Where the Bones are Buried (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-nine

Dinah averted her eyes from the bloody area where Farber had fallen and followed Wegener up to the sitting room. She paused to look at the shelves where Baer displayed his model car collection. He probably had a replica of the car he'd been driving when Pohl crashed into him. She wondered if some of the hate he felt for Pohl was displaced guilt for taking his pregnant wife for a spin around the “green hell” racetrack. Not that being pregnant turned a woman into a fainting flower. Sabine might have craved speed and adventure as much as Baer.

“You are free to sit if you like,” said Wegener.

“Thanks. Is it all right if I get a glass of water?”

“Yes, of course.” She couldn't keep the tone of disapproval out of her voice, or didn't try.

Dinah went behind the bar, found a glass, and held it under the tap. There was a staircase on the far side of the bar. From the outside, the house appeared to be four stories. This room was the second floor. The bedrooms, bathroom, and kitchen must be on the upper floors.

Wegener unfolded a large map and spread it open on the coffee table. She studied it minutely, apparently lost in thought.

“Where's the bathroom, Sergeant?”

“On the floor above.”

“Am I permitted to go alone?”

“The rooms have been searched. So long as you do not leave the house, you may go as you please.”

The carte blanche gave Dinah an instant infusion of energy and curiosity. She drank her water and sallied off to explore the rest of the house.

The third level consisted of one large bedroom with a small adjoining bath. Like the room below, there was a huge window, although this one was shuttered. Photographs of a young woman with dark hair and eyes and a faintly mocking smile covered one entire wall, almost like a shrine. This had to be Sabine, the dead wife. In one or two of the photos, Dinah saw a resemblance to herself. It made her skin crawl. Baer had been flirting not with her, but with the ghost of his wife.

The room was furnished simply—a bed, a side table, a chair, and a dresser. She couldn't help thinking about Viktor's letter, in which he admitted that Farber had bought and resold stolen art. Baer said he didn't intend to give it to the police. Maybe that was because, after reading it, he began to suspect that Farber and/or Hess had something to do with Viktor's death. Had he used it to lure Farber here and carried out another act of revenge? If he hadn't destroyed it, he'd probably hidden it somewhere in the house. The police had been over the place with a magnifying glass and fine-point tweezers or Wegener would never have turned her loose to mouse around, but had they looked specifically for the letter?

She gave the dresser a cursory search, glanced inside the drawer of the bedside table, and did a double take. A Sony microcassette recorder nestled on a blank notepad at the back. She slipped it in her pocket and proceeded to the fourth floor.

On one side, modern stainless steel appliances attested to Baer's interest in the culinary arts. There were two ovens, two refrigerators, a marble island with sink and beside the sink, a fancy espresso machine. She opened the refrigerators. One held fancy mustards and condiments. The other was well stocked with eggs and cheese and sausages. A mahogany dining table sat in front of the huge window overlooking the river. She wondered if he had entertained
der Indianer
club up here, or his many banker friends. His metamorphosis from bon vivant to murderer seemed paradoxical. Usually it was the loners who cracked.

She prospected in the buffet and under the flatware drawers without success and returned to the sitting room. Wegener was behind the bar, her back to the mirrored panels, talking on her cell. Dinah drifted toward the bookcases on either side of the mantle. Hanging across the arm of the chair where she'd sat and noshed Leberwurst, was the bolo tie with the big hunk of turquoise. She picked it up and the polished stone felt cool and smooth. Idly, she began to roll it between her palms as she read the titles in the first bookcase.

Philosophers lined the top shelves. Kant, Schopenhauer, Schiller. The middle shelves were devoted to history, the world wars, and biographies of famous generals and politicians. Titles by Karl May dominated the bottom shelves. A book about Winnetou would be a fitting place to bury Drumming Man's last words. She hung the bolo tie around her neck and felt about, between and behind the books. At random, she took out
Im“wilden Westen” Nordamerikas
with a cover showing an Indian chief standing defiantly on a rocky precipice gazing across a desolate plain. A cowboy, presumably the chief's faithful German sidekick Old Shatterhand, lay on his belly and aimed a long rifle into the distance. She flipped through the pages, which were in German, when a question percolated out of the sediment of her brain. “Did you search the bunker?”

