by Ilsa J. Bick
“That doesn’t excuse it. You’re just a boy. . . .”
“I’m not a boy. I know what I’m doing.” I looked at Dr. Rainier. “I was there. I saw it. I know what happened.”
Dr. Rainier had gathered up the hasty drawings I’d made. Her face registered first disbelief, then astonishment and, finally, horror. She looked up quickly. “These two men,” she said. “Christian, I’ve seen them before.”
“What?” Uncle Hank took the drawing from her. “One of them’s a walleye.”
“A strabismus,” Dr. Rainier corrected. “But I’ve seen them both.”
“I’ve only seen one of them before.” I pointed to the one with the strabismus; I’d rendered in a few quick strokes, the man grasping a small struggling boy. “His name’s Daecher, and there’s some kind of serial number after his name. I think . . . I think they’re both German PWs from the camp. Mr. Witek’s father must’ve drawn a lot of them.”
Dr. Rainier was nodding. “That’s where. In that sketchbook by Mr. Witek’s bed . . . this one.” She tapped the paper. “He’s there too.”
I said, “He’s more than just here on paper.”
“What?” Uncle Hank and Dr. Rainier said at the same moment. “What do you mean?” asked Dr. Rainier.
I turned to Uncle Hank. “Is Mr. Mosby still here? The guy with the ground penetrating radar?”
“Yes. He said they wouldn’t finish with the old Ziegler place for a couple of days yet. Why?”
I pointed to the north side of the barn—and then I showed them one of my drawings: two men, shovels in hand, shoulders hunched, bent to their task. “We need him.”
So that’s how I discovered how a grave looks on GPR: a rectangular, dark gray lozenge, because even though bodies have no corners, for some reason, every gravedigger cuts four. It wasn’t possible to see how many bodies were in there. Mosby said all we’d get was the grave itself.
“But it’s down there,” he said. “Right under the concrete and that brick. Bet my company on it.”
That was close to midnight. No one felt much like sleeping. So after rousting the relevant people and applying jackhammers and crowbars and then spades, we’d opened that grave by seven, first light. By that time, someone had gotten through to Dr. Nichols, who’d pulled up at six thirty, hair mussed and eyes red-rimmed. She was jazzed.
Not one skeleton but two: both men, laid out alongside each other, possibly because it had been easier to make the grave wider than deep. After over sixty years, the tissues holding the bones together had disintegrated, and the skeletons were disarticulated, in pieces but still clumped into two distinct shapes.
One wore a tattered set of work trousers, and I could see where the crowbar had smashed into Mordecai Witek’s skull. Dr. Nichols felt along the legs and hips and then fished around with her fingers beneath the body—and withdrew a frayed, gnawed-looking leather wallet. Dr. Nichols carefully unfolded the wallet and tweezed out a ten-dollar bill, two fives—and a photograph: four people, discolored with age and faded. One was barely recognizable as Mordecai Witek.
Even though they were photographic ghosts, I was reasonably sure who the other three were. I’d even seen them before, without knowing it: the family portrait in Mr. Witek’s room. Looking at Marta, I thought I knew something else too.
“The lab might be able to do something with that,” Dr. Nichols said, carefully slipping the photo into an evidence bag. “But this.” She held up a thick rectangle, about the size of a Social Security card. “This is good.”
The card had once been pink. On one side was a black seal, what looked like some kind of bridge span against a backdrop of mountains and the letters, IABSOIW. On the reverse, the card read:
THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT:
Mr. M. M. WITEK
is a member in good standing of the
International Association of Bridge,
Structural, and Ornamental Iron Workers
of WINTER, WI
Local No. 119
This card good until Dec. 31st, 1945.
“My Lord,” said Uncle Hank. “He never left.”
“Looks that way. Of course, we’ll do DNA and get a comparison sample from his son’s body,” said Dr. Nichols. “I’m sure his executor will have no objections. But I’d say this card is pretty persuasive, wouldn’t you?”
The other skeleton would be a problem. The man’s nose was broken, but that was the only bony injury visible on Dr. Nichols’s cursory exam. She didn’t find a wallet, though she thought that he might have been some kind of farmhand. “Look at the clothes, how rough they are. Very coarse weave and I think there’s some kind of logo here on this remnant of a sleeve. Bleached, I’m afraid; I can’t read it, but you can see where this part of the cloth is quite a bit paler than the rest. The lab people might be able to clean it up. But we might never know who he is.”
I knew better. I’d seen and drawn what the two Germans, Woolfe and Daecher, had missed because there’s a big gush of blood when you cut a man’s throat with a corn knife, especially when he’s still alive, and blood can hide a lot.
I said, “If you can find the left pinkie finger . . . that would help.”
After ten minutes of careful sifting of trowels of dirt through wire mesh, Dr. Rainier said, “Hey, I thought I saw something metal....”
Dr. Nichols’s gloved fingers carefully picked out a length of bone she called a metacarpal—and then, a man’s gold pinkie ring. On the ring was a set of initials in fancy, curlicue script.
“C-R-E,” I said. “Charles Randall Eisenmann.”
“But that’s impossible.” Uncle Hank looked from me to the ring and then to Dr. Rainier before saying again, “It’s not possible. Eisenmann’s alive.”
“Then how do you explain the ring? Look at pictures from the time period. He always wore this ring, always. He’s still got the gold watch chain and fobs; they’re in the pictures too. But I’ll bet that if you compare a picture from 1944 to one in 1946, the ring’s gone.” I pointed to the ring in Dr. Nichols’s gloved fingers. “That’s because the real Charles Eisenmann was still wearing it when he died, and the guy who took his place forgot about it. He changed out of his clothes and made sure he had the pocket watch. But he missed the ring.”
Uncle Hank still wasn’t convinced. “How do you fake something like that?”
I knew the truth because I’d seen it happen. “Because there were the scars. All we know is he got them on the night of the murder, right? He got attacked? But what if the guy who took his place did them to himself? What if someone helped?”
“It’s possible,” Dr. Nichols put in, “especially if the damage is extensive and people are primed to accept it because there would be other cues—the clothes and the watch chain and the fobs. Close enough is all that’s required.”
Uncle Hank screwed up his face. “I still don’t buy it.”
I turned to Dr. Rainier. “You recognized those guys in my pictures, right?” When she nodded, I said, “Can you get Mr. Witek’s sketchbook?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s locked up with his personal effects, but—” She turned to Uncle Hank. “A request from you would probably do it. A warrant, if you need it. You certainly have enough presumptive evidence right here for one.”
“Sure,” Uncle Hank agreed. “But what would I be looking for?”
“The Gemini twin.” I riffled through my stack of drawings and tugged out the one with the second man, corn knife in hand, bent over Eisenmann. “That guy.”
“Any jury would say you saw the drawing and it hung around in your subconscious,” Uncle Hank objected. “Heck, that’s what I’m saying.”
“Ah . . . not bloody likely,” interrupted Dr. Nichols. Her capable fingers crawled through the debris on that mesh screen, and then she was thumbing dirt away from an oval disk made of thin metal.
Dr. Rainier’s eyebrows knit. “What is that, a machine tag?”
Dr. Nichols’s eyes actually twinkled. “Oh, it’s a tag all righ
t, just not for a machine.” She extended her hand.
In the center was an aluminum oval as big as her palm. A single, deeply incised line bisected the tag along its long axis. There were also three round perforations in the aluminum, two above and one below, and a remnant of what looked like a shoelace was threaded between the two holes along the top of the oval. Above and below the line were a series of numbers and letters that read: 9356 Pz. Gen. Rgt. 26. A large O had been stamped along the lower left-hand edge.
“I have no idea what those abbreviations mean,” said Dr. Nichols, “but I’ll bet that this is some kind of dog tag. That number corresponds to identification, a serial number.”
“The Wolfsangels were a Panzer division,” I said. “So the P and the Z could be an abbreviation for Panzer, right? So maybe this is for Soldier 9356.”
“With an O blood type,” Dr. Rainier chimed in. “That does make the most sense in terms of the O, right?”
