Maps of Hell (31 page)

I
tried to get the women to talk on the drive to the safe house, but Maltravers was semiconscious, or was pretending to be, while Irma Rothmann just stared at me vacantly. I gave up and spoke to Clem instead.

“Call Vers,” I said. “Check he’s okay.”

The detective nodded and opened his phone. “Yo, man, you alive?” There was a long silence, which didn’t do much for my nerves, then Clem laughed. “Keep some for us. Be there in ten.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “The dog! He got the twins to cook dinner. Chili.”

“My favorite,” I said, noticing that Fraulein Rothmann suddenly looked curious. “Yours, too?”

She snorted disdainfully.

Then it clicked. “Ah, it’s the twins you’re interested in. They remember you.

“By the way, what are you a professor of?”

Irma Rothmann looked reluctant to answer. “Neuroscience,” she finally said.

“Have you by any chance been working on guinea pigs in the depths of Maine?”

This time she kept quiet. I would be following that angle up later.

When we got to the house, I asked Clem to take Dana Maltravers in first and see if the twins knew her. I waited in the car for his call.

“Nope,” he said, after a couple of minutes. “No obvious signs of recognition.”

“Okay, I’m bringing in the Queen Bee.” I opened the car door and pulled Irma Rothmann out.

“What is this ridiculous game you are playing, Wells?” she demanded, as I led her toward the house.

I wanted to mess with her—maybe the twins would lose their respect if they saw her in a distressed state.

“You have no idea how much shit you’re in,” I said, my lips close to her ear. “If I find out you had anything to do with Joe Greenbaum’s death, I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands.”

Her face went even paler than it normally was, but she held her nerve. “Greenbaum?” she said, twisting her lips. “Is that a Jew name?”

“It’s a German name.” The woman was trying to rile me, too. I smiled. “Rothmann. That sounds quite Jewish, too.”

She looked away. I reckoned I’d won that round, and pressed the bell. Versace opened the door.

“So this is what a Nazi looks like,” he said, in a low voice. “Welcome to hell.”

I frowned at him.

“Sorry, Field Goal,” he said, stepping back. “My best friend at high school was a Jewboy. His grandparents were gassed by pieces of shit like her.”

I pushed the women in after him, wondering in how many states
Jewboy
was an acceptable term.

Pinker led us into the dining room. The table was laid with plates and cutlery and there were large bowls of chili, rice and salad. The smell was enticing, but the reaction of the twins to Irma Rothmann made me forget the food immediately. In the seconds before they saw her, they were sitting quietly at the far end of the table. The instant they took in the tall woman, their backs straightened and their expressions became ultraserious.

“No introductions necessary,” Clem said.

I was studying Gwen and Randy. They still hadn’t spoken, but I had the impression some sort of silent communication was under way. I turned to Irma Rothmann. Her expression was pinched, her eyes flicking from one twin to the other.

“You can talk to them, if you like,” I said.

For a few moments, she didn’t respond. Then she moved her bound hands upward slowly and said, “We are not in camp now.”

Gwen and Randy relaxed slightly, then looked at Dana Maltravers.

“Who’s she?” Randy asked.

Fraulein Rothmann glanced at me. “She is my daughter.”

The twins stiffened again. It struck me that they gave no sign of fear, for all the talk of the horrors they had experienced at the camp.

“Right,” I said, “it’s time for a question-and-answer session. Where can I take contestant number one?”

“Upstairs,” Versace said. “Use any of the bedrooms, but don’t you dare make a mess.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Clem.

“Better not. Let’s not leave your partner alone.” There was a strange aura about the twins and the professor.

Clem nodded, though it didn’t look like he was tuning into the vibes I was getting. I took Irma Rothmann upstairs and pushed her into the nearest bedroom.

“Can you unfasten my hands, please?” she asked.

“No chance.” I had Dana Maltravers’s gun, but I’d seen the emptiness in her mother’s eyes at Woodbridge Holdings and I wasn’t going to give her the slightest opportunity. I sat her down on the bed.

“I’m not going to talk,” she said, before I opened my mouth.

“So you say.” I took the pistol from my belt and laid it on the bed next to her.

She gave a contemptuous laugh. “You don’t frighten me. You are very far out of your depth, Matt Wells.”

I raised my shoulders. “All right. I’ll go and get Dana.”

She frowned. “What for?”

