AS HIS CAR CRUNCHED THE GRAVEL on the side of the road next to the Epp Farm, Kommissar Rolf Wundt once again had to lean forward, pinch the bridge of his nose, and force his eyes open. Last night, he and Klara had left the dishes for the next morning, so the French press that usually provided him with sunrise fuel was lying in pieces in the sink when Inspector Hans-Josef banged on his door at a quarter to five. As a consequence, Rolf’s perception of the ride from Munich consisted of snatches of crime related mutterings — body found, young girl stripped to the waist, message carved in chest — blended with fading images of last night’s dream whose narrative was gone but whose imagery had been dominated by bats, moons, and a strange hurdy-gurdy melody.
Hans-Josef, in the seat next to Rolf, edged his lean, smooth-skinned face into Rolf’s field of view and asked, “You okay, boss?”
“Sure. If I felt any better, I could be embalmed. Two hours of sleep is enough for anyone.”
Hans-Josef didn’t laugh or smile at this. All Rolf got for his pains was a nod of acknowledgement, which wouldn’t have bothered Rolf if Hans-Josef hadn’t been so insufferably alive right now. “What are you doing awake and chipper, Inspector?”
“I’ve never really needed much sleep, sir.” Hans-Josef said. Rolf remembered those days fondly, when functioning on an hour’s catnap felt like a triumph against God and nature. Now he just felt like someone who’d been run over by a convoy of half-filled container lorries. Glancing up at his protégé, Rolf did catch, just for a second in the sun, sight of the one gray wave in Hans-Josef’s blonde ocean of headage. You are mortal after all.
The crunching noises from the car’s tires came to a stop. The engine’s rumblings sputtered out and gave way to the tweeting of birds. Hans-Josef tried to look grave, but there was still a greenhorn’s excitement in his shoulders. “We’re here, boss.”
Their driver got out of the car and opened the rear doors for Rolf and Hans-Josef. Rolf’s knees creaked as he hauled himself out of the car. The air smelled of mist and manure, but even though fog still clung to the earth, Rolf could feel that it was going to be a hot day.
At the rear of Epp’s farm, a small group of yokels had gathered, probably the Epps and their near neighbors. Rolf reached into his pocket for his notebook. “Hans-Josef, figure out which of these people is the family and hold onto them. Then get everyone else’s names and addresses. Make them show ID.”
“Why?”
“Any killer who’d carve a message into a body might want to watch our reaction to the message.”
“Got it.”
Hans-Josef started his march over to the rustics. Rolf paused to survey his surroundings and to gather the energy he’d need to start absorbing the crime scene. In front of the Epps’ farmhouse were parked a local police car and a hearse from Hammerstrom’s Funeral Parlor in Dachau. The hearse’s driver, having a laugh at something he was reading in a magazine, sat behind the wheel of his vehicle.
No one would ever think that the Epp’s farmhouse belonged to a rich man. It was a Thuringian-style house covered in peeling, sun ravaged sky blue paint... the sort of place that begged a man to pause in life’s pleasures. A dented mailbox, with the name “Epp” painted on it in dribbly black letters, sat atop a leaning post that was losing a long war of attrition against soil erosion and gravity. The crops in the back, by contrast, looked healthy and tall, on course for the autumn harvest. Ranks of evergreens bounded the Epps’ working fields. There wasn’t another farm house in sight. People who lived like this had a strong taste for isolation. What a way for it to go.
Rustic and unprepossessing as it was, the Epps’ farmhouse didn’t look like a murder house, but Rolf had learned long ago not to take appearances seriously. Germany was full of murder houses these days, but none of them advertised it.
Rolf approached the neighbors. He noticed that the one Hans-Josef was talking to was bleary eyed, sickly looking, dressed in a pajama top and wrinkled brown trousers, and holding a camera.
“This is Gregor Grunwald, boss. He took pictures of the body for us.”
“How soon can you have them for us?”
