King of Bavaria
by Sam DouglasAt first, the man loitering on the edge of his crime scene got Detective Anthony Mason's attention because he looked out of place - too well dressed, too affluent for this neighborhood. But then Mason realized that he knew the man; this was the man at the center of Mason's most baffling case in all his 21 years of police work.
His name was Randolph Pozner, and Mason had seen him several years ago - about five years, he thought now - and that had been at a crime scene, too. Only then, Pozner had been the victim. When Mason had arrived on the scene, Pozner had been lying in the street with a couple of paramedics working over him, grim looks on their faces. Mason recognized them as the team the guys called Mutt and Jeff. They'd each been paramedics for over ten years and had been partners for about seven.
Mason had stood in front of them until Jeff looked up; he raised his eyebrow and cocked his head in silent question. Jeff shook his head slowly; this guy wasn't going to make it. Mason had shrugged and gone on with the examination of the crime scene, an armed robbery. By the time he'd made his preliminary check, Pozner was gone. Mason saw the paramedics packing their equipment back into their vehicle and made his way over to them. "What happened to the victim, guys," he asked, "hospital or morgue?"
"Damndest thing I ever saw, Detective," said Mutt. "The guy suddenly perked up. His vitals became almost normal. He insisted he had to leave, but he agreed to let us check his heart and BP one more time. When we did that, we had no reason to hold him."
"Did you tell him I'd need to talk to him?" asked Mason. "If he's not the victim of a murder, at least he's the star witness in an attempted murder."
"As a matter of fact, I did tell him that," said Jeff. "He said 'Yeah, okay,' but when I looked around, he was gone. I think he just walked away. We got his name and address from his driver's license. Randolph Pozner, 407 E. Wilkinson Blvd."
Mason had driven to E. Wilkinson right away, hoping he could catch Pozner while the robbery was still fresh in his mind. It was a nice house in a nice neighborhood, middle class - maybe a little more than Mason could afford, but he'd never found the right woman, had no family, and so didn't need a place like this. The door looked freshly painted, and Mason unconsciously looked at his knuckles to see if any of it came off when he knocked. A young woman, thirtyish, answered Mason's knock. She turned out to be Sylvia Pozner, Randolph's wife. She was attractive in a dowdy sort of way, like the best looking girl on the assembly line. She was tall, with mousy brown hair and ruddy skin. Two children, a boy and a girl, maybe six and five, peeked around a door behind her. "Is it daddy?" asked the boy.
"No, honey," she said, looking questioningly at Mason.
He flashed his badge and said, "I'm Detective Mason, Adderly Police Department. I need to talk to Randolph Pozner. Is he here?"
The woman hesitated a moment, staring at Mason's badge. "That's my husband," she said hesitantly, "but he's not here now. He hasn't gotten home from work yet. Why do you need to talk to him?"
"Does he usually get home this late?"
"No, he's a little later than usual. Why do you want to talk to him?"
"Could you describe your husband to me, Mrs. Pozner?"
She described the man Mason had seen stretched out in the street earlier, apparently near death. Then she asked again, voice wavering, "Why do you want to talk to him? Why won't you answer my question? Has something happened to my husband?"
"Don't worry, Mrs. Pozner," said Mason quickly. "As far as I know, your husband is okay. We just believe he may be a witness to an armed robbery and attempted murder. I need to talk to him as soon as possible to give us the best chance of catching the robber. Do you have any idea where he may be?"
"No; I called his office, and they said he left on time. He should be here by now. Are you sure he was only a witness to the robbery?"
Mason reassured Mrs. Pozner that her husband had been fine when he left the crime scene. Then he called in Pozner's description to be broadcast and waited for another half hour hoping Pozner would turn up and relieve Mrs. Pozner's obvious anxiety. When he finally left, he had given Mrs. Pozner his card and told her to have her husband call him as soon as he showed up. Pozner didn't call, but several hours later Mrs. Pozner did. Her husband was still not home. "This is really not like him, Detective," she said, sounding even more anxious than when Mason had left her. "He's never late. I'm really worried now."
Mason had had the description rebroadcast and announced at roll call for the next week. He'd put out the word to all his contacts. But after that date, there were no credible sightings or reports on Randolph Pozner. It was like the guy had vanished from the face of the earth. First he made a miraculous recovery from near death, and then he disappeared completely. Mason had talked to Mrs. Pozner occasionally over those five years, and she always said she still had not seen or heard from her husband. And now her husband stood on the perimeter of this crime scene, a mugging that had left a middle-aged victim clinging to life in an alley off a main thoroughfare.
