Obsessed Page 29

Sweeney jumped off and sprinted from the room. Stephen followed on his heels. Behind them, the cover scraped concrete. A single bullet chipped the wall before they made the stairwell. They cleared the building, tore up the alley, and ran straight for Stephen’s car, a happening hippie in blue bell-bottoms and a scruffy Realtor in white underwear.

  Not until Chaim pulled the car into traffic on La Brea did Stephen feel his pulse ease. But the madness wasn’t over, was it? In so many ways, it was just beginning.

  For the first time, he knew what was happening; now he just had to follow through. A whole new world had just been opened up to him. He was being drawn by the pearl of great price. The pearl was Esther, for whom he was born.

  STEPHEN PACED in the living room, peering repeatedly out the windows on either side of the house. They’d let Sweeney and Melissa off ten blocks down La Brea and returned home the long route. An hour had passed since their narrow escape, but Stephen’s nerves still felt taut like piano wires.

  They’d called the police who’d dispatched a cruiser to check out Rachel Spritzer’s apartment.

  “Rabbi—”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t help you sooner, Stephen. I was afraid you were pulling back into yourself. But I see that you’ve been reaching out more than withdrawing. You’re finding your own identity.”

  Stephen nibbled at his index fingernail. “I don’t think I can hang out here for the police.”

  “They’ll want to take a statement. We were shot at and nearly killed!”

  Stephen looked in his eyes. “She’s alive, Chaim.”

  “Who is?”

  “Esther.”

  “She’s alive and in a German town called Greifsman.” He swallowed. “He’s going to kill her. I have to stop him. He said the red scarf had selected—”

  “Red scarf?” the rabbi interrupted, paling.

  “The red scarf. You saw it. The letter—”

  “He’s the one behind the killings!”

  “That’s what the letter said. His father was the commandant in the camp where my mother was held.”

  “No, now. The killings in Los Angeles.”

  “What killings?”

  “You haven’t heard? Of course you haven’t!” Chaim quickly filled him in.

  “There’s no direct link,” Stephen said. “Either way, he’s gone now. I have to get to Germany, rabbi.”

  Chaim looked at him blankly.

  “Braun’s going to kill her, did you hear me? I have to beat him there.”

  “And maybe that’s what he wants.”

  “Then he would have taken me with him. Or killed me when he had the chance.”

  “This is very dangerous, Stephen.” The rabbi hurried to the phone, dialed a number. “You can’t just run off to Germany. Do you even have a passport?”

  “Yes. Who are you calling?”

  “Sylvia. She’s working on the Red Scarf case.”

  Stephen stared out the window as Chaim spoke on the phone. The possibility that Roth Braun was a killer failed to upstage the revelations of Martha’s letter.

  “Thank you,” Chaim said into the phone. He dialed a second number.

  On the other hand, this serial-killer business was extremely important. It meant that Esther was about to die. At least that’s how Stephen saw it.

  He bumped his forehead with his fist. The emotion that had consumed him for the last few days now felt like a hot branding iron on the brain.

  Chaim dropped the receiver in its cradle. “She’s not at work. No answer at home.”

  “I’m going, Rabbi.”

  They stood in silence for a moment. “Why would Braun want to kill her now, assuming he’s known all along where she lives? Does she know where the Stones are?”

  “No. I don’t know. The letter says that their hiding place would go to the grave with Martha and Ruth.”

  “And they’re both dead.”

  “Right.”

  “So what does Braun know?”

  “I don’t know. But I know he’s going after Esther.”

  “Well, this is terribly dangerous.”

  “No, this is my life!” Stephen was yelling now. He might burst into tears at any moment. “I have to do this. I can’t explain why any more than I can explain why I tunneled into the apartment, but I have to go.”

  “The police—”

  “I can’t afford to be questioned by the police. If Roth Braun is the man they’re looking for, then the danger for Los Angeles is gone. Let them try to find him, although I can guarantee you that he’s already in the air. It’ll take time to coordinate any action with the German police.”

