by R.J. Ellory
We didn’t speak of it again, but the following day, as I knelt before the grave of my wife and child, a child I never saw, a child who was never named, I decided that I would do what Haynes Dearing had asked of me.
I would go to Jesup, Wayne County; I would speak to Gunther Kruger; I would see if his eyes reflected the faces of ten little girls as their lives had been extinguished.
Had I known at that point what would come, had I been aware how February of 1949 would signal the end of my time in Georgia, I might have made different decisions. I didn’t see the signpost then, not along the banks of the Crooked River, or on Jekyll Island or Gray’s Reef; no indication amidst the flooded swell of islands, creeks, salt marshes or river inlets; nothing pinned to the trees, upon their coats of Spanish moss; no word in the grain of split logs bound together to navigate the corduroy tracks across deeper swamps. Perhaps I longed to be a child once more with a mother and father, a child possessing a quiet and unspoken love for Miss Alexandra Webber. Perhaps I was merely manufacturing enough compelling reasons for departure, for in leaving Georgia I could almost imagine that life would change sufficiently for memories of the past to be lost. They would not, and I knew it, but I believed that trying was better than nothing.
Morning of Tuesday the fifteenth I went to see Haynes Dearing. I told him I would go up to Jesup and see Gunther Kruger.
Dearing neither smiled nor thanked me. He sat behind his desk and looked at me for some seconds. “You understand that I’m gonna need as much as you can get from him?”
“I understand what you want, Sheriff. I’m not sure you’re going to get it.”
“I want you to do everything you can to determine his whereabouts, his movements. I want you to ask him about the girls that have been murdered. I want to know his reactions to questions, what he remembers of when they were found. I want to know what he heard and what he thought about it.”
“And you can’t go because?”
“Because I’m the sheriff. Because any time I ask anyone a question people consider it their duty to withhold everything from me.”
“And you think he’ll let something slip?”
Dearing shook his head. “I think nothing, Joseph . . . I just hope.”
“Scarecrow,” I said, and smiled as Mathilde Kruger hugged me.
“Sceercraw!” she echoed, and laughed exuberantly. She had changed a great deal. Only six and a half years had passed since the Krugers left Augusta Falls, and yet she seemed to have aged more than twenty. But their house, the one they now occupied in Jesup, Wayne County, was the same as the Kruger house in Augusta Falls. It smelled of sauerkraut and bratwurst and dark coffee, of generous hearts and the welfare of others. The Kruger house embodied the memory of my mother as she had been and the way these people had helped her. I could not imagine that Gunther Kruger knew anything of ten little dead girls and the terrible things that had been done.
I arrived in the late morning of Wednesday the sixteenth. I had driven up from Charlton in Reilly’s pickup.
“Should buy your own goddamn truck,” he said, and laughed, and there was something awkward in that sound that told me he understood how difficult the journey would be.
“Good luck,” he added as I leaned out of the window and raised my hand. “Better you than me,” was what I think he said as I pulled away, but I was not sure.
“Gunther is out with the boys,” Mathilde explained. “Aach, I say boys. They are not boys. They are men now. Both of them men, like you,” and once again she hugged me, took my hand and led me to the kitchen.
Mathilde Kruger busied herself with coffee and pastries.
“I’m not hungry,” I told her.
She laughed. “Sceercraws is always hungry. You sit there. I make coffee, okay?”
I smiled, started to laugh. I pretended I wasn’t nervous, pretended that my visit was nothing more than a social call.
“Your mother,” Mathilde said. “I understand she is in this nervous hospital, yes? I am wrong, yes?”
I shook my head. Mathilde brought the coffee and set it before me. She sat down. “You’re not wrong,” I told her. “She is in the nervous hospital. She’s out in Waycross.”
“Such a woman,” Mathilde said, and there was something so compassionate and sympathetic in her tone that a twinge of guilt invaded my senses; we were speaking of my own mother and for some considerable time I had barely thought of her.
