A Thousand Devils (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 2)

by Frank Goldammer

  Heller started to reply, but the general raised a hand.

  “And before you get too worked up, think twice. Because there are radicals among us who would not stop even at a person like you. Speidel is a good man, good at his job. He joined the Social Democratic Party as early as ’45 and then the Socialist Unity Party. He’s already showing himself to be a good comrade. Heller, I can see you’re angry, but you’re going to have to live with people like him.”

  Medvedev paused. “I will ask him to show restraint.” He picked up his piece of cake and dunked it in his coffee. The sodden piece fell apart in his fingers, most of it landing inside the cup. Medvedev frowned and started fishing for the crumbs with a little spoon.

  Heller shook his head in distress. “No, please. Please let me handle this on my own.”

  Medvedev nodded with satisfaction. “You see? This is exactly what I expect of you. Now will you finally take some of this cake? You can wrap it up in newspaper.” He pushed over pages of newspaper to him, the Sächsische Zeitung.

  Heller read: “Unity and Progress . . . Two Factories Back in the People’s Hands . . . Looking to the Future Together.” He loathed how these socialist slogans were always the same. But then he helped himself to some cake, wrapped up four pieces, stood, and gave the commandant a military salute as he left.

  February 9, 1947: Late Morning

  Heller knocked at the Schlüters’ front door. “Werner?”

  “Coming!” Oldenbusch shouted from inside before opening up. “Come on in, boss, but stay over there.”

  Oldenbusch went over to a window. “I just want to finish this real quick, then I have to show you something.”

  Heller looked around. What he saw unfortunately matched every cliché about the Russians. They had ransacked the place, ignoring the typical house search code of conduct. Cabinets stood open, drawers pulled out, doors torn off. Papers lay strewn all over the floor, laundry and broken dishes too. The sofa had been sliced open.

  “I have enough fingerprints to keep an expert busy for a year,” Oldenbusch said. “And it’s not just one set.” He came back over, holding a little piece of transparent film that he carefully tacked to an index card.

  “I can’t tell you if any of these are usable, though. You can see the job the Russians did. I’m hoping I can at least match a few prints with those in the cellar, mainly on the ammo crate where the grenades were. From around the house itself, we mostly have fingerprints of the women and children, since the men are usually only home in the evening.” Oldenbusch put away his brush and container of black carbon powder.

  None of this was Heller’s main concern. “Werner, Frau Schlüter isn’t at the police station I took her to yesterday. They say the Soviets took her away right before I came. No one knows where, and no one at the MVD will tell me. In any case, what else have you found here?”

  “You really haven’t heard? Come on, Max. You’re not going to like it.”

  Heller followed Oldenbusch down to the cellar. He said hello to other colleagues whose names he couldn’t remember. Most of them had recently joined up and received a quick course in criminology. Oldenbusch passed through the cellar so they could exit through the cellar door into the yard. A tarp was spread out, with cardboard cartons and crates on it.

  “These officers have been here since we started working. They relieved the MVD’s people. They started following the boy’s tracks at daybreak. Those led to a neighboring property over on Löbauer, where we found all this hidden in a hollow space under a pile of rubble. The print roller’s here, the self-made template, some leaflets, some failed attempts too. Our initial check tells us the leaflets came from this equipment and match the ones from the Münchner Krug crime scene. In this bag was a hunting knife, some Hitler Youth badges, a pennant, photos. And this here.” Oldenbusch knelt down, grabbed an old doctor’s bag, folded open its dual-handled metal closure, and gave Heller a look inside.

  Heller saw an ax with a blade splattered red, a jigsaw, a butcher’s knife, and a sharpening steel. He crouched down. “That’s not rust, I take it.”

  Oldenbusch reached his gloved hands into the bag, pulled out the ax, and pointed at the crusty splotches. “This makes more sense considering what comes next.” He placed the tool aside and reached back into the bag. He took out something wrapped in newspaper. He laid it down and unfolded the paper. Heller winced. Two hands lay before him, a right and a left, severed at the wrists. He let out a fatalistic sigh.

