The crime scene photographer was already at work. MPs and their German counterparts set up a line to hold back the growing crowd of spectators, while others searched for possible witnesses. Becker muttered a prayer. A German policeman rushed into the shadows and vomited. Some of Mason’s investigators had thus far witnessed the crime scenes only through photographs. Now face-to-face with the real thing, some turned away with blanched faces.
The victim was another woman. Her arms and legs were gone. She had been strapped to the column, her head cinched back so her lifeless eyes and frozen scream faced the gray clouds and heaven. From neck to pubis, every organ had been removed. The rib cage, split apart as before, was wired back to reveal an empty torso.
“Son of a bitch,” Wolski murmured. “Wasn’t it sick enough the last time?”
“First the sewers, then a factory, then a church,” Mason said. “Now a cathedral. He keeps looking for bigger and bigger stages.”
“Well, what’s goddamned next? After a cathedral, how much higher can he go? The gates of heaven?”
Becker said, “One of my men reports that they have yet to find the victim’s limbs.”
Mannheim approached them. “None of the women saw anything. They had been working in a corner section for about twenty minutes before the one who is hysterical discovered the victim.”
The engineers leaned two ladders against the column. The crime scene techs were about to climb up, when Mason said, “Wait. I need to have a closer look before you go up there. Plus, the killer could have rigged a booby trap.” He turned to Becker. “Care to join me?”
Mason hesitated at the bottom rung of one ladder and took a few deep breaths before climbing. Becker’s expression remained neutral, but he, too, took slow steps up the other ladder. They both watched for any signs of a booby trap, but as they reached the top it became clear that nothing but the woman’s corpse waited for them.
At the top, the angle of his ladder brought Mason’s nose close to the torso and the victim’s face. In spite of the cold air, he could detect a sickly sweet odor of old blood and the beginnings of decay. He glanced around the cathedral from this high angle. There were cops everywhere combing the area. “If he’d rigged a trap we would have come across it by now.”
“Perhaps he ran out of time,” Becker said and put on his reading glasses to get a closer look at the corpse. “The same fashion of amputation.”
Mason had to admire Becker’s composure. “Everything is the same, right down to the wire holding the body. Except he keeps trying to outdo the last one’s setting. Each place is more and more public. Each time he’s taking a greater risk. And each victim is more mutilated than the last.”
“Though his displays are not for us.”
“For God or the angels?”
Becker looked at him over his reading glasses. “It seems likely.”
Mason noticed a square piece of paper pinned to the back of the woman’s neck. “I found something.” He pulled out a pair of tweezers from his shirt pocket and gently unpinned the paper. The killer had left a note written in crude lettering. “Looks like your theory that he’d run out of time is correct.” He showed Becker the hastily written message then read it aloud. “‘This saint suffered, as did Christ, and she shall clear for me a path to heaven.’”
Becker turned his gaze back to the corpse. “This poor creature.”
“I’ve seen enough,” Mason growled, and they climbed down.
Major Treborn met them at the bottom of the ladder.
“My God, the butcher didn’t leave me much,” Treborn said. “Where are the organs?”
“Don’t know,” Mason said. “Haven’t found the limbs, either.”
“I remember the good old days when I had an entire cadaver to examine.”
“See what you can do to pin down the time of death. If the victim was killed more than a few days ago.”
“I heard about what happened at the cabin. I’ve been doing this a long time. These things happen in an investigation.”
Mason said nothing. He and Becker stepped away and let Treborn and the technicians do their jobs.
Mason looked up to the jagged remnants of the ceiling. “Feels more like a tomb than a church.”
Wolski intercepted them from the left. “We found the arms and legs.”
Mason and Becker followed Wolski across the nave toward the altar. They had to negotiate scaffolding and piles of collected rubble until they came to a wooden cross mounted where the high altar used to stand. Timmers and two German police were there, standing in a semicircle and staring down at the base of the cross. Timmers pointed to the arms and legs lying on the floor and arranged in the same X and cross pattern.
“The baptismal cross again,” Mason said, then squatted to get a closer look. He pointed to the woman’s right leg. “There’s a large patch of bruising around the knee, and it looks swollen. Maybe the killer got careless this time.” He turned to Wolski. “Get the ME over here.”
Wolski returned with Major Treborn a moment later. Mason pointed out the bruised area around the knee, and Treborn examined it in the light of Wolski’s flashlight.
Treborn shook his head. “This bruising is at least a couple of weeks old.” He stood. “Probably a bad sprain.”
Mason thanked Treborn, who returned to the area near the column to resume examining the body.
Becker looked up at the ribs of the church. “Investigator Wolski is correct in asking where will he go next.”
“What other principal churches are in the city center?” Mason asked.
“Saint Peter’s, Saint Michael’s . . .” Becker stopped. “I should have thought about this before. Saint Michael’s Church.”
“What about it?”
