by Nele Neuhaus
“Come in.” His handshake was firm, his gaze direct. “I can’t invite you into the living room, I’m afraid. It’s a mess, because I’m only staying here temporarily.”
Bodenstein and Pia followed him into a sparsely furnished little room: a sofa bed, dresser, and small desk, a narrow mirror on the wall, behind the door a folded ironing board and a laundry rack.
“How long have you lived here?” Pia asked.
“A couple of weeks.”
“Why? You and your wife have a lovely house.”
Kornbichler frowned. His muscular upper arms told of countless hours in the fitness gym, while his neat clothing and carefully manicured hands revealed that he placed great value on his appearance.
“My wife has grown tired of me,” he said lightly, but with a bitter undertone in his voice. “She tends to switch out her husbands every so often. She threw me out over a trifle and closed all my accounts. After six years of doing everything for her.”
“What sort of trifle was it?” Pia wanted to know.
“Oh, it was insignificant. I just had a little something on the side, and she made a federal case out of it,” he replied evasively, looking past her into the mirror. He seemed to like what he saw, because he smiled with satisfaction.
He didn’t offer any further explanation for his expulsion from paradise. He didn’t blame himself for the unfair treatment he’d received and seemed not to notice how suspicious he was making himself appear with each word he spoke.
“It sounds like you’re rather angry,” Pia said.
“Of course I’m annoyed,” Vinzenz Kornbichler admitted. “I gave up my business for my wife’s sake, and now here I am with no home, no money, nothing! And she doesn’t even answer the phone when I call.”
“Where were you last night?” Bodenstein asked him.
“Last night?” Kornbichler looked at him in surprise. “What time?”
“Between eleven o’clock and three in the morning.”
Hanna Herzmann’s husband frowned in thought.
“I was at a bistro in Bad Soden,” he said after a moment. “From about ten-thirty on.”
“Until when?”
“I’m not sure exactly. Twelve-thirty or one, I guess. Why do you want to know?”
“Are there any witnesses who could corroborate your presence there?”
“Yes, of course. I was with a couple of friends. And the staff will no doubt remember me. Has something happened?”
Pia gave him a sharp look. His innocence seemed genuine, but maybe he was just a good actor. Was it possible that he had no idea what had happened, or why they wanted to speak with him?
“What type of car do you drive?” asked Pia.
“A Porsche. A 911, 4S, convertible.” Kornbichler grimaced. “Until she takes that away, too.”
“And where were you before you went to Bad Soden?” Bodenstein asked the exact question that Pia had been going to ask next. Sometimes, Pia thought with a hint of amusement, she and Bodenstein were like an old married couple. It was no wonder, after conducting hundreds of interviews and interrogations together.
The question obviously made Kornbichler uncomfortable.
“I drove around the area a bit,” he said, waffling. “Why is that important?”
“Your wife was attacked and raped yesterday,” Pia said. “She was found this morning, seriously injured and unconscious in the trunk of her car. And her neighbor told us that you were at her house yesterday.”
* * *
Markus Maria Frey had changed from his slick suit into jeans and a T-shirt. Right now, he was standing with two other fathers at the outdoor gas grill. All week, he’d been looking forward to the school celebration. Despite his tight calendar of appointments, he always made time for his children; he was the chairman of the parents’ association and had played a substantial role in organizing the party. All proceeds from the sale of food and drink and any donations would go toward construction of the new school library. The line waiting at the grill seemed endless. As fast as they took meat and sausages off the grill, the food was whisked out of their hands. The citizens of Königstein were generous when it came to charitable causes, and the school parents’ association had agreed to round upward the amount that was taken in.
The weather was being cooperative, and the mood was relaxed and festive.
Frey stayed at the grill until his relief arrived; then he was assigned to be a referee and assistant at the games on the athletic field—sack races, wheelbarrow races, bobbing for apples, tug-of-war. The children and their parents were having a great time, and Frey had at least as much fun just watching. How eager and focused the children were, with their red cheeks, shining eyes, and happy laughter. What could be better? They swarmed around him when the awards were handed out to the winners, but he also had consolation prizes and encouraging words for the kids who had lost. Children gave meaning to life.
