Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (32 page)

In a capital case for murder, prosecutors have no formal obligation to prove motive. But if they’re smart they’ll dig one up and try to tag it on the defendant anyway. Otherwise jurors will always wonder, even if the judge instructs them not to, Why did the accused do it?

If Emma was running up against a contractual deadline to lodge a claim as to ownership of the flag, and she knew about it, that would answer the question. It could provide a wicked motive for hastening the death of her father. And the intrigue wouldn’t be lost on a jury, not given the abundance of publicity surrounding the Blood Flag, and the speculation as to its value.

I wouldn’t even be thinking about this except for the words of Elliott Fish on the phone the day I talked to him, that Robert Brauer was the last to survive. Whether this had some significance beyond the simple statement, I don’t know. But we have to find out.

It’s for this reason the thumb drive held by Tony may be far more important at the moment than the brass key sent to his father. Whatever else I accomplish during our meeting tomorrow in Las Vegas, I have to convince Tony to trust me with the thumb drive.

“There is one common element to all of this that seems to surface no matter how you look at it,” says Joselyn. She is working at the computer, a desktop situated on a table against the wall in our living room, her back to me.

“What’s that?”

“DNA,” she says. “It’s at the root of everything.”

“You mean as to Sofia? The paternity of the embryo and the tissue under her fingernails?”

“No, I mean as to everything,” she says.

She’s talking macroscience, as in the fundamental building blocks of life. “You’re waxing philosophic,” I tell her.

“No, more to the point,” she says, turning in the chair to look at me, “doesn’t it strike you as odd that this flag, according to every source I can find, disappeared at the end of the war—that was what, seven decades ago?—and it picks this point in time to suddenly surface?”

“Harry and I talked about that. We’re guessing that they probably didn’t know precisely what they had until very recently. We’re thinking two, maybe three years at most. Fish, when I talked to him on the phone, tried to lead me into the weeds. He said he had been retained some years earlier, but he didn’t say exactly how many. We’ll know more when we see the date on his instructions,” I tell her.

I am guessing that Fish was being cagey, unwilling to give up anything, especially if the information could be connected to the flag, what they knew, how they discovered it, and when.

“How do you think they found out?” she says.

“You mean that it was the Blood Flag? I don’t know. It’s possible someone told them.”

“Who?”

“You got me.”

“Anyone who had firsthand knowledge with access to the flag to make them sufficiently familiar to recognize it on sight would have to be ninety years old, or very close to it. Grimminger, who was the regular flag bearer, the man most familiar with it, died back in the sixties. And even if they found someone who was still alive, that person wouldn’t have seen the thing for seventy years.”

“What’s your point?” I say.

“Every flag, even the Nazi flag, looks like every other Nazi flag, unless you have some way of identifying it. How would the former GIs who had this one be able to identify it? More to the point, how would they prove to others that it was the authentic article when they went to sell it?”

“You mean provenance?”

“Exactly,” she says.

“The dealer mentioned it when I talked to him on the phone, that no high-end bidder would play unless there was evidence establishing the flag’s authenticity.”

“Did he say how they would do this?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Shame on you,” she says. “But let’s say they had it back in the fifties and sixties and they had reason to believe it was the Blood Flag. How would they go about proving it then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe by the pattern of the bloodstains that were on it? It’s possible. Ask me when I see it.”

“Unless you had highly detailed photographs of the original stain pattern, before the flag disappeared, you’d have nothing to compare it with. There are photos of the flag, but none that are that detailed. Most of them show the flag hanging down from its standard, with folds so that you can’t even see the swastika,” says Joselyn.

“Back then I suppose you could ask Grimminger,” I tell her.

