To Catch a Killer

by Nele Neuhaus

  Erik Stadler shrugged. “That’s what I already told you. It was like this,” he said. “The doctors confirmed brain death. The cerebral hemorrhage had damaged the brainstem irrevocably. She never woke up again.”

  “Your grandmother told us that you blew your top when you found out the doctors were no longer interested in saving your mother’s life. At that point, they viewed her simply as a possible organ donor.”

  “I was seventeen years old!” Stadler protested vehemently. “I was in total shock. My mother died right before my eyes! And I don’t understand what this is all about at this late date. It’s been ten years. She’s dead.”

  I’ll tell you why this is important,” said Pia. “Outside, someone is running around shooting innocent people in order to punish their relatives for what happened to your mother back then. Somebody who knows what really happened. Someone who believes that your mother’s life could have been saved. If she had really lain in the field for two hours and was already brain-dead when she was taken to the hospital, it would have been a terrible stroke of fate. No one could be blamed. But that’s not what happened!”

  Stadler flipped out. Under the increasing pressure of the questioning, which had been hitting him for fifteen minutes like machine-gun fire, he cracked.

  “And what if I told you that they let my mother die because they desperately wanted her organs?” he yelled. “You’d take me for a nutcase who hasn’t been able to accept his mother’s death, even after ten years. Someone who’s spreading horror stories.”

  “No, we wouldn’t do that,” said Bodenstein calmly. “And we would track down the people who permitted this to happen and call them to account. We think that’s a lot better than shooting people’s wives and children.”

  “You could save lives,” said Pia.

  “I’ve heard that line before,” Stadler said with a cynical laugh. “That’s exactly what they told my grandfather. Just sign here so that we can remove the organs. Your daughter may be dead, but she can still save lives. They really leaned on my grandparents hard. They cited examples: The little boy can live if he gets a new liver in the next fourteen days; this young mother of three will die if she doesn’t get a new kidney within a week. And on and on.”

  Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His breathing was labored.

  “Please calm down,” Bodenstein said soothingly. “We’re not trying to open old wounds.”

  “But that’s what you’re doing,” said Stadler. “I’ve been trying for ten years to forget this horror. My sister is dead because she could no longer live with her guilty conscience, but she was never to blame for anything.”

  He fell silent, shook his head, and briefly closed his eyes.

  “When can I go?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When? You can’t hold me more than twenty-four hours without a reason.”

  Bodenstein stood up and Pia grabbed the file.

  “We do have a reason,” Bodenstein said. “As long as you have no alibi for the times of the murders, we consider you a suspect. I told you that last night. You have the right to remain silent, to avoid incriminating yourself, and you can call a lawyer at any time.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Stadler was getting worked up again. “I didn’t shoot anybody! I don’t need a lawyer!”

  “On the contrary. I think you do. Or four alibis.”

  “We’re not really making any progress,” said Pia to her colleagues in the corridor after Erik Stadler had walked past. She was disappointed because she’d been hoping for more from the interview. Something substantial. Some indication that Stadler was the Judge.

  “You never get over something like this,” replied Kim, who along with Dr. Engel, Kathrin, Kai, and Cem had observed the questioning from the next room. “At any rate, he’s not telling the truth about his mother’s death. His behavior indicates that he’s lying. Based on his profile, he could be the perp. He had the motive and the opportunity.”

  Pia didn’t want to hear any more of this profile shit. She almost regretted involving her sister in the investigation. They were overlooking something. But what?

  “There’s something he’s not telling us,” said Kim. “I wonder why?”

  “Maybe because the clinic made them agree to the official version of what happened,” Bodenstein guessed. “That’s why they got the hush money.”

  “But they never told Helen anything about that,” Kai added. “She believed that she was to blame for her mother’s death.”

  “Careful,” Bodenstein warned. “That’s speculation. All we know is that something’s fishy about the whole story. A powerful pressure has been building up around someone connected to the family or their circle of friends, and now it has exploded.”

