The Untimely Death Box Set

by James Kipling

  Chapter 3

  Yuan found the district he was searching for without much trouble. It was a conjunction of reconverted buildings and shops all of which catered to the pet care trade. He passed a small pet hotel with special ramps for dogs so that they could get plenty of exercise. The obsession with small pets was something his mother shook her head over all the time. Where she grew up, animals were there to work and be of use. You might have an ox or cow on the farm, but it was a working animal, not a friend of the family. Chickens and other poultry were different, but they ran all over the place. He was glad to have grown up in the United States, the stories his mother told about life in China were hard to believe and she would bring them up as a reason he should be grateful as a kid.

  The place he was trying to locate was called “Professional Pets” and specialized in advanced dog training. He’d asked around and a few people told him they did the best working dog training in the area. If anyone knew how to make a dog attack a bank and hold back the security guards, it was this place. If they weren’t the ones who had provided the training, maybe they had a line on who had done it.

  Yuan parked his SUV in front of the training center he was trying to find. A good friend of his, who worked with rescue dogs, told him that the man he wanted to talk to was named Leonard. He knew more about training and conditioning dogs for work than any other person in the city. Yuan decided he was the man to see. He also intended to see if this Leonard knew anyone who fit the profile. There might be several people who owned a team of dogs which could have been used in the attack on the bank. The real problem would not be getting the information, but trying to keep this Leonard from knowing why he wanted it.

  “Hello,” said Yuan to the young lady behind the counter. She eyed him up the moment he walked into the office. The office smelled of dog: manure, dry dog food, and the scent of animals. “I’m looking for a man called Leonard; I was told he might be able to help me.”

  “I’ll call him,” she said and picked up a radio, while smiling at Yuan. Yuan felt something trigger inside his mind and realized he had a potential date in front of him. Strange how some of the women, who so closely identified with nature, could be approached so readily. There had to be a connection because three of the women he had in rotation were vegetarians. A man with low morals might think it fun to see if he could break them of this eating choice, but Yuan found it kept them healthy and who would want to watch a person retch when they’d just eaten meat for the first time in years?

  “Hello,” a voice called to him from a side door. “I’m Leon. Sally called and said you wanted to see me.” Leon was a tall, muscular man in his forties with a shaved head. He looked imposing and Yuan could see how he had no trouble managing the dogs under his care.

  “I was told you were the person to talk to in the Delaware Valley when it came to training dogs for military and security applications,” Yuan told him. “At least several people told me I should talk to you.” Yuan handed him his card. Leon looked at it and his eyes went wide.

  “This has to be about those dogs used in the bank robbery,” he told him. “I was fixing to call you guys because I had someone come to me for training three Rotty’s and a Shepherd. Hard dogs to take care of, they eat a lot. But they can be readily trained, and bond to the people who take care of them.”

  “What were you supposed to train them for?” Yuan asked him.

  “Security work. The man wanted the set to be able to handle crowds and grab gun hands. Just like the ones used in the robbery.”

  Williams had just parked his car in Philly and was walking into Doc Stanford’s office. He didn’t see the good medical examiner and called for him. Stanford yelled from a nearby lab and told Williams he was in the middle of something.

  “I’d have you come into the lab,” he yelled again, “but it’s a biohazard situation. I’m cleaning up, give me a few minutes and I’ll be out. The rules are pretty strict these days with all the infectious diseases running amok.” Williams shuddered. He well remembered the panic, which rolled over the nation during the Ebola fear. At least the disease was controlled. The next time it might not be.

  “This has to be about the old ladies,” Doc Stanford said as he emerged from the lab, drying his hands. “I can’t think of another reason. Did the captain send you to see me?”

  “No,” Williams told him. “I was sent because Yuan and I have divided up the lines of attack on these cases. You told us, just as the captain called us into his office, about the interference you’ve had from Washington. Well congratulations, you’re not the only one getting flack. Washington is onto the captain about this case too. Remember that bank robbery yesterday? It’s all tied in with the death of those two women. Any clues as to who I should be talking to about all this?”

  “I’d recommend a man named Hans Bernhard,” Stanford told him.

  “Why would I want to talk to him?” Williams asked the old medical examiner as they met in the antechamber of his office.

  “He knows more about the kind of people who fled Germany after the holocaust than anyone else I know in Philly,” Doc Stanford explained. “He’ll get you the information you want to know. I’d talk to him if you think these two had some connection with the Nazi prison camps. He’d be the person to talk to in this matter. Furthermore, you can tell him I sent you.”

  “How is it you know him?”

  “We go back a ways. He was in medical school the same time I was there. His family comes from some old Junker stock in East Prussia. These were the kind of people who the Nazis pushed aside to gain power. They looked at Hitler and company as a bunch of ignorant peasants and were paid back for their refusal to support the New Order. They were deprived of their lands and thrown in prison camps. He might have had a relative or two who remembered the German ladies we found the other day. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had been trying to find those two women for years.”