The afternoon flew by. There were tears of disappointment to wipe away, adhesive bandages to apply to a skinned knee, and squabbles to settle.
“So, if you ever get bored at the state attorney’s office, you’re always welcome here with us at the day care,” someone said behind him. Frey turned around and looked into the smiling face of Mrs. Schirrmacher, the director of the city day-care centers.
“Hello, Mrs. Schirrmacher,” he said, returning her smile.
“Thank you,” chirped the little girl whose braid had just been newly plaited. She ran off to play.
“The children are hanging on you like leeches.”
“Yes, I know.” He watched the girl go as she jumped into the tumult at the bounce house. “It makes me happy, and I find it really relaxing.”
“I wanted to talk to you about our theater project,” Mrs. Schirrmacher said. “I wrote you an e-mail about it. Perhaps you recall it.”
Frey had a great fondness for the educator who was so involved in her job. With imagination and enthusiasm, she worked very hard on behalf of the children in her care, some of whom came from troubled families. She continually had to contend with the shrinking budget in the strained communal coffers.
“Of course I remember. I’ve already spoken with Mr. Wiesner from the Finkbeiner Foundation about it.”
They strolled across the grounds to the tents, where there was still a line at the grill and drink stands.
“Normally, we don’t support outside projects, but in this case we decided to make an exception,” Frey went on. “It’s a very ambitious program, and it will also benefit children from disadvantaged families. So you can count me in. Including a donation of five thousand euros.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Thank you so much.” Mrs. Schirrmacher’s eyes glittered with tears, and in her excitement she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “We were afraid that we’d have to give up the whole project because of lack of funding.”
Markus Maria Frey smiled, a bit embarrassed. He always found it awkward to receive gratitude for such a trifle.
“Papa?” Jerome, his eldest son, came running up, out of breath, a cell phone in his hand. “It rang a couple of times already. You left it at the grill stand.”
“Thanks, big guy.” He took the cell and tousled his son’s disheveled hair. The phone promptly rang again.
“Please excuse me for a moment,” Frey said, reading the name on the display. “I have to take this.”
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Schirrmacher said, and Frey moved a few paces away.
“It’s just not convenient,” he said into the phone. “Could I—”
He stopped speaking when he heard the tension in the caller’s voice. In silence, he listened, and within seconds his anger turned to bewilderment. Despite the heat, he found himself shivering.
“Are you a hundred percent certain?” he asked in a low voice, glancing at his watch. He was standing in the shade of a huge cherry laurel, and the lovely sunny day seemed suddenly clouded by a gray veil. “I’ll meet you in an hour. Find a place we can meet and let me know, ok
ay?”
His thoughts were churning like crazy. Could a person in Germany simply vanish from the surface of the earth—for fourteen years? A burial without a body? A gravestone, flowers, and candles on an empty grave? After everything that had happened, the news of the death made him sad, but mostly relieved. The danger that had threatened everyone had seemed averted once and for all.
Frey ended the call and stared into space for a moment.
He realized what it meant, if what he’d just heard was true. It was undoubtedly the worst thing that could have happened. The nightmare was going to begin all over again.
* * *
“Good God!” Kornbichler straightened up and his eyes opened wide. “I … I didn’t know that. How is … I mean … oh shit. I’m really sorry.”
“Why were you in Langenhain? Why did you go there?” Pia asked.
“I … I…” He ran his hand through his hair, fidgeting nervously as he sat on the sofa bed. “You … You don’t think that I raped and injured my wife, do you?”
He didn’t sound outraged; he sounded shocked.
“We haven’t come to any conclusions,” replied Bodenstein. “Right now, you just need to answer our questions.”
“Why didn’t anyone call to tell me about this?” Kornbichler shook his head and looked at his smartphone. “Irina or Jan should have informed me.”
