Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (18 page)

“You must have children?”

It’s a voice from behind that I can’t see. When I turn and look, there is an elderly gentleman standing in the doorway, well dressed, suit and tie, assisted by a walking cane. A woman about the same age stands next to him.

“I have one child, a daughter,” I tell him. “She’s grown.”

“I could tell. But then they’re never really grown up. Not to us.” He smiles as he steps into the room. “If Sofia’s father needs something to drink there’s liquor in the cabinet against the wall.” He gestures with his free hand toward the cabinet. “Please help yourself.”

“Is he all right?” the woman asks. “Does he need a doctor? There’s one right next door, our neighbor. I’m sure he’d be happy to come over.”

Herman asks Frank if he would like a drink, but Leon shakes it off and says, “No.”

“He’s fine,” Herman tells the couple. “He’ll be all right. He just needs to sit for a few minutes.”

“Take all the time you need,” says the old man.

“I take it you’re the homeowner?” I ask him.

“Yes.”

“If he’d like to lie down there’s a couch in the other room,” says his wife.

“Are you related to Tess?” I ask.

“Who?” says the man.

“Tess Zavala, Sofia’s roommate.”

“Oh, no. But she’s wonderful, isn’t she? They all are. So energetic, full of life. To be young again,” he says.

“And you are?” I ask.

“Theo Lang,” he says. “My wife, Claudia. We simply wanted to help out.”

“Kind of you to offer your house,” I tell him.

“It was the least we could do. She was such a lovely young lady.”

“Then you knew Sofia?”

“Hmmm?” He looks at me. “Oh yes. It’s terrible,” he says. “Absolutely terrible. And look what it’s done to her family, her mother and father.” He wrings his hands while still holding on to the cane. “She was such a wonderful young person. What’s the world coming to?” he asks.

I nibble around the edges of this question myself as I wonder how an old man, so gentle and austere, the very image of aged sobriety, can stand there and tell such a bold-faced lie. Theo Lang never met Sofia. I know this because she told me herself. Lang is a successful industrialist, scion of a wealthy family, a name you couldn’t miss if you lived in the area for any length of time. He and his wife support every worthy cause in the community. Among his other good deeds, he is one of the three men who signed letters of recommendation for Sofia, men she told me herself she never met. The letters were obtained by an intermediary whom Sofia didn’t identify. At the time I didn’t press the issue. Now I’m beginning to wish that I had.

TWENTY-THREE

M
onday morning just before ten, I have my secretary show Anthony Pack into our conference room the moment he arrives. Harry and Herman want to meet him, but I don’t want to overwhelm him with numbers until I’ve had a chance to feel him out. He may be reluctant to talk in front of a crowd.

Inside, I offer him coffee, bottled water, or a soft drink. He takes a Diet Coke and we settle into two chairs at the corner of the big table to talk.

“Thank you for coming all this way.”

“It’s not a problem. I’m happy to do it,” he says. “I just hope we can help each other.”

He’s a big man, tall, rangy, ruddy complexion with sandy-colored curly hair, a little gray at the temples and around the ears. He has an affable smile, something of the Irish if I had to guess.

He’s put a thin zippered leather folio on the table in front of him. From the look of it he hasn’t come burdened with a load of documents.

“Have you heard anything more from the authorities regarding Mr. Brauer’s death?” he asks.

“No. We’re still waiting.” I don’t tell him that Emma’s been charged. I’ll break that to him later.

“Tell me about your father,” I say. “You said over the phone, if I heard you correctly, that there were seven members in the platoon originally, but only three survived the war and that your father stayed in contact with the other two over the years.”

“That’s right.”

“What was your father’s name?”

“Edward. Everybody called him Ed. Even most of his patients. He wasn’t one to stand on formalities.”

I make a note on the legal pad in front of me. “Edward ‘Ed’ Pack = Army Medic.”

“Was there any kind of a designation for the platoon that you know of?”

“I’m not sure. They were part of Company C, I know that.”

I write it down. “Was there a brigade or a regiment?”

“I don’t know. Is it important?”

“Probably not, unless we need to do research.”

