“Hurts. Who… you?”

“I’m one of Rhea’s friends, Paul, remember?” I said soothingly. “You’re going to be okay. Do you know who shot you?”

“Ilse,” he said on a rasping breath. “Ilse… Bullfin. Rhea. Tell… Rhea. SS know where…”

“Bullfin?” I repeated doubtfully.

“No,” he said, correcting me in a weak, impatient voice. I still couldn’t make out the last name clearly. The paramedics started down the hall: every second counted. I trotted along to the top of the stairs. As they started down, Paul thrashed on the stretcher, trying to focus on me with his cloudy eyes. “Rhea?”

“I’ll make sure she knows,” I said. “She’ll look after you.” It seemed a harmless enough comfort to offer him.

Radbuka passed out again as soon as he’d taken in my reassurance. The medics told me to stay in the house until the police came, as the cops would want to question me. I smiled and said sure, no problem, and locked the front door behind them. The cops might come at once, in which case I’d be trapped here. But in case I had a few minutes’ grace I ran back up to the hexagonal room.

I pulled the gloves back on, then looked helplessly at the mess on the floor, at the drawers with papers pulled partway out of file folders. In two minutes what could I possibly find?

I noticed a second, smaller map of Europe over the desk, with a route drawn on in thick black marker, starting in Prague, where Paul had written Terezin in a wobbly hand, moving to Auschwitz, then to the southeast coast of England, and finally a heavily drawn arrow pointing west toward America. Berlin, Vienna, and Lodz were all circled, with question marks near them-I guessed he had marked his putative birthplaces and his reconstructed route through wartime Europe to England and America. So? So?

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.

I lay down in the rank grass, thankful for the protection of the bloodstained coverall. The accordion file pushed unpleasantly into my breasts. I inched my way around the side of the house. I could see the tail end of a cop car, but no one was watching the side of the house: they were expecting to find me, the helpful family friend, within. Still lying in the grass, I looked around for the bush where I’d tossed my picklocks. When I’d retrieved them, I crawled stealthily to the back fence, where I shed the bloodstained boiler suit and my kerchief, stuffing the picklocks into the back pocket of my jeans. I found the boards where I’d watched the cat vanish earlier, pried them apart, and shoved my way through.

As I walked down Lake View Street to my car, I joined the crowd of gapers watching the cops force their way into Radbuka’s house. I tsked to myself in disapproval: I could have shown them how to do it in a much neater way. Also, they should have had someone at the side gate, to watch for anyone trying to leave through the back. These were not the best of Chicago ’s finest.

My front felt damp; looking down I saw that Ninshubur had bled through the sheet and onto my blouse. Having discarded my bloodstained coverall to avoid being conspicuous, I now looked as though I’d played the central role in open-heart surgery. I turned away, clasping my arms across my sodden front, feeling Ninshubur squishing against the accordion file.

Bending over as if in intense stomach pain, I jogged the three blocks to my car. I took my shoes off: they were covered in blood, which I didn’t want to transfer to my car. In fact, they were the same crepe-soled shoes I’d worn when I’d stepped in Howard Fepple’s remains on Monday. Maybe it was time to kiss them good-bye. I pulled a brown paper bag from a nearby garbage canister and stuck them into that. I didn’t have an alternate pair in the trunk, but I could go home and change. I found an old towel in the trunk and a rather rank T-shirt left over from pickup softball this past summer. I pulled the shirt over my bloodstained blouse. Inside the car, I took out the faithful hound and wrapped him in the towel on the seat next to me. His brown glass eyes stared at me balefully.