by Nele Neuhaus
Finally the penny dropped for Pia.
“You mean that Gehrke was murdered?”
“Bingo, even though it took you awhile. But I’ll let the current corpse serve as your excuse.”
“And the insulin?”
“Someone could have given him the injection at any time. He was sedated and couldn’t defend himself.” Henning didn’t sound as though his marital troubles were giving him a headache. “Chloroform isn’t really in fashion these days, but it’s marvelous for putting someone out for a while—”
“How certain are you?” Pia interrupted him. Bodenstein had come out of the construction site with Kröger, and both were now standing next to her.
“I’m fairly sure. But you’ll still get all the lab results, of course.”
“Thank you, Henning. My boss just arrived. Talk to you again tomorrow.”
“What did the Lord of Death want at this hour?” Kröger inquired.
“He had nothing better to do tonight, so he performed an autopsy on Gehrke,” Pia replied. “He’s pretty sure that his death was the result of foul play. Apparently, Gehrke was knocked out with chloroform. There were no soot particles in his lungs, which means he must have been dead before the documents were burned.”
“Another homicide.” Bodenstein shook his head in resignation. “That’s just great. As if we have nothing else to do.”
“You guys should go home.” Kröger patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll finish up here. Whatever Dr. Kirchhoff can do, I can do, too.”
“You’re a screwball, Christian,” said Pia with another yawn. “Come on, boss, let’s go home. Tomorrow’s another day.”
After he dropped Pia off at Birkenhof around four in the morning, Bodenstein drove home. His fury at the sniper and his own powerlessness had metamorphosed into a feverish unease. Since Inka preferred to sleep in her own bed after she came back from her emergency call, he had no reason to stay home. He realized that he didn’t have to take anyone into consideration. He didn’t have to justify his actions or feel guilty for working on a holiday; there were no children to disappoint by failing to keep a promise, no reproachful looks. He could turn on all the lights in the house at five o’clock, start the coffeemaker, and take a leisurely shower and shave without worrying about waking someone up. Why, he thought as he stepped over to his wardrobe in the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, would he want to change this situation? Living in a relationship seemed much more complicated than living alone; the drawbacks far outweighed the advantages. Even during the period after his divorce from Cosima, he’d enjoyed living alone; back then, the only thing that had bothered him was the lack of comforts in the coach house of the Bodenstein Estate. Now, on the other hand, he owned a lovely house, and being free felt like paradise.
Bodenstein enjoyed the freshly brewed coffee and the view out the floor-to-ceiling windows of the entire Rhein-Main region. He wasn’t the type of person who started the new year with a zillion resolutions, only to give them up in a matter of weeks. But at this moment, he intended to achieve three things in the year 2013. First, he would catch the sniper; second, end his relationship with Inka; and third, accept Gabriela’s offer. No more self-doubt and constant giving in out of sheer laziness. This year, he was going to change a few things, and he was looking forward to it.
Feeling motivated, a little later he put on his coat, turned off the lights in the house, and went out to his car. They were close to reaching a breakthrough in the sniper case; his intuition told him that. Yet he was wary of having overlooked something, and that made him edgy. The investigation had been chaotic from the start, and the team was not working smoothly together. Every time he thought he’d understood something, new circumstances had popped up, a new murder happened, and all that talk about a perp profile had confused him utterly. Nicola’s decision to bring in a profiler had simply been premature. Before they had even figured out what the murders were all about, they’d been distracted by psychological speculations that had to be revised the next day, and at some point, they’d lost their perspective. In the end, who was to blame for their failure to arrest the sniper yet? Why did more people have to die?
As Bodenstein drove along the streets of Kelkheim that were littered with fireworks debris, he thought about Chief Inspector Menzel, his former boss in Frankfurt. His motto was: Remember everything that you heard or saw and follow the trail backwards. The sniper simply hadn’t allowed them enough time to think things through and to eliminate false starting points. He had hounded them forward, put them under pressure, and they had let themselves be hurried, although in a homicide investigation, nothing was more disastrous than haste, stress, and exhaustion. Tired people make mistakes, drew the wrong conclusions, and lost the thread. At least now they had names and knew what was driving the sniper. They could warn the individuals who were on Helen Stadler’s list.
