Authors: Paul Grossman
“Superb reasoning.” Eisenlohr applauded. “Better hurry, though; everything here closes
pünktlich
at five.”
The offices of the
Niedersedlitzer Beobachter
, however, were several blocks from the city hall, and by the time they got there, it was one minute past five. A bald man with a long mustache was just on the other side of the door but refused to let them in, even when Willi flashed his badge. They saw him grab his hat, slip out the back, and hurry down the block. Willi had a mind to run after and book the son of a bitch for obstructing justice, but reason held sway. He led Gunther around back instead and, using the metal pick on his army knife, unlocked the door.
Gunther looked at him as if he’d gone mad.
“Come now.” Willi shrugged, guiltlessly probing for the bolting mechanism. “You know the old saying
: the more laws, the less justice
. Keep an eye out for God’s sake and make sure nobody’s watching. Order may be half of life, but only half. And besides, many roads lead to Rome. We’re on the hunt for major mass murderers here. With wolves one must howl. And sometimes, Gunther, what the lion can’t manage”—the lock popped open—“the fox can.”
Working with flashlights, they found an archive dating back to the 1880s, and soon enough unearthed a whole set of articles regarding the 1916 Amalgamated Leather fire. Strangely, though, disappointingly, not one exceeded three paragraphs in length. The Battle of the Somme raging in France no doubt overshadowed local arson, but clearly the story must have been censored. The company apparently manufactured boots, bags, and rucksacks. Some fifty men were employed there when it burned the night of November 5. Two days later plant foreman Bruno Köhler was arrested and charged with arson. No motive was given, but if you read between certain lines—“surly attitude” and “sloppy at work”—the implication was that he was either drunk or disgruntled or both—perhaps with the war, perhaps not. In those days any dissatisfaction was treason.
Subsequent articles summarized the arson trial in even vaguer terms: the “substantial” evidence presented by the prosecution, including more than one eyewitness account, and finally, a confession by Köhler himself, whom the
Beobachter
quoted as telling the jury, “What I did, the devil demanded.”
It was the final article, though, the one on the convicted man’s sentencing, that made Willi’s neck hairs stand. In what they probably felt was a note of patriotism, that even a child was against sabotage, the newspaper pulled no punches conveying how Köhler’s ten-year-old daughter told them that twenty-five years wasn’t enough for her father. That he ought to be locked up for life.
Who would even make up such a thing for a ten-year-old to say?
“Gunther, quickly.” Willi’s pulse jumped. “Get out Ingeborg’s list of Ilses.”
Sure enough, there she was. Third to last.
Ilse Köhler. 1906.
Twenty-one
Amber light broke through a colonnade of distant smokestacks. Across the street a field of grain waved in the late-August dawn. As Willi watched from his hotel window, a hawk swooped down and grabbed a rodent, flying off with it. For some reason it reminded him of that afternoon at the
Viehof,
that huge woman dressed as a man. He’d had such difficulty understanding her. Wasn’t her dialect similar to the one here?
The moment the clock struck eight, they were at the post office putting through a call to Berlin. Willi instructed Ruta to contact Direktor Gruber at the
Central-Viehof
and find out if anyone, business or employee, was registered under the name Köhler.
“And don’t let them dilly-dally. It’s urgent. Call me back, at the Niedersedlitz
Rathau
s.”
At the nearby Hall of Records they got to work digging. First find: a wartime registration card listing all the family members; their religion—Protestant; and their parish—First Reformed. Ilse had not one sibling, it turned out, but two: Magda and Axel. It had to be him, then, Willi thought. The Ox. Ilse’s birth cerfiticate was there, but neither of the others’.
What they did find, however, was a death certificate.
Clara Köhler, mother of all three, drew her last breath giving Ilse life.
Mandatory employee records submitted at the end of 1914 included a letter to the Dresden draft board stating that Bruno Köhler had been employed at Amalgamated since he was fourteen, had been chief foreman of the factory for the past eight years, and was considered essential to productivity. A model worker.
A widower with three dependant children.
“My God, look at this,” Gunther said, handing Willi a police report, dated three years later—March 1917.
