The German Read online

  And again my thoughts drift, remembering a hole, deep and dark, with water pooling at the bottom like blood in an open wound.

  Four: Tim Randall

  The news about Harold Ashton upset Ma. She’d spent the entire afternoon on the phone exclaiming and protesting the information pouring in from her friends all over town. She even considered calling into the factory and taking the night off to stay home to a keep a watchful eye. Bum’s parents didn’t seem to have the sense to be worried about him, which was okay by me. My mother called Mrs. Craddick and the fuzzy-brained woman was just fine with Bum spending the night at our house, so long as he got home first thing in the morning to help her with chores in the yard. Only slightly comforted that I wouldn’t be in the house alone, my mother grabbed her hat and handbag, then she checked the locks on the back door and all of the windows before hurrying out to the factory for her shift.

  We messed around in the house until suppertime, and then I fixed Bum and me beef sandwiches and glasses of milk. We wolfed those down before heading to the backyard to play war with sticks, but we quickly tired of the game and ended up sitting on the back steps talking about Harold Ashton and speculating on his killer. With the limited information at our disposal – because my mother had given no details, not even mentioning the note the rest of the city was already talking about – we imagined a number of horrific fates for the older boy (though granted, none as horrific as what had really happened to him).

  When it started getting dark we went inside and turned on the radio and settled in for the week’s installment of The Adventures of the Thin Man. The show never did much for me but Bum liked the way Nick and Nora Charles spoke, the sounds of their voices, so even if the mysteries weren’t particularly exciting, he looked forward to the show. I fidgeted throughout, asking questions about the story and the characters and the stuff I was too bored to follow.

  Full dark had settled by the time the announcer insisted we tune in next week for the next exciting episode, and I muttered, “No, thank you.”

  “You’re being uncouth,” Bum said, doing a terrible impression of Nick Charles.

  “So’s your butt,” I said.

  “What’s on now?”

  “You know, it’s dark,” I said, ignoring his question and looking at the window as if to prove my point. Across the street, I noticed Mr. Lang sitting in the shadows of his porch, the light from his front window spilled over his shoulders, casting his head in silhouette. My impulse was to wave, but I quelled it and turned away. “We should check our orders and start the assignment.”

  Bum’s mouth dropped open. He shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “You want to go out in the dark and get yourself scalped, go on ahead. Besides, we promised your ma we’d stay put, and you just know that some neighbor will see us out there and tell her. I’m not getting tanned just to peek in somebody’s window. We never see anything good anyhow.”

  “The rules of Spy Commander are clear,” I said with authority. “We can’t refuse a mission, no matter how deadly.”

  “The rules don’t say anything about getting scalped.”

  “Oh come on, Bum, no one’s going to bother us, and what else are we supposed to do?”

  “Maybe something good is on the radio now. We’ll listen to whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want to sit around all night. We have a mission.”

  An entire city waited out there like a cave where any manner of treasure might be found. What could we possibly hope to experience just sitting around my living room? Bum argued and pouted and even crossed his arms and sat on the floor like a lump. We played the usual game of dares and double-dares, but these childhood threats to honor had no effect on my friend. He remained committed to staying inside, far away from whatever might prowl the night, so I took a different tack.

  “Well, I’m going,” I told him.

  Bum’s face screwed up with concern and then relaxed, calling my bluff. “No, you’re not.”

  I asked for the tin spyglass and Bum pointed to where it lay by the sofa. I retrieved it and carried it with me through the living room and into the kitchen. Without pause, I unlocked the back door, opened it and walked down the steps, stomping across the backyard. At the low fence, I paused and looked back, hoping my best friend would be chasing at my heels like a good dog, but the kitchen doorway was empty. Defiantly, I hopped the low fence into the Findleys’ yard and ran to the corner of their house. This time when I checked the open kitchen door, Bum stood on the threshold, looking out. Maybe he saw me, and maybe he didn’t, but I remained perfectly still in the shadows, thinking that if he decided to follow now, I’d hide and give him a good scare for being a pain. He didn’t come out, though. He leaned forward, craning his neck to search the yard, and then he pulled back and closed the door, making it clear he would not be joining me on the night’s mission.

  A car passed on Crosby Street ahead, and I pressed hard against the Findleys’ house. Trepidation lit in my veins, and I heard my mother’s scolding voice telling me how important it was to be responsible with my father gone. I didn’t want to go back and admit defeat to Bum, but neither did I want to walk the streets of Barnard alone. Even before Harold Ashton’s murder, the idea would have unnerved me. Unlike the downtown streets my neighborhood didn’t have arc lamps. Dark houses like tombs lined the road, and the spaces between them were filled with thick camouflaging shadows within which any manner of villain might hide. But I’d made such a show for my friend, and pride won out so I left the side of the Findleys’ house and walked across their yard to Crosby Street.

