But Demers interested him. He was the reason that she was in attendance at the press conference. He’d heard from Ross that she was back in Maine, staying at some hotel midway between Bangor and Boreas. He’d eventually succeeded in getting in touch with her the night before, and suggested that they meet, but she begged off with a migraine and offered to hook up after the press conference instead.
Mercifully, the conference started to wind up, and the whole sorry affair was brought to a close, the relief palpably emanating from those behind the microphone. Walsh sidled up to Demers. They’d met briefly in the aftermath of Ruth Winter’s murder, and at her burial. This time he took Demers for coffee, where she ordered some kind of nonfat decaf which, to paraphrase the Tom Waits song, didn’t even look strong enough to defend itself. In the spirit of the occasion Walsh resisted ordering something sweet and fat, and instead went for an Americano with so many shots that it practically counted as a giant espresso.
‘Thanks for taking the time to meet,’ he said.
‘SAC Ross told me that it might be worth my while speaking with you.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Ross doesn’t do nice.’
‘No, he doesn’t. I just said it for form’s sake.’
Walsh took a hit of his coffee, and the first of the caffeine lit up his synapses like fireworks on the Fourth of July. He thought his eyeballs might pop out.
‘Well?’ said Demers.
She wasn’t much for small talk, Walsh thought. It might have been the aftereffects of the migraine, or it could be that she was always that way. He didn’t much care which. It wasn’t as if they were planning to get married.
‘You’re investigating a man named Marcus Baulman as a possible war criminal.’
‘Yes.’
‘This Baulman was at a concentration camp called Lubsko, of which Ruth Winter’s mother was the sole survivor.’
‘It wasn’t a concentration camp: it was officially an “experimental colony” but otherwise, yes.’
‘And members of Bruno Perlman’s family died at the same camp, which gives us a dotted line between Ruth Winter, Perlman, and Marcus Baulman.’
‘Again, all this is common knowledge.’
‘I have something that isn’t,’ said Walsh.
‘Really?’
Demers wasn’t exactly on the edge of her seat, but he could see that he had piqued her curiosity for the first time.
‘The man who killed Ruth Winter – the one we’re calling Earl Steiger, in the absence of anything more conclusive – was a professional killer, possibly hired by a man named Cambion.’
Now Demers was interested. She even pushed her weird coffee to one side, as though it might impede the flow of information.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘It doesn’t matter where, and it’s not conclusive. I don’t have any evidence to support it, but the source is good.’
‘You didn’t share this with Ross?’
‘I did.’
‘Ross didn’t share it with me.’
‘You take that up with Ross. For what it’s worth, he told me to keep it to myself, but I don’t work for Ross – not officially, anyway, although sometimes he acts like I do. Plus I’m tired of seeing my entire department chasing its tail with no result. So I’m looking at all of these pieces, but I can’t make them fit together. Then you come along talking about war criminals, and suddenly I can see a picture.’
‘Go on.’
‘Bruno Perlman finds out something about Lubsko and Marcus Baulman that nobody else knows. He shares it with his friend Lenny Tedesco, then heads north. Along the way, he lets someone up here know that he’s coming – maybe even more than one person. Because of the Lubsko connection, I’m figuring one of them has to be either Isha Winter or her daughter.’
‘I spoke with Isha Winter,’ said Demers. ‘Perlman didn’t say anything to her about coming back for a second visit, and I don’t think he’d have been welcome anyway. Isha didn’t care much for his attitude the first time they met.’
‘Then it’s Ruth Winter he wanted to see. Perhaps he figures that an elderly woman shouldn’t be approached directly about whatever he’s discovered, and he might be better off going through her daughter. Baulman finds out that Perlman is coming, and hires Earl Steiger to take care of him and the Tedescos. Steiger could have killed all of them, but I’m leaning toward him farming out one of the jobs.’
‘Why?’
