Bad Wolf

by Nele Neuhaus

  Autopsy room 1 was too small to accommodate all the spectators. Henning Kirchhoff and his boss, Professor Thomas Kronlage, were conducting the autopsy together, supported by two postmortem assistants. The state attorney’s office had immediately sent over three representatives, including the zealous hothead from this morning. A police photographer whose name Pia couldn’t recall completed the group.

  “Standing room only,” Henning’s colleague Ronnie Böhme whispered to Pia as she and Bodenstein squeezed past the autopsy table.

  “This is not a forensics lecture for lawyers,” Henning complained to State Attorney Frey. They knew each other well, since the pathologist was often called upon to serve as an expert witness for the prosecutor’s office or for the court. “Do we really need four of you standing around and getting in the way?”

  The representatives from the SA’s office put their heads together, and then two of them left the room with scarcely concealed relief. Frey and the overzealous Merzad Tanouti remained.

  “That’s better,” grumbled Henning.

  For everyone present, the autopsy of such a young person was bound to have a powerful emotional impact. The mood was tense, and even Henning refrained from his usual cynicism. When the victim was a child or teenager, everyone present felt a genuine sadness. It wasn’t the first court-ordered autopsy for either Bodenstein or the staff from the SA’s office, and Pia had spent countless evenings and weekends in this room or in autopsy room 2, next door, when she was still married to Henning. In order to have any time with her husband at all, there had often been no option but to come to his workplace, since his attitude toward his job bordered on obsession.

  Pia had seen corpses in every stage of decomposition and in every possible or impossible condition—and smelled them: floaters, burn victims, skeletons, crash victims, and those who had died as the result of an accident or a horrendous suicide. Often she and Henning had stood by the autopsy table and discussed everyday topics; sometimes they’d even argued. And the detailed forays into forensic medicine under the guidance of a teacher as strict as Henning had sharpened Pia’s handling of crime-scene investigations.

  This didn’t mean that Pia felt unmoved whenever she was called to a murder scene or the location where a body had been found. There were situations and circumstances so extreme or gruesome that sometimes she had to summon all her strength to maintain a professional demeanor. Like most of her colleagues, Pia did not see her job as a crusade against crime in the world. One of the reasons she loved doing her job, no matter how frustrating and depressing it could often be, was that she felt she was showing respect to the deceased by clearing up the circumstances of their deaths. She was restoring at least a small part of their human dignity. Because there was nothing as undignified as a nameless corpse, a person robbed of identity, who was buried somewhere or just left on the ground like a piece of garbage. No fate could be sadder than lying dead for weeks or even a month inside an apartment without being missed by anybody.

  It was these cases, fortunately rare, that made Pia sense the true purpose of her work. And she knew that it was the same for many of her colleagues. And yet some of them shied away from forensic medicine, so in the past Pia had often volunteered to take over the task. As soon as a body lay here on the shiny stainless-steel dissection table under the glaring fluorescent light, it lost all power to terrify her. There was nothing sinister or mysterious about an autopsy; the court-ordered dissection followed a strict protocol, which began with the external postmortem examination.

  * * *

  Riding the motor scooter was like traveling halfway around the world. Although his butt burned like fire after an hour and a half on the plastic seat, he enjoyed the ride. The warm wind caressed his face; the sunshine on his bare arms did him good. He felt young. For many years, he’d had no time or opportunity to take a trip on his scooter. It must have been twenty years ago that he took off with his best buddy, the one he remembered so fondly. They had actually made it all the way to the North Sea on the 80cc motorbikes, keeping to country roads. At night, they’d slept in a tent, or sometimes out under the clear starry sky when they were too lazy to pitch the tent.

  Of course, they didn’t have much money, but they were freer than they’d ever been before, or would be ever again. That summer, he met Britta on the beach at St. Peter-Ording and fell in love at first sight. She was from Bad Homburg, and after vacation they’d gotten together again. He was a law student and had just passed his first state exam; she had recently finished her training as a retail and wholesale buyer and was working in a department store in the women’s outerwear department.

