Grave Intent

by Alexander Hartung

  Jan rushed over to the special team’s office.

  “You called me by my first name before,” Robin said.

  Jan pressed the door handle, closing the door with a shoulder. “Apologies. I’m normally a pretty polite guy, but with a gun in my face I forget my manners.”

  All his fellow officers turned his way.

  “Wasn’t anything personal.”

  Jan pointed to his phone using his free hand. “It’s all right, Herr Cordes.” Jan stressed the name with a special urgency and at the same time turned on the speaker undetected so that his colleagues could follow along.

  Cordes’s voice echoed through the room. “I’m not doing this because I feel guilty somehow or like you a whole lot. It’s only out of love for my girlfriend.”

  Patrick lifted a phone off the table and dialed a number. A hand cupping his mouth, he urgently spoke to someone on the other end.

  “Has your girlfriend told you about the latest developments?”

  Patrick raised a thumb, pressing the phone to his chest.

  “That motherfucker’s photo, you mean.”

  At least ten sets of eyebrows stared at Jan, transfixed. No one moved. Jan wondered if anyone was even breathing, the room was so still.

  “I do. The grave murderer has you in his sights.”

  “Just like I told you.” Robin sounded amazingly calm. It was likely not the first time someone had threatened him.

  “I’m sorry for doubting you.”

  Jan had to hold the speaker closer to his ear. The connection was bad. There was static and hissing and Robin’s voice kept cutting out.

  “What do you want? I’m not going to let myself fall in the cops’ hands. So don’t go telling me about protective custody.”

  “This is about the connection between the two victims and you.”

  “Like I said before. Valburg bought drugs from me, and I got special meds from Quast that I dealt.”

  “What kind of meds?”

  “Mostly stuff you can’t get in Germany. At first it was supplements for hair loss that are allowed in other countries but banned here. Later it got more rare. Experimental substances for cancer or HIV. Some of them were still in the testing phase.”

  “Where did Moritz Quast get them?”

  “No idea. I was just the middleman between him and the customers.”

  “Who were your customers?”

  “Regular people at first. The doctors and private clinics got in on it for the testing-phase stuff. They paid crazy prices. Made more profit off that than off coke.”

  “Did you sell bogus meds too?”

  “Now and then.”

  “What exactly?”

  “Hair-growth remedies and Viagra. But only when supplies were dwindling. Most were legit. The doctors would have noticed if we were peddling them sugar pills. And we did not want to lose those lucrative customers, believe me. Quast and I were earning tons. You had to know the right balance.”

  The person Patrick had called appeared to have reported back. Patrick scribbled something on a notepad and held it up. Robin’s cell phone had been traced. An address in Charlottenburg. They’d managed to find it even without Max’s help.

  “Did anyone die from taking the meds?”

  “One of our customers popped too much of the stuff and had a heart attack when he was with a prostitute.”

  Patrick pointed at two investigators and waved them out. They slipped out of the room.

  “I mean the experimental substances.”

  “No idea. The doctors never told us what they did with the stuff. Why is that so important?”

  “We’re looking for the killer’s motive.”

  “The guy is nuts, that’s what.”

  “Possibly,” Jan replied. Luckily Robin was in a chatty mood. A car would be at the address in a couple of minutes. Then they could get him into custody, even if it had to be against his will. He would survive the night that way. “But his choice of victims isn’t random enough. You three are too connected for it to be coincidence.”

  “Hmm,” Robin said. He seemed to be thinking about it.

  “Reconsider our offer of protection.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “I really do hope you can.”

  “If you promise not to bother my girlfriend anymore, I’ll report back in.”

  Patrick came over holding up a finger. His mouth formed the words one minute.

  “I promise. When will you call again?”

  “I have something going on tonight. Tomorrow I’ll keep a real low profile. If the day I die passes no problem, you’ll be hearing from me again. I got your number.”

