Ruins of War (10 page)

“Do you think you might have seen this man before? Maybe someone from this neighborhood?”

The man gave them an embarrassed smile and swept his hands across his tattered clothes. “Not from this neighborhood, sir. Even from my window I could tell it was a very fine coat. I’m a tailor, you see? Beautifully tailored, the coat was. And in very good condition.”

Mason sighed in frustration. This man could describe the coat in detail but not the man himself.

“Oh, and besides the bundle, he also carried a large cloth bag . . . canvas, I believe.”

“He took all this into the church?” Becker asked. The man nodded. “Did you see him come out again?”

The man shook his head. “I heard noises, like someone hammering and moving things about. I thought he was repairing the church, or perhaps making a shelter for himself. Another homeless man.”

“At one o’clock in the morning?” Mason said. The man shrugged and gave another sheepish smile. “How long did you watch from your window?”

“Maybe thirty minutes. It was very cold, you see.”

Mason and Becker thanked the man and were about to return to the church when another German policeman came up to Becker. “So far, no other witnesses, sir,” the policeman said. “However, several people reported hearing a wagon in the early hours of the morning.”

“Where was this?”

“Around the corner and up the street a block.”

“No one saw the wagon?”

“No, sir. But several people informed us that the street can get quite busy with wagon traffic because of the salvage and demolition work. Rarely at night, but sometimes.”

Becker thanked him and turned to Mason. “Should we assume that the killer arrived by wagon, and then came the rest of the way with the cart?”

“I’ve thought about this before. A wagon points to a civilian, but I
don’t see how he could get around in a wagon without being noticed. He’d have to possess an after-curfew pass or permit.” Mason paused to reflect on this. “It’s time to look closer into that possibility.”

Mason and Becker reentered the church just as an ambulance pulled up. Two medics got out and retrieved a stretcher from the back. Captain Sykes met Mason and Becker in the vestibule. He looked rattled.

“He took her lungs,” Sykes said as if still trying to believe the words.

“To help you with time of death,” Mason said, “a witness saw a man, who we believe is the killer, carry into the church what we think was the body, about twenty-four hours ago. And from what we know of the last victim, he kills within twelve hours before that.”

“That’ll give me something to go on,” Sykes said. “We’ll obviously have more after the autopsy. Needless to say, she was killed and drained of blood before being transported here. The small puddle on the floor is simply leaking bodily fluids mixed with traces of blood.”

“Also consistent with the other ones.”

“Are you the lead investigator on this case?” On Mason’s nod, Sykes handed him a small square of parchment. “I found this pinned to her back.”

On it, scribed in Gothic letters, was another note from the killer:

That saints enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell.

“It’s a quote from Thomas Aquinas,” Becker said.

Mason let out a heavy sigh. No killer was more unpredictable and dangerous than one who believed that murder and torture empowered him to open the gates of heaven and survey the depths of hell.

M
ason and Wolski stopped just inside the double doors of the main structure in the McGraw Kaserne complex, an immense grouping of buildings originally built for the Nazi bureaucracy and now taken over by the Third Army. A long, austere hallway lay before them, and at the other end a master sergeant occupied a desk. Like Cerberus, he guarded the entrance to the underground vaults containing the U.S. Army personnel files.

“Now we’ll see how much juice your girlfriend has,” Wolski said.

“I keep telling you, one moonlit walk back to her hotel does not a girlfriend make.”

“She should be. She’s gorgeous, smart, brave. I can’t believe you let her go last night.”

“Come on, Cupid. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

They began the long walk down the hallway. It was eleven
A.M.
Friday morning. Mason had received Laura’s message at CID headquarters an hour before, saying that General Morehouse had cleared the way for them. He and Wolski had stopped by the church crime scene and met with Inspector Becker again. Becker’s team had widened the canvass and examined the lone wagon tracks left in the snow the night before, but nothing relevant had turned up and the trail had
petered out. The autopsy would be performed tomorrow, and the sketch of the female victim would be distributed that afternoon. Little else could be done immediately, so the message from Laura had come at an opportune time.

As their footsteps echoed loudly in the empty hallway, the master sergeant looked up from his newspaper with vigilant eyes. His intense stare and clamped jaw said he took his gatekeeping job very seriously.

Mason spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “I imagine we’re about to violate any number of army regulations.”