  Less than six months later, they got married. Their parents splurged to give them a dream wedding. Registry office, church, a coach with four white horses. A reception with two hundred guests at the Bad Homburg Castle. Wedding pictures in the park beneath the mighty cedars. Honeymoon on Crete. After passing the second state exam, he got a job with one of the best law firms in Frankfurt, specializing in business and tax law. His salary was good enough for them to buy a lot and build their dream house. Then their daughter was born, and he was crazy about her. Later, they also had a son. Everything was perfect. On summer evenings they barbecued outdoors with friends, in the wintertime they went skiing in Kitzbühel, and they traveled to beaches in Majorca or Sylt in the summer. He’d been promoted and made partner—at the young age of thirty—and began focusing on criminal law. His clients were no longer tax evaders or misguided CEOs; now they were murderers, kidnappers, blackmailers, rapists, and drug dealers. His in-laws weren’t pleased, but for Britta, it didn’t make any difference. He made more money than the husbands of her friends, and she could afford to buy whatever she wanted.

  Yes, life had been great, even though he had to work eighty hours a week. Success had intoxicated him; he was the most famous defense attorney in Germany. He moved with ease in the circles of his prominent clients, and was invited to birthday parties and weddings. Without batting an eye, he had billed a thousand D-marks per hour, and to his clients, he was worth every penny.

  But all that was long gone. Instead of driving a Maserati Quattroporte and a Porsche 911 Turbo, he was now relegated to an ancient motor scooter. The villa with gardens, pool, and every imaginable luxury had been replaced by a trailer. But even though the outward appearance of life had changed, the man inside him had remained the same, with all his secret wishes, dreams, and longings. Most of the time, he succeeded in controlling them, but not always. Sometimes his inner urge was stronger than any sense of reason.

  He had left behind the last buildings of Langensebold. Now there were only two miles to go. The estate wasn’t easy to find, which was precisely the intention of its residents. Back then, they had searched for a long time before they found a suitable property: a run-down farm with extensive grounds behind a stretch of woods, not visible from any road. It was years since he’d been there, and he was impressed when he saw what they’d made of it. He stopped the scooter by a spike-topped wrought-iron gate seven feet high. The motion-activated cameras spotted him at once, zooming in on him. The property had been converted into an impregnable fortress, surrounded by a fence that was covered with an opaque façade. He took off his helmet.

  “Benvenuto, Dottore Avvocato,” a voice croaked from the speaker. “You’re just in time for dinner. We’re behind the barn.”

  The double gate swung slowly open, and he drove through. Where once cowsheds and pigsties had stood along with tons of old manure, he now saw a junkyard. The carefully renovated barn contained the workshop. On the paved forecourt stood rows of Harley-Davidsons gleaming with chrome; beside them, his miserable motor scooter looked like a poor relative. On the other side, two Staffordshire bull terriers were barking in a big kennel behind confidence-inspiring, solid-looking fence posts.

  He stuck the cardboard box under his arm and went around to the back of the barn. Maybe he would have been shocked if he hadn’t known what to expect. Steaks were cooking on a big sus
pended grill, and at least a thousand years’ worth of prison time was sitting at the tables and benches. One of the men, a beefy giant with a carefully trimmed beard and wearing a head scarf, got up from his spot in the shade and came over to him.

  “Avvocato,” he said in a gruff bass voice, giving him a quick hug with his muscular arms, which were tattooed from shoulder to fingertips. “Welcome.”

  “Hey, Bernd.” He grinned. “Great to see you again. It must be ten years since the last time I was here.”

  “It’s your own fault for not stopping by. The business is going really well.”

  “You always were a gifted gearhead.”

  “Whatever. And I’ve got a couple of really good boys.” Bernd Prinzler lit himself a cigarette. “Have you already eaten?”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry.” The mere smell of grilled meat turned his stomach. Besides, he hadn’t rattled thirty miles along a country road to come here and eat. The tense anticipation that he’d only barely managed to keep under control since Bernd’s phone call last night now flared up, making his heart beat faster. He’d been waiting so long for this! “On the phone, you said you had something new for me?”

