Where the Bones are Buried (20 page)

Dinah did a slow burn. “You never have any time for reflection, do you? Always off to your next dalliance. Is that because you can't stand to think about all the lies you've told?”

“I told you why I lied about Alwin Pohl.”

“I'm not talking about that batch of lies.”

“What then?”

“Cleon murdered my dad. Did he tell you?”

She recoiled as if she'd been slapped. “That's crazy.”

“Oh, but it's true. Didn't you know?”

“No.” She backed against a chair. Her knees buckled and she sat. “How can you say such a thing?”

“How can you be surprised?”

Swan shook her head from side to side.

“He did it to get you back,” said Dinah, “although I'm not sure he ever really lost you. The two of you were as close as a pair of sealed lips, but Cleon owned up in the end. And in case you're curious, he didn't show a flicker of remorse.”

“I don't believe you. Cleon wouldn't have done anything to hurt me. He loved me.”

“That's precisely why he killed your husband. What I need to know is whether you knew he was going to do it.”

“No!”

“Did he tell you afterward? Did he come to you with a new proposal of marriage?”

“He wanted us to remarry. That doesn't mean he killed Hart.” She braced up and regained a dash of defiance. “I don't care what Cleon said to you, I don't believe it. He had cancer. He was taking painkillers. He wasn't in his right mind. Anyway, I said no when he suggested we get married again, so you can't say I led him on in any way.”

Did that self-serving denial of responsibility constitute an admission of knowledge? Swan seemed scarcely to comprehend the evil of murder, much less empathize with the murdered. Dinah pushed harder. “All those years later, after Cleon came out of that house with blood on his coat, after he told you he'd murdered two federal agents, did you never look back and wonder what other ungodly things he might have done?”

“He had changed by the time he shot those agents. After he got into the drug business, he wasn't the same man.” She bounced up with a smile, like an actress who'd finished a difficult scene and gone back to her normal persona. “Don't you remember how good Cleon was to you when you were little? All the books and trips? And that funny little Shetland pony. What was his name? I remember you called him Neddy, but your brother called him Stewball.”

Dinah might as well have been talking to an alien life form. “‘None so blind as those who won't see.'”

Either Swan didn't hear or pretended she didn't. She preened in front of the mirror, whishing her hair this way and that. “What should I do if Mr. Amsel comes back and tries to kick me out?”

“Tell him Inspector Thor Ramberg of the Norwegian Criminal Investigative Service has ordered you to remain in this room until further notice.”

“But Thor didn't say that.”

Dinah laughed an ironic laugh. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.”

Chapter Thirty

The row of white metal crosses on the fence across the street from the Brandenburg Gate stopped Dinah every time she passed by. Each one paid tribute to an East German citizen who died trying to escape over the Wall. The saddest to her was the one farthest to the right, Chris Gueffroy. He heard from an East German guard that the GDR had revoked its shoot-to-kill order and on February 5, 1989, he made a run for it and earned for himself the distinction of being the last person shot going over the Wall. He wasn't the last victim. A man named Freudenberg toppled out of his hot-air balloon trying to fly over the Wall in March. But today in particular, Chris' death resonated. She fancied she could hear his ghostly lament,
Don't believe everything people tell you
.

A gust of wind ripped through the trees and she was caught in a hail of chestnuts. She picked one up as a worry stone and walked. She had no reason to go in one direction or another. She just knew that she had to walk and hoped that the exercise would stir some fresh insight. She turned the corner onto Scheidemannstrasse. Ahead, she saw the Reichstag, Germany's historic parliament building. Its recently added glass cupola was an architectural tour de force and visitors to the city lined up to get inside for a look at the dazzling inverted cone of mirrors.

To escape the mob, she cut through the Tiergarten. The big yellowing oaks gloried in the sunshine and the lindens and maples blazed like struck matches. The nip of autumn in the air and the earthy smell of decaying leaves brought down by yesterday's rain and wind, energized her and she understood why the park was called Berlin's green lung. She rubbed the chestnut in her hand as if it might magically summon a genie who could answer all her questions.

If Lena didn't know that Swan had gone to the Adlon, if
she
hadn't taken her gun, who had? It must have been Stefan Amsel, but why? The murderer would know that it wasn't the same caliber as the murder weapon. Either Amsel had Swan's gun or he knew who did. With Viktor now the presumed killer, he could have no reason to lie, whether to protect himself or anyone else.