“So many hard things in this life for her, eh?” Mathilde looked down, her complexion coloring as she fought back tears, and then she shook her head and smiled bravely. “It will be ho-kay, all be ho-kay, yes?”
I nodded and smiled understandingly. “Yes. I’m sure it will be okay.”
“So you are working in Augusta?”
I shook my head. “Enough, yes. I’m surviving.”
Mathilde reached out and closed her hand over mine. “Good. You are too thin, Yoseph, always too thin, but I can see that you are okay, yes?”
My attention wandered: I believed I could see right through Mathilde Kruger as if she were a window into the past. I looked at the dark and awkward history we had survived together. I wondered if she knew about her husband and my mother. I wondered how much time she spent thinking of Elena, the way her body had been carried from the house the morning after the fire.
I remembered November of ’45. I recalled speaking with Alex about the girls, the murders, and about the Krugers, the death of Elena, all that had transpired. I recalled how certain I was that Gunther Kruger was not involved. Back then there had been no question in my mind, but now? Now I was sitting in the Kruger kitchen waiting for Gunther to come home. I was on an errand for Sheriff Dearing. An errand of investigation based on suspicion, backed by nothing more substantial than fear.
Perhaps I was wrong and my slanted perspective saw a reflection of something internal. Possibly my imagination wanted to create something in order to justify my visit.
Gunther Kruger arrived within the hour. He called to his wife from the front of the house and when he entered the kitchen I saw it.
I saw the guilt.
Later, with hindsight, I told myself that it was the guilt he carried regarding his relationship with my mother.
That would have explained the element of surprise he manifested, and yet beneath that the evident shadow of unwilling recognition. His expression gave everything away: here I was, an image from the past—a face, a voice, nothing more than that, but sufficient to remind him of something long since buried beneath a shroud of justification. Joseph Vaughan stood before him, the son of a woman he had lain with while his own wife had stood no more than thirty yards away. Gunther the fornicator. Gunther the adulterer. Gunther the liar.
“Joseph!” He walked forward, his arms extended, and with his hands he gripped my shoulders firmly. “Ach! Nicht wahr? You are here! Joseph Vaughan. Ha!”
He pulled me close and hugged me, but there was something in the way his arms tightened around my back. He squeezed me, and at the point where he held me tight enough, he suddenly squeezed a little harder. I was caught off guard, surprised by the sudden pressure and I lost my breath. I am showing you how happy I am to see you for my wife’s benefit, that gesture said. I am telling her that I have nothing to hide. But unbeknownst to her I want to hurt you for coming. For coming back into a life that no longer has anything to do with you or your people. I will pretend you are welcome, pretend only for appearance’s sake, and when you are gone you must not come back.
“Gunther,” I replied enthusiastically. “It’s great to see you! Lord Almighty, it must be six years or so. Six years and you haven’t changed a bit . . . neither of you.”
“Ach, so kind,” Mathilde crooned. “I know you are being so kind. We are growing old . . . soon too old to keep the farm here.”
“Me?” Gunther interjected. “I will never stop this. I will pull a plow until I drop dead in the mud! Ha ha ha!”
We sat at the table and Mathilde brought coffee. Gunther s
toked his pipe and proceeded to fill the room with bitter, acrid smoke.
“So you are living still in Augusta Falls?” he asked me.
“Same house, yes,” I replied. “My mother—”
Gunther stopped me. “I know, Joseph, I’m sorry. I understand that she was not well for some years, yes?”
“Seven years,” I said, and for some reason felt there was some significance in the fact that it had been February when Reilly and I took her to Waycross. February tenth, 1942. It was now February 1949. I’d been fourteen years old; now I was twenty-one. I’d lost a wife and a child. Seven more girls had been murdered.
“So things are well for you there, yes?”