Good thing they hadn’t started looking in prisons for him because Bruno Köhler, model worker and father of three, never made it into one. According to the Niedersedlitz police, following a court-granted last night at home with his kids, his body was found “cut into more than twenty pieces and strung like Christmas ornaments around a backyard pine tree—head on top.” All three children vanished.
My God
was right.
The phone rang. It was Ruta from Berlin. Gruber’s office, she said, reported that no one named Köhler was employed or currently leasing space at the
Central-Viehof
.
Damn. Where did that leave them?
He was about to hang up when Ruta stopped him.
“Sorry, Herr Sergeant. Kommissar Horthstaler wants a word with you.”
“You’d better have a good reason for prancing off to Danzig, Kraus.”
“Dresden, Herr Kommissar.”
“Don’t correct me, damn it.” The man was beside himself.
Two more boys had gone missing yesterday. Sons of very rich industrialists this time, out riding ponys in the Tiergarten. The horses had returned but not the boys.
“Street kids and orphans are one thing—but this. The whole city’s in an uproar. Mayor calling saying his wife wants to send away their sons.
Le Monde
from Paris calling saying they want a story on the Monster Child-Eater of Berlin. Who’s it going to be next, Kraus?”
Willi assured him he was working as fast as humanly possible.
“Well, you’d better work faster. Call on the Lord your God for a miracle or something—because let me tell you, a lot of people are suddenly wondering why a Jew’s been named protector of our children.”
* * *
The Köhlers’ former home, 159 Heimgarten Strasse, was a plain, little stucco cottage on a dead-end street surrounded by woods. A young couple with several kids lived there now—no idea what happened fifteen years ago.
“Mind if we look around?” Willi held up his Kripo badge.
Beyond the sparse furnishings there wasn’t much to see. Just a strange indentation beneath a worn rug in the kitchen they would have missed had it not been for Willi’s veteran eye. Underneath, a trapdoor.
“I hadn’t a clue that was there.” The young husband was astounded.
A short flight down led to a tiny, windowless root cellar full of cobwebs. When he came back up, Willi closed the door behind him and pulled the rug back over. “Might want to clean it up,” he suggested. “Use it for extra storage.”
He didn’t mention the iron clasps he noticed bolted into the wall that looked like chain fittings.
“Sorry we couldn’t help,” the wife said in a thick Saxon accent, bouncing an infant. “Try the Bachmanns next door. She’s not so friendly, but they’ve lived here for centuries.”
“Okay, Gunther,” Willi said as they headed to the next house. “I’m going to need you to step up and turn on a little country charm.”
Frau Bachmann was a sharp-faced woman with a pile of silvery hair knotted atop her head.
“Ja?”
She cocked her chin with stern authority.
“What a beautiful home you have,
gnädige Frau,
” Gunther said with a humble bow. “So full of love and warmth. Might we come in? We’re with the
Morning Observer.
Here to do a story on some local history.”
The kid could think on his feet, Willi saw. He’ll do all right.
“Newspapermen?” Her face brightened as she ushered them in, throwing a glance at Gunther. “Imagine that. My son, Alfred, wanted to be a newspaperman before the war. You look just about his age when he left for the front. Flanders.” Her wrinkled hand touched her throat.
“My condolences.” Gunther touched his heart.
“No, no.” She waved him off, laughing. “I didn’t lose him. Entirely.” The laugh faded. “He was such a sincere young man, of course, once.” Her expression slowly soured. “Yearned to serve his fatherland. But,
ach,
now…” A bitter grimmace overcame her. “So cynical. I don’t go visit him much, even though he’s just outside town, at the veterans’ home.” She cocked her head, squinting at Gunther as if he were a photograph. “You really do look like he did.”
“We’re writing a story about the people who lived next door during the war.” Willi felt the need to press forward. “The Köhlers.”
Clearly she’d been caught by surprise. “I don’t remember any family by that name.” She turned gray, shaking her head.
“Didn’t you live here during the war?”
“No. Back then we lived over in—listen, gentlemen.” Her face seemed to calcify. “I’ve been ill lately. You’ll have to leave.” Her spotted hand rose toward the door.
From the brittle look in her eye, Willi saw she meant it. That nothing short of torture was going to make her talk. So, reluctantly, he motioned Gunther, and they beat a frustrated retreat.