‘The timing is tight – not too tight for it to be impossible for Steiger to have worked alone, but just tight enough to make it improbable. And also—’
He took a moment to risk another sip of coffee. This wasn’t where he parted ways with Louis, exactly, but it was a leap that he still wasn’t entirely confident about making.
‘There’s a chance,’ he said, ‘and only a chance, that the killing of the Wilde family might be part of the same picture, but designed to distract us.’
Demers said nothing. He couldn’t tell if it was disbelief, or if he had her.
‘Everything about the Wilde case is off,’ said Walsh. ‘Everything. Oran Wilde should have been caught within hours, but he’s still out there. His father’s safe was locked when the house was examined, and we found charred bills in his wallet, so what’s the kid doing for funds? And there’s no motive. The more we find out about Oran, the more he seems like a regular kid – a little fond of wearing black, liked his shoot-’em-ups, and not as smart as he thought he was, but no murderer. Just the opposite: his close friends had him pegged as a decent, sensitive guy. His yearbook photo should have read “Least Likely to Commit a Mass Killing.” But somehow, his family ended up dead and we’ve committed huge resources to scouring the state for him, with no result.’
‘You’re saying that someone slaughtered four members of a family, and abducted a fifth, as a diversion? From what?’
‘From a body on a beach. From Bruno Perlman. Whoever put him in the water probably didn’t know about the tides there, which are all screwy. Perlman wasn’t supposed to wash up at Mason Point, but he did. I think someone went to the trouble of clogging up our system so Perlman would be overlooked and tagged as an accidental drowning, or a suicide, or would simply lie in cold storage until whatever else needed to be done could be completed.’
‘What about Ruth Winter?’ asked Demers. ‘She doesn’t fit into the same time frame. She dies later. Why not kill her along with Perlman?’
‘Maybe because Perlman’s killer knew that he hadn’t shared his information with her yet. What if it was something physical, something that Perlman wanted to show her? There was no laptop in his car when it was found, and we know that he owned one from a warranty found in his apartment. Unless Perlman brought his computer with him for his last swim, then it, along with anything else that might be useful, was taken by his killer.’
‘Then why murder Ruth Winter at all?’
‘That’s where it all starts to fall apart,’ admitted Walsh.
‘But you think Baulman may be the one who did the hiring,’ said Demers.
‘Would he kill to hide his past?’
‘He was responsible for murdering children at Lubsko, and apparently did it without compunction. So, yes, I think he would – or, given his age, he’d pay someone else to do it for him.’
‘You have proof that Baulman is the one you’re looking for?’
Demers drank some more of her coffee and scowled.
‘Why am I even drinking this shit?’ she said.
‘I didn’t want to ask.’
She didn’t wait for him to offer to get her something stronger, but went to the counter herself and came back a few minutes later with an espresso.
‘Fuck it if I get another migraine,’ she said.
‘That’s the right attitude.’
‘Where were we?’
‘Proof that Baulman is a war criminal.’
‘We don’t have any.’
‘Jesus. For real?’
Demers shrugged.
‘You know we have Engel awaiting deportation to Germany. Naturally, he doesn’t want to go. The Germans don’t want him either, because they say there’s not enough evidence to try him, but that’s not our problem. We’d prefer a trial, but getting him out of here is enough.’
‘Wait,’ said Walsh. ‘So why are we sending him over there?’
‘We’re deporting him on the basis of irregularities in his original visa application.’
‘Not because he was a war criminal.’
‘A suspected war criminal,’ she corrected. ‘No.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Walsh.
‘Denaturalization and deportation is all we have,’ said Demers. ‘It’s not ideal, and it’s not enough, but it’s better than the other option, which is to let these people live out their last years in the bosom of their adopted country. Because of a loophole in the system, we can even keep paying them their Social Security if they agree to go. Effectively, we bribe them to get the hell out of the United States. But Engel has a family here – a wife, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren – and he wants to die surrounded by them. His wife still refuses to believe that her husband was a murderer who put bullets into the necks of naked, kneeling men and women. She’ll take him back, if he can stay. So Engel offered to give up another Nazi in hiding if we’d halt the deportation proceedings.’