  “Yep. A lot. It’ll blow your mind.” The giant squinted his eyes. “I bet you can’t wait, eh?”

  “Honestly, no,” he admitted. “I’ve had to wait long enough already.”

  “Well, come on, then.” Bernd put his arm around his shoulders. “I just have to go and pick up the kids at school. But I’m sure you’ll be able to manage on your own.”

  * * *

  “Ninety-one and a quarter pounds at a height of five six,” said Professor Kronlage. “That is massive undernourishment.”

  The emaciated body of the girl was covered with scars, old ones and relatively fresh ones. In the glare of the fluorescent lights, they were clearly visible: the burns, bruises, scratches, and hematomas—shocking evidence of the years of abuse that the girl must have suffered.

  A young woman came into the room.

  “The photos,” was all she said as she shoved brusquely past Bodenstein and Pia without greeting them. She sat down at the computer on a little table by the wall and started typing. A moment later, the skeleton of the dead girl appeared on the screen. The days when black-and-white X-rays were clipped to light boxes were long gone.

  Kronlage and Kirchhoff interrupted their external examination of the body and stepped over to the computer to analyze what they saw there: broken bones in the face, ribs, and extremities. And like the external injuries, some were old and healed, but some were fresh. They counted twenty-four fractures.

  Pia shuddered at the thought of the horrible martyrdom this girl must have endured. But more important to the forensic physicians than the fractures were the various indicators of the age of the skeleton. Fusing of the cranial growth sutures and of the long bones enabled a preliminary estimate of the victim’s age.

  “She was at least fourteen, but no more than sixteen years old,” Henning Kirchhoff said at last. “We’ll be able to be more precise very soon.”

  “In any case, the child was abused over a period of years,” Professor Kronlage added. “Also, the abnormal pallor of the skin and the almost complete lack of vitamin D in the blood, as reported by the laboratory, are striking.”

  “Striking in what way?” asked the young lawyer.

  “Vitamin D is not actually a vitamin, but a neuroregulatory steroid hormone.” Kronlage peered over the top of his half-moon glasses. “The human body creates the hormone whenever the skin is exposed to sunlight. Nowadays, vitamin D deficiency is nearing epidemic proportions worldwide, because dermatologists and health authorities have been stirring up hysteria about skin cancer and advising people to stay out of the sun or to use sunblock with an SPF of thirty or higher. Which means that—”

  “What has that got to do with the dead girl?” Tanouti asked him impatiently, interrupting.

  “Just listen,” Kronlage chided him.

  Tanouti silently accepted the rebuke and merely shrugged.

  “A value of fifteen to eighteen nanograms per milliliter of blood, as was determined in a large-scale screening in the USA after the winter months, is considered a sizable deficiency. The optimum is fifty to sixty-five nanograms per milliliter of blood,” the professor went on. “Only four nanograms per milliliter was measured in the blood serum of this girl.”

  “So? What do we conclude from that?” Tanouti’s voice sounded even more impatient.

  “I have no idea what you conclude from it, young man,” Kronlage replied calmly. “For me, this fact, combined with the skin pallor and the porous bone structure evident in the X-rays, supports the assumption that the girl had not been exposed to sunlight for a very long time. This may mean that the girl was held captive.”

  For a moment, the room was totally quiet. Then a cell phone rang.

  “Excuse me,” said State Attorney Frey, and left the room.

  The general condition of the girl was very poor; her body was extremely undernourished and dehydrated, her teeth were full of cavities, and she had apparently never been to a dentist. That eliminated the possibility of determining her identity from dental records.

  The external examination was concluded; now the actual autopsy would begin. With a scalpel, Kronlage cut the scalp from one ear to the other, folded the skin forward and then left it to an assistant to open the cranium with an oscillating saw in order to remove the brain. At the same time, Henning was opening the chest and abdominal cavities with a single vertical incision from neck to pubis. The ribs and breastbone were separated with the saw, and the organs that were removed were placed on a small metal tray above the dissection table and examined immediately. Tissue samples were also taken. Condition, size, shape, color, and weight of each organ was determined and logged.