“Even if we get in there, Colonel Walton’s gonna have our hides when he finds out.”

“Who said anything about telling Colonel Walton?”

“Yes?” the master sergeant said when Mason and Wolski stopped by the desk.

“I’m Chief Warrant Officer Collins from the CID, and this is Warrant Officer Wolski—”

“Yes, sir,” the master sergeant said and shot to his feet. “I was expecting you.” He retrieved a ring of keys from the desk drawer and turned to a heavy wooden door.

“She definitely has the juice,” Wolski said under his breath.

The master sergeant unlocked the door and led them down a set of stairs to the basement level. “There are a couple of privates, file clerks, at your disposal if you need them. You shouldn’t be disturbed. Things are pretty quiet down here.” He unlocked another door at the end of the hallway and entered.

Mason and Wolski followed close behind then stopped in their tracks. The dimly lit room held fifteen long rows of file cabinets. Wolski whistled at the size of it.

“We’ve got most of the army personnel records for the southern and western U.S.-occupational districts. The only one bigger is in Frankfurt. Well, I guess D.C.’s got the biggest. You’ll find medical personnel files on rows four, five, and six.” As the master sergeant walked back to the door, he said, “If you need anything just holler.”

“A bottle of aspirin and a gallon of coffee,” Wolski said.

“Excuse me?”

“We’ll be fine for now,” Mason said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

They both surveyed the room. Mason felt sure that Wolski, like he, was trying to steel his will for the coming task.

“Well, let’s get to it,” Mason said.

They spent the next eight hours poring through the files, and after three hours they enlisted the two privates for help shuffling files back and forth. The day’s search brought more frustration than suspects. They found a few doctors described as deviant. Some had been accused of physical or sexual abuse of patients, but few were still posted in Germany by the time the murders began. As it turned out, only five files provided any kind of vague suspects, and without crime scene fingerprints or other clues, they couldn’t justify digging any deeper without alerting Colonel Walton that Mason had “sidestepped” direct orders. And by the end, it turned out Wolski’s request to the master sergeant had proved prescient: They both came away with a great need for aspirin.

•   •   •

M
ason entered his office and dropped his briefcase on the desk. The clatter of typewriters and the nagging phones made the spikes in his head dig deeper into his temples. The pain, plus the frustration of a full day spent without concrete results, made his foul mood boil over. He stared a moment at the stack of files covering his desk and was tempted to shove everything off and grind them into the floor.

A knock on the open door stopped him.

“Don’t do it,” Wolski said, stepping in and closing the door.

“I’d just have to turn around and pick them up anyway.” Mason sat at his desk and rubbed his forehead. “Five files and nothing earth-shattering. We’ll check out the suspects, but it’s looking like we should start thinking in terms of Germans or DPs. Becker’s team is checking all the civilian doctors and surgeons, so let’s take a more serious look into
U.S.-issued night passes and permits, then cross-check them with identification and denazification papers. Maybe something will turn up.”

“Assuming the killer didn’t get a counterfeit, there could easily be ten thousand legitimate ones. That could take weeks if it’s just the two of us. We need more manpower.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“I can imagine Colonel Walton’s face when you ask him about that.”

Through the pebbled glass on Mason’s office door they could see the silhouette of a private hesitating just outside. Wolski opened the door. The private snapped to attention. “What is it, Private?”

“Sir, the colonel wants to see Mr. Collins right away. He’s at OMGB headquarters, General West’s office.”

“Friday evening at the general’s?” Wolski said. “That can’t be good.”

Mason gathered his coat and hat and said to Wolski, “Contact public affairs at OMGB about those night passes.”

“Oh, sirs,” the private interjected, “the colonel told me to ask everyone if they know the whereabouts of the colonel’s cognac and several bottles of scotch.”

Mason and Wolski exchanged looks, and Mason said, “No, we sure don’t.”

“The colonel’s been in a killing mood since he found his bottles gone.”

“Well, good luck with that investigation,” Wolski said.

•   •   •

M
ason entered a large conference room with full-wall wood paneling, marble flooring, and a sedan-sized fireplace. A long table of mahogany dominated the room. At the far end sat Colonel Walton; General West, the Third Army’s provost marshal; and a major whom Mason did not know. They were in the middle of a heated discussion when Mason stopped at the head of the table and saluted. Colonel Walton waved him to come forward.