  “Take good care of yourself,” Jan said. He didn’t want to keep the call going unnecessarily long or he’d cause suspicion. The officers would be close enough to him by now.

  “Thank you.”

  He hung up.

  “We have two patrols in the area,” Patrick said. “His bearings point to a public square with few options for hiding. Officers will call in as soon as they’ve picked him up.”

  He set his phone on the table. They all stared at it.

  A minute passed. Patrick anxiously tapped his foot.

  Two minutes.

  No one said a word.

  Three minutes.

  “Goddamn it,” Patrick said. “It shouldn’t be taking this long.”

  Then, as if on cue, the phone began playing the theme song to Bonanza.

  Patrick pressed speaker. “You have him?”

  “He wasn’t there.”

  “What? We had his phone pinpointed down to the yard with GPS.”

  “We found the cell phone. Just not Robin Cordes.”

  “He can’t disappear that fast,” Jan protested.

  “He wasn’t here. His phone was stuck to another phone.”

  Jan groaned. Thus the bad connection.

  Patrick kicked at the table, furious. “This Cordes is clever,” he said.

  “Hopefully more clever than the grave murderer,” Jan remarked.

  He looked at the time. Dusk was approaching.

  “Good luck, Robin. You’re going to need it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jan was glad to have Patrick driving him to the wooded cemetery. He might be able to fit in a catnap while Patrick drove. He’d had no time to stock up on energy drinks.

  Patrick didn’t have to be doing this stakeout with him. But his colleague had packed bread, cheese, Vienna sausages, coffee, tea, and water. Plus bananas, grapes, and chocolate. It was enough for the whole unit.

  Jan’s window of peace and quiet came to an abrupt end when Patrick pulled into the cemetery parking lot. They crossed the street and passed the first plainclothes patrol. Jan nodded and entered the cemetery.

  All units were in position. As planned, he and Patrick separated and took different routes to their hiding place. The cemetery had few visitors at this hour. Jan fished out some still-respectable flowers from the compost for disguise and strolled along the paths that skirted the grave site of Robin Cordes. He memorized possible escape routes and tried to note every spot a person could hide. Then he headed to his designated hiding place.

  The shrub that had been prepared for them was every kid’s dream. Dark and cramped like a robber’s cave, it was the perfect hideout. Patrick had switched on the monitor showing the surveillance cams and set two tiny folding camping stools before it. There wasn’t room for much more, but it would do. As long as it didn’t rain, their bush wasn’t much worse than most cars.

  “Any activity at the grave?” Jan said into his portable radio.

  “Negative,” Max replied. “Three persons total have passed by. All were checked when exiting, but none were suspect.”

  “Thanks for the info,” Jan said.

  “Not much will happen before midnight,” Patrick said. “Robin Cordes’s date of death isn’t until tomorrow, and so far our killer’s been sticking to his word.”

  “He could check out th
e grave before the murder.”

  “So what happens when he doesn’t get Robin?”

  “Then he’ll be tough to find. And he won’t give up if we don’t catch him tonight. Maybe Robin will play along eventually and let us tail him. When the murderer starts trailing Robin? We got him.”

  “I’ll take the first watch.” Patrick grabbed a thermos from their bag. “Sleep a bit if you can. I’ll wake you up around midnight.”

  “Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.” Jan folded his arms at his chest and closed his eyes, content. He was asleep within seconds.

  “Wake up.” Someone was shaking his arm. Jan opened his eyes. It was pitch-black. Only the tiny monitor gave off any light.

  “What is it?” Jan whispered, rubbing at his eyes.

  “We have a visitor.”

  The right side of the monitor showed the feed of the cam in the holly bush. A man holding a bunch of flowers was heading toward the grave. He wore dark clothing with a hood up. Even with infrared it was tough to see him. “Not exactly visiting his grandma’s grave,” Patrick remarked.

  “How late is it?”

  “Just after one.”

  Jan picked up the portable radio. “You see him?”