“What were you looking for in your wife’s house in Langenhain?” Bodenstein asked, repeating Pia’s question. “And why didn’t you tell us at once that you’d been there?”
“You asked about the period from eleven to three in the morning,” Kornbichler countered quickly. “I had no idea what this was all about.”
“So why did you think that Kripo wanted to talk to you?” Pia asked.
“Honestly, I had no clue,” he said with a shrug.
Pia watched the play of emotions on his face. Vinzenz Kornbichler was clearly insulted and angry, but was he capable of the kind of brutality that Hanna Herzmann had been subjected to?
“Does your wife have any enemies?” Bodenstein asked. “Was she ever threatened in the past?”
“Yes, there was a guy who stalked her once, quite seriously,” Kornbichler said. “It was shortly before Hanna and I met. By then, he’d been convicted and sent to prison.”
That sounded interesting. Kornbichler didn’t know the man’s name, but he promised to ask Irina Zydek about it.
“And there’s a former employee, Norman Seiler. He has a gigantic grudge against Hanna,” the man went on. “She fired him two weeks ago, without notice. And then there’s Niemöller—he has always seemed suspicious to me. He’s got a huge crush on Hanna, but she doesn’t pay him any attention. And there are lots of people whose lives were exposed when they were talk-show guests—some of them are pretty mad at Hanna because of that.”
Pia had been taking notes. Norman Seiler certainly had a motive that would be any police officer’s dream, but unfortunately, he also had an airtight alibi. The day before yesterday, he’d flown to Berlin and had just returned this morning. All appointments he’d mentioned had been checked and confirmed. But Jan Niemöller’s alibi was considerably weaker. He claimed he’d driven home after the wrap party and gone straight to bed. But Meike Herzmann had observed him sitting in his car, waiting for Hanna. His bleary-eyed appearance also contradicted his claim that he’d been sound asleep.
“One evening, I happened to drive through Langenhain,” Vinzenz Kornbichler now said. He hesitated before he went on. “It was late, shortly before midnight, and there was a vehicle I didn’t recognize parked in front of the house. A black Hummer. I thought, Oh great, my successor has already moved in. Actually, I wanted to leave right away, but I … I couldn’t resist. So I got out of my car and went into the yard. I saw not only one guy there, but two.”
Pia cast a glance at Bodenstein.
“When was this?” she asked.
“Hmm … night before last. Wednesday night,” replied Kornbichler. “I had a funny feeling. Even though Hanna threw me out, I still love her.”
Pia dug deeper. “Why did you have a funny feeling?”
“One of the guys was huge, with a beard and bandanna … the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to run into even in broad daylight. He had so many tattoos that he looked like a Smurf. Completely blue, except for his face.”
“And what did you observe?” Bodenstein asked. “Were the men threatening your wife?”
“No. They just sat there talking; I think they’d had something to drink. Around twelve-thirty, the giant Smurf left, and a few minutes later Hanna got in the car with the other guy. I followed them.” Kornbichler gave an embarrassed smile. “Don’t think I’m a stalker, but I’ve been worried about Hanna. She never told me much about her research, but she often has full-blown psychopaths on her show.”
“Where did they go?”
“In Diedenbergen, I saw that my tank was almost empty. I had to stop for gas on the autobahn, so I lost track of her.”
“Where did you stop for gas? At the Weilbach rest stop?” Pia had the geography of the Main-Taunus region pretty well memorized.
“Yes, exactly. Around that time of night, it’s the only gas station open.”
She glanced at her colleague. Hanna Herzmann had been found thirty-six hours later in the trunk of her car, not five hundred yards from that very rest stop where the husband she’d thrown out had stopped for gas. Only a coincidence?
“Did you notice the license number of the black Hummer?” Bodenstein asked.
“I’m afraid not. It was such a small plate, like on a moped, and it was dark.”
What Vinzenz Kornbichler was telling them could definitely be true. The glasses on the coffee table in the living room of Hanna Herzmann’s house could indicate that she’d had visitors.