“You know the general, don’t you?” Colonel Walton said.

Mason acknowledged the general. “Yes, sir. How are you, sir?”

The general finished a sip of coffee. “That remains to be seen.”

“And this is Major Bolton, of OMGB civil affairs,” Colonel Walton said.

Major Bolton was a small man with a wiry mustache. With quick, birdlike motions, he stood and leaned across the table to shake Mason’s hand. Colonel Walton invited Mason to sit. Mason pulled out a chair and angled it to face the three inquisitors. He immediately felt the warmth of the fire, knowing it wasn’t the only heat he was going to feel in the next few moments.

“Where are you with this investigation after last night’s discovery?” General West asked.

Mason filled him in, though there was little new since his last report. He mentioned the eyewitness, the reports of a wagon, and the priest’s idea that the victim’s arrangement on the chandelier symbol was of a Christian baptismal cross.

“This latest murder, of the young woman, is an act of cruelty and savagery,” General West said. “The first two victims, from the factory and sewer, we were able to keep pretty well under wraps, but accounts of the young woman last night are spreading around this city like wildfire. It’s upsetting the civilian population. I’ve got the Munich city council pressuring me to solve this, and they insist on giving the German police a more active role on the investigation. They claim we’re not doing enough because the victims are German.”

Mason glanced at Colonel Walton, but Walton didn’t bat an eye.

“Frankly,” General West went on, “I don’t care what the Munich city council thinks, but we’ve got enough problems on our hands without half the city’s population too afraid to come out of their homes, and the other half clamoring for justice.”

Mason wondered where in all this was the desire to solve this for the victims. “Sir, we need to double the MP patrols, especially in the backstreets. We need double or triple the checkpoints—”

Colonel Walton tried to object. “Mr. Collins—”

Mason cut him off. “General, I need more manpower if I’m to carry out a proper investigation. I need more MPs and investigators at my disposal, with a dedicated operations center. We need enough men to interview the female victim’s family and associates, we need periodic monitoring of the crime scenes and the victim’s paths and frequented places, and we need to check U.S.-issued civilian night passes. Now that we’ve almost exhausted our search through U.S. Medical Corps personnel files—”

“You what?” Colonel Walton blurted out.

Mason realized he’d just blown his undisclosed investigation into U.S. medical personnel files. “Right now, the German police are trying to cover all the doctors and hospitals, but I’d like to have at least two teams of ours cover them as well. And that doesn’t include DPs with surgical knowledge—”

“Mr. Collins, that’s enough!” Colonel Walton said. “This grandstanding of yours has gone too far. The very idea that you investigated U.S. Medical Corps personnel without my permission, that you think you can make demands or dictate terms to the general . . . You are one breath away from disciplinary action.”

General West raised his hand, and Colonel Walton stopped. There was a moment of silence in the large room while the general lit his cigar. A log in the fire snapped. Another broke apart at its burned-out center, sending sparks up into the chimney. Mason waited for the hammer to come down.

Instead, General West nodded and said, “If more manpower will get the job done then I’m prepared to put at Mr. Collins’s disposal all the investigative resources we can spare. Pull out all the stops and get this case solved.” He turned to Colonel Walton, whose face had turned crimson with anger. “Frank, I know you have your hands full out there. But this kind of case unnerves everyone. What this killer does to his victims riles up a population already weary of murder and death. The idea that a Jack the Ripper–type psychopath is roaming the streets could seriously disturb a population that’s already at wit’s end.”

Major Bolton cleared his throat for attention. “I’ve already recommended that we keep these stories out of the press. The
Stars and Stripes
has agreed not to publish any articles relating to this case, and since we control the German newspapers, there won’t be any printed in those, either.”

Mason glanced around the room hoping that no one noticed the look of guilt on his face. If anyone found out that he’d leaked information about the case to Laura, it would surely be the end of the line for him as a CID criminal investigator.

General West puffed on his cigar. Everyone waited for his final word. “You laid out a pretty big shopping list. We’re undermanned as it is, but I don’t see that we have any choice. Frank, see that Mr. Collins gets his wish for more investigators. I’ll notify the MP company commanders to beef up patrols and checkpoints.” He pointed his finger at Mason. “But I better have results. And fast. If I see you can’t handle this case with alacrity and efficiency, then I’ll find someone who will.”