The Last Word (31 page)

Haviland watched her with anxious eyes, but Olivia was too lost in the picture emerging from the printer to pay him any heed.

The machine completed its task and the image fell neatly into a tray. Olivia snatched it up and carried it to the window. There was no denying it. The eyes gave him away.

Olivia leaned against the glass, pressing her right cheek against its cool surface as she glanced out at the ocean for a long time, desperately needing to be soothed by the dips and swells of blue.

It failed to comfort her.

She turned her stunned gaze on the interior of her house, her eyes staring at the well-known patterns of tile and wood flooring and carpet. It was as if she didn’t know where she was. Her surroundings, her town, and the people in it seemed to have turned inside out, and all that she knew had become cold and strange.

And no matter how much she wanted to, she could not avoid knowing what she now knew. There was no way to deny the truth that burned her lungs and brought hot tears to her eyes.

Olivia knew the identity of Heinrich Kamler. She’d known him for years and cared for him deeply.

The doorbell rang. Olivia leapt backward like a startled doe.

Haviland began to bark and raced into the kitchen. Olivia followed him slowly, like a sleepwalker. When she opened the door to Rawlings, she could not speak. She merely shook her head, again and again, clutching the photograph of Heinrich Kamler in her hand.

“Shhhhh,” the chief hushed her and gently pried the paper from beneath her fingers. He studied the image in silence and then touched her cheek. “Olivia, I’m sorry that it has to end this way. Raymond Hatcher is innocent of Nick Plumley’s murder. Heinrich Kamler is the killer.”

Mutely, Olivia averted her gaze, but Rawlings put a hand under her chin and forced her to look at him. “I came to tell you before I picked him up. It’s against every rule and regulation, and I’m half disgusted with myself for being here, but I knew this would hurt you. I didn’t want you to find out from anyone but me, but I can see that I’m already too late. I suppose your professor friend sent you this?”

Olivia didn’t even hear the question. She dug her fingertips into the fabric of the chief’s uniform sleeve and squeezed him hard. “Let me be the one,” she begged, her voice hoarse and pitiful. “Let me go to him first.”

Rawlings dropped his eyes. “I can’t allow that. You’d have him on the next plane, the next boat, anything to save him.”

“Even if I offered, he wouldn’t run,” she whispered. “He didn’t want to before. Ziegler forced him to. Please, Sawyer. I want him to have a friend there when you come for him. He’s been on his own for so long.”

The muscles in the chief’s jaw pulsed as he waged an internal battle over what was more important, following procedure and ensuring an airtight case or allowing another human being a moment of grace. In the end, he decided that Heinrich Kamler was worthy of a little compassion.

“You have an hour,” he stated sternly. “And I’m trusting you, Olivia.”

Too overwhelmed by emotion to respond, Olivia wiped the tears from her cheeks and gestured for Haviland to accompany her to the car. She backed out of the driveway, leaving sprays of dust and sand in her wake.

Never had she imagined that the end of the investigation would lead to the door of a friend. She’d always assumed that the killer would be some cruel and twisted stranger, a vengeful, spiteful, or greedy man with a black heart. But this one was funny, kind, and hardworking. He was one of them. He belonged to them.

Olivia sped through town, oblivious of everything around her. Five miles beyond the business district, she turned onto a narrow lane sloping down to the harbor. A small house with brown shingles sat perched on a gentle rise above the water. A worn path led to a small dock where a one-man fishing skiff was tethered, leisurely bobbing in the mild current.

The sight of the tiny vessel nearly made Olivia stumble, but she managed to make it to the front door.

There was no need to knock. Heinrich Kamler had seen her coming and had opened the door to welcome her inside.

“I’m glad it’s you, ’Livia,” he said in a voice heavy with sorrow. “Of all the people in this town, I’d have chosen you to know the truth.”

Olivia nodded, angry that she could not control the tears that rushed down her face.

“There, there,” the man said and reached for her. “I reckon we’ve got time for a glass of sun tea before the chief comes for me.”

She went to him, putting both arms around his back, taking in the frailty of his body. She traced the vertebrae of his spine and could feel his ribs through his thin, aged skin. Yet in her mind, she saw him as Evelyn White had seen him, a young man in the prime of life. A young man doomed by a lie.

The only comfort she had to offer was this embrace.

