The Confessor

glass.
    As they walked toward the entrance of the apartment house, Gabriel thought of his first conversation with Detective Axel Weiss. The tenants are very casual about who they let in. If someone presses the intercom and says "advertisements," they're routinely buzzed in.
    Gabriel hesitated, then simultaneously pushed two buttons. A few seconds later a sleepy voice answered, "Ja?" Gabriel murmured the password. The buzzer howled, and the door unlocked. They stepped inside and the door closed automatically behind them. Gabriel opened and closed it a second time for the benefit of anyone who might be listening. Then he placed the stack of fliers on the ground and crossed the foyer to the staircase--quickly, in case the old caretaker was still awake.
    They crept quietly up the stairs to the second-floor landing. The door to Benjamin's apartment was still marked with crime-scene tape, and an official-looking note on the door declared that it was off-limits. The makeshift memorial--the flowers, the notes of condolence--had been cleared away.
    Chiara crouched and went to work on the lock with a slender metal tool. Gabriel turned his back to her and watched the stairwell. Thirty seconds later, he heard the lock give way, and Chiara pushed open the door. They ducked beneath the crime-scene tape and went inside. Gabriel closed the door and switched on his flashlight.
    "Work quickly," he said. "Don't worry about making a mess."
    He led her into the large room overlooking the street--the room
    Benjamin had used as his office. The beam of Chiara's flashlight fell
    across the neo-Nazi graffiti on the wall. "My God," she whispered.
    "You start at that end," Gabriel said. "We'll search each room together, then we'll move to the next."
    They worked silently but efficiently. Gabriel tore the desk to pieces, while Chiara pulled every book from its shelf and thumbed through the pages. Nothing. Next, Gabriel went to work on the furniture, removing slipcovers, pulling apart cushions. Nothing. He turned over the coffee table and unscrewed the legs to check for hollow compartments. Nothing. Together, they turned over the rug and searched for a slit where documents might be concealed. Nothing. Gabriel got down on all fours and patiently checked every floorboard to see if one of them had been loosened. Chiara removed the covers from the heating vents.
    Hell!
    At one end of the room was a doorway leading to a small antechamber. Inside, Benjamin had stored more books. Gabriel and Chiara searched the room together and found nothing.
    Closing the door on the way out, Gabriel detected a faint sound, something unfamiliar; not the squeak of a dry hinge, but a rustle of some sort. He put his hand on the knob, then opened and closed the door several times in quick succession. Open, close, open, close, open . . .
    The door was hollow, and it sounded as if there was something inside.
    He turned to Chiara. "Hand me that screwdriver." He knelt down and loosened the screws holding the latch to the door. When he finished, he separated the latch. Attached to one of them was a line of nylon filament, hanging into the interior of the door. Gabriel gently tugged on the filament, and up came a clear plastic bag with a zip-lock enclosure. Inside was a tightly folded batch
    of
    papers.
    "My God," Chiara said. "I can't believe you actually found it!"
    Gabriel pried open the Ziplock bag, then carefully removed the papers and unfolded them by the illumination of Chiara's flashlight. He closed his eyes, swore softly, and held the papers up ft Chiara to see.
    It was a copy of Sister Regina's letter.
    Gabriel got slowly to his feet. It had taken more than an hour to find something they already had. How much longer would it take I to find what they needed? He drew a deep breath and turned around.
    It was then that he saw the shadow of a figure, standing in the center of the room amid the clutter. He reached into his pocket, wrapped his fingers around the butt of the Beretta, and quickly drew it out. As his arm swung up to the firing position, Chiara illuminated the target with the beam of her flashlight. Fortunately, Gabriel managed to prevent his forefinger from pulling the trigger, because standing ten feet in front of him, with her hands shading her eyes, was an old woman wrapped in a pink bathrobe.
    THERE WAS a pathological neatness about Frau Ratzinger's tiny flat that Gabriel recognized at once. The kitchen was spotless and sterile, the dishes in her little