For days, Bodenstein had secretly been anticipating that the higher-ups would take him off the case that was attracting so much attention, or bring in some super-investigator from State Criminal Police headquarters to replace him, but that had not happened. Either they trusted him to get the upper hand in the case, or else there was no one else foolish enough to scorch his reputation with such an unpopular investigation. Failure was always bad for anyone’s career; failure in the eyes of the public was professional suicide. But he had no intention of failing. On the contrary. Now that most of the pieces of the puzzle were on the table, they just had to put them together correctly. And they had to do it today.
Pia’s eyes were watering from fatigue as she drove toward Hofheim shortly before 7 A.M. along the paved frontage road that ran parallel to the autobahn. When she’d got home, Kim wasn’t there, and her bed hadn’t been slept in. After Pia Skyped with Christoph, she had nodded off on the couch, but she wasn’t able to enter a deep sleep. One nightmare had followed another, and around five, she received a cryptic text on her cell phone, which Kim had no doubt sent around ten the night before in answer to her text. It had been delayed by the annual overload of the cellular network on New Year’s Eve. Okay. Call if you need me. Not drinking until 11. After that, we’ll see! ;-) XO Kim.
By six thirty, Pia gave up on sleeping. She took a shower, put on clean clothes, fed the animals, and took off again.
As she drove through the pitch-dark morning, she pondered what mistakes she might have made that could possibly cost Christoph his life. The offenses of Renate Rohleder, Patrick Schwarzer, and Bettina Kaspar-Hesse had not been capital crimes—they were human errors, long forgotten or repressed. But the decisions they made back then had injured other people so deeply that their actions became a boomerang that returned to punish them ten years later in the most horrible way.
A fox ran across the road, its eyes shining spooky green in the headlights; then it vanished into the dark.
No one went through life without occasionally hurting other people, now and then causing disappointment, problems, and even outright harm. For almost any action that hurt someone else, there were rules for rectification, namely the penal code. Long ago, people took the law into their own hands, but that time was over. Even if many felt unjustly treated by the law, as a rule, they did not take up arms to exact vengeance. But that’s exactly what the sniper was doing. He did not trust in the system of justice and the rule of law. Instead, he held to the biblical legal code: “a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a brand for a brand, a welt for a welt.” He was meting out his own justice. What did his deeds mean? Your beloved for my beloved?
Pia’s cell phone beeped, and the thought that had flitted through her head evaporated. She called up Henning’s text and read it as she drove. Dr. Hans Furtwängler, Cologne, he wrote. He had a lot to do with Rudolf, maybe he can help you guys out. Tel. no. follows.
Dr. Hans Furtwängler! Fritz Gehrke had phoned him before his death, and she had read the name in Helen Stadler’s notebook. Kai had already checked out the
old doctor and also asked him what he and Gehrke had talked about on Saturday evening for fourteen minutes. But she couldn’t recall what Furtwängler had told Kai. She definitely needed to ask him again. She turned off the highway toward Hofheim and reached the station three minutes later. Kim’s car was parked in the public parking lot, and it hadn’t been there for long, because Pia could see tire tracks on the frost-covered asphalt. Where had her sister spent the night?
Professor Dieter Rudolf was beside himself. Last night, the police had taken him into custody and locked him in a cell without giving him a chance to call anyone. On the way from the cell to the interrogation room, his shoes kept slipping off because he’d had to surrender his shoelaces, but the height of humiliation was that he’d had to hold up his pants with one hand, since they were too loose without a belt.
“This is wrongful deprivation of personal liberty!” he yelled angrily at Bodenstein and Pia as he was ushered past them into the interrogation room. “I’m going to lodge a complaint, you can count on that!”
