Straight into Darkness

by Faye Kellerman

  “If he is anxious, I will not insist, but I think he will take the risk. I’ll ride him to the scene in a Zweikraftrad. He can sit in the passenger seat.”

  “Very well, Axel, go ahead.”

  Berg was leery of Volker’s uncharacteristic acquiescence. His thoughts drifted back to Margot, and to the person responsible for her death. Berg knew damn well why she had been slain. The poor girl had seen a Munich policeman murder two boys. She could no longer be trusted. Berg had to wonder if he’d be next.

  “Thank you, sir. I will change into a uniform right now.”

  “Yes, yes. Just go. You’re annoying me.” As Berg was about to close the door behind him, he heard Volker cluck his tongue and whisper, “It’s your funeral.”

  FORTY

  Kolb said, “I don’t understand why I wasn’t immediately called in to examine the death scene.”

  Berg took a deep breath and told himself to be patient. “The city has been in turmoil since the rally, Herr Professor. Maybe the police couldn’t reach you.”

  “More likely, someone didn’t want me touching a young German Mädchen because of my Jewish blood.”

  It was not like Kolb to show irritation. “The Austrian wouldn’t know your religion, Herr Professor.”

  Kolb touched his nose. “All he’d have to do is take one look at me.” The old man was aware of what Hitler was capable of fomenting. He appeared nervous.

  Berg tried to be soothing. “I can’t tell you how chaotic everything was after the murders were announced.”

  “It’s a pity,” Kolb said. “I’m sure everything’s cleaned up by now. It would have been much more helpful if I could have examined the crime scene before it was trampled on!”

  “So shall we skip the park now and go back at daylight?”

  “Yes, I think so. Let’s go on to the pathology lab. I’d like to see the bodies before they are autopsied. Might as well salvage what we can!”

  “Whatever you think, Herr Professor.”

  Kolb took in a deep breath and let it out. “I am churlish tonight.”

  “We are all quick-tempered.” Berg blinked several times, hoping to blot out murderous images: a knife, his knife, penetrating skin. He couldn’t rid his mind of foul thoughts . . . of a murdered mother and child . . . those too-real nightmares . . . the knife slicing through the soft tendons of their windpipes. Blood squirting outward and hitting him in the face.

  They were only children. Evil children, but still just children.

  The magnitude had yet to sink in. Right now, he had to concentrate on external monsters, not the one within. He had to remain focused if he were to root out a killer. Later would be the time for recriminations.

  He pulled out the choke of the Kraftrad, turning the handle several times to get enough fuel into the motor. “Are you settled properly?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  Kolb lived northwest of Schwabing in a third-floor one-room apartment on the outskirts of the city: a newer building where the electricity was wired inside the structure. The Professor often worked in poor light; maybe that was why his spectacles were so thick.

  Now Berg was dragging him out of a comfortable bed to ask for his help. Slowly, he guided the Kraftrad into the street. “They live close to you . . . in Schwabing. That is, they did . . . the victims.”

  “But they were murdered in the Englischer Garten?”

  “I don’t know where they were murdered. The bodies were found in the Englischer Garten.”

  “Ah yes,” Kolb said. “Have you any thoughts on this monster . . . this enemy of ours?”

  “I have thought of nothing but him! Who the devil he is, where he comes from, his employment, what drives his deviance.”

  “And?”

  “I have come up with very little. The clues that I have point to different people with different names, different occupations, and different nationalities.”

  “Pardon?” Kolb strained over the rumblings of the motorbike. “I can barely hear you.”

  Berg made a series of quick turns until he was on Ludwig Strasse, then pulled over next to the walkway and turned off the motor. The tree-lined street—a main north-south thoroughfare—was deserted and dark, electric streetlights turned off by order of the Oberbürgermeister. Even the ubiquitous clanking of the streetcars had been stifled for the night. In the last two hours, a curfew had been imposed on the city. Any unauthorized person on the roads would be arrested immediately.