She crossed Strasse des 17 Juni and paused next to a mossy pond to watch a man and a little boy feeding a pair of swans. It never ceased to amuse her when she remembered that swans mate for life. But then, her Swan had been named for the river, not the bird, and she wasn't the only one who couldn't hack the 'til-death-do-us-part thing. Thor and Jen didn't last long enough for their son to remember them as a household. After a few minutes, the man and boy ran out of bread and continued hand-in-hand down the path. She rotated her shoulders sideways, brought the chestnut forward from behind her head, and whipped it thirty feet across the pond. Not bad for a girl, she thought, and walked on.

Viktor's death had saddened her in a way she couldn't quite articulate. Of all the wannabe “Indians” she'd met, he had seemed the most sincere. She recalled some of the criticisms she'd read online about Karl May. Criminal. Con man. Pathological liar. And
hochstapler
, which translated as “a swindler and a deceiver.” He lied about having lived among the Apaches in America, but he had so melded fiction and reality that he believed his own myth. He regarded Winnetou as a real person and himself as Winnetou's loyal friend and comrade. She had the sense that Viktor was a lot like Karl May. They both found escape in the persona of nobler beings.

She wondered if Baer had returned home after his meeting with Amsel. She felt an urge, almost a compulsion to talk with him, not so much to gather information about Hess or Amsel as to hear his thoughts about Viktor, or perhaps to receive absolution. She couldn't shake the thought that she might somehow have prevented his suicide if she had reported his morose mental state. Was guilt the reason a contrarian voice in her head howled murder?

Thor and Swan were both busy. She had time on her hands and questions on her mind. There was nothing to stop her from paying a surprise call on Baer. As she circled back through the park, she recalled his intimation of sexual interest. Would he misinterpret her visit as a sign of reciprocal interest? Not today. He'd be too upset about Viktor's death. And if he made any untoward moves, she could lower the temperature very quickly.

On Schiffbauerdamm, she kept her eye out for the gap in the hedge and the narrow passageway to the river. When she looked down the closed-in corridor to his house, a twitch of anxiety ran through her and she reached automatically for her Berlin Wall worry stone. She must have left it in a different jacket. She wished she hadn't thrown the chestnut away. Now that she was here, she couldn't think of a single thing to say. Just offer your condolences and leave, she told herself. Ad lib, as usual. She straightened her shoulders and marched down the path.

She rang the bell and promptly heard footsteps descending the stairs. The door opened. His face was haggard, as if he hadn't slept, but his eyes brightened when he saw her. “What perfect timing. I am in need of pleasant company.”

She said, “I heard about your friend Viktor.”

“It's hard to believe he's gone. I may have been the last person to speak with him. Come, let's go upstairs and sit.” He helped her out of her jacket and hung it on the rack. “Can you believe that on the day when rain might have extinguished that fire and saved Viktor's life, the sky was clear and full of stars?”

She didn't think rain would have helped much, but she didn't say it. She shuddered slightly and followed him up the stairs.

“Please, sit down. May I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks. I'm sorry to intrude. I came on impulse.” They took the same chairs they'd sat in before. In spite of the huge window and the mirrored panels behind the bar, the room seemed gloomier than it had on her first visit. Certainly, her host did.

He took out a cigarette. “Do you mind?”

“No.”

He looked as if he needed it. His hands shook slightly as he lit up a Raucher sterben früher. “Stefan Amsel and I will arrange the funeral. The last thing Viktor would want is a traditional mass. We will have a drumming ceremony. There is no one to object. His parents are no longer living, he was estranged from his brother, and Lena wouldn't know what to do even if she cared to do it.”

“She probably won't attend the funeral,” said Dinah. “She was arrested this morning for firebombing the guest house where she thought my mother was staying.”

“Was anyone injured?”

“Luckily, no. Lena used an old American grenade she found among Viktor's belongings. Why do you suppose a man of peace kept live grenades around the house?”

“I didn't know that he did. There is so much left over from the war. Perhaps they reminded him of the destructiveness and futility of war. He had curious ideas about atonement.”

“You told me that you thought Farber might be acquiring some of his art pieces illegally. I'm sure of it. The Hopi people would never have sold a
katsinam
mask. Viktor must have known that some of the things coming into the gallery were stolen.”

He pinched off the ember of his half-smoked cigarette, placed the butt on an oyster shell for reuse, and went to the bar. “Are you sure you won't have a drink?”

“Yes.”

He poured himself a glass of something amber and chugged it. “The right woman might have saved Viktor. Even the wrong woman might have saved him, if she had gone to him in his hour of need.” He replenished his glass and brought it back to his chair. “I never understood what he saw in Lena, or she in him. In terms of character, she was tailor-made for Pohl. If Viktor did anything illegal, and I can't believe that he did, it was for her.”

