Lying in wait

17

I told Sue Danielson I was going home for lunch. We're not in the kind of business where it's fashionable to "do" lunch. The implication behind what I said, of course, was that I'd be dining on a homemade sandwich of my own making. The last part was a little white lie. There wasn't a scrap of bread in the house, and nothing to put on it if there had been. I solved the lunch problem by grabbing a sandwich from the downstairs deli, the one on the ground-floor level of Belltown Terrace.

Famished, I inhaled the sandwich, then turned my attention to my real reason-my shameful, nonmacho, secret reason for coming home at lunchtime. To take a nap. Even I could see the folly of getting up at three o'clock in the morning and following that with a late-evening stab at salsa dancing. There was a time when I would have thought nothing of such an arrangement, but age begets wisdom. Now I have better sense.

I set an alarm for one-fifteen and stretched out full-length in the window seat. The fog had burned off early that day. With the sun headed south for the winter, the southwestern exposure of the building as well as my living-room window seat were both drenched in a splash of warm sunlight. Within moments I fell sound asleep.

Sue had agreed to pick me up in a departmental car. I hoped it wouldn't be the Mustang again. So when I woke up at one-fifteen, there was plenty of time between then and our one-thirty appointment for me to check for messages. The only new one was from Ralph Ames, my attorney, calling from Phoenix to say that he would be in town on Sunday afternoon to work on our quarterly trust report. Did we want to get together? He'd call back later to try setting something up.

In addition to the call from Ames, there was one saved message as well-the call from my grandmother, Beverly Piedmont. Guilt-ridden again, I dialed her up right away.

"Sorry. I didn't get your message until late last night when it was too late to call back."

"Oh, that's all right," she replied. "Don't worry about it. I was just feeling sorry for myself. I shouldn't have bothered you."

"It's no bother. What about dinner tonight? I'll have to go back to work later on in the evening, sometime after nine. But I could take a break earlier than that-say, around five-thirty or so."

"I don't want to be in the way, Jonas. Are you sure it isn't too much trouble?"

"I'm sure."

"Where shall we go?" she asked. "The King's Table? It's a buffet. There's one right down here on Market."

"No," I said. "It'll be a surprise. And it's also my treat."

"But…"

I stopped her in midobjection. "No buts, now. Just be ready by the time I get there."

I had to break the connection, then, because my call-waiting buzzed. When I switched over to the other line, Sue Danielson was calling to let me know that she and the Mustang were both waiting downstairs.

Caffe Minnie is barely three blocks from Belltown Terrace. It was still crowded with late-lunch customers, so the only available four-top table was located in the triangular, window-lined front dining room-not the best place for conducting any kind of confidential conversation. By one-thirty Sue and I were settled at the table and sipping coffee out of clear glass cups. Kari Gebhardt and her boyfriend arrived ten minutes later.

Even without an introduction, I would have recognized Kari anywhere. Six feet tall, blond, and blue-eyed, she seemed a carbon copy of her mother as I remembered her back when Else Didriksen was a senior at Ballard High School. The only real difference was a ranginess and muscle tone in Kari that pointed more to participating directly in athletics rather than sticking to the sidelines and serving on a cheerleading squad.

The young man she introduced to us as Michael Morris was a good five inches shorter than she was. My initial impression of him was that he was a handsome little shit with light brown, wildly curly hair, chiseled features, and an attitude. Tight-lipped, he sat down, crossed his arms, grunted his order for coffee, and then glowered at me while Kari ordered hers. I wondered what his beef was and was it with me or with Kari?

The uncomfortable tension between the two young people was immediately obvious. Kari seemed near tears, which wasn't all that surprising. Considering what was going on in her life, God knows there was plenty of reason for her to cry. But still, from the way she and Michael sat at the table-not touching; avoiding one another's gaze-I wondered if they hadn't quarreled on their way to the restaurant. If so, I had the distinct impression that the fight was far from over-only postponed for the time being.

"I don't know why she has to come see you like this," Michael said huffily, glancing around the noisy room once our waiter had delivered two more cups of coffee. "What do you want to talk to Kari for? She wasn't even in town when her father died. She was home in Bellingham with me."

"This interview is strictly routine," I explained. "When someone is murdered, the only way homicide detectives can get to know the victim is through talking to people who knew him."

My explanation wasn't enough to mollify Kari Gebhardt's self-appointed defender. "Why now?" Michael demanded. "And why today? Hasn't Kari been through enough? I mean, she and her mother just finished making funeral arrangements."

"I know it's a difficult time for you right now. For all of you," I added, letting my gaze linger on Michael's defiant face. "And I realize how painful it must be to have to endure this kind of interview along with everything else, but you must understand we can't afford to wait until later. With every hour of delay, the killer's trail grows that much colder, and we're that much less likely to catch him."

