Voices of the dead

Harry checked the closets and drawers in the bedrooms, looking for a gun, a Nazi uniform, but didn’t find anything incriminating. Colette checked the other rooms, went through the utility closet, refrigerator, oven. Nothing. They met in the office. It had a sleek desk with a black granite top on a chrome frame. Behind the desk was a credenza with a matching top and custom wooden file drawers, two banks of three. The drawers on the left were unlocked. Envelopes, stationery, stamps, letter opener in the first one. Pens, paper clips, tape, stapler in the second drawer, and files in the deep third drawer.

The drawers on the other side were locked. He took out the letter opener, jammed the tip in the lock and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. Colette walked out of the room without saying anything, came back a few minutes later with a hammer and a screwdriver.

“Let me try.” She got on her knees and pounded the screwdriver into the lock, gripped the handle, turned left and it opened.

Harry said, “Where’d you learn that?”

“A few years ago I wrote an article on how to pick a lock.”

He opened the first drawer and found a box of 9 mm Parabellum cartridges. Now they were getting somewhere. The next one was filled with a strange assortment of things. He reached in, taking the stuff out, putting it on the desktop: a couple pairs of eyeglasses, woman’s suede gloves, gold Star of David, watches, bracelets, women’s panties, necklaces, a diamond ring, a wedding ring, silver locket.

“Harry, what is all of this?”

“I don’t know.”

Colette opened the third drawer, took out a file folder with several cracked sepia-tone photographs, shuffled through them.

“Harry, look at these.”

The first one was a young SS officer in uniform, posing, blank expression. Harry recognized him immediately. Took out the mug shot Taggart had given to him and unfolded it. Now he could see the young Nazi in the older man’s face.

“Harry, who is that?”

“Unterscharfuhrer Ernst Hess,” Lisa said.

Harry was in her office at the ZOB. He’d dropped Colette off and come right over. Why didn’t he recognize Hess before? Sitting across the table from him at Les Halles. Harry showed her another shot, Hess grinning, dead bodies behind him, piled up in a mass grave. “I remember the look of satisfaction on his face,” Harry said, “after shooting my father and eleven others with a machine gun, saying, ‘This is how you kill Jews.’”

“He looks so ordinary,” Lisa said. “He could be a plumber or a taxi driver.”

“What did you expect?” Harry said. “He’d have horns and a tail?”

“Hess was only there for a short time,” Lisa said, “a few weeks, touring Dachau and its sub-camps.”

Martz turned his head a couple times left to right and rubbed his neck. “Harry, don’t get old. It’s no fun.” He paused. “It was very unusual-I would say unheard-of for the SS to murder Jews en masse outside the camp. Why go to the trouble? They would just shoot us in the yard, the Schiesstand, sending a message, scaring the hell out of those who saw it or heard about it.”

“Maybe they were experimenting,” Lisa said. “Dachau was the prototype for other camps, the training ground for the SS. Many well-known Nazis learned their trade there.”

“There have been no corroborating accounts that Hess was a mass murderer until now,” Martz said. “The voices of the dead can’t speak, Harry, but you can.”

“What do you know about him?” Harry said.

“His father was a career soldier. His mother was a music teacher,” Lisa said. “He was raised in a strict German household. His middle name is Tristan after Wagner’s opera.”

“Seems appropriate when you realize Wagner was an anti-Semite,” Martz said.

Lisa said, “Hess fell out of a tree when he was a boy of nine or ten. His mother heard him crying and beat him with a stick for being weak. Later, a doctor came to the house, examined him, and discovered he had broken his leg.”

“Well you can begin to understand why he turned out the way he did,” Harry said, moving his chair back from Lisa’s desk so he could cross his legs.

“So if you have a bad upbringing murder is justified?” Lisa said, raising her voice.

“My dear, think how sensitive it is for Harry,” Martz said. “He is a civilized man, showing compassion.”

“The hell I am. He killed my parents,” Harry said. “And my daughter. I’m going to get the son of a bitch.”

Martz said, “What do you mean, your daughter?”

Harry told them what happened to Sara.

“Harry, I’m so sorry,” Lisa paused, eyes holding on him.

“I am, too,” Harry said.

“I can’t imagine-”

“Tell me more about Hess,” Harry said, changing the subject.