  His words echoed in the small house.

  “I have to go now.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “No. Stay and fill the police in. Tell Sylvia. Do whatever you need, but please give me a chance to get out of the country.”

  “They’ll want to know—”

  “Then tell them. Just don’t tell them where I’ve gone. I’m not the criminal here. They can’t hold me, can they?”

  “Vandalism.”

  Stephen knew Chaim had a point, and it infuriated him. He gathered himself.

  “I have to go, rabbi,” he said quietly. “Please, hear me. I have to go.”

  Chaim sighed and finally nodded. “Okay. Find her, but please remember what I said, Stephen.”

  The phone rang. Chaim snatched it up. The police.

  In a moment the rabbi set the phone back down and faced Stephen wearing a frown. “You were right—no sign of Braun; no evidence of a crime. Other than a hole in the basement. They want a statement from both of us.”

  “I’ll give mine when I get back.”

  The rabbi seemed to accept this.

  “Obsession is a dangerous business, Stephen. You can’t lose sight of virtue or morality for the sake of passion. Just because your intentions are noble, you have no right to break the law. Certainly not to kill or to—”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone. I’m going to rescue Esther. God has answered my mother’s prayers.”

  39

  Torun

  May 8, 1945

  Dinnertime

  THE COMMANDANT’S EYES WERE RED AND WATERY FROM LACK OF sleep. He leaned over the table and sipped at a spoon of the corn chowder Martha had prepared for supper at his request. The china was set on a white cloth, and the commandant was dressed in the uniform he reserved for social events—black, pressed, and starched. For nine months she’d waited on the commandant, while the war slowly ground to a halt throughout the world. Auschwitz had been liberated, Belsen liberated, even Buchenwald in Germany itself liberated. But here in Toruń, just a few miles from Stutthof, the Germans had dug in and were fighting a fierce battle over these last camps. Why? And how could Braun sit so calmly while even now Russian planes flew overhead, armed with bombs for Stutthof?

  Martha had long ago lost her fear of Gerhard Braun.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  “It will never be over,” he answered, not bothering to look up. “You’re alive today. Does that mean you’ll be alive tomorrow?”

  Martha looked away. His threats hardly even registered anymore. Several other facts, however, did register, like glaring lights in her eyes. The first was that David was still alive. She hadn’t seen him for nine months, but she knew he survived in the barracks below. The second was that in a matter of days, whatever end awaited them all would come.

  And the third was a growing hope—yes, hope—that she could actually affect that end. How many nights had she laid awake, her mind filled with fantasies of revenge, plotting to use Braun’s treasures to her advantage? Her only living mission was to save the children; perhaps she could do so with the help of the spoils hidden in the vault.

  The only question was how? Anytime now, Braun would evacuate the vault and be gone.

  Paper covered the picture window now, obstructing the view of the camp below where her little David lived. Most of the Russian bombs had
descended on the main camp at Stutthof, but Toruń had suffered several raids as well. Braun had sent most of the remaining prisoners north to the Baltic nearly two weeks ago to be evacuated by sea, he said. All but a hundred, mostly wounded or sick, were gone. Rachel was among those who remained. Rachel and David. Rachel and David and Martha and Esther, pawns in his game, kept only to make Braun feel powerful.

  If only there was a way to speak sense into this pig! “You have no reason to keep us,” Martha said. “And you have no reason to kill us. What will any of this prove?”

  Braun set his spoon into the empty bowl, dabbed his lips with a serviette, and ran his tongue over his teeth. She wanted to cut off his red lips with a knife. A fantasy as foolish as taking his treasure.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he said softly. “I have more reasons than you can possibly know to kill you.” He stood and picked up his hat. “As it turns out, I also have several compelling reasons not to kill you. Killing you would end your misery, and I have no interest in ending your misery. Also, the Allies are evidently frowning on the indiscriminate killing of prisoners— I’ll be gone when they come, but I wouldn’t want to leave any evidence to fuel their fires.”