  “Why so glum? After all, we just might have found the hands that go with that head,” Oldenbusch said.

  “No, Werner. This is a new victim. They didn’t call Swoboda ‘One-Handed Franz’ for nothing.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Oldenbusch muttered, his mood souring.

  Heller took a closer look at the hands. They were masculine, strong, with short fingers, the nails clean and well groomed. On the right ring finger was a small gold wedding band.

  “Can you remove it?”

  “Already tried, but the hand’s frozen stiff. Needs thawing first.”

  Heller bent down again, this time to take a closer look at the newspaper the hands had been wrapped in. He turned up a corner of the paper. It was a page from Der Stürmer, already yellowed.

  “There’s a stack of them in that cellar room,” Oldenbusch said.

  “So did we find this?” Heller asked. “Us, not the MVD.”

  “We did. Wolpert, to be exact. About an hour ago.”

  “Was anyone from the MVD still here?”

  “Yes. They took some photos and cleared out after.”

  “And none of them thought to follow those tracks across the property? Even though I’d clearly described the situation yesterday to Ovtcharov?”

  “What are you getting at, Max? No, they were only inside the apartment turning everything upside down. They posted a sentry overnight and questioned people in the building. They all still look intimidated.”

  “Werner, this bag needs to get to the lab at once and these clues secured. The wedding ring might be engraved, which could help us identify the victim. That’s the highest priority. I want you to do it personally.”

  Keeping his eyes on the ground, Heller slowly crossed the lawn and followed the beaten path all the way to the thicket at the edge of the property. He ducked under the low-hanging branches of a fir tree and took bounding strides over tangles of roots. That brought him to the old wooden fence separating the property from the one behind it. Some slats had been broken off, and Heller bent down to clamber through the opening. The boy’s hard work amazed him, considering all those boxes and crates he’d hauled to his temporary hiding spot. And all of it more or less under the eyes of two cops who were there to prevent it.

  The neighboring property was even more overgrown, the house uninhabitable. Heller only crossed the yard. The tracks ran left down a slope and to the next property over. The whole stretch of fence had been pushed down. Heller climbed over it and found himself in a small copse of beeches, the old leaves like soft carpet under the snow. He tried walking alongside the path, figuring he wouldn’t spot any useful prints. It seemed clear either way that Friedel was the one who had hidden the evidence. Heller had seen him. Yet he still needed proof. To make matters worse, his inexperienced colleagues had ended up using the same path while seizing the material—highly unprofessional.

  Heller scratched his chin, deep in thought. Time for a shave, he thought, which sparked no joy at all, with no shaving cream and his worn blades. He stared into the snow. What reason would Friedel have to cut off a man’s hands and possibly the head of another? Did he even have the nerve for such a thing? Heller didn’t know the boy, but there was a big difference between tossing a few grenades before running off and mutilating a man, dead or alive. And where were the bodies? Could the other victim also have some connection to the Schwarzer Peter?

  It was up to Heller to find the answers. He also needed to know why the Russians hadn’t set up spotlights. The crates had be
en sitting out unguarded all night, and anyone could’ve set down that doctor’s bag with its horrific contents.

  Heller kept following the tracks. He passed through the copse, then spotted a completely unscathed building to the left with black smoke billowing out its chimney and a villa with boarded-up windows to the right. He stopped at a collapsed garage. The side walls had toppled inward, and only the back wall still stood. Here the tracks ended. Heller reached for a piece of tar paper and bent it upward. Underneath was a hollow space. Friedel had stashed the crates here, though it didn’t seem like a very secure hiding place. The houses within view were inhabited—someone would’ve found this garage sooner or later. It looked more like a temporary hiding spot. Yet where had the boy wanted to take the crates? Did he have a handcart for hauling them away in one go?