  As I moved from one shadow to the next, the news of Harold’s murder worked deeper into my bones. When I considered meeting his killer in one of the neat backyards or in the alleys between the houses, I imagined myself brave, recalling episodes of Gang Busters and Crime Files, where a single cop managed to subdue half a dozen crooks with his smarts and a good right hook. The misguided illusion so engulfed me I considered the tin spyglass in my pocket an effective weapon.

  Passing onto Worth Street from between two white houses, I made a right and headed for Bennington, which would lead north to town. Only then did it occur to me that I had no destination. Yes, I had written a name on the slip of paper Bum kept in his shirt – though the rules stated it should have been hidden away in a shoe – but I no longer considered the home of Abigail Dougherty a feasible destination.

  Abigail lived on the far side of Main Street. Since her husband had been drafted in February, she’d lived alone in a house on Forrester Avenue, and the older boys said she walked by her windows wearing almost nothing at all. They even said that men who worked the same factory shift as my mother stopped by her house when their shifts ended in the middle of the night to mess around with Mrs. Dougherty. Bum had been talking about making her a suspect in our game for weeks, but he’d never managed to build enough courage to write her name on the assignment form. I’d done it for him as a kind of gift. But the idea of sneaking through another fifteen blocks of shadows cowed me.

  We’d already investigated most of my neighbors to one degree or another: we’d seen Mr. Klavin washing clothes in his undershirt; we saw Morton Clooney’s widow, Mavis, sitting in her living room sobbing into a kerchief, only to laugh hysterically a moment later and point a finger at her Crosley radio as if encouraging what she’d heard there; and Mr. and Mrs. Thrombolt on Worth Street danced in their dining room; and Cleta Ferguson told her children stories around the kitchen table; and Stella Jackson undressed in her bedroom and lay on her bed in nothing but a slip, fanning herself with a red and gold fan; and Wesley Smalls eagerly picked his nose, sending the snot to the carpet for his dog to eat; and Myrtle Pearlman sat quietly on her sofa knitting a child’s sweater, though her only baby had died at birth. These had been the neighbors that had struck Bum and me as interesting. Everyone else was just a neighbor. So where was I supposed to go?

  Uncertain and beginning to convince myself that I’d already proved my courage to B
um, I hid between the side of an ugly brown house and a thick shrub, deciding to wait another ten minutes before heading back. I tried to kneel but the tin spyglass dug into my leg, so I removed it from my pocket and set it in my lap once I’d gotten comfortable in the dirt.

  After two minutes, I felt restless and eager to get home, but before I managed to get to my feet, voices on Bennington Street stopped me. They began like the whispers of angry ghosts, sounding rough and distant, but the speakers were heading north on Bennington, towards where I sat. The voices came clearer, and though I couldn’t see the boys approach, I already knew one of them and my vague fears solidified behind my ribs when I heard Hugo Jones’s low, gravelly voice.

  “Daddy says it’s a German, and he knew it before that swamp-assed Sheriff Tom Rabbit knew it.”

  A German, I thought. Ma hadn’t said anything about that, and I wondered if Hugo’s information could be trusted or if it was just more of his hot air.

  “Town’s crawling with Germans,” another boy replied. I thought it might be Ben Livingston talking, because he was always with Hugo, but I couldn’t be sure. “How we supposed to know which one did it?”

  “Kill ’em all if we have to,” a third boy said. This voice I recognized. It belonged to Austin Chitwood, another of Hugo’s gang. “Just line ’em up and mow ’em down.” He made machine-gun noises and then started cackling like the idiot he was.

  “Shut your trap,” Hugo snapped. “This ain’t no game. Daddy says the Germans have been sending spies over since they lost the Great War. The Nazis trained every one of them and they’ve just been waiting to attack. And you think it’s a coincidence Harold disappeared just after D-Day? No sir. No how.”

  “Well, if that’s true, why’d they wait so long?”

  “Because we hit ’em good at Normandy and they want revenge. No reason to expose their spies if they’re winning the damn war. Use your head.”

  The argument played in circles while the boys continued walking down Bennington Avenue. Hugo maintained his confidence that one of the Germans in town had butchered Harold Ashton. Ben Livingston questioned the logic, and Austin expressed his eagerness to kill them all. Again the voices thinned out and became the whispers of violent spirits before the night ate them entirely.

  Once I felt certain Hugo and his gang had put sufficient distance between us, I climbed to my feet and worked my way through the bushes and would have headed for home right then, except a car rolled into the intersection at my back, its brakes creaking an alarm as it rolled to a stop. I crouched down again and looked through the bushes to see a black Ford idling dead center in the intersection. The driver had turned off the headlights, or he’d never thought to turn them on. The dark shape of the driver’s head was distorted, and I realized he wore a large brimmed hat, a Stetson or Panama, though the former struck me as far more likely. I couldn’t make out anything else about the driver, and I again wished the city had spent the money to erect street lamps in my neighborhood to give a face to this mysterious figure.

  My first thought was that the driver had been following Hugo, Ben and Austin on their patrol through the streets, but this malicious motive arose and dissipated like smoke. He was probably just lost, trying to decide which direction to turn, except I couldn’t convince myself of anything so mundane. The car’s presence made me uneasy. I felt as if I hid in a jungle observing a tiger that was waiting for prey. This train of thought gained steam and soon enough, I convinced myself that the Ford had come for me, a precursor to the hearse that would carry me to a final church service. Suddenly, I was drowning in thoughts of Harold Ashton’s murder, and panic crackled in my veins hot as electric current. I wanted to flee, but my legs were locked.

  Then the Ford rolled forward, slowly crossing the intersection, continuing its prowl down Bennington. Once it was out of sight I ran, retracing my surreptitious path along Worth Street.

  Hurrying between two houses, working my way back to Dodd Street, I thought of Ernst Lang, my neighbor, because he shared the killer’s nationality. I certainly didn’t believe he had murdered Harold Ashton, and I knew he hadn’t been the driver of the black Ford because Mr. Lang drove a cream-colored Buick, but his proximity to the important pieces of my life – my house and my mother – made me uneasy.

  Why had he chosen to live in my neighborhood instead of on the other side of town where the majority of the German immigrants had taken up residence? Why did he live alone? Where were his wife and children? All grown men had families, but Mr. Lang had never mentioned his, and there was also the issue of the men.

  On more than one occasion I’d seen different men visit Mr. Lang’s home after sunset, and I’d thought nothing of it. Yet the more I considered these visits, the more their oddity needled me. Often enough, my neighbor would not turn on his porch light to greet his visitors, and soon after they entered his house, the living room lights went dark – sometimes the whole house. Most of the time the visits were brief, hardly the length of a good chat among friends. The recollections of these visits struck me as significantly more peculiar as I made my way through shadows and bushes on my return home.

  I was so caught up in my suspicions of Mr. Lang, I nearly ran into him. My neighbor came around the corner of the Ashcroft’s front lawn and blocked my path like a bull, and his appearance so startled me, I backpedaled clumsily and fell on my butt.

  “Ah, good,” he said. I could hear the humor in his voice. “Your friend is worried about you.”

  He stepped forward and leaned down, reaching out a hand to help me to my feet. At first, I couldn’t take the hand.

  “Come now,” he said. “Your fat friend is very upset. He thinks you’ve run off and gotten yourself killed.”

  “W-where is he,” I asked.

  “In your living room, eating a piece of cake. He came outside to see if you were at the lake, and I told him to go inside and wait until I found you.”

  I took the German’s hand and let him pull me up. He patted my back lightly a single time and then set off down Crosby Street.

  “It’s quicker if we go between the houses,” I said nervously.

  “But those aren’t your houses, or your yards. It’s rude to make a road of a man’s property if he hasn’t invited you. We will walk around the block like gentlemen. It is a nice night and you are safe, so where is the hurry?”

  I didn’t respond. When we reached the corner Mr. Lang placed his hand on my shoulder, stopping me.

  “Where did you go tonight?”

  “Just took a walk.”

  “A walk?” he asked. The scars on his nose and cheeks seemed more pronounced in the gloom as if the furrows in his skin had no bottom, just openings revealing great, black space beyond the flesh. “You took a walk through bushes and between houses? A walk that upset your friend so much?”

  “That’s just Bum. He’s a scaredy cat.”

  “Because of that boy who was killed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you are not afraid?”

  “No,” I said, but the lie rang in my own ears so clearly, it must have been obvious to my neighbor. Still, I pushed on, hoping to camouflage my fear with reason. “Why would anyone want to kill me?”

  “Why would anyone want to kill that other boy?” he said

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, good. Enough of this. Let’s get you home to your fat friend before he eats all of the cake.”

  We walked the rest of the way to my house, and at the front door, my neighbor patted me on the back again and said, “Good night.”

  “Mr. Lang,” I said, “are you going to tell my ma about this?”

  He chewed on the question a bit and shook his head. “No. Some things are just between men. Go inside now and see your friend.”

  His comment about men puffed me up. I said good night and strutted into the house as if I had returned from an actual spy assignment, and I teased Bum for an hour, not telling where I was or what had happened, but allowing him to stew in the
material of his imagination.

  Five: Sheriff Tom Rabbit

  Tom sat at his desk, face in his hands. He scrubbed his palms over his cheeks and eyes, trying to erase a bit of the fatigue the long day had left with him. Gilbert Perry remained in the front office but Rex had gone home to develop the crime-scene photos and Don was out to the city hall building a list of suspects from the town’s census, focusing on the German population. Tom still believed, or wanted to believe, that the murderer of Harold Ashton had crept into town, done his evil, and then moved on to some new, distant location, but he couldn’t count on that. Doc Randolph had done a thorough job with the boy, and noted the cleanliness of the multiple cuts necessary to remove so much material from Harold’s torso. Though any number of the city’s residents could dress a deer in a few minutes flat, Doc Randolph thought a good place to start would be with butchers, stockyard workers, and surgeons. A preliminary list already sat on Tom’s desk, and he’d gone over it a dozen times.