To Catch a Killer

by Nele Neuhaus

  “But how will I explain it to my parents? I mean, about Fabio?”

  “Don’t you think that they’d be proud of you two if you contributed to solving this series of murders? Plus, then you and your boyfriend wouldn’t have to keep sneaking around.”

  The girl hesitated.

  “Hmm. Well, maybe you’re right. When can you come?”

  “We can be there in half an hour.”

  Ten minutes later, Bodenstein, Pia, and Kim were in the car heading toward Darmstadt. The construction site had clearly been the shooter’s hiding place, as proved by the ballistic path of the bullet. And for the first time, the sniper had left traces behind. Kröger and his men found shoe prints in the dust of the construction site, along with a clear body print where he had lain. The sniper had lain in wait in the opening of a floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor. He had rested the rifle barrel on two sacks of cement stacked up. A perfect hiding place with a first-class view of the Hesse family’s house.

  Pia looked at her sister in the rearview mirror. Kim was typing a text into her smartphone and smiling to herself. In Bodenstein’s presence, she didn’t want to ask Kim about where she had been last night. But she was curious.

  “We’d like to keep you here one more night for observation,” said the senior physician. “A concussion and whiplash are nothing to trifle with.”

  “I’m not planning on going skiing,” Karoline Albrecht said stubbornly. “I can lie in bed just as well at home.”

  “You were in a serious car crash,” the doctor argued, but he was already beaten. Of course he wanted to keep a private patient in the hospital awhile longer, but Karoline was restless. At a little past noon, she had phoned Greta to wish her a Happy New Year, but refrained from mentioning the accident. She didn’t want to upset her daughter unnecessarily. She hadn’t been able to reach her father, because his cell was turned off, and he didn’t pick up the landline. Maybe he had put in earplugs and gone to bed, since he’d never been a fan of New Year’s Eve and fireworks.

  “I feel fine,” Karoline said to the doctor. “I promise to take it easy. And if I feel worse, I’ll come back.”

  “As you wish.” He gave up. “I’ll have the discharge papers printed out. But you’ll have to sign a statement saying that you’re leaving the hospital at your own risk.”

  As soon as he was out the door, Karoline got up. She felt a bit woozy, and she had a headache, but except for a couple of bad bruises and a cut on her forehead, she had survived the accident without injury. She went into the small bathroom and was shocked when she saw how pale she looked in the mirror. The left half of her face had turned purple, and under her eye, a fat blood blister had formed. Someone had put the clothes she’d been wearing yesterday into the wardrobe. It was rather disgusting to put on the stinking, blood-caked garments, but she could take a shower and change clothes when she got home. Her cell phone rang. The number was unlisted, but she took the call anyway. It might be the police or the towing company.

  “Bodenstein. Good morning.” She recognized the sonorous baritone of the inspector. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good morning. I’m feeling pretty good, thanks. Because of the air bags, I have only a mild concussion and whiplash,” she replied. “I’m going home now. Were you able to get anything out of that notebook?”

  “Yes, it’s very informative. But I’m afraid that last night it was too late. Once again, the sniper was faster than we were.”

  “Oh my God.” Karoline sat down on the edge of the bed. “If I hadn’t had that accident and could have delivered the notebook earlier—”

  “It’s not your fault,” the inspector interrupted her. “And you’re not to blame for Fritz Gehrke’s death either. The autopsy showed that he had been sedated and then killed with an overdose of insulin. Later, a large number of documents were burned in his fireplace, which we thought he’d done to cover up something. But new information has now shed a whole new light on the destruction of the documents.”

  One piece of disastrous news after another. In the meantime, she was so numb inside that she hardly felt anything with regard to dead bodies and murder. She had once read in a book that no one who had been touched by murder, no matter how casually, would ever be the same. That was certainly the truth.

  “Your father was a friend of Gehrke’s,” the inspector went on. “Is that correct?”

  “I have no idea whether they were actually friends,” replied Karoline. “But they had known each other for a very long time, and Gehrke’s firm financed my father’s research.”

  Her cell phone began to beep because of a low battery.