“If you could find him, and assuming a buyer was willing to pay hard cash and lots of it, based solely on his word, with nothing more. Don’t you see? That’s the problem,” she says. “You couldn’t establish the authenticity, not with certainty, until 1985, when the first practical protocol for DNA profiling came into use. We know whose blood it is on the flag.” She turns around and fishes through a stack of papers on the table. “Here it is. Andreas Bauriedl was his name. I think I’m pronouncing it correctly. He was one of the men who marched with Hitler during the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Bauriedl was shot by the Munich police during the march. He fell on the flag and bled out. It’s all documented.”

“Yeah, I remember the name, Harry telling me at one point. What you’re saying is that the blood on the flag establishes its provenance.”

“If you connect it to this guy Andreas, it does.”

That involves some major assumptions. First, that this Andreas character has living descendants, at least one who can provide a DNA sample for comparison, and two, that you can find a sufficient amount of cellular material, white blood cells, on the flag to extract DNA in the first place. The blood on the flag, assuming there is any, is not seventy years old. It’s more than ninety years old.

“I know,” says Joselyn. “But haven’t they extracted DNA from dinosaur fossils much older than that?”

“Yes, they can get dinosaur DNA, but it’s because they’re taking it from bones, inside near the marrow. And the bones have been buried underground.” I have been through all of this with DNA experts on the stand. Read tomes on the subject in an effort to avoid having my ass kicked in the courtroom.

“With DNA,” I tell her, “it’s all about how the materials are stored or preserved by natural conditions. Whether they were protected from UV radiation, heat, and water. Two things that will destroy DNA faster than anything else are sunlight and rain. Here you’re talking a flag that was taken outside in the weather for ceremonies on a regular basis. And we don’t know the conditions under which it was stored. You’re talking a real long shot.”

“Apparently Dr. Pack didn’t think so.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he had information on a similar case in which DNA from blood was taken, and it was older than this. By about thirty years.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was something you said on the plane the other day on the way home from Tony’s. You said there was an article on his dad’s desk, a photograph. I think you said it was blue, of a helix, an article from the Internet. Something about a hundred-and-twenty-six-year-old mystery that was solved. When I started looking at this stuff, it got me thinking. So I googled what you described. And guess what I found.”

I shake my head.

She swivels back to the table, fishes through a stack of paper, and when she turns back again she’s holding it up. It’s the article I saw on Edward Pack’s desk. Even from across the room I recognize the baby blue photograph of nature’s spiral staircase, the DNA helix. I get out of my chair and start to walk across the room.

“I had to wade through an ocean of articles on the browser to find the right one,” she says. “There’s a ton of material on it, and a lot of controversy. Trust me. Some say yes, it’s valid, and others say no. As far as we’re concerned, it may or may not matter. I’m still trying to sort that out. Mostly what I wanted was to find the article you saw, the one with the picture of the helix, so that we would know exactly what it was that Dr. Pack was reading about. It was Jack the Ripper,” says Joselyn.

FORTY-FIVE

B
efore Tony even stepped off the plane in Las Vegas he was on edge. Taxiing to the jetway he had turned on his cell phone and found an e-mail message from Paul Madriani. Paul apologized but said he couldn’t make it to their meeting. Madriani had gotten hung up in court, a last-minute appearance in the judge’s chambers on Emma Brauer’s case. It was something the lawyer couldn’t avoid. He explained in his e-mail that he wanted to call but he knew Tony would already be in flight and he wanted Tony to have the message as soon as he landed.

According to the e-mail, Paul had dispatched an investigator to meet Tony in Las Vegas. He was one of the people employed by the firm. The man’s name was Victor Palma. Madriani told him that Palma would be carrying the key held by Madriani so that Tony could compare it with the one he had found.

Tony wondered why Madriani didn’t mention the encrypted thumb drive. It had been a hot item in their exchange of e-mails earlier. It seemed now that he’d forgotten about it. Tony looked down at the message on his phone.