  “And maybe there’s a reason behind this that’s much more mundane than we suspect.” Pia gnawed on her lower lip as she tried to piece together the thoughts running through her head.

  “Stadler is a good shot, at any rate,” Kathrin remarked.

  “Biathletes shoot at a disk several meters away,” Cem said dubiously. “Our man shot a person from a distance of almost a kilometer. That’s something totally different.”

  “What do you intend to do now?” Nicola Engel asked. “Let him go?”

  “Reluctantly,” Bodenstein admitted. “But we can’t hold him much longer without new evidence.”

  “Then dig some up.”

  “One telling piece of evidence is that there haven’t been any more dead bodies since he’s been sitting in that cell,” said Kathrin.

  “That’s not enough.” Bodenstein shook his head. “We’ll let him go, but only under certain conditions. Kai, arrange to have him watched. And he has to relinquish his passport and report to our colleagues in Niederhöchstadt once a day. Cem and Kathrin, you go talk to Stadler’s girlfriend. I want to know how Stadler’s been behaving recently, whether he’s changed in any way. . . . You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, we know,” said Cem.

  Everyone could feel the pressure that was growing by the hour. Secretly, they were all waiting for an emergency call to come in and a fifth obituary to appear in the paper. An officer of the watch came down the hall.

  “A Ms. Wenning is waiting downstairs. She wants to speak with you,” he told Bodenstein. “She has a lawyer with her.”

  “Thanks. We’ll be right down.” Bodenstein nodded, then turned to Cem and Kathrin. “Your visit to Stadler’s girlfriend will have to wait. Drive into Frankfurt and talk to Stadler’s neighbors. But first pay a visit to Patrick Schwarzer. Maybe today he’ll be in the mood to talk to you. Show him the obituary. We need to establish a link between him and Kirsten Stadler.”

  The group broke up. Only Pia stayed behind.

  “What is it?” Bodenstein asked.

  “We’re asking the wrong questions,” said Pia.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just what I said.” She looked at her boss. “Stadler is hiding something, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be about the murders. Remember the Kaltensee case? Marcus Nowak and Elard Kaltensee, the professor?”

  “Yes, of course.” Bodenstein gave her a quizzical look. “What have they got to do with this?”

  “We thought they were both suspects because they’d obviously been lying and were hiding something from us,” Pia said. “It turned out they weren’t clamming up about the murders as we thought; but they didn’t want to tell us about their secret connection. Erik Stadler also has some secret that he doesn’t want to reveal at any cost, but he isn’t the Judge.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Hmm.” Pia shrugged. “It’s only a hunch. But he was telling the truth when he said that he’d been trying for ten years to forget the whole thing and simply wanted to lead a normal life again. But I also think that he was forced to stick to the official version of the events—a version that had been explicitly spelled out. His nervousness was due to the fact that he wasn’t allowed to speak candidly.”


  Bodenstein frowned as he thought about what she’d said.

  “You may be right,” he admitted. “But why is he willing to risk becoming a suspect and continue sitting here in custody?”

  “There could be several reasons for that. Either the secret he’s hiding seems worse to him than being suspected of the murders. Or—and this I consider more plausible—he’s trying to protect someone.”

  They looked at each other for a moment.

  “Stadler first or his girlfriend?” Pia asked.

  “First the girlfriend,” Bodenstein said.

  Lis Wenning, pale and visibly anxious, was waiting in the lobby at the security checkpoint. Next to her stood a tall man sporting a mustache and dressed in a suit and tie. Everyone in the criminal police in the Frankfurt region probably knew who he was. Hiring Dr. Anders as attorney was tantamount to a confession of guilt, because the defense lawyer almost exclusively took on cases of individuals accused in particularly spectacular murder cases that would get his name in the papers. Naturally, he couldn’t pass up the Taunus Sniper case.

  “I’d like to speak with my client,” he demanded at once.