Mason glanced toward the victim, who lay on his back with his head resting on his rolled up jacket, attended by a doctor who had been passing the scene. "How's he doing, Doc?" called Mason, never letting Pozner out of his peripheral vision.
The doctor looked up and shrugged, "Not much more I can do here," he said. "We're just waiting for an ambulance."
Mason nodded and turned his full attention to Pozner. He ducked under the yellow police tape and strode the ten yards to where Pozner stood, eyes riveted on the victim. "Mister Pozner, I'm Detective Tony Mason. I've been looking for you. I need to know where you've been for the past five years."
Pozner whirled at the sound of Mason's voice, head jerking to meet Mason's gaze. He had a strange look on his face, a cross between fear and indecision, as if he were afraid of what was about to happen but unsure how to avoid it. "I'm afraid I don't know you," Pozner said to Mason. "And I don't know anybody named Pozner. You've got me mixed up with somebody else."
At the crime scene five years ago, Mason had seen Pozner for only a short time, but he'd gotten a good look. Since then, in his investigation of that case, he had seen dozens of photos of Pozner, and there was no doubt in his mind. This was Pozner. "No, no, I don't have you mixed up with anyone, Mister Pozner. I've been looking for you ever since you almost died at one of my crime scenes. I know who you are. And I know that your wife and kids miss you very much. I don't know why you didn't go home then or where you've been since, but I'm not letting you go until I find out."
The indecision left Pozner's face, and only the fear remained. He began to back away, but there was a uniformed policeman right behind him. The officer grabbed his arm. Pozner struggled for only a second, realizing that the policeman was much too strong for him. Mason stepped to the policeman's side. "Mister Pozner, I'm holding you on a charge of obstructing justice until I find out what's going on. You might as well make up your mind. You're going to tell me what happened to you five years ago and where you've been since then."
The officer easily put handcuffs on Pozner, who clearly realized that physical resistance was useless. Mason led him to his police car and shoved him into the back seat. "Now, what happened five years ago?"
"I'm telling you, Detective, you've got me confused with somebody else, and this is causing me a great deal of inconvenience. I need to leave now. You're wasting my time. Please, let me go." He had adopted a steady, logical voice, hoping to reason with the detective.
His effort was fruitless. "Sorry," Mason shook his head, "but there's no way I can have you confused with somebody else. I've studied every picture your wife has of you. You know there are a lot of them, and there just can't be anyone else that looks so exactly like your pictures. You're Randolph Pozner alright, and I'm not letting you go until I find out what you've been up to."
"You have absolutely no reason to detain me, Detective," said Pozner, a note of frustration overriding the logic in his voice. "I haven't done anything wrong. You're going to look pretty silly when I bring a lawsuit for false arrest. Save us both a lot of trouble by letting me go now."
Mason had never reacted very well to threats, and Pozner's threat of a lawsuit just strengthened his resolve. "Not a chance I'll let you go now," he said. "The very least I'll do is take you down to the station and fingerprint you. If the fingerprints show you're not Randolph Pozner, I'll release you, and you'll be free to file your lawsuit. But we both know that isn't going to happen. We both know you're Randolph Pozner; the more you deny it, the more fascinated I become."
It appeared that Pozner wasn't going to tell him anything more, so Mason decided to complete his examination of the crime scene. He locked Pozner in the car and made his way back to the victim, hoping for information on the mugger. But this time, he found the victim's head covered by the jacket it had been resting on earlier. "He didn't make it, huh, Doc?"
"No; the head trauma was too extensive."
"Did he say anything at all to you before he died?" asked Mason.
"Nope. Not a word."
"Thanks, Doc." Mason let his eyes wander the scene again. There was nothing to see. No witnesses had turned up, just a bunch of curious rubberneckers. Nevertheless, Mason went through the motions, debriefing the uniformed officer who had been the first on the scene and scanning every inch of ground one more time. Nothing.
When he got back to the car, his prisoner was highly agitated. "I told you before, Detective, that this is really an inconvenience for me. I need to leave right away. You have no grounds to keep me. Please let me go now."
"And I told you before, I'm not letting you go before I fingerprint you. The good news is that I'm ready to go to the station now." Mason started the car and put it in gear.
As the car began to roll forward, Pozner asked, "Can you leave yet? Don't you have to search the scene and make sure the victim is taken care of?" His voice had assumed a note of desperation that seemed a little curious to the detective.
Mason braked and turned to look back at Pozner. "I'm touched that you're so concerned about my job, but the uniforms and I already searched the whole area, bagged what little evidence there was, and talked to everybody we could find. As for the victim, he already died from his injuries."