But the fact that Kornbichler kept driving past his ex-wife’s house showed that he still had strong feelings for her. The man was feeling insulted, injured, broke, and jealous—all of it making for a highly explosive mixture. A single spark could set him off. Had the sight of Hanna getting into a car at night with a strange man been that spark?
“That was on Wednesday,” she said. “What happened on Thursday?”
“I already told you.” Kornbichler frowned.
“No, you didn’t.” Pia gave him a friendly smile. “So? What did you do at her house on Thursday?”
“Nothing. Nothing special. I just sat in the car for a while.” His body language betrayed his nervousness: his hands fiddled with his smartphone, his gaze kept shifting, and he was jiggling one foot. At the beginning of the conversation he’d made a commanding, even relaxed impression, but his self-confidence was leaving him with each second that passed.
Pia took from her shoulder bag the clear plastic sleeve with the photos of Hanna Herzmann’s face beaten until it was unrecognizable and held it without comment in front of Kornbichler’s nose. He glanced at the picture and recoiled.
“What’s this supposed to be?” He tried to sound indignant, but he couldn’t pull it off.
“I propose that you accompany us, Mr. Kornbichler.” Bodenstein got up.
“But why? I told you that I—” Kornbichler said, agitated.
“You are under provisional arrest,” Pia said, interrupting him. Then she read Kornbichler his rights and obligations according to paragraphs 127 and 127b of the criminal code. “Since you have no permanent place of residence, you will be housed at state expense until we have checked out your alibi for Thursday night.”
* * *
It was cold. She was freezing, and her body felt as heavy as lead. Somewhere in her mind, she felt a throbbing that was a distant foreboding of pain and torment. Her mouth was dry as dust, her tongue swollen so thick that she couldn’t swallow. As if through cotton she heard a faint, steady beeping and buzzing.
Where was she? What had happened?
She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t no matter how hard she tried.
Come on, she though
t. Open your eyes, Hanna.
It took all her willpower to open her left eye just a sliver, but what she saw was blurry and out of focus. A gloomy twilight, blinds pulled down in front of the windows, bare white walls.
What kind of room was this?
Footsteps approached. Rubber soles squeaked.
“Ms. Herzmann?” A woman’s voice. “Can you hear me?”
Hanna heard an unarticulated sound that changed to a dull groan, and it took a few seconds to realize that she had made this sound herself.
Where am I? she wanted to ask, but her lips and tongue were numb and refused to obey her.
A hint of concern crept through the thick fog surrounding her. Something was wrong. This was no dream; this was reality.
“I’m Dr. Fuhrmann,” said the woman’s voice. “You’re in the intensive care unit of Höchst Hospital.”
Intensive care. Hospital. At least that explained the irritating beeping and buzzing. But why was she in the hospital?
No matter how much Hanna racked her brains, she had no memory of why she was in this condition. Just emptiness. A black hole. Total blackout. The last thing she could remember was the argument with Jan after the party. He’d suddenly appeared in front of her in the parking lot, as if he’d sprouted right out of the ground. He’d given her a real fright. He’d been extremely angry, grabbing her arm so hard that it hurt. She probably had a bruise on her upper arm today. But what was that all about?
Scraps of memory flitted through her head like bats, gathering into fleeting, fragmentary images, and then tearing apart. Meike. Vinzenz. Blue eyes. Heat. Thunder and lightning. Sweat. Why had Jan been so mad? And again those bright blue eyes with the laugh lines. But no face, no name, no memory. Rain. Puddles. Blackness. Nothing. Damn.
“Are you in pain?”
Pain? No. A dull ache and pounding that she couldn’t locate—unpleasant but not unbearable. And her head was throbbing. Maybe she’d had an accident, crashed her car. What kind of car did she drive anyway? Strangely enough, the fact that she couldn’t remember her car scared her more than anything else about her condition.
“You’re getting a strong sedative that will make you sleepy.…”