“Do you think the Gestapo had a monopoly on extreme methods of torture?” I was thinking of Joe again, and of Karen. I told myself again that she hadn’t been the woman I’d seen sacrificed; I willed myself to believe that was the case.

“She’s hurt,” Fraulein Rothmann said, more animated now. “You can’t—”

She broke off when I touched my groin. “Good-looking woman, your daughter,” I said, licking my lips ostentatiously. “I’m looking forward to giving her everything I’ve got.” I was not proud of this strategy.

“You’re disgusting,” Fraulein Rothmann said, spittle flying from her lips. “There are policemen downstairs. You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me. Have you see any warrants? This is hardly an official operation.” I got up and headed for the door.

“Stop!” she said, stretching out her bound hands. “Please! Leave Dana alone!”

“All right,” I said, going back to the bed. “But I won’t hesitate if I think you’re lying.”

She kept her eyes off me as I sat down next to her and picked up the gun.

“Where’s Karen Oaten?” I asked, my heart suddenly thundering. “I hope for your sake she’s still alive.”

“I don’t know.”

“But you do know who I’m talking about.”

“Of course.”

“I suppose you just saw the news reports of her disappearance.”

Her eyes burned into mine. “Don’t be ridiculous. She was in the camp, the same as you. I don’t know where she is now.”

I rocked back at the unexpected admission.

“Why was she there?”

“For the same reason you were. To learn the error of her ways.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded—I wanted her to spell out what she and her brother were doing.

Irma Rothmann sighed. “She was getting too close to an associate of Woodbridge Holdings.”

“Gavin Burdett.”

“If you know, why do you waste time asking?”

I let that go. “Has something been done to Karen’s memory?”

“Oh, I think so,” she said, with a tight smile. “Don’t you?”

I forced myself to move on. “The occult murders. Who’s the killer?”

“What makes you imagine I know?”

It was my turn to sigh. “We know of Woodbridge Holdings’s links to the North American Nazi Revival and the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant. You decided to make examples of occult people you didn’t approve of, didn’t you?”

She gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, come now.”

“Loki was an embarrassment to your puritanical movement. He made Nazism ridiculous.”

She pursed her lips.

“And Monsieur Hexie was black, Professor Singer was a Jew and Crystal Vileda was a Hispanic.
Untermenschen,
all of them.”

“I cannot argue with that characterization.”

“So who killed them?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, looking away.

She wasn’t sure, but she obviously had suspicions. The murderer had to have some relation to the Rothmann twins and their activities—the pairs of murder weapons, the choice of victims, the way I’d been framed as soon as I left the camp, Woodbridge Holdings’s timber and newspaper businesses—everything was connected.

Then I thought of the diagrams that had been attached to the victims: squares and rectangles in four different arrays—what did they mean? Lights flashed before me and I heard an echo of martial music; something I’d seen when I was under the machine in the camp, something that had started as shots of fences and guard towers, a gate with German words above it, rows and rows of huts…and then was mapped from above, into a composite picture…a familiar map of hell:

“Auschwitz,” I said, my voice faint.

A smile spread across the woman’s thin lips. “Ah, the maps,” she said slowly. “You understand them…. Bravo.”

I kept silent, my mind in a frenzy. Why had the killer deliberately left clues pointing to a Nazi link?

“You aren’t in complete control of the killer, are you?” I said at last.

“You’re not as clever as you think, Matt Wells. You have overlooked something much more important.”

The tone of her voice warned me that I was in danger, but I didn’t know how to react.

Before I could do anything, she screamed, “Barbarossa! The policemen! Barbarossa!”

She said the words twice before I got a hand over her mouth. As I restrained her, I felt a strange mix of emotions—shock at the virulence of her screams, but also a pressure that was being brought to bear on me and an urge, frightening in its intensity, to comply with some immutable authority.

Then the rational part of my mind kicked in.
Barbarossa
: it was the code name for the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union—the greatest act of aggression in human history. I realized that it was a trigger and pushed myself away from Irma Rothmann. As I crashed down the stairs, images cascaded before me—twin weapons puncturing flesh and organs; twin weapons, held by the hands of twin murderers; twins from a farm on Iowa, whose father had died trying to bring them home; twins who had now been ordered to attack.

