Draw the Dark (26 page)

That’s when I noticed something else: all those crows were gone. Yet I sensed they were still somewhere close....

“I’ll be right back.” Before either of them could say anything, I was monkeying my way up the scaffolding to the precise spot where I’d first felt that icy wash of dread weeks ago now. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when that turned out to be level with that swastika. Then I stepped away from the ladder and turned to scan the fields and hills.

“Christian?” Uncle Hank called. “What is it, son?”

I didn’t reply. My eyes picked out the ruined house— David’s house, I knew now, and I wondered who or what had burned it down—and then, closer in, the pond with the copse of aspens at the southern tip. My breath hitched.

There were the crows. The aspens were black with them. There were so many crows that the branches of those aspens were actually bent.

And then I had it. Even if the crows hadn’t been there to point the way, I realized that there was something in the aspens
now
that had not been there when I’d gone to David’s time that first go-round—and as I thought about it, there was something
missing
from the basement of the barn that had been there the night of the murder.

In my mind, I heard Mr. Eisenmann sneering at Mordecai Witek:
She’s already spoiled goods....

“Christian?” Uncle Hank called again.

“Oh my God.” I half slid, half shimmied down the ladder to the ground. “I know what it is. I know
why
!”

I took off at a run, throwing myself down the hill toward the pond. I must’ve looked pretty crazy: my clothes still stained from my bloody nose, my hair wild. I heard them calling after me, but I didn’t slow down. My legs thrashed through damp meadow grass that grabbed at my jeans and sucked at my Chucks. As I reached the aspens, the crows screamed and lifted in a black cloud for the sky. I plunged through weedy snarls, sweeping tangles away with my hands, until I found what I was looking for.

Yes, there they were, as real as I was.

Uncle Hank and Dr. Rainier came gasping up. “What the
hell
,” Uncle Hank began.

I held one up for them to see. The stamp on the brick read:
GOLD & BRICK 1941
.

“They used them in the barn. So when they needed them again, they knew exactly where to go,” I said.

“But why?” asked Dr. Rainier. “Why do that to a baby? Who would really have cared or connected them? Marta was just a servant.”

“That’s easy. That little baby was evidence
and
a reminder, and so the killer made sure, one way or the other, that
all
the Witeks were silenced,” said Uncle Hank. “Every last one.”

Uncle Hank thought it would be better to wait until after church—not the least of which was because he could be sure where Eisenmann was and not run the risk of the old man getting wind of anything. So he and Justin stationed themselves across the street from St. Luke’s Lutheran. At the stroke of eleven—the minister at St. Luke’s is a stickler for punctuality—people started filing out of the old Lutheran
Kirke
. A few glanced at Uncle Hank and Justin, curious that the sheriff and a deputy were cooling their heels outside of church.

Eisenmann finally shuffled out in his finely tailored three-piece suit. The sun winked from the gold watch chain and fobs dangled from his vest pocket. He was chatting with the minister, using his gold wolf’s-head cane to make some point. He turned when Uncle Hank mounted the steps and said, “Sheriff, what brings you to the Lutherans this fine Sunday? Here, I always thought you were a UCC man. Now, don’t you go asking for favors for that nephew of yours. Even a Sunday dinner won’t change my mind, no matter what the Lord tells us about Christian charity.” I guess he thought that was pretty funny because that seamed and scarred gargoyle’s face of his pruned up as he laughed, the lopsided lips peeling back to show his teeth.

Uncle Hank allowed this was so and then said, “Thing is, Mr. Eisenmann, I’ve got something of yours you’re going to want to see, something I think you lost a while back.”

Eisenmann stopped laughing and frowned. “Lost? I can’t for the life of me think what you mean, Hank.”

“I think for the life of me is quite apt, sir,” said Uncle Hank, and then he held up two evidence bags. One contained Charles Eisenmann’s gold pinkie ring. The other held that old aluminum dog tag from World War II—because that’s what it was. The Germans even incised that line down the middle so one half could stay with the body, while the other was collected to keep track of the dead. It’s the reason our soldiers have two sets of tags—except during World War II, when metal was scarce.

