To Catch a Killer

by Nele Neuhaus

  “Were Kathrin and Cem able to get anything at the UCF?” Bodenstein asked.

  “No.” Ostermann demolished Bodenstein’s last glimmer of hope. “Supposedly there’s no one in-house who’s authorized to allow access to hospital records. The order from the state attorney’s office hasn’t arrived yet.”

  They drove back in the same depressed state of silence as on the drive over. Henning Kirchhoff had been right: An autopsy in the case of Maximilian Gehrke was as unhelpful as those of Ingeborg Rohleder and Margarethe Rudolf. It was all wasted effort. Bodenstein felt like he was sitting in a car that was gradually running out of gas.

  “Your car is still parked in Liederbach,” Pia reminded him just before they reached the turnoff for the Main-Taunus Center. He had intended to keep driving in the center lane toward Hofheim. Just in time, he put on his blinker and veered sharply to the right.

  At least Rosalie had arrived safely in New York, and her pain at leaving had given way to excitement about the city in which she was now going to live and work for a year. When could he talk to Inka about the offer from Cosima’s mother? How was she going to react? So far, there hadn’t been a suitable opportunity. In the daytime, they were both busy, and at night, she slept at her own place because Sophia was staying with him. He’d been pondering for days how he was going to explain everything to her without her again making the unjustified accusation that he didn’t want to let Cosima go. In this tense situation, the last thing he needed was to fight with Inka.

  Bodenstein stopped next to his unmarked car, undid his seat belt, and got out.

  “See you soon,” he said to Pia, who had taken the wheel.

  “Okay,” she said. “Have you got your car keys?”

  He patted his coat pocket and nodded before walking past the garage to the row of houses where Dirk Stadler lived. As darkness fell, the shades had been pulled down in all the houses where somebody was already home. Here and there, faint light could be seen through the small glass panes in the front doors, but otherwise, everything was locked up tight.

  The lights were off at Stadler’s house. Bodenstein pressed the doorbell, waited a moment, and rang again, but nobody came to the door. The gusty wind was shaking the two small boxwood trees at either side of the front door, whirling dry leaves over the path. The temperature had dropped a few degrees, and the cold was creeping up Bodenstein’s pant legs. There was no doubt that he enjoyed his job, which he’d been doing for a good thirty years, although he was often worn out. He loved the challenges that each case brought, and he felt great satisfaction when a murderer was convicted and justice was won for the victim and his family. Bodenstein couldn’t imagine working in another profession, and to be honest, he didn’t have the expertise for anything else. For him, his profession had always been a calling, far more than merely a job that was over at five o’clock. And there were always recurring periods like now, when they seemed to make no headway. In his career, there had been only a few cases that had never been solved, cold cases that he retrieved from the archives from time to time to review. Modern criminological technology permitted more extensive analyses and brought more precise results, and often the networking with international police authorities helped as well. Calm determination and patience were two important traits that a police officer needed, but at the moment, Bodenstein had the unpleasant feeling that waiting was the worst of all possible alternatives. He turned around and hurried back to his car.

  Naturally, you will receive appropriate compensation for this task. Gabriela’s statement kept running through his head. His officer status did not allow him to accept supplementary income just like that. Did it mean that he’d have to quit his job? And would he ever be able to meet his mother-in-law’s expectations?

  Bodenstein turned on the engine and set the heat on high. Icy air blew into his face. Cursing, he adjusted the fan, turned on the windshield wipers, and drove off.

  On the drive from Liederbach to Hofheim, he thought about the advantages of Gabriela’s offer. He would never again have to jump out of bed in the middle of the night or on a Sunday morning because there was a dead body somewhere. He wouldn’t have to worry about lack of personnel, tiffs among the colleagues, and all the regulations, restrictions, and tedious paperwork. No more burned, rotting, bloated corpses; no endless questioning in which the wildest tall tales were served up; no stress, no hectic pace, no more pulling an all-nighter. Would he miss the tension that he felt each time he was called to the site where a dead body was found? The fever of the hunt, the feeling of doing something important and good, and the satisfaction of working together with his team? What sense of accomplishment would he have if all he did was worry about his mother-in-law’s fortune? “No,” he said out loud to himself. “No, I won’t do it.”

