Berg heard the fatigue in the Professor's voice. "Or we can visit the scene in the morning. I don't want to subject you to such a long evening."

"I can manage a long evening." Kolb smiled. "Death, my friend, is even longer."

SINCE THE PATHOLOGY LAB was located in the basement of the state hospital, most of the smell was confined to that area. Still, as soon as the two of them entered the stairwell, rank fumes rose up and Berg almost gagged. It was only the third time that he had ever been there and his two previous encounters had failed to prepare him for the third.

Kolb, on the other hand, seemed inured to the foul odor.

The autopsy assistant, the Diener, seemed amused by Berg's reaction. He was dense in build and stared out with sunken eyes, escorting them down the dark steps with the help of a gas lantern. Though the building had electrical lighting, the stairwells were not wired.

"We welcome the wintertime," the Diener said. "In summer the stench is much stronger. Then there are the insects. They are attracted to the stink of decomposing flesh. Specifically the black flies. And when the humidity increases . . ." He waved his hand in the air. "Ach, it is bad."

Berg continuously swallowed to keep the contents of his stomach down. He wrapped his scarf over his mouth and nose. As they reached the bottom, the stench became riper. He thought of the charnel of his own making. The smell of decay was stronger than the smell of murder.

"One accustoms to the rankness," the Diener went on. "On some days I even eat my lunch in the same room."

"That is repulsive!" Berg muttered.

"It is better than starving, Inspektor." They had reached the bottom step. The assistant opened the door to the lab. "This way, meine Herren."

Inside was a dungeon, a bone-chilling, dank concrete bunker with no visible windows, not even traditional basement dormers. No fresh air was to be had, and not a hint of natural light could come in, even in daytime. Electrical bulbs cast intermittent spots of urine-stained glow, along with old gaslight sconces mounted on the walls. Berg thought he had endured the worst of the odor when the Diener opened a hallway door. He was wrong.

"This way."

Inside the autopsy amphitheater, the fetid air was so intense that Berg nearly fainted. He felt ludicrous. In the Great War, he had breathed the malodor of death and disintegration as moribund bodies lay around him. In his job with the Mordkommission, he had examined many corpses in varying states of decomposition. But the rankness here was unparalleled.

Not only was the stench overpowering, the visual images suggested nightmares. Rows of steel autopsy tables, each one visited by a body, some fifteen to twenty in all. Some were decently covered, but at least half were naked cadavers staring upward with vacant eyes. Some of the corpses had been left in the elements too long, and the skin had withered and blackened like African shrunken heads. Others had grown mold like spoiled meat or moldy cheese. The bodies that hadn't made it to the tables were still wrapped in white sheets and placed on shelves. The carcasses were leaking body fluids as tissue broke down into watery components, dripping away corporeal existence one droplet at a time. Even the strong stench of antiseptic couldn't mask the stink of rot.

Several pathology doctors were conducting autopsies. One had just made the Y-incision from the shoulders to midchest down to the pubic region. Another had just removed the heart, his gloved hands filled with the bloody mass. Quickly, he placed the dripping organ on the scale to weigh it.

Palettes of red filled Berg's brain: red, ruby, crimson, scarlet, carmine, cerise, maroon, vermilion . . . so many variations of one wavelength . . . more reds than there were names.

At one of the tables, an elderly doctor looked up. He wore a blood-and-tissue-spattered white apron that protected a suit and tie. A paper cap sat on his scalp, rubber gloves obscured his hands, and a paper mask covered his mouth and nose. He sported a long white beard and wore rimless spectacles. He was quite paunchy. Had the apron been just a bit more vermilion, he could have passed for Saint Nicholas. He looked straight at Berg.

"You are Polizei."

"I am."

"Up so late?"

"Unusual circumstances." Berg pulled down the scarf to be understood. His nose was assaulted further, but the Diener had been correct. Slowly, slowly he became accustomed to the smell. He could breathe without choking. "Inspektor Axel Berg from Munich Police, from the Mordkommission. I have been investigating the recent violent deaths in our city."

"Herr Doktor Jakob Gebhardt here." The man clicked his heels. "It is good to make your acquaintance, Inspektor."

"Same here, Herr Doktor," Berg answered, "although I would have preferred to meet you under less trying circumstances. This is the Polizei Daktyloskoper and foreign-material analyst Herr Professor-"

"No need for introductions, Inspektor, I've known the eminent Herr Professor Kolb for years." Gebhardt smiled. "All of us ghouls know each other. Give me a moment to close my charge up and I'll be right with you."

A moment was twenty minutes. Berg was fatigued, yet his nerves still shot poison through his system. He couldn't have slept even if he had chosen to try to do so. He couldn't bear to close his eyes for fear of what lurked behind them.