  Heller scrambled into the hollow space. It smelled strongly of martens. Feathers and little bones lay on the ground. He pulled a flashlight from his overcoat pocket. It didn’t provide much light, the batteries having suffered from the cold. He shined it over the ground and hesitated when something caught the light. Heller knelt in the rubble and spotted a syringe lying between two chunks of brick. He carefully lifted it out with his fingertips, touching only the metal nozzle so as not to smear any clues on the needle, cylinder, or piston. He crawled back out into the daylight with his find.

  It was a medical syringe, the injection needle clearly used. The glass cylinder still held a little bit of frozen liquid. Berinov had a fresh injection mark on his upper arm, Heller recalled, and Kasrashvili hadn’t been able to tell whether it was from a typhus immunization. Heller wondered if the syringe was German or Russian.

  A strange feeling hit him. He looked up and pivoted, eyeing the buildings, trying to see if someone might be watching him through the trees.

  His ears pricked up. He thought he heard the blare of a police siren coming closer. He turned back for the Schlüters’ villa, holding the syringe between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Comrade Wolpert!” he yelled since it was the only name he could remember.

  A tall, gaunt man came out of the cellar, ducking his head so as not to bump the doorframe. “Yes?” he asked without any greeting or salute.

  “Oldenbusch is already gone, I take it?”

  Wolpert shook his head. “I think he’s still upstairs.”

  Heller frowned. That wasn’t what he’d meant by leaving immediately, though he had to admit it wasn’t bad timing.

  “Werner, I found this in that collapsed garage.” Heller handed Oldenbusch the syringe. The police siren had now faded.

  “I’d really like to know who used this and if it’s a standard model. The content needs to be analyzed. At once!”

  Oldenbusch didn’t seem to pick up on the urgency. He took his time looking over the syringe and even held it up to the light. “No clues on it at all.” Then he unscrewed the needle and smelled the nozzle. He eventually tried pulling out the piston but couldn’t, since the contents were still frozen. He cupped a hand and breathed into the opening of the syringe.

  “Either this was cleaned or someone was wearing gloves, likely the latter.”

  Heller struggled with how Oldenbusch was treating such crucial evidence. Heller had to trust that there really were no clues on the syringe and swallowed his objections. “Our men trampled all over the path,” he said.

  Oldenbusch nodded, then offered a sad smile and a conciliatory tone. “We evidently have to choose between laymen or die-hard former Nazis. I don’t even want to know where they find these people. In construction, administrative posts, power plants, waterworks—who knows?”

  Oldenbusch took another sniff of the syringe’s opening and moved the glass cylinder back and forth. An oily drop ran down the glass.

  “I’ll analyze it to make sure, but I’d bet it’s Evipan.”

  “An anesthetic.”

  “Right, commonly called a knockout drug, with a short-lasting effect. Used in surgery. Also at the front. Saw it used often in ’45, when I was lying in a field hospital. The patient quickly loses consciousness. Side effects range from impaired senses to dizziness to nausea. Frequent use can lead to dependence.”

  Heller pulled off a glove and massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He needed to sort out his thoughts. It didn’t help that another police siren was blaring.

  “I have to speak to Gutmann and Frau Schlüter. I don’t know whom to try first. And we have to find Friedel, no matter what, before the Russians do! Where were the men killed? Apparently not here in this house. At least that’s how it looks. Why were those hands in that bag? And why the head in a backpack?”

  Oldenbusch looked at the window. The siren was coming closer. “Maybe he was some kind of trophy?”

  “Berinov was probably just an accessory who got eliminated. Maybe Gutmann did have something to do with it.”

  The siren stopped. A uniformed cop jumped out of the passenger seat of a small truck and hurried up to the front door. He obviously wanted Heller for something, and he went over to the apartment door.

  “Comrade Oberkommissar? Herr Heller?” someone called from downstairs.

  “Up here,” Heller yelled back.

  “But what does all this have to do with the Schlüter boy?” Oldenbusch asked. “He needs to be questioned, either him or whoever foisted that doctor’s bag on him.”

  The cop ran up the stairs. He stopped at the door and gave a military salute. “A body’s been found! You’re needed at once.”

  “Is nobody else available?” Heller asked, indignant.