  “In case this call is cut off, it’s because my battery is running low. I left my charger at home.”

  “Then I’ll make it brief,” said Bodenstein. “Last night we arrested your father. He’s not talking and wants to have his attorney present. Of course, that’s his legal right. But it’s important for us to find out what he talked about with Gehrke the night before his death and—”

  His voice broke off; the battery was dead. Karoline stood up and tossed it in her purse. Mama was dead. Papa in jail. The new year was starting out as badly as the old year had ended. She grabbed her coat and purse and went down to the nurses’ station. There she signed a form that said she was leaving the hospital on her own recognizance. She longed to take a shower and get some sleep. But before she went home to bed, she would stop by her parents’ house one more time.

  By ten thirty, they were in Griesheim. Streets were still blocked off over a wide area, and the evidence team was busy reconstructing the sniper’s escape route with the help of sniffer dogs. The Hasebrinks lived on the second cross street before Tauberstrasse, which had already been more densely developed, in a duplex that was painted red. Jonelle was a pretty girl with a snub nose, long straight hair, and big wide eyes. Her boyfriend, Fabio, was a skinny guy with spiky hair; the kind of guy who wore jeans that were too loose, a baseball cap, and sneakers. But for the visit to his girlfriend’s parents, he had dressed decently. He sat motionless at the Hasebrinks’ pine dining room table. Bodenstein and Pia had also sat down, and the two young people stared at them like convicts eyeing their executioners. The conversation was not flowing smoothly, which may have been due to the disapproving expressions of Jonelle’s parents. They made no secret of the fact that they regarded Fabio as a disastrous boyfriend for their fifteen-year-old daughter. Finally, Pia asked the parents if they could speak with the teenagers in private. Kim remained with the parents. After that, things went better.

  Jonelle and Fabio had been going out for four months. They had met quite often at the construction site on Tauberstrasse, where work had been stopped for almost a year because the contractor went broke. Last Friday, they had been there, too, on the second floor, because windows had already been put in, and it wasn’t so cold up there.

  “We just sat around talking,” said the girl, moving a strand of hair out of her eyes. “There was a noise downstairs. We totally panicked because we thought, Oh shit, it’s a real estate guy or maybe the guy who owned the dump. We couldn’t get out of there without being seen, so we hid behind a couple of cement sacks.”

  “A man came up the stairs,” Fabio continued the account. “We saw him through the steps. He looked all around and then went into the room that had a good view of the house across the way. He was in there a couple of minutes, then he went downstairs. We heard him walking around down there. After a while, he left. And we did, too.”

  “What did the man look like?” Pia asked. “What was he wearing?”

  “Dunno.” Jonelle shrugged. “I didn’t look that closely at his face. But he was wearing all black, with a cap and hoodie.”

  “Black jeans and a dark blue jacket,” Fabio said more precisely.

  “I think he had a beard,” Jonelle said.

  “He wasn’t clean-shaven,” Fabio agreed. “But it wasn’t really a beard.”

  “A mustache?” Pia suggested.

>   “Yeah. That’s it.”

  “How old was he? What’s your guess?”

  “Pretty old.” Jonelle looked at her boyfriend uncertainly. “Around forty. Or maybe older . . . dunno.”

  Pretty old? Thanks a lot, Pia thought.

  “What happened then?” Bodenstein asked.

  “He kept walking around, like forever,” said the boy. “I thought, Hey, man, get the heck out of here. I had soccer practice at four, and Coach is real strict if you show up late. When the guy finally left, we ran downstairs and got out of there. I took off for practice on my moped.”

  “I wanted to go home,” Jonelle went on. “But first I thought I’d stop and get something sweet at the HEM gas station. So I’m walking up the Elbestrasse and at the roundabout at the North Ring, I see the guy in the parking lot next to the HEM station getting into his car. An old Opel, dark blue or black. I noticed the license number, don’t know why. Maybe because it wasn’t from around here. And the guy was acting so strange.”

  She told them the license plate number, MTK-WM 177.

  “And you’re sure it was the same man you saw in the house under construction?”

  Bodenstein made sure.

