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.
It wasn’t clear whether the room was to punish Ulrich or to serve as Paul’s refuge. Interspersed with Ulrich’s disfigured face were pictures of Rhea. Paul had cut them from magazines or newspapers and then apparently taken them to a studio to have prints made—several shots which had been cut out of newsprint were repeated in glossy, framed photographs. Around these he had draped the things he’d lifted from Rhea’s office. Her scarf, one of her gloves, even some pale lavender tissues. The cup he’d taken from the waiting room stood underneath with a wilted rose in it.
He’d also added memorabilia about Max to the wall. It made my stomach ache, seeing the way he’d accumulated information on Max’s family in one short week: there was a set of photographs of the Cellini Ensemble, with Michael Loewenthal’s face circled. Programs from the Chicago concerts they’d given last week. Photocopies of newspaper articles about Beth Israel Hospital, with Max’s quotes circled in red. Maybe Paul had been heading here to add Ninshubur to the shrine when his assailant shot him.
The whole idea of the place was so horrible I wanted to run away from it. I shuddered convulsively but forced myself to keep looking.
Among the pictures of Rhea was a woman I didn’t recognize, a framed five-by-seven photograph in a silver frame. It showed a middle-aged woman in a dark dress, with large dark eyes and heavy brows over a mouth that was smiling in a kind of wistful resignation. A placard he’d attached to the frame said, My savior in England, but she couldn’t save me enough.
Facing the wall of pictures stood a little fold-up bed, shelves of canned food, a ten-gallon water jug, and a number of flashlights. And underneath the cot an accordion file tied up in a black ribbon. A disfigured photograph of Ulrich was glued to the outside, with the triumphant scrawl, I’ve found you out, Einsatzgruppenführer Hoffman.
Dimly, from the world outside the closet, I heard the insistent ring of the front doorbell. It jolted me awake, away from the horrific symbols of Paul’s obsession. I pulled the picture of his English savior from the wall, stuffed it into the accordion folder, jamming the folder inside my shirt, behind the bloody little dog. I ran down the stairs two at a time, bolted down the hall, and flung myself out the kitchen door.