“The church claims to have the skulls of two saints, Cosmas and Damian. They are patron saints of surgeons. One of their miracles was cutting off a man’s diseased leg and attaching a healthy one so the man could walk again. The saints are often depicted standing over a patient with a severed leg at the foot of the operating table.”
“Those saints’ skulls are here in Munich?”
“Yes. It may have nothing to do with our killer, but it’s possible. . . . And Saint Michael is the archangel who battles evil spirits and ascends the deceased to heaven.”
“That’s where we’re headed,” Mason said. He called to Timmers, “Sam, I want you to take command here. Make sure the ME gets everything he needs, continue the canvassing, and make sure the techs get over here to process this area.”
From across the cathedral and echoing off the stone walls came a man’s cry. “Emily! No! My God, Emily!”
Mason and the others rushed over to where Major Treborn was examining the body. Three MPs were pulling another MP away from the area. Tears flowed as he continued to scream her name. Mason turned to another MP, who looked shaken by his friend’s grief.
“What happened?”
The MP didn’t respond and continued to stare at his friend.
“Soldier, I’m talking to you.”
The MP snapped out of it. “The dead girl, sir. She was his girlfriend. A nurse, sir.”
Mason looked at Becker, acknowledging the inspector’s accurate guess.
“Emily O’Brien. She worked at the 98th General Hospital,” the MP said.
Mason whirled around. “What? She was American?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mason stood silent for a moment. The tragedy was the same. The woman’s nationality didn’t change the horror of it. But it was going to change everything else. He already had a measure of army brass support for the investigation, but now higher brass, politicians, and the press would come down on him with a vengeance, let alone the idea that he’d let them get sidetracked on a bogus lead.
“Help your buddy calm down, but don’t let him leave,” Mason said. “We need to tal
k to him.”
The MP left to help the others. They led the grief-stricken MP to a pew set against the wall and sat him down as they talked to him.
“The guy’s in shock,” Wolski said. “You’re not going to get much out of him.”
Treborn stepped up to them. “I covered up the body, and the ambulance team is coming in.” He looked at the MP. “A hell of a thing to see your girlfriend like that. I give it twenty-four hours and then all hell’s going to break loose.”
“Believe me, I’ve thought of that. The brass will be second-guessing when I should take a crap.” Mason signaled for Wolski to follow him. They walked over to the MP, who was now quiet, staring into the distance and heaving with every breath. Mason squatted next to him. He asked one of the MPs the man’s name.
“Bill Shankton.”
“Bill, I’m the principal investigator of these murders. I’m sorry for your loss. I know it’s hard, but I need to ask you a few questions.”
Shankton took a deep breath and gritted his teeth, then nodded.
“When did you see Emily last?”
Another MP said, “Sir, can’t this wait?”
“If he knows something that can help find this killer then I need to know it now. Not when Bill feels better.”
Shankton looked up at Mason. He wasn’t much more than twenty-five; still a boy, as far as Mason was concerned, and he would wear this scar for a very long time. “I saw her three nights ago. We had an argument. Then I had a couple of twenty-hour shifts, and I wanted to calm down.” He looked away. “It wasn’t a big thing. How was I supposed to know . . . ?” He took another deep breath.
“Do you know if she talked about anyone stalking her or bothering her in any way?”
Shankton shook his head. “Not that she told me.”
“We believe the suspect is a tall, broad-shouldered man, usually wearing a hat and long, dark blue coat. You notice anyone like that when you were with her?”
Shankton trembled at the thought. His eyes began to glaze over as his control waned. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Where was she living?”
“In the barracks at the hospital.”
“All right. You take it easy for a while, but I want you to think about anything you might remember that might help us. Remember, the more we know, the faster we can track this guy down.”
Shankton snapped his head around to face Mason. “Track him down, my ass. You chased the wrong guy. You guys don’t have squat. You all got your thumbs so far up your asses you don’t know whether to shit or swallow.”
A couple of the MPs put their hands on Shankton’s shoulders to quiet him.
Mason stood. “When you’re ready to talk like a policeman and a soldier, let me know if anything comes to mind.”
Most of the MPs looked anywhere but at Mason, but a few gave him hard stares. They didn’t have the killer to rip apart, so they steered their wrath his way, to the one powerless to stop the killings. And Mason knew the army brass and populace of Munich would soon be doing the same thing.
Mason stepped away with Wolski in tow. He could feel their stares on his back. His steps were slow and uneven; the guilt weighed heavily on his shoulders.
“I know Shankton,” Wolski said. “A stand-up guy. You’re not going to report—”
Mason got in Wolski’s face. “When did you start thinking I was some chickenshit that I’d give a rat’s ass what he just said?” Mason marched over to Timmers, who was still standing next to Treborn. “Mr. Timmers, take Mancini and Cole and talk to Emily O’Brien’s coworkers and friends. Find out what places she frequented, and see if the girl said anything to them about being followed.”
Mason said it with so much force that it left Timmers glued to the spot. “Go!” Mason yelled, and Timmers hurried off.
