Ruins of War

by John A. Connell

  “There are more of us than you think. You name a theater of the war, and there was a woman correspondent covering it.”

  “How did you get in that line of work?”

  “I thought I was supposed to ask the questions,” Laura said. She looked from face to attentive face. “Okay, fine . . . I was doing fashion photography in Paris when Germany invaded France. I had a French boyfriend at the time. Actually, we were engaged to be married. He was killed at Dunkirk. I guess instead of falling apart, I decided to cover the German advance and their march into Paris. I managed to get out in the nick of time and make my way to London. Then I got assignments covering the London Blitz, and it took off from there.” She caught Mason staring at her. “What?”

  Laura so beguiled Mason that he hadn’t realized he was staring at her. “Nothing,” he said as nonchalantly as he could.

  “All right, boys, that’s enough about me. I want to find out how the murder investigation is going.”

  “You know we can’t divulge anything about that,” Mason said.

  “Off the record, then,” Laura said and held up her right hand. “I promise.”

  “Go ahead, Chief, tell her,” Wolski said. “Maybe she can see an angle we haven’t thought about.”

  Mason still hesitated.

  Laura continued to hold her hand up as if swearing a solemn oath. “Off the record is off the record. Honestly. I wouldn’t be able to do my job very well if I betrayed that.”

  Mason signaled Wolski with his eyes that Anna shouldn’t hear what he was about to say. Laura picked it up right away. “Anna,” she said, “why don’t you wait a few minutes in the ladies’ lounge. I’ll come and get you when we’re finished.”

  Anna glanced at Wolski, who nodded. She looked disappointed, but she left the table and headed for the ladies’ lounge.

  “Okay,” Mason said, “off the record is one thing, but before I go on, I have to ask you not to share this with anyone else. No one. Something like this could create a panic.”

  When Laura agreed, Mason described what they’d found in the factory, how the body was mutilated and displayed on the column, the precision cuts, the severed limbs displayed in the bizarre fashion, the hours of torture the victim had likely endured. He told her about the body in the sewer, and that in all probability it was a victim of the same killer. “I’ve seen and heard about butchering murderers before, but nothing like what this killer does. I think this is just the beginning.”

  “Like Jack the Ripper?” Laura asked.

  “I don’t get how anyone could kill like that,” Wolski said. “And this one being a doctor, for chrissake. Doctors are supposed to save lives.”

  “You think he’s a doctor?” Laura asked.

  Mason said, “According to the medical examiner, every cut the killer made was surgically precise. The guy didn’t just cut off the arms and legs, he surgically removed them.”

  “Some people think Jack the Ripper was a doctor,” Laura said. “Then there’s the doctor everyone’s talking about in France; they’re saying he could have killed up to seventy men, women, and children. It’s all over the French press.”

  “His surgical skills and the fact that he can move around at night after curfew points to someone in an army uniform. In all probability, someone in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. We’ve checked MP and CID arrest records and looked for any open murder cases suggesting a killer with surgical skill, but nothing turned up. This killer has been able to elude detection and probably has no previous record. We need to get into medical personnel files and search for criminal background checks, psychological profiles, reprimands, disciplinary actions, anything that might hint at someone liable to commit this kind of murder. . . .”

  “Only we can’t get clearance to access medical personnel files,” Wolski said. “Our commander has put that strictly off-limits. They’re okay with us searching for a suspect as long as he’s not American.”

  “Hm,” Laura said, tapping her fingernails on the tabletop, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “What is it?” Mason asked.

  “I have an idea . . . if you’re open to it.”

  “Shoot,” Wolski said eagerly.

  Laura looked to Mason, who nodded for her to go on.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “I get you access to the medical personnel files, and you give me exclusive access to your investigation. I get to know what you know, but I don’t publish anything until you’ve caught your man. What do you say?”

  “And how are you going to get us that kind of access?” Mason asked.

  Laura gave them a sly smile. “I know the chief medical officer for the Third Army’s medical battalion, Brigadier General Morehouse.” She furrowed her brow at Mason. “And don’t get the wrong idea. He’s a good friend, and that’s it. I caught him in a rather compromising position—to say the least—and I promised to keep it quiet. He promised me a favor. Maybe it’s time to cash it in.”

  Mason looked at Wolski as he considered Laura’s proposal. Wolski raised his eyebrows, clearly prompting Mason to accept the deal.

  “Exclusive access to our investigation doesn’t mean tagging along. We’ll share information and lines of investigation, but you don’t publish anything that the other newspapers don’t already have until we’re done.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  As they all shook hands, Mason wondered if he’d just grabbed a bobcat by the tail. If so, he was enjoying every minute of it.

  TWELVE

  Mason exited the officers’ club after the party carrying a box of leftover food collected from the club’s kitchen. The master sergeant overseeing the kitchen had agreed to prepare two dozen bags containing full dinners. Wolski, Laura, and Anna were waiting for him on the sidewalk.

  “Didn’t get enough to eat?” Wolski asked.

  “I’ve got a delivery to make.”