Outside, the tall green pine next door swayed from the hot gusts of wind. You could practically see those Christmas ornaments dangling from it still.
They knocked at every house on the street, spoke to shopkeepers, people out walking dogs. Spent hours trying to find someone who’d tell them about the infamous Köhlers, but oddly, no one seemed to recall even hearing of them. Picturing that bloody head propped atop that tree, though, perhaps it wasn’t so odd, Willi thought. They were still out there, after all, the Köhler kids. Ilse wanting to rid the world of the “slime” who lived in Niedersedlitz.
These townsfolk probably remembered them, all right—all too well.
Trudging next to Gunther in the heat, Willi wondered what the hell that father could have done to provoke such vengeance in his children, and how he’d gotten away with it so many years. He recalled what Kurt had said, how plenty of schizoids presented normal personalities. Made eye contact. Seemed friendly. This guy must have been a doozy, Willi thought. Turning out three homicidal maniacs without anyone even—
He froze, an icy chill crackling in his skull. Could that be it? He looked at Gunther without saying anything. Were all three of these siblings working as one—kidnapping, killing, and processing children’s bodies, like some demonic hydra? It seemed inconceivable. But then again, hadn’t everything in this case—bags of bones, human lampshades—until he’d seen it with his own eyes?
Back in town, he found himself seeking any excuse to stay and keep hunting, but coming up empty-handed. Kommissar Horthstaler had made it amply clear he was to return at the earliest possible moment. Willi hated to admit it, but Niedersedlitz appeared a dead end. Except—the old lady, Bachmann. Not a good actress. She’d obviously lived in that house for years. If she had a son who’d served in Flanders, he calculated, the kid would probably have been around the same age as the boy next door, Axel.
* * *
A taxi to the edge of town left them at a barrackslike building with a federal flag flapping out front. Inside, they were shocked by a blast of soggy air laced with heavy ammonia, and visions of endless beds filled with shadowy figures. A white-hatted
Krankenschwester
at the front desk led them down the center aisle of a long, dim-lit ward. Halfway there, Gunther began losing color. Bed after bed was filled with grotesque travesties of human forms: some eyeless, some noseless, some gagging still from gas attacks years past. Some sat in little groups playing cards, others alone in bed convulsing. Searching the faces of these beat-up figures, Willi, shivering, tried to maintain himself against blood-soaked waves of memories.
At bed #39, though, they saw a big-chested fellow merrily enjoying a cigar, projecting a nearly comical joie de vivre considering his surroundings—and that he had only one arm and no legs and was held up by a canvas harness rigged to a swivel pole. When they introduced themselves, his big head cocked, much as his mother’s had.
“Kripo!” Alfred Bachmann’s well-shaved face parodied a look of alarm. “My God—here to arrest me?” He let out a bellowing laugh, balancing the cigar between his fingers. “Don’t you suppose this place is prison enough?”
Willi didn’t need to wonder what had happened to the poor devil. Didn’t need to close his eyes to see him sprawled on Flanders’s fields, blown to bits by high artillery yet clinging somehow to life. This Alfred, however, for whatever reasons, appeared to have transcended the shock and anguish, the isolation and helpless rage, and managed, after all these years, to appreciate the few slim pleasures his world could offer. A corner bed. A tree out the window. Nurse to do his bidding.
And Kripo agents all the way from Berlin.
After hearing what they’d come to talk about, though, the good humor drained like a lanced boil.
“Oh.” His eyes fled out the window.
An old battle-ax in nurse’s uniform growled from across the aisle, “Those guests want tea?”
Alfred Bachmann sighed wearily. “What do you think, Schmidt, they’re like you, no earthly desires?”
Willi pulled up a chair, motioning Gunther to do the same.
“It’s crucial you help us out here, Bachmann. Lives may be at stake.”
“Lives,” he snickered. “And don’t call me Bachmann, huh? Reminds me of the army. Alfred’ll be fine. Thanks, lover,” he nodded to the nurse. “Put it there.”
“I know where to put it.” Schmidt dropped the tray on the counter.
Bachmann’s chest expanded as he plugged the cigar back in his mouth, eyes flying out the window again. “I don’t know what you think I can tell you, Sergeant. I haven’t seen them in years.”