The German (8 page)

Tom knew about Jack the Ripper, he’d read about the killer in pulp novels and even seen a movie based on his crimes, but he wasn’t connecting a murderer of London prostitutes with the death of a local boy. He knew nothing about the other man Doc Randolph had mentioned.

“Fish was a child molester, murderer and cannibal,” he said.

“Oh for the love of God,” Tom interjected.

“Hear me out,” the doctor said. “They executed Fish in New York a few years back. He is known to have killed three children but may have killed many more. The thing is, there are similarities between those cases and this business with Harold Ashton. The most obvious are the mutilations of the bodies and the pieces missing from those bodies, and the killer’s need to communicate what he’d done. In this case, the note you found in Harold’s mouth.”

“How do you know about these cases?” Tom asked, feeling the doctor had more than one-upped him.

“Psychiatric magazines,” the doctor said. “I don’t buy into a lot of the mumbo jumbo they throw around, but there are some interesting articles on deviant behaviors, and I remember reading about Fish in one of those journals right after he was executed.”

“So did the article tell you how we catch this guy?”

“No,” the doctor said, “I mean if we knew anything at all about Jack the Ripper, who he was, why he did what he did, or if we knew of other such cases we might be able to make some comparisons, but this Fish character was uniquely insane. For example, he shoved needles in his privates and beat himself with nails.”

“It’s not uncommon. Masochism is a well-documented sexual perversion, like pedophilia, homosexuality, bestiality, and necrophilia. Generally it is believed that childhood factors play into the formation of these illnesses, and there are numerous people suffering them, but of course, the taboo nature of the diseases means the afflicted don’t go around talking about them.”

Tom got the impression Doc Randolph was quoting from one of those magazines he’d mentioned. It sure felt like a classroom lecture to him. Further, he didn’t know what good the information would do them. He knew nothing about the diseases the doctor had listed, but a man sick enough to carve up a boy like Harold would have to stand out.

Doc Randolph pulled his pipe and a pouch from the hip pocket of his jacket. He wore a stern expression, like a parent waiting for a child to explain himself. His expression didn’t change as he tamped the tobacco into the bowl.

“Exactly,” Doc Randolph said, striking a match and setting it to his pipe. “He’s got more on his mind than just killing. He wants you to know he’s doing this for Germany. After all, the note did say, ‘One less gun against the Reich.’ He can’t – for whatever reason – fight for his country
in
his country, so he’s decided to do it in ours.”

“But when did they flee? And why?” the doctor persisted. “I can think of at least one of our residents who’s been with us for a good long time. In fact, he left Germany just about the time the first wave of socialism was crushed. At that point, leaving made a lot more sense than staying. He couldn’t know Hitler would emerge from jail a hero – a man of the people.”

~ ~ ~

Tom sat at the window of his bedroom, gazing south where the sky shone a pale purple from the lights of Barnard. He couldn’t see the lights themselves as a ridge obscured the city from his view, but he saw the radiance cast by the lamps and homes miles in the distance covering the town like an ominous dome. The list of suspects – all German names – sat on the table beside him. He knew every man named on it, had drank with several of them and had spoken to them all at one time or another, and he couldn’t bring himself to believe that any one of them had murdered the Ashton boy. Even Gerhardt Weigle, who was a difficult man on the best of days, struck Tom as unlikely. Tomorrow, Rex would head up a crew to comb through Blevins’s property, looking for signs of a transient’s camp, anything to offer hope that Harold Ashton’s killer was not a regular at Ormand’s Mercantile, or Milton’s Barber Shop, or Carl’s Bakery. Tom would make calls to Dallas and Austin and the sheriff’s departments in between to see if they’d had any recent violence. If it weren’t for that damn note he might just have been able to convince himself that Harold’s death had been an isolated tragedy, but like the dome of light covering Barnard, Tom felt engulfed in something immense and inescapable.

More than ever he wished Glynis was still with him. His wife had always listened to him talk about the troubles in Barnard, and unlike Doc Randolph, who treated Tom like a babbling infant, Glynis comforted him and allowed him to work through the mysteries. She’d questioned things, had given him new perspectives and even if their talks didn’t produce an ironclad solution, she had been there to laugh at his bad jokes and whisper encouragement in his ear. He wondered what she’d make of a case like this one.

The whole thing left a heavy rotten lump in his stomach. He’d seen his share of death, both accidental and planned down to the second – gunshot wounds, knife wounds, poisonings, even a young woman who’d met the angry side of an axe – but this business with Harold Ashton was unlike anything he’d witnessed. Doc Randolph had gone a good ways towards undermining Tom’s confidence by spouting off about that Fish character, acting like some small city Sherlock Holmes and treating Tom with no more respect than he’d show a dense ward. And what good did the information do him? Was he supposed to strip every German down to the skin and see if he’d been jabbing his privates with pins?

Gazing through the window, Tom shook his head. Where did monsters like that come from? Was it really just a sickness or something more sinister?

