Collision of Evil (14 page)

Surely this cavern and its undefined contents were related to Sedlmeyer’s tale of the
Kriegsende,
the end of the war. The old man claimed to have been an eyewitness to a delivery of mysterious goods—in
wooden crates
—to precisely this part of the mountain. How many caves concealing hidden goods could there be up here? This had been the storage venue for crates dating back to 1945. But what mute prize was contained within the National Socialist packaging?

“At least it’s a start,” Waldbaer muttered, ignoring the glance and raised eyebrow of a nearby police officer. He balled his fists and shoved them deep into the pockets of his sports coat. The problem was, the trail discovered now seemed to end. Whatever had rested here for decades had been moved. To where? The tracks to and from the cave could be traced only as far as the asphalt of the valley road below. To find the killers of Charles Hirter, they needed to determine the new location of the crates. At exactly that location, Waldbaer was convinced, all would fall together and the deadly sequence of events would be resolved. The detective’s love of clarity would be fulfilled.

Waldbaer exited the cavern and stood under the pines, their sentinel stillness broken by the creaking of a branch high above. Perhaps someone had seen the truck or trucks that had been up here. It wasn’t impossible and represented the only real hope that the investigation could progress further. True, the mountains here were
uninhabited and only sporadically invaded by hunters and hikers. But farther down toward the valley, where the meadows were located, there were a few farm dwellings. A long shot, perhaps, but one of the farmers might have noticed a vehicle moving up into the hilly terrain.

Farmers. An interesting archetype. He ran through the qualities he assigned them: stubborn, narrow, loud, complaining. But at the same time: generally honest, hard-working, straightforward. Perhaps not bad on balance. Still, Waldbaer did not want to invest his time in visiting the three or four farmhouses within observing distance of the meadows. It would entail sitting in their rustic kitchens trying to pry out information word by word.

“Colleague Eibel,” he said, and a bulky policeman nearby turned at the name. His complexion was like raw ground beef.

“Yes, Herr Kommissar, what can I do for you?” The voice rumbled as if from some watery subterranean depth, thick with Upper Bavarian accent and a long intimacy with alcohol.

“I want you to do something for me when you’re finished here. On the way back to the main road, you’ll see a few farmhouses. Pay them a visit. I’m hoping one of the farmers or their wives, distrustful, nosy creatures that they are, noticed the vehicle that traveled up here. If one of them has seen anything, let me know immediately.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kommissar,” the policeman intoned, hitching his trousers a centimeter higher over his generous, beer-built abdomen.

Waldbaer walked over to the all-terrain vehicle he had driven up in, opened the door, and permitted gravity to assist him into the seat. There was nothing more to be gained here he concluded. Better to head back to the office and reflect. Maybe he should check on Hirter at the Alpenhof and give him the courtesy of an update. At least there had been some progress, however modest. Finding the baseball cap had been a good piece of luck; he was certain that a DNA test would definitively establish its provenance.

Still, despite the day’s successes, he could not rid himself of an unsettling sense that some rapacious malignancy was let loose, larger in its dimensions than the brutal murder of Charles Hirter taken
alone. There was no evidence for this sentiment, no facts to sustain it. It was an inchoate and primordial feeling only, but it weighed on him like a stone. A whisper that the evils recently unveiled were about to procreate explosively. He worried that he needed to do something to intervene against pending events but felt as helpless as a weak swimmer amid the waves of the North Sea. He heard fleetingly from inside his head the somber chords of Rachmaninov’s
Isle of the Dead.
He would have preferred to summon the vestigial strains of Mozart or perhaps Haydn, but the joyous notes would not come.

Forty kilometers from the cavern, the crates lay in neat, military rows upon a concrete floor. The clandestine transfer of the items had gone without incident. The rented vehicles had been emptied quietly at their destination. The man who had organized these events gazed out over the cargo, his eyes squinting against the glare of neon lighting in the warehouse. He felt satisfied and the sensation coursed through him like blood. He was aware that a new stage in the operation had been achieved after years of waiting. Now the tempo of events would quicken and move along a trajectory toward violent completion. He wondered for a moment at the zeitgeist, a fine word from the German. The Spirit of the Age. Exactingly precise, he thought. Events were moving as they must, impelled by some invisible force toward an ordained conclusion. Destiny.

It was not as if he himself had no part to play in the unfolding events; his personal fate was bound up with the cargo. The purpose of his life was contained in those wooden boxes. He was aware that the American he had killed had served as a catalyst for the movement of the cargo and its pending employment. In his own way, then, the American had served as a tool of the Spirit of the Age, and why not. They all had their role to play; whether wittingly or not was beside the point.

The weekend would be busy. There was assembly to be finished, carefully, professionally. And phone calls to be made. It was critical that their activities be conducted clandestinely, but this should not prove difficult. He felt certain that the police, that herd of otherwise unemployable dullards, could not prevent them from fulfilling
their destiny. Even if the police managed to find the cavern where the goods had lain for so long, it would bring them nothing. Too late, friends, too late. It will lead you no farther, so go back to your liters of beer and your low-stakes card games. You will have more than enough to occupy you before long. He smiled broadly and broke into laughter, its resonance filling the otherwise silent warehouse.

Waldbaer sat across the kitchen table from the couple, his back uncomfortable on the hard and unforgiving wooden bench. He felt the warmth of the steaming coffee cup between his hands. The farm kitchen was as he expected it to be—down to the last detail. Whitewashed walls and rustic, unvarnished pine cabinets. A collection of ceramic beer mugs with pewter lids arranged in a neat row under a window sill. The round, rude hardwood table before him was worn and scarred. It was impossible to tell whether it was twenty years old or two hundred. A large, hand-carved crucifix hung in one corner, its age equally a mystery. A calendar was thumbtacked to one wall, each month decorated with a color photograph of alpine flora. Edelweiss this month, prosaic but inoffensive. There was no chaos in this kitchen; this domain was ruled by an orderly housewife with an iron hand.

The iron housewife sat silently across from Waldbaer, her farmer husband next to her, equally quiet, waiting for the detective to initiate the conversation now that the required pleasantries had been concluded. Waldbaer had been summoned here by the policeman he had dispatched to inquire at the farmhouses bordering the mountain access road. Herr Andreas and Frau Gisela Schneider, both in their late sixties, had advised the uniformed policeman that, indeed, they had seen vehicles underway to the forest above. They had additionally advised that they had some details about the vehicles. This information having been relayed to Waldbaer, he decided it best to conduct the interview himself.

“Ja, Herr and Frau Schneider, I’m interested in what you can tell
me. My colleague says that you recall having seen vehicles underway above. I’m interested in your recollections.”

The couple glanced quickly, almost furtively, at one another. The eternally suspicious nature of the farmer, Waldbaer thought unkindly. Herr Schneider pursed his lips and ran the palms of his meaty hands along the surface of the table. His heavyset spouse feigned disinterest, but covertly eyed the police official. Bovine eyes, Waldbaer thought, unable, or at least unwilling to stem his instinctive lack of sympathy for the couple. You are being unfair, he chastised himself, give them a chance.

After some seconds, the broad-shouldered farmer offered a response. “
Naja,
I saw something. Why does this interest you, Herr Kommissar? Does it have to do with the murder of the American?”

Waldbaer did nothing to conceal his sigh. He had expected that these country people would feel free to pose more questions than they willingly answered. Let’s get this out of the way he thought. “As I’m sure you’ll both appreciate, I’m not at liberty to discuss the murder investigation. But I can tell you that the reason I’m here is not unrelated to the murder of Charles Hirter. That’s as far as I can go for the moment. Now, back to my question if you don’t mind, Herr Schneider.”

The farmer shifted in his chair and nodded as if considering whether he minded or not. His wife stared at her well-scrubbed, folded hands. Her husband looked Waldbaer in the eyes as he spoke.

“It was just luck that we noticed anything at all. Often we aren’t here. On a farm there’s always something to do, deliveries to town, finance things with the bank, the farmers market.” The farmer paused and Waldbaer arranged his features in the requisite look of sympathy for daily tasks.

“Anyway, we were here one evening when two trucks drove up the meadow road. It was just after dusk, and we noticed the headlights through the window.” He turned his head a notch and indicated the square panes of glass. “Cars go up there sometimes, just looking around most of them, following a dirt road; tourists. Now and then we see someone from the forestry office from Munich or
climbers. But they go up during the day. After dark, well, seldom. But going up at night? Why?”

“A fair observation, Herr Schneider,” the policeman interjected, oiling the track for more conversation. “I can’t imagine that there would be much reason for traveling up there at night.”

Frau Schneider released a dismissive snort. Waldbaer was reminded uncomfortably of a mare. “Maybe a local Casanova with a girl, but even they don’t have to travel that far. Whoever drives up to the mountains at night is up to no good, count on it.” The woman darted a hand over her thick bun of pinned-up gray hair, glanced knowingly at the police official, and then returned her gaze to the tabletop.

“So,” Waldbaer resumed after a gulp of coffee, “perhaps you can tell me what precisely you saw after you noticed the headlights through the window?”

The farmer made a noise in his throat as if to acknowledge the gravity of the information he had to impart. “Like I said, when I noticed headlights at that hour, I thought it was funny. That made me curious. I was here in the kitchen, so I opened the front door and walked outside to get a good look, Ja? That’s when I noticed that there were two trucks, traveling together. They seemed to know where they were headed, they were moving fast enough. Not like they weren’t sure whether they should turn around or not. They went right by the field in front here, then up past the high meadows and into the trees. I could see their lights in the forest for a few moments. And I heard the motors even longer; sound travels pretty well downhill in this area. And then they were gone.”

“Andreas is right,” Frau Schneider added, half-turning to her spouse. “I saw the same thing from the window. Two trucks, small ones. Not like those big lorries on the autobahn with all the extra wheels.”

Waldbaer considered. “You’re sure these were trucks, not those jeep-like things—SUVs like the Americans say?”

“No, trucks,” Herr Schneider confirmed with a trace of irritation. “With this type of ground it would make more sense if they
were all-terrain vehicles, but they weren’t. They were trucks. The kind businesses use to make deliveries.”

”Delivery trucks,” Waldbaer muttered. “Used not just to drop things off, but to pick things up.”

Frau Gisela Schneider issued another equestrian snort. “Nothing to pick up in the forest. Except wood. And there’s lots of that in the valley. More likely dumping garbage or hazardous chemicals or something.”

“What else can you tell me about the trucks?” Waldbaer had determined that Herr Schneider was the more factual interlocutor, his wife more prone to opinion.

The farmer scratched at his ear. “Two trucks. Both the same size. It was dark, but they were white or beige, light-toned anyway. They were well past me before I could see more.”

Waldbaer nodded affirmatively but felt defeated. The couple was cooperative, but they offered a limited array of facts. At least he knew now that two trucks had traveled up to the cavern, the existence of which was clearly not known to the Schneiders. But this information was insufficient to bring the investigation further. Waldbaer realized with a sinking feeling that his investigation in any serious sense was quite possibly over.

“Thank you for your time,” the police officer said, intent on hiding his disappointment. “I’ll be going now.”

The farmer swiped a large hand in the air indicating that his guest should sit back down. “Why go now? I told you about what I saw when the trucks went up. Don’t you want to hear what I saw when they came back down?”