  “Yes, a hundred percent,” Jonelle said with a nod.

  “You’re a good observer, Jonelle.” Bodenstein smiled. Thanks so much to both of you for calling us.”

  The two smiled a bit uncertainly, but with some pride. Someday, the story of their testimony and the criminal police would make them heroes among their friends. But Jonelle was still hemming and hawing.

  “Um, do you think you could talk to my parents?” she asked Bodenstein coyly. “About Fabio, I mean.”

  “I think Dr. Freitag has already done that,” Pia assured the girl. “You won’t get in any trouble.”

  He had to get rid of the car, and right away. The police had not only the license plate number, but also the make and color. How had they managed that? Where had he made a mistake? He’d been so careful to avoid being seen by anyone. He almost fell over when he happened to hear the news on the radio, and ever since, he’d been jittery. Dammit, they were right on his heels. Luckily, they had no idea where he was. He had to capitalize on his small head start, or he could forget about the rest of his plan, which he’d been following so scrupulously.

  He drove up the hill toward Königstein. His palms were sweaty, and at any moment, he expected his car to be recognized and pulled over. He was scared. Not of being caught, and not of prison. He was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to finish his list, that they would stop him before he did. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the roads. It was a holiday. New Year’s Day. People were still in bed with hangovers, or they were afraid of being shot by the Taunus Sniper. Having a few cars on the road was good; that way there was less risk of being spotted. Anyway, a blue Opel Meriva would be easier to spot in light traffic.

  But he had an exit scenario for everything in his plan, also for the car. And now he would carry it out exactly, instead of driving the car into the woods in panic and ditching it there.

  It had started to rain. At first only a few drops, but now the slate-gray sky had relentlessly opened its floodgates. Raindrops were pounding on the roof and windshield of the car, and Bodenstein had to set the wipers on intermittent to be able to see anything at all. For the past half hour, he and Pia had been sitting in the car, watching the house at Taunusblick 72 in the Liederbach development, where Wolfgang Mieger, the owner of the blue Opel Meriva with license plate MTK-WM 177, was registered. Nobody had seen him. The house seemed deserted. Junk mail was overflowing from his mailbox, and the path to his door was covered with fallen leaves. The blinds were rolled down.

  The car’s back door was wrenched open, and Cem now plopped down on the backseat.

  “What shitty weather!” he cursed, brushing the wet hair back from his forehead. Like Bodenstein and Pia, he wore a bulletproof vest under his coat. It might be practical if anyone shot at him, but it was about as comfortable as a fur coat in summer.

  “What did the neighbor say?” Pia inquired.

  “Wolfgang Mieger has been in assisted living since Christmas of 2011,” said Cem. “He has dementia and apparently no relatives to take care of him. His wife died a few years ago, and he has no kids. Since then, the house has been empty. Somebody comes by to check on the house and mow the lawn in the summertime, but the neighbor has never met him.”

  “If we’re unlucky, the stakeout will be a waste of time,” said Pia, huffing on her cold hands. While the police service vehicles did have automatic windows, luxurious extras such as heating when parked were not included. “But if we’re lucky, the sniper will be using the house as a hideout.”

  Initially, excitement had gripped the whole team when the sniper was turned from a phantom into a person of flesh and blood by the testimony of the two young people. But now an intolerable tension had set in. So far, Bodenstein had received no e-mail message from the sniper with an obituary for Ralf Hesse. Tracking of yesterday’s e-mail by the IT specialists at State Criminal Police HQ had indicated that it had been sent from an open WLAN, but so many of these unencoded URLs were no longer active. Most users protected their WLANs with passwords to prevent unauthorized use. Was the sniper starting to feel the pressure? Did he suspect that they had found Helen Stadler’s notebook and were closer on his heels than he’d thought? And if so, how did he know that?