  Williams drove back across Philly to the address Stanford gave him. Hans Bernhard had an office off Columbus Boulevard where he ran art auctions for the very wealthy. This might be a double source of information. If he was an art expert, he would know about missing art objects. They didn’t have a picture of the egg as of yet, but he might know about it from the many missing ones looted out of Russia during the early days of the October Revolution. It was worth a talk.

  Williams parked his car in the small lot outside of Bernhard Auctions and made his way up to the second floor to its physical location. He was forced to ring the door buzzer and tell a secretary why he wanted to come inside. She started to give him a difficult time until Williams let the women know he was with the Philadelphia Police Department. To make his point, he held up his badge to the security camera she had on him. That did the trick and he was soon inside and walking up the staircase to the small office.

  The office was filled with rare art objects from around the world. Williams stopped and admired a vase from the Ming Dynasty until the man he wished to see greeted him.

  “Detective Williams?” he inquired. “I’m Hans Bernhard. I was told you wanted to see me about my work with art treasures looted by the Nazis.”

  “That was part of the reason I came to see you, Mr. Bernhard,” Williams told him. “The other reason was a murder investigation which ties into the missing treasures. I’m told you have some knowledge about the Nazi prison guards who stripped people of their possessions.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “I’ve written several books about the looting of the art treasures of Europe. It’s still an issue which divides people. Many museums and private collectors refuse to admit the origin of what they have in their collections. How can I help you?”

  “Two days ago,” Williams began, trying not to scope out the office’s ornate designs and paintings, “Two elderly women were found dead in their condo. You may have seen something about them in the news. The reports are saying they died of natural causes; we have reason to believe it was foul play. We
have evidence they were hiding, in a safety deposit box, two art objects they may have stolen from prison camp inmates. We have reason to believe the person who killed them focused on their eyes and tortured them to obtain the safety deposit box numbers and the keys to the boxes.”

  “What were their names?” Bernhard asked.

  Williams gave him their names but cautioned that they might not be the real names. It was possible the women were hiding under an assumed identity.

  “It wouldn’t be the first account of that,” Bernhard replied. “It’s still common for international criminals to rebuild an identity when they travel.”

  “’Have you any knowledge of two prison guards who might have escaped to the US who fit their descriptions? I can furnish you with more information if you need it.”

  “I have quite a bit of information on the kind of women used in those prison camps,” Bernhard told him. “Let me get my tablet and I can bring up some useful data.” He disappeared into his office and returned with a small computer tablet.

  “Let’s see, what do we have here,” he said as he began to bring up what he wanted to look at. “Here it is. Two women who were prison guards who escaped the Nuremberg Trials at the end of the war and fled to nobody know where.” He looked at the screen some more and thought for a bit. “What did you say they had in those boxes?”

  “A Fabergé egg and a diamond necklace. I can understand the difficulties in selling the egg, but I would think the necklace could have been broken up into individual gemstones.”

  “Not always. If the necklace was made by a famous designer, its whole would be worth more than the sum of the parts. Let me see, ah, here I have them.”

  “Yes it appears they were accused of running a scam where they would offer to help prisoners escape if they gave them any valuables they might have on them or at least give them the locations. In reality, they would keep the jewels or money and ship the prisoners off to another camp where no one would ever listen to them. Can’t have prisoners complaining to guards who didn’t get a cut of the spoils.”

  “I have some information on the egg,” Bernhard continued. “It belonged to an Archduke who put it in a Swiss bank. Now how they managed to get at it is a mystery, as the Swiss don’t let just anyone into those banks. It took a threat from the CIA to get at a syndicate criminals account in Switzerland thirty years ago. The man was living the good life and claimed he only made four thousand dollars a year. The IRS managed to take him down, but that’s another story entirely. It sounds like you have a pair of excellent monsters in the morgue. These two liked to put out people’s eyes who gave them a hard time.”

  “You said eyes?” Williams spoke to him.

  “Yes, why?”

  “It was the eyes that were tortured first. We couldn’t figure out why someone would do that, but the depravity of humanity knows no bounds. Now I think we may have a link.”

  Yuan was on his way back from the dog-training center. Leon had provided him with some valuable information, including a physical description of the man who paid for the dog training. However, all Leon had on him was a cell phone number and address. Yuan hadn’t tried the number yet and figured it probably wouldn’t work since the suspect had likely used a burn phone, disposed of soon after the training was finished. And the contact address for the man out in Coatesville was probably bogus. The client had paid Leon in cash, so there was no way to trace a credit card. Other than allowing himself to be seen, there was no way they could identify the man. He’d even refused to be photographed with his dogs when the training was finished, a standard practice at the training center. The dog owners would be given a diploma and photographed with their new “graduates”.

