by Nele Neuhaus
“I helped thousands of people!” Rudolf protested. “I made pioneering discoveries in the field of organ transplantation, and you . . . you bigoted little cop, you’re dragging it all into the dirt! All of you are completely clueless! I have the vision and the courage to implement new ideas. Men like me have always made advancements for mankind. Without us, people would still be huddling in caves. Sacrifices are inevitable.”
“Men like you damage the entire medical profession!” Pia countered sharply. “You have killed innocent victims. You will go down in the history of transplantation medicine as a ruthless, greedy criminal. People will be horrified and will throw your books in the recycling bin.”
Her words struck his conceited soul like a blow of the sword. Pia could see the effect on Rudolf’s face. He was intelligent enough to realize that she was right.
“A doctor who feels so little empathy for his patients would do better as a carpenter,” she continued relentlessly. “The results wouldn’t be so bad when an experiment fails.”
“I’m not a failure!” Rudolf snarled. A vein throbbed in his temple and beads of sweat had formed on his brow.
“Yes, you are,” said Pia. The pity in her voice brought the professor to white heat. “In every respect, both professionally and personally. You’ll be an embittered old man by the time you get out of prison.”
Dieter Rudolf’s face was twitching uncontrollably, and he rubbed his palms on his thighs.
“Who pushed Helen Stadler in front of the train?” Pia asked unexpectedly. “Was that how you were trying to cover up your failure?”
The professor stared at her, full of hate.
“I wish I had done it!” he croaked. “I wish I’d killed that little slut who wanted to destroy my life’s work, but regrettably, it wasn’t me.”
Spit sprayed from his lips, and his knuckles turned white.
“Who was it?” Pia asked, unmoved. “Tell us. If you cooperate, it could go a lot easier for you.”
“You can kiss my ass!” the professor exploded. “I want to call my lawyer right now.”
Pia and Bodenstein stood up.
“You’d better look for an expert in criminal law,” Bodenstein advised him. “You’re going to have to answer in court for several counts of homicide.”
“You haven’t got a thing on me!” Rudolf yelled, now beside himself with rage. “Not a damn thing!”
“Oh, yes, we do,” Bodenstein said with a cool smile. “You were seen on Saturday night leaving Fritz Gehrke’s house after you knocked him out with chloroform and killed him with an overdose of insulin.”
“How can you accuse me of something like that?” The professor wasn’t easily cowed. “Fritz was my friend.”
“Friendships can be broken if one friend lies to the other,” replied Bodenstein. “In your house, we found clothes that reeked of smoke. In your car, there were document binders that belonged to Mr. Gehrke, and a bottle of chloroform. And in your safe, we found a cell phone that you used to make a lot of calls in recent days. Your daughter was very cooperative.”
Rudolf turned pale as a corpse.
“She planted that evidence because she hates my guts,” he claimed. “I want a lawyer. Right now.”
“What a disgusting character,” Pia said with a shudder after they’d left the interrogation room. “He doesn’t give a damn about Burmeister.”
“A megalomaniac who has lost all touch with reality,” replied Bodenstein. “Narcissistic and blinded by ambition.”
“If he hadn’t lied to us, we would have gotten wise to Stadler much sooner. That made me so mad, I just had to provoke him.”
They walked down the hall to the conference room.
“Whom are Riegelhoff and Furtwängler afraid of? All this happened ten years ago.” Pia stopped next to the fire door by the stairwell.
“I can understand the anxiety Furtwängler must feel, or the director of the UCF,” Bodenstein said. “A scandal like this could ruin the reputation of a clinic or hospital, especially when people find out it was covered up.”
“Then the lawyer must feel the same,” Pia said with a nod. “He was actively involved in the cover-up and must be afraid that he’ll be disbarred or even end up being indicted. Bribes and hush money may have changed hands. Who knows?”
Bodenstein opened the glass doors, and a moment later, they entered the conference room. Several colleagues were startled out of their lethargy, while others kept dozing. Dirty dishes, empty glasses, and bottles covered the side tables along with pizza boxes. The room was stuffy and it was as quiet as a church. Seeing his exhausted team, Bodenstein fervently hoped that the investigation would soon be over and they would have a chance to rest.
At one table, the state attorney in charge, Nicola Engel, Kim, and Kai Ostermann were talking quietly.
Bodenstein and Pia sat down and reported on their conversations with Thomsen and Rudolf.
“Stadler will kill Hartig as soon as they’re done with Burmeister,” Bodenstein concluded. “And then this whole scandal may remain unresolved, because the others will keep their mouths shut in order not to incriminate themselves.”
“But why would Stadler do that?” inquired Engel skeptically. “The way it looks right now, Hartig is an accomplice.”
“Stadler doesn’t view himself as a murderer. He sees himself as a champion of a just cause,” Bodenstein replied. “He used Helen’s research to take revenge on those who caused him and his daughter harm. He followed his plan rigorously, without leaving any evidence behind. But then something changed.”
“What?” asked State Attorney Rosenthal, a large bald man in his midforties who was known for his shrewd intelligence.
“He attacked Burmeister,” replied Bodenstein. “Not the man’s daughter or girlfriend or ex-wife. Why? Why did he change his strategy, which had worked perfectly so far?”
“Maybe he found out something,” the state attorney suggested.
“That’s what I think.” Bodenstein nodded. “But what? And from whom?”
“From Hartig?” Pia mused.
“No, I suspect it was Vivien Stern, Helen’s friend,” Bodenstein said. “An outsider who may have given him a new perspective, which made him decide to include Hartig in his plans.”
“Cem and Kathrin are still at Stern’s place,” Kai said. “She refuses to come to the station.”
“When did we talk to Stadler about his daughter’s notebook?” asked Bodenstein.
“Yesterday evening,” Pia said.
“If Vivien Stern told Stadler that Hartig wanted to prevent Helen at all costs from going to America, then Stadler had to accept that Hartig’s relationship with Helen was based on sheer calculation,” said Bodenstein, laying out his theory. “Hartig had used the Stadlers by encouraging the hopeless suit against the UCF. But when Helen began to poke around in the old case, backed by Thomsen, Hartig had to restrain her, because otherwise she would discover what role he’d played in the death of Kirsten Stadler. That’s why he started giving her drugs. I’m certain he would have stuck her in a psychiatric institution, and she would never have been able to get out. Someone—if he didn’t do it—then solved the problem by pushing Helen in front of a train.
But Hartig had never dreamed that Helen’s family and Thomsen knew she was afraid of him.”
“The girl ended up in the hands of two psychopaths who had failed at everything in their lives,” Pia added. “The only person who could have saved her was Mark Thomsen.”
“So why didn’t he?” asked Kai.
“Because he may have underestimated what had gone on between Stadler, Hartig, and Helen,” Bodenstein said.
“All this is nothing but speculation,” State Attorney Rosenthal interjected, shaking his head.
“For the time being yes,” Bodenstein said. “But these speculations are based on solid police work, the way it was done a hundred years ago—without genetic fingerprints and such frippery. Kai, please call Cem. He has to ask Ms. Stern whether Stadler
phoned her yesterday.”
“But you’re of the opinion that Stadler and Hartig worked together when it came to Burmeister, aren’t you?” asked the state attorney.
“Yes, definitely,” Bodenstein confirmed. “Hartig is an excellent surgeon. And Stadler filmed the whole thing.”
Kim hadn’t taken part in the conversation. She was watching the video of Burmeister’s hand amputation a few more times on Kai’s laptop.
“This linoleum floor you can see in the video bothers me,” she now said. “They don’t have that type of floor in kitchens and butcher shops. Way too slippery when dealing with water and fat. But I did notice something else. Look at this.”
She turned the laptop around to show them the frame on which she had paused the video. Everyone looked closely.
“Here!” Kim tapped on a point in the background. “That’s a wooden bench, and there are clothes hooks along the top. Now the type of floor makes sense. They’re in the locker room of a gym.”
“A school gymnasium. That’s possible,” Kai agreed. “All the schools are still closed for Christmas vacation. And schools don’t have night watchmen like office buildings do, since no cash is kept on-site.”
“Excellent,” Bodenstein praised Kai. “Inform the patrols in the field to give priority to checking out schools with gymnasiums on the west side of Frankfurt. Find out how many schools there are, and keep in mind that Stadler is far from finished with his campaign of retaliation.”
“Bull’s-eye, boss,” said Kai Ostermann as he hung up the phone. “Stadler did call Vivien Stern last night, probably shortly after you left. He wanted to know what Helen had told her about Hartig, and what happened afterwards. He also asked about what happened on September sixteenth, the day Helen was killed by the train. Naturally, I asked Ms. Stern about that, too, and she admitted through her tears that Helen was supposed to meet with someone who was going to tell her the truth about her mother’s death. Ms. Stern had a bad feeling and wanted to accompany Helen, but she refused. She said she had it all under control.”
“And then what?” Engel prodded. “Whom was she supposed to meet?”
“A doctor from the UCF,” replied Ostermann. “But unfortunately, Helen didn’t tell her friend who it was.”
Somebody had opened a window to let in some fresh air. No one was dozing anymore.
“That confirms what Thomsen told us,” said Pia. “An ice-cold murder in order to save the hospital’s reputation.”
“Which could have remained undiscovered,” Engel added.
“We have a genetic fingerprint from the swabs of Helen Stadler’s body,” said Kröger. “If we get saliva samples from Hausmann, Janning, Rudolf, and Burmeister, we can run a DNA comparison.”
“So, it’s not merely solid investigative work like the police did a hundred years ago,” said State Attorney Rosenthal with a wry smile. “Still, good job.”
“We also received the surveillance video from the airport,” Kröger went on. “I’ll play it on the big screen.”
Everyone watched the video as if spellbound. The frame included the exit door and the short loading zone by Gate C in the arrivals hall. The coffee shop was clearly visible.
“Stop!” Pia shouted.
Kröger paused the playback and zoomed in.
Two Asians were sitting at a table; next to them was a man reading a paper, and way in the background were two men occupied with their smartphones.
“It must be the guy with the newspaper,” Pia said. “He’s sitting at an angle so he can see the whole hall.”
Kröger let the video roll in slow motion. To the casual observer, the man was simply a businessman with a mustache and horn-rimmed glasses, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. But on closer observation, you could see that although he was turning the pages of the paper, he was neither reading nor drinking the coffee. What was happening in the hall was claiming his full attention.
“In any case, it’s the same man who gets into the left rear seat of the taxi a few minutes later,” said Kai. “There’s no doubt about it. Tie, glasses, mustache—everything matches.”
“Well, congratulations,” said the state attorney. “Now all we have to do is catch him.”
He had hardly uttered these words when the officer on duty opened the door of the watch room and yelled across the hall: “They got him!”
Everyone jumped up as if electrified. A wave of excitement flowed through the room, affecting even lazy Ehrenberg.
“The Frankfurt police have found his car behind the gym of the Ludwig Erhard School in Unterliederbach.”
Finally things were moving. Bodenstein doled out assignments, and everybody knew what he had to do. Within half an hour, one of the most extensive police actions of all time was under way in the Rhein-Main region. In and around Unterliederbach, all the streets, main roads, and rural roads were blocked off. Every vehicle was stopped and searched. Even the entry ramp to the A 66 autobahn was blocked off, as well as Königsteiner Strasse, which led out of the city to Highway B 8 and the autobahn. Not a mouse could have escaped unseen from the west side of Frankfurt. Nicola Engel and Ostermann coordinated the action because Bodenstein wanted to be on the scene.
“Christian, you come with us, but send two of your men over to the UCF.” He already had one foot out the door when this occurred to him. “They have to confiscate something from the offices of Hausmann, Janning, and Burmeister that will serve as a DNA fingerprint. The state attorney has promised to get warrants for you ASAP.”
“We’re on it,” Kröger confirmed, and grabbed his cell. “Let’s go! Good luck!”
Four patrol cars were already waiting out front, with blue lights flashing and two-tone sirens going, to escort Bodenstein, Pia, and the evidence team to Unterliederbach. During the ride, the police radio chattered quietly, and Pia made one phone call after another from the passenger seat. Bodenstein glanced over at her. He could see the tension in Pia’s face. She was taking this case personally, just as he was. On the steps of the station, he’d seen her crying, which moved him deeply because he couldn’t recall ever seeing her weep before. Not even during the case two years ago, when Christoph’s granddaughter had fallen into the hands of the child abuser and Christoph himself had been injured by the man. Since then, she’d grown more sensitive. Bodenstein felt a need to console her, take her in his arms and reassure her that in the past two weeks, she had performed at a superhuman level. But that wasn’t something he should do, not even in an exceptional emotional situation like this one. He was her boss and had to behave correctly at all times.
After Pia spoke to Karoline Albrecht and had sent a unit to the professor’s house in Oberursel where she was staying, she called Hausmann and checked to hear if he and his family were safe. Janning, too, was spooked after seeing the photo of Burmeister.
“We’re here at home and won’t leave until you give us the all clear,” he assured her.
All hell had broken loose on the police band.
“What sort of idiot is this Rudolf, anyway?” Pia had her cell phone clenched between her knees and held on tight to the armrest of the door because Bodenstein was taking the curves so fast. “Just to keep from losing the sponsor for his crazy experiments, he lets a woman die. And without giving a thought to the consequences. Then this man who’s over sixty doesn’t have the guts to admit to his crimes. Not even the death of his wife made him stop and think.”
“Quite the opposite. Out of fear of being discovered, he even killed his old companion and supporter,” Bodenstein added. “It’s unbelievable.”
He followed the two patrol cars, which were thundering along the right shoulder of the road past the cars in the traffic jam, with blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. At the exit to Unterliederbach, they were stopped for a moment and heard over the radio that the school was already locked down.
“They broke in through one of the doors,” a voice croaked from the radio. “What should we do now?”
“Don’t wait for us
. Go in,” Bodenstein decided. “We’re stuck here at the autobahn exit. If the injured man is really in there, he’s going to need medical attention fast.”
“Copy that. Understood.”
Bodenstein’s fingers were drumming impatiently on the steering wheel. His emotions kept shifting between hot and cold. He had a bad feeling that once again they were going to arrive too late.
When they arrived at the school building, it was all over, and Bodenstein’s foreboding proved true. The disappointment that the perps had escaped was written all over the faces of the officers. They had found Burmeister in one of the locker rooms of the gym, and the trauma doctor was already with him.
“I can’t go in there.” Pia stopped short.
“I’ll do it,” said Bodenstein. “You take care of the car.”
She gave a grateful nod and vanished into the darkness, while he went into the gymnasium with Kröger. The familiar smell of locker room sweat underlay the sweet, metallic smell of blood. The trauma doctor and the EMTs were taking care of the injured man.
“How’s he doing?” Bodenstein inquired from the doorway. He was trying to convince himself that he didn’t want to disturb any evidence, but in reality, he was afraid of having to look at what he’d already seen on video a couple of hours earlier.
“We’ve stabilized his circulation. Now we’ll take him to the hospital in Höchst,” the trauma doctor told him. “Both his hands were amputated, and rather professionally at that. But it’s too late to reattach them.”
“Why?”
“Well, just have a look,” the doctor replied. “I’ve been doing this job for fifteen years and thought I’d seen everything. But things just keep getting worse.”
Bodenstein gathered all his courage and stepped into the locker room. The linoleum floor was covered with pools of blood that had already dried. Burmeister lay on a bench, bound with nylon straps like the ones used to secure suitcases. He was unconscious.
Bodenstein swallowed hard. A shiver ran down his back when he saw the stumps of arms and the bloody bandages. In the long years he’d been with the homicide division he’d seen plenty of gruesome things, and he wasn’t easily upset. But the sight of the severed hands lying on the floor like a carelessly discarded pair of dirty socks cut him to the marrow. This image of the most brutal, profound contempt for humanity became seared into his mind, and when he imagined what must have happened here a few hours before, his stomach turned over. One of the EMTs sliced through the nylon restraints. Burmeister moaned and started to move.