Justin said what happened next was pretty amazing. Eisenmann’s laughter dried up. That ruined face went slack with astonishment, though the crocodile tears still flowed. For that instant, the facade of the man calling himself Charles Eisenmann crumbled away, and in his eyes, Justin saw a flare first of disbelief, then fear—and then something else not quite human.

Eisenmann tried to recover. He gave a weird little giggle, though his skin had gone milk white except for the two flaming spots of scarlet in his cheeks. “I’m sure I don’t understand, Sheriff.”

“No,” said Uncle Hank, and then he put his hand on Eisenmann’s arm, “I’m sure you do. Shall we, sir? We don’t really want to do this here, with all these people around. Let’s go in my car.”

Eisenmann seemed to become aware of the silent, staring people on the church steps—men and women who thought they knew exactly who this was—and then he said to no one in particular, “No, I don’t believe I shall. I have Sunday dinner waiting—”

“It can wait,” Uncle Hank cut in. “Please come with us— Herr Woolfe.”

Justin said that did it. A kind of groan dripped out of the old man’s misshapen mouth, and his knees buckled. He would’ve fallen if it hadn’t been for Uncle Hank and then Justin rushing up to brace him on the opposite side. A ripple of whispers ran through the crowd as Uncle Hank and Justin led the stumbling old man to a cruiser.

“Watch your head, sir,” said Uncle Hank as they helped fold the old man into the backseat. “Here.” He gently took the wolf’s-head cane from Woolfe’s slack fingers. (Yeah, talk about irony: that must’ve tickled him, taunting people with a symbol only he understood, not only a stand-in for his real name but the 8th Panzers.) “I’ll hang onto that, if you don’t mind.”

Eisenmann—or, according to Mordecai Witek’s sketchbook, Hermann Woolfe, serial number 31G-3945—turned a pleading look to Uncle Hank. His lips were trembling, and Justin said real tears splashed in the crevices and valleys of those ruined cheeks.

“They can’t kill me.” Woolfe’s eyes swam with fear. “Not after all this time . . . who cares? Besides, Witek was nothing but a Jew....”

“Sir, I don’t think you should say anything else.” Uncle Hank leaned in and buckled the old man’s seat belt. “But for the record: He was a man, with a family. They all were.”

Like I said, I wish I could’ve been there. But here’s something else I think about when I consider all those good men and women watching that cruiser pull away:

How many suspected? Or knew?

I awoke well after dark. The house was the only thing that was quiet. I lay there a moment, listening, hoping I was wrong. But I wasn’t.

Crap. I didn’t know how to feel about that.

My bedside clock read 8:15, and I was hungry. So still a little sleep-fogged, I stumbled downstairs. I dumped cereal— yeah, Cocoa Puffs—into a bowl along with some milk and ate standing up at the kitchen sink. Feeling almost human again, I rinsed out my bowl, rummaged around in the fridge until I found a carton of orange juice, and then downed a glass.

I held myself very still and listened. Food hadn’t really helped either. Not that I expected that it would. I thought I’d probably have to do something about this, and then I thought that, maybe, this was something Dr. Rainier and I should talk about.

That’s about when I noticed that the message light of our answering machine was having fits. The box said we had eight messages, but the first five were hang-ups, probably people in town calling to find out what happened. (Uncle Hank says they never seem to learn that law enforcement people do not have the affirmative duty to gossip.)

The sixth was from Sarah: “Hey, Christian, I heard what went down at the barn . . . well, some of it. I guess the GPR guys were talking in Gina’s or something. Anyway, that was way cool, and I hope you’re okay and don’t forget my party on Halloween, okay? That’s this week, just in case you forgot.... Saturday night about seven. We’ll do all sorts of stupid stuff, you know, bobbing for apples. Anyway, it’ll be fun. So . . . see you in school? . . . Yeah, well . . . okay. Bye.”

The voice that delivered the second message was a man’s and one I also recognized: “Christian, this is Rabbi Saltzman. We spoke on Friday? I was going to get back to you, but a Dr. Rainier beat me to it. She called earlier today, right after I’d finished with my Sunday school classes. I should back up.... I called the home on Friday right after we hung up, and so I know about David. I’ve been in touch with his executor, a lawyer and . . . oh, I’m going to run out of time here, aren’t I? Anyway, I gather from Dr. Rainier that there might be more remains of other family members? If so, I’ll be coming up to Winter soon to make arrangements, probably in the next week or so. Why don’t we meet then? Call me and we’ll set something up when I know with more certainty when I’ll be there.” He left his cell number and hung up.

Dr. Rainier’s message was to the point: “Christian, I’ll expect to see you in my office on Tuesday. We’ll talk about where we go from there.” A longish pause. “That was . . . remarkable. You’re very brave. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Another pause. “But do me a favor. Don’t make any decision, not yet, and for God’s sake, don’t do anything stupid out of guilt, you got that?”

I stood there as the machine told me there were no more messages. I was stunned down to my toes.

How could Dr. Rainier have possibly known that the muttering of those voices from the sideways place was back?

School was pretty much the same, sort of. Everyone still stared, and they were back to huddling in groups, throwing looks my way, and then whispering excitedly. A couple of people surprised me, though. Said hi, how’s it going . . . that kind of thing.

I bypassed the cafeteria at lunch like I always do and made my way to the art studio. Man, it felt like I hadn’t been there for a hundred years.
I
felt different, like someone I barely recognized. The charcoal of my mom was still on its easel, but I hesitated a good minute before drawing the canvas away from her many faces.

I stood, studying those eyes I knew so well, that face I’d imagined in waking dreams. Mordecai Witek’s brushes burned a hole in my hip pocket. Obviously, I wouldn’t use them on a charcoal drawing, but I felt this compulsion to hang onto them the way a drowning person grabs onto a twig.

So was I drowning? Was I about to be swept over the falls? Because I knew I could be, if I wanted. I sensed that the power lay within me. Yes, David had found me, but I had always had the power to use. Even in death, I’d been able to touch his spirit or soul—whatever you want to call it.

But David was gone now, forever. I felt that the way you know when you’ve dropped a quarter down a sewer grate and it’s gone for good.

But my mother—she was still out there, somewhere. All I had to do was dare to touch her soul....

I replaced the canvas without making a single mark.

I ate my sandwich, alone, sitting on the school’s back steps. The concrete was cold, and my sandwich tasted like sand.

“I’m thinking I don’t need to be here. It’s not that I’m angry or pissed off or tired of you . . . that’s not it. But I think we’ve pretty much established that this isn’t in my head, and I’m not some maniac kid who’s going to go all homicidal. This is a real ability with real consequences, and only I can figure out what to do with it.”

“Do you know what that is? What you want to do, I mean?”

I shook my head. As crazy as it sounded, I had toyed with the idea of being kind of a psychic ghostbuster. I mean, here I’d helped to solve a real-life crime and expose Mr. Eisenmann as an imposter. And there was that baby in the hearth....

I said, “Were you able to get it?”

She nodded and brought up a picture on her computer. “I snapped it with my cell phone, but I think I got enough detail.”

She had. “You see it, don’t you?” I pointed to the girl’s red hair band. “It’s the same as the photograph in Mordecai Witek’s wallet. And look at how tiny her jaw is. She and her mom look a lot alike.”

Dr. Rainier thought about it, then nodded. “So they both had Treacher-Collins? Possible. The hair band would hide that Marta didn’t have any ears, and her mother’s hair is styled to hide hers. Either or both would be deaf, of course.”

Both, I thought. Hadn’t Woolfe told Daecher not to worry about the noise?

And I knew that Marta had wanted to be an interpreter— not of something like German or Polish but
sign
language. That’s why she’d
cawed
in David’s memories; that’s why her hands were always moving.

Dr. Nichols said they could establish who the father was by comparing the baby’s DNA with David and
his
father. I was also betting that Eisenmann—Hermann Woolfe—was the father. But what happened to Marta or how she’d allowed her child to be taken by Woolfe, I’d never know because David clearly hadn’t. I was reasonably certain that Uncle Hank’s prediction had come true—that a servant was the mother—because I remembered what I’d learned in one of my visions: that Marta worked for Catherine Bleverton. (Of course, I couldn’t tell Sarah that, but the DNA would go a long way.)