  The stillness was eerie, but somewhat nostalgic, bringing back images of Berg’s youth. On rare moments like this, he could almost touch his childhood, a time before there were motorcars and electricity everywhere, before modern invention intervened with the natural order of things. When he was a young child, he had often pretended to be sleeping, when in reality he lay in bed for hours just thinking. With his feather duvet wrapped tightly around his body, his nose cold from the frosted air, he had been careful not to move lest he wake up his two younger brothers sleeping beside him in their shared bed.

  Back then, if he listened carefully, he could hear the whinnies emanating from the horse stables. The beasts had once ruled the city, pulling the police wagons, the streetcars, and the cabs. Now only the market vendors used the beasts to pull their wagons, and not even they so much anymore because the old horses clogged traffic, the motorists beeping and swearing at them, scaring the poor animals until they reared in protest. It wasn’t that the motorcar was a bad thing; it was the motorcar operator who felt as if he owned the roadways.

  So long ago it was, before a war had torn the world apart, before the city was rent by politics and its legions of armies. The Kommunist against the royalist. The Social Democrats against the German Workers Party. The Bavarian Workers against the German Democratic Party. And everyone against Hitler—or so they claimed, even though the Austrian’s support seemed to keep growing.

  It was all too much to fathom.

  “I didn’t say anything that profound.” Berg turned off the scooter and bundled his scarf tightly around his neck. The air was wet and biting. “Nothing you haven’t thought of yourself.” He repeated what he had said about the killer while Kolb nodded agreement.

  “And even the victims, Herr Professor. They are not all alike. The first was a bourgeois woman who lived in a six-room apartment on Widenmayer Strasse. She was married, expecting a child. The second woman was a visitor to the city, a Kommunist—or at least she flirted with Kommunismus—whose home was in Berlin. She was staying in a rented room in Giesing. Our third victim was an immigrant Jewess seamstress who lived near Gärtnerplatz. Now we have these two new murders—a working-class woman and her daughter who lived just east of Schwabing.

  “There is no consistency in any aspect—either with the type of woman, the wealth of the family, religion of the women, the geographical location of their homes, and even the time of day they were killed. The last two appeared to be slain in daylight, the first three under the cloak of darkness. It is maddening!”

  “Interesting.” Kolb stroked his beard. “From my point of view, they’re very similar. All were young women, and so far all were strangled. The bodies were discovered in the Englischer Garten except in the case of Marlena Druer. But even she was found less than a kilometer away.”

  “I suppose it does depend how the case is regarded,” Berg replied. “Still, finding bodies in the Englischer Garten or along the Isar doesn’t exactly point to anything specific. The park is three hundred and seventy-five hectares of copses, woods, brush, and glades. I can’t think of a better place to dump a corpse.”

  “That is true,” Kolb said.

  “Shall we proceed to the lab?”

  “Before we do, what do you know about these latest victims?”

  “Nothing at the moment. I certainly don’t know how they were murdered if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Do you know anything personal about them?”

  “The woman was widowed. Her husband died four years ago from a leg infect
ion—an old war wound, I think.”

  “Was the murdered little girl the woman’s only child?”

  “There is a surviving son.”

  Kolb said, “And now he is an orphan.”

  Berg slumped under the invisible weight pressing on his shoulders. Once again, he started the choke and guided the motorbike back onto the boulevard. He shouted, “The aunt’s name is Renate Dehmel—a married woman with two children of her own.”

  “And the victim?”

  “Edith Mayrhofer. She was forty. The little girl, Johanna, was six or seven.”

  “The surviving boy?”

  “Ralph . . . ten. Aunt Renate was watching him because she has a son the same age. Edith had decided to take little Johanna for a walk . . . to take advantage of today’s sunshine. When they were late to pick up Ralph, Renate became concerned. She decided to go look for them.”

  “Don’t tell me she found them?” Kolb let out a gasp.

  “I don’t know if she found them or they were discovered by someone else, but an officer at the police station told me that she saw the corpses. It must have been terrible, especially because the little boy was there with her.”

  “Oh Gott, that is awful!”

  “Just dreadful!”