  “It’s quite possibly a young woman. Comrade Niesbach said that falls under your responsibility. She was found in the courtyard behind the Schwarzer Peter.”

  That got Heller’s attention. “Very well. Werner, take us there before heading to the lab. Make sure someone takes care of this right away!”

  A loud drone from the street made Heller glance out the window. Two large Soviet Army trucks were coming up the street. They stopped in front of the house. The driver of the small police truck was forced to give up his parking spot.

  Oldenbusch groaned. “The Russians are here to clear out the apartment.”

  Heller could only shake his head.

  February 9, 1947: Midday

  Another large crowd had gathered. Oldenbusch hit the horn along Alaunstrasse, just fifty yards from Gutmann’s bar, passing all the people who begrudgingly cleared a path. Once the uniformed cops recognized the car, they forced people out of the way to let the Ford through.

  “Comrade Oberkommissar,” one of the officers said to Heller as he climbed out. “We’ll have to go up the street a little to a passageway. The body was found in the back courtyard.”

  Heller nodded and gestured to Oldenbusch to drive on and take care of his tasks. “Let’s go,” he told the cop.

  Heller followed the cop up the street to the passageway. Through that was an open area about a hundred yards long. Several buildings facing the inside courtyard had been fully destroyed by the air raids, creating a rubble landscape that had evidently served as an adventure-filled playground for some time now. The children had built shacks here. Flags and pennants made of fabric remnants gently fluttered. The retaining walls of two buildings still stood, and the remains of stairs rose into the sky like skeletons.

  The wasteland amazed Heller; he’d never have guessed it existed judging from the intact buildings facing the street. He followed the cop into the rubble. They walked the well-trodden paths to reach a large crater that descended steeply and held frozen-over water at the bottom. Yet someone had cleared a path all the way down. Heller and the cop managed to descend several yards using steps dug by hand. There they saw an opening, which led into what apparently used to be a cellar.

  Heller hesitated but then spotted light shining a few yards ahead, and he pulled himself together. He didn’t want to show weakness. They went a short way, and Heller was amazed to find a staircase leading up to the ground floor
, then reaching up two stories more. The final portion of stairs was in acute danger of collapsing, the steps suspended by a few rusty reinforcing bars. The top landing was riddled with cracks. The cop pointed at a loose pile of debris on the highest floor.

  “The victim’s lying up there, under that debris. Just visible. Someone had wrapped her in fabric. Curtains or something. Then they laid stones and wood over it. Some children found her.”

  “Who hides a body in a spot where children obviously play? She’d be found sooner or later.”

  “But up there?” The policeman pointed to the nearly free-floating portion of the third floor. “That’d get you killed. Not even a kid’s going up there!”

  For Heller there was no question. “Exactly the kind of place a kid would find interesting. Danger isn’t a deterrent. Same reason they play with dud shells and discarded ammo. Has anyone been up there yet?”

  “I have,” the cop told him. “But I’d rather not climb up there again. The thing moves under your feet.”

  Heller climbed a level higher. The man was right—it was dangerous to walk around on such a shaky surface. “Well, the body made it up there somehow.”

  “The fire department will have to get a ladder up there.”

  “Go. Get them out here,” Heller ordered. He waited until the man had disappeared before looking around. There were people in all the windows and courtyard entrances, and all the children were sure to have come running up for a look at the body before the find had been reported. He’d already sent Oldenbusch away. So to secure evidence he’d have to use the policemen on the scene—men who, much like Klaus, had been recruited after serving in the military and were completely inexperienced in police matters. Heller thought it over for a moment and then bounded up the final rickety steps onto the upper landing. He now stood fully out in the open with no more walls to support himself. He could feel the floor swaying under his feet. He tiptoed onward. A freezing wind whistled up here, making his eyes water. He squinted and eyed the portion of the floor before him with skepticism. It was already sinking. He would need to step around it, even though that would put him perilously close to the ledge. If he fell, he was sure to plummet ten to fifteen yards before landing on the rubble. Yet he moved onward, and Karin could never know about this. She’d think he was crazy.