The Diaries - 01 (35 page)

“Just paperwork,
sir.
 
Nothing else.”

“What paperwork?”

“Searching out
files on some rogue veteran.”

Ellis could hear
the noise of the radios in the background.
 
Though he wouldn’t admit it to a soul, he was beginning to tire of
France.
 
The sounds of the office made
him pine for his daily routine.
 
“A veteran,
huh?
 
What did he do, steal a bottle of liquor?”

Sorgi
laughed.
 
“Well, the polizei made a request
for the guy’s DD-214 along with the rest of his file.
 
Says he may be mixed up in that double murder
that took place last night.”

“Double murder?
 
In Germany?
 
Involving a vet?” Ellis asked,
incredulous.
 
Murders were rare in Germany;
multiple murders almost unheard of.

“Not only Germany,
here in Frankfurt.”

“In Frankfurt?
 
And an American vet is the suspect?”
 
The news made Ellis stop in his tracks.

“Yeah, at one of
those sleazy hotels over by the
bahnhof
.
 
Thought you would’ve heard about it.
 
It’s big news, all over the television and
the newspaper.”

“I don’t speak or read
French, Sorgi.
 
I haven’t heard anything,
and watching CNN International in my hotel room isn’t my idea of fun.”
 
Ellis resumed his walking.
 
“What happened?”

“They don’t know
yet.
 
A hotel clerk and a girl, a really pretty
girl, were killed.
 
She was sexually assaulted
too, it sounds like.
 
Their only suspect
is this guy, the veteran, and the Krauts came in hot and heavy wanting that
file and every shred of intel we had on him.
 
Said they had the government’s backing so the commandant hustled what we
had right over.
 
They’re still pulling
records over the computer from Indianapolis.”
 
Sorgi paused.
 
“It appears
something is amiss with the guy they’re seeking.”

Ellis stepped into
the sunshine at an intersection and turned his eyes to the sky.
 
Things like this were just his cup of tea.
 
Interesting.
 
A mystery.
 
The kind of thing that makes life worth living.
“Did they ask for
our help?”

“Not yet, although
Barron volunteered, of course.
 
You know
how the polizei is, though.”
 
Sorgi paused
as he spoke to someone in the office about directions to a unit in
Stuttgart.
 
He came back to Ellis and
apologized.
 
“Sorry, sir.
 
There’s a big commotion over a deal in
Stuttgart,
 
Some private first class
threatened to jump from a tower because the staff duty wouldn’t let him sign
out on leave early.”

Ellis frowned at
the distraction.
 
“About the murder
suspect, the vet…what did you have on him?”

“Just pulled his
basic info.
 
Artilleryman, working as a building
project manager over here.
 
Pretty
vanilla file.
 
Retired early as an E-7
due to a medical.”

“Is he running?”

“They haven’t
found him yet, that I know of.”

Ellis crossed the
street, sighing dejectedly.
 
“Okay, then,
Sorgi.
 
Call me if I’m needed,
seriously.”

“No, I
won’t
, but thanks for the offer.
 
You finish your vacation.”

Just as they were
hanging up, Ellis asked a final question—the same one he always asked—the same
one all cops ask.
 
“Hey Sorgi…wait.
 
What’s this veteran’s name?”

Sorgi was silent
for a moment; Ellis could hear paper riffling.
 
“Umm, just a sec.
 
Here it is…young
guy too.
 
Only thirty-nine.
 
Name’s Hartline.
 
Gage Nils Hartline.”

Klaxons blared at
a thousand decibels in Captain Damien Ellis’s head.
 
He froze on the sidewalk so quickly that a
lady bumped into him, cursing him and cellular phones as she brushed past.

Ellis stopped,
steadying himself with his left hand on one of the common yellow French
mailboxes, mounted to a building, marked
postes
.
 
His voice was grave.
 
“Say the first name
again
, Sorgi. Say it slowly.”

“Gage.
 
G-A-G-E.
 
Originally from New York.
 
Do you
know him?”

Never in his
fifty-three years had Damien Ellis heard of a man being named Gage.
 
Never.
 
Now he had heard the name twice in just a few days.
 
Coincidence?
 
Not likely.

“Sir?” Sorgi repeated.
 
“Do you know him?”

“I think I do,”
muttered Ellis, licking his lips.
 
“Describe the girl.”

“Twenty-nine, dark
brown hair, brown eyes, olive complexion.
 
As I mentioned, she was attractive.”

 
Ellis’s eyes were closed as he listened.
 
He gripped the mailbox as a wave of dizziness
passed through him, thinking back to what he had seen and heard from the hotel stairwell
in Metz, and then he did something Sorgi had never heard him do:
 

Damien Ellis
cursed.

 
 
***

Gage followed the
Main River southward, wanting to put at least double the distance between him
and Frankfurt than he already had.
 
He
didn’t know in which town he would choose to eventually stop, but when he did,
he would find a train station—a small stop without cameras—and use an automat
to purchase a ticket to
Böblingen
.
 
That was the plan.
 
There were two other ways out, in Gage’s
mind, but this one made the most sense.
 
He soldiered on, marching as he had done during Special Forces selection
so many years ago.
 
As he neared the town
of
Karlstadt
, the river was bounded on both sides by
farmland, dormant, the recently harvested hills rolling as far as his eyes
could see.
 
Gage walked at a near-jogging
speed through the rich farmland, fueled only by his internal mission.

