26

Bayou City

The small-town cop genially escorted him from the building, shaking his head. “We've got a bunch of Pritchetts around town. I never thought about her calling the sheriff. Come on, might as well ride with me, Mr. Kamen,” he said, as they stopped beside the first police car.

“Okay.” Aaron Kamen got in the front seat. The car was like the building inside, spotlessly clean and shiny. Kamen was tuned to the man's vibes and the aura was professional and smart. The cop spoke good ol’ boy dialect, which is to say he talked with a Missouri twang, but Jimmie Randall was no backwoods cracker. Kamen sensed intelligence and competency, and that acted to reassure him. Without needing to ask he knew this small-town police chief had checked him out thoroughly; it was unspoken in the way he was being treated. There was no hint of condescension in tone or language.

The chief had said Alma Purdy was probably off visiting kinfolk, but there'd been a file folder in a basket on his desk and Kamen had noticed he'd picked it up and brought it with him. It lay on the seat between them and he knew police never gave a civilian everything they knew, regardless of his or her credentials.

“Do you think it's possible Mrs. Purdy might have told the sheriff about the individual she thought she'd seen?"

“The Nazi from the war, you mean?"

“Right.” So there'd at least been some investigation of the matter.

“We'll sure regard it as a possibility. Let's check the residence and see what we can shake loose there first, and then maybe we'll go talk to the sheriff. You know these older folks.” He shook his head. “You have to see what kinda’ mood a person might have been in the last time somebody saw them. You get to be that age and you also have to take into consideration senility. Alzheimer's.” The words came easily to him.

“What's the normal procedure for how long a person is missing before you suspect something?"

“It varies with circumstances. Like I say, determining the mood and whatnot. Was Mrs. Purdy mad at somebody? Does she have a friend she might be staying with? Medication? Somebody that age is probably under a doctor's care, and they might be on strong medication. Was she on any kind of mind-altering substance? We can check to see who her doctor is, what the pharmacy might have sold her recently, who she might have confided in, such as a friend or neighbor.

“Had one old fellow got lost. Found him in a hotel in Memphis. You never know. She might have distant kin who came in, found her all agitated, and decided to slap her in one of the area nursing homes and just didn't tell anybody. That's happened, too."

They arrived at the Purdy house. The chief gained entry and the two men looked around. Kamen could imagine trying to go with the cops under similar circumstances with an urban force such as the KCPD. They found clothes in the closets, food in the refrigerator, stale air.

“Something must have happened to her,” Kamen said.

Jimmie Randall replied, “See if there's any correspondence around. She might have had a letter from somebody or...” He trailed off and shuffled through a few papers. “Let's go see the sheriff."

They closed up the house, which Randall locked with a key from a ring of what looked like a hundred or more keys.

The two men chatted amiably about the weather most of the way to Charleston, driving with the windshield wipers on full. It had begun to rain, a hard blowing rain that was coming down with sudden fury. Aaron Kamen was beginning to feel the depression that comes with rainy days.

He was surprised the local cops had not asked him more about his own investigative background, and he listened for hidden nuances in the policeman's conversation but found none. They pulled up next to the county jailhouse, hurried inside, and the two local law-enforcement heads greeted one another like old pals.

“We've got this lady, Alma Purdy,” Randall said, “been missing for a couple weeks."

“I spoke with her about three weeks back. I took a report on it. That was the War Crimes deal, right? She'd sighted a guy from the old concentration camp, something like that?"

“Yep."

“Um.” The sheriff's face didn't change.

“Mr. Kamen here is concerned something may have happened."

Kamen spoke up quickly. “I think we have to assume that possibility—that strong possibility exists, sheriff. She thought she might have seen a former Nazi doctor who committed a lot of atrocities and ... suddenly she goes up in smoke.” Even as he spoke he wondered if the sheriff realized the singular inappropriateness of that phrase. “Chief Randall said she might be under medication or under a doctor's care, and it dawned on me, I wonder if this man Emil Shtolz might still be working as a doctor?"

“First, Mrs. Purdy didn't strike me as particularly coherent, but let's say she was. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she saw this old guy. Aren't all these Nazis elderly men themselves now?” the sheriff asked.

“He was a young man at the end of World War II,” Kamen said. “He might be seventy now, but he might not appear that age. He could easily have had a face lift, and from what Alma Purdy told me it sounded as if he might have had some cosmetic surgery, assuming, as you say, assuming she did see Shtolz."

