“Not enough blood for that,” Byron responded. “There’s only two with stab wounds. The rest of them he just beat to death.”
They were waiting for the police photographer to finish taking pictures of the crime scene and the bodies.
“We screwed up,” the up-timer muttered. “We should have found him.” He stepped out of the way of the photographer. “We should have found him,” he repeated, looking over at his partner.
“It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found,” Gotthilf replied.
Neither one of them drew any comfort from that thought.
* * *
Simon walked out the front door of the grand townhouse, hoping that he hadn’t just lied to Ursula. The problem was, he had no idea where Hans could be.
For lack of anything else, Simon started back the way he and Hans usually went to the fight arena; down the Gustavstrasse, across the bridge over the Big Ditch into the Neustadt, heading for the gate at the northwest corner of the city.
He wasn’t far from the gate when he glanced down a side street as he crossed it and saw a gathering of people. A cold hand gripped his heart and his feet took him that direction before his conscious mind realized it.
He pushed through the crowd. When he got to the front of it, he was up against a piece of rope that was rigged as a barrier between the shells of two burned buildings left from the sack of the city that hadn’t yet been torn down. There were several men standing or walking around, and he could see what appeared to be several bodies lying on the ground. The cold hand around his heart got colder.
* * *
“So what do we do now?” Gotthilf asked.
“I don’t know,” Byron muttered.
Dr. Schlegel came over to them, tugging gray leather gloves back on after looking at each corpse. “You can probably tell cause of death as well as I can,” he announced. “Time of death was obviously last night some time, but because of the cold I can’t be more certain than that until I do the medical exams.”
“Yeah,” Byron sighed, “it’s pretty obvious what happened. I’m not too sure that pinning down when it happened will be very useful in this case, but you never can tell. Let me know what you find out.”
The doctor nodded, then turned and began issuing instructions to his attendants as they waited for the photographer to finish his work.
“Sergeant! Sergeant Hoch!”
They both looked around at the call.
“Oh, great. It’s the kid,” Byron said. “How do we break the news to him?”
* * *
Friedrich von Logau looked up from his notepad as a burgher with a stern face jostled him going by. He looked across the table to his friends.
“Who was that?”
Johann Gronow leaned forward and murmured, “That was Master Andreas Schardius, the leading corn factor in Magdeburg. A very wealthy man, is Master Schardius, with connections to the Regierender Rat in Old Magdeburg.”
“Rumor has it,” Plavius joined in, “that he paid for all the cost of staging the opera.”
“No,” Gronow said. “Only a third. I heard it from Frau Higham herself.”
“He is also rude,” Friedrich said, adjusting his chair.
“Imagine that,” Seelbach laughed.
* * *
Schardius checked his pocket watch as he left the coffee house. Hours to go yet before the opera began. He still steered his steps in the direction of the opera house.
* * *
Simon grasped the rope tightly as Sergeant Hoch approached.
“Hello, Simon.”
“Yes, Sergeant. Please, is it Hans?”
The sergeant looked solemn. “You shouldn’t be here, Simon.”
The cold hand turned his heart to ice. “Please, Sergeant. Is it Hans?”
Sergeant Hoch hesitated, looked over his shoulder, then nodded. Simon closed his eyes. He felt the sergeant pat his shoulder.
Simon opened his eyes. “Please. I have to see.”
“I don’t know,” Sergeant Hoch said.
Just then Lieutenant Chieske walked over. “What’s going on here?”
The sergeant explained that Simon wanted to see. Simon poured his yearning into his eyes. It must have worked, for the lieutenant looked at him and nodded. Sergeant Hoch lifted the rope and Simon bent under it.
“Stay with me and don’t go wandering around,” the sergeant cautioned. Simon nodded.
It was only a few steps. One of the other men moved aside at a word from the lieutenant, and Simon could see everything. There were several bodies lying on the ground. All dead. And yes, much as he didn’t want to admit it, one of them was Hans. He lay on his back with a knife hilt sticking out of his abdomen.
“It must have been some fight,” Lieutenant Chieske mused. The lieutenant continued talking, but Simon didn’t hear him. His eyes were fixed on his friend. Hans would never again whistle tunelessly, never again laugh when Simon called Tobias “Ferret-face,” never again put his hat on Simon’s head and grin when it dropped down to his ears. Hans was gone, and there was a hole in his heart now.