Pozner's head dropped, "I should have known. How long ago did he die?"
"I don't know. He was dead when I got back there."
"So it's been over an hour?" asked Pozner.
"Yeah, well over an hour, I'd say. Why are you so interested in that?"
"No reason," said Pozner. "It just seems strange and sad that while we're occupied with our mundane little concerns, a man is dying, a life is ending."
Mason thought that was a strange tangent for Pozner's rhetoric to take. He also thought that if as the guy was kept talking, he might drop some clues. "Well, I've got a flash for you, Mr. Pozner. That's the way it works. All over the world, all the time, people are dying while the rest of us are occupied with our mundane little concerns. And one of these days, the rest of the world will be occupied with its mundane little concerns while we die."
"I am not Pozner!" This time Pozner almost screamed his denial. "I am not Pozner," he said again in a whisper, almost a sob, "and it is even more urgent that you release me now. I'm running out of time."
Mason had seen too many violent outbursts to be disturbed by this one. "Running out of time for what?" he asked. Pozner's head snapped up. He had a strange look on his face that Mason could not identify. "Running out of time for what?" he asked again.
"I've got something very important to do," Pozner said quietly, "and I've got only a short time left to do it. It's a matter of life and death. You've got to let me go."
"You're making this sound real serious," said Mason. "But I've got some serious concerns of my own. I've still got an old unsolved attempted murder and an open missing person file to deal with. I let you go and neither of those cases gets closed. If you won't tell me what's going on with you, I've got to hold you till I sort it out. And don't tell me you're not Randolph Pozner. That just doesn't wash. That makes me believe that you think I'm both blind and stupid."
While he was talking, Mason watched Pozner closely. Pozner's lips were pressed tightly together; his jaws were clenched; his eyes were blinking rapidly. "Detective," he said, "I really wasn't lying when I said I am not Randolph Pozner. And I wasn't lying when I said my getting out of here is a matter of life and death. I'm running out of time and I'm desperate. I'm going to tell you the truth, but you've got to promise you'll let me go then."
"Well, Mister Pozner, I really don't have to promise you anything," said Mason, "but telling me the truth would probably put me in a much better frame of mind."
Pozner looked resigned. "I don't really have anything to lose since you're not letting me go anyway," he said softly, almost as if he were trying to convince himself of the wisdom of his actions. He paused a moment and took a deep breath. "This is going to sound strange to you, but keep an open mind. Put what I tell you now in the context of what you already know and maybe it will make a little more sense to you.
"I said I'm not Randolph Pozner, and that's true. But this body I'm in used to belong to Randolph Pozner. If you check the fingerprints, they'll match Pozner's - but he left this body about five years ago and I occupied it on his departure. You witnessed the process but didn't know what you were seeing."
Mason had already decided that he was going to play along with whatever this guy said as long as he continued to talk. "So where did Pozner go?" he asked.
Pozner looked at him like he really was stupid. "He was dead," he said in a condescending voice. "He went where dead people go."
The tone irked Mason a little. "And I would have guessed that you know where that is," he said, assuming his own condescending voice. "So Pozner is gone where dead people go and you occupied his body. So just who the hell are you?"
"This is where it's really going to get difficult for you, Detective. Please bear with me." Pozner took a deep breath. "I am King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria. I haven't told a sober person that for over a hundred years. The body I originally occupied died in 1886. I was swimming in a lake near one of my castles in southern Germany and I drowned. My doctor - actually, my psychiatrist - was swimming with me. When I drowned, I unexpectedly broke free of my body and tried to occupy his. But he drowned, too, and sank in the lake. Fortunately, one of my servants, a peasant named Karl, was attending me. When he saw I was in trouble, he ran out into the water to help. Unfortunately for him, he could not swim and drowned in much shallower water than I had. As he left his body, I occupied it and brought it back to the lake shore."
"You're right, Pozner," Mason interrupted. "I shouldn't take you to the station. I should take you to the nut house. You're telling me you're not Pozner, you're some German king who's been dead for over a hundred years, and I'm supposed to believe that and let you go. Well, look, if you're a king, I guess we can just look you up in the encyclopedia and find out all about you, huh?"
"You can do that. You'll find that I drowned with my doctor in that mountain lake just like I said. But you won't find any reference to Karl. When I died, they weren't all that concerned about a servant."
"I really can't figure out the purpose to your story." Mason shook his head in disbelief. "I would have thought you could have come up with a much better lie than this."