To Kolb, Gebhardt said, "You look tired, Josef."

"It is nearly one in the morning, Jakob. Some of us actually sleep at night."

"Night, day, it's all the same down here." Gebhardt addressed Berg. "Before electricity, we had our own building with windows and daylight and proper working conditions. But once the city wired the hospital and the surrounding buildings, it took away our lab and sent us down here. Of course, it's convenient-the hospital no longer has to transport the bodies-but the conditions are not good, especially in the summer."

"I was telling them that, Herr Doktor," the Diener piped in.

"I'm sure you were, Klaus." He sighed. "And look at this lighting . . . it is terrible. You can hardly see anything unless you supplement with kerosene lanterns. Sometimes, for a very bright light, I even use a torch! But then I worry about starting a fire."

Gebhardt threw up his hands.

"You know all those myths about creatures of the night that shrink in daylight? I think someone has seen one of our pathologists emerge from this cave, suddenly squinting from the brightness of the sun."

Kolb said, "I hope we're not disturbing you."

"Not at all." Gebhardt's expression turned grave. "What happened out there?"

"Hitler is what happened," Berg said.

"Will it ever stop?" Gebhardt shook his head. "Shall we take a look at the latest tragedies that have embraced our troubled city?"

"If you'd be so kind," Berg responded.

"I've got one of the bodies over here." Gebhardt stopped in front of a table where the body had been covered with a sheet. Even under the cloth, Berg knew it was the little girl. Such a compact little package. Berg thought of Monika's sweet face and instantly, beads of sweat gathered over his brow. The doctor did not appear to notice. He turned to his assistant. "Klaus, get down the mother. I believe she is resting in compartment five, letter G."

Once again, Berg regarded the shelves of bodies. A large brass plaque hung over the top rung of corpses. The engraved lettering was Roman print instead of the usual Gothic-logical because the words were in Latin instead of German.

Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.

"This is a place where death rejoices to teach those who live," Kolb translated.

"How true." Gebhardt pulled back the cloth, exposing the child's body. She was a pretty, little girl in death, no doubt even prettier in life: fair-complexioned with long golden hair. It was hard to tell the eye color because the pupils had reached maximal dilation, but Berg could make out the palest of blues that encircled her fixed stare.

"This little girl was an Aryan from top to bottom," Gebhardt said. "No doubt Hitler will drag this poor girl's death into his politics."

In the background, Berg could hear Klaus grunt as he worked to retrieve the body from the shelf. "How did she die?"

"See for yourself. . . ." Gebhardt gently rolled the little body onto its side. In this position, a substantial depression in the back of the skull was clearly exposed.

Kolb pulled out his own rubber gloves from his pocket and let his fingers gently caress the hollow.

"Any number of objects could have made that indentation," Gebhardt said.

"It is not a hammer," Kolb said. "The hollow is too broad. And such a delicate skull would have shattered under the blow of metal."

Gebhardt said, "And it is not a paddle, either. The hollow is too small. Nor does it look like a buckle from a belt. It is very regular in its circumference."

Berg interjected, "You think that a mother did this to her own child as overzealous punishment?"

"I've seen it before, Inspektor," Gebhardt answered. "Parents who don't realize how fragile a child is. Usually it's a father with the strap, and the victim is a boy. But I have seen mothers who have killed their small children . . . sometimes by accident, sometimes by temper. In those cases, though, I also see multiple welts on the legs, arms, stomach, and buttocks. Generally it is not a single whack to the head."

Berg said, "Since the mother was murdered, I think it is safe to assume that she was not responsible for her daughter's death."

"Exactly," Gebhardt said. "Then I thought about the woman's husband. Men can beat their wives quite harshly."

"She is a widow," Berg said.

"Yes, yes . . ." Gebhardt said. "That definitely rules out her husband."

Kolb said, "My guess is that it came from behind, someone smashing her with a walking stick."

Berg raised an eyebrow. "Was she also strangled?"

Gebhardt studied the body. "Her neck is intact. There are no ligature marks."

Kolb said, "Let's measure the size of the depression, shall we?"

Gebhardt took out a pair of calipers, measured the diameter, and gave him the exact figure in centimeters. Kolb pulled off his rubber gloves and stroked his beard.

"It's not the same size as the last one," Berg pointed out. "He used a different walking stick?"

"Not necessarily," Kolb answered. "A grown woman has harder bones. The stick would meet with more resistance. A child's skull is more delicate and thinner. In a child a dent made by the same instrument and with the same amount of force would be wider and deeper."

Berg looked pained. "Did she suffer?"

Kolb answered, "I would think that the whack would have put her out instantaneously."

