else but where they were. Walsh was reminded of those show trials in China, when everyone involved in a failure was paraded in front of the cameras before being hauled off and shot. They’d asked him to take his place out front with the damned, but he’d told them, in the most diplomatic way possible, to go screw themselves.
When the reporters had exhausted themselves by asking the same questions that they’d been posing ever since Oran Wilde vanished off the map, someone from NBC raised the Winter murder, and Driver gave a variation on the same theme: lines of inquiry, ongoing investigation, reluctant to compromise sources, any information gratefully received, and we’ll even pay for the stamps …
This led on to Bruno Perlman, and the possibility that the case of the Tedescos down in Florida might be connected to his death. Driver gratefully ceded the microphone to Detective Louise Tyler, who was leading the Perlman investigation. Thank God they didn’t put her buddy Welbecke up there, Walsh thought. She’d probably have punched someone out. Tyler threw the media a couple of bones, but they had little meat on them, and when she tried to suggest that Perlman’s death might yet prove to be suicide, it provoked open expressions of disbelief from the crowd. The Perlman question did allow the MSP to shift some of the heat to the FBI liaisons, one of whom told the room that because the results of the autopsy on Perlman were ‘inconclusive’, a second, federal autopsy was in the process of being conducted. When asked about a connection to the murder of Ruth Winter, he said the investigation was still in progress. He gave the same answer when asked about the Tedescos.
While he was speaking, someone took the chair at the far end of the row from Walsh. He glanced over to see Marie Demers, who’d come nosing around following the Winter murder, and who was being copied on all relevant material. Walsh tried to recall if he’d ever been involved in a bigger clusterfuck, and decided that he hadn’t. Maybe they should get T-shirts made for everyone once it was all over:
I SURVIVED THE CLUSTERFUCK KILLINGS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT – AND THE REMNANTS OF A CAREER
.
The problem, from Walsh’s point of view, was that the resources of the MSP were being fatally overstretched by the three investigations – Wilde, Winter, and Perlman – and, instead of alleviating the burden, the involvement of outside agencies was complicating the whole business still further. It was as though white noise was being pumped in over a piece of music, and now nobody could hear the tune.
But Demers interested him. He was the reason that she was in attendance at the press conference. He’d heard from Ross that she was back in Maine, staying at some hotel midway between Bangor and Boreas. He’d eventually succeeded in getting in touch with her the night before, and suggested that they meet, but she begged off with a migraine and offered to hook up after the press conference instead.
Mercifully, the conference started to wind up, and the whole sorry affair was brought to a close, the relief palpably emanating from those behind the microphone. Walsh sidled up to Demers. They’d met briefly in the aftermath of Ruth Winter’s murder, and at her burial. This time he took Demers for coffee, where she ordered some kind of nonfat decaf which, to paraphrase the Tom Waits song, didn’t even look strong enough to defend itself. In the spirit of the occasion Walsh resisted ordering something sweet and fat, and instead went for an Americano with so many shots that it practically counted as a giant espresso.
‘Thanks for taking the time to meet,’ he said.
‘SAC Ross told me that it might be worth my while speaking with you.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Ross doesn’t do nice.’
‘No, he doesn’t. I just said it for form’s sake.’
Walsh took a hit of his coffee, and the first of the caffeine lit up his synapses like fireworks on the Fourth of July. He thought his eyeballs might pop out.
‘Well?’ said Demers.
She wasn’t much for small talk, Walsh thought. It might have been the aftereffects of the migraine, or it could be that she was always that way. He didn’t much care which. It wasn’t as if they were planning to get married.
‘You’re investigating a man named Marcus Baulman as a possible war criminal.’
‘Yes.’
‘This Baulman was at a concentration camp called Lubsko, of which Ruth Winter’s mother was the sole survivor.’
‘It wasn’t a concentration camp: it was officially an “experimental colony” but otherwise, yes.’
‘And members of Bruno Perlman’s family died at the same camp, which gives us a dotted line between Ruth Winter, Perlman, and Marcus Baulman.’
