“You never joined the SS? Or its Security Service? Not even the Nazi Party?” Schorrer wasn’t really asking. It was more of a statement.
Heller withstood the man’s stare. “No.”
“You must be an amazingly good criminal investigator to be able to keep your job. Is there some specific reason why you refuse to join?”
Heller sat up a little in his chair. It was time to end the questioning. “This isn’t what I came here to talk about. I was hoping you could help me with the second murder case. But I’m probably taking up too much of your time already, so I can find someone else.” Heller was bluffing. If Schorrer didn’t reply, he’d have no help at all.
“No, it’s fine, Herr Detective Inspector, make yourself comfortable. I unfortunately can’t offer you any coffee as I only have tea, and I’m afraid it’s only wild herbs. I just thought we could talk among ourselves a little, like upstanding men. These days, it’s not easy to remain upstanding, as you know. I’ve been finding it tough to comprehend some of the things I’ve seen on the Eastern Front. Naturally, I don’t enjoy the same perspective as our beloved Führer. Yet I still can’t quite comprehend the policy of terror that’s being pursued there, along with all the rest of it. I keep a low profile, but up here . . .” He tapped his temple. “What goes on inside here, no one can control. So. Both your sons are over there?”
How did he know that?
“Well, in this case at least,” Dr. Schorrer continued, “I can say that I’m lucky I don’t have any children.”
Heller had no interest in talking about this. But if Schorrer was suddenly going to be affable, he’d accommodate.
“Where are you from?” Heller said. “You don’t sound like a local.”
Schorrer ran his fingers through his flattop. “Görlitz. Such a small town, everybody knows everybody. I wanted to get out in the world. Out of a hospital and into the war. An adventure was what I was looking for then, and still am. Baptism by fire—nothing could shock me after that. I’ve surely been proven right there. If I could make a little confession?”
Schorrer lowered his voice. “Certain developments at the front did not escape my attention. They speak of ‘tactical withdrawals’ and ‘straightening out the front lines.’ That’s all farce. This was what motivated me, among other reasons, to request my discharge from military service after five years and get transferred to the rear. I certainly can’t deny my military past and don’t intend to, yet here I do hope to find myself in a more favorable situation once the enemy is at the city gates, which”—he lowered his voice even more—“is sure to happen.”
Then his voice grew louder again—a little too loud for Heller’s taste.
“So, your victim? No more than twenty, I would say. A refugee, by the looks of the clothing. Might have gotten lost while begging. That, or someone took her with them. Probably drugged her. Or maybe she was unconscious from a blow. There’s a hematoma on the back of her head, caused by a heavy object, probably a club. We can only hope her suffering didn’t last long. She had a gag in her mouth. And then there’s the matter of her eyes.” Schorrer shook his head.
Heller shifted in his chair, wishing Schorrer had offered him some of the tea he mentioned. He asked the doctor, “How long would it have taken him to do what he did to her?”
“An hour, maybe two. It might help to ask a butcher how long it takes to skin an animal of similar size.”
Heller could have done without the comparison, but it hadn’t seemed to affect the doctor. “It must have occurred at night?” Heller added.
Schorrer looked down at a document. “I’ve put the time of death as the night of the seventeenth of December. This can’t be established precisely due to the condition of the corpse. I’m assuming the killer dragged the victim up to the attic during the air raid warning, when no one was out on the street or inside their homes. Leaving the crime scene would’ve proven far less problematic that way.”
“Did he need to carry her, or did she willingly follow him?”
Schorrer held up his hands. “That’s outside my field. I could examine the skin again for any exterior wounds, but what good would it do? And she could’ve received any such wound on the way to Dresden, even that hematoma. You also asked for the stomach contents to be examined. Porridge, potatoes, milk, nothing that suggests any kind of lure, such as chocolate, meat, things like that.”
Heller had his notebook out, jotting down the essentials, but none of it was very helpful.
“Any sexual acts?” he asked without looking up.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“I’m wondering about the motive. What sort of hate must a man carry for him to do what he did?”
Schorrer pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “What do you think? Do you think you could harbor such hate inside, even just a trace? I don’t hate anyone. Or maybe I hate them all the same, all of us human beings. But doing something like that, it goes far beyond hate. I’m assuming there’s no standard motive to fall back on.”
“You think the killer could be religiously motivated?”
Schorrer laughed, though he didn’t look amused. “Herr Detective Inspector, it looks like you’re making me do all the work for you.”
Heller slapped his notebook shut. “Not at all. I’m only trying to get my thoughts sorted and voice them out loud. The way things look, I’m pretty much on my own if I want to solve this case.”
“I understand it’s not just the personnel that’s lacking.”
A silence ensued. The clacking of a typewriter could be heard from the outer office, and Heller had to consider how much of what they were discussing had reached the secretary’s ears.
“Looking at the corpse and her . . . various parts,” Schorrer said, “it occurred to me that the killer might be interested in a certain visual aesthetic. Does that mean anything to you?”
Heller tried to come up with something, running his tongue over his teeth, realizing his teeth might be getting looser. “My first thought was that an angel of death was appearing before me.”
