Children of Wrath

by Paul Grossman

  “Well, the bone doesn’t come to the dog, Gunther. And better one-eyed than blind.” Willi appreciated his assistant’s enthusiasm, if not his table manners. “In terms of hard facts, it’s true we don’t have much. But a good detective must try to fit together even the loosest pieces. And if you think about it, we’re not doing badly. Niedersedlitz, the ‘haystack’ as you call, isn’t terribly large. And we know that by the time she was eighteen, Ilse had a violent hatred toward it. So much so that she told Helga she wanted to ‘rid the world’ of its inhabitants. That ‘the devil himself had moved there straight from hell’—a rather extreme posture in regards to your hometown, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Gunther nodded wide-eyed, chewing. “I only hated how ugly the girls were.”

  “Clearly the place was connected with some prolonged trauma, child battering probably—which nobody rescued her from. If the Ox really is her brother, then it’s not a needle we’re seeking at all—but a pair of very sick siblings. And if in fact they did grow up in town, somebody in Niedersedlitz will remember them.”

  “You know, boss”—Gunther swallowed hard—“I learn more from you in an hour than all my textbooks put together.”

  Dresden, Germany’s Florence on the Elbe, was a storybook city of chocolate and porcelain, Wagner and Strauss. Towering baroque cathedrals and palaces. The long glass Hauptbahnhof from 1892 was among Europe’s finest. But when they arrived, the main hall overflowed with dusty, slump-shouldered figures, the unemployed. In front of the station, dueling phalanxes of uniformed Nazis and Communists were forcing campaign literature on everyone passing by. Willi and Gunther had to run a raucous gauntlet to reach the #6 tram.

  Forty minutes later they were on a little green streetcar rattling through Niedersedlitz, a picturesque mix of pastures and heavy industry, wide fields golden with rye framed by mile-long factories. Off they got at the town center and headed straight for the Rathaus, a mélange of Gothic, Renaissance, and art nouveau. First stop—the Hall of Records.

  A sallow-faced clerk manning the front desk didn’t even look up when Willi asked how they could find any tanneries or leather works, and if there were documents pertaining to battered children from twenty years ago.

  “Room 2D, Commerce and Industry. Legal’s down in—” He stopped, checking to see who would ask such a question, a swastika pin all but blazing from his lapel. “No Jews allowed.” He looked back at his paperwork.

  Gunther’s eyes widened. “What’d you say?”

  “You heard me: no Jews.”

  “You stupid ass.” Willi was shocked to see Gunther reach over and threaten to grab the clerk by the collar, his whole face flashing red. “You’re addressing a Sergeant-Detektiv of the Berlin Kriminal Polizei here, working on a case of national importance. So unless you feel like having your ass raked over hot coals…”

  The guy admitted them, but muttered loud enough to hear, “Just what stinks in this republic, Jew detectives.”

  “Never mind.” Willi restrained Gunther, delighted by his assistant’s show of support, but concealing it. Once again he found himself appreciating Gunther’s fervor more than his finesse. Saxony was known for its illiberality. Plus they only had twenty-four hours here. Barely enough time to get into fisticuffs with the local Nazis. “You go downstairs; I’ll go up.”

  The mustached clerk in room 2D, by contrast, Herr Eisenlohr, all but shined Willi’s shoes when he learned he was a Kripo agent from Berlin.

  “Oh, yes, sir, Herr Sergeant-Detektiv. Here we are.” He bowed like a waiter bringing the house specialty as he handed Willi a leatherbound volume: Major Industry in Niedersedlitz—1900 to Present.

  Willi’d barely gotten the huge book open, though, when Gunther was back over his shoulder.

  “Fräulein down in Legal says she needs special keys to unlock police files. Thing is, fellow who authorizes them’s all the way down in—”

  “Gunther,” Willi cut him off, “I don’t have time for this. Figure it out.” He thumbed down the list of key industries. “We’ve got to see those files.”

  Gunther just stood there.

  Willi glanced up. “Remember the Kripo manual? In addition to Zuverlässigkeit and Unbestechlichkeit, an ideal Kripo agent possesses Findigkeit. Ingenuity. In other words, kid, use your brain.”

  Gunther smiled sheepishly, lumbering off.

  Poring through the massive volume, Willi saw that Niedersedlitz had manufacturers of refrigerators, locomotives, world-class cameras, and macaroni, but no tanneries or leather works. Anymore. There had been a sizable firm here for decades. But Amalgamated Leather burned in 1916, during the terrible “Turnip Winter” at the height of the war. An asterisk on the matter caught his eye. The plant foreman had, apparently, been convicted of setting the blaze and sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor. Willi inhaled, closing the volume, deciding to find out more downstairs and see how Gunther was making out.

  Not badly, apparently.

  In the basement corridor a tall, gawky young woman who could have been Gunther’s twin rushed past him, smoothing her hair and then ducking into the ladies’ room. When Willi walked into Legal, Gunther looked up, restraining a grin.

  “Mission accomplished.” He dangled a set of keys, oblivious to the lipstick on his mouth. The kid obviously felt he’d found his forte. Willi didn’t have the heart to lecture him about discretion too.

  Gunther’s use of ingenuity unfortunately yielded few results—even with the help of his newfound darling, Ingeborg. They uncovered plenty of files on children hit by cars, drowned in wells, murdered by itinerant foreigners. But in all the reams of police files for the past quarter century, none reported a parent hurting his own child. Not that it was all that surprising, Willi bore in mind. Only recently had they begun reporting such cases in Berlin. Still, he had to ask himself, might someone other than a family member have been the “devil” the Shepherdess hated? Nothing they came across in the files suggested that, either. Perhaps the origins of her trauma had been purely psychotic.

  Going through birth records based on the High Priestess’s memory, Ingeborg produced a list of seven girls given the name Ilse from 1905 to 1907. They weren’t sure the Shepherdess was even born in Niedersedlitz, and with no last name it didn’t much matter. But Willi read and reread the list hoping something might click. Finally, though, sighing, he shoved it aside. Any one of these could be the Shepherdess—or all this could be a big waste of time. It was pure luck.

  An hour’s search, though, and not a single file on the Amalgamated Leather factory fire had nothing to do with luck, he knew. Someone had clearly tampered with the records. A trial had to have documents. Ingeborg called in Herr Eisenlohr, but the man could only yank out his hairs at not being able to further assist.

  “If I had a shred of information, so help me, Herr Sergeant, I’d hand it to you on a golden platter. All I can tell you is this: during the war, if anything even hinted at civilian sabotage, it was removed by military authorities. Those files could be buried somewhere with the kaiser’s love letters.”

  “We could try the jail.” Gunther calculated on his fingers. “There’d still be another … twelve years on his sentence.”

  “Problem is, which jail?” Willi wondered. “In a city the size of Dresden there’s got to be half a dozen. We don’t even have a name to ask about. But maybe—” He straightened up. “The local paper. They must have covered the story. I’ll bet they keep archives.”

  “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 hel
d 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 Rathaus.”

  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 to
wn, 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?