  “What have we here?” Henning asked himself, ignoring the onlookers. He had cut open the stomach to take samples of its contents.

  “What’s that?” Pia asked.

  “Looks like … fabric.” Henning smoothed out the oily scrap with two pair of pincettes and then held the scrap up to the bright light. “It’s been pretty well damaged by the stomach acid. Well, maybe the lab can make something out of it.”

  Ronnie Böhme held out an evidence bag and made a note of the finding.

  The minutes passed and turned into hours. The chief state attorney had left. The pathologists were working, focused and meticulous. Henning, who was responsible for the report, spoke the findings into the microphone he wore around his neck. It was four in the afternoon by the time Böhme placed the organs back inside the body and sewed up the incisions. The autopsy was completed.

  “The cause of death was clearly drowning,” Henning summed up in his closing comments. “There were also serious internal injuries caused by kicks or blows to the abdomen, chest, extremities, and head, which sooner or later would also have resulted in death. Ruptures of the spleen, lungs, liver, and rectum. In addition, the massive injuries to the vagina and anus indicate that the girl was sexually assaulted shortly before her death.”

  Bodenstein listened in silence and with a stony expression. Now and then, he nodded, but he asked no questions. Kirchhoff looked at him.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Bodenstein,” he said. “We can rule out suicide. But whether the injuries were due to an accident or the result of murder is your job to find out.”

  “Why do you rule out suicide?” Pia asked.

  “Because—” Henning began, but he got no further.

  Tanouti broke in. He suddenly seemed to be in a hurry. “Dr. Kirchhoff,” “I want the autopsy report from you on my desk first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “That goes without saying, Mr. Tanouti. Tomorrow morning, it will be in your mailbox.” Henning smiled with exaggerated charm. “Shall I type it up myself?”

  “If you like.” Tanouti was so blinded by his own importance that he didn’t even notice how in a matter of seconds he’d become the most unpopular member of
the state attorney’s office. “So we can announce to the press that the girl in the river died of drowning.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Henning peeled the latex gloves from his hands and tossed them in the wastebasket next to the washbasin.

  “Excuse me?” The young man took a step back into the autopsy room. “But you just said that the girl obviously drowned.”

  “Yes, that’s true. But you interrupted me before I could explain why I’ve ruled out suicide. In fact, she did not drown in the Main.”

  Pia gave her ex-husband a baffled look.

  “When someone drowns in fresh water, the lung tissue is so severely overinflated that the water pours out when the chest cavity is opened. We call this phenomenon emphysema aquosum. But here, that was not the case. Instead, a pulmonary edema had formed.”

  “And what is that in plain German?” snapped Tanouti in annoyance. “I don’t need a lesson in forensic medicine. Just give me the facts!”

  Henning cast a disparaging look in his direction. He had an ironic gleam in his eye. Tanouti had spoiled any chance of ever being on good terms with the pathologist.

  “A more detailed knowledge of the field of forensics is never a drawback,” he said with a sardonic smile. “Especially if someone wants to make a name for himself in the tempest of flashing cameras from the press.”

  The young attorney flushed and took a step toward Henning, but he had to beat a hasty retreat because Böhme shoved the gurney with the body of the dead girl right up against him.

  “For example, a pulmonary edema can form in salt water.” Henning took off his glasses and polished them calmly with a paper towel. Then he held the glasses up to the light and squinted at the lenses to see whether they were clean. “Or by drowning in chlorinated water, such as in a swimming pool.”

  Pia exchanged a quick glance with her boss. That was really an extremely important detail, and typical of Henning that he’d left it until the end.

  “The girl drowned in chlorinated water,” he said at last. “In the next few days, a precise analysis of the water sample taken from the lungs will be done by the lab. Now you’ll have to excuse me. Pia, Bodenstein, Mr. Tanouti, have a pleasant day. I have to type up the autopsy report.” He winked at Pia and left the room.