  Ostermann had reached Dr. Burmeister at his hotel in the Seychelles and informed him that he and his daughter would be met at the arrivals gate by the police. When Burmeister asked why, Kai had not replied, so Pia decided to go out there herself and talk to the doctor. Mark Thomsen was still on the loose, as was Jens-Uwe Hartig. Kai had informed one of the shop assistants of Hartig’s decision to close the store until January 6, and she was surprised. As far as she knew, Hartig hadn’t had any plans to go anywhere over the holidays. The state attorney’s office had approved a cell phone localization warrant, but so far, Hartig’s phone had been turned off and remained as untraceable as its owner.

  “Could you please turn on the engine for a minute?” Pia asked her boss. “I’m almost frozen.”

  Bodenstein turned the key in the ignition. The engine sprang to life, and the defroster cleared off the fogged-up windshield. Then his phone rang. He put it on speaker.

  “The Special Assignment Unit will arrive there in ten minutes,” said Ostermann. “And Napoleon has turned up here. Should I get rid of him?”

  “No.” Bodenstein’s anger at Neff had abated in the meantime. “Maybe he can be of some use to us. What does the notebook say?”

  “It’s more of a diary; she wrote down what she did each day in abbreviated form. Lots of everyday stuff. But I did find a couple of interesting items,” Ostermann said. “Helen talked to Fritz Gehrke, Professor Ulrich Hausmann, Dr. Simon Burmeister, and Dr. Arthur Janning, and she noted down precisely where and when. She also entered the exact same date for each: December 19, 2012. She didn’t report much about what they discussed, and I can’t really make sense of the entry ‘Santex, blood type barrier, blood type O universal, Donor A to Recipient O—no, reverse yes, Insel Hospital Bern, Uni Clinic Zürich, and even the address of the Federal Association of Physicians. No idea what all this is supposed to mean.”

  “Let’s ask her father when we finish up here,” Pia suggested. “He should be back soon.”

  “Have you located Janning and Hausmann?” Bodenstein wanted to know.

  “No, sorry, not yet,” replied Ostermann. “But I’ll keep trying.”

  “We definitely have to find out whom Karoline Albrecht got this notebook from,” said Bodenstein.

  “Her cell phone is still turned off,” said Kai. “I’ll keep trying her.”

  The radio began to make noise, and a raspy voice came through.

  “Kai, it’s starting,” said Pia. “The SAU is there. Talk to you later.”

  Pia and Bodenstein got out and walked down the street in the rain until they reach
ed the SAU vehicles. They went over the exact procedure with the team leader. Three men would enter the property around Mieger’s house through the backyard. Two officers were already posted there to make sure that nobody could approach or exit the house unseen. The other four officers would enter the house through the front door with Bodenstein, Cem, and Pia, but first the garage door would be opened. A few minutes later, the garage door had been opened without much noise, and what they saw was surprising. Or maybe not. In the garage stood the black SUV belonging to Mark Thomsen. Thomsen must have known Mieger from somewhere; maybe the old man was a member or sympathizer of HRMO. Somehow Thomsen must have heard that Mieger’s house was vacant and his car stood neglected and ready to roll in the garage. For someone who worked at a security firm, the old-fashioned front door lock presented no problem.

  “Thomsen was previously a sharpshooter with the GSG 9,” Bodenstein told the SAU leader. “He should be considered armed and dangerous.”

  The SAU leader informed his team, then ordered the attack. Within seconds, the front door was broken down, a flashbang was tossed into the dark hallway, and ten seconds later, Mark Thomsen, who had been lying comfortably on the couch watching a movie on his laptop, was taken into custody. When Bodenstein, Pia, and Cem entered the house, he lay prone on the floor, dressed only in a T-shirt and jogging pants, his wrists bound behind him with plastic cuffs. Two of the masked SAU men pulled Thomsen roughly to his feet. Jonelle and Fabio’s description couldn’t have been more precise: Thomsen was unshaven, slim, late forties, with a mustache. Over the back of a chair hung a pair of black jeans and a dark blue jacket.

  “We meet again,” said Pia.

  “Did you have to scare me half to death?” Thomsen said with a crooked grin. “Why didn’t you ring the bell?”

  Bodenstein boiled over with anger when he saw the grin. The gruesome photos of the victims flew through his head, and he thought about the profound despair of the relatives. He had to stop himself from ramming his fist in the man’s face.