by Brenda Novak
“Leon Stein is none other than Friedrich Josef Durst of the Third Reich.”
“Excuse me?” Jack asked. He sat up and I came up with him.
I was really wishing I’d dug my pajamas out of the suitcase because I was freezing. Jack had already rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts, and he tossed a T-shirt at me so it hit me square in the chest.
“I’ve never heard of Friedrich Durst,” I said. “Should I have?”
“Not unless you’ve studied Hitler’s henchmen. Durst was a commander of multiple concentration camps, and he’s to this day still considered a Nazi War Criminal. According to his file, he alone was responsible for the deaths of more than half a million men, women, and children. He fancied himself a doctor and experimented on those who caught his eye—mostly young girls from the age of fifteen to twenty. I’ll spare you the details and send it to you in an email. I’ll just say it makes my stomach turn, which is saying something considering I’ve seen about everything there is to see in this job.”
“That seems like a good motive for killing someone,” I said. “Maybe Leon’s old identity wasn’t as well hidden as he thought it was.”
“Possibly. Or maybe the motive has more to do with the ten million dollar price on his head, payable until his hundredth birthday. Dead or alive.”
“Jesus,” Jack said. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I wish I was. And let me tell you something else. The minute those fingerprints went into the system things lit up like the Fourth of July. I hadn’t expected that kind of response, so I didn’t have it protected. Every agency in the world knows those are Friedrich Durst’s fingerprints. You’d best prepare yourself for the shit storm.”
“Hell. How long do you think we have before we’re descended upon?”
“You’ve probably got twenty-four hours, and that’s being generous. If you’re going to find out who killed Durst then your window of opportunity is very small.”
“What do you mean if we find out who killed Durst?” Jack asked.
“Come on, man. You think anyone is going to convict someone for killing a man like Durst? They’ll be considered a hero.”
“That’s not for us to decide,” Jack said, stiffly. “Murder is murder.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from saying anything. The thing about Jack was that he believed in the system. He believed in right and wrong. And he believed that two wrongs didn’t necessarily make something right. By Jack’s way of thinking, a man like Durst might deserve to die, but the man who killed him shouldn’t be lauded as a hero. He was still a murderer.
My conscience wasn’t quite as honorable as Jack’s. I had a tendency to bend the line for justice every now and again. I believed in shades of gray and that sometimes people got the justice they deserved. Justice that a court of law couldn’t always deliver. Which was why I was keeping my mouth shut. A honeymoon probably wasn’t the best place for an argument on ethics.
“Settle down, cowboy,” Carver said. “I know you well. Go do what you do. I’m just telling you to expect company, and that not everyone is going to thank you for what you’re doing.”
“They asked for help. That’s all I can do. What did you find out about Father Fernando?”
“He was born on the mainland. Led a very sheltered life. Was raised by his mother after his father was killed in a boating accident. He entered the priesthood at twenty and has been at his current church just over twenty years. He seems to be your every day, garden-variety priest. No skeletons in the closet that I could find. Now the other one, Father DeCosta, is a different story. He’s got a sealed juvie record.”
My brows rose at that. “I don’t supposed he’s handy with a knife?”
“Nope, at least not that he got caught with. Armed robbery and assault for the good Father. Grew up in a rough area. Single parent household. But looks like one of the local priests took an interest in him and got him straight.”
“What about Xavier?”
“He’s scared of his own shadow. I almost fell asleep reading his file. He might be the most boring person on the face of the planet. Not even a smudge on his record.”
“That at least gives us something to go on tomorrow,” Jack said. “Someone is lying.”
“After I found out who Stein really was it wasn’t too difficult to find your murder weapon. It’s an officer’s dagger carried by all of Hitler’s closest advisors. He had them especially made in1937, and the engraving on the blade says Arbeit Adelt, which translates to Work Ennobles. It was a shout out to the Reich Labor Service and all it stood for. They’re a collector’s item and sell for around three thousand dollars each if in good shape.”
“I appreciate the help, Carver.”
“I’d tell you any time, but you pretty much already do that. And all kidding aside, be careful out there. If someone thinks you two are going to get in the way of a ten million dollar pay day then you might be next on the list for a knife in the heart. I’d hate to see that happen to the Doc, especially since I’m probably next in line to marry her if anything happens to you.”
“I’m sure your wife would appreciate that, Carver,” I said.
“Hey, she watches Sister Wives. She’s very open-minded.”
“She’d have to be to be married to you.”
“That’s hurtful, Doc. Damned hurtful.”
“Go put your baby to bed and get some sleep,” Jack told him. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
Carver sighed. “I bet the two of you are going to have way more fun going to bed than I am. But in seventeen years and ten months my wife and I will have our lives back and we’ll be able to have hot sex again.”
“Unless she’s pregnant again,” Jack said.
“If I was nearby I’d punch you right in the face for saying that. Oh, by the way, the way the body was buried could be coincidence, but did you know Saint Michael was considered the patron saint of Jews?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Jack said.
