“What did the Chief stop you for?”
“Curfew,” Bruno said, after a pause.
“You’re a shit liar, Bruno. C’mon, what was it?”
“He…um, well, he hit on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“As in, he prefers men to women.”
“What? No shit?”
“I think he might have mistaken my intense interest in the flag the other day as interest in him.”
“Oh my God. That’s it!”
“What?”
“That’s Magdalena’s problem with me! I mean, if the Chief is gay, it’s probably not nightly fireworks in their bedroom. Then I roll into town, and yeah, I didn’t wear a bra once or twice, and I talked to her husband once or twice, though technically one time was an interrogation, and boom, she’s threatened. Bruno, I don’t think she knows. He’s gaslighting her. Guys. Always with the fucking gaslighting.”
Bruno grinned at her. “You’re feeling no pain right now, aren’t you?”
“I’m not not drunk, I’ll say that much.”
“Oh, listen to this. I heard back from the translator about your newspaper clipping. The article is from an Oktoberfest in Chicago a couple years ago. Gerber went for fun, and just happened to get interviewed. Man on the street kind of thing. As you and I talked about, people in Switzerland speak Swiss-German, which has lingual variations from Standard German. The translator said Gerber’s responses were a weird mix of both, leaning more towards Standard German. I think he might’ve had a drink or two and gotten a little careless.”
Francine’s enthusiasm dissipated. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Bruno her settled opinion on Roland.
“It may not be a nail in the coffin,” Bruno said, “but definitely another vote in the guilty column. Not that we need too many more.”
“What do you mean?”
Bruno looked at her quizzically. “I think we have enough already.”
“Bruno.” Francine joined him on the trunk of the car. “What if we’re wrong?”
“We’re not wrong. That’s why we’ve been building our evidence.”
“But we haven’t really built that much.”
“Sure we have. All of Lischka’s suspected travels and known locations line up neatly with Gerber’s history. We have the whole thing with the flag on Garage Sale Day. I mean, I know it wasn’t him directly, but he’s got to be connected somehow. He matches the description from Ida’s story, and he has nothing to verify his life in Switzerland that couldn’t have been bought at a gift shop. And now this article you swiped shows him speaking Standard German.”
“Okay, but what if he lived on the border or something? I mean, all our evidence is circumstantial.”
“What about the way he wiped his glasses?”
“Definitely strange. I’ll give you that. But is it enough?”
Bruno stood up from the bumper. “We might not have a fire, but there’s plenty of smoke. He’s hidden any direct links so far, but he can’t obscure everything forever. That’s why we report him to the proper authorities and start the downfall.”
“But it’s never been some shaky story. He’s said it all so easily. Everything, since the moment I met him.”
“I admit he’s good at it—”
“Or maybe it’s just him, Bruno. You looked into his past. I’ve talked to him face to face. When will it be enough?”
Bruno looked confused, then a little annoyed.
“The guy has been telling the same lie for almost fifty years. Rehearse a speech for that long and see how many mistakes you make. Nothing about who he ‘is’ will sound improvised, because it isn’t. He’s lived in the Roland Gerber costume for so long it’s hard to see the seams, but it’s still a costume.”
Francine didn’t like how judgmental Bruno was starting to sound, so she raised her voice to meet his. “Even if Lischka went to Argentina, who’s to say his body wasn’t the one in the fire? And even if he escaped Argentina, who’s to say he ended up here?”
“I showed you my work—”
“I know. Nothing disqualifies Roland from being Lischka, but nothing confirms it either. These guys always hold on to something, right? That’s what you said.” She held up empty hands. “So where’s that something?”
Bruno shook his head. “You make it sound like I’m trying to rough up an innocent senior citizen for the fun of it. Some of these old Nazis are white-haired and brain dead, drooling as they’re loaded onto an extradition flight, facing charges of war crimes from a decade they hardly remember. That’s not Lischka.”
“Don’t call him Lischka.”
“Fine. Gerber’s as sharp as ever. He’s an expert liar who’s been successfully hiding from international law enforcement for half a century. You don’t think he can resist the great penetrating eye of a history teacher and a hairdresser on vacation?”
“Hey!” Francine jumped to her feet. “It’s not easy to do what I’ve been doing! I’m one-on-one with him, okay? It’s hard enough to do that without having to defend myself to you. We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
“We are on the same side. Look, I know he’s chock full of bite-size advice and has an incredibly sympathetic ear to anything you want to talk about, like saying how much of a dirtbag your ex-husband is and—”
“My ex-husband is a dirtbag.”
Her words echoed in the garage as the gutters rhythmically dripped rain onto the driveway.
“Maybe we should go inside, have a glass of water,” Bruno said.
“I told you I don’t want Charlie mixed up in this.”
“I thought you said Gerber was innocent.”
“Maybe I don’t want to confuse the kid with an Uncle Mike a few days before Uncle Mike goes back to New York.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“No. But it doesn’t fucking help.”
“I said I’d go with you to San Francisco.”
She didn’t have a good answer to that.