  And suddenly he felt a lot better.

  Karoline Albrecht had been sitting in her car for quite a while, wondering whether she should get out and ring the doorbell of the row house. She didn’t really want to learn anything about this woman who had also been struck by such a cruel fate. She herself was so filled with pain and rage and grief that she didn’t know whether she could stand any more. Gradually, the guests at the reception after the funeral left, and Karoline finally had to get moving before it got too late to pay a visit to a stranger.

  “Yes?” Renate Rohleder scrutinized her suspiciously through a crack in the door. “What do you want?”

  “My name is Karoline Albrecht,” she said. “Please excuse me for simply showing up at your door, but I . . . I wanted to speak with you. My mother was . . . shot last week, in Oberursel. By the same . . . murderer as your mother.”

  “Oh!” The reddened eyes of the woman widened in astonishment, and caution gave way to curiosity. She didn’t ask how Karoline knew her name and address. She took off the safety chain and opened the door all the way. “Please come in.”

  The house smelled sweet and stuffy and a bit like wet dog. For a moment, the two women stood facing each other mutely in the hall, looking at each other with some embarrassment. Grief had ravaged Renate Rohleder’s face. Deep furrows ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth; her eyelids were swollen, and dark circles had formed under her eyes. Although she was probably only a little older than Karoline, she looked like an old woman.

  “I’m . . . so sorry about what happened to your mother,” Karoline broke the silence, and Renate Rohleder gave a sob and wrapped her in her arms. Karoline, who normally did not care much for physical contact, felt herself pressed to a soft bosom, and the ice that had covered her heart burst into a thousand pieces. She made no effort to maintain her composure but gave her tears free rein, sobbing just as hard as this other woman, whose soul had been just as damaged as her own.

  Later they sat together in the living room and drank tea. They had agreed to skip the formalities and address each other in the familiar way, using each other’s first names. But for a while, neither of them knew quite how to broach the subject. The old brown Lab lay in his basket and watched them out of melancholy dark eyes that were clouded over by a bluish sheen.

  “Topsi hardly eats anything, now that Mama is gone,” said Renate with a sigh. “She was there when . . . when it happened.”

  Karoline had to swallow hard.

  “My daughter, Greta, was standing next to my mother when she was shot through the kitchen window,” she replied, amazed at how easy it was to say these words. Until now, she and her father had chosen a multitude of euphemisms for the terrible event.

  “Oh my God!” Renate’s face showed her concern. “That’s even worse. How is she coping with it?”

  “Well, she’s with her father and his family at the moment. She seems to be doing all right.” Karoline cradled the teacup in her hands. “I just can’t believe that this guy shot my mother at random. My parents’ house is at the edge of the woods, at the end of a cul-de-sac. Nobody ever walks past by chance.”

  Renate straightened up and gave at Karoline a searching look.

&nbs
p; “The murders aren’t random,” she said softly. “They’re saying that in the papers only because the police aren’t giving out any information.”

  “What do you mean?” Karoline said in bewilderment.

  “The police think it’s because of Kirsten. Kirsten Stadler.” Renate’s voice quavered, and her eyes swam with tears. “They found out her name through the last victim. And through these . . . these obituaries.”

  A sob caught in her throat.

  “It’s so terrible. We were practically next-door neighbors, Kirsten and I. I saw her often, and sometimes we went walking together. Kirsten also had a dog, a Hovawart, whose name was Spike.”

  Karoline didn’t have the faintest idea who this Kirsten was or what Renate was talking about.

  “What obituaries?” she interrupted her.

  “Wait a sec.” Renate jumped up and left the living room; she came back a little later holding a paper in her hand and gave it to Karoline. “This is a copy of the one that was mailed to the police in Eschborn.”