Carver hung up and I shook my head. Dealing with Ben was like dealing with an energetic toddler. He was fun in small doses, but I was always exhausted by the time he left.
“There’s nothing new that won’t still be waiting for us in the morning. We might as well try to get some sleep.”
I didn’t need to be told twice, so I crawled under the covers and waited for Jack to join me, and then I snuggled against him as he wrapped his arm around me. It wasn’t long before I felt myself drift to sleep, but I knew that Jack lay wide awake. I could practically hear the worry. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make myself stay awake long enough to ask him what was wrong.
Chapter Nine
Joe had been wrong about the storm coming in mid-afternoon. By the time we woke up the next morning it was like a monsoon. The wind howled against the thin walls of the cabana and the rain was horizontal. The waves, which had been peaceful the day before, raged, slapping against the shoreline.
The phones were out, and we waited until after ten, hoping the rain would let up. But it was obvious from the roiling gray clouds that the storm would be around for a while. So we had no choice but to put on rain jackets and run out to the 4x4 we’d rented. I had the box of evidence shoved under my jacket, and I slid on the rocks, catching myself as I hit the side of the car.
Jack had been quiet for most of the morning, and I knew he was thinking things through in his head. He had an ability to put pieces of the puzzle together like no one I’d ever seen before. There was something in his expression that had me worried. Whatever was rattling around in his brain wasn’t the conclusion he wanted.
We passed the police station and I looked at him curiously. “Where are we going?”
“I figured it’s probably a good time to visit Maria Stein. Ben’s right. Our time here is limited. If we don’t find Stein’s killer now we won’t ever find him.”
I looked at him and asked seriously, “Does it really matter?”
He turne
d his head from the road and looked at me and his fists tightened on the wheel. And then he relaxed and looked back at the road. The wipers swished back and forth, but they couldn’t go fast enough to make things more visible. We could barely see past the hood of the car.
“You know it matters. It isn’t our call to be judge and jury. It never has been. It’s to find out the facts when a crime has been committed. How many deaths have we worked where the victim was a criminal in their own right? We still worked the cases and documented the facts. And then we let the system take over from there. It’s what we do. It’s what I believe in. I have to or everything I’ve done over the course of my career—good and bad—is for nothing.”
He was right. We fought for the dead. No matter who the dead was. I didn’t like it, but he was right. Taking shortcuts or passing judgment would compromise the work we did. And there were plenty of dead who didn’t have skeletons in their closets. You couldn’t compromise one without compromising the other. It was a slippery slope.
One of the things I loved about Jack the most was he never wavered from his moral code. I might not always agree with it, but he was who he was and did the job he did despite the scars it had left on his soul. The day he started compromising his principles was the day he’d leave the job.
“I know you’re right,” I told him. “And I’ll always stand beside you, no matter what’s decided. My worry is what happens when we find out who the killer is and they walk away without consequence. What does that do to you?”
“It is what it is at that point and we walk away. But at least we know the answers. And I’ve always believed if a person doesn’t get what they deserve in this life they’ll get it in the hereafter.”
It was something to think about. Situations like this one made me question why we do what we do. But then I remembered that the dead didn’t have a voice. We were their voice. It didn’t matter who the victim was. Someone had to speak for the dead.
Jack drove carefully down the coastal road. The elevation was higher and the houses were spread farther apart on this side of the island. The trees were denser. The bungalows were built right on the road and since cars weren’t the norm on the island, most people didn’t have driveways.
He parked as close to the front door as possible, and we got out and ran to the little covered porch. It was a white bungalow with yellow shutters and two rocking chairs on the front porch.
Jack rang the bell and we waited patiently to see if anyone answered. The door opened and a woman, stooped with age, stared at us out of rheumy brown eyes. Her hair was the color of steel wool and pulled back in a severe bun and she wore the black dress of someone in mourning.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice weak with age.
“Are you Maria Stein?” Jack asked.
“I am. You must be the Americans Joe told me about. Come in. My family will be back soon. They’ve barely given me a moment to myself since the news came that Leon was dead. The wake is tonight so they’ll be back in full force. Sometimes I can’t wait until I’m dead so I can just get a little peace and quiet.”
I pursed my lips as Maria stood back and let us pass.
“We’ll sit in the living room. It’s got a good view of the water.” We followed her into a little room at the back of the house. It was decorated in muted colors of yellow and green and a large picture window across the back gave an incredible view of the ocean. I was only a little concerned about a palm tree flying through the window and killing us all.
“Do you have children?” Maria asked.
“No,” Jack answered.
“Don’t have them. They’re a pain in the ass. And very expensive.”
I coughed to cover my laugh and decided I liked Maria Stein. She had guts. And attitude.
“You’re here about Leon. Have you found out anything? I watch the American television crime shows. Am I a suspect? They always suspect the husband or wife first.”
Jack’s face was very serious when he asked, “Where were you between three and five o’clock yesterday afternoon?”