Bruno’s voice became forcibly measured. “Look, Gerber tells you what you want to hear, things that just so happen to support his own outlook on life. Forgiveness is power. Leave the past behind where it belongs. Who might want to push that kind of narrative?”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? The past should be left behind.”
“Yes. When it comes to divorce. Not genocide.” Bruno held his hands up in exasperation. “I’m glad this investigation is helping you be less sad about your ex, but to me and Ida and a lot of other people, it means a lot more than that.”
“You’re saying I can’t care because of my past? You started all of this to get over something too. Don’t act like you don’t want him to be guilty as much as I want him to be innocent.”
“We have to be impartial. If we’re not objective—”
“How the fuck are you objective, Bruno? Only one case solved, and now the one most important to you has stalled. I wonder if that could possibly push you toward considering him guilty? Even if Roland is Lischka, it won’t bring your girlfriend justice. Having a murdered girlfriend doesn’t—”
She stopped herself.
“Oh God, I’m sorry.”
“Finish it,” he said.
“Bruno.”
“Finish it.”
Francine couldn’t look him in the eyes.
“I just mean…our own life experiences don’t have anything to do with whether Roland is guilty or not. It’s easy for both of us to forget that sometimes. But if we’re wrong, we’ll destroy what’s left of an innocent man’s life.”
Bruno stared at her. Was he going to cry? Hit her?
“Maybe you’ve watched too many Saturday morning cartoons and adventure movies where we laugh at the Nazis and rest easy, knowing they’ll be outfoxed by the time the credits roll.” His words were slow and careful. “But there’s a reality most people seem to have forgotten. This was a very specific ideology that perpetrated very specific crimes on the people of this world. People wh
o were skinned alive, dumped in ammonia, thrown away like garbage into mass graves—”
“Stop,” she said quietly.
“That was the work of people like Lischka, and he’s never answered for it. I may be a discount detective, but you’re letting him numb your conscience with tea and cookies and sycophantic bullshit. He moves gingerly. He has a nice dog. He’s polite. So what? Good table manners don’t exonerate someone from evil actions. It’s an act, Francine. You’re being manipulated. Again.”
“Please stop.” A tear rolled down her cheek.
Bruno looked like he wanted to say something else, but just shook his head. And when he walked away, she didn’t try to stop him.
What had she expected? Bruno was just like her, stumbling around in the dark, grabbing for anything that hurt less than what had come before. What if they’d both grabbed onto the wrong thing?
A figure moved sheepishly up the driveway.
“Hey,” Laura Jean said tentatively. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Francine wasn’t in the mood to talk, not even to Laura Jean.
“I’m not trying to be nosy, but you could hear it up and down the street. I didn’t hear what you were arguing about,” she added quickly. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sometimes—”
“I said I’m fine, Laura Jean!” Francine snapped. “You don’t have to mother me right now. I can screw this up all on my own.”
“Okay,” Laura Jean said softly. “Just let me know if you need anything.”
She retreated back down the driveway, and Francine felt like she’d kicked a puppy. But she didn’t feel much like apologizing to anyone at the moment.
Why? Why had she gotten involved with Bruno and his clusterfuck of a case during this last chance at turning her life around? Now she’d be going back to San Francisco with her heart and mind worse than ever. What would her life look like six months from now? Six years? She couldn’t even bear to think about it.
Inside, she found Charlie asleep on the family room couch with his mouth hanging open, an old horror movie playing on the TV. She sat down next to her nephew and watched his untroubled dreaming. What had she told him? Things always looked better in the morning?
She was going to let him believe the lie as long as she could.
Chapter 33
I am afraid to be alone in the dark.
[ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE
Charlie counted one hundred Mississippi and cracked an eye open to see Aunt Francine sleeping on the couch next to him.
She’d been yelling at Mister Mystery in the garage like Charlie had never heard her yell before. Whatever was wrong in Hawthorn Woods was getting to her. She needed his help now more than ever.
He crept carefully across the carpet, up the stairs, and out the front door, not stopping until his feet reached the spot where the driveway’s blacktop met the asphalt of the street. There was safety in the driveway, like keeping all your toes under a blanket at night. But there was nothing to be discovered in safety.
He took off into a night that felt extra dark. No parties, no kids on bikes, no Kick the Can. Just a gentle hook of moon, and the scant light it provided.
He could hear the voices arguing before he even got to the Banderwalts’ house.
“Two more hang ups today,” Eric said. “He’s gonna come back. You know he will.”
Mrs. Banderwalt, her wheelchair in front of the TV like always, didn’t respond.
“Mom!”
“What, Eric?” she said tiredly, like he was bothering her.
“He’ll do anything to get to her.”
“That’s why we moved,” Mrs. Banderwalt said. Her voice was soft and thin, as if it were coming from somewhere very far away.
“Why do you talk to him at all?”
“He won’t send child support if I don’t. There’s nothing else I can do.” Her voice fluttered, like she was going to cry. It was the most emotion Charlie had ever heard from her.
“He barely even sends anything anyway. And we don’t need his money. I’m taking care of us. I do the cooking and the cleaning, and I’m fine doing it, but he can’t come back.”
“I told him not to.”