While he had the
ability to zone out all kinds of distractions, Monika’s death loomed large like
the sun.
 
He didn’t have to look at it to
know it hung above him, blazing forth in its dreadfulness, outshining every
thought to pass through his head.
 
But as
he pushed on through the farmland, a competing emotion began to rival his
sorrow over her death; it was his growing anger.
 
From a tiny seed, as his mind cleared with
every step, rage began to course through his veins.
 
The people that wrought such a terrible end
on Monika, whoever they were, deserved to die.
 
This he was certain of.
 
But each
time he tried to picture a revenge scenario, notions would collide and the
lucid thoughts would fall away in a shattering of grief.
 
He was tired.
 
He was in some stage of shock.
 
And his mind was still a mess over Crete.
 
Though he never would admit it, he wasn’t so
sure it wouldn’t be better to step
in
front
of the train to
Böblingen
, rather than ride
inside it.

The river lazed on
to his right, lolling along slower than Gage’s foot speed.
 
To his left was a fragrant field.
 
Nutritive brown earth, freshly tilled and
waiting on Mother Nature to finish with fall and winter.
 
The damp soil made Gage think, again, of a
rectangular hole, seven feet by three feet.
 
Six feet deep.

Suicide.
 

Never in a million
years would Gage have considered killing himself as an option.
 
But the thought kept coming back, popping
ahead of his other contemplations like an unwanted Internet ad.
 
The ad was obnoxious, advertising death.
 
No more pain.

There was an entry
he’d read in the 1935 diary, the very first diary, the one currently in his
pack…

Today marked my sixth week at work, diary, and something
I’d felt coming for the last two weeks finally happened.
 
Something so vile, so detestable, it again
makes me ponder facilitating my end.
 
With no brother, and no parents, I often wonder why I keep clinging to
life.
 
I’m like a person on a building
ledge, my fingernails bloody from hanging on out of some sheer inner will.
 
Why don’t I simply let go, tumble into the breeze,
and enjoy the ride down?

Aldo went out of his way today to find me.
 
He had to have, because his schedule showed
him attending important meetings.
 
I was
in one of the studies, the one with the books of literature.
 
Approved literature, some of which I suspect
has even been rewritten.
 
Standing on one
of the ladders, I was cleaning the top of the bookshelves when I heard a
click.
 
I turned and there was Aldo, wearing
a fine double-breasted suit, hands behind his back, staring up at me with a
strange smile.
 
It was the smile he gave
for dignitaries and photographs.
 
It was
not the smile he gave to impoverished maids.

I apologized, telling him I had been told to clean
here and asking him if I should leave.
 
It was then I noticed he had closed the door.
 
He twisted the brass lock.
 
My heart was audible in my ears.

Aldo gestured for me to climb down.
 
He offered me his hand.
 
Then, diary, he stood staring at me for what
felt like a full day.
 
The large room
clock ticked, seeming to grow louder in the gulf of silence.
 
Finally, in a whisper, Aldo asked me to
remove everything under my skirt.

Diary, you know I have never willingly done more
than kiss a man.
 
Some of my girlfriends
have told me of the things married couples do, and there was the horrible
little man who gave me my identity, the one who made me do disgusting things to
myself and to him, and I have had dreams at night that occurred outside the
bounds of my control, but never before have I willfully engaged in such
acts.
 
Though I didn’t know what his
motivations were, I’d felt him looking at me differently for weeks now.

I apologize, diary, for what I will now
write.
 
Perhaps if I take my life, or I
simply change my mind, I will remove these pages lest someone read them
someday…

Suicide again.
 
What
the hell are you thinking about, Gage?

The quick chirp of
disc brakes and the sound of an engine idling snapped Gage from his
recollections and self-loathing.
 
He felt
his heart lurch but stepped along smartly, his instinct correctly telling him
there were eyes watching him.

The sound of an
engine, over his left shoulder, manned by someone.
 
Idling.
 
Waiting.
 
Watching.

Gage didn’t want
to turn all the way around to look.
 
Instead,
he gazed to his left.
 
A country road
tracked along the river and, in this particular spot, no trees blocked the view
from the road to Gage.

He thought about
the jacket he was wearing with the
Würzburger
Beer
logo.
 
Perhaps the woman had called in
the theft?
 
He walked at the same pace,
waiting for another sound.
 
Fifty feet
ahead, the road moved slightly left and was bounded by a guard rail.
 
He focused on the sound of the engine, hoping
beyond hope it was just a farmer.
 
The
engine had a slightly higher pitch to it, making Gage feel it might be of the
smaller variety.
 
He heard it moving
again, matching his speed.

Once inside the protection
of the guard rail, as he neared an overpass, Gage glanced over his left
shoulder to see that the source of the engine noise had braked, idling by the
rail.
 
It was a lone patrolman, on a BMW
motorcycle outfitted in the familiar polizei green and white.
 
The man was of good size, with a helmet and
mirrored aviator glasses.
 
He was a
hundred meters behind Gage, staring directly at him like a hawk might hungrily
eye a baby hare.

Gage turned his
head back to the front, wondering if the guy was just bored or had actually made
him.
 
He heard the motorcycle’s engine
rev.
 
Gage picked up his pace.
 
Then he heard a different noise, a bumping sound.
 
Gage rotated his head again, now almost under
the bridge.

Two hundred meters
back, the policeman had turned around and was now easing the motorcycle down
the lumpy slope to the walking trail.