  Instead of accompanying them to the car, Mason crossed the street and placed the carton of food a little bit away from the hole of the orphans’ shelter. Kurt came out to investigate.

  “I brought you all . . .” Mason didn’t have to finish. The scent of hot food had reached their noses. All the children climbed out, and this time Mason didn’t have to back away. He smiled and said, “Guten Abend,” to all of them.

  They returned the greeting, but then stopped and looked with suspicion at something behind Mason. Mason turned to see Laura come up to his side. She took his arm and stood very close. Her broad smile made the children relax.

  A girl of eleven or twelve poked her head out and tried to pull herself onto the sidewalk. Two younger boys had to help her the rest of the way. Mason felt his heart constrict. Laura squeezed his arm.

  The girl’s left leg was missing from the knee down. She reached back into the hole and brought out a pair of battered crutches, then raised herself up and stood back from the rest. She wore a discarded Wehrmacht overcoat cut off to her ankle, but the bulky coat couldn’t hide her skeletal frame. Her pale skin seemed to be stretched across bone. She had all the features of a beautiful girl hidden under a layer of dirt.

  Mason couldn’t help staring at her.

  Laura asked the girl, “And what is your name?”

  “Her name is Angela,” Kurt said. “She doesn’t talk much.”

  Kurt’s younger companion, Dieter, added, “She doesn’t have her leg.”

  “Yes, we see that,” Mason said. “But you should be kind to her about that.”

  Dieter nodded earnestly, and the youngest children began grabbing for the bags of food. Kurt barked at them to thank the nice man. Then as each one took a bag he or she bowed slightly and said, “Danke.” Kurt took his and Angela’s bags last.

  Laura asked the children if any of them were sick and Mason added, “We could bring a doctor.”

  Kurt shook his head. “Just food. And, if you please, c
igarettes. We can buy stuff with cigarettes.”

  Mason pulled out his almost full pack and handed it to Kurt. Kurt’s eyes brightened as if he’d been given a brand-new bicycle.

  Mason looked at Wolski and whistled. “Got any cigarettes?”

  Wolski came over, Anna following him, and tossed a couple of packs to Mason.

  “There’s another two packs,” Mason said to Kurt. “But I don’t want to see you smoking them.”

  “No, sir.”

  And Angela added in a soft voice, “Thank you, sir.”

  Mason bowed. “You’re welcome, my lady. Now go inside before you get too cold.” He waited until Kurt helped Angela return to their shelter, then turned for the car.

  Anna left Wolski’s side, rushed up to Mason, and kissed him on the cheek.

  Wolski smiled slyly at Mason, as if an impostor’s true identity had suddenly been revealed.

  “What?” Mason asked.

  “Nothing at all.” That smile again. “Hey, I know a great club we could go to. It’s got a nice mix of regular army and locals. How about you guys come with us? I stole a bottle of the colonel’s scotch just for this occasion.”

  Laura glanced at Mason, then said, “Thanks, but I’ve got to get back to my hotel and finish an article that’s due tomorrow. I also need to put in that call to General Morehouse.”

  “I’ll pass, too,” Mason said. “I’ll walk Laura back to her hotel, and then I’m going to hit the sack. If Morehouse gives us access to those files, we’re going to have a long day tomorrow.”

  “Suit yourselves,” Wolski said. He climbed into the car with Anna and drove away.

  Mason and Laura turned a corner, leaving the lights of the club behind. The light of the moon took over, washing the ruins in a ghostly glow. They walked in silence and entered the big plaza, Marienplatz. On their right was the neo-Gothic Neues Rathaus, intact but gutted by fire. The intricate facade, the arches, turrets, statues, and gargoyles, all reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral, stood out in stark relief from the hard light of the moon.

  “So, you don’t have a current girlfriend?”

  “I’ve been here barely two weeks, plus I’ve been a little busy. I had a girlfriend when I worked as an assistant for the general staff in Frankfurt. A nurse. But that didn’t work out.”

  “No girl back home?”

  “An ex-wife.”

  “That didn’t work out, either?”

  “‘Ex’ would be the giveaway. Six weeks of bliss, then a year of pain. She sent me a Dear John letter right after I landed in France.”

  “Poor boy.”

  “It was mutual, though it was pretty rotten of her to do it just when I was about to go into combat.”

  “What about family?”

  “Just a grandmother. She and my grandfather raised me when my mother died. I was twelve. My stepdad took off long before then. I have no idea where he is, and I don’t want to know.”

  A group of inebriated soldiers passed them on the other side of the street. They walked in and out of the light from a couple of bars and restaurants that served late for the soldiers.

  “You were right about my parents,” Laura said. “They’re both overachievers. My father is a biochemist and a U.S. congressman, and my mother is a writer and a leading feminist and she teaches medieval and Renaissance literature at Brown University. They both pushed me so hard to follow in their footsteps that they suffocated me.”

  “How did they react to you becoming a fashion photographer and a war correspondent?”