Gregor opened his mouth to speak. Rolf heard a click off to his right, turned, and spotted a scaly-skinned man in a cheap suit snapping pictures of the corpse, which lay exposed because the blanket that had been covering her was now in a heap a meter from her head. Rolf strode up to the sick bastard and snatched his camera out of his hands.
“Who the fuck—” said the pervert.
Rolf pulled out his badge and showed it. Upon sticking it back in his pocket, Rolf took hold of the film door at the back of the camera. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the pervert said.
“You’d better have some awfully good friends if you’re going to tell me what to do.”
This gray eyed, hairless little creep’s lips curled into a sneer. “Is Gauleiter Streicher a good enough friend for you, Kommissar?”
Hans-Josef appeared at Rolf’s shoulder. “I was about to tell you. He’s from Der Stürmer, boss.”
“Der Stürmer,” Rolf said.
“It’s a living, Kommissar,” the photographer said.
“You saw his credentials?” Rolf said.
“Yeah,” Hans-Josef said. “I saw them. His name is Etzel Dietwieller.”
Rolf fidgeted with the camera. “It’s a living, Etzel?”
“Yeah.”
“Please. In this economy, there are probably plenty of more honorable jobs for a man of your qualifications.”
“Oh?”
“Sure. Doping horses, rolling drunks, selling the sexual favors of chickens...”
“You’re a million laughs, Kommissar. Give me my camera back. Now.” Herr Etzel was the South Bavaria and North Austria Distributor of smug.
Rolf toyed with the handle of the film door for a moment, calculating how much damage would result if he ran Etzel in, kept him in the Tombs for three days, and chalked it all up to routine questioning.
“Boss?” Hans-Josef sounded scared. Apparently he’d finished his calculations and approximated the terror of the sum.
“Eat it.” Rolf shoved the camera into Etzel’s guts as hard as he could, knocking Etzel’s breath out and sending him down to one knee.
Quickly, Etzel gathered himself. He growled, as he started to stand up. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Rolf grabbed Etzel’s shoulder and pressed until Etzel’s knee again met the earth. “How did you know the body was here? Who told you?”
Etzel snapped. “I got a tip.”
“What kind of tip?”
“The anonymous kind, Kommissar. Would you let me do my job now, please?”
Seized by an unhealthy and possibly career ending urge to tear off the smug son of a bitch’s head, only a supreme act of will enabled Rolf to drop this line of questioning and release Etzel’s shoulder.
Soon Etzel’s shutter resumed its clicking, and Rolf, anxious to direct his attention elsewhere, looked over to the back door of the house, where an elderly couple stood, dressed in ill-fitting clothes. The old man looked as if just coming near a plow would break his twig of a torso in half. His frau was plump and ruddy faced, with a tension in her features that suggested great and painful forces at work underneath. Rolf asked Hans-Josef, “The Epps?”
Hans-Josef nodded. “Their son’s inside.”
“Awake?”
“I don’t know. They just mentioned a son.”
Rolf checked the windows. No faces in them. “Not a particularly curious guy, is he?"
With one last click, Etzel snapped up the last bit of the girl’s soul. He turned around, tipped his hat to Rolf, and ambled back toward the road. Four uniformed officers passed by him on their way over. Rolf turned his attention to the body. She lay in the dirt, legs and arms splayed wide — posed that way presumably. She’d been stripped to the waist. Her skirt, a blue one, was still on, stippled with dried blood. Rolf knelt in the dirt and pulled the skirt’s fabric up to find the label inside, which was stamped with the abbreviation for the Bund Deutscher Mädel: BDM.
“She was in the BDM. There was a parade yesterday at the Köningsplatz, wasn’t there?” Rolf said.
“Sure." Hans-Josef's left eyebrow started crawling up his forehead. “You weren’t there?”
Rolf shot Hans-Josef a dirty look for asking. “Since you were there, presumably, did you see any BDM girls in attendance?”