There was more disturbing news. The investigator was already on the ground waiting for him in Las Vegas. The reason Palma had gotten there early was that he had a previously scheduled meeting in Las Vegas earlier in the day with another client. For that reason he took an earlier flight. And one final change: they were no longer meeting at the restaurant between the airport and the Vegas Strip, the place Tony had picked. Instead the e-mail instructed Tony to take a taxi to an address. It was described as an industrial area where Palma had his earlier meeting. The e-mail explained that the investigator would probably be finished with that meeting by the time Tony arrived, in which case Palma would simply wait for him. On the other hand, if the meeting went long, he and Tony wouldn’t run the risk of missing each other.

It made sense. But still, Tony didn’t like all the last-minute changes. It knocked him off his stride and made him wary. He considered for a moment, thought about it, wondered, and then said to himself no. Madriani wouldn’t set him up. He had a sense for the man. He’d met Joselyn, Harry, and Herman, their lead investigator. Tony had the feeling that he knew them all. Most of all, he trusted Paul. At the moment, what he wanted was to get to the meeting and get it over with.

Besides, what else could he do? It would have been good if Paul had given him the investigator’s cell number. But he didn’t. At least then he could have called the man, checked with him to see exactly what was going on. Tony thought about calling Madriani. He looked at his watch. Chances were he was still in court. And even if he wasn’t, what could he do from San Diego? The other man had the key, and he was here. The only thing for Tony to do was to go and deal with the investigator.

It was less than ten minutes from the time Tony stepped into the taxi in front of the airport to when it stopped at the curb on the empty street in front of the faded white concrete building. The message was right. The area was a small industrial zone about a mile east of the end of the airport runway. At least it was close.

The driver asked Tony if he was sure he had the correct address. The building looked deserted. The exterior walls were cinder block, painted white, apparently some time ago. The paint was cracked and peeling in places. There was a single row of horizontal windows high on the walls. Two of them were broken. The building had a steel roof. From what Tony could see, it looked like a warehouse.

He checked the address on the e-mail from Paul and then looked at the street number painted on the side of the building.

“It’s the right address,” he told the driver.

“Do you want me to wait?”

Tony thought about it for a second and said, “No. The airport’s pretty close. I’ll just call when I need a ride.”

The driver held out a card with his cell number and told Tony to give him a call. He’d come back.

Tony thanked the man, paid him, gave him a nice tip, and took the card. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and into the hot sun. The taxi did a quick U-turn and headed down the deserted street. It turned right at the first intersection and disappeared.

Tony was left standing alone, squinting in the bright sunlight and the glare off the stark white walls of the building. He turned, shaded his eyes with his hand, scanned across the front of the building, and saw a door about forty feet away. It was the only opening in the otherwise solid wall.

He started walking. When he got to the door it was locked. He looked to see if there was a button for a buzzer or a bell anywhere around the door, but there was none. He was beginning to wonder if he’d been stood up.

He stepped away, back out onto the sidewalk and from there out into the street to get a better look at the building. About fifty yards away in the other direction was a chain-link fence with a rolling gate, what looked like a vehicle entrance. From what he could see, it appeared that the gate was open. Palma must be down there waiting for me, he thought. He started walking.

By the time he got to the open gate, sweat was running down the back of Tony’s neck. The dress shirt under his suit coat felt as if he had been swimming and his feet were beginning to hurt. Tony was wishing he’d worn casual slacks, a polo shirt, and running shoes. Being a banker had its limitations. People always expected you to dress.

He walked through the open gate. Inside was a large paved area with a loading dock on the shaded end of the building. The area was fenced all around with chain link, topped by rusted barbed wire. Two of the strands were broken. They dangled down and meshed with the chain link like prickly vines on a berry bush.

Sharp edges of rusted scrap metal poked out of the top of a large rectangular steel container that was up against the fence on one side.

Scattered around on the paved yard were discarded pieces of old pipe, various sizes, odds and ends along with rusted parts from machinery. One of them, a housing of some kind with a rusted set of gears, was the size of a pickup truck. The place had the look about it as if some giant had picked through whatever was here, took what he wanted, and left the rest where it fell.