  An obituary, printed on a sheet of paper.

  INGEBORG ROHLEDER HAD TO DIE BECAUSE HER DAUGHTER IMPLICATED HERSELF IN THE DENIAL OF ASSISTANCE AND ACTED AS AN ACCESSORY TO NEGLIGENT MANSLAUGHTER, she read.

  “What’s this supposed to mean?” she whispered. “And what does it have to do with my mother?”

  “I don’t know.” Renate blew her nose. Then she told Karoline the story of what had happened on the morning of September 16, 2002. “I still can’t grasp that I am supposed to be guilty of my mother’s death. What have I ever done that’s so bad? I couldn’t have known what was going on with Kirsten. Who would ever imagine that a young, healthy woman all of a sudden would be brain-dead? What was I supposed to do, anyway?”

  For a moment, Renate just sat there, staring into space and crumpling the tissue between her fingers. Karoline understood how much courage it must have cost the woman to tell her about this. The self-recriminations must have been eating her alive.

  “Am I understanding correctly?” Karoline asked. “This so-called Judge killed your mother because you didn’t help out back then?”

  Renate nodded unhappily and shrugged.

  “It’s so inconceivable. Why didn’t he shoot me? My mother was so . . . such a good person. She . . . she was so generous and so ready to help, and she would always listen to anyone’s problems.”

  Grief overwhelmed her, and she started sobbing again.

  “It was so long ago,” Renate whimpered. “I had stopped thinking about it, until . . . until Helen showed up in my shop, together with a man.”

  “Helen?”

  “Kirsten’s daughter. She asked me why I didn’t help her mother that day, and only then did it all come back to me.”

  “When was that? What did she want from you?”

  “It was a few months ago. Sometime during the summer. Helen asked me whether I was at all aware of what I’d done back then, and whether I had any regrets. The man didn’t say a word the whole time, only looked at me in a funny way. It really scared me.”

  What is Renate getting at? Karoline wondered.

  “The police asked me about him, but at the time, I was so confused that I couldn’t remember anything else. But then I had an idea.” She reached for a newspaper lying on the table and held it out to show Karoline. “I happened to see this ad the day before yesterday, and then it dawned on me.”

  She tapped on a classified ad.

  “This sign was on the car that they were driving. It was parked right outside my shop window.”

  The “sign” was the company logo of a goldsmith in Hofheim.

  “Do you understand, Karoline?” Renate whispered urgently. A fearful look had come into her eyes. “I think he might be the Judge.”

  Karoline stared at her as her brain desperately tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Obituaries. Kirsten Stadler. Failure to render assistance. Brain-dead. She felt like a tightrope walker balancing above a black abyss without a net, clinging to the last remnants of a child’s primal sense of trust.

  “Renate, can you remember what hospital Kirsten was taken to and what happened to her there?” Her vocal cords ached with tension, her palms were sweaty, and her heart was pounding as she dreaded what she might hear.

  “I . . . I don’t know, I have to think about it.” Renate rubbed her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “It was a hospital in Frankfurt—the UCF, I think. They couldn’t do any more for her, her brain had gone too long without oxygen. . . .”

  Thoughts were racing thick and fast through Karoline’s head; she no longer heard what Renate was saying. Somehow she managed to take her leave, and she found herself back outside in the fresh air. With unsteady steps, she walked along the dark street to her car.

  She got in, put her hands on the steering wheel, and took a few deep breaths. Everything in her was fighting against the suspicion that her father might have had something to do with the Kirsten Stadler case. She really didn’t want to know. Mama was dead, and nothing would bring her back to life.

  “We couldn’t have turned out more differently.” Kim had made herself comfortable on the love seat. “Here I am, living in a loft in the middle of Hamburg, and you’re on a farm.”

  “It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted.” Pia grinned and toasted her sister with a glass of white wine. “I lived long enough in the city and had enough of wasting my time searching for a parking spot or having to park in an underground garage.”

  “But you don’t have any neighbors,” Kim replied. “If anything happens to you here, nobody would know.”