“Maybe. We bag this, send it on, and see what comes up, but I’ve got a very good feeling about this. Artifacts are the most helpful element in terms of dates and identities. But let’s talk DNA for a second. If this man is the real Charles Eisenmann, then we can match his DNA to the relatives buried in your town cemetery, specifically to his parents. Fifty percent of his DNA will match his mother, and fifty percent will match his father. Those numbers can’t and don’t lie. You get a sample from the man who claims he’s Charles Eisenmann, and the DNA will expose him.” Dr. Nichols practically preened. “Sheriff, I’d say that you have more than enough evidence for an exhumation.”
Someone had brought coffee and doughnuts, but I passed. The night was finally catching up to me. All I wanted was to get home and fall into bed. I stumbled out of that place of horrors and into a gorgeous Sunday morning in late October. A fine mist veiled the pond to my left and floated above dips in the meadows. I pulled in a lungful of air, but my head didn’t clear. Something nagged at me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. But what more was I supposed to do?
As I stood there, Dr. Rainier and Uncle Hank came to flank me on either side. They looked tired too, but I knew that Uncle Hank still had a long day ahead. He said, “Dr. Rainier will drive you home. You look done in.”
“I am,” I said, “only . . .”
“What?”
I craned my head to peer back into the barn’s dank shadows. “I don’t know, it’s just . . . I don’t know.” They followed me as I trudged around to the barn’s northwest face. The scaffolding was still in place. I’d be lying if I said I was sad to never lay eyes on that again. The ghostly remnant of that last swastika was still visible, and I thought about that for a second. I had never thought about this before, but now I wondered: why had I been compelled to spray-paint this side of the barn? Nothing was coincidental here, not the dreams I’d had or meeting Mr. Witek or gazing out from the haymow . . . nothing. So this side was important. But why?
That’s when I noticed something else: all those crows were gone. Yet I sensed they were still somewhere close....
“I’ll be right back.” Before either of them could say anything, I was monkeying my way up the scaffolding to the precise spot where I’d first felt that icy wash of dread weeks ago now. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when that turned out to be level with that swastika. Then I stepped away from the ladder and turned to scan the fields and hills.
“Christian?” Uncle Hank called. “What is it, son?”
I didn’t reply. My eyes picked out the ruined house— David’s house, I knew now, and I wondered who or what had burned it down—and then, closer in, the pond with the copse of aspens at the southern tip. My breath hitched.
There were the crows. The aspens were black with them. There were so many crows that the branches of those aspens were actually bent.
And then I had it. Even if the crows hadn’t been there to point the way, I realized that there was something in the aspens now that had not been there when I’d gone to David’s time that first go-round—and as I thought about it, there was something missing from the basement of the barn that had been there the night of the murder.
In my mind, I heard Mr. Eisenmann sneering at Mordecai Witek: She’s already spoiled goods....
“Christian?” Uncle Hank called again.
“Oh my God.” I half slid, half shimmied down the ladder to the ground. “I know what it is. I know why!”
I took off at a run, throwing myself down the hill toward the pond. I must’ve looked pretty crazy: my clothes still stained from my bloody nose, my hair wild. I heard them calling after me, but I didn’t slow down. My legs thrashed through damp meadow grass that grabbed at my jeans and sucked at my Chucks. As I reached the aspens, the crows screamed and lifted in a black cloud for the sky. I plunged through weedy snarls, sweeping tangles away with my hands, until I found what I was looking for.
Yes, there they were, as real as I was.
Uncle Hank and Dr. Rainier came gasping up. “What the hell,” Uncle Hank began.
I held one up for them to see. The stamp on the brick read: GOLD & BRICK 1941.
“They used them in the barn. So when they needed them again, they knew exactly where to go,” I said.
“But why?” asked Dr. Rainier. “Why do that to a baby? Who would really have cared or connected them? Marta was just a servant.”
“That’s easy. That little baby was evidence and a reminder, and so the killer made sure, one way or the other, that all the Witeks were silenced,” said Uncle Hank. “Every last one.”
XXXII
I wish I could’ve been there when Uncle Hank and a deputy went to see Eisenmann. I had to wait to get the story second-hand.
