Snow White Must Die

by Nele Neuhaus

  “We would very much like to speak with your son,” she said. “Perhaps he can tell us something about Amelie.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” Christine Terlinden pulled up the fur collar of her vest, again stroking her immaculate blond coiffure. “Thies is not well. Yesterday he had an attack, and we had to call the doctor.”

  “What sort of attack?” Pia persisted. If Mrs. Terlinden was hoping that the police would be satisfied with vague hints, she now saw she was mistaken. Kirchhoff’s question seemed to annoy her.

  “Well, Thies is very sensitive. Even small changes in his surroundings can sometimes throw him into a tailspin.”

  It sounded like a response she had committed to memory. The lack of any empathy in her words was remarkable. Obviously Mrs. Terlinden had little interest in what had happened to the neighbor girl. She hadn’t even asked about her out of politeness. That was odd. Pia remembered the conjectures of the women in the grocery store who considered it entirely possible that Thies might have done something to the girl when he was prowling through the streets at night.

  “What does your son do all day?” Pia asked. “Does he have a job?”

  “No. Strangers expect too much of him,” said Christine Terlinden. “He takes care of our garden and those of a few neighbors. He’s a very good gardener.”

  Involuntarily Pia thought of an old mystery novel cliché: The murderer is always the gardener. Was it that simple? Did the Terlindens know more? Were they hiding their handicapped son in order to protect him?

  * * *

  The rain had finally turned to snow. A fine white layer had formed on the asphalt of the street, and Pia took great pains to bring the heavy BMW with its summer-tread tires to a gentle stop at the main entrance to the grounds of the Terlinden company.

  “You should have your tires changed,” she told her boss. “Winter tires from O to E.”

  “What?” Oliver frowned in annoyance. He was lost in thought, but clearly it had nothing to do with their work. His cell buzzed.

  “Hello, Dr. Engel,” he answered after glancing at the display.

  “October to Easter,” Pia murmured. She rolled down the window and showed the gate guard her ID. “Mr. Terlinden is expecting us.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, but the man merely nodded, hurried back into his warm hut, and raised the barrier. Pia accelerated slowly so as not to skid and steered the car across empty parking spaces near the glass façade of the main building. Right in front stood a black Mercedes S-Class. Pia stopped behind it and climbed out. Why couldn’t Oliver cut short his conversation with Engel? Her feet were blocks of ice because the short drive through Altenhain was barely enough to get the car heater going. The snow was coming down faster. How was she going to drive the BMW all the way back to Hofheim in the snow later on without ending up in a ditch? Her gaze fell on an ugly dent on the left rear fender of the black Mercedes, and she took a closer look. The damage couldn’t be very old or rust would have formed.

  She heard a car door slam behind her and turned around. Bodenstein held the front door open for her, and they entered the lobby. Behind a counter of polished walnut sat a young man; on the white wall behind him was only the name TERLINDEN in gold letters. Simple yet imposing. Pia told him their business, and after a brief phone call he accompanied them to an elevator in the rear of the lobby. They rode in silence to the fifth floor, where a stylish middle-aged woman awaited them. She was apparently on her way out the door since she was wearing a coat and scarf, with her bag over her shoulder, but she dutifully escorted them to her boss’s office.

  After everything Pia had heard about Claudius Terlinden, she’d expected a jovial patriarch and was at first a bit disappