Bad Wolf: A Novel (Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein)

by Neuhaus, Nele

  “By chance, I found an address in Langensebold,” Meike went on. “It’s an isolated farm, presumably the headquarters of a motorcycle gang. I was there, but they let a dog loose on me.”

  Fear surged like an insidious poison, and Leonie started to sweat. She had to try to keep her expression under control, so she crossed her arms and pressed them to her chest.

  “Have you gone to the police about this?” she asked.

  The man, who hadn’t spoken until now, cleared his throat.

  “No, not yet,” he said. “I’ve known Hanna for a long time; she’s worked for our station for fourteen years. And I know how sensitive she is when it comes to her research. So the first thing we wanted to do was find out if the attack might have something to do with her work.”

  Obviously, there was some connection, but he seemed to think it was better to play dumb.

  “Ms. Herzmann has been in therapy with me for a few weeks,” Leonie replied with a regretful undertone in her voice. “She didn’t tell me what she was working on. The e-mail referred to a former patient of mine whom Ms. Herzmann happened to know. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Leonie felt Meike scrutinizing her with an almost hostile expression. You’re lying, her eyes said, and I know it. But Leonie had no choice; she had to protect Michaela at all costs.

  The man thanked her and handed her his card. She stuck it in the pocket of her gardening apron.

  “Just in case you happen to think of something else that might be helpful,” he said. Briefly, he put his arm around the young woman’s shoulders. “Come on, Meike, let’s go.”

  They left the courtyard, and Leonie watched them get into a car with Frankfurt plates parked in one of the five spots in front of the bakery. Then she closed the main gate, barred it, and went into the house. She had to make an urgent call—very urgent. No, it would be better not to use the phone. For a moment, she stood undecided in the hall, then she grabbed the car keys hanging on the hook next to the front door. She would drive over there. Maybe it wasn’t too late for damage control.

  * * *

  Kai Ostermann had spent three hours ascertaining that Kilian Rothemund had absolutely no subsequent police record. After he was released from prison, he no longer seemed to exist officially. He did not receive any money from the government, nor did the government receive any from him. The cell phone number of his probation officer had been changed, and on the landline there was only an answering machine that said there was no possibility of leaving a message.

  “Here it is.” Pia stopped the car in front of a cubic glass building with a flat roof and a well-tended front yard. “Oranienstrasse One twelve.”

  They got out and crossed the street. Even before noon, the asphalt was very hot, and Pia could feel the heat through the soles of her running shoes. In front of the two-car garage stood a snow-white SUV, so someone must be home. During his research, Kai had found Rothemund’s old address in Bad Soden. Bodenstein was hoping that the new owners might know what had become of the previous occupants.

  Pia rang the doorbell next to the mailbox labeled with the discreet initials K.H.

  “Hello?” a voice said in the intercom.

  “Criminal Police. We would like to speak with you,” said Pia.

  “One moment.”

  The moment lasted a long three minutes.

  “Why are they taking so long?” said Pia, blowing a strand of hair from her forehead. Some people tore the door open at once out of sheer curiosity when they rang, while others were struck by vague feelings of guilt at a visit from Kripo and tried to delay the encounter.

  “Maybe they’re running some compromising documents through the shredder,” Bodenstein said with a grin. “Or they’re hiding Grandma’s body in the basement.”

  Pia gave her boss a surreptitious glance. This type of humor was something altogether new for him, just like his current habit of not shaving regularly and no longer wearing a tie. There was no doubt that Bodenstein had changed in the past few weeks, definitely for the better, in her opinion, because it certainly hadn’t been easy to work with an eternally depressed and absentminded boss.

  “Very witty.” Pia was just about to ring the bell again, when the door opened. A woman appeared in the doorway. Mid-forties, willowy, very well groomed. She was still attractive, but her looks were starting to fade. After forty, the skin took its revenge for too much sun and too little body fat.

  “I was just in the shower,” she said apologetically, running her hand through her damp, dark hair, which showed a few white strands.