Wegener was still gabbing on her cell. She looked up with a start. “What bunker?”

“Downstairs in the entryway. Behind the coat rack.”

She spewed a salvo of German into the phone, including quite clearly
der bunker
, and signed off. “Show me.”

“You'll need a flashlight,” said Dinah.

She took one from her utility belt and charged downstairs.

Dinah followed, careful to step around the place where Farber died, and pointed. “Behind the coat rack”

Wegener rolled it aside and pulled on the iron ring.

“You have to wrench it hard to the right,” said Dinah. “The door slides right.”

Wegener grabbed the ring and wrenched. Nothing happened. She looked chagrined, set her jaw, and tried again. The door opened. She drew her gun out of the holster. “Have you been down there?”

“No. Baer showed it to me when I visited. He said the original builder preserved it as a possible tourist attraction.”

Wegener shone her light into the pit. She looked back in frustration, as if Dinah held her on a leash. “I have my orders to remain with you and guard you until the Inspector returns, but it is also my duty to capture Eichen if he is down there. You will follow me and do exactly as I say. Is that clear?”

“As the sky over Berlin. But I'll need a light. My phone has an assistive light app. I'll run back upstairs and get it.”

“Hurry.”

She ran upstairs, took her phone out of her bag, and turned on the mini-flashlight. It wasn't big, but it was bright. She hung the shoulder bag with her gun over her neck and shoulder and went back downstairs.

“Shine this light on the ladder for me as I go down,” said Wegener. She grabbed onto the ladder, and descended into a well of darkness.

Dinah aimed the light on her feet, but Wegener had trouble holding onto the ladder and the gun at the same time and several times she missed a rung and almost fell. When she got to the bottom, she said, “Drop the light down to me. The floor is earthen. It won't break. I will shine the light for you.”

Dinah dropped it. She heard it hit and Wegener picked it up and shined it on the ladder for Dinah. Descending wasn't easy with the phone clutched clumsily in one hand. Even with the light, her feet groped for each rung. The smell of dust and mold grew stronger and the temperature dropped. At last, one foot found the floor.

“You stay here,” ordered Wegener. “Do not move until I call you.” She took the flashlight and vanished into the darkness.

Dinah shined her puny beam around and tried to get her bearings. The only thing she saw was a painted phosphorescent arrow on the wall in front of her. It pointed through what looked like a tunnel. Tunnels were among her least favorite things and this one looked particularly ugly.

A minute ticked by, and then two. Two minutes in this black hole was a long time. If Wegener didn't call soon, should she go back up the ladder to the house? Should she go forward and see where she'd gone? Maybe she'd called and Dinah hadn't heard. Hell, what was one more misdemeanor in a lifetime of insubordination?

Fighting her dread, she bent her head and crouch-walked through the tunnel. When she touched the wall on either side, her hands came away with a texture she didn't want to think about. The tunnel had to open into a larger area somewhere. This place had to be cavernous if thousands of soldiers and civilians had sheltered down here during the Allied bombing.

As if reality had taken a cue from her thoughts, the tunnel gave way to an enormous room with twenty-foot ceilings. She straightened her back, wiped the grit off her hands, and looked around. The floor and walls were blackened concrete and the air felt heavy and dank. A scaffolding of military bunk beds had been affixed to one wall and a gauze of ancient cobwebs, seemingly undisturbed for the last seventy years, covered the bunks like mosquito netting. A miscellany of artifacts littered the floor—an old boot, a helmet, a rotting blanket, a scattering of spent shell casings. A message in German had been printed on the wall opposite the bunks and another phosphorescent arrow pointed the way to the next room.

“Wegener? Wegener, where are you?” Her voice pealed, like the acoustics in a cathedral. If Hell had a cathedral.