“Really? That was quite levelheaded of you.”
Heller nodded and stood. He apparently wasn’t getting any of that tea. He figured he’d go check out the attic one more time.
Dr. Schorrer stood to walk him to the door. Once there, he put out his hand.
Heller shook it. “Thank you so much.”
“If you need anything else, anything at all, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And please, call me Alfred.”
“Glad to, Alfred, and you can call me Max.”
That afternoon, Heller sat at his desk in his office, staring at his typewriter. He had written down all the information he’d compiled. It wasn’t much. Searching around the attic again, he’d been able to get a few fingerprints, which would need to be compared to all the tenement residents’ prints. He’d already tried comparing the fingerprints from the Bellmann case and couldn’t find any apparent similarities. This was all time-consuming work for specialists, though, not something a person just fit in when he had the time. He hadn’t spotted anything else in the attic—no telltale fabric remnants, no cigarette butts, no note. Not that there wasn’t a message being left here. That was what troubled Heller the most. The killer wasn’t the type you’d figure out by thinking in rational terms. The only way to comprehend what drove him was, as Schorrer had already supposed, to start searching for motives that simply couldn’t be grasped by sound human intellect alone. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Was the killer religiously motivated or delusional? Did he hate a specific type of woman—young, independent, emancipated? Was that the common thread? Could he even presume that both murders were committed by the same person?
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. “Come in!”
Oldenbusch stuck his head in the doorway and waved a brown portfolio. “Just got the photos. Made three prints of each.”
Heller nodded and took the portfolio. “Where have they been sending you?”
&nb
sp; “Security detail at Neustadt train station. Our city’s becoming a massive traffic hub, I’m afraid. They have a hundred trains passing through each day. Max, the things I’ve seen.”
“I know, Werner, believe me. Please take a photo of the woman’s face back with you. Maybe someone knows her.”
Oldenbusch was standing inside the room now. “At first, I thought this was just someone venting their rage. But the thing with her eyes? It’s downright scary.”
That annoyed Heller. He smacked his hand on the table. “Look, don’t you go starting with this nonsense too.”
December 19, 1944: Afternoon
“Do you know this woman?” Heller showed a man the photo of the attic murder victim.
The man was older, wearing a fur jacket and leather cap with earflaps, and he recoiled, crossing himself. “Satan!” He shook his head and ducked back into the crowd.
Heller, used to the reaction, continued through the mass of refugees who were camped out there.
He showed a dozen more people the photograph, which didn’t seem so bad at first glance until they saw what had happened to the dead woman’s eyelids. No one had seen or knew the woman. Heller could tell there was little point to this, yet he couldn’t just sit doing nothing. He had to keep at it. In war, everything was different, out where the fighting and killing was legitimate. But that didn’t apply to civilian life; the rule of law couldn’t just be switched off. Even so, Heller knew all too well that the regional court at Münchner Platz was handing out executions every week. When the life of one human truly had lost any worth, why should these two unfortunate women retain any? If the offensive on the Western Front fizzled out, the Reich’s last reserves would be exhausted. Germany wouldn’t be able to put up any effective resistance to the Russians, let alone the Americans. By that point, he would be forced to consider how to survive at all.
“Anyone know this woman?” he kept asking as he moved through the crowd. He held up the photo to a group of four women. One covered her eyes right away in horror. “You know her? She was murdered.”
The women started whispering to one another in a foreign tongue.
“Yes or no?” Heller barked.
“No,” one of the women replied while another whispered something frantic and hoarse, and Heller cursed their Silesian dialect.
“Well? What are you saying? Tell me.”
“The Piotrovskys, they lose girl,” one said sheepishly, her accent thick.
“Who are they?” Heller asked, worried he was saddling himself with more dilemmas instead of solid leads.
“Three over there, have ox.” The woman pointed them out. Heller left the women and went over to a family standing next to an ox cart. The animal was emaciated, its ribs protruding as if someone had draped a blanket over a wooden frame. A small child of indeterminate gender was lying asleep on their pile of baggage, while an old woman crouched in apathy next to one of the wooden cart wheels, just feet from the stinking pile the animal had just expelled.
Heller didn’t feel like crouching down to her. “Good day. Are you Frau Piotrovsky?” He gently poked her with his toe. She looked up and tried giving a little room.
“Police detective,” Heller added.
The old woman started moaning and flailing her arms with her hands clasped.
“You know this woman?” He held up the photo. The people around them recoiled, as if fearing they’d be pulled into a situation they wanted no part of.
The old woman stared as if she’d never seen a photograph before.
“She not understand!” explained a stooped man. “She go crazy, because airplanes! A terrible horror.”
“You know the Piotrovskys?”
“With them also a woman, she go get water, go over one hour now!”
Heller nodded, unsure how to proceed.
“Are you looking for me?” a woman said to him.
“Heller, police detective. Are you Frau Piotrovsky?”
The emaciated woman nodded and set aside a full metal bucket. The ox raised its head, desperate for a drink. “We only wish to pause here, a little rest before continue soon. They say they tell us where to, say they send us to Bavaria.”