  “You may as soon as we’ve spoken with Ms. Wenning,” Bodenstein replied. “Please wait here.”

  The lawyer objected while Lis Wenning apologized for the inconvenience. Pia noticed that she was on a first name basis with him.

  As they walked along the corridor, Pia asked the dark-haired woman curiously, “How do you happen to know Dr. Anders?” They entered the interview room where Erik Stadler had recently been sitting.

  Bodenstein closed the door and asked Ms. Wenning to take a seat. She sat down on the edge of the chair, holding the straps of her handbag tightly. Her big brown eyes looked anxious.

  “He’s a member of my fitness club,” she replied. “I don’t know any other lawyers. When your colleague took Erik away last night, I knew that it must be about something serious. Where is Erik now? What are you accusing him of?”

  Pia studied the woman and decided not to go easy on her.

  “We suspect Mr. Stadler of having shot four individuals,” she said.

  “You can’t be serious!” Lis Wenning turned even paler and pressed her hand to her throat. “Why would he do something like that?”

  “To avenge the deaths of his mother and sister,” said Pia. “He hasn’t been very cooperative so far. He has no alibis for the times of the murders and claims he was out jogging. Maybe you could help him—and us.”

  Stadler’s girlfriend was trying to process the shock of what she’d just heard. She shook her head in bewilderment.

  “Where was Mr. Stadler on December nineteenth between eight and ten in the morning?” Bodenstein asked. “On December twentieth around seven in the evening? And on Christmas Day at eight A.M.? And yesterday around noon?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Ms. Wenning stammered. “On the nineteenth and twentieth of December, he was probably in his office. And on Christmas, he was already gone when I woke up. He didn’t come back until afternoon.”

  She hesitated.

  “He didn’t tell me where he’d been. And I didn’t ask. Yesterday, he also planned to go into the office. They’re in the middle of compiling their annual figures, and his bookkeeper called.”

  “He wasn’t at the office. They told us he was working from home.”

  Lis Wenning looked helplessly from Pia to Bodenstein.

  “Ms. Wenning, has Mr. Stadler been behaving differently over the past few weeks?” Bodenstein spoke in a quiet, insistent voice. “Have you noticed any change in him?”

  She struggled for a moment with her loyalty, but then she nodded.

  “He has changed,” she said honestly. “Quite a bit. Ever since Helen’s death. Her suicide affected him tremendously. He and Helen were always very close. Sometimes I was even a little jealous.”

  She forced a joyless smile that vanished from her face at once.

  “How has he changed? What seems different about him?” Pia asked

  “He stopped laughing,” said Lis Wenning. “He retreated into himself and seemed far away, lost in his own thoughts. And he started devoting an excessive amount of time to sports. Erik . . . is addicted to danger and thrills. I don’t go with him anymore when he does these crazy things, I can’t stand it.”

  Lis Wenning fell silent. She pressed her lips together and looked upset.

  “Lately he seems worried all the time,” she whispered, looking down. “I’ve had the feeling he might be hiding something from me. He was always late and he hid his cell phone from me.”

  “Can you guess what could have been occupying his attention so much?” Bodenstein asked.

  “I . . . I . . . thought . . . he might have another woman.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “A couple of times I asked him about it, but . . . but he refused to talk about it. He really isn’t like that and . . . only recently he told me that . . . that he loves me.”

  That was really all she knew. If she could have given him an alibi, she would have. She might even have tried to lie for him, but she didn’t.

  “Does Mr. Stadler own a gun?”

  “Yes, several. He keeps them in a cabinet at his office.”

  “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to turn them over to one of our colleagues today,” Bodenstein concluded the conversation. “We will check the weapons and hope that Mr. Stadler will talk to us on Monday. He’ll have to remain in custody until then.”

  Lis Wenning nodded and got up.

  Bodenstein and Pia accompanied her back to the lawyer, who was waiting impatiently to see his client. But first Bodenstein wanted to speak with Mr. Stadler again. He asked Cem to drive Ms. Wenning back to Sulzbach and confiscate the weapons.