I looked toward Mathilde, standing in front of the sink. The woman never sat for more than a moment, never ceased doing something; seemed she had managed to organize her mind in such a way as to exclude everything she did not wish to consider. Possibly she knew of her husband, his affair with my mother; possibly she thought of her daughter and how she’d been lost; perhaps she knew of the killings and said nothing.
“Things are fine,” I replied. “Things are okay, Gunther . . . but there has been the same trouble . . .” My voice trailed away into silence. I felt awkward, as if here—premeditated and deceitful—I was attempting to trick Gunther Kruger into saying something that would somehow incriminate him.
“Trouble?” Gunther asked. “What trouble?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It’s not something I wanted to talk about.” I looked up at Gunther, turned toward Mathilde as she stepped away from the sink. I smiled at her, but there was something in her expression that defied description. “I came here to visit with you,” I went on, at once unnerved by Mathilde Kruger’s appearance. “I came to let you know how things were doing, to find out about Hans and Walter.”
I turned back toward Gunther.
“Tell me what trouble,” he prompted.
I sighed and shook my head. I too was now a liar, and I really felt like one. “These terrible things, you know?”
Gunther frowned and shook his head. He looked concerned, avuncular; he looked like the man who’d driven the length of the St. Mary’s River so we could spend the day at Fernandina Beach; the man who’d said that even I—Joseph Vaughan—should have some memories to cherish for when I grew older.
“These little girls, Gunther.” I looked up. Looked right at him. There was nothing but patience and curiosity in his expression. “The little girls that have been killed.”
Mathilde stepped forward. She appeared behind Gunther and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“No,” she said. “Still this is going on?”
I nodded. “There have been ten now. Ten of them have died.” I looked at Gunther Kruger. If he knew anything, anything, then there was some clear division between his memory and his reaction, a division over which nothing crossed.
“Ten girls,” Gunther said, and once again his voice belied any knowledge he might have possessed. But then there was something. Something? Later, I couldn’t determine what I had seen—a shadow, a flicker of something in his eyes? I stared at him, so much so that I sensed him grow uncomfortable. “I do not understand such a thing,” he said, and looked over his shoulder at his wife. It seemed he did it simply to avert his gaze. Mathilde maintained her focus on me.
“And the police?” Gunther asked. “They have nothing?”
I shook my head. “There are rumors. People call them with all manner of reports about things they think they saw. I don’t know how many false leads they’ve followed. I know that they’ve tried to get the Georgia Bureau of Investigation down here again but that never came to anything. Truth is, I don’t think they are any the wiser as to who might have done these things than when they started.”
Gunther turned back to face me. For a moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them it seemed that he too was holding back tears. “Such a world we live in,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “Such a world where people can do such terrible, terrible things.”
“It is hard to comprehend,” I replied. “But I didn’t come to speak of these things. Where are Hans and Walter?”
Gunther smiled. “They are out for much of the day. They are working over in Walthourville. I don’t think they will be back before sunset.”
“A shame,” I said. “I would so like to have seen them.”
“You must stay,” Mathilde said. “They won’t be happy if you come all this way and do not visit with them, no?”
“I can’t stay long . . . I have work to get back to. I was driving over to Glenville and I thought I’d stop by.”
“So come,” Gunther said, starting to rise from the table. “You must come and see our farm here.”
“Sure,” I replied, and stood also.
Gunther led the way to the back door. “Make Joseph some food for him to take on his trip,” he told Mathilde. “Some sausage and some rye bread, something to fatten him up!” Gunther laughed and I followed him out into the yard.
Ten yards from the house he slowed down. He took my arm and pulled me a little closer. “I am sorry for your mother,” he said. “You are a man now . . .” He looked at me for a second, and then he looked away as if embarrassed. “There were things that happened many years ago—”
“Gunther—” I started, but he cut me short.
“Let me say what I need to say, Joseph. A lot of years have passed, and your mother has not been well. I have always tried my best to be an honest man, a God-fearing man, but there were things that happened when we were in Augusta Falls that would send even the best man to Hell, yes?”