  “Yes,” Max replied.

  The man kept heading toward Robin’s grave. He was only a few steps away when he halted and pivoted around, as though making sure no one was watching him.

  “He’s mine.” Jan shot out of their hiding spot and sprinted down the path. The man started, dropped the flowers, and tried to make a break for it, but Jan was too fast for him. Jan used his momentum to haul the man down and was rewarded with a loud groan. He flipped their nighttime visitor on his back, pressing an arm into his neck. Two plainclothes officers knelt next to Jan and bound the man’s wrists with plastic cuffs, holding him down.

  The man cursed in a foreign language.

  “No weapons,” Jan said after frisking him.

  A plainclothes yanked the man’s ID from a pocket and checked the photo. “A certain Martin Novak.”

  Jan had one officer keep the man on the ground. He stood, pulled out his flashlight, and shone it in the man’s face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m taking flowers to my mother’s grave. What the hell is this about?”

  Jan nodded to the officer keeping Novak down. He twisted Novak’s wrist so painfully that Novak moaned.

  “We’re looking for a serial killer. You give me another stupid answer like that, I’ll throw you in jail for double homicide.”

  “I steal flowers,” Novak wailed. He appealed to them, still held down. “My sister-in-law has this nursery. It’s not doing so well, see, so I hit the cemetery at night and clear out the new graves’ flowers. I know nothing about any murder.”

  Patrick appeared by Jan’s side. “His excuse is so dumb, it’s probably true.”

  “We can’t question him here,” Jan said. “If he’s not our man, all this pandemonium is going to scare off our grave murderer.”

  Jan turned to the other officers. “Take him down to the station. Check his story, see if he’s got an alibi for the murders. If there’s even the slightest link to the victims, keep him in custody. He’ll have a nice long interrogation to look forward to.”

  The officers pulled up Novak and led him off, and they weren’t gentle about it.

  Patrick watched the man go. “What do you think?”

  “Can’t know for sure.” Jan shook his head. “Depends if we can form any connections between him, Valburg, and Quast. We’ll know more in a few hours, provided we even believe his story.” He pointed at the flowers. “Let’s get this cleaned up and back to our posts. The day of Robin’s death is now one hour old.”

  At nine a.m., Jan leaned his hoe against a tree and sat down on a bench. They had given up on their hiding place a little after seven, thrown on some work clothes, and taken up their posts again. Martin Novak’s story of being a flower thief had checked out. His sister-in-law had tearfully admitted to her shady swindle a little before dawn. Plus there was no connection to Bernhard Valburg, Moritz Quast, or Robin Cordes. To play it safe, they were keeping Novak in custody just the same.

  Jan pulled his phone from a pocket and dialed Friederike Roth’s number. She picked up on the first ring.

  “You hear anything?” Her voice was a mix of anticipation and panic.

  “Nothing yet, unfortunately. We staked out the cemetery all night, but Robin’s grave is still empty. Did he check in with you?”

  “No. I had my phone with me in bed all night.”

  “I’m going to hope that no news is good news. We’ll stick it out here today. I’m optimistic that the grave will stay empty.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Please let me know immediately if Robin calls.”

  “I will, right away.”

  “Thanks.” Jan hung up and stashed his phone. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the rays of morning sun on his face. A few hours’ sleep in their stakeout hole had staved off the worst of his weariness. And Patrick’s catering job had supplied him with a nice breakfast, at least. Jan was losing himself in a daydream of mattresses and down pillows when his portable radio sounded.

  “Someone’s coming up the path.” Max didn’t sound the least bit weary, even though he hadn’t slept for two nights now. Jan was going to have to get the brand of his energy drinks, and soon.

  He positioned himself behind a tree so that he couldn’t be seen from the path. “Who is it?”

  “Two men from the cemetery.”

  “They really with the cemetery or they just wearing the gear?”

  “They work here. Both were checked out.”

  “So why are you reporting in?”

