One long wall leading out to a window, pale beige, was coveredwith crimson lettering. Kratz had chosen a Gothic typeface, very precise, veryneat, no drips or spatters, like a giant vampire inkjet had painted the page.
Die Fahne hoch, dieReihen fest geschlossen . . .
I found myself muttering a rough translation, “The bannerhigh, the ranks closed tight, the S. A. marches with silent solid steps.”
About a dozen eyes shifted to stare at me, distracted by mywords. “Horst Wessel song, 1927, Nazi party anthem.” Dad brought a 78 rpmrecording of it back from serving in Germany, the war and after.
I watched my own steps, not mashing any clues, but movedacross to the wall. The letters wereblood, still glistening, about two inches high, laid down and held in placewith that precision I’d seen from the door. Even up close, each line and curveshowed perfect edges. I sniffed. Kratz. I ran my fingers over the letters, aquarter inch off, not touching, and his power buzzed right through the gloves.It seemed to be keeping air away from the blood as well as holding it in place,keeping the color bold and bright.
He’d never done a scene like this before, but it fit hisprofile perfectly. Artistic murder. So much for my worries about brain-damagedphotocopiers.
I turned and looked at the corpse. “Another John Doe?” The guylooked like a Master Race type — close-cropped blond hair, blue-gray eyeshalf-open in death, tall slim muscular Hitler Youth body.
Cash shook her head. “Wolfgang Abel, Austrian, standardpassport. Commercial courier, delivering a load of cut diamonds to someinternet jeweler out in La-La land. As you might guess, the diamonds havevanished. Smaller stuff, largest a couple of carats, no settings, perfect loot.Couple million bucks, retail.”
And maybe fifty or a hundred thou, fenced. Worth a man’s life?I studied him, passed my right palm over him, feeling the power flows, checkinghis fading aura. Maybe two hours dead. Cause of death looked like blood loss.No wounds. Kratz had translated that blood straight from the arteries to thewall, same trick he’d used on the guts of John Doe back in that warehouse. Ididn’t know whether the mural had used up enough to kill the poor bastard, orwhether Kratz had dumped the rest down the toilet. That question was ME territory,not mine.
The corpse had a case still chained to his left wrist, one ofthose aluminum clamshell things about the size of a normal briefcase. It layopen and empty, complex lock unbroken. No sign of the key, and that kind oflock retained its key when open.
One of the forensics guys saw what I was staring at andduckwalked sideways to let me at it. “Whoever opened this knew what he wasdoing.”
I crouched, my knees complaining. I’m getting too old for thiskind of thing. I let my senses drift over the case, the same stuff I’d done forRidge, feeling how that aluminum disturbed the flow of energy. Yeah, I couldhave opened the lock. Just use a little power to push here and at the same time there . . .
Something else. I switched back to real vision, gaugingthings. “That case has a false side panel. Something like a half inch lessdepth on the right than on the left. This guy made a habit of smuggling otherstuff, hidden behind the sparklies.”
The city man clicked his camera and then gestured an invitation.I let my sense of energy loose again, feeling, feeling, tilted my head to oneside to change the perspective, then pulled both sides of the case outward justso. The false cover popped loose.Kratz had done the exact same move, I could feel him in front of me, and Iexpected the hideout to be empty.
It wasn’t. It held a manila envelope, not sealed. Camerasclicked and flashed again. I got another nod from the city guy, so I lifted theenvelope and opened it and slid the contents out far enough to see them.
They were a stack of papers, about as thick as a magazine, ina language or languages I couldn’t read. Looked like Cyrillic charactershand-lettered by a calligrapher, photocopies of old stuff showing stains andfading and mice or bookworms or just age and wear nibbling around the edges. Icouldn’t tell if it was in Russian or one of the other languages that use thesame alphabet. And Kratz hadn’t taken them. He hadn’t planted them, either, Icould tell that by the feel.
Several of the sheets had that Orthodox cross at the top, likeI’d seen at the warehouse.
Whatever it was, Kratz had wanted us to find it.
VIII
“A couple of things about Al Kratz that you might not getfrom the files.” We walked up and down the airport concourse, setting theoverall scene in my head, just two people killing time between planes. I’dalready done everything I could in that VIP lounge. If we stayed in there, we’dbe messing up evidence and getting in the way of the real forensics guys andgals.
“Kratz had an uncanny way of digging out your nasty secrets.He mostly worked alone, but I’d swear that guy could find more dirt than thefull staff of the CIA and KGB combined. You probably saw that case in therecords, a pedophile he killed. Nobody suspected a thing until we found thecorpse. And found the stuff he’d scattered around it, photos and kids’ clothingand such. So I’d say that if you poke deep enough, you’ll find that Wolfgangwas a closet neo-Nazi.”
I grimaced. Echoes there, my father. “The other thing, it tiesin with those papers Kratz left for us to find, was that the bastard liked tostir up stink just for the hell of it. He didn’t target people because theywere nasty. He took them out because they had something he wanted. But part ofhis screwed-up modus operandi, sortof adding insult to injury, if he found some shit on you, he made sure everyonein the neighborhood got splashed. His idea of
