Sara Paretsky - Total Recall

I waited for a confirmation, then unlocked the front door and ran back upstairs to Radbuka. He was still breathing, wheezing as he exhaled, gasping as he sucked in air. I felt the pad; it seemed to be holding. As I adjusted the comforter, I felt a lump in his pocket that must be his wallet. I pulled it out, wondering if it would have some proof of identity that would let me know his birth name.

No driver’s license. An ATM card for the Fort Dearborn Trust in the name of Paul Radbuka. A MasterCard, same bank, same name. A card saying that in an emergency one should call Rhea Wiell, at her office. No insurance card, nothing to show any other identity. I slipped the wallet gently back into his pocket.

It dawned on me that I didn’t look my best, with my latex gloves now red with blood and my picklocks in my tool belt. If the cops came with the paramedics, I didn’t want to have to answer awkward questions about how I got in. I ran into the bathroom, washed my gloved hands quickly but thoroughly, and opened one of the windows in Paul’s bedroom. I tossed the picklocks at an overgrown shrub in the garden, disturbing a cat that took off with a heart-stopping yowl. It disappeared between two broken boards in the back fence.

Back in the room with Paul, I picked up Ninshubur. “Did you save his life, you poor little bloodstained hound? How’d you do it?”

I inspected the damp plush figure. It was the dog tags I’d given Calia for him. One of them was bent and dimpled where the bullet had struck. They were too soft to stop or deflect a bullet, but maybe they’d helped slow it down.

“I know you’re a piece of evidence, but-I doubt you’d tell a forensics team much. We’ll get you cleaned up and back to your little girl, I think.”

I couldn’t think of a better way to secure Ninshubur than the one Paul had used: I wrapped him in the last piece of sheet, unbuttoned my coveralls, and tucked him inside my blouse. I listened to Paul’s breath and checked my watch: four minutes since I’d called. One more minute and I’d call again.

I got up and looked at the rest of the shrine, wondering what the shooter had wanted so badly that he-or she, of course-had shot Paul to get it. Whoever had rifled Ulrich’s study had looked in here with the same ferocious impatience. The books were hurled open in the same horrifying fashion. I didn’t touch them, in case there were fingerprints, but they seemed to be a major collection of Holocaust writings: memoirs, histories ranging from Elie Wiesel to William Shirer, with everything in between. I saw Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews flung against Judith Isaacson’s Seed of Sarah. If Paul had read this stuff day after day, he might have had a hard time distinguishing his memories from everyone else’s.

I was starting down the stairs to use the phone again when I finally heard footsteps in the front hall and a loud shout. “Up here,” I called, taking off the latex gloves and stuffing them in a pocket.

The paramedics trotted up with their stretcher. I directed them to the end of the hall, following so as not to get in their way.

“You his wife?” the medics asked.

“No, a family friend,” I said. “I was supposed to collect something from him and walked in on this-this chaos. He isn’t married, doesn’t have any family that I know of.”

“Can you come to the hospital to fill out the forms?”

“He’s got independent means; he can pay the bill himself if necessary. I think his wallet has something in it about whom to notify in an emergency. What hospital will you take him to?”

“Compassionate Heart-they’re the closest. Go to the reception desk in the ER to fill out the forms when you get there. Can you help take this blanket away? We’re going to shift him to the stretcher.”

When I picked up the comforter, a key fell out-something Paul had been holding that had dropped from his flaccid grasp. I squatted to pick it up while they slid him to the stretcher. Being moved jolted him briefly awake. His eyes flickered open, not quite focusing, and he saw me kneeling at face level.

“Hurts. Who… you?”

“I’m one of Rhea’s friends, Paul, remember?” I said soothingly. “You’re going to be okay. Do you know who shot you?”

“Ilse,” he said on a rasping breath. “Ilse… Bullfin. Rhea. Tell… Rhea. SS know where…”

“Bullfin?” I repeated doubtfully.

“No,” he said, correcting me in a weak, impatient voice. I still couldn’t make out the last name clearly. The paramedics started down the hall: every second counted. I trotted along to the top of the stairs. As they started down, Paul thrashed on the stretcher, trying to focus on me with his cloudy eyes. “Rhea?”

“I’ll make sure she knows,” I said. “She’ll look after you.” It seemed a harmless enough comfort to offer him.

Radbuka passed out again as soon as he’d taken in my reassurance. The medics told me to stay in the house until the police came, as the cops would want to question me. I smiled and said sure, no problem, and locked the front door behind them. The cops might come at once, in which case I’d be trapped here. But in case I had a few minutes’ grace I ran back up to the hexagonal room.

I pulled the gloves back on, then looked helplessly at the mess on the floor, at the drawers with papers pulled partway out of file folders. In two minutes what could I possibly find?

I noticed a second, smaller map of Europe over the desk, with a route drawn on in thick black marker, starting in Prague, where Paul had written Terezin in a wobbly hand, moving to Auschwitz, then to the southeast coast of England, and finally a heavily drawn arrow pointing west toward America. Berlin, Vienna, and Lodz were all circled, with question marks near them-I guessed he had marked his putative birthplaces and his reconstructed route through wartime Europe to England and America. So? So?

Faster, girl, don’t waste time. I looked at the key that had dropped out of the comforter when the medics moved him. It was an old-fashioned one with squared-off wards-it could be to any kind of old-fashioned lock. Not a file cabinet, but to one of the rooms, a closet, something in the basement or the third floor, where I hadn’t looked? I wouldn’t have time for that.

This room was his shrine. Something in here that the perpetrators hadn’t found? Not a desk lock, too big for that. No closets anywhere I could see. But these old houses always had closets in the bedrooms. I pulled back the drapes, revealing windows in the three pieces of wall that made up a kind of fake turret here. The drapes hung beyond the windows, covering the whole side of the room. I walked behind them and came on the closet door. The key worked in it perfectly.

When I found a pull cord for an overhead light, I could hardly take in what I was looking at. It was a deep, narrow room, with the same ten-foot ceiling as the bedroom. The left-hand wall was covered in pictures, some in frames, some taped, going up well above my head.

A number were photographs of the man who’d been in the picture in the living room, the one I assumed was Ulrich. These had been terribly disfigured. Heavy red and black swastikas covered them, blocking out the eyes, the mouth. On some Paul had written words: You can see nothing because your eyes are covered-how does it feel when someone does it to you? Cry all you want, Schwule, you’ll never get out of here. How do you feel now you’ve been locked in here all alone? You want some food? Beg for it.

The words were venomous but puerile, the work of a child feeling powerless against a horribly powerful adult. In that interview Paul had given on Global TV, he’d said his father used to beat him, used to lock him up. The slogans scrawled on his father’s photographs, were these the words he’d heard when he’d been locked in here? No matter who Paul was, whether he was Ulrich’s son or a Terezin survivor, if he’d been locked in here, heard that torment, small wonder he was so unstable.