“Don’t let what that MP said get to you,” Treborn said. “You’ve got to keep a clear head.”
Mason walked off without a response. He headed for the exit and called out, “Herr Oberinspektor Becker, if you’d come with me, please.” Then, “Wolski!”
Mason stopped on the cathedral steps. A large crowd had gathered and was still growing. The word had spread. MPs and German police kept them back fifty feet from the steps, but they didn’t need to see inside to know what had happened. He was sure the group of women who’d discovered the body had told anyone who’d listen about what they’d found lashed to the column.
Just as Becker and Wolski joined Mason, a woman yelled out, “The Amis care nothing for dead Germans! We are not safe in our streets!” Another cried out, “The German police are American puppets. We want justice!”
“We want justice!” A man repeated the shout.
In no time, the crowd took up the chant, the cries combining in a unified roar.
“They now have reality to add to the rumors,” Becker said. “I cannot blame them for their fears.”
Mason descended the steps, and Wolski and Becker followed him into the crowd. The spectators moved away to let them pass, while some deep in the crowd continued to yell:
“The murderer is an Ami soldier.”
“The Amis care nothing about us.”
A woman grabbed Becker’s arm. “Please, Herr Oberinspektor, we walk the streets in terror.”
Becker patted her hand as he continued walking. “We are doing everything we can.”
The three finally emerged from the crowd and walked in silence the two long blocks past piles of rubble and the skeletal shapes of buildings to Saint Michael’s Church. Remarkably, the church’s high, sturdy walls remained standing despite direct bomb hits on the roof. Inside, the immense barrel-vaulted ceiling was completely gone. An intricate web of scaffolding kept the walls from collapsing, though the ornate Baroque altar still stood at the far end. A priest led a handful of worshippers in an afternoon service.
“Many of the statues and artwork, and the pulpit, were removed once they realized that Munich would inevitably be bombed,” Becker said.
“And the two saints’ skulls?”
“The reliquary and its contents are also in safekeeping. They were displayed in one of the side chapels. The first one on the right.”
“You seem to know this place,” Mason said.
“I should. I come here for mass every Sunday. This is my church, you see.”
Mason moved forward along the west wall to get a better look at the worshippers. Workmen stopped briefly to look at them before going back to the task of shoring up the walls.
“I don’t see much of a reason for the killer to come here,” Wolski said. “It’s not higher up the scale than a cathedral.” He looked around. “Plus, it’s too open. Too public.”
“The killer has managed to get around that problem so far,” Mason said. “This is as likely a place as any for his next display.”
The three reached a point where they could survey the twenty-plus worshippers. Except for a scattering of elderly men, they were all women.
“We’ll set up rotating teams to keep an eye on this place,” Mason said. “Maybe have routine checks at the other main Catholic churches, at least in the center of town.”
“And what are they going to be looking for?” Wolski said. “All we have is the vague description.”
“It’ll have to do for now.”
“So, we’re back to square one,” Wolski said.
Mason suddenly felt the weight of the case bearing down on him. He squatted and shifted chunks of stucco as he thought. “Albrecht seemed so perfect: the description, his concentration camp history, a thoracic surgeon, to boot. . . .”
“Yeah, except that he only ran from us because he didn’t want to be arrested as a war criminal.”
“Okay. But we’re not back to square one. We’ve learned a lot about the killer, and we’ve developed lines of investigation we can still pursue.” M
ason juggled a piece of stucco as he thought. “What do we know about the killer?”
“He’s tall and broad shouldered, strong, smart, and a religious fanatic,” Wolski said.
“He’s surgically skilled,” Becker said. “He’s able to move around at night and more than likely uses a wagon to transport the bodies.”
“And he chooses doctors or nurses,” Mason said, then paused. “There must be thousands of doctors and nurses in this city, German and American. Why those four victims? What made him pick them?”
Wolski sighed to express his frustration. “There’s nothing physically that links them: hair color, eyes, ages, sex were all different. Could be that each one just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Becker shook his head. “I concur with Investigator Collins. There is some attribute that we are overlooking.”
Mason stood and surveyed the church. Near the worshippers, an elderly woman helped a much older man approach the pews. The man struggled to walk, his body bent with age, and he leaned heavily on his cane. “We didn’t overlook one element; we just shelved it when we went after Albrecht: Dr. Hieber and the German nurse, Agneth, both limped.” He turned to Becker.
“Yes, of course,” Becker said. “Dr. Reinhardt’s widow—”
“The victim we found in the sewer?” Wolski asked.
Becker nodded. “She said that he limped due to a gunshot wound he’d received during the war.”
“Do you really think that’s it?” Wolski asked.
Mason dropped the piece of stucco and brushed the dust from his hands. “I’ve got an idea.” He headed for the exit. “Let’s finish up at the cathedral, and then we’re going back to headquarters.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Mason, Wolski, and Becker entered the main entrance to headquarters. The entire department seemed to be on high alert. A watch commander yelled out assignments to a squad of MPs. Multiple phones rang.
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