“Of course. Troops. They were laying flowers beforehand.”
“Well, check to see if any of the BDM groups are missing a girl. She was wearing the uniform, so she must have been doing something official.”
“Got it, boss.”
Rolf looked behind the girl’s head. No blood spray, neither was there any sign of blood on the body or alongside it, apart from the area right around her neck wound and the carved message of Judenmörder Erwache! above her breasts. The stiffness of the girl’s jaw and the purple blotches on the skin of her lower portions told Rolf that she’d died either early this morning or late last night. Rolf pictured her murderer carrying her here in the moonless dark, dropping her in this spot, manipulating stiffening limbs to achieve the effect he wanted. But why go to all that trouble to pose her here? Who was he trying to terrify? Rolf told the uniformed officers, “Fan out into the field. Look for footprints, blood drops, any dropped belongings that might identify the girl or a suspect.”
The uniformed cops nodded their acknowledgment and, chatting amongst themselves, headed out into Epp’s crops. Rolf stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees. Hans-Josef asked, “What do you make of the letters?”
“Judenmörder Erwache? Nothing.”
“It sounds like the Jews to me.”
“From such conclusions promotions spring.”
Hans-Josef beamed. “Thank you, sir.”
“That wasn’t meant as praise, Inspector.” Rolf’s eyes were still fixed on the body. A fly landed on her swollen bottom lip. Nature was returning her to base uses. “At one of the Jack the Ripper crime scenes, there was a message scrawled on a wall near the body: ‘The Jews are the men who won’t be blamed for nothing’. Would you conclude a Jewish Jack the Ripper from this?”
“You want me to say no, sir.”
“Assuming the graffiti was connected with the murder at all — not a safe assumption — it could have meant that the killer was Jewish and was taunting police by saying he could forever elude blame...”
“Which turned out to be right.”
“Or,” Rolf's hand rose with its index finger pointed skyward, a gesture he'd stolen from Herr Kohl, his trigonometry teacher. “The killer could have been making an anti-Semitic comment to justify his own butchery.”
“I take your point, boss, but what else could this message mean, besides Awaken, Jewish murderers?”
Rolf bent down and shooed the fly off of the girl’s lip. It buzzed around briefly before reclaiming its perch. To the fly, the victim was food and a repository for eggs, one it would not surrender easily. Thinking instead to cover the girl again, Rolf stepped over her to collect the navy blue blanket. A half second after picking it up by its corner, Rolf dropped the blanket as if it were a plague rat when five of the black ants swarming on it made a bid to seize control of his hand. He scraped his hand against his pant leg to dislodge the little biters. “We need to get her out of here.”
“I’ll tell the undertaker,” Hans-Josef said. They started walking around the house. “You were saying, though, sir?”
"Why am I following you?”
“I don’t know. But since you are...”
“Right. Anyway, there are a few ways to think of it. Does it mean ‘Awaken Jewish murderers’, ‘the Jew murderer awakes’ or ‘Wake up, murderers of Jews’? The killer might have wanted us to blame the Jews. Or, for all we know, the girl might be Jewish and he might have dressed her in a BDM uniform as a kind of cruel joke. Who knows? I’ll tell you what is worth thinking about, though: think of the way she was posed and where she was posed. The killer wanted the body to be seen here, his message to be read here. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me either,” Rolf said. “But this seems like an unlikely place for a terrorist to spread his message. The Epps aren’t Jewish, right?”
“Right,” Hans-Josef said.
“So why say it to them?”
They had, by this time, rounded the house to the front walk. Hans-Josef raised his hand to wave the undertaker over. Rolf said, “That fellow you were talking to who snapped the official pictures looked a little green.”
“Yeah. I get the impression he’s not used to this kind of thing. He mostly does family portraits. The local cops pulled him out of bed because they didn’t know who else to ask. He said he’d have pictures ready for us by noon.”