“Shut up and sit down.” Bodenstein pointed to the chair across the table from Pia, who had already taken a seat.
“You’d better watch how you talk to me,” the professor retorted. “I have rights!”
“In a society in which we have rights, we also have obligations,” Bodenstein countered with a cool look at the man sitting across from him. The professor’s thin face was flushed and his Adam’s apple hopped up and down. He was unshaven, and his white hair was sticking out wildly. The night in the cell had deeply shaken his ego, and he was reacting precisely the way Bodenstein had expected: with aggression and shouts. Men in executive positions liked to think of themselves as untouchable. Used to obedience without complaint from their subordinates, they had a hard time taking orders from anyone they would normally regard as beneath them.
“I know my rights!” Rudolf snapped in rage. “I pay as much in taxes every month as you make in a year!”
“Sit the fuck down!” Bodenstein thundered at the man, and he obeyed, in shock. “We’re not talking about taxes here, but about moral obligations! You could have saved the life of an individual yesterday if you’d told us the name of your former colleague. Last night, the husband of the former transplantation coordinator at the UCF, Mrs. Bettina Kaspar-Hesse, was shot to death. Even more guilt to heap upon your conscience!”
The professor pressed his lips together, crossed his arms, and defiantly stuck out his chin.
“In the meantime, we’ve found out that you violated regulations in order to implant a new heart in the son of your friend Fritz Gehrke. The boy was very ill, and then Kirsten Stadler happened to fall into your hands. Ms. Stadler was unfortunately blood type O. That means that her heart was a match for Gehrke’s son and coronary patient Maximilian. You cut short Ms. Stadler’s life by prematurely declaring her brain-dead,” Bodenstein said.
“The woman was dead anyway,” Rudolf argued. “A day sooner or later, what difference did it make?”
“So you admit, with reference to Kirsten Stadler, that you—,” Pia began in disbelief.
“I admit nothing!” the professor declared. “There is nothing to admit.”
“Now, I want you to listen to me carefully,” Bodenstein took over, leaning forward. “You are sitting up to your neck in shit. If you had been cooperative from the beginning, then perhaps we never would have discovered what we now know about you.”
“My wife was shot to death by this . . . this person.” The professor was stonewalling. “I was in deep grief and utterly bewildered. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“You weren’t grief-stricken and bewildered enough not to try to do some damage control when you talked to Fritz Gehrke on the phone,” Bodenstein replied. “I don’t believe a word you’re saying. You have violated your Hippocratic oath as well as the law. And proof of it has now come out. That’s why Gehrke paid the relatives of Ms. Stadler a large sum to drop the case. But there was a witness who did not keep his mouth shut, namely Jens-Uwe Hartig. He told the Stadlers the truth.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” The professor remained outwardly calm, but he was blinking his eyes rapidly.
“On the contrary, we’re learning more by the hour.” Bodenstein glanced at the piece of paper with four names on it that Pia had jotted down, and nodded brusquely. “Attorney Riegelhoff told us quite a few things and turned over all the documents from the lawsuit between Stadler and the UCF.” He leaned back and studied the professor’s face intently. “Our conversation with Mr. Hartig was also extremely informative. Today, we will be talking to Furtwängler, Janning, Burmeister, and Hausmann.”
A spark of apprehension appeared in the professor’s eyes, and his mask of arrogant indifference began to crack.
No one said a word. Bodenstein and Pia simply stared at the professor. Abrupt silence was a tried-and-true technique. Most people couldn’t deal with it, especially not after a tough verbal exchange. They would grow more nervous by the minute. Their thoughts would begin to race, and they would get tangled up in explanations, justifications, excuses, and lies.
Professor Dieter Rudolf lost the power struggle after exactly seven minutes and twelve seconds.
“I want my attorney,” he croaked, cowed.