She took the gun out of her bag and walked on. Stalactites of filth and cobwebs dangled from the ceiling and tiered down the walls like those shelf-like mushrooms that grow on decaying tree trunks. This hidden netherworld was a time capsule and the time it encapsulated must have been horrific. She imagined she could hear the bombs screaming down on the city, feel the crash and jolt as they landed, smell the fear of the people huddled in this man-made purgatory, between life and death.

She didn't have to imagine the gun that prodded suddenly against her back.

“I was hoping you had forgotten about my underground sanctuary, Dinah.” He took her gun out of her hand.

She blenched at his touch. “Sergeant Wegener is down here. She's armed, so you'd better let me go.”

“The Sergeant has met with a small accident. More a blow to her pride than her person, I assure you.”

She could feel his breath in her hair. If she whirled, she might catch him by surprise and knock him down. She turned her head and saw him tuck her gun away behind his hip at the small of his back.

“Don't test me. I wouldn't stick at one more casualty.”

The barrel of the gun gouged into her back. The naïve assumption that he wouldn't hurt her evaporated. She said, “Wegener told the others about the bunker. They'll be here any minute.”

“Then we'd better hurry.” He prodded her again. “Walk please. Use your little light.”

She'd read that some of the old bunkers had been linked with underground train stations, but the nearest U-Bahn to this house was the Brandenburger Tor on the other side of the Spree. The bunker must run parallel to the river, and very close. Pools of standing water began to appear. “Where are you taking me?”

“To a place where we can talk. I have something to give you.”

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Another “gift” from a double murderer.

A rat scurried along the wall. How much farther, and for what purpose? She edged around a pool of water from which two arms of a crudely painted swastika emerged. The floor sloped and river water washed in through cave-like holes.

“To your left.” He prodded her again.

“You want me to walk into the wall?”

He moved ahead of her and pushed. The wall opened and they walked into a tiny cubicle, like a dungeon cell. Two LED lanterns emitted a harsh light that hurt her eyes after being in pitch darkness. He pulled an iron ring that closed the wall behind them.

There was a card table and a chair. Wegener lay on the floor, eyes closed and hands bound behind her.

“Sergeant Wegener?”

She didn't speak or move.

“She can't hear you. I daresay she won't wake up for a while yet.”

“Give me your shoulder bag, Dinah.”

She lifted it over her head and handed it over. He tossed it into a wooden wine crate with Wegener's gun and holster.

“Sit down,” he said.

The gun pointed at her middle was persuasive. She sat. “You've got this place tricked out like a medieval castle. How many movable walls and secret rooms are there?”

“This is the only one you'll see.” He took a green hardcover book off the table and handed it to her,
Winnetou, die Apache Ritter.
“A
Ritter
is a knight. A noble man, like Viktor was. Go ahead. Open it.”

She did and a brown envelope fell out. “Is this the letter you used to bait Farber into an ambush?”

“Naturally, he wanted it.”

“That sounds like premeditation. I can understand why you hated Pohl, but you had no cause to kill Farber. He hadn't done you any harm.”

“He killed Viktor, or conspired with Hess to kill him.”

“What happened to your suicide theory?”

“They would have made it look like suicide, of course, and gotten away with it. I'm sure they had similar plans for me. Florian attacked me when I opened the door. He punched and kicked my legs, thinking to detach my artificial limb. Fortunately, I was armed and able to give him the death he deserved. I had hoped that Reiner would be with him, but Farber said he'd been arrested.”

“You were going to kill Hess, too?”

“When both the law and God fail, someone must be concerned with matters of truth and justice.”

If that was his twisted translation of the Einstein quote, he was a psychopath. She wondered if there was a chink in his hubris. “Did Florian not understand that all he had to do was offer you money for the letter?”

His face reddened with rage. “It disappoints me that you, of all people, would think me so crass.”

“You've murdered two men. Crass isn't the first word that springs to mind. You're a megalomaniac with a sick, inflated sense of your own omnipotence.”

He raised the gun to her face. Her courage wicked away in an instant.

“You're a brave woman to speak so boldly,” he said, spectacularly mistaken.