Dinah harked back to Viktor's poignant remark that Baer had been lucky that his wife died young. Dinah wanted to ask about her, but was afraid he would clam up. “Did Viktor tell you that Lena had smashed his pottery?”

“Yes. He talked to me the day after her tantrum. He was despondent, of course, but resigned. I don't know what sent him over the edge.”

“You do believe it was suicide then?”

His eyes hooded behind the wooden glasses. “Ah, you are investigating still. Do you have reason to suspect foul play?”

“It's a stupendous coincidence.”

He set his drink on the coffee table and relit the cigarette. This time, his hands didn't shake. “Why are you pursuing this, Dinah? There is no connection between Viktor and your mother. If the police have transferred their suspicions to Viktor, her troubles are behind her. Is that not so?”

“Yes, and I'm extremely relieved that she's out from under the cloud. I just don't like coincidences.”

“But Viktor's death is a coincidence that makes logical sense. He was an unhappy man, his wife betrayed him with Pohl, depleted his savings, and destroyed the things he valued most. Her leaving was
der letzte Strohhalm,
the last straw. Even if she didn't set the fire, she is responsible for his death.”

Was that speech a shade contrived? Remember Chris Gueffroy.
Don't believe everything people tell you
. She said, “The police think Viktor killed Pohl and then killed himself, either because he couldn't live with the guilt or because he didn't want to face the consequences.”

He inhaled deeply and turned to look out at the river, the color of lead in the fading light. A tour boat glided past and he followed it with his eyes. “Nothing is without consequences. They follow our sins as surely as a wake follows a boat. Sometimes the consequences are worse than the original sin.”

When last they'd talked, he had insisted that Viktor was incapable of murder. Today he sounded reconciled to the fact. “When Viktor called you in the middle of the night, did he confess that he'd killed Pohl?”

“No.”

“You've spoken to Amsel. Did he confess to him?”

“No. Neither Stefan nor I would have blamed him if he had done it. After the shabby way Lena treated him, he showed a kind of tragic nobility by not killing her.”

Baer's antipathy toward Lena made Dinah wonder if his late wife had betrayed him in similar fashion. She hazarded a push into more personal terrain. “Viktor mentioned that your wife died young. Did he know her?”

“No.” He crushed his cigarette in the shell and, like a brooding Bogart, withdrew to the window to stare out at the Spree.

Dinah couldn't decide whether he was composing himself to speak or whether he meant to stand there with his back to her until she slunk away down the stairs and left. She said, “That was presumptuous of me. Sorry if I roused painful memories.”

He turned and his face had relaxed. “It is I who must apologize. I forget how open Americans are, how natural and unoffending such a question would seem to you. We Germans tend not to reveal ourselves so directly to people we don't know. In truth, we are reticent even with those we call friends.” He returned to his chair and picked up his glass of amber. “My wife Sabine died before I moved to Berlin. At the time, she was about your age, I'd guess, with dark eyes and a smile very like yours. She died while carrying our unborn child.”

Dinah was about to utter some bromide about losing a loved one when he asked, “Will you attend Viktor's funeral with me?” There was nothing seductive in his manner. He seemed like a man grieving for a friend and in need of company.

“When will it be?”

“We don't know yet. There's to be an autopsy. We must wait for the police to release the body. We will have our answer then, as between suicide and murder.”

“If it was murder, if you had to guess who did it, who would you guess, Baer?”

“The person who would want to kill Pohl and the person who would want to kill Viktor are fundamentally incompatible. And yet I understand that in crime fiction, it's a mistake to postulate more than one murderer.”

That postulate was going to take some time to consider. She said, “Call me and let me know the day and time of the funeral ceremony, Baer. I'd like to be there.”

The doorbell rang and he looked at his watch. “Stefan is early. We are going to dinner tonight to discuss the arrangements.”

“I'd better go,” she said. “I have to prepare for my class at the University on Tuesday.”

“Thank you for coming.” He walked down the stairs in front of her and she noticed a limp she hadn't noticed going up. Of course. She remembered Florian saying he had an artificial foot. In the entryway, he helped her into her jacket and opened the door.

A sixtyish man with a blocky build and collar turned up to his ears was waiting on the other side. He skimmed a surprised look over her head to Baer, who forgot to make the introductions. The visitor said something in imperious German. Whatever the gist, it was obvious from the hostile sheen in his eyes that he was less than thrilled at the sight of Dinah.

She covered her own surprise, said “
Auf Wiedersehen
,” and started down the path. She turned her head for a second look, but the man had already disappeared inside.