  Martha, confused, watched him walk to the door. It was the part about her misery that sounded wrong. How would her liberation lead to extended misery—except in the memories she would take with her? Such relatively insignificant misery was beneath Braun. He meant to do more.

  “I will be leaving in the morning, but the guards at the perimeter will remain. Don’t think you can walk out of here.”

  He reached the door, put on his hat, and turned the handle. “Oh, and I’ve decided to take the children with me.”

  Martha’s mouth dropped open. “No! No, you can’t!” She took three steps toward him and stopped. “You . . . you can’t!”

  “But I am. What’s more, I can promise you that you’ll never find them.”

  Martha ran to him, fell to her knees, and grabbed his hand before considering the consequences of such an action. “No, I beg you!” she cried. “I beg you; they are children! They mean nothing to you!”

  He looked at her as a scientist might look at a lab experiment, pleased by such an unusual reaction from her.

  “Please, let me keep my child,” Martha whispered.

  “You don’t think that I’d seriously allow Ruth’s ridiculous obsession with hope to actually find life outside this camp, do you? There is no hope for the Jews.”

  He jerked his hand free and stepped out into the darkness. “If you make any attempt to escape, I would be delighted to shoot all three of you. Except Esther. I’ve taken a liking to the little girl.”

  “As has your son,” Martha said bitterly.

  His head snapped up. He glared. The night Roth had tried to kill Esther had been the last time Martha had seen him.

  She pushed him, knowing the danger of it. “He’s stronger than you.”

  Gerhard spat. “He’s a child who doesn’t know that the war is over. Yesterday’s indulgences are today’s death sentences. If I didn’t know you better, I might think you were asking to be killed.”

  “I have no reason to live without my David.”

  “Which is the point. You’ll live with the horror of this camp your whole life. Roth doesn’t understand that death is sometimes the easy way out.”

  Gerhard made a disgusted, dismissing motion with his right hand and shut the door with a thump.

  Martha jumped to her feet and ran for the stairs, mindless. Her right foot was already down two steps before the first clear thought forced her attention. She had to get David! The commandant was leaving, and she had to get her baby before then. She spun around, ran for the door, but pulled up without opening it.

  What was she thinking? Even if she could get David, she could never escape with two children under her arms. Even alone, she would be killed.

  She threw both fists toward the floor, jerked to the window and screamed through gritted teeth, like an animal. For several long seconds she just stood there, tensed from head to foot, trembling with fury. The thought of losing Esther and David was like the thought of dying. Maybe worse. What did he have to gain from this? Nothing!

  But she knew that her scream would do nothing for either David or Esther. She forced herself to take a deep breath. Maybe she could still prevent him from taking the children. Or maybe he didn’t really mean to carry out this threat. He was playing with her, one last sick joke before running off with this loot of his.

  She blinked. The Stones of David. The journal.

  Martha walked to the kitchen and then back working quickly through ideas. There was no way to save the children. Nothing would prevent Braun from taking them.

  She stopped by the kitchen table and stared at the far wall without seeing, never so hopeless since seeing the red scarf on her bed nine months earlier. Whatever Braun planned to do with the children could not be good. He might kill them outside the camp, leaving her with lingering hope and uncertainty.

  “No, Martha,” she muttered, wiping her eyes. “You have to be strong. You have to be strong.”

  She returned to an idea she’d massaged for dozens of hours late in the nights. A thread, however thin, of hope for the children.

  She ran down the stairs, suddenly consumed with accomplishing this one task before Braun returned. Esther slept in peace—her night started at five, something the commandant had insisted on. He wanted the child asleep before he sat down for a quiet evening meal. Martha had wanted to dump poison in his quiet evening meal when he’d first made the demand, but tonight she was grateful.

  First, the vault.