"Please, Michael," Kari said. "You know we have to help. For Mother's sake if nothing else."

Kari's appeal caused Michael's expression to soften a little, but his arms remained folded across his chest. "Go ahead and ask your damn questions then," he said. "Let's get this over with."

Sue started off with the basics-names, telephone numbers, addresses, that kind of thing. When she asked for their addresses and phone numbers in Bellingham, Kari flushed before she answered. "You won't give that information to our families, will you? About where we're living, I mean."

Neither Sue nor I made a comment, and Kari rushed on. "Michael and I share an apartment up at school. I had a female roommate to begin with, but she moved out at the end of last semester. I never quite got around to telling my grandmother that Michael and I were living together. Sharing expenses cuts down on costs for both of us, but I don't think Granny would approve. And I know Mother wouldn't.

"When we've been here in Seattle, Michael stays on Mercer Island with his folks, and I've stayed with a girlfriend. This time…" She broke off.

"I can see how this time things are different," Sue finished, and Kari nodded gratefully, relieved that she didn't have to continue. She seemed to be having difficulty making her voice work without dissolving into tears.

From the looks of them, I guessed that expenses weren't all Kari Gebhardt and Michael Morris were sharing. I remembered what it was like back when I was a horny young man. And it isn't so long ago that I've forgotten how such men think. For a sexually active young adult, it's a real comedown to go from living together to being split up into separate celibate sleeping arrangements in disapproving parental households. It's like a hotshot shift boss being booted back to the gang.

I wondered if Michael's role as Kari's surly defender wasn't a guise used to cover a more general distress that stemmed from the fact that Michael Morris currently wasn't getting any. He probably expected to die soon of pure sexual deprivation. I felt like telling him that doing without isn't fatal. In the long run, it's all part of the educational process.

"What are you two studying up in Bellingham?" I asked. I thought but didn't add, "besides the obvious."

It was an icebreaker-type inquiry, designed to bridge the necessary gap between presumably easy questions and tough ones. To my surprise, my supposedly innocuous question wasn't innocuous at all. The quick warning glance that passed from Michael to Kari put me on instant alert.

Kari was the one who answered. "We're history majors," she said. "When we graduate, we both plan to go for advanced degrees."

"What kind of history?" I asked.

"Twentieth-century," Michael Morris replied.

Kari looked at him, one eyebrow raised and questioning. "I told you on the way here, Michael," she said. "I'm going to tell them everything." She ignored the almost imperceptible shake of his head and forged on.

"We're both interested in World War Two, Detective Beaumont. Particularly the European front. We're doing a joint independent study project on the Holocaust that may eventually evolve into a joint Master's project as well."

I'm not a golfer, so I've never hit a hole in one. The feeling, however, has to be similar. With that one effortless question and without even having to dig for it, we suddenly had a pretty good idea of what it was that had gone wrong between Kari Gebhardt and her father.

Closing my eyes, I could visualize the rank upon rank of Nazi toy soldiers standing on the shelves in Gunter Gebhardt's locked basement. A lover of Nazis would be prone to think of what had happened to Jews in Hitler's Europe more in terms of "Final Solution" than as "Holocaust." Justification rather than horror. Rationalization rather than responsibility.

For some inexplicable reason, Kari, the Nazi-lover's very own daughter, had opted to identify with the slaughtered victims rather than with the perpetrators who were her father's heroes.

This was nothing short of a fundamental disagreement, but then that's how generation gaps usually work. Often, American children in particular seem to be programmed to oppose their parents' most cherished beliefs. I figured Kari was just keeping up her end of the bargain.

"Did your father know anything about this study project of yours?" I asked.

Kari shook her head. "Since he wasn't paying a dime for my schooling, I didn't think it was any of his business. I'm not a dependent, you know. I'm on a scholarship, although when I need help, Granny usually slips me a little something."

That figured. Inge Didriksen strikes again. Everyone should have such a noninterfering mother-in-law.

"Tell us," Sue Danielson said, "what was your father like?"

For the first time, tears sprang to Kari Gebhardt's eyes. "He was a liar and a cheat," she answered.

Kari's tears proved to be too much for Michael. Frowning, he uncrossed his arms, leaned forward, and took her hand. "You don't have to do this, Kari," he whispered urgently. "You don't have to put yourself through this. Let's just go." He stood up.

I sensed that Kari was about to tell us something important, while Michael was ready to cut and run. "She does have to, Michael," I said. "Willingly withholding information in a homicide investigation is a felony. Now sit back down."

