Butcher (11 page)

He was surprised the local cops had not asked him more about his own investigative background, and he listened for hidden nuances in the policeman's conversation but found none. They pulled up next to the county jailhouse, hurried inside, and the two local law-enforcement heads greeted one another like old pals.

“We've got this lady, Alma Purdy,” Randall said, “been missing for a couple weeks."

“I spoke with her about three weeks back. I took a report on it. That was the War Crimes deal, right? She'd sighted a guy from the old concentration camp, something like that?"

“Yep."

“Um.” The sheriff's face didn't change.

“Mr. Kamen here is concerned something may have happened."

Kamen spoke up quickly. “I think we have to assume that possibility—that strong possibility exists, sheriff. She thought she might have seen a former Nazi doctor who committed a lot of atrocities and ... suddenly she goes up in smoke.” Even as he spoke he wondered if the sheriff realized the singular inappropriateness of that phrase. “Chief Randall said she might be under medication or under a doctor's care, and it dawned on me, I wonder if this man Emil Shtolz might still be working as a doctor?"

“First, Mrs. Purdy didn't strike me as particularly coherent, but let's say she was. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she saw this old guy. Aren't all these Nazis elderly men themselves now?” the sheriff asked.

“He was a young man at the end of World War II,” Kamen said. “He might be seventy now, but he might not appear that age. He could easily have had a face lift, and from what Alma Purdy told me it sounded as if he might have had some cosmetic surgery, assuming, as you say, assuming she did see Shtolz."

The two lawmen discussed who'd file the preliminary missing persons report with the state police in something called Bluff, which Aaron Kamen learned was Poplar Bluff, Missouri. But he knew he was hearing two conversations: one was shorthand cop talk, the other appeared to be for his benefit. It sunk in while he and Randall were heading back to the Bayou City police headquarters in the rain. He listened to their questions about the Purdy report, in tandem with a bantering about computers, how the sheriff was sick about the 2000 getting “shit-canned,” which he knew referred to an NCIC computer program. “I knew it'd be a hump,” Randall had said.

“I'll call Cape and let Immigration in St. Louis know.” More shorthand about the FBI and other authorities whom the sheriff would bring up to speed. It had been rather smoothly executed, Aaron thought, all in the cop-shop sidebar talk, punctuated with occasional questions to him about the contact with Purdy. He realized they'd known every speck of this all along, right down to the trip to the missing woman's home. This had been something Sheriff Pritchett and Chief Randall had set up to take
his
measure. He was being investigated, and not for the first time.

“Did I pass?” he asked suddenly, turning in the seat and smiling to show he recognized professionalism and approved of it.

“Excuse me?” The chief raised his eyebrows. Aaron was not offended. The fact they'd handled him rather adroitly, that they'd obviously been on top of the case for some time, was hardly discouraging. So far, at least, nobody was laughing at the serious situation.

So he saw it as good news and bad news. The good news was a circle of light was moving in the direction of the darkness. The bad news was that a woman named Alma Purdy, who'd apparently already been through hell once, had vanished.

Aaron left Randall's office after a few conversational loose ends were tied, among them being a mutual promise of cooperation. Meanwhile, where would Mr. Kamen be staying? He gave his room number at the little ma ‘n’ pa motel on the highway. How long was he planning to stay in town? Not long, he said. He assured the cop that he knew his place as a civilian, that he'd notify Randall and Pritchett if he learned of Mrs. Purdy's whereabouts, all the expected stuff. The chief would circulate the two blow-ups of Emil Shtolz that Kamen had extracted from his files, one a passport photo that showed the Boy Butcher without his infamous facial birthmark. Yes, he realized it might be impossible to I.D. a person from a forty-plus-year-old passport picture. And so on.

Instead of returning to the motel, Kamen went to a pay phone and dialed Raymond Meara's number for the second time. Kamen routinely attended gun shows, firearms club rallies, and the like, with a special eye for the lunatic fringe gun collectors, from whose ranks Neo-Nazis sometimes emerged. Aaron and Raymond Meara had met at a gun club rally the preceding year. They'd exchanged opinions on gun laws, the plight of the small businessman and small farmer, and found some areas of agreement. Kamen, being a people collector, retained the man's name in his files. When Alma Purdy had said Bayou City, he had recalled having a contact there.