‘Again, all this is common knowledge.’
‘I have something that isn’t,’ said Walsh.
‘Really?’
Demers wasn’t exactly on the edge of her seat, but he could see that he had piqued her curiosity for the first time.
‘The man who killed Ruth Winter – the one we’re calling Earl Steiger, in the absence of anything more conclusive – was a professional killer, possibly hired by a man named Cambion.’
Now Demers
was
interested. She even pushed her weird coffee to one side, as though it might impede the flow of information.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘It doesn’t matter where, and it’s not conclusive. I don’t have any evidence to support it, but the source is good.’
‘You didn’t share this with Ross?’
‘I did.’
‘Ross didn’t share it with me.’
‘You take that up with Ross. For what it’s worth, he told me to keep it to myself, but I don’t work for Ross – not officially, anyway, although sometimes he acts like I do. Plus I’m tired of seeing my entire department chasing its tail with no result. So I’m looking at all of these pieces, but I can’t make them fit together. Then you come along talking about war criminals, and suddenly I can see a picture.’
‘Go on.’
‘Bruno Perlman finds out something about Lubsko and Marcus Baulman that nobody else knows. He shares it with his friend Lenny Tedesco, then heads north. Along the way, he lets someone up here know that he’s coming – maybe even more than one person. Because of the Lubsko connection, I’m figuring one of them has to be either Isha Winter or her daughter.’
‘I spoke with Isha Winter,’ said Demers. ‘Perlman didn’t say anything to her about coming back for a second visit, and I don’t think he’d have been welcome anyway. Isha didn’t care much for his attitude the first time they met.’
‘Then it’s Ruth Winter he wanted to see. Perhaps he figures that an elderly woman shouldn’t be approached directly about whatever he’s discovered, and he might be better off going through her daughter. Baulman finds out that Perlman is coming, and hires Earl Steiger to take care of him and the Tedescos. Steiger could have killed all of them, but I’m leaning toward him farming out one of the jobs.’
‘Why?’
‘The timing is tight – not too tight for it to be impossible for Steiger to have worked alone, but just tight enough to make it improbable. And also—’
He took a moment to risk another sip of coffee. This wasn’t where he parted ways with Louis, exactly, but it was a leap that he still wasn’t entirely confident about making.
‘There’s a chance,’ he said, ‘and only a chance, that the killing of the Wilde family might be part of the same picture, but designed to distract us.’
Demers said nothing. He couldn’t tell if it was disbelief, or if he had her.
‘Everything about the Wilde case is off,’ said Walsh. ‘
Everything
. Oran Wilde should have been caught within hours, but he’s still out there. His father’s safe was locked when the house was examined, and we found charred bills in his wallet, so what’s the kid doing for funds? And there’s no motive. The more we find out about Oran, the more he seems like a regular kid – a little fond of wearing black, liked his shoot-’em-ups, and not as smart as he thought he was, but no murderer. Just the opposite: his close friends had him pegged as a decent, sensitive guy. His yearbook photo should have read “Least Likely to Commit a Mass Killing.” But somehow, his family ended up dead and we’ve committed huge resources to scouring the state for him, with no result.’
‘You’re saying that someone slaughtered four members of a family, and abducted a fifth, as a diversion? From what?’
‘From a body on a beach. From Bruno Perlman. Whoever put him in the water probably didn’t know about the tides there, which are all screwy. Perlman wasn’t supposed to wash up at Mason Point, but he did. I think someone went to the trouble of clogging up our system so Perlman would be overlooked and tagged as an accidental drowning, or a suicide, or would simply lie in cold storage until whatever else needed to be done could be completed.’
‘What about Ruth Winter?’ asked Demers. ‘She doesn’t fit into the same time frame. She dies later. Why not kill her along with Perlman?’
‘Maybe because Perlman’s killer knew that he hadn’t shared his information with her yet. What if it was something physical, something that Perlman wanted to show her? There was no laptop in his car when it was found, and we know that he owned one from a warranty found in his apartment. Unless Perlman brought his computer with him for his last swim, then it, along with anything else that might be useful, was taken by his killer.’