  Kolb said, “It would have been most useful to see the bodies as they were found.”

  “Usually, someone from the Mordkommission must sign off before the bodies can be removed. But because of the rally and subsequent rioting, the police had been diverted to Königsplatz and Gärtnerplatz.”

  Kolb said, “Once we visit the pathology lab, we will know more.”

  Berg said, “Afterward we can visit the crime spot. I’m certain that the police cordoned off the area with ropes.”

  “Yes, we can do that.”

  Berg heard the fatigue in the Professor’s voice. “Or we can visit the scene in the morning. I don’t want to subject you to such a long evening.”

  “I can manage a long evening.” Kolb smiled. “Death, my friend, is even longer.”

  • • •

  SINCE THE PATHOLOGY LAB was located in the basement of the state hospital, most of the smell was confined to that area. Still, as soon as the two of them entered the stairwell, rank fumes rose up and Berg almost gagged. It was only the third time that he had ever been there and his two previous encounters had failed to prepare him for the third.

  Kolb, on the other hand, seemed inured to the foul odor.

  The autopsy assistant, the Diener, seemed amused by Berg’s reaction. He was dense in build and stared out with sunken eyes, escorting them down the dark steps with the help of a gas lantern. Though the building had electrical lighting, the stairwells were not wired.

  “We welcome the wintertime,” the Diener said. “In summer the stench is much stronger. Then there are the insects. They are attracted to the stink of decomposing flesh. Specifically the black flies. And when the humidity increases . . .” He waved his hand in the air. “Ach, it is bad.”

  Berg continuously swallowed to keep the contents of his stomach down. He wrapped his scarf over his mouth and nose. As they reached the bottom, the stench became riper. He thought of the charnel of his own making. The smell of decay was stronger than the smell of murder.

  “One accustoms to the rankness,” the Diener went on. “On some days I even eat my lunch in the same room.”

  “That is repulsive!” Berg muttered.

  “It is better than starving, Inspektor.” They had reached the bottom step. The assistant opened the door to the lab. “This way, meine Herren.”

  Inside was a dungeon, a bone-chilling, dank concrete bunker with no visible windows, not even traditional basement dormers. No fresh air was to be had, and not a hint of natural light could come in, even in daytime. Electrical bulbs cast intermittent spots of urine-stained glow, along with old gaslight sconces mounted on the walls. Berg thought he had endured the worst of the odor when the Diener opened a hallway door. He was wrong.

  “This way.”

  Inside the autopsy amphitheater, the fetid air was so intense that Berg nearly fainted. He felt ludicrous. In the Great War, he had breathed the malodor of death and disintegration as moribund bodies lay around him. In his job with the Mordkommission, he had examined many corpses in varying states of decomposition. But the rankness here was unparalleled.

  Not only was the stench overpowering, the visual images suggested nightmares. Rows of steel autopsy tables, each one visited by a body, some fifteen to twenty in all. Some were decently covered, but at least half were naked cadavers staring upward with vacant eyes. Some of the corpses had been left in the elements too long, and the skin had withered and blackened like African shrunken heads. Others had grown mold like spoiled meat or moldy cheese. The bodies that hadn’t made it to the tables were still wrapped in white sheets and placed on shelves. The carcasses were leaking body fluids as tissue broke down into watery components, dripping away corporeal existence one droplet at a time. Even the strong stench of antiseptic couldn’t mask the stink of rot.

  Several pathology doctors were conducting autopsies. One had just made the Y-incision from the shoulders to midchest down to the pubic region. Another had just removed the heart, his gloved hands filled with the bloody mass. Quickly, he placed the dripping organ on the scale to weigh it.

  Palettes of red filled Berg’s brain: red, ruby, crimson, scarlet, carmine, cerise, maroon, vermilion . . . so many variations of one wavelength . . . more reds than there were names.