“Mr. Meara,” he said, when a gruff voice answered after a dozen or so rings, “it's Aaron Kamen calling again. I'm the one called yesterday about Mrs. Purdy?"

“Yeah."

“I'd like to talk with you, as I said. I just finished speaking with the police and the sheriff and apparently the woman is in fact missing."

“Um. Well, like I said, I don't know zip about her. She's like a hermit, or whatever you call them, a recluse, you know?” Kamen moved under the protective overhang of the building as he was pelted by hard, cold raindrops.

“I understand, Mr. Meara, but if I could, I'd still like to come out and talk with you. I'm trying to find another individual. It's a bit lengthy to go into on the phone. Also, I want to show a couple of photographs to you and see if you might be able to help me."

“That's okay. Pretty good drive out here from town but you're welcome to come out.” It sounded as if Aaron Kamen were anything but welcome.

“If I'd be catching you at a bad time we could make it another day."

“Nah. I'm just waddlin’ around out here. Come on if you want to."

Kamen extracted directions, and in spite of the off-putting and complex-sounding series of twists, turns, and otherwise convoluted instructions, he had no trouble finding the Meara farm.

Within twenty-five minutes he was pulling up in the muddy yard of a near stranger, and he saw the scarred countenance of Raymond Meara.

“You bring this down from K.C., didja?” drawled Meara.

“No, sir. It was cold up home but at least it was dry."

“Come on in,” Meara said, and Aaron Kamen followed him into the farmhouse, and out of the pelting rain.

T
he rain had become an ever-present factor in Kamen's daily plans. It slowed his driving even more, and he'd been no speed demon to begin with. But he did not enjoy driving in the rain. His unfamiliar surroundings presented yet another worry. Working his way outward from the hub of Bayou City, he'd tried for an operational plan that was geographically logical, but the locations of some of the suspects on his primary search list were deceptively placed. Seeing something on a map and finding it in rainy, unfamiliar territory, weren't the same.

Three of the closest communities had been approached alphabetically: Anniston, Bertrand, and one of the list's more promising names, a Dr. Mishna Vyodnek, working at Consolidated Labs some twenty minutes from Bayou City, had not panned out. He found himself sitting in the front seat of the car, water puddling from his raincoat, trying to make heads or tails out of his map.

There were at least two other nearby leads, a veterinarian of Shtolz's approximate age, and a surgeon with the name Raoul Babajarh. He decided to check those two out next and, if time permitted, look up a party in a community called Kewanee. That would bring him into line with New Madrid, and from there he could swing back through Bayou City. If none of his semi-leads checked out, he'd call it a day and tackle the rest tomorrow. Then he saw another stop he reckoned would be on his way and inserted it into his itinerary. With that he pulled back into a stream of trucks and headed for the vet's.

Three hours later Aaron Kamen was winding up a conversation with a retired general practitioner in New Madrid, and for the first time he found someone opening up to him a bit.

“If you don't mind my asking, is this fellow you're looking for in some kind of trouble?” Kamen's day had convinced him that physicians were even more clubby and protective of their own brethren than lawyers or cops. His methodology had been to do a quick thumbnail profile of the type of man he was looking for, one who might have background or expertise in the medical or experimental disciplines, at least fifty years old—he ruled nothing out—and he might have a slight European accent, “a little like mine, perhaps."

None of the persons he'd personally contacted could have been Shtolz, but Nate Fletcher, retired from a lifetime of private practice, was physically excluded by his size. He was all of five feet tall. Many things about a person can be altered or faked, but among the most difficult is the simulation of diminutive stature. Spinal compression notwithstanding, a man who stood nearly six feet tall in 1944 could not have shrunk a foot in fifty years. When he asked if the man in question had been in trouble, it was not in the usual AMA tone.

“The man I'm looking for was a Nazi doctor. He was tried as a war criminal for the torture and murder of many, many persons. He was in his early twenties then, and we know he made his way to North America.” He told the man, Dr. Fletcher, about Alma Purdy.

“You need to go to the po-leece,” the man squeaked at him in a high-pitched voice. “That's the first thing.” Kamen assured him he had and showed him his list of doctors over fifty within fifty miles of Bayou City, his arbitrary parameters.