She looked more thrilled to be asked than insulted. “I was here. I’m afraid I don’t have an alibi. My health isn’t what it used to be and trips into town are very exhausting. And I find I just don’t like people as much as I used to, so I try to stay away from them.”
“What about Leon? When was the last time you saw him?”
“Just after breakfast. Around seven-thirty or eight. He liked to go into town and play dominoes at the café until it was time for Mass. He liked going to the three o’clock because he said that’s when all the pretty girls went. Leon and I were married seventy years you know.”
I felt myself start to choke up at the thought of being married to someone that long and then suddenly being without them. I didn’t know how she was keeping it together as well as she was.
“I’ve outlived three of my children and a couple of my grandchildren as well, so I’ve been around the block a time or two. Do you know what made our marriage successful?”
She looked at both of us and I could tell Jack was just as captivated by her as I was.
“What?” I asked.
“Separation,” she said. “Leon left after breakfast every morning and didn’t come home until dinner each night. The longer we spent apart the less he got on my nerves. And believe me, when a man starts to get older they’ll get on your nerves a lot.” She looked at me as if she was telling me the world’s greatest secret.
“Joe said Leon came to the island back in 1945 and decided to stay after one look at you. He said you were married just weeks later.”
“It sounds more romantic than it was,” she said, shaking her head. “The war had just ended, and we even felt the aftermath here, secluded as we were. Then one day Leon shows up, rigid and German, and says he’s come for an extended vacation. His English wasn’t so good back then.
“To be fair, I looked older than I was back then. And I didn’t dissuade him when he started showing interest. I don’t know if Leon and I would’ve ended up together if my father hadn’t caught us in a very compromising position. I got the beating of a lifetime. My father was very religious. Staunch Catholic. So Leon and I were married within the week. And eight months later our first child was born.”
“Did you ever meet Leon’s family?”
“He said he didn’t have any living family. It was just him.”
I’d read the file Carver had sent us on Friedrich Durst over breakfast that morning, and I hadn’t been able to finish eating. Durst had had a wife and two daughters he’d left behind when he’d fled Germany. He also had the reputation of culling out the prettiest girls, usually between thirteen and sixteen, while he commanded the concentration camps. His experiments and torture of those girls would be stuck in my mind forever. And it explained why a thirty-year-old Leon found fifteen-year-old Maria so desirable.
“When did you find out Leon was Friedrich Durst?”
The question came out of the blue and it took a moment for it to process. Maria went completely still and I realized I was holding my breath. And then I realized Jack was right. Maria knew exactly who her husband was.
Chapter Ten
“Well that went well,” I said a few minutes later.
We sat in the SUV with the engine running, and I was still in a state of shock. The rain had lessened and the wind had died down some, so Jack put the car in reverse and we went back down the coastal road at a faster speed than when we’d arrived.
“How’d you know?”
“Just a gut feeling,” he said. “She was trying too hard. And her hand was shaking.”
“She’s eighty-five. Of course her hand was shaking.”
“It was the way she talked about Leon.”
“What way? She didn’t say anything bad. I thought she was just teasing about the secret to a long marriage.”
“Every time she said his name you could see the hatred in her eyes. She made it a point of saying she didn’t know if she
and Leon would’ve ended up together if her father hadn’t caught them. What do you want to bet Leon raped her like he raped all those other girls? And Maria’s father was staunch enough in his beliefs to force her to marry her rapist.”
“Jesus,” I said, rubbing my hands over my eyes.
“Did you look at the side of the house?”
“No, I apparently missed every subtle clue while we were at Maria’s.”
“There was a little lean-to attached to the house. And inside were two bikes sitting side by side. What do you want to bet one of them is Leon’s?”
“You can’t possibly think Maria had the physical capability to kill her husband.”
“No, but I guarantee she knew about it ahead of time. And she knows who killed him.”
“A ten million dollar reward for a Nazi War Criminal. You think money fits the motive?” Because that’s what was stumping me. This was a simple island. And simple people. Money of that caliber wasn’t something they considered as necessary.
“I need to talk to Ben again. And then I think it’s time we had a meeting at the church.”
***
It had taken Jack a couple of tries to get hold of Carver. In Carver’s words, he still had a day job that consisted of something other than being Jack Lawson’s bitch. But once Jack got him on the phone things started falling into place.
It hadn’t been hard to get Joe to make an announcement to those who’d been at the church during Leon’s murder. Jack had asked for everyone to meet back at the church that evening before Leon’s wake. He knew how small communities worked. They’d all be too curious to find out what was going on to stay away.
The rain had been relentless all afternoon, and I was finding that I’d become tired of island life. I wouldn’t have minded packing our stuff and getting the hell out of dodge. Especially after Maria’s reaction to Jack’s question earlier in the day. And by the hostility on everyone’s faces as we gathered at the church, I was guessing Maria had complained loudly about the American couple upsetting her time of mourning.