Uncle Hank thought it would be better to wait until after church—not the least of which was because he could be sure where Eisenmann was and not run the risk of the old man getting wind of anything. So he and Justin stationed themselves across the street from St. Luke’s Lutheran. At the stroke of eleven—the minister at St. Luke’s is a stickler for punctuality—people started filing out of the old Lutheran Kirke. A few glanced at Uncle Hank and Justin, curious that the sheriff and a deputy were cooling their heels outside of church.
Eisenmann finally shuffled out in his finely tailored three-piece suit. The sun winked from the gold watch chain and fobs dangled from his vest pocket. He was chatting with the minister, using his gold wolf’s-head cane to make some point. He turned when Uncle Hank mounted the steps and said, “Sheriff, what brings you to the Lutherans this fine Sunday? Here, I always thought you were a UCC man. Now, don’t you go asking for favors for that nephew of yours. Even a Sunday dinner won’t change my mind, no matter what the Lord tells us about Christian charity.” I guess he thought that was pretty funny because that seamed and scarred gargoyle’s face of his pruned up as he laughed, the lopsided lips peeling back to show his teeth.
Uncle Hank allowed this was so and then said, “Thing is, Mr. Eisenmann, I’ve got something of yours you’re going to want to see, something I think you lost a while back.”
Eisenmann stopped laughing and frowned. “Lost? I can’t for the life of me think what you mean, Hank.”
“I think for the life of me is quite apt, sir,” said Uncle Hank, and then he held up two evidence bags. One contained Charles Eisenmann’s gold pinkie ring. The other held that old aluminum dog tag from World War II—because that’s what it was. The Germans even incised that line down the middle so one half could stay with the body, while the other was collected to keep track of the dead. It’s the reason our soldiers have two sets of tags—except during World War II, when metal was scarce.
Justin said what happened next was pretty amazing. Eisenmann’s laughter dried up. That ruined face went slack with astonishment, though the crocodile tears still flowed. For that instant, the facade of the man calling himself Charles Eisenmann crumbled away, and in his eyes, Justin saw a flare first of disbelief, then fear—and then something else not quite human.
Eisenmann tried to recover.
He gave a weird little giggle, though his skin had gone milk white except for the two flaming spots of scarlet in his cheeks. “I’m sure I don’t understand, Sheriff.”
“No,” said Uncle Hank, and then he put his hand on Eisenmann’s arm, “I’m sure you do. Shall we, sir? We don’t really want to do this here, with all these people around. Let’s go in my car.”
Eisenmann seemed to become aware of the silent, staring people on the church steps—men and women who thought they knew exactly who this was—and then he said to no one in particular, “No, I don’t believe I shall. I have Sunday dinner waiting—”
“It can wait,” Uncle Hank cut in. “Please come with us— Herr Woolfe.”
Justin said that did it. A kind of groan dripped out of the old man’s misshapen mouth, and his knees buckled. He would’ve fallen if it hadn’t been for Uncle Hank and then Justin rushing up to brace him on the opposite side. A ripple of whispers ran through the crowd as Uncle Hank and Justin led the stumbling old man to a cruiser.
“Watch your head, sir,” said Uncle Hank as they helped fold the old man into the backseat. “Here.” He gently took the wolf’s-head cane from Woolfe’s slack fingers. (Yeah, talk about irony: that must’ve tickled him, taunting people with a symbol only he understood, not only a stand-in for his real name but the 8th Panzers.) “I’ll hang onto that, if you don’t mind.”
Eisenmann—or, according to Mordecai Witek’s sketchbook, Hermann Woolfe, serial number 31G-3945—turned a pleading look to Uncle Hank. His lips were trembling, and Justin said real tears splashed in the crevices and valleys of those ruined cheeks.
“They can’t kill me.” Woolfe’s eyes swam with fear. “Not after all this time . . . who cares? Besides, Witek was nothing but a Jew....”
“Sir, I don’t think you should say anything else.” Uncle Hank leaned in and buckled the old man’s seat belt. “But for the record: He was a man, with a family. They all were.”
Like I said, I wish I could’ve been there. But here’s something else I think about when I consider all those good men and women watching that cruiser pull away:
