Voices of the Dead

Read Voices of the Dead for Free Online

Book: Read Voices of the Dead for Free Online
Authors: Peter Leonard
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, Suspense & Thrillers
back. Harry noticed crime-scene photos amid the clutter, eight-by-ten black-and-white shots of a man and a woman naked on their stomachs, blood pooled around their heads. Taggart picked them up and turned them over.
    “Shouldn’t be looking at those.”
    “I already did,” Harry said. “What happened?”
    “Shooter took them down the basement, bam, bam, one each in the back of the head.”
    “Looks like they were executed.” The photographs reminded Harry of something he’d seen a long time ago. “Why are they naked?”
    “Good question.”
    “Who are they?” Harry said.
    “Dentist and his fiancée. Maybe it’s a pissed-off patient, guy got a bad root canal,” Taggart said. “This is why I missed the diplomat yesterday morning.”
    “Who found them?”
    “Somebody called it in.”
    “The killer?”
    “Crossed my mind. Anxious for us to find them. Maybe that’s part of the buzz.” Taggart sat in the chair behind his desk. “Harry, I appreciate your interest but I think you should be concerned about your own situation.”
    Harry sat, blew on his coffee and took a sip.
    “I guess I had you all wrong,” Taggart said. “You don’t strike me as the vigilante type.”
    Harry pictured Sara’s battered face and felt himself getting angry. “Guy killed my daughter, you think I’m going to let that go?”
    “I don’t know but you’re being charged with assault. The bodyguard needed four stitches to close a cut on his face.” Taggart sipped his coffee. “How’d you do that?”
    “Judo.”
    “Judo, huh? You don’t look Oriental. Where’d you learn that?”
    “I took lessons,” Harry said.
    “You a black belt?”
    “Brown.”
    Taggart drank his coffee. “They also got you on destruction of property.” He took out a piece of paper. “Restaurant says you owe them for six Bordeaux glasses, four Limoges plates.” He pronounced the “s.” “Total of two hundred and eighty dollars.”
    Harry sipped his coffee.
    “German consulate says they’ll drop the assault charges if you go home, promise to get counseling.”
    “Counseling?” Harry could feel his bile rise. “They’ve got a lot of nerve.”

Dachau, Germany. 1942.
    He watched the SS guard shout angry words in German, spit flying, the mouth working hard, opening and closing in cadence with the harsh guttural command. He saw the scene in hazy gray monochrome. Harry was standing on the muddy yard at Dachau with a group of prisoners, barracks on both sides of them. Guards were beating them with whips and clubs, herding them into the back of a truck that was covered by a tarpaulin. They had been told they were being transferred to a sub-camp, so there was hope because anything was better than where they were.
    “ Komm, komm ,” the guard said. “You look like you don’t want to work any more. Get on the truck. Schnell .”
    Harry and his father were the last two on, prisoners packed in front of them. The tarp was pulled closed but not all the way. Harry could see through the opening. The truck drove out of the camp, turning right, engine laboring in low gear until it reached the main road, heading toward Munich.
    A few minutes later, Harry saw a stone marker on the other side of the road. Dachau 4 km . They drove a little further and the truck turned right onto a two-track path that wound through the trees, and now there was a feeling of panic among the prisoners. They weren’t being transferred to a sub-camp. Harry tried to convince himself it was a work detail but knew they had been selected.
    Harry looked at the raggedy figures pressed around him, shifting to the sway of the truck. Glanced the other way through an opening in the tarp at the guards following them in two kubelwagens , four men in each. As they wound their way through the trees the guards would disappear from view. Harry’s father told him to jump off the truck.
    “You have to do it,” his father said.
    “I want to stay with you.”
    “In a few minutes there will

Similar Books

Stormed Fortress

Janny Wurts

Hero

Julia Sykes

Eagle's Honour

Rosemary Sutcliff

Make-Believe Marriage

Dill Ferreira

4 The Marathon Murders

CHESTER D CAMPBELL