“Good." Feeling a sudden jolt of fatigue, Rolf rubbed his face and shook his head. "I’m going to go back and talk to the Epps.”
As the undertaker approached, a shout came up from the field. “Footprints!”
Rolf and Hans-Josef trotted around the house. A uniformed cop waved his arms above the crops. “How many footprints!” Rolf shouted.
“One set! I see dried blood!”
“Is there a road back there?” Rolf asked Hans-Josef.
Hans-Josef shrugged. “I don’t know, boss. I’ve never been out here. I guess there could be.”
“I’ll bet there is. Help them follow the footprints. Don’t let them step across them and fuck them up. I want pictures and a guy out here to take plaster molds of them. If you get to a road, look for tire tracks. I think she was killed a long way from here.”
“You want molds of the tire tracks too?”
“If any, yes. And pictures,” Rolf said. “Now get back there.”
Hans-Josef waved the photographer over, said a couple of words to him, and they both dashed into the field. Rolf turned around. The undertaker and his assistant rounded the house’s corner with a stretcher and blanket. Mr. and Mrs. Epp watched them from their back door. If Rudolf Epp, the Bismarck era painter who shared the Epps’ name, had defined the Platonic form of the Teutonic rustic, these two were the least recognizable shadows of it. They were bent, careworn people, white haired and liver-spotted, who’d worked well past their best years, wearing patched and faded clothes whose oldest threads probably predated the war. They didn’t look like people who’d ever bounced a grandchild on a knee or imparted time-tested wisdom to a beaming youth.
Rolf said. “Mr. Epp, I’ve finished my examination of the body. The undertakers will be taking her away now. Your field will be yours again soon.”
Mr. Epp nodded the only way he could: grimly. “Thank you, sir.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Epp said. “Poor child.”
Rolf watched the undertaker lay the stretcher beside the body. “I understand you have a son. Would it be possible for him to join us for a talk? I have some questions.”
The Epps looked at each other, as if each was trying to find in the other’s eyes a reason not to panic. Of course, they had no right to refuse. Rolf’s asking had been merely a courtesy.
Mrs. Epp said, “Yes, of course. Come inside.”
Rolf followed Mrs. Epp in. Mr. Epp trailed him. After a brief pass through the laundry area and a well used, and well stained, kitchen, they came into the parlor, where faded fabric couches and chairs — floral patterned — faced each other like football players before the whistle’s blown. The coffee table, lacquer worn down to nothing and chipped at the edges, kept the couches and chairs apart. A newspaper lay open on the table. Mr. Epp quickly moved past Rolf and grabbed it. Rolf almost told the old man that he didn’t care what newspapers he was reading, but he doubted the old man would have believed him if he’d said it, and it was, at any rate, beside the point.
“We’re sorry the place is such a mess,” Mrs. Epp said, just after her husband snatched the newspaper off the table.
“That’s all right,” Rolf said. “My house is in a similar state.”
“Sit, Kommissar,” Mr. Epp said. “Please. I’ll get my son.”
Rolf sat on the couch, and instantly found it to be a lumpy, uncomfortable perch. He shifted, trying to find a groove that fit him. After a search that seemed longer than it was, he found a bearable spot. Mrs. Epp continued to stand, watching Rolf as if he were a wild animal she’d loosed in her house.
“You can sit too, ma’am,” Rolf said.
“Yes. I was just wondering if you’d care for something, some tea or coffee. It is early for you, I’m sure.”
“If it’s no trouble.”
“Oh, no. I usually make some around this time. My husband and son are both addicts, you see. How do you take it?”
“Just some cream, if you have it.”
“Very good.” Mrs. Epp shuffled out to the kitchen.
“None of you are Jewish, by any chance?” Rolf raised his voice to ensure it reached the kitchen.
The clanging of pots almost obscured Mrs. Epp’s reply: “No, Kommissar.”