Over the years, he’d watched the power lines go up all over Barnard and as a boy he’d marveled at the endless, steady light the electric bulbs cast through living-room windows. He’d seen the dirt tracks leading in and out of town fall beneath smooth bands of concrete as great veins of road began to spread through the state, and soon after he’d witnessed the laying of the sidewalks which kept his pant cuffs from getting muddy, but scuffed his shoes if he wasn’t careful with the curb, and cars replaced horses, and refrigerators replaced iceboxes. Telephones in every home. Radios sending him the beautiful voice of a woman in New York, singing with an orchestra. He’d seen so many things change, and he couldn’t help but wonder if man was changing, too.

A board creaked behind him and Tom turned away from the window. Estella stood in the doorway, chin against her chest, peering at Tom through her eyelashes. He waved her into the room and turned out the lamp.

All I knew of the war came from newsreels, movies and radio broadcasts, but the scope of the conflict never really struck me. I knew my daddy was in Europe. All spring, letters had been coming in, and Ma let me keep the stamps along with the small notes Daddy sent along, specifically for me. If he wrote about the war, he did so in the letters Ma kept, and she almost never read me passages from those notes. She’d tell me where Daddy was currently stationed and that he was just fine. His notes to me were always the same. I kept them in a metal box on my dresser. In late June Ma received a letter, the longest one yet, but the scrap of paper – Daddy’s note to me – like a piece of fat ticker tape, was no different than a dozen others:

We’re giving them a good run, Timmy. Be sure to behave yourself and mind your mother. Your father, Fred Randall.

I imagined when he returned he’d have a thousand stories to tell, and he’d share them while we fished in the lake or went hunting for wild pigs up north. Before his leaving, these had been quiet excursions with little said between father and son, but he wouldn’t keep the war to himself. I felt certain of that.

July 1, 1944 – Translated from the German

The anniversary.

My face looks no older, but perhaps the fault lies in the mirror. Age is a slow infection working on skin and muscle imperceptibly until one is irrevocably stricken, and the mirror is an easily misread instrument. If I had a photograph of myself from all of those years ago, then perhaps I could refute this strange conviction, but I have no such picture and no one familiar to whom I might pose such a bizarre question. All I have is the mirror and it shows me the same face another did in Bad Wiessee, only the day before the passing.

I have nothing of my previous life but the scars and memories: not entirely trustworthy.

Once the coffee is on the boil, I walk to the front door and pull it open to retrieve my milk and the morning paper. My neighbor Tim stands outside, and his face lights up when he see me, and he lifts his hand to wave, and we both say “good morning,” though only his greeting is sincere, and he tries to speak to me, not knowing that this is a miserable anniversary. Lately he has been eager for my company. I am pleasant but impatient to end this morning’s conversation, though he does not seem to see this. He chatters about his mother and the lake and about going fishing, and I feel that his every word is another coat of varnish, cutting off oxygen from my lungs and affixing my limbs beneath heavy layers of stain. A clamp tightens at the base of my skull, and I want to ask him if my face has changed at all in the years we have been neighbors, except I know he will not understand the question. He keeps me on the porch as long as he can, but finally he runs out of trifling topics, and he wishes me a good day, and I thank him before escaping back into the house.

The boy’s manner is familiar to me, and it concerns me. Men under my command and men in my bed have exhibited similar eagerness for my sanction, and though I recognized the need I similarly felt wholly unqualified to fulfill it. The boy’s father is in battle, far away from home, and it is natural for him to seek a male figure to exalt in replacement, except I am no one’s father. I have no lesson that could benefit this boy. Soldiers mistook my leadership for paternal guidance; lovers confused dominant affection for some deficit in their childhoods, and these were weaknesses I exploited to fashion better soldiers and better lovers. What do I know of fathers and sons? My own father was nothing but a vile shadow on the walls of my childhood home, a threatening shape that was void of light, darkly insubstantial.

I remember the man who comes to the reeking cell to kill me. He is arrogant and cold as all executioners should be. The gun he places beside me carries a single bullet, and he says there is honor in its use. I refuse this generosity. Let the fuckers erect their own deceit. I have spent a life in service to this fraudulent cause, and if I’m to die for it, my death will be honest. My executioner leaves me alone with the weapon, which remains untouched until his return. Two flashes of light send me to the floor and my executioner peers down into my face, leveling the gun’s muzzle at my chest, and then I am cold, standing in grass and staring into a hole.

Holding the coffee pot, my hand trembles. I return it to the stove. My cup remains empty.

I will not leave the house again today, except to feed the chickens. This is a bad day. A terrible day.

The scent of frying chicken woke me on the morning of July Fourth. Since she worked so late at the factory, I wasn’t used to Ma waking before me, but from the sounds and smells emerging from the kitchen I could tell she’d already been up for a good long while. In the kitchen I found her turning chicken in the skillet. Potatoes for a salad boiled on the stove, and a sheet of cookies sat on the counter waiting to go into the oven. Ma kissed my forehead and retrieved two slices of toast from the oven, which she quickly replaced with the cookie sheet. Sitting me at the table with my toast and a jar of strawberry jam, she returned to her cooking.

Before we left for the celebration at the fairgrounds, the chicken and potato salad had been tucked into a wicker basket and placed in the refrigerator, where it would wait until early evening, accompanying us to the nighttime celebration on the southern edge of Kramer Lake. The fireworks had been cancelled this year, but it was for the war effort so nobody made a fuss, and it was still nice to see so many people.