‘Did you agree?’
‘We told him it would depend upon the quality of the information. The truth is that he’s going back to Germany no matter what he tells us. He could prove to us that Mengele didn’t drown in Brazil in 1979 but is alive and well in Palm Beach, and we’d still want him gone. We’re simply delaying packing him up and shipping him off until we’ve bled him for all we can get, and then his own people can have him.’
‘And Engel pointed you to Marcus Baulman?’
‘He told us that Baulman was actually Reynard Kraus. He said he and Kraus served together at Lubsko. We looked into Baulman, and his paperwork had some gaps and inconsistencies in it – yet not enough to support a case against him, and they could be explained away by the chaos of war. But you get a sense for these people if you hunt them long enough, and Baulman is bad. What might have helped was a positive identification from Isha Winter, who knew Kraus by sight.’
Walsh picked up on the words ‘might have.’
‘But you didn’t get it,’ he said.
‘Yesterday I showed Isha Winter a picture of Baulman as a younger man. She told me that Baulman wasn’t Kraus.’
‘So Engel was lying.’
‘I haven’t had a chance to put that to him yet.’
‘Unless he was right about Baulman, but somehow managed to connect him to the wrong name. I mean, all these guys must be old as Methuselah by now. I have trouble remembering names, and I’m only fifty.’
‘It’s also possible that Isha Winter is mistaken, but it’s a long shot. She comes across as sharp as a tack. If she says Baulman isn’t Kraus, then it must be true. I’m going to keep working the case, but I was banking on the positive ID to give us a push.
‘It leaves you with problems too. Whatever information Bruno Perlman had, it couldn’t have been that Marcus Baulman was really Reynard Kraus, not unless he was as mistaken as Engel. Either way, why would Baulman go to the trouble of having Perlman and everyone connected with him killed if they were on the wrong track to begin with?’
Walsh swore. He’d been so sure that he’d found a way to connect all the pieces. It didn’t take him long to regain his composure, though.
‘Baulman doesn’t matter,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘The rest of it feels right. We just need another name, but Lubsko remains the common detail. Whatever is happening here, it goes back to there.’
‘Let’s stay in touch, see what emerges,’ said Demers.
‘And Ross?’
‘I’m going to shout so loudly at him for keeping me out of the loop, his phone will melt.’
‘It sounds like a plan.’
‘Then he’s going to shout at you.’
‘I have a plan too.’
‘Which is?’
Walsh abandoned the rest of his coffee. With luck, he’d manage to get a night’s sleep sometime before Christmas.
‘I won’t answer my phone.’
50
Rachel and Sam lived in converted stables adjoining the house owned by Rachel’s parents, although a wood-and-glass conservatory furnished with overstuffed couches and chairs now connected it to the main building. Rachel’s father Frank had recently retired, but continued to work as a freelance consultant in business realms in which Parker had no interest, even if Rachel’s father had ever been bothered to try to explain them to him. Parker had never gotten along with Frank Wolfe. He had been suspicious of the detective from the start, and everything that followed had only reinforced his conviction that Parker was bad for his daughter in almost every way. He made some small concession only for Sam, upon whom he and his wife doted, although Parker was certain Frank had somehow blocked from his mind the fact that Sam carried any genetic material from his daughter’s former lover.
Thankfully Rachel’s old man was absent when Parker, with Angel and Louis as escorts, arrived at the house. Frank had left the previous morning for a meeting in Seattle, and would not return until the weekend. It was doubly fortunate for all involved, because whatever doubts Frank had about Parker were multiplied manifold when it came to Angel and Louis. If he had his way, the two men wouldn’t have been allowed into the state, let alone onto his property.