  “They’re pushing a coffin your way.”

  Jan looked out from around the tree. It was just as Max described. He knew the two cemetery workers. He’d questioned one of them himself. They were pushing a cart with a wood coffin on it.

  “Regular cemetery operations had to continue,” Jan explained. “That was a condition of the management. They can’t postpone burials or store the deceased.”

  Another officer’s voice came over the radio. “There’s no burial listed in this area for today, though.”

  Jan went up to the men pushing the cart. “Morning, gents.” He showed his badge. “Can you tell me what you’re doing with that coffin?”

  “Ya know, burying the dead,” one of the men said. He was looking at Jan as if the detective wasn’t quite right in the head.

  “Where?”

  The man raised a clipboard. “D six-zero-four. Site B.”

  “What B?” the other man said. “We don’t got no Bs. First a letter, then the number. Never any As or Bs.”

  “See for yourself.” The first man held up the clipboard for his coworker.

  The second man shook his head. “Who filled that out?”

  “What’s the deceased’s name?” Jan asked.

  “Cordes, R.”

  “What?” Jan ripped the clipboard from the man’s hand. Robin Cordes’s name was there. “Open the coffin!”

  “We . . . we’re not supposed to—”

  “Do it now!”

  One of the men muttered something about disturbing the dead, but they finally did lift off the lid.

  Inside the coffin lay the corpse of Robin Cordes.

  At the cemetery, not even a celebrity funeral could have sparked as massive a police operation as the discovery of Robin Cordes’s body. All visitors were inspected at the entrances. Two crime-tech teams searched for clues, and special patrols were checking out all cars parked in the vicinity.

  Jan turned to Zoe. “How did he die?”

  The medical examiner raised her eyebrows. “That hole in the back of his head interfered with his getting oxygen.”

  “So that was the cause of death?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Murder weapon?”

  “Egg spoon.”

  “Seriously?�
�

  “Man, you’ll believe anything.” She lit up a cigarette with a windproof Zippo. “I’m going with a hammer again.”

  “What’s with his fingers?”

  “Cut off. But don’t go asking me why again.”

  “Postmortem?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “With what?”

  “Garden shears or something similarly crude.” She beckoned a colleague over to her. With his sweater-vest, hair combed over a receding hairline, and orthopedic shoes, he couldn’t have made a greater contrast to the always-stylish Zoe.

  “Walter, pack up the dead guy and get him ready for autopsy. Put on coffee beforehand. I’ll pick up something for breakfast on the way back and then I’ll be in.”

  She turned back to Jan. “I saw Bergman earlier. Face all red and pinched up like one of those wrinkly Chinese dogs, gasping for breath. Wouldn’t have thought he could be in an even fouler mood than usual.” She pointed at the corpse. “Might have something to do with that one there.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up. I can use the encouragement right now.”

  “Always a pleasure.” Zoe waved to go. “Tonight I’ll know more.”

  The smoke from her cigarette had not yet cleared when Max came running up to Jan with his laptop under one arm.

  “Find anything out?”

  “I know how the murderer slipped us the corpse.” He waved Jan over. “Let’s go over to the administration offices.”

  On the way, Jan cut a wide swath around a group of cops with their gazes fixed at the ground. They were searching the path around the grave for clues. There was always a chance the murderer had lost something when he shoveled out the hole.

  “The cemetery uses a computer program for scheduling the day’s assignments.” Outside the cemetery offices, Max flipped open his laptop and pointed at the screen. “Name, time, grave site, and all the other stuff are saved there. Every cemetery employee has a user account to view the log, but only four people are allowed to make entries.”

  “Who made the entry?”

  “The cemetery manager—and early today, at one forty-one a.m., at that.”

  “Was he here?”

  “No.”

  “So the murderer hacked his account.”

  “I wouldn’t call it hacking. The manager can’t remember passwords very well. He writes them down on a notepad in his desk drawer.”