Olivia held him close. Haviland licked their hands and whined anxiously, as she whispered his name over and over again. “Wheeler . . . Wheeler . . .”

—KAHLIL GIBRAN

 

 

 

 

 

W
heeler led Olivia into his tidy kitchen. The room was Spartan, lacking the bric-a-brac, photographs, and souvenirs displayed by most people who’d lived for eight decades. Every surface was clean, and the scent of oranges and vinegar hung in the air.

Three storage containers, a knife block, and a cutting board were lined up with mathematical precision on the countertop. Wheeler placed a lemon and a lime onto the board, cut the fruit into nearly transparent slices, and stuffed them on the bottom of a glass tumbler. He then smothered them with ice cubes, poured in his homemade sun tea, and beckoned Olivia to join him out on the small deck.

They settled on a pair of chairs overlooking the harbor, and Olivia waited for Wheeler to speak, sipping the tea as though this was a relaxed social call, as if there wasn’t a phantom hourglass present, its grains of sand already falling.

Wheeler sat for a few minutes, watching a sailboat pass beyond a pair of marker buoys. As the vessel headed for the open sea, he said, “Ziegler’s boy was the spittin’ image of his daddy. When he came into my place for breakfast, I thought I was seein’ a ghost. A ghost with glasses and better manners, sure enough, but I saw through his mask. That writer thought he was above the rules, that he was better than the rest of us, just like his daddy did. When men like that think no one’s watchin’, their eyes go cold. They both had those ice-cold eyes.”

“What happened the night Ziegler escaped?” Olivia asked. She wasn’t ready to hear about Plumley’s death.

In the tired afternoon light, the harbor seemed lethargic and calm, a contradiction to the turbulence and sorrow that ran through Wheeler’s past like floodwaters.

“You gotta understand somethin’,” Wheeler said. “Ziegler was a Nazi. He was brainwashed through and through, and he looked at the rest of us like we weren’t worth the pot he pissed in. He reckoned we were traitors, workin’ with the Americans the way we did. Watchin’ their movies and learnin’ baseball.”

“Why were you on that U-Boat in the first place?”

Wheeler shrugged. “I wanted to see the world. My folks were farmers and I would’ve done anythin’ to get away from that life. I didn’t wanna get stuck, see? I was so young . . . I thought it was gonna be such a thrill to travel underwater, silent as a shark, and surface to find a white beach filled with beautiful women.” He laughed. “Lots of boys got in that war outta boredom. What fools we were.”

“But Ziegler was a true Nazi,” Olivia stated.

“Would have killed us all if he could, his yellow-bellied countrymen, but what he wanted most was Evelyn.” Wheeler winced, as if the act of speaking her name caused him physical pain. “That devil stole my knife and stabbed a good, hardworkin’ man in the back. Poor guy never saw it comin’. We coulda walked outta there anytime without hurtin’ a soul, but Ziegler wanted blood. He’d wanted it since the war started. Craved it, even. I followed him that night ’cause I saw his eyes at suppertime. There was murder in those icy blues. It was shinin’ out like the ghost lights you see in the fog every now and again.”

Olivia knew about those lights. She’d seen them the night her father had disappeared, while she’d waited, shivering and alone in a small dingy, to be rescued. More than once, she’d spotted a glow and expected the prow of a ship to slice through the curtains of fog, but the luminescence had faded as quickly as it had appeared. Many a fisherman had gone temporarily mad in the deep waters, having gone adrift far off the coast because of a storm or mechanical problems. These grizzled seamen talked of hearing strange noises and seeing an unearthly light, unable to completely believe that the soft twinkles were the product of hallucinations brought on by dehydration.

“After curfew, I heard Ziegler leave his tent. I followed, my knife in my pants,” Wheeler continued. “I figured on rescuin’ someone that night, savin’ some poor sod from him, seein’ as that boy was hell-bent on killin’ a Yank. He’d lusted for blood since the war started, but he’d had lots of schoolin’ and was given a desk job. That made him mad too. He hadn’t been able to take a shot at a single GI.”

It was easy to get caught up in Wheeler’s narrative, to see Ziegler creeping out in the darkness. The guards, who’d never been threatened by one of their prisoners, relaxed at their posts. Perhaps they played cards or dozed off or stared at the moon as they smoked cigarette after cigarette, their hushed voices rising with the smoke into the night air. “Did you fight him?”

Wheeler nodded. “Aye, but I was no good. He sucker punched me in the gut, grabbed my knife, and stuck it in the guard’s back before I could catch my breath. I rolled the man on his side to see if I could help him, and that’s when another pair of guards approached on their rounds. I knew they saw my face and that they’d find my knife. When all was said and done, I was still a Kraut. I was the enemy. Didn’t matter that I loved everythin’ about this country. Didn’t matter how pretty my paintings were. Didn’t matter that
she
was waitin’ on me, waitin’ for the war to be over . . .”

“You had to run,” Olivia said soothingly.

His face clouding with grief, Wheeler nodded. “I wanted to go straight to Evie, just to tell her I’d be back for her and that I didn’t do what they were gonna say I did, but I didn’t know where she lived.” He stared at the water, the hopelessness of that night replaying across his features. “I had a general idea, but there wasn’t time to roam around the streets lookin’ for her window.”

“Did you know where Ziegler was headed?”

“No. If I’d known, I’d have gone after him, dragged him back by his hair. He was a snake and a coward and all twisted inside.” Wheeler gestured to the west. “I made my way to the mountains. Took clothes hangin’ out to dry and pinched scraps from farms. I hated myself for it too. I’d always been good with my hands and I found work at a mill, fixin’ gears and wheels and such.”

Olivia looked at him. “And you became Wheeler Ames. Wheeler by trade and Ames as a show of respect to the murdered guard?”

He sat back in surprise. “That’s what his buddies called him. See, one of the non-English-speakin’ prisoners couldn’t get the
J
out, and after that, Ames just stuck. I never wanted to forget the man, so I used that name for my own. By that time, I could pass as a local and I never did talk much anyhow. Folks thought I had gone soft in the head durin’ the war and they were only half wrong. Havin’ to leave Evie . . . havin’ her wake up to hear I was a murderer and a liar . . . a runaway . . .” He trailed off.

“You never tried to contact her?”

Anguish pulled the corners of Wheeler’s mouth down. “I sent her letters in the beginning, but she didn’t answer. I reckoned she’d washed her hands of me, that she thought I was a killer. I even found her house when I thought it was safe to come back, but she and her family were gone.” He shook his head mournfully. “I let her go. Or tried to. I’ve been with other women, but I never loved any woman but her.” His eyes flashed, anger chasing away the regret. “And when I heard Ziegler’s boy talkin’ about her, whisperin’ to that ex-wife of his and her lump of a boyfriend, I knew I was gonna end him. It’s a scary thing, girlie, to realize you’ve got that inside you. And I’m not real sorry either, ’Livia. Only about hurtin’ folks like you. But I don’t have much life left in me anyhow. If folks think bad of me, I won’t hear about it for long and I don’t have to read the papers in jail.”

“You sound almost relieved that you’ll be locked up,” Olivia said gently.

Wheeler reached over and placed a weathered hand over hers. “I’m tired, my girl. I’m old and there are places achin’ inside that I thought were all scarred over. I just wanna sit down for a spell, read a few books, and die in my sleep. Don’t care where that happens. Jail’s as good a place as any other.”

Olivia tried to imagine her aged friend lying quietly on a cot, reading a novel as his cell neighbors adorned themselves with homemade tattoos or wrote entreating letters to a family member or, if they were lucky, to a lover.

“Do you wanna know it all?” Wheeler asked, and Olivia knew that he hoped she’d say no.

“I do,” she answered without pause. “We’ve all been involved, my friends and I, in some way or another. I need to know.”

Wheeler hesitated. “I hate to have you look at me with different eyes, but it’s too late to fret about that now.” He took a long drink of sun tea, and Olivia was aware that she had never heard Wheeler speak as much as he had for the past few minutes. The effort was draining him, the paper-thin wrinkles beneath his eyes drooped lower on his cheek and his breath was slightly labored.

“I didn’t have a plan,” he began slowly. “Just spent the whole night imaginin’ how Plumley had killed Evie. They didn’t whisper about that part, he and that Cora woman, and I only heard as much as I did because she thought he wasn’t gonna pay up anymore. She started hollerin’ at him when I was in the kitchen diggin’ around for more coffee filters, but I heard. I heard her mention Evie and what Plumley did to her with her own pillow. I nearly went blind with hate. It crippled me, or I would have killed the man then and there.”