  Erik Stadler was sitting with his eyes closed on the narrow cot in his cell, his head tilted back against the wall.

  “Mr. Stadler,” Bodenstein began while Pia stood by the door. “Why don’t you tell us the truth? Why would you risk being charged with murder if you’re innocent? Are you trying to protect somebody?”

  No answer.

  “Today we’re going to remand you to the investigating prison for people awaiting trial. You might be there for quite a while, depending on the circumstances.”

  Erik Stadler opened his eyes, and for a few seconds, Pia hoped that he would start talking and tell them the truth. But she was disappointed.

  “Do whatever you like,” Stadler replied. “I’m not saying another word without my attorney.”

  As Bodenstein and Pia turned into the cul-de-sac to Dirk Stadler’s house, they almost ran into a woman who came dashing around the corner, her head down. In the glow of the streetlight Pia recognized, to her surprise, Erik Stadler’s bookkeeper.

  “Ms. Fellmann?”

  The woman turned around in fright and then stopped. Her eyes were swollen and her face wet with tears.

  “I . . . was just at Mr. Stadler’s to give him the keys to the office after I tried all day long to reach Erik,” she explained. “Yesterday was my last day at work, but he promised me that today we’d have a glass of champagne together. I finished up the year-end bookkeeping—all by myself because my boss left me in the lurch. He didn’t even call.” She broke into tears.

  “How long have you worked for Mr. Stadler?” Pia asked.

  “Since the very beginning,” Franka Fellmann sobbed. “Since October 2009. At first only part-time, but business was really good, and then Erik needed a full-time bookkeeper.”

  She rummaged in her purse, took out a pack of tissues, and blew her nose loudly. “Mainly I was responsible for getting the clients to pay on time. These computer geniuses don’t like to deal with such mundane matters.”

  She gave a bitter laugh, then sobbed again.

  “Erik was always a great boss, and I had a lot of fun building the company up with him, but now . . . it’s no longer working. I have a son who needs me, and I’ve had to take care of everything at the office for the past couple of months. Eve
r since the boss’s sister died.”

  “Did you know his sister?” Bodenstein asked.

  A tiny expression of disapproval flitted across her face.

  “Yes, of course. It’s a very casual office. We had a lot of parties, and Helen was often invited.”

  “What sort of person was she?”

  Franka Fellmann thought about it for a moment and then started crying again.

  “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead,” she told them. “But Helen was an odd duck. Everybody treated her with velvet gloves. A slap in the face probably would have helped her more, instead of all the tiptoeing around. If you ask me, Helen destroyed her family with her obsession about her mother.”

  Bodenstein and Pia exchanged a quick glance but took care not to interrupt Fellmann’s outpouring of words.

  “As soon as a celebration or a barbecue really got going, she would mention her mother and bum everybody out. She always had to be the center of attention. It was a totally pathological thing with her, this craving for attention. Sometimes I got the feeling that she enjoyed this role and the way she could manipulate everyone around her. Once I told her she ought to get into therapy, and she lit into me like a fury. After that, she never spoke to me again. She would look right through me as if I were made of glass.”

  “What sort of work did Helen do? Did she work in her brother’s company, too?” Pia wanted to know.

  “She might have wanted to, but she had absolutely zero skills,” replied Fellmann. “For a while, the boss had her answering the phone, but she couldn’t even do that right. She showed up whenever she felt like it, made personal phone calls, and was totally unreliable. Eventually, I said it was either her or me. Of course, that meant that she and Jens-Uwe didn’t want anything to do with me, but afterwards, the company ran smoothly again, and that was the most important thing to me.”

  Fellmann had been jealous of Helen Stadler; she had even hated her. But when Helen died, things did not improve for Franka. Her boss’s sister had reached from beyond the grave to destroy everything that had meant anything to Ms. Fellmann.