Rolf’s attention turned to the pictures on the wall. He couldn’t see them well from his vantage, but was afraid if he got up he’d lose the groove he’d found in his cushion. Two of the photos were posed portraits — a wedding photo and a framed daguerrotype of an ancient relative of the Epps, a grandfather or grandmother perhaps — but another, smaller, and more recent picture showed what looked like Mr. and Mrs. Epp with their arms around a young man in military uniform: their son presumably. Rolf spotted several other places on the wall where pictures must have hung recently; their bent nails jutted from the floral wallpaper. Musing on the floral emphasis of the décor, Rolf decided it was too heavy and insistent, a kind of desperate overcompensation.
The tromp of heavy shoes heralded Mr. Epp's return through the arch to the foyer. Entering quickly and silently behind him was a slight, short, middle-aged man of medium height and nervous movements, dressed in ratty, drooping, faded blue pajamas. His eyes looked watery, his skin almost as pallid as that of the young girl under the blanket. At his hairline a long scar wound across his forehead before dropping down to his left eye. The way Epp the Younger’s eyes darted about put Rolf in mind of a wounded leopard, scanning for hyenas and hoping that he’ll make it to a tree in time.
Mr. Epp said, “Kommissar, this is my son, Joachim. Joachim, this is Kommissar Wundt of the criminal police.”
Joachim nodded so quickly that Rolf feared he’d snap his neck.
Mrs. Epp returned with a cup of coffee for Rolf, but apparently no accommodation for her family. Rolf took a sip. It was decent but unmemorable, a drink more for fuel than pleasure. Still, he smiled at Mrs. Epp. “Thank you, ma’am. That helps me a great deal.”
“You’re welcome, Kommissar.”
“Could everybody sit? The way you’re all standing makes me a little nervous.” Rolf said.
Tremulously, the three members of the Epp family took seats, Mr. and Mrs. Epp on the opposite couch, Joachim on a chair to Rolf’s right.
Mrs. Epp clasped her hands in her lap. “Why did you ask if we’re Jewish?”
“Just trying to make sense of the words carved in the victim’s chest. If one of you was Jewish, that might help explain.” Rolf opened his notebook. “But anyway, Mr. Epp...”
“Father or son?” Mr. Epp said.
“You, sir. The elder Epp.” Rolf smiled. “Mr. Epp, when did you discover the body?”
“I didn’t,” Mr. Epp said.
“That was me, Kommissar.” Mrs. Epp raised her hand. “I was going out to collect eggs from our chickens for breakfast.”
“What time was this, if you know?”
Mrs. Epp took a second to recall. “It must have been about four forty-five. I went out, and I saw… her.”
“Did you touch the body or move it in any way?”
Mrs. Epp reached into her pocket for a handkerchief as tears pooled in her eyes. “No. I saw the wound on her neck. Her eyes were staring. I screamed.”
“Did you hear the scream, Mr. Epp?”
The elder Epp nodded as he put his arm around his wife, who was now weeping in earnest. Rolf turned his eyes to Joachim, who, strangely, didn’t seem to be moving to comfort his mother. He just sat there, pale and isolated, as if he were in another room, trying to think of something far away.
Rolf shifted on the couch, trying and failing to bring the groove with him as he turned toward Joachim. “Did you hear the scream?”
Joachim shook his head. Mr. Epp interjected, “My son often sleeps heavily.”
Pen scratching, Rolf committed this information to his notebook. “So you heard the scream at four forty-five, Mr. Epp. What did you do then?”
“Well, I rolled out of bed and went to the window to see what was wrong. I saw the body there and my wife, and I ran downstairs.” Mr. Epp held his wife so that she could cry into his chest.
“According to my information, the police station didn’t log your call until five twenty-three. What took so long?”
Mr. Epp clasped his wife tighter. Rolf could see that it was an effort for him to maintain composure. The old man cleared his throat. “Well, sir. We don’t have a telephone. I don’t know if you noticed.”
Rolf smiled. “You haven’t shown me the whole house, Mr. Epp. Still, I take it you’re telling the truth.”