‘Then why murder Ruth Winter at all?’
‘That’s where it all starts to fall apart,’ admitted Walsh.
‘But you think Baulman may be the one who did the hiring,’ said Demers.
‘Would he kill to hide his past?’
‘He was responsible for murdering children at Lubsko, and apparently did it without compunction. So, yes, I think he would – or, given his age, he’d pay someone else to do it for him.’
‘You have proof that Baulman is the one you’re looking for?’
Demers drank some more of her coffee and scowled.
‘Why am I even drinking this shit?’ she said.
‘I didn’t want to ask.’
She didn’t wait for him to offer to get her something stronger, but went to the counter herself and came back a few minutes later with an espresso.
‘Fuck it if I get another migraine,’ she said.
‘That’s the right attitude.’
‘Where were we?’
‘Proof that Baulman is a war criminal.’
‘We don’t have any.’
‘Jesus. For real?’
Demers shrugged.
‘You know we have Engel awaiting deportation to Germany. Naturally, he doesn’t want to go. The Germans don’t want him either, because they say there’s not enough evidence to try him, but that’s not our problem. We’d prefer a trial, but getting him out of here is enough.’
‘Wait,’ said Walsh. ‘So why are we sending him over there?’
‘We’re deporting him on the basis of irregularities in his original visa application.’
‘Not because he was a war criminal.’
‘A suspected war criminal,’ she corrected. ‘No.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Walsh.
‘Denaturalization and deportation is all we have,’ said Demers. ‘It’s not ideal, and it’s not enough, but it’s better than the other option, which is to let these people live out their last years in the bosom of their adopted country. Because of a loophole in the system, we can even keep paying them their Social Security if they agree to go. Effectively, we bribe them to get the hell out of the United States. But Engel has a family here – a wife, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren – and he wants to die surrounded by them. His wife still refuses to believe that her husband was a murderer who put bullets into the necks of naked, kneeling men and women. She’ll take him back, if he can stay. So Engel offered to give up another Nazi in hiding if we’d halt the deportation proceedings.’
‘Did you agree?’
‘We told him it would depend upon the quality of the information. The truth is that he’s going back to Germany no matter what he tells us. He could prove to us that Mengele didn’t drown in Brazil in 1979 but is alive and well in Palm Beach, and we’d still want him gone. We’re simply delaying packing him up and shipping him off until we’ve bled him for all we can get, and then his own people can have him.’
‘And Engel pointed you to Marcus Baulman?’
‘He told us that Baulman was actually Reynard Kraus. He said he and Kraus served together at Lubsko. We looked into Baulman, and his paperwork had some gaps and inconsistencies in it – yet not enough to support a case against him, and they could be explained away by the chaos of war. But you get a sense for these people if you hunt them long enough, and Baulman is bad. What might have helped was a positive identification from Isha Winter, who knew Kraus by sight.’
Walsh picked up on the words ‘might have.’
‘But you didn’t get it,’ he said.
‘Yesterday I showed Isha Winter a picture of Baulman as a younger man. She told me that Baulman wasn’t Kraus.’
‘So Engel was lying.’
‘I haven’t had a chance to put that to him yet.’
‘Unless he was right about Baulman, but somehow managed to connect him to the wrong name. I mean, all these guys must be old as Methuselah by now. I have trouble remembering names, and I’m only fifty.’
‘It’s also possible that Isha Winter is mistaken, but it’s a long shot. She comes across as sharp as a tack. If she says Baulman isn’t Kraus, then it must be true. I’m going to keep working the case, but I was banking on the positive ID to give us a push.
‘It leaves you with problems too. Whatever information Bruno Perlman had, it couldn’t have been that Marcus Baulman was really Reynard Kraus, not unless he was as mistaken as Engel. Either way, why would Baulman go to the trouble of having Perlman and everyone connected with him killed if they were on the wrong track to begin with?’