Gavin Burdett was sitting in front of the TV in a house on the outskirts of Baltimore, his trousers and boxers round his ankles. Despite the pair of muscle-bound guards downstairs and the open door, he had been zapping between porn channels. There was a bevy of women pretending to be lesbians that almost got him going, but then he had found a spoof horror movie that featured a zombie orgy. It was one of the best climaxes he’d had in months.

After he cleaned himself up, he surfed the normal channels. A cold stiletto of fear had entered his gut when he saw Karen Oaten getting out of a helicopter. What was the bitch doing free? Larry had promised him she’d never be seen again.

Burdett got up, stretched for his cell phone and was brought down by the clothes round his ankles. He finally reached the device and called Thomson’s private number.

“What the
fuck’s
going on?” he screamed. “Oaten’s free.”

“Of course she is.”

“But…but you told me she was finished. What about the case against me?”

“Oh, Gavin, how can you be so selfish?”

“What do you mean? If I go down, so do you.”

Larry Thomson laughed. “That’s not exactly true, you know,” he said smoothly. “There are other eventualities.”

The connection was broken.

Gavin Burdett threw the phone down and caught sight of the men in the doorway. The one in front was carrying a length of rope with a noose at one end.

The last thing the investment banker thought of was the tarot card depicting the hanged man. He knew more than he should have of the occult world, and now he was paying the price. The hanged man meant relinquishing control, different priorities and readjustment. But, as he was only too well aware, it also pointed to a necessary sacrifice.

By the time I got to the dining-room door, the twins had already struck. Clem and Versace were both motionless on the floor; a table knife protruded from Pinker’s bloody chest. Nearer to me, Gwen was sawing frantically at the plastic ties on Dana Maltravers’s wrists and Randy was turning my way with Clem’s pistol. I had already racked the slide on the FBI woman’s weapon and I got a shot off before he did. Randy took it in the upper abdomen and crashed backward into the empty fireplace.

His sister shrieked and turned the knife on me. I brought my free hand down hard on her forearm. The knife carved an arc through the air and landed on the opposite side of the table, out of Maltravers’s reach. The agent stood up and charged at me with her head down. I was driven into the door frame, but I managed to keep a grip on the gun. The blow stunned me and I could hardly move, but something else was holding me back, a force I couldn’t resist…

“Leave him,” I heard Irma Rothmann say from the hall. “He won’t harm us now. I can drive. I cut myself free with these nail scissors—we’ll free you in the car, Dana.”

The FBI woman slammed both her elbows into my belly and then stumbled out. Gwen went with her, eyes wide. Then I threw up on to the carpet and tried to get a grip on myself as the pressure in my mind lessened.

I saw Clem Simmons’s head. It was lying in a pool of blood. I let out a roar and crawled into the hall, my vision clouded. The front door was open and I saw Clem’s car being reversed onto the street. Lying flat and trying to hold my hand steady, I fired at the car until the clip was empty.

The vehicle slewed into a bush and stayed there. Its horn was blasting repeatedly as I dragged myself up and staggered outside. Steam was rising from the bonnet and the front windscreen had shattered. My gun was empty, but I kept going—it had occurred to me that the fuel tank might explode. Then I got to the front door and looked in.

Irma Rothmann was lying back against the headrest, blood coming in gouts from a hole above her right eye. Her daughter Dana was unconscious and I hauled her out, feeling her shallow breath against my arm. She had taken a bullet in the right side of her chest. I got her clear and went back for Gwen. I found the back door on the other side of the car open—no sign of her, no blood on the seat. By the time I looked again, there was no spurting from Irma Rothmann’s entry wound. She was no longer alive, but I didn’t have it in me to care.

As I got back to the house, I heard the sound of sirens between the horn blasts. I checked Clem and found a pulse after rolling him on to his side. Versace was alive, too—just. Randy was still breathing. They would all have a chance, assuming paramedics were on the way. I picked up Versace’s gun and cell phone. There was a number in there that I’d be needing. Staying on-site was not an option.

I headed toward the back of the house. As I went through the sitting-room, I thought I was dreaming. The TV was on and there was breaking news coverage showing pictures of Karen, my Karen, stepping out of an executive jet. She was smiling and looked in good health. I felt a surge of joy, but it was short-lived. I was turning tail, leaving the cops who had been helping me in critical condition—but I couldn’t stay, even though it meant not watching Karen. Perhaps I’d never see her again, but she was well. That was all that mattered.

Meanwhile, I had to finish things with the surviving twin from Auschwitz.