  “Normally, Christoph is there, and my nearest neighbor is five hundred meters away,” Pia said. “At any rate, I feel safer here than in a city, where there’s no longer any social network at all. Do you know how often we find dead bodies who have lain in their apartments for weeks and nobody misses them? What good does it do you if you live in a building with ten or twenty people and none of them takes any interest in you? Out here, people all look out for each other.”

  “I don’t know if I could live in such a secluded place.” Kim took a sip of wine.

  “Secluded?” Pia laughed. “Not a hundred meters from here is the most heavily trafficked autobahn in all of Germany.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Kim. “I’m surprised that this solitude doesn’t bother you after what you went through.”

  “That happened in an apartment with neighbors on both sides,” Pia reminded her. “And it didn’t do me any good.”

  After work, the sisters had gone shopping and tended to the horses. Then Pia had cooked dinner: lamb cutlets with garlic, olive oil, and fresh herbs, with a polenta with Parmesan cheese and baby carrots sautéed in butter. They had enjoyed the delicious meal with a bottle of Gavi di Gavi and later opened another bottle.

  “Do you cook like this every night?” Kim wanted to know.

  “Yep,” said Pia. “Actually, Christoph does most of the cooking. He’s a divine chef. I was always the type who shoved a frozen pizza in the oven and gobbled gyros, bratwurst, or burgers all day. But now I can cook a lot of things pretty well. Except pumpkin soup.”

  “Pretty well? It was great.”

  “Thanks.” Pia smiled and poured herself more wine. A fire was crackling in the fireplace and spreading a pleasant warmth. After the complete remodel of the small house three years ago, the quality of life at Birkenhof had improved dramatically: triple-glazed windows, the addition of a second story with the new roof that was properly insulated, a modern central heating system instead of the old baseboard heaters that never really worked yet used an incredible amount of electricity. Upstairs, there was now a big bedroom with a balcony, a wonderful bathroom, and another room that she and Christoph used as a walk-in closet. The old bedroom downstairs had become a guest room with its own bathroom.

  “I’m eager to get to know Christoph,” said Kim. I’m so happy that I’m here.”

  “Me, too.” Pia looked at her younger si
ster. They used to be inseparable and had done everything together. But Pia had developed a strong yearning for freedom, and right after high school, she had left her parents’ house, which had seemed increasingly joyless and somber. She moved in with a girlfriend, started to study law, and always had some sort of job on the side so she could be independent from her parents. Kim, the baby of the family, had found it more comfortable to live with her parents for a longer time. She had been more softhearted than Pia, but also full of determination. When none of the siblings could be persuaded to do an apprenticeship at Hoechst AG, their parents had finally accepted having a bank teller and two female college students in the family. But while Lars and Kim had consistently followed their chosen paths, Pia had abandoned her studies and joined the police force. This proved to be a humiliating decision for her parents, who had already been boasting about their daughter the attorney at the bowling club and church choir. When she subsequently married Henning Kirchhoff—a man who cut up corpses for a living—Pia no longer figured in her parents’ conversations. The same thing later happened to Kim. The younger daughter, who dealt only with hard-core criminals and psychopaths, was also quietly erased from the family history. Unlike Pia, who had burned all her bridges with a light heart, Kim was profoundly hurt by the blatant disapproval of her parents. She moved to Hamburg and for the past ten years had communicated only with impersonal Christmas cards.

  “What drove you to visit our parents this year?” Pia wanted to know.

  “I’m not really sure,” said Kim with a shrug. “I feel like my time in Hamburg is over. After eleven years, my job no longer seems challenging, especially since I can’t count on becoming a medical director someday. But I have plenty of other job offers, even one here in Frankfurt.”

  “Really?” Pia was astonished. “It would be super if you came back and lived in this area again.”

  “Yeah, the thought appeals to me, too,” Kim admitted as she twirled the stem of her wineglass. “More than moving to Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, or Vienna. Frankfurt is in the middle, which I like. You can get anywhere quickly.”