“I can name about a half dozen doctors over fifty you don't have on that list. And there'd be another two dozen between here and Cape if you'd include Dexter, ‘n’ places like Scott City. You want to make some notes?” He paused to give the youngster time to get his pen out and keep up with him.

“How'd he get his Missouri license? What's this fella got for a diploma to hang on his wall, one of them fakes? Here's what the real thing looks like.” He gestured behind him at a wall full of framed, gilt-edged certification. “Have you thought about sales? Fella like that would do right well in sales. Probably like it, too,” he snorted. “Check out your oddball ministers, too. Be a natural for him.” It was clear that Nate Fletcher was not overly fond of salesmen or men of the cloth. “Fella come through here once claimed to be a Baptist minister, turned out he was nothing but a—what do you call the perverts who molest little boys? Check out your priests and ministers. Bunch of
charlatans
."

“Well, I sure appreciate your taking—"

“And another thing, I'd run up to Farmington. They've got some older people in there. And I'd—"

“Sure do thank you, Dr. Fletcher.” He was gathering up his materials. Leaving the blow-ups of the old passport and driver's license photos. “If you think of anything else—"

“Talk to some of the old-timers around Bayou City. They can give you lots of names of people emigrated over back in the olden days."

“That's a good idea,” Kamen said, smiling, pulling his raincoat back on.

“I reckon you already talked to Doc Royal."

“Who's that?"

“Be sure to go see Dr. Royal. He's still up there in Bayou City. Been there all his life. He'd know all the old-timers."

“I don't think he's on my list,” Aaron Kamen said, not being totally successful at swallowing a yawn as he made his way to the door.

“He's the first one I'd talk to. Been here since God was a pup. Somebody told me he still works a couple days a week. He's probably like me, a good bit past retirement age. Got the clinic there."

“What clinic is that?"

“The Royal Clinic they used to call it.” He made a face. “But I don't rightly know what the name is now. Some younger fellas got ‘em a practice there in town, too, so I don't really know if Doc Royal's still open but go talk to him."

“I will,” he said, thanking the old gentleman and opening the door. As he headed down the sidewalk toward his car, the high screech of Nate Fletcher called out behind him.

“Don't forget some of the old
preachers!"
Kamen assured him he wouldn't and waved farewell.

The rain had slackened off somewhat, tapering to a fine mist that was just enough to keep the windshield wipers hypnotically sweeping back and forth across his field of vision. He was getting an eyestrain headache again, and felt unusually tired for no reason.

After fifteen minutes of driving along a slick levee road it occurred to him the terrain looked vaguely familiar, and it dawned on him he'd driven past these landmarks before, only from the opposite direction, when he'd visited Raymond Meara.

A pickup truck shot around him, the men in the front seat looking at him quizzically as they went around the irritatingly slow-moving car. Aaron rubbed his eyes under his glasses and turned the car radio on.

“—rain belt. Widespread heavy rain is flooding the lower Ohio River Valley and the thirty-day forecast indicates greater-than-average precipitation and warm temps for the next thirty days.

“Southeastern Missouri has been drenched with rain for the last five days, and the Mississippi is swollen by more than ten feet, threatening to flood its banks in many places.” Interference crackled. “—expected to reach the flood stage tomorrow. Flood stage there is forty feet. The Missouri Highway Patrol reports—” He switched to music and that irritated him even more, so he shut the radio off.

As he looked to his left he wondered if he'd have to drive through any water on the way back. He'd lost his directional bearings. If Aaron Kamen had glanced to his right instead of his left, far along the horizon he'd have seen a silver band glistening like a knife edge in a break between the distant tree lines. The slim, bright sliver was the edge of the mighty Miss pushing inland. He had sensed danger, true enough, but he'd looked in the wrong direction.

Kansas City

I
t was an ominous-looking day. Sharon Kamen picked up the phone in her apartment and dialed the weather number. A male announcer's voice told her in computerized neospeak that she should “ask Kansas City Federal Savings about a money-saving IRA account. Time ... seven nineteen. The forecast is ... cloudy with thundershowers likely. Turning colder tonight.” She hung up and put the small, collapsible umbrella in her briefcase.