Heller held up the photo. “You know her?”
The woman made a face. “That not Agnieszka. Is she dead?”
“The woman here is. Is your daughter missing?”
“She my niece, Agnieszka. She go run off yesterday evening. No run off, I say—when we gotta go, we go.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventeen. Some man maybe offer her cigarettes and bread.”
“A man? Can you describe him?”
“I never see him. Someone tell me.”
“Who? Tell me. Is the person who saw him here?”
The woman looked around. “Nah.”
“For God’s sake.” Heller stuffed the photo into an overcoat pocket. “You have a photo of Agnieszka?”
Frau Piotrovsky started rummaging around in her personal effects on the cart, under a thick blanket. She pulled out an ornate oval picture frame surrounding a family portrait. “Here,” she said with pride, and Heller sighed with frustration. Agnieszka was no more than five years old in the picture.
“How tall is she? What color hair? What clothes was she wearing?”
“About tall as me, dark hair and eyes. She wear trousers under dress—black-and-white dress. Jacket blue, lined in fleece.”
Heller had pulled out his notebook and was writing it all down. “Did she do that a lot, go off with someone for bread?”
“Sometimes a person gotta do it.”
“Did she do it a lot?” Heller stressed again. “How often?”
“Three times, maybe, but she never go this long.”
Heller flipped to the last page of his notebook, wrote down his telephone number, and tore out the page. He handed it to Frau Piotrovsky. “If Agnieszka shows up, please report to the authorities at the train station and tell them they’re supposed to call me for you. Do you understand? You need to do this.”
Frau Piotrovsky threw a skeptical glance at the train station. “Where these offices?”
“You see those army vehicles near the entrance with red crosses on them? Ask those medics there.”
Heller paused. What he’d just said gave him an idea.
“Are you losing your mind, Heller? Is that it?” Klepp eyed him with put-on dismay. “Now you don’t even bother getting your superior’s approval?”
Heller stood next to the chair in front of Klepp’s desk, which kept Klepp standing too so he wouldn’t have to look up at Heller.
“There was no time to lose. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.”
Klepp leaned forward, propping himself on his desk, which was piled high with stacks of documents. “Just because of some Polack whore?”
“She’s not a whore, and she’s not Polish. She’s ethnic German, and she’s disappeared. It’s possible she’s gone off with a man who promised her food. I think it’s appropriate to follow this lead. One, to find the girl, and two, to possibly—”
Klepp pushed himself away from his desk and knocked off a heap of papers in the process, scattering them all over the floor. “See there, you just said it yourself: possibly! We can’t afford ‘possibly’ these days, now that the German Volk are closing ranks to face the final struggle. Ordering a search for this girl? Have you gone completely out of your mind? Wasting all our resources? No more, done, enough!”
Heller stood at attention like he’d learned in the military. “May I leave?”
“Not a chance,” snapped Klepp. “We’re just getting started. Staff Surgeon General Funke complained to me that you were questioning his army medics and taking their names before moving on to question military police. What’s gotten into you? A good dressing-down is what you need.”
“I was only doing my job. There remains the possibility that one of the medical corps was using his position and food rations to lure young refugee women away from camps. The ki
ller could have gotten at his second victim this way.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” Klepp thundered, and Heller hoped it wasn’t obvious how fast his heart was racing. “You really are crazy! Second victim? You dare to question me, to publicly embarrass me? Trying to show everyone and everybody that you’re the big criminal investigator? Well, it doesn’t work like that anymore, Herr Detective Inspector. You think we’re not watching you, that we’re not wondering why you’ve never joined the SS? You even snubbed the Party! What kind of a German are you, anyway? What kind of Aryan? Do you even have a clean bloodline? Do you?”
“I do.” Heller hoped his superior couldn’t see his hands shaking with rage. First his thoroughly unqualified boss had the audacity to launch into a foaming rant, and now here he was, trying to imitate the gestures and facial contortions of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
“I didn’t hear you, Heller!” Klepp said, the skin around the scratch on his face turning bloodred.
“I do!” Heller repeated, louder.
Klepp put on a smug face. “So you, a purebred Aryan, dare to claim that our German men would even touch such a dirty little hussy, and you even go so far as to call it your job?”
“I’m not claiming anything. I simply have to cover all eventualities.” Heller hoped Klepp couldn’t see how hard it was for him to remain calm. A man like Klepp was unpredictable. He had reached his position of power by acting this way, but his brain couldn’t handle it.
If it hadn’t been for the war, Heller would have been promoted to the same position long ago. He would have at least reached chief inspector—except for the National Socialists and their war. That was why his career hadn’t progressed in more than seven years, why an idiot like Klepp got appointed as his superior. For his part, Heller was only able to remain in his job because of one thing: eight months on the front lines in Belgium in 1915, of all things, along with four verified combat missions.
Obersturmbannführer Klepp was about to launch another full-scale offensive rant when someone knocked on the door.
The Air Raid Killer (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 1) Page 6