  How long would Braun be gone? It could be five minutes, or it could be several hours. She ran back upstairs to his bedroom, to a beautifully engraved, white jewelry box on his nightstand, under which she’d discovered the key to the vault three months earlier while cleaning. Tilting back the box, she snatched up the key and flew to the basement. Most of her plan would require stealth, in the late-night hours after Braun was asleep. This first part, however, she could not do without disturbing the peace.

  The idea had first mushroomed in her mind as she contemplated how renowned the Stones of David were. Certainly they were far more important to the world than two Jewish children, even if in her mind David and Esther were the true Stones. If her children were ever to be lost, they would be forgotten forever with untold thousands following the war. But the Stones would always stand as icons, sought by the whole world.

  What if she could somehow link both children to the Stones of David? Draw them by association to each other and to her? Rachel’s confession in the barracks over a year earlier had haunted Martha. What if she could mark Esther and David as Rachel had done? And what if later she could make it clear in private circles that she was looking for a girl named Esther and a boy named David, both bearing this mark?

  She unlocked the door with unsteady hands and stepped into the cool, dark room. It looked just as it had the first time she’d come in. But the journal was gone.

  Gone?

  Martha hurried to the box and opened it. There, on top of the five stones, lay the leather journal.

  She emerged from the vault three minutes later with two green ammunition containers the size of shoe boxes under her right arm. Sweat slicked her palms, but she didn’t falter. Not once. She locked the door, slid the boxes under her bed, and returned the key to its place under the commandant’s jewelry box.

  Returning to the living room window, she peered past a tear in the paper. No sign of him yet. She had to put the mark on Esther before he returned, or her crying would cause a terrible scene. And she would cry. Poor baby, she would cry.

  Martha hurried to her room and reached under her thin mattress for the twisted piece of metal. She’d formed the symbol a week ago, using one paper clip, cut and folded back on itself to show the brand she intended.

  It would never work! She paused, reconsidering, trying to think of a better way.
r />   There was no time.

  The child slept on her back. Martha looked at her supple, innocent body and started to cry silently. She tied the crude brand to the end of a wooden ladle and then bared little Esther’s chest. Should she wake her?

  Dear God, this was madness! How could she burn a child? She nearly abandoned the plan then, but this was the only way she knew to extend the very hope Ruth had died for. The thought gave her the strength to slowly heat the metal over a candle flame until it was red hot.

  She had to clear her eyes of tears twice so she could see. “I’m sorry, dear Esther,” she whispered, and then she pressed the metal into the baby’s flesh, hard.

  Esther did cry. She screamed through Martha’s fingers. But thankfully, before the child fully realized she was under assault, the damage was done.

  Martha hugged the child tight and rocked her. “Shh, shh, I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to hurt you. Shh, shh, you must be quiet.”

  She dabbed the deep burn with an ointment she’d confiscated from Braun’s personal medicine cabinet and then placed a bandage over it. Esther might tear it off, but Martha knew the burn must be hidden from Braun, at least for as long as he had both children.

  Surely he wouldn’t keep both—it wasn’t in his character. He would rid himself of David; why would he keep David? No reason to keep a Jewish boy. The only reason he’d allowed the boy to live was for the sake of his game. He would rid himself of her son within a day or two, maybe sooner.

  Martha’s thoughts brought her no comfort. Had she burned in vain the child she had promised to care for as her own? Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks, and she lay down with the child, soothing her slowly back to sleep. Exhausted by the pain and tears, Esther finally settled.

  She would have to wait now, lying here in bed, cold with sweat. Wait. And doubt.

  The door upstairs banged an hour later, and Martha bolted up. Boots clomped on the wood floor, then down the stairs. Many boots, maybe four pair or more. They walked by her door, straight to the vault.

  Panicked, she slid from the bed, dropped to her knees, shoved the ammunition boxes all the way under her bed, and then pushed some dirty clothes after it, knowing this cover-up was hopeless. If the commandant discovered anything missing from the vault, he would tear through the entire house, starting with her room, until he found it.