“I think that’s a little harsh, Gunther.”
“The Bible says what it says, Joseph. Lying with a woman other than your wife is a mortal sin. I have carried this sin in my heart for all these years. Mathilde . . . ” He glanced back toward the house. “Mathilde, she knows nothing of this thing, and she can never know, you understand?”
“You don’t need to worry about me, Gunther, I would never tell a soul.”
“But you must understand that I have prayed for your mother’s recovery. I have prayed night and day that the Lord would see to her recovery from this sickness she has.”
“I know, Gunther, and I appreciate your thoughts and prayers. Truth is that she will more than likely never recover, but they are doing what they can for her.”
“Ha! These people, these doctors, they know nothing. They can mend your leg if it is broken. They can stitch a wound and stop the blood. But the soul? They know nothing of sickness in the soul. It is only by the grace of God that such things can be remedied. Your mother was . . . your mother is a fine woman, a strong and fine woman. Such things are a crime against—”
“Gunther.”
He stopped mid-flight.
“Enough,” I said quietly. “Enough now. It is too late for regrets. This is how the world is, and there is nothing we can do about it now. I came to see you, to let you know that I was okay. I came to see Hans and Walter—”
“And Elena,” Gunther interjected. “You would have seen Elena too, if she was not snatched away from us as well.”
“I know, I know, and that’s still so hard for me to think about. There are many things we can grieve over, but if we believe in God then we must also have faith in His decisions.”
“His retributions,” Gunther said.
I frowned. “Retributions?”
Gunther looked down at the ground. “The Bible tells us that all these things happen for a reason.”
“No,” I said. “You can’t start thinking like that, you can’t punish yourself for Elena’s death. How could you possibly consider that you had anything to do with what happened?”
Gunther was silent. He turned his back on me and looked toward the house. “I did a terrible thing,” he said. His voice almost a whisper.
“She was lonely. My father had died. I can understand human nature, Gunther, and you can too. If God made us in His own ima
ge, then He too must have made us feel what we feel. You are a good man, Gunther Kruger, and as far as I’m concerned you never did anything but help us, and I believe that punishing yourself for what happened with my mother is just as crazy as believing you had some part to play in Elena’s death. These things happen, and the real test of strength is to go on living despite them.” Even as I finished speaking I regretted having spoken at all. I wondered if the terrible thing he spoke of was his infidelity, or something else.
Gunther nodded. He looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes. “Ach, you are right, Joseph. You have grown smart and clever in a few years, yes?”
I waved his comment aside. “You have moved here and your family is well. Mathilde is happy, yes? The boys too, I should think.”
“Hans will be married in the summer,” he said. “You must come to see him married. You must come to see him married, yes?”
I nodded and gripped Gunther’s shoulder. “I would be honored.”
“Good, then that is settled. Now, must you go or can you stay a little while?”
“I have to go,” I lied.
“Very well,” Gunther said. “Come say goodbye to Mathilde and get some sandwiches for your journey.”
Fifteen minutes north toward Glenville I turned the pickup around and headed home. By the time I arrived it was mid-afternoon. The sky was bleak and without feature.
I took Reilly’s pickup to his house, parked it outside, was grateful there was no sign of him. I walked home; it started raining, as if the God whose name I’d spoken in vain was attempting to wash away my guilt. Not a hope of such a thing. The guilt was within.
I had failed Sheriff Dearing. I had lost my nerve. I should have pressed Gunther Kruger, should have asked what he meant when he spoke of the terrible thing he had done. But in my mind I believe I knew, must have known. I remembered kneeling before my window that night so many years before. I remembered seeing Gunther standing out there in the darkness, his long coat like a shroud, and the way my breath had caught in my chest, the way a cool hand had gripped my heart and squeezed every last drop of blood from it. Could he have done such things? Was such a man capable of such terrible crimes?