Mrs. Epp pulled her head back, wiping her face with the handkerchief and shuddering as the emotion she was now fighting to contain forced its way out of her. Mr. Epp stroked her back. “Anyway," Mr. Epp said, "I had to get dressed, get into the truck and drive to the Katzenmuller farm, which is a couple of kilometers down the road, to place the call. I’m sure they’ll verify that.”
“I’m sure they will, Mr. Epp,” Rolf said. “Now, Joachim, you didn’t get up when your mother screamed?”
“No, Kommissar.” Joachim seemed to fold in on himself when spoken to, a reaction Rolf found familiar. In fact, he saw it every day.
“Joachim, when did you spend time in prison?”
“I—” Joachim sputtered. He seemed less surprised to hear the question than he was afraid to answer it.
Mrs. Epp came to his rescue, her voice unsteady but audible. “It was three years, sir. Three years. From April 1933 to last March. Three years.”
Mr. Epp nodded. “Three years.”
Rolf began to feel the tingle of being close. He saw Joachim’s hands clutching the silver handle of a straight razor, pictured his ecstatic face registering the drunken thrill of the sight of fresh blood after three years’ incarceration. Was it this that Joachim was trying to hide beneath the image of the quivering stick in the chair? The pose of enfeeblement would be effective in convincing young girls that no harm would come to them if they helped Joachim put a suitcase in the back seat of a car, or directed him to some lonely road where he could do with them as he liked. Questions remained, to be sure. How could such a slight man carry a woman across that field? Why carry her across the field instead of just driving up to the back door and dumping her? And why dump her here, unless he wanted to get caught, unless this was his way of committing suicide? All good questions to work out at headquarters, certainly. “What did you do to get you thrown into prison, Joachim?”
“My political views mostly.”
“Oh? Nothing else?”
“Just one thing: I shot a man.”
Rolf put his notebook away and patted his pocket to make sure the handcuffs were in there and not in his thicker coat at home. (He’d forgotten them there once and suffered no end of trouble and embarrassment bringing in a rape suspect last February.) “Where were you last night, Joachim?”
“He was with us!” Mrs. Epp cried.
“Don’t lie for me!” Joachim shouted. “I was out. Drinking.”
“Where?”
“At the Breckelbräuhaus about four kilometers from here.”
“Were you there all night?”
“They close at half past midnight.”
“How did you get home?”
“I assume I walked.”
“You assume?”
“I don’t remember.”
The metal of Rolf’s handcuffs felt reassuringly cold. Rolf shifted his feet and leaned forward, ready to seize Joachim at the first sign of movement. “You don’t remember? I suppose you also don’t remember that girl! The dead girl that you couldn’t even work up enough curiosity about to come to a window!”
Joachim’s eyes widened. “I’d already seen her! Why should I stare?”
“Of course you’d already seen her. On the road, last night, probably lost. You saw her, and you took her off in the bushes, and in the night’s chill you killed her, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
Joachim sprang from his chair. Rolf lurched forward and grabbed him. Joachim struggled more effectively and strongly than Rolf would have anticipated. But of course Joachim had done time, so the holds and footwork involved in controlling a suspect were familiar to him. Still, whatever knowledge Joachim had availed him nothing. Rolf wrestled the graying stick insect to the floor, pressed his face into the faded carpet nap, brought his arms together and cuffed his wrists. Behind him, Mrs. Epp wailed. After Rolf took his knee out of Epp’s back and stood, he focused his attention on the Epps’ relatively bare photograph wall, which helped distract him from the weeping mother while he collected himself. Couldn’t an old couple like this have found a few more photos to hang — a birthday, a visit, a trip, a good harvest, anything?
Maybe the empty hooks near the pictures told the story, Rolf thought as he raised Epp the Younger to his feet. Maybe the Epps feared letting a policeman see the things that, in more carefree days, had made them happy.