The two lawmen discussed who'd file the preliminary missing persons report with the state police in something called Bluff, which Aaron Kamen learned was Poplar Bluff, Missouri. But he knew he was hearing two conversations: one was shorthand cop talk, the other appeared to be for his benefit. It sunk in while he and Randall were heading back to the Bayou City police headquarters in the rain. He listened to their questions about the Purdy report, in tandem with a bantering about computers, how the sheriff was sick about the 2000 getting “shit-canned,” which he knew referred to an NCIC computer program. “I knew it'd be a hump,” Randall had said.

“I'll call Cape and let Immigration in St. Louis know.” More shorthand about the FBI and other authorities whom the sheriff would bring up to speed. It had been rather smoothly executed, Aaron thought, all in the cop-shop sidebar talk, punctuated with occasional questions to him about the contact with Purdy. He realized they'd known every speck of this all along, right down to the trip to the missing woman's home. This had been something Sheriff Pritchett and Chief Randall had set up to take his measure. He was being investigated, and not for the first time.

“Did I pass?” he asked suddenly, turning in the seat and smiling to show he recognized professionalism and approved of it.

“Excuse me?” The chief raised his eyebrows. Aaron was not offended. The fact they'd handled him rather adroitly, that they'd obviously been on top of the case for some time, was hardly discouraging. So far, at least, nobody was laughing at the serious situation.

So he saw it as good news and bad news. The good news was a circle of light was moving in the direction of the darkness. The bad news was that a woman named Alma Purdy, who'd apparently already been through hell once, had vanished.

Aaron left Randall's office after a few conversational loose ends were tied, among them being a mutual promise of cooperation. Meanwhile, where would Mr. Kamen be staying? He gave his room number at the little ma ‘n’ pa motel on the highway. How long was he planning to stay in town? Not long, he said. He assured the cop that he knew his place as a civilian, that he'd notify Randall and Pritchett if he learned of Mrs. Purdy's whereabouts, all the expected stuff. The chief would circulate the two blow-ups of Emil Shtolz that Kamen had extracted from his files, one a passport photo that showed the Boy Butcher without his infamous facial birthmark. Yes, he realized it might be impossible to I.D. a person from a forty-plus-year-old passport picture. And so on.

Instead of returning to the motel, Kamen went to a pay phone and dialed Raymond Meara's number for the second time. Kamen routinely attended gun shows, firearms club rallies, and the like, with a special eye for the lunatic fringe gun collectors, from whose ranks Neo-Nazis sometimes emerged. Aaron and Raymond Meara had met at a gun club rally the preceding year. They'd exchanged opinions on gun laws, the plight of the small businessman and small farmer, and found some areas of agreement. Kamen, being a people collector, retained the man's name in his files. When Alma Purdy had said Bayou City, he had recalled having a contact there.

“Mr. Meara,” he said, when a gruff voice answered after a dozen or so rings, “it's Aaron Kamen calling again. I'm the one called yesterday about Mrs. Purdy?"

“Yeah."

“I'd like to talk with you, as I said. I just finished speaking with the police and the sheriff and apparently the woman is in fact missing."

“Um. Well, like I said, I don't know zip about her. She's like a hermit, or whatever you call them, a recluse, you know?” Kamen moved under the protective overhang of the building as he was pelted by hard, cold raindrops.

“I understand, Mr. Meara, but if I could, I'd still like to come out and talk with you. I'm trying to find another individual. It's a bit lengthy to go into on the phone. Also, I want to show a couple of photographs to you and see if you might be able to help me."

“That's okay. Pretty good drive out here from town but you're welcome to come out.” It sounded as if Aaron Kamen were anything but welcome.

“If I'd be catching you at a bad time we could make it another day."

“Nah. I'm just waddlin’ around out here. Come on if you want to."

Kamen extracted directions, and in spite of the off-putting and complex-sounding series of twists, turns, and otherwise convoluted instructions, he had no trouble finding the Meara farm.

Within twenty-five minutes he was pulling up in the muddy yard of a near stranger, and he saw the scarred countenance of Raymond Meara.

“You bring this down from K.C., didja?” drawled Meara.

“No, sir. It was cold up home but at least it was dry."

“Come on in,” Meara said, and Aaron Kamen followed him into the farmhouse, and out of the pelting rain.