  Yuan drove back to Philly trying to figure out who the person might be who had paid for the dog training. The way he was described sounded like a generic old white guy, of which there was no shortage in the county areas outside the city. Leonard described a slight accent, but he couldn’t tell from where. Yuan thought some more about it as he pulled up to a stop light. He thought about running into a convenience store for coffee, but changed his mind when the light turned green. He continued on his way to the highway into Philly. The traffic would be backed up as usual, of that he was sure.

  It still amazed him the way these people out here lavished attention on their animals. Some people even took them to restaurants with them. The service dogs he could understand, they provided a useful function. Service dogs could be trained in any number of ways. He even saw a small fox terrier with a service dog tabard on and wondered what it had been trained to accomplish.

  He drove on and pulled over when his cell phone went off. Yuan looked at it and discovered Williams were calling him. His new SUV had a voice assist, but he’d forgotten to activate it today, which meant he had to take the call manually.

  “So what did you find out?” he asked Williams.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” the voice from the other end of the phone said to him.

  “You first.”

  “Okay, I learned something today from a man who is an expert on art objects looted by the Nazi’s in World War Two. He claims the two women who were found dead might match the descriptions of a pair of prison guards who fled Germany at the end the war. They had some kind of fraud going where they took valuables off people in return for getting them out of the prison camps. But they never really got them out and kept what they were given as bribes. I dug around on my own today and found out a necklace, which belonged to a Prussian noblewoman, was one of the items these women were supposed to have taken. It’s the stuff of legends, but I think there might be something to it all. Furthermore, this noblewoman had two sons who fled to Finland during the war. Which means she might have family still out there trying to get the necklace back.”

  “Seems like a long time to exact revenge,” Yuan commented.

  “Not if you’re Prussian,” those people are crazy when it came to honor and slights. No South Philly gangster knows as much about respect as these people did. What did you find out?”

  “Somebody did come to the dog kennel I wanted to check out. They paid to have dogs trained, which matched the descriptions of the ones the witnesses described. However, he paid in cash and left nothing we could use as contact but a burn phone number, which was probably disposed of. Even the address he gave the owner of the training center was a bus lot in Coatesville. Surprise, surprise.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you got a lot to go on from him.”

  “At least I have a physical description, but he sounds like any other white guy out there.”

  “Watch it!”

  Yuan chuckled.

  Chapter 4

  When they returned to the station house, Yuan and Williams discovered the PPD had decided to get the Major Crimes Unit involved. In most cases this would be a good idea as both of the detectives appreciated getting the extra help, but right now, they worried it would be a case of too many cooks trying to work on the steak dinner. Now they would be forced to share all the information they had painstakingly pulled out of the witnesses and hunted down on their own, with the new unit. Still, it was the best way to find out the information they needed for a conviction. Besides, Washington was driving the captain crazy and he was desperate to get a break. After a day of digging around, they had no more information than when they’d begun. At least nothing solid.

  While the MCU was busy down at the station house going over the information Yuan and Williams had uncovered, the two detectives decided to go over to the diner and see what was on the menu for the day. As far as Williams was concerned, this meant finding out which was the best Spaghetti plate. Yuan, on the other hand, was interested in finding out what women were working as waitresses.

  He never had much trouble with the fairer sex. Yuan’s mother wanted him to marry a nice Chinese woman and produce a bunch of heirs for the family name. Yuan had some other ideas of what to do with his down time when he wasn
’t working for the PPD. Right now, he had several women in rotation at his condominium and several more under consideration. A typical evening at home would consist of him having dinner served by a woman wearing nothing but an apron. He would finish while she kneeled next to him. Yuan would hand feed the woman and then allow her to clean off the table. Later he might watch TV and have the woman recline on his lap and tell him how her day was. Yuan never lacked for candidates. Any woman who tried to impose restrictions on him was immediately dismissed from service. He didn’t want any woman around who was less than a hundred percent happy about being with him.

  He would occasionally take two or more women out on the town just to watch the look of disgust on the face of married women and their husbands. None of them dared to say a word to him, but their expressions told him all he needed to know. Yuan found this game endlessly amusing and it provided him with no end of entertainment. He did not cooperate with any alternative lifestyle organization, although he did attend the annual Sinister Ball held every year around Halloween. Yuan would bring at least two women along and have them wait on him. This brought out the men who would seek his advice and ask him how he managed to pull it off.

  “There is no secret,” Yuan would say, “have a decent job, no one to hold you down and pay your bills. Make sure you pick your princesses from the best and do not tolerate any self-destructive behavior from them. And, most important of all, do not run your life as if it’s written down in a novel. Real life is far more difficult than any movie or play.”

  It all made sense to him, but few other people could see it that way. He also resisted the attraction of using his position on the force to go after women. It was too easy to be brought up on harassment charges and he couldn’t understand why so few men understood this. Yuan had watched several men in his training class at the academy lose their positions when they felt the badge gave them unlimited protection. Well, it didn’t, nor was it supposed to.