“I can check to see if it’s in any of my dad’s old papers at the house,” he says.

“Let’s put it aside for the moment. You said there were three survivors. Your dad, Bob Brauer, and a third man.”

“Walt Jones,” says Pack. “Walter. He was the sergeant in charge of the platoon. He and my dad stayed in contact over the years. They both lived in Oklahoma City. The 45th was a National Guard unit. It was federalized when the war came. It was headquartered in Oklahoma City. Most of the men who served came from that area. But during the war they drew recruits from all over, mostly the Southwest. They did basic training at Fort Sill. My dad said that after that, they went all over the place, Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia. That’s where they shipped out, Hampton Roads. They ended up in North Africa, and from there they went to Italy. They saw a lot of action in Sicily and later Salerno.”

“But they ended up in Germany, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“So I take it they were at Normandy on D-Day?”

“No. The 45th came up through southern France, the area around the Riviera, part of a diversion to draw German troops away from Normandy. When I was little, my dad and I used to look at maps of the Mediterranean and Western Europe. We actually took a trip some years ago. The entire family. He showed us where they fought.”

“Hell of a way to see St. Tropez,” I tell him.

“That’s what he said. Almost his exact words.” There’s a smile and a twinkle in his eyes as if this brings back happy memories.

“They actually landed a little to the west of there and fought their way north through France. They had to push through the Maginot Line from the west and later the Siegfried Line, crossed the Rhine, and took Nuremberg.”

“Sounds like you memorized it.”

“I used to move toy soldiers on the map spread out on the floor in Dad’s study. Little green plastic G.I. Joes,” he says. “I knew every city on that map.”

“Somewhere I read that they liberated the concentration camp at Dachau.”

“That’s true. Dad never talked much about that. I asked him several times and he didn’t want to discuss it. It was the one thing that was off-limits.”

“Well, I’m sure you can imagine why,” I tell him. “I’ve only seen old film and that was enough. I can’t imagine being there.”

“Yes. No question about that,” he says. “But I’ve always wondered if perhaps there was another reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, twice there were units of the 45th that came under investigation for war crimes.”

My ears perk up.

“There were soldiers in the division charged with executing German prisoners. Of course, my dad never told me about this. I found out about it on my own, doing research when I was older. One of the episodes involved Dachau,” he says. “Charges that German guards were shot while trying to surrender. Estimates of those killed as high as fifty. And that some of the wounded Germans were denied medical treatment by US soldiers.”

“You don’t think your father was involved in any of that?”

“I’d like to say no. I’d find it hard to believe. But the fact is, I have no idea. War does funny things to people. It’s what he always said.”

I make a note to check it out.

“In the end it probably doesn’t matter, because the investigation all came to nothing,” he says. “The division captured Munich near the close of the war and that’s where they stayed when it ended. General Patton became the military governor of Bavaria. He had been itching to bury the investigation from the start. When the charges from Dachau ended up on his desk, that’s exactly what he did. They buried Patton a short time later after a traffic accident and the rest is history. The division was highly decorated. A number of them got the Medal of Honor. According to my dad, the worst part of all came after the war when they were stuck in Munich. They were there for months. They were bored and they wanted to come home. There was nothing to do but drink, get plastered. That’s how two of the men from the platoon died in the front seat of a jeep. To my father, that was the real tragedy because there was no reason for it. It was a total waste. He kept in touch with the families of those two men for years after the war. To my dad, it was like he was still serving with them. He was their medic. Strange thing is, years later, several of the family members, the survivors, became patients in his practice.” Pack looks up at me. “Well, that’s it. That’s all I know. What I want to know is who killed my father and why. Not that he had a lot of years left. But whoever did it had no right,” he says. “Not to take the life of a man who lived like that.”

“You’re right,” I tell him. “You’re absolutely right.” I sit back and look at him. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“A cup of coffee and a roll early this morning,” he says.

“Why don’t I take you to lunch. Let me grab some people. I want you to meet my partner and a few of the others. We’ll go next door.”