"Exactly," said Pozner, "I could have come up with a much better lie. So the logical conclusion is that this must be the truth."
"Yeah, sure, Ludwig," Mason didn't even try to hide the derision in his voice. "So we've got you in a servant's body in 1886. Where do we go from here? Don't think I'm believing any of this. I'm just giving you the chance to make it a little more entertaining."
The resigned look on Pozner's face didn't change. "Things were a little sticky for me after my first body drowned," he said. "First I had to figure out who I really was. It was very disconcerting at first having people call me Karl. But when I told them I was Ludwig, they called me crazy and wanted to lock me up. Finally, in self defense, I had to accept that they thought I was Karl. Then I had to learn to act like Karl, to act like a servant. I didn't know how to do that. All my life I'd had everything I wanted and had everything done for me. Of course, I'd had servants around all the time, too, but I never paid any attention to them. I didn't know what they did. On top of all that, some people at the castle wanted to hang me for letting the king drown. Isn't that the ultimate irony? Karl had given his life to save me; now they wanted to hang him. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have made a greater effort to get into my shrink's body. It might have been interesting to be a psychiatrist."
"Well, at least this is getting to be a little more entertaining," said Mason, "but you've still got a long way to go to get to the here and now."
Pozner, or Ludwig, settled back into his nostalgic mode. He seemed almost to enjoy being able to talk about these things. "The problems with being Karl just worked themselves out," he said. "The people made a few allowances for the ordeal he'd been through. They forgave him for letting me drown because they knew he couldn't swim and he had always been a good servant. Gradually, I learned what servants do and settled into his life. It was hard, and I prided myself on my perseverance and versatility. Who'd have ever thought a king could make it as a servant?
"Several years passed like that, and then I began having troubling dreams and worrisome thoughts about Karl's body. It was as though a higher force was warning me that I couldn't use this body forever. Eventually, about five years after Karl had drowned, the dreams and thoughts intensified to the point that I had no peace at all. I knew that I had to find a new body. Based only on my experience with Karl, I supposed that I would have to find a body that the old occupant was leaving. Somehow I knew instinctively that I would not be able to expedite the old occupant's departure - if I caused his death, I would not be allowed to profit from it."
Mason couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "Did you make this all up by yourself, or is it from some Poe story you read?" he asked. "I really want us to get on to Pozner, but I also want to know what happened to poor old Karl."
"Well, the bottom line was that I lucked out when I had to leave Karl's body. One of the men I knew in the village had a cousin who had been in an accident with a wagon. The cousin was hanging on to life in the local hospital. I went to visit him, and it was as though my arrival was all he'd been waiting for. I had been in the room only a few minutes when the cousin left the body, and I was able to occupy it."
"But what happened to Karl's body?" asked Mason, trying to adopt a tone of genuine concern. With a story this fantastic, he believed that eventually Pozner would have to trip himself up.
"It disintegrated," said Pozner. "He left only a small pile of dust."
"How very convenient."
When it became clear Mason was out of questions, Pozner continued. "The cousin's name was Johann. His folks were all thrilled with his amazing recovery, and I had to learn another lifestyle. This was the change that made me appreciate the hazards of my condition. I didn't know anything about Johann when I took over his body, and trying to learn was exhausting. So after only a short time in his body, I left Bavaria and went to France to start a new life altogether. That established the pattern I've followed ever since."
To keep Pozner talking and to get closer to the time Mason was really interested in, he asked, "When did you come to the United States?"
"About fifty years ago, in the body of an American soldier killed in the Second World War. I feel pretty bad about that one. His folks were so happy to get him back alive; when I disappeared, it broke their hearts."
"Sort of like Randolph Pozner's wife and kids, huh?" asked Mason, sarcastically. "So every five years you need a new body?"
"Yes; it's pretty exact. I start feeling the need, and it builds up. Sometimes I've cut it a little close, and my premonitions have rushed me along. Once, I stayed in an old body too long, and it collapsed on me. I really had to scramble to get into a new body that time. Of course, I've never been able to test this theory, but I believe that once I leave a body, I have about an hour to get into another one."
"One other thing is confusing me," said Mason. "You said that when you take over a new body you sort of get out of Dodge, you go somewhere else to avoid any complications. Why didn't you do that with Pozner? Why are you still here?"
"Yeah, why?" said Pozner. "I'm not still here, Detective; I'm back here. My company sent me here for a symposium this week. It was just one of those weird coincidences. I thought long and hard about coming back and then decided to take the chance. Looks like it might be the worst decision I ever made."
"Yeah." Mason lifted his head and stared at Pozner. "So your time in Pozner's body is about up?"