“Did you forget why you’re in that wheelchair? Why Diana can’t sleep at night? He’s going to try and take her.”
But Mrs. Banderwalt was gone again, far from whatever feeling she’d been close to reaching. “I don’t know what you expect me to do, Eric.”
“Just stay out of my way if he comes back.”
He banged out the front door and stormed over to the shed. The dirty lightbulb inside blazed to life, drawing a hurricane of soft-winged moths that made the light jump and dance.
Charlie scampered over to the shed, his fingers feeling along the wavy sheet metal until he reached the door hinge and peeked inside.
Eric had set a new piece of plywood across the two construction horses, and this time there was actually something on the table to be chopped. Down came the cleaver.
Thwack.
The sound was meaty and wet.
Thwack.
The smell coming from the table made Charlie sick.
Thwack.
For a horrible moment, the moths cleared away from the lightbulb, and Charlie saw, with perfect clarity, the pile along the back wall.
THUNK.
The knife buried into the plywood as an opossum’s head rolled off the table.
Charlie didn’t cry out or scream. He walked slowly and carefully away from the shed to the safety of the willow tree’s umbrella and sat against the huge trunk, not knowing what to feel.
Through the shifting curtain of leaves, he watched a police car roll down the street. They’d probably want to know about what was inside Eric’s shed, but it was past curfew. If he talked to them, he’d be in trouble.
He stayed put, nuzzling into the willow roots. Crickets buzzed. An owl hooted as fireflies drifted around the tree like wandering fairies. Charlie’s eyelids grew heavy…
The pained yelp of an animal filled the still night air.
Charlie jumped to his feet and ran, no longer caring what was wrong in the neighborhood as long as he could get home.
“Charlie!” Aunt Francine clacked the phone back into its cradle as he came through the back door. “I was just about to call Chief Durham! Where were you?”
He fell into her arms. “Something’s hurt!”
“What? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
She held him out, looking for an injury, but he pushed her hands away.
“Not me! Somebody hurt an animal! Over by Eric’s house!”
“Charlie, calm down. I don’t know what you—”
“He has bones in his shed!” Charlie yelled. “And I think he just hurt something new!”
Chapter 34
It does not bother me particularly to see animals suffer.
[ ] TRUE [ x ] FALSE
Francine’s yellow flashlight stuttered as she walked down the driveway. Since Charlie had given their spare batteries to Diana, it seemed like this was the best she was going to get.
Her head wasn’t in the best shape either, pounding from the bucket of absinthe and a horror-movie infused nap. Waking to an empty house and then hearing her nephew scream about hurt animals hadn’t helped things much.
She’d given Charlie a glass of warm milk, told him a quick bedtime story, and promised to go see what happened. His story hadn’t changed. A shed of bones and a whimpering animal. Francine was ninety-nine percent sure the boy had been confused by the horror movie on TV, but a promise was a promise, so out she went.
A simple call to the police station would’ve been nice, but she didn’t want to get Lori, considering this “emergency” was even flimsier than the last one. “Oh, your nephew got scared wandering around at night while you were supposed to be watching him? And you were what? Drunk and fighting with your boyfriend? I hope you know I’m obligated to tell Ell
ie all about this when she gets back.” Francine would run a marathon to avoid a lecture from Lori. A quick loop of the block was an easy compromise.
She slapped her palm against the plastic casing of the flashlight, but the output didn’t improve. A sharp hoot brought her beam to the top of a gnarled elm, where it lit the huge eyes of an owl.
The damp chill left by the rain seemed to find Francine all at once, and she pulled the polar bear sweater tighter around her body, walking faster as she did so. The pathetic flashlight revealed only a few feet of road at a time. If she found something on the way to Eric’s house, she was going to find it suddenly.
A small animal scampered frantically across her spill of light.
“Son of a bitch!”
The flashlight’s bulb died, then came back to life, showing a mouse in the streetside gravel. That wasn’t so bad.
A soft whooshing compelled Francine to look skyward just in time to see two outstretched talons bearing down. She screamed and shielded her face. The owl banked around her and collapsed onto the rodent. The light went out again. She heard the briefest of strangled squeaks and a piston of wings before the flashlight sputtered back to life, revealing a still-blinking mouse head in the gravel.
Annnd that was enough exploring in dead of night.
Francine was about to head straight home when she heard it. Not the scream and sudden silence of something being killed, but the moaning cry of an animal, badly hurt.
She closed her eyes and listened. Between the lazy clang of windchimes and the five-note call of a mourning dove, the whimper came again from somewhere up ahead. She walked forward into the vacant dark, pulled by the same terrible lure that had drawn her toward Brownie.
Then the flashlight found another surprise: a thin ribbon of blood running jaggedly from the Banderwalts’ yard, out into the street, and back into the Asperskis’ yard, where it disappeared into a ribbed metal pipe that ran underneath the driveway.
Cold rainwater squished under Francine’s knees as she knelt in the ditch at the edge of the pipe, the inside of which was about a foot and a half wide, and completely dark. She held up the flashlight to reveal narrowed eyes and sharp teeth that gnashed at her before backing deeper into the pipe.
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