Gebhardt concurred.

"Herr Doktor," Klaus, the Diener, said, "I have prepared the cadaver."

"Good, good!" Gebhardt exclaimed. "Let's have a look, shall we, gentlemen?"

At the sight of the naked woman, Berg involuntarily averted his eyes. When he brought them back to the corpse, he blinked several times before he could look at it objectively. Once this had been a living being named Edith Mayrhofer. Now she was a slab of dead tissue, the light gone from eyes that had been pale blue like those of her daughter. The skin had turned waxen and gray, the face creased by wrinkles even in death. Her hair was curly-tawny in color and streaked with white-except for the big, molasses-colored blotch on the right side of her forehead. The wound had oozed blood and brains.

Berg looked down at her neck. It was discolored, but it was hard to see if there were any signs of asphyxiation. "Was she strangled?"

Gebhardt peered through his spectacles and studied the skin of the neck. "As far as I can tell, there are no finger- or thumbprints, so nothing was done by hands. What do you think, Josef?"

Kolb examined the neck. "I concur. Nor do I see any ligature marks."

Berg sighed. This was not what he wanted to hear. The first woman had been slain by strangulation. Regina Gottlieb had been attacked, bashed over the head, and strangled. These latest victims had died from blunt-instrument wounds.

Did the murderer figure that it was easier to kill by bashing his prey in the head with a walking stick? Had he changed his method, or was this a different killer?

Could it be possible that none of the murders were related?

"Was she raped?" Berg asked.

"At this moment, I'd say no. I swabbed her internally for semen and put the samples on several glass slides. I checked under a microscope, Inspektor, and there was no sign of spermatozoa. Of course, one has to consider that the fiend may have failed to complete the act. I haven't done an exam of her privates. I will check for bruising and tears, but short of that . . ."

Berg said, "The first woman had had sex, the second no . . . Regina Gottlieb yes, but these two no . . ."

"What are you thinking?" Gebhardt asked.

"I'm trying to establish a pattern where there is none," Berg thought out loud. "The first murder-the slaying of Anna Gross-appeared at the time to be a crime of passion. She did have semen inside of her."

"I thought her husband did it because she had made a cuckold out of him," Gebhardt said.

"That was one theory, yes. But her husband was lynched before all the facts came out." Berg didn't elaborate. "The second slaying was Marlena Druer . . . perhaps that was a crime of passion. We found something in her room that could have been a love letter. But she wasn't raped."

Berg stopped and collected his thoughts.

"The third murder was clearly a rape/murder. In these most recent slayings there was no rape." He paused. "Either we're dealing with different killers or . . . perhaps the thrill of murder has taken the place of the thrill of sex."

"Lustmord," Kolb said. "And in this crime, he has gone even further to satisfy the urge: the killing of a child. Who knows what he'll do in the future to fulfill his desires?"

Berg shook his head in revulsion. "How can this be? The killing of a little child?"

"I suspect she wasn't the intended target," the pathologist suggested. "Perhaps the murderer didn't even notice her until he had captured her mother."

Kolb said, "Or perhaps she signifies a potential woman and that is what he detests. Kill it before it can kill. Freud has a theory that women secretly desire to destroy men because of penis envy. And they do this by sending them off to die in war. Men, on the other hand, are jealous of women because they are the ultimate creators of life. They get retribution by symbolically killing them over and over in the sex act."

"I have heard that before," Gebhardt said. "I don't know if I believe it."

"I agree with Herr Doktor Gebhardt," Berg stated. "There are many reasons to have sex other than to satisfy a lust for murder."

"But often the two are intertwined. Both acts involve an element of losing control."

Gebhardt said, "I lose control when I stub my toe, Josef. That doesn't mean I rape and murder."

"Of course not! Murderers don't materialize from the ether," Kolb said. "But you cannot deny, Jakob, that creation and destruction are the two primary driving forces in the world."

"No, I would not deny that."

Berg nodded as if Kolb had said something profound. He didn't understand all the excitement about Freud, how this Viennese Jew got so famous by stating the obvious.

FORTY-ONE.

At three in the morning, Berg fell into a nightmarish stupor and woke up with a start two hours later, finally crawling out of bed at six. Too tired to heat up water for a bath, he sponged off his body using a pail of icy water from the tap, washing his head and hair until his scalp was numb, rinsing away dirt and flecks of blood, watching it all swirl down the drain of the kitchen sink. He opened a new box of Sisu shaving blades and tore at his face with the razor, unmindful of the nicks, enjoying the bite of pain. He splashed his face with water, then slipped into long underwear, followed by long woolen pants and a thick cable-knit sweater. His feet were wrapped in double socks and stuffed into cracked leather boots.