"Yes! Exactly!" Pozner raised his handcuffed arms in emphasis and triumph. "The feelings are as intense as they have ever been. I had my next body identified at the mugging site, but you interfered and now he's been dead too long. If I have to leave this body, I'll have only an hour to find another - and I may have to leave it at any time now. You've got to let me go, Detective. If you don't release me now, it will be just as though you murdered me."
"Your story is fascinating, Ludwig." Mason shook his head. "But I've got a bigger problem now. Just how much of this crap am I going to be able to put in my report? I don't believe most of it myself."
"But, Detective, I told you the truth. You've got to let me go now." The triumph was gone from Pozner's voice, and the desperation was back.
"No, no, don't say anymore. I've heard too much already. No matter what I do with you, I'm going to get second-guessed all the way to City Hall. I'm taking you in to give me a little time to sort this out and figure out what I'm going to do." Mason put the car into gear again and headed downtown.
It was a quiet night at the station. There wasn't even anybody in the holding cell. Sergeant McAllister was on duty. "Hi, Mac," said Mason. "I thought your seniority got you off these late shifts."
McAllister laughed. "One of my guys had a family emergency, so I'm filling in for him. Gives me a chance to see how the other half lives."
"Yeah, and to be grateful you don't have to do it anymore, huh? How long are you going to be here?"
"I'm on 'til eight in the morning. I just hope I can stay awake that long."
"Well, I'll be back before then. Take good care of my prisoner." Pozner, or Ludwig, or whoever he was, had given up his protests by then, and submitted quietly to the processing and the lockup.
"I'll see you in the morning," said Mason as he left Pozner in the cell. "Try to get some rest. You must be worn out from all that fantasizing you've been doing." Mason waved at Sergeant McAllister as he left the station. "See you in the morning, too, Mac."
By morning, Mason had shaken off the dramatics of Pozner's farfetched story. He had no doubts that Pozner was Pozner. He showed up at the station earlier than usual, confident that he could straighten the guy out and convince him to finally tell the truth. After all, he'd had a happy life before with his wife and children, and they loved him and missed him. Mason wanted to get these people back together where they belonged. Such a case gave him a rare opportunity to do something he could feel truly good about.
"Hey," said Mason to the officer on duty as he entered the lockup. "Where's McAllister? I thought he was supposed to be on until eight."
"Something happened to the sergeant," said the officer. "A heart attack, or something. They had to rush him to the hospital. They called me in in the middle of the night to take over."
Mason whistled through his teeth. "That's too bad. Mac's a good guy. I hope he's okay." He looked toward the holding cell, and was surprised to find it empty. "Where's my prisoner?" he asked.
"What prisoner?" asked the officer. "There hasn't been anybody in there since I came on."
Mason walked to the door of the cell and peered inside. There was no sign anybody had ever been in there. As he stared, his eyes were drawn to something that seemed out of place - a small pile of dust in the far corner behind the bunk.
He turned quickly back to the officer. "Where'd they take McAllister?"
"Mercy Hospital; it's the closest one." Mason grabbed the phone on the officer's desk and punched in the number for the hospital. He began talking before the nurse on the other end finished saying hello. "I'm Detective Mason from the Adderly Police Department. I need to know the status of a Sergeant McAllister, who was brought there in the middle of the night with a heart attack."
"I don't even have to look that one up," said the nurse. "It's the talk of the ward. Evidently Sergeant McAllister didn't have a heart attack, or he got over it in record time. He checked himself out a couple of hours ago. He said he was fine and we couldn't find anything wrong with him, so we had to let him go. He said he was going home."
As Mason hung up the phone, he asked the officer on duty, "Did anyone call Sergeant McAllister's wife?"
The officer stared at him intently for several seconds before answering. "I don't think so, Detective," he said. "They told me not to call her. They said they didn't want to bother her in the middle of the night until they knew how serious it was. I don't think anybody ever called her."
Mason lifted the receiver to his ear again, feeling prickles on the back of his neck as he dialed McAllister's home number. The sergeant's wife answered. "Mrs. McAllister, this is Detective Mason. I need to talk to your husband. Is he there?"
"Why, no, Detective," she said. "I haven't seen nor heard from him since he got called in to duty last night. Is there a problem?"
©Sam Douglas
Sam Douglas is a retired military man who served in Air Force Intelligence all over the world inlcuding several combat and Cold War stations. He is now a freelance writer living in the southern US with his wife of many years. He has a BS from the University of Maryland and an MS from Webster University. His work has appeared in various university, small press, and online publications.