A white Mercedes CLS-Class Coupe was parked in the driveway outside the house as they pulled up, alongside Rachel’s recently purchased used Prius.
‘A white coupe,’ said Angel. ‘That’s an asshole’s car right there.’
With that, the asshole himself appeared. Rachel’s boyfriend Jeff was about ten years older than she was, and believed that if wealth was worth having, then it was worth displaying. He was all white teeth and prematurely white hair. If the lights went out in a mine, they could have sent Jeff to lead everyone back to safety using only his smile. Parker was self-aware enough to realize that he was still more than a little in love with Rachel, and therefore Christ Himself could have come down to date her and he still wouldn’t have approved of the match. Still, the thought of Jeff and Rachel involved in any kind of intimacy – physical or emotional – caused his gut to tighten. Parker tried to be civil to Jeff for the sake of all involved, but the effort strained his diplomatic muscles to their limit. As for Angel and Louis, they made it clear – on the rare occasions when they were forced to spend time in Jeff’s company – that if they could have gotten away with shooting him and dumping his remains in a swamp, they would have.
‘The fuck is he doing here?’ asked Louis.
‘He doesn’t look happy,’ said Angel. ‘Which makes me happy.’
He was right. Jeff was red with rage, even beneath his year-round tan. He was wearing a yellow V-neck sweater over a pink shirt and blue pants, and was carrying a navy blazer in his left hand.
‘He looks like the father of a groom at a gay wedding,’ said Angel.
Jeff paused as Parker got out of the car. He had to pass Parker to get to his own vehicle, but appeared reluctant to do so, as though he hoped the detective might instead just vanish into the ether, leaving only bad memories.
‘Jeff,’ said Parker, by way of greeting.
Jeff managed to pull together a Frankenstein’s creation of a smile, composed entirely of other unrelated emotions. It lived for only a moment before it collapsed and died.
‘I heard you were coming,’ said Jeff.
‘You didn’t have to welcome me personally.’
Jeff raised his right forefinger and pointed it in the direction of the house. His car keys dangled from his fist, catching the morning sun.
‘They deserve better,’ he said. ‘That child deserves better.’
‘Better than what?’
‘You know.’
His eyes drifted past Parker to Angel and Louis, who remained seated in the car. Angel gave him a wave and a smile, and mouthed the word ‘fuckwad.’
‘And you bring these people here, these—’
‘Careful,’ said Parker. ‘Their feelings are easily hurt.’
Rachel appeared at the door of the house before Jeff could say anything more. Her arms were folded across her chest. She’d been crying.
‘Jeff,’ she said. ‘Just go. Please.’
Parker almost felt sorry for Jeff, but it quickly passed. Whatever had occurred before they’d arrived was serious, and possibly terminal. Now Jeff was suffering the added humiliation of retreating before the three men in the world he least wanted to see at that moment.
Jeff brushed past Parker, got in his shiny new car, and drove away. Parker watched him go. When he looked back at the house, Rachel was no longer at the door.
‘Give us a minute?’ he asked Angel and Louis.
‘Sure,’ said Louis.
‘Is it too early to start celebrating?’ asked Angel.
Parker gave him a look that suggested he would be well advised to keep cracks like that to himself for the present.
‘Okay,’ said Angel. ‘We’ll celebrate on the inside.’
Parker knocked on the door and called Rachel’s name. He wasn’t about to enter a house that wasn’t his own without her permission, not even this one. She called to him from the kitchen, and he found her with her back against the sink, her head low and her shoulders shaking. He walked over and stood beside her, but he didn’t touch her. He knew her better than that.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.
‘Besides everything you’ve done already? You could shoot me. How about that?’
‘I didn’t bring my gun.’
She gave a short laugh, then just cried harder.
‘Why don’t you go outside and borrow one? They must have a fucking arsenal in that car.’
‘I don’t think they’d let me shoot you. They like you too much. But if you want someone else shot, I’m sure they’d be willing to oblige.’