the Amber Room

'I'm a lawyer, Rachel, not an international investigator.'

'Okay. Let's take this to the police. They could look into it.'

'That's far more practical than your first suggestion. But the trail's still years old.'

Her face hardened. 'I hope to hell Marla and Brent don't inherit your complacency. I'd like to think they'd want to know what happened if a plane blew out of the sky with you and me on it.'

She knew exactly how to push his buttons. It was one of the things he most resented about her. 'Did you read those articles?' he asked. 'People have died searching for the Amber Room. Maybe my parents. Maybe not. One thing's for certain. Your father didn't want you involved. And you're way out of your league. What you know about art could fit inside a thimble.'

'Along with your nerve.'

He stared hard into her angry eyes, bit his tongue, and tried to be understanding. She'd buried her father this morning. Still, one word kept reverberating through his brain.

Bitch.

He took a deep breath before quietly saying, 'Your second suggestion is the most practical. Why don't we let the police handle this.' He paused. 'I realize how upset you are. But, Rachel, Karol's death was an accident.'

'Trouble is, Paul, if it wasn't, then add my father to the list of casualties along with your parents.' She cut him one of her looks. The kind he'd seen too many times before. 'Still want to be practical?'

TWENTY

Wednesday, May 14, 10:25 a.m.

Rachel forced herself to climb out of bed and get the children dressed. She then dropped the kids off at school and reluctantly headed for the courthouse. She'd not been in her chambers since last Friday, having taken Monday and Tuesday off.

Throughout the morning her secretary made things easy, running interference, rerouting calls, deflecting lawyers and the other judges. Originally the week had been scheduled for civil jury trials, but they were all hastily postponed. An hour ago she'd called the Atlanta police department and requested somebody from Homicide be sent to her chambers. She wasn't the most popular judge with the police. Everyone seemed to assume that since she was once a hard-nosed prosecutor, she'd be a pro-police judge. But her rulings, if they could be labeled, tended to be defense-oriented. Liberal was the term the Fraternal Order of Police and the press liked to use. Traitor, was the description she'd been told a lot of the narcotics detectives whispered. But she didn't care. The Constitution was there to protect people. The police were supposed to work within its bounds, not outside them. Her job was to make sure they didn't take any shortcuts. How many times had her father preached, when government comes before law, tyranny is not far behind.

And if anyone should know, he should.

'Judge Cutler,' her secretary said through the speaker phone. Most times they were simply Rachel and Sami; only when someone came around was she labeled judge. 'A Lieutenant Barlow is here from the Atlanta police. In response to your call.'

She quickly dabbed her eyes with a tissue. The picture of her father on the credenza had triggered more tears. She stood and smoothed her cotton skirt and blouse.

The paneled door opened and a thin man with wavy black hair strutted in. He closed the door behind him and introduced himself as Mike Barlow, assigned to the homicide division.

She regained her judicial composure and offered a seat. 'I appreciate your coming over, Lieutenant.'

'No problem. The department always tries to accommodate the bench.'

But she wondered. The tone was irritatingly cordial, bordering on condescending.

'After you called, I pulled the incident report on your father's death. I'm sorry about your loss. It appears to be one of those accidents that sometimes happen.'

'My father was fairly independent. Still drove a car. He had no real health problems, and he'd climbed those stairs for years without a problem.'

'Your point?'

She was liking his tone even less. 'You tell me.'

'Judge, I get the message. But there's nothing here to suggest foul play.'

'He survived a Nazi concentration camp, Lieutenant. I think he could climb stairs.'

Barlow seemed unpersuaded. 'The report says nothing appears missing. His wallet was on the dresser. The televisions, stereo, VCR were all there. Both doors were unlocked. No evidence of forced entry anywhere. Where's the burglary?'

'My father left the doors unlocked all the time.'

'That's not smart, but it doesn't appear to have contributed to his death. Look, I agree, no evidence of robbery could lead to an implication of murder, but there's nothing to suggest anyone was even around when he died.'

She was curious. 'Did your people search the house?'

'I've been told they looked around. Nothing elaborate. There seemed no need. I'm curious, what do you think was the motive for murder? Your father have enemies?'

She did not answer him. Instead she asked, 'What did the medical examiner say?'

'Broken neck. Caused by the fall. No evidence of other trauma except bruising on the arms and legs from the fall. Again, Judge, what makes you think your father's death was something other than accidental?'

She considered telling him about the file in the freezer, Danya Chapaev, the Amber Room, and Paul's parents. But the arrogant ass didn't even want to be here, and she'd sound like a conspiratorial nut. He was right. There was no proof her father had been shoved down the stairs. Nothing that connected his death to any 'curse of the Amber Room,' as some of the articles suggested. So what if her father was interested in the subject? He loved art. Once worked with it every day. So what if he was reading articles in his study, stashed more in his freezer, unfolded a German map in the den, and possessed a keen interest in a man heading for Germany to dig in forgotten caves? A huge leap from that to murder. Maybe Paul was right. She decided to let it lie with this guy.

'Nothing, Lieutenant. You're quite right. Just a tragic fall. Thanks for coming by.'

Rachel sat sullen in her office and thought back to when she was sixteen, her father explaining for the first time about Mauthausen, and how the Russians and Dutch worked the stone quarry, hauling tons of boulders up a long series of narrow steps to the camp where more prisoners chiseled them into bricks.

The Jews, though, weren't so lucky. Each day they were tossed down the cliff into the quarry simply for sport, their screams echoing as bodies flew through the air, bets taken by the guards on how many times flesh and bones would bounce before being silenced by death. Eventually, her father explained, the SS had to stop the hurling because it so disrupted the work.

Not because they were killing people, she remembered him saying, only because it affected the work.

Her father cried that day, one of the few times ever, and so had she. Her mother had told her about his war experiences and what he'd done afterward, but her father hardly mentioned the time. She'd always noticed the smeared tattoo on his left forearm, wondering when he'd explain.

They forced us to run into electric fence. Some did willingly, tired of torture. Others were shot, hanged, or injected in the heart. The gas came later.

She'd asked how many died in Mauthausen. And he told her without hesitation that 60 percent of the two hundred thousand never made it out. He arrived in April 1944. The Hungarian Jews came shortly thereafter, every one of them slaughtered like sheep. He'd helped heave the bodies from the gas chamber to the oven, a daily ritual, commonplace, like taking out the garbage, the guards used to say. She remembered him telling her about one night in particular, toward the end, when Hermann Goring marched into the camp wearing a pearl gray uniform.

Evil on two legs, he called him.

Goring had ordered four Germans murdered, her father part of the detail that poured water over their naked