Desert Run by Betty Webb Page A

at Denny’s.”
    After sixty years, Oberle still hated Ernst. How many people who’d been around Camp Papago in those days felt the same way about him? As soon as the question surfaced, I remembered how Ernst had died: just like the Bollingers—gagged and beaten to death in his kitchen. Could he have been killed by someone who had loved them and all these years had nursed thoughts of revenge? I floated my unlikely theory to Harry. A retired deputy, he would have seen his share of revenge killings over the years.
    Harry rubbed his bad leg for a moment, then leaned back in the recliner. “The psychology’s wrong. From what Frank here has told me about Ernst—and he never shuts up about him—Ernst always ordered other people to do his dirty work, like he did with that new prisoner, Werner Dreschler.”
    The Scottsdale Journal article had gone into great length about the Dreschler torture killing, but I was surprised that Harry had heard about it. “You knew about Dreschler?”
    â€œEverybody in Arizona knew about the Werner Dreschler case. Prison camps, Nazis, torture and murder? If it happened today, it’d be a prime time TV movie before Dreschler was buried. If you ask me…”
    Oberle interrupted again. “Yeah, talk about your entertainment value. Speaking of, I was surprised when I found out that the Dreschler thing wasn’t going to be part of the documentary, ’specially since there was a whole chapter about it in that reporter’s book. Say, come to think of it, you’re working for that director guy, too. Did you ever ask him why he isn’t doing something on poor old Werner?”
    I shook my head. “I just found out about him, but I’ll ask Warren next time I see him.”
    â€œA waste of time, if you ask me,” Harry said. “The Germans saw him as a spy, and they did what service people always do to spies. Just a little more so.” Then, turning to Oberle, he said, “You know, old son, I’m beginning to come around to your way of thinking. Maybe Ernst did order those two crewmen of his to kill the Bollingers. It sure sounds like him.”
    Oberle shook his head furiously. “But not like them ! I knew both Gunter and Josef, and they was real good guys, even if they was German. Especially Josef. That big kid had all them rabbits around camp eatin’ outta his hand! Nah, Josef wouldn’t hurt a fly. And his buddy Gunter, all that ol’ boy wanted to do was draw pictures. I never could figure out how either of them wound up on a U-boat. They shoulda been home raisin’ chickens or something.”
    â€œConscripted,” Harry broke in. “Toward the end of the war, the Germans were grabbing little kids off the street and sending them to fight.”
    Oberle waved his hand. “Whatever. But neither of those boys would murder anybody, not even under orders from their slimy Kapitan. Pah! Talk about your worst of the worst. If there was any justice in the world, somebody woulda killed Ernst a long time ago.”
    Harry gave his friend a pirate smile. “Did you try, Frank? I hear somebody nearly did him in when he was still living back East, too. Sure you didn’t fly out there for a little vacation?”
    Oberle snorted. “Me in Connecticut? Too cold. ’Sides, if that’d been me, Ernst would a been missing a head, not his legs. But what the hell. He was pure evil. It’s nice to know that in the end he died slow. Hope he was conscious all the way to his last breath.”
    So much for age mellowing a person. This case had already taught me that regardless of their age, people were people. Harry and Oberle were not at all unusual in that they were both still consumed by the same loves and hates as they had been sixty years earlier. Harry grieved for the Bollingers; Oberle for Werner Dreschler; Ernst’s neighbor for the husband and uncles lost in World War II. The common