  At one of the tables, an elderly doctor looked up. He wore a blood-and-tissue-spattered white apron that protected a suit and tie. A paper cap sat on his scalp, rubber gloves obscured his hands, and a paper mask covered his mouth and nose. He sported a long white beard and wore rimless spectacles. He was quite paunchy. Had the apron been just a bit more vermilion, he could have passed for Saint Nicholas. He looked straight at Berg.

  “You are Polizei.”

  “I am.”

  “Up so late?”

  “Unusual circumstances.” Berg pulled down the scarf to be understood. His nose was assaulted further, but the Diener had been correct. Slowly, slowly he became accustomed to the smell. He could breathe without choking. “Inspektor Axel Berg from Munich Police, from the Mordkommission. I have been investigating the recent violent deaths in our city.”

  “Herr Doktor Jakob Gebhardt here.” The man clicked his heels. “It is good to make your acquaintance, Inspektor.”

  “Same here, Herr Doktor,” Berg answered, “although I would have preferred to meet you under less trying circumstances. This is the Polizei Daktyloskoper and foreign-material analyst Herr Professor—”

  “No need for introductions, Inspektor, I’ve known the eminent Herr Professor Kolb for years.” Gebhardt smiled. “All of us ghouls know each other. Give me a moment to close my charge up and I’ll be right with you.”

  A moment was twenty minutes. Berg was fatigued, yet his nerves still shot poison through his system. He couldn’t have slept even if he had chosen to try to do so. He couldn’t bear to close his eyes for fear of what lurked behind them.

  To Kolb, Gebhardt said, “You look tired, Josef.”

  “It is nearly one in the morning, Jakob. Some of us actually sleep at night.”

  “Night, day, it’s all the same down here.” Gebhardt addressed Berg. “Before electricity, we had our own building with windows and daylight and proper working conditions. But once the city wired the hospital and the surrounding buildings, it took away our lab and sent us down here. Of course, it’s convenient—the hospital no longer has to transport the bodies—but the conditions are not good, especially in the summer.”

  “I was telling them that, Herr Doktor,” the Diener piped in.

  “I’m sure you were, Klaus.” He sighed. “And look at this lighting . . . it is terrible. You can hardly see anything unless you supplement with kerosene lanterns. Sometimes, for a very bright light, I even use a torch! But then I worry about starting a fire.”


  Gebhardt threw up his hands.

  “You know all those myths about creatures of the night that shrink in daylight? I think someone has seen one of our pathologists emerge from this cave, suddenly squinting from the brightness of the sun.”

  Kolb said, “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all.” Gebhardt’s expression turned grave. “What happened out there?”

  “Hitler is what happened,” Berg said.

  “Will it ever stop?” Gebhardt shook his head. “Shall we take a look at the latest tragedies that have embraced our troubled city?”

  “If you’d be so kind,” Berg responded.

  “I’ve got one of the bodies over here.” Gebhardt stopped in front of a table where the body had been covered with a sheet. Even under the cloth, Berg knew it was the little girl. Such a compact little package. Berg thought of Monika’s sweet face and instantly, beads of sweat gathered over his brow. The doctor did not appear to notice. He turned to his assistant. “Klaus, get down the mother. I believe she is resting in compartment five, letter G.”

  Once again, Berg regarded the shelves of bodies. A large brass plaque hung over the top rung of corpses. The engraved lettering was Roman print instead of the usual Gothic—logical because the words were in Latin instead of German.

  Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.

  “This is a place where death rejoices to teach those who live,” Kolb translated.

  “How true.” Gebhardt pulled back the cloth, exposing the child’s body. She was a pretty, little girl in death, no doubt even prettier in life: fair-complexioned with long golden hair. It was hard to tell the eye color because the pupils had reached maximal dilation, but Berg could make out the palest of blues that encircled her fixed stare.

  “This little girl was an Aryan from top to bottom,” Gebhardt said. “No doubt Hitler will drag this poor girl’s death into his politics.”

  In the background, Berg could hear Klaus grunt as he worked to retrieve the body from the shelf. “How did she die?”

  “See for yourself. . . .” Gebhardt gently rolled the little body onto its side. In this position, a substantial depression in the back of the skull was clearly exposed.