  “What do you think? My mother cried and my father yelled. Then my father cried and my mother yelled. It got a little better when they saw my articles being published. My father and I barely have two words to rub together, but my mom told me he keeps a scrapbook of every article of mine he can find in print. But it wasn’t just me who had them pulling their hair out. My older brother became a cop for the Boston PD. You see? I know a little about cops.”

  Mason stopped and looked at Laura. “Then you know they can be a lot of trouble.”

  “So can reporters.”

  A quiet moment was broken between them when two army jeeps drove by on patrol. A couple of GIs whistled at Laura.

  “I’d better get back,” Laura said.

  Mason held out his arm and they walked in silence for a while.

  “So, what happened in Chicago?” Laura asked.

  Mason stopped. “There you go again.”

  “Come on, we all have ghosts in our closets.”

  “I thought it was skeletons.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  Mason tried to look angry, but her eyes, her smile, melted away his aggravation. He extended his arm again, and Laura took it and they resumed their stroll.

  “I was partnered with one of the best men I’ve ever known. He’d been a detective going on eighteen years. I really looked up to him. Detective Sergeant Dave Lupin. About three years after I became a detective, Dave and I were investigating a series of drug-related murders. But every time we tried to make a bust, someone tipped them off. Each time we found an eyewitness, the witness disappeared. Dave started suspecting an inside job. I refused to believe it. Back then I never imagined sworn police officers would murder, torture, and steal to take over the drug trade.”

  “But that’s just what some of them did.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Did your partner—”

  “Dave.”

  “Dave. Did he take it to your commander?”

  “You have to understand one thing. In every police department there’s what’s called ‘the blue code of silence.’ No one rats on a fellow officer. It’s not written anywhere, it’s not taught at the academy, but it might as well be chiseled in stone and mounted on every precinct entrance, like Moses had delivered an eleventh commandment.”

  “But did Dave go to someone?”

  “Not before he had enough concrete evidence. He worked on it for six months. The commander started sniffing around and gave us a stern warning. I kept warning him—”

  “Didn’t you want to stop these crooked cops?”

  “I knew something was going on, but I still couldn’t believe it was fellow detectives. If there’s one thing to this day that still hurts, it’s how stupid and naive I was.”

  “Dave didn’t share the evidence with you?”

  “No. He said it was to protect me. Then, Dave met me one night and handed over everything he’d found out. I didn’t understand why he was giving it to me. He said it was my turn to step up to the plate. He walked away and two hours later he was shot in the back. They collared a junkie for it, but I knew better.”

  “What did you do with the evidence?”

  “I was scared. So I went to a motel outside of town and read everything. It was incredible. It was horrible what these guys had done and were doing. The next morning I stashed the evidence in a bus station locker. And you want to know how stupid and naive I was? I went to the commander.”

  “Oh, no. What did he say?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I waited for two days, expecting to get a bullet in the back. Then out of the blue I got transferred to a precinct on the other side of town and reduced down to patrolling a beat. That really steamed me, so I went to the assistant DA and told him about the evidence. The guy patted me on the back and shook my hand and said he would take care of it.”

  “And nothing was done about it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You should have gone to the press.”

  “I did. I made an appointment with a reporter, but that same day I was busted for kickbacks and extortion. They’d planted evidence and bribed some lowlifes to testify against me. They claimed Dave had falsified all the evidence because of a vendetta Dave and I had against these guys. They fired me but didn’t prosecute me
. Everyone went along, from the mayor on down. Sharing the wealth and crushing the story.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

  “It sticks me in the ribs once in a while, but I don’t let it get me down.”

  “You’re a better man for it.”

  “There you go.”

  “Well, this is me,” Laura said, and they stopped in front of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, a high-class hotel reserved mostly for army brass and military government officials.

  Mason smiled. “You know, the only other person I’ve told the whole story to is my grandmother.”

  Laura went up on her toes and kissed him. Mason kissed back. They slowly broke the embrace.

  “I’d better go in,” Laura said.

  They said good night. Laura entered the arched entrance, then turned and waved before going inside. On the twenty-minute walk back to his billet, Mason couldn’t help his silly grin. His reverie came to an abrupt end, however, when he saw the figure waiting outside his house.

  “You’re needed, sir,” Corporal Manganella said, standing next to a parked jeep. “There’s been another one of those murders.”

  THIRTEEN

  Corporal Manganella drove the jeep through a district where the train tracks converged from the countryside and cut a wide swath through the west side of the city. During the Allied bombing raids, the bombardiers had used the web of tracks to line up their targets, and this area had been hit many times. For blocks on end, they passed nothing but the ruins of warehouses and working-class housing. In some sections closer to the tracks only dust and craters remained.

  The corporal pulled the jeep up to a small church flanked by empty hulks of apartment buildings. The church’s steeple, the stained glass windows, half the roof, and the front portico were all gone. The exterior stone had been scorched black from the fires.

  Outside the church, a group of German police stood on one side of the entrance, while four U.S. Army MPs stood on the other. Because of the curfew, there were no spectators, except for those who peeked out from glassless windows or behind half-open doors.