Twenty minutes later we are huddled around one of the larger tables at the Brigantine. Harry and Herman are on one side, Pack and me on the other when Joselyn walks in. Apparently one of the secretaries told her where we were. “Joselyn, I’d like you to meet Anthony Pack . . .”

“Tony,” he says. “Please. You keep saying Anthony. I’m looking around wondering who you’re talking about.”

“Let me start over. Joselyn, I’d like you to meet Tony Pack. Joselyn is my better half,” I tell him.

“His only half,” says Harry. “The empty-headed fool left a cake on my desk the other night trying to convince me it came from somebody else.”

I ignore him.

“Tony’s from Oklahoma City. He flew in last night and he’s hungry,” I tell her. “So join us.”

Ignoring Harry never works.

“By the way, we enjoyed the cake,” he says. “But next time you might try chocolate mint. That’s Gwyn’s favorite.”

“I hope she’s fond of dogs,” I tell him. “I’ll lodge your request for mint with Emma.”

“I must have missed something,” says Pack.

“In our office you need a roster to know the players,” I tell him. “I’ll bring you current later.”

Joselyn sits down at the end of the table right next to me. She already knows who Pack is because I’ve told her. If it has to do with Sofia’s murder she wants to know about it. From the little we’ve gleaned at Emma’s house, it may. I tend to think there’s some connection between the little box and its contents, the key in Emma’s basement and Sofia’s death. If it’s true, whatever Tony Pack’s dad knew may be one of the yellow bricks in the road that leads to her killer.

We order drinks and then lunch. When the cocktails come and as soon as the waitress has laid them all out, I ask Pack, “Mind if we make it a working lunch?”

“Not at all,” he says. “Let’s not waste time.”

“One person we haven’t talked about is Walter Jones, the sergeant. I assume he’s dead?”

“Of course,” says Tony. “How could it be any other way?” He offers up a cynical smile, then sips around the ice from his Scotch and soda. “It’s very convenient how they all died in such quick and orderly succession. It’s something I brought to the attention of the police, and which they immediately dismissed. Their answer? ‘They were all old.’ ”

“How did Jones die?”

“He was killed crossing the street by a hit-and-run driver five weeks to the day after my dad passed. The police never found the driver.”

“I can see how that could be considered a geriatric disease in certain police departments,” says Harry.

“This was in Oklahoma City?” says Joselyn.

He nods. “That’s where he lived, just like my dad, his entire life.”

“And then Brauer,” I say.

“Let me ask you. Do you see any kind of pattern here?” says Tony.

“The police can be obtuse sometimes,” I tell him.

“That’s a polite way of putting it,” says Harry. “Why bring the hospital’s problems down to the precinct house when you can avoid all the trouble by checking the little box that reads ‘pneumonia.’ ”

“If you had to make a guess—and I know you don’t have any evidence—but if you had to guess, what would be your best flying leap as to the cause of death in your father’s case? You saw him, I take it, in the final throes?”

“Oh, you bet I did. And it’s a good question. I’ve put it to myself many times. I’ve spent hours bent over the computer looking at the screen searching for the answer. And it always comes back the same.”

“What’s that?”

“Insulin overdose,” he says.

“Your father was a diabetic?” I ask.

“No. But it fits the symptoms and it’s the perfect substance for murder. The victim goes into hypoglycemic shock, followed by deep coma, which, if it’s not diagnosed quickly and treated almost immediately with the appropriate countermeasures, results in brain death. Hospitals sometimes fail to diagnose it. According to the literature it’s one of the favorite ways the elderly use to commit suicide. Massive insulin overdose. Do it in a facility where the prime mission is residential assistance and you can forget it. My dad was on the floor for hours before they found him, and he still lingered. But they couldn’t bring him back.”

“Best of all,” says Harry, “in most states insulin doesn’t even require a prescription. You can buy it over the counter and nobody will ask any questions.” How does Harry know this, you ask? From the boardinghouse case across town where the little old landlady was knocking off tenants in order to cash their Social Security checks. It’s been in and out of the news for weeks.

“Does Oklahoma require a prescription?” I ask Tony.

“I don’t know. But what difference does it make? It’s a short ride across any border to the next state.”