He sat, and I turned my attention back to Kari.

When detectives ask questions, they usually have some notion of what the answers will be. We had spent two days nosing around in what had turned out to be Gunter Gebhardt's very unsavory recent past. What we had learned pretty much agreed with Kari's simple assessment. Her father had indeed been a liar and cheat. I half expected her to tell us that years earlier she had somehow stumbled across irrefutable evidence of her father's womanizing-with some distant predecessor of Denise Whitney. I thought that would be the real basis of her feud with her father. I would have missed the mark by a country mile.

"He lied to us," Kari Gebhardt murmured. "He lied to Mother and me about everything."

"Everything?" Sue asked. "What do you mean?"

Kari paused, as if uncertain whether or not to continue. The noisy clatter of a nearby table being cleared of dishes by a green-haired busboy filled Kari's sudden silence. I was afraid she'd quit on us altogether, but she didn't.

"My father was born in a town in Bavaria, a place called Kempten. He always told us that his father was a pilot in the Luftwaffe, and that he was killed during World War Two."

"We already heard about the pilot part from someone else-your mother, I believe," I said. "Wasn't he shot down over France?"

"That's just it," Kari said, her voice breaking as she spoke. "He wasn't. That's all part of the lie along with everything else. When I was little, I used to be fascinated by all those soldiers. I'd go down in the basement and watch for hours while Dad worked on his collection. He always told me the soldiers were from his father's army, and that's why he made them-out of respect for his father. I didn't have any idea what the German Army stood for, and I didn't really come to grips with the awful reality of what went on during World War Two until I was in high school.

"I spent part of my senior year as an exchange student in Frankfurt, Germany. When we had a break from school, I hitchhiked down to Kempten and looked up the records myself. My grandfather, Hans Gebhardt, wasn't in the Luftwaffe at all. Ever. He was S.S. A Nazi guard at Sobibor."

She whispered the last word with what sounded like wrenching revulsion, as though she could barely stand to say it aloud. Her eyes met mine. They seemed to be pleading for understanding. It was as if she expected me to recognize the full implication of what those strange sounds meant.

Certainly when the words "Nazi," "the S. S," and "guards" are all used in the same breath, several awful images come inevitably to mind-Auschwitz; Dachau. Photographic images of skeletal, emaciated people with shaved heads staring hopelessly out through barbed-wire fences. But the word "Sobibor" meant nothing to me.

"What's that?" I asked. "A concentration camp?"

Kari looked at me through tear-filled eyes. She shook her head, bit her lip, and didn't answer. Couldn't. Finally overcoming his own reluctance, Michael Morris spoke up in her place.

"Not a concentration camp," he answered. "Not a work camp. Sobibor was an extermination camp. A death camp in Poland. The official record says the Germans killed two hundred fifty thousand people there in a little over a year. But that total only counts the ones who were transported there by train. Lots more came by truck or bus or on foot. Those weren't counted in the official total."

Michael spoke softly but determinedly, each word enunciated with horrifying clarity. "However they arrived, once they were inside the gate, guards gave a speech welcoming them to a work camp. Dirty and exhausted from the trip, their hair was cut off, and they were ordered to strip for cleansing showers. But gas came out of the shower heads, not water. They died like dogs being slaughtered in a pound.

"Afterward, the corpses were burned, the ashes used for fertilizer. The countryside for miles around that place is still littered with human bones."

I glanced at Kari. Her face was pale, but she appeared to be under control.

"Maybe your father was ashamed of what his father did," I suggested. "With your grandfather gone, maybe it was easier for Gunter to rewrite his father's death as a pilot than to…"

"Kari's grandfather isn't dead," Michael interrupted. "We believe he's alive and in hiding someplace. He was an S.S. guard and a deserter besides, and people are looking for him. I hope to God they find him, too," he added bitterly.

"But, Michael," Kari blurted, "what if they killed my father while they were trying to find my grandfather? I was mad at Dad. I hadn't spoken to him in years because of the way he acted about what his father did; because he lied about it and covered it up. But that doesn't give these men the right to kill him. That makes them just as bad as my grandfather was."

Voices were rising. Other people in the restaurant were beginning to stare. "Wait a minute," I said. "You're telling us that someone came looking for your Nazi war-criminal grandfather, and you think they're the ones who killed your father?"

Kari nodded. "I'm sure of it," she said.

I looked around the room. There weren't that many people around, but some of the customers seated at other nearby tables seemed entirely too interested in what was going on at ours.

"I'm sorry," I said. "This isn't something we should be discussing in such a public place. I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to come down to the department after all. At least there we'll have some privacy."

This time there was no objection from either Michael Morris or Kari Gebhardt.