[WP] When a person dies, their memories and knowledge are released to the public.

It was very cold, though it would not do to acknowledge it. I simply sat and waited, watching my breath erupt and dispel into the gray air. Bird shit covered the bench, so I sat on Myska's coat. His only admission to this was the crossing of his arms. They were thick and his shirt strained to contain them, tufts of black hair emerging from the cuffs. He looked around with an eyebrow raised, as though waiting for something to amuse him. I felt rather than saw someone approach. Myska shifted his feet but said nothing. My friend has arrived. He was breathing raggedly, his legs heavy. He sank onto the bench without grace and sighed wetly. "Hello Urbanski," I said, turning to him. He looked like the corpse of the man I expected to see. "You're... looking well." I turned away quickly. I did not want him to see my unease. I heard him swallowing, over and over. An eternity passed before he said: "I know you killed Elzbieta." His voice was like a bucket of gravel being stirred. Despite myself, I started. As a boy, Waclaw Urbanski was a talented singer. He was known in the city even then. As a man, his voice could shake the glass in your hand. It was his strength in interrogation. In court, it made him a giant to any jury. I was beginning to smell him. Like soil and mildew and scotch. I looked again. He seemed like a man hiding beneath a heap of rags. But his eyes were the same piercing black dots. His gaze covered me like muslin. "Let it go, detective," I whispered through clenched teeth. I felt Myska lean closer, waiting, listening. "It has nothing to do with you. It never did and it never will." "It has do with me, Hermann. I made a promise and unlike you I cannot turn away from my duty. Do you know what I've seen? Her memories... there was nothing. She saw no one. She heard nothing. Her world, the world you put her in, was nothing but pain until the end. "I saw them so many times. Searching for the missing piece, searching for something the auditors missed. Past the chains, past the... the burning, and the cutting, and... So many times. Looking for you, or some trace of your passage. But you were perfect, as you have become in time. She had no chance. All she has now... is me." A gunshot rang out, deafening. I slumped sideways on the bench, head ringing, eyes watering. On the ground beside me, Myska lay on the cold pavement as though drunk. Blood pooled around his head, Christlike. My eyes raised to Urbanski, now standing, his service revolver in his hand. I thought he looked like one of the war monuments in the park, the illusion complete but for the steaming hole in the side pocket. "You can't. They will kill you. You know they will kill you for this." I do not know if it was fear or only the cold that seeped into me from the frozen bench, but it was in my bones. "And before I die, I will see your life laid out like a map. And then I will know for certain. And they will all know what I do here is a justice, one too long in waiting."

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