“And you’re going to need one.” Bodenstein shoved his chair back and stood up. “I arrest you provisionally on suspicion of the negligent homicide of Ms. Kirsten Stadler.”
“You can’t do that,” the professor protested. “My patients need me.”
“They’re going to have to get along without you for quite a while,” said Bodenstein, nodding to the officer standing by the door. Then he left the interrogation room with Pia.
Kim had stopped at a convenience store to buy sandwiches, and she now set the plate in the middle of the conference table. Present were Nicola Engel, Bodenstein, Kirchhoff, Ostermann, Altunay, and Fachinger. Everybody reached for a sandwich. Pia grabbed a soft pretzel with cheese.
“Happy New Year,” Kim told her, taking a seat beside her sister.
“Thanks, same to you.” Pia smiled as she chewed, then lowered her voice. “Where were you last night?”
“Later,” Kim whispered. “By the way, you could have let me know and I would have come along.”
Before Kai could begin, Pia took the floor and told her colleagues about her conversation with Henning.
“We have to consider the possibility that Gehrke did not commit suicide, but was murdered,” she concluded. “We’ll be receiving detailed lab results ASAP.”
Kai had gone through Helen Stadler’s notebook, which Pia had given him last night, and he’d made a list of people he wanted to phone. He had reached the ex-wife of Dr. Simon Burmeister and learned that the doctor had been in the Seychelles with his seventeen-year-old daughter for two weeks and was expected back tomorrow morning.
Pia thought of something else.
“Remind me, Kai, what did Dr. Furtwängler talk to Fritz Gehrke about the night before he died?”
“Apparently nothing in particular,” replied her colleague. “They were old friends, and Gehrke had seemed in a melancholy mood. He attributed it to the death of Gehrke’s son.”
“Do you believe that?”
“So far, anyway. Why?”
“Henning gave me a tip about Furtwängler. He apparently had worked a lot with Rudolf. And now I’m asking myself where their fields of expertise intersected: One was a cardiologist, the other an oncologist and hematologist.”
“I’ll call him back.” Kai nodded and wrote himself a note.
Mark Thomsen’s house was still deserted. There was a stakeout on it, just as there was on the Winklers’ home and on Hartig’s house and shop. A note on the goldsmith’s door said that the shop would be closed until January 6, 2013. Hartig’s house in Diedenbergen had also been checked out and searched. It was empty. Neighbors had told them that Hartig had begun the renovation, but work had suddenly ceased this past autumn.
> The telephone on the conference table rang. Kai picked it up and then handed the receiver to Pia.
“Hello,” said a timid girl’s voice. “My name is Jonelle Hasebrink. I live in Griesheim, on Saalestrasse.”
“Hello, Jonelle.” Pia sat down and put the call on speaker so that everyone could hear. “I’m Pia Kirchhoff with Kripo in Hofheim. How can I help you?”
“I think,” said the girl, “that my boyfriend and I saw the killer.”
Everyone stopped chewing and stared at the telephone as if spellbound.
“My parents can’t know about this, because . . . they . . . well . . . They have no idea that I have a boyfriend.”
“How old are you, Jonelle?” Pia inquired, writing down the girl’s last name and shoving it over to Kai. He typed it into his laptop.
“Fifteen.”
“You’re still underage. That means your parents have the right to be present when you talk to the police,” said Pia.
“Can’t we do it on the phone? Otherwise, I’ll get in big trouble.”
“Hasebrink, Lutz and Peggy, Saalestrasse 17,” Kai said quietly.
“How good a look did you get of the man?” Pia asked.
“Not too good, I guess.” Jonelle was trying to backpedal, now that she realized the possible consequences of making this call. “But I saw him getting into his car. Maybe it’s not that important.”
Pia looked over at Bodenstein. He gave her a thumbs-up and nodded.
“No, it’s very important.” Pia tried to sound soothing. “You’ll help us a lot if you tell us exactly what you saw. We’d be happy to come over right away, and it would be good if your boyfriend was there, too.”