Chapter 43 Chapter Forty-Two

It was six o'clock in the evening when Dieter parked the car next to the house on Dubois Avenue.His sky-blue sedan was covered in dust and dead bugs after the long drive.As he got out of the car, the sun was setting behind the clouds and the suburban streets were in shadow.He fought a cold war. He took off his driving goggles—he drove with the top down—and smoothed his hair with his fingers. "Hans, please wait here for me," he said.He wanted to be alone with Stephanie. After opening the gate and entering the front garden, he noticed that Miss Remus's Simca No. 5 was missing.The garage door was open, and it was empty.Is it Stephanie using this car?But where would she go?She was supposed to be waiting for him here, with two Gestapo guarding her.

He strode across the garden to pull the rope on the bell.The doorbell rang, and he looked through the window into the vestibule, but the room was usually empty.He rang the doorbell again.no respond.He bent down to look at the letterbox hole, but there wasn't much to see here either, just a small section of stairs, a painting of a Swiss mountain scene, and the half-open kitchen door.Nothing happened. He glanced toward the house next door to see a face hastily withdrawn from the window, the curtains drawn back. He went around the side of the house and across the yard to the garden behind.Both windows were broken and the back door was open.There was a sudden shock in his heart.What's going on here?

"Stephanie?" he called out.No one answered. He goes into the kitchen. At first he didn't understand what he was seeing.A large package was tied to a kitchen chair with a household rope and what looked like a woman's body was covered in a disgusting mess.Moments later, his experience as a policeman told him that that disgusting mass was a bullet-punctured head.Then he saw that the dead woman was wearing mismatched shoes, one black and one brown, and he knew it was Stephanie.He howled in pain, covered his eyes with his hands, and slowly bent his knees, sobbing. After a minute, he moved his hand away, forcing himself to look more clearly.The detective's intuition led him to notice the blood on her skirt, and concluded that she had been shot from behind.Maybe that's kinder.She may not have experienced the horror of facing death.He saw that two shots had been fired in all, and the way the bullets exited made her lovely face look terrible, ruined her eyes and nose, and left only her sexy lips, bloody but intact.He would hardly have recognized her if she hadn't been wearing those shoes.Tears filled his eyes, and she became blurred in front of him.

Losing her felt like a huge wound on his body.She was dead, and the sudden realization of it hit him like never before.She wouldn't throw him that proud look she used to; she wouldn't go in and out of a restaurant and make everyone look back at her; he wouldn't watch her take off her stockings from her perfect calves.Her charms, her wit, her desires and her fears, all were dead, cleansed, finished.He felt like he was hit, he lost a part of himself.He whispered her name, and that was all he could do, or at least he could. Then he heard a voice behind him. He yelled in fright. The voice came again, not speaking, but a low moan.He stood up suddenly, turned around, and wiped the tears from his eyes.This was the first time I saw the two men lying on the ground.Both were in military uniform.They were Stephanie's Gestapo bodyguards.They couldn't protect her, but at least they wanted to, and they died for it.

Maybe there's still one alive. One was lying still, but the other was struggling to speak.It was a young fellow, nineteen or twenty, with black hair and a short moustache.His uniform cap fell to the oilskin floor next to his head. Dieter walked over and squatted beside him.His wound was in the chest, he was shot in the back.He lay in a pool of blood.His head was twitching, his lips were moving.Dieter put his ear to the man's mouth. "Water," he whispered. He was about to bleed to death.Dying people always need water, Dieter knows—he's seen it in the desert.He found a cup, took a cup of tap water, and brought it to the man's mouth.The man drank it all, and the water ran down his chin onto his blood-soaked coat.

Dieter knew he should call the doctor right away, but first he had to figure out what was going on here. If he delayed any longer, the man would die without telling him anything.Dieter hesitated for a moment before deciding.This person is dispensable.Dieter had to finish the questioning before calling the doctor. "Who did it?" he said, bending his head again to listen to the dying man's whisper. "Four women," he said hoarsely. "'Jackdaw'." Dieter said viciously. "There are two in the front... two in the back." Dieter nodded.He could imagine everything that happened.Stephanie went to the front and opened the door.The Gestapo stood ready in the back, watching the living room ahead.The terrorist sneaked up to the kitchen window and shot from behind.Then……

"Who killed Stephanie?" "water……" Dieter controlled his inner urgency.He went to the sink, got another glass of water, and put the glass again to the man's mouth.He drank all the water again and sighed with relief, which became a terrible moan. "Who killed Stephanie?" Dieter asked. "Small man," said the Gestapo. "Flick," Dieter said, a burning desire for vengeance burning in his heart. The man whispered, "Excuse me, Major..." "How exactly did it happen?" "Soon...very soon." "tell me."

"They tied her up ... called her a traitor ... shot her in the back of the head ... and they left." "Traitor?" Dieter said. The man nodded. Dieter choked up. "She never shot anyone from behind," he whispered in pain.The Gestapo didn't hear him.His lips were motionless and he had stopped breathing. Dieter leaned over, stretched out his right hand, and gently closed his eyelids with his fingertips. "Rest in peace," he said. Then, he turned his back on the body of his beloved woman and walked over to make a phone call.