  “No problem. Fortunately, it’s not raining yet.” Bodenstein presented his ID and introduced himself and Pia. The woman gave him an uncertain smile.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Ms.…” Bodenstein began.

  “Hackspiel. Britta Hackspiel,” she replied.

  “Thank you. Ms. Hackspiel, we’re looking for someone who once lived here. A man named Kilian Rothemund.”

  The smile on her face vanished. She crossed her arms and took a deep breath. Her whole posture signaled a defensive attitude.

  “Why am I not surprised?” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know—”

  She stopped, wanting to say something, then changed her mind.

  “Please come in. We don’t need to let the whole neighborhood know that the police are here again.”

  Bodenstein and Pia entered a glassed-in anteroom. The whole house seemed to consist primarily of glass walls.

  “Kilian Rothemund is my ex-husband. I divorced him when he had to go to prison. That was in 2001, and I haven’t seen him since.” Britta Hackspiel tried hard to maintain her composure, but inwardly she was in turmoil. Her hands revealed her distress, as she kept rubbing her upper arms. “I couldn’t bear to be married to a pedophile. My children were still young back then, and I’ve often wondered whether that perverse swine might have molested them, as well.”

  Revulsion and hatred were evident in her voice. Nine years had not softened her emotions.

  “What that man did to me, the children, and my parents is simply unimaginable. The disgusting reports in the media were a nightmare for all of us. I don’t know if you can comprehend how humiliating and appalling it is when the husband you thought you knew suddenly turns out to be a child molester.” She looked at Pia, who could see how deeply wounded the woman was. “Our friends turned away from me, and I felt like an innocent person condemned to death. I often asked myself whether it could have been my fault. I spent three years in therapy because I felt partly to blame.”

  The family members of convicted felons often had feelings of guilt, seeing themselves as responsible for what had happened. This was even worse if they lost their friends and neighbors. Pia could only imagine how dreadful it must feel to be suddenly branded the wife of a child molester and have to bear the shame for crimes committed by someone in the family.

  “Why didn’t you move away from here?” she asked.

  “Where to?” Britta Hackspiel uttered an unhappy laugh. “The house wasn’t paid off yet, and there was no money left. In the divorce settlement, I was awarded everything, but if my parents hadn’t helped me out financially, it all would have gone down the tubes.”

  “Do you know where your ex-husband is living now?” Bodenstein asked.

  “No. And I don’t want to know, either. The court revoked all visitation rights; he isn’t allowed to come near the children. If he violates these conditions, he’ll be sent straight back where he belongs: in prison.”

  So much bitterness. A damaged woman whose wounds would never heal.

  A black BMW pulled into the double garage next to the white SUV, and a large man with a sparse gray hair stepped out, along with a boy and girl.

  “My husband and my children,” explained Britta Hackspiel nervously. “I don’t want them to know the reason for your visit.”

  The boy was about twelve years old, the girl about fourteen, a little beauty with big dark eyes and sk
in like milk and honey. Her long blond hair reached to the middle of her back, and Pia understood Britta’s fears. She had a fleeting thought of Lilly.

  The girl must have been a little younger than Lilly was now when Britta Hackspiel learned of her husband’s perverse tendencies. Along with the terrible realization that she didn’t really know her own husband, she’d had to worry about the children and endure the ostracism of society. Unfortunately, too many children were sexually abused by their own fathers. The closed microcosm of the family allowed for a cruel exertion of power, and despite all the public service campaigns, this topic was still taboo.

  Pia handed Britta Hackspiel her business card.

  “Please call me if you happen to think of anything else,” she said. “It’s very important.”

  The girl came up the steps. Stuck in one ear was a white iPod earbud, and over her shoulder she carried a sports bag with a hockey stick protruding from it.

  “Hi, Mama.”

  “Hi, Chiara.” Ms. Hackspiel smiled at her daughter. “How was practice?”

  “Awesome,” replied the girl without enthusiasm. She gave first Bodenstein, then Pia a quizzical look.

  “Okay,” Bodenstein said, turning to go. “Thanks so much for the information. And have a nice weekend.”

  “You, too. Good-bye.” Ms. Hackspiel folded Pia’s card into a small rectangle, first across, then lengthwise. She wasn’t going to call. The card would probably wind up in the trash. And Pia could understand why.

  * * *

  At 4:00 P.M., the APB was issued for Kilian Rothemund.

  The photo wasn’t very current, of course. It was nine years old, from the police computer, but better an old photo than none at all. Additional results came in from the crime lab in Wiesbaden, lending the Hanna Herzmann case a whole new perspective. Fingerprints on one of the glasses from the coffee table in Hanna’s house had been partially wiped off, but the lab had still been able to find one usable print.

  “Bernhard Andreas Prinzler,” said Kai Ostermann at the afternoon meeting. The whole K-11 team, including Christian Kröger, had showed up in the conference room. “A real heavy. His rap sheet is as long as a roll of toilet paper. Manslaughter, aggravated assault, illegal weapons possession, promotion of prostitution, coercion, extortion. The man has worked his way through almost the entire penal code. But his last conviction was fourteen years ago. For a long period, he was also one of the leaders of the Frankfurt Road Kings.”

  “The tattooed giant Kornbichler had reported seeing in the living room,” said Pia. “So who was the other man Hanna Herzmann later drove away with?”

  “That was Kilian Rothemund,” replied Kai. “His prints are all over the house. And he didn’t bother to wipe them off his glass.”

  “Unlike Prinzler,” Bodenstein added. “Why would he wipe off the glass if he was just visiting someone?”

  “It probably becomes a habit for somebody who has regular run-ins with the law,” Christian Kröger suggested.

  “Or maybe Prinzler intended to come back,” said Cem Altunay.

  “Somehow it doesn’t add up.” Pia shook her head. “Prinzler and Rothemund visit Hanna Herzmann, sit with her in the living room, and chat like old friends. Later, Ms. Herzmann rides away with Rothemund. That evening, he returns to her house and shoves something in the mail slot—”

  “So what did he actually put in there?” asked Kathrin Fachinger, interrupting.

  “We don’t know yet. Meike Herzmann isn’t answering her cell phone,” said Pia. “She hasn’t called back, has she, Kai?”

  “Not here, no.”

  Bodenstein stood up, picked up a marking pen, and added the names Kilian Rothemund and Bernd Prinzler to the list on the whiteboard. Then he crossed out Norman Seiler and Vinzenz Kornbichler.

  “What about Niemöller?” He turned around. “Who talked to him?”

  “Kathrin and I did,” said Cem Altunay. “He has no alibi for Thursday night. He claims he had an argument with Ms. Herzmann about a research matter. He apparently was insulted that she wouldn’t tell him what she was working on. Supposedly, he drove straight home from Oberursel and got drunk in his apartment out of sheer frustration. Unfortunately, there are no witnesses to corroborate his story.”

  “It didn’t seem to me that he was lying,” Fachinger added. “To be honest, he’s such a dry stick-in-the-mud. I really can’t imagine him doing something like that.”

  Bodenstein made no comment. It was impossible to tell by looking at someone what he was capable of. Bodenstein didn’t think that Jan Niemöller was the perp, either, but he hoped to get useful information from him about Hanna Herzmann’s actions, especially about the research she was involved with at the moment.

  “Any news from the hospital?”

  “Ms. Herzmann still isn’t able to be questioned,” Cem put in. He and Kathrin had been to the hospital in Höchst, but Hanna hadn’t come out of the anesthesia from the second operation yet, and the doctors still considered her condition to be critical.

  “Rothemund must be staying somewhere in the vicinity,” Bodenstein said. “He rode a motor scooter to Langenhain.”

  “I’ve got Prinzler’s address.” Kai looked up from his laptop. “He lives at Peter-Böhler-Strasse One forty-three in Ginnheim. I’ve got a gut feeling that Rothemund could be hiding out at his former client’s place, because he owes him a favor. It might interest you to know that Kilian Rothemund was Prinzler’s defense attorney in several court cases. In two cases of aggravated assault, Rothemund got him acquitted due to lack of evidence.”

  Bodenstein nodded. That actually sounded quite promising. At any rate, they could assume that Prinzler would not let himself be taken without resistance.

  “Let’s go over there right now,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Kai, call our colleagues in Frankfurt. I’ll need backup team of at least six men. They have to be there at precisely five-thirty P.M.”

  Maybe they’d get lucky and the Hanna Herzmann case would be cleared up in a couple of hours so that they could get back to concentrating on the Mermaid, who still lay nameless in a freezer at the Frankfurt Institute for Forensic Medicine.

  * * *

  Hanna had lost all track of time. How long had she been lying here? A day? A week? What date was it? What day of the week?

  It drove her crazy that she couldn’t remember anything. But no matter how hard she tried, there was nothing in her head but impenetrable fog. She realized that was a specific gap in her memory, because she knew her name, her birthday, and she could recall even the smallest details, up until the argument with Jan after the wrap party.

  The doctors had told her this morning, before they took her to the OR for the second time, that she had suffered a skull fracture and a severe concussion; temporary amnesia was not unusual in such cases. They had advised her not to push herself too hard. At some point, her memory would return on its own. Skull fracture. Severe concussion. Why did they have to operate a second time? Why could she hardly move?

  The door opened and the dark-haired female doctor whom she’d seen several times came over to her bed.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked in a friendly voice.

  Dumb question. How would anyone feel lying in Intensive Care with no memory and not even a single visit from her own daughter?

  “Pretty good,” Hanna murmured. “What happened, actually? Why did I need an operation?”

  At least she was able to articulate halfway understandably. The doctor checked the monitors behind Hanna’s bed, then pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “You were the victim of a crime. Someone attacked and raped you,” she said with a serious expression. “This caused serious internal and external injuries. We had to remove your uterus and part of your intestine and perform a colostomy.”

  Hanna stared at the woman in silence. Comprehension came in shock waves. She hadn’t had an accident. She’d been raped. That couldn’t be true. Things like that happened to other people, not to her. S
he was the one who reported on that sort of event. Victim of a crime? No, no, no! She didn’t want to be a victim, someone people would gape at and pity.

  “Does … do the media know about this?” Hanna murmured. She could picture the headlines on the front pages of the tabloids: HANNA HERZMANN BRUTALLY RAPED. Maybe even with a photo showing her helpless and half-naked. The image made her shudder in horror.

  But to Hanna’s relief, the doctor shook her head.

  “No, the hospital has imposed a news blackout. But the police would like to speak with you.”

  Of course. The police. Now she was a victim. A rape victim. Sullied, abused, violated. She’d had so many women on her show who’d been raped, and she’d talked to them about trauma, fear, and perpetrators, about psychotherapy and self-help groups that went on for months or even years. She had feigned sympathy and understanding, but secretly she had despised these women. It’s your own fault, she’d thought, if something like that happens. Anyone who runs around dressed like a hooker or cowers like a scared rabbit should expect to be attacked and raped. And now the same thing had supposedly happened to her? The thought was absolutely intolerable.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. If you like, you can speak with a psychologist.” The doctor put her hand briefly on Hanna’s arm. Looking in her eyes, Hanna saw sympathy, which was the last thing she wanted.

  She closed her eyes. Just don’t think about it, she told herself. The best thing would be to stop trying to remember. If she didn’t remember, then maybe she could repress the fact that it had happened. As soon as possible, she needed to call her agent so that he could think up a suitable story for the press and the public. It would be impossible to hide that something had happened to her. An accident would be good. Yes, she could live with a car crash. In the glare of the headlights, something dashed across the street in front of her, and she instinctively spun the steering wheel to the left. Hanna twitched in shock, the situation had suddenly seemed so real. She’d been on her way home when an animal ran in front of her car. She’d managed to avoid hitting it and then … Loud music. The animal in the headlights. A badger or a raccoon. POLICE—PLEASE FOLLOW. The warning triangle. Flashes of memory shot like lightning through the fog in her brain, random and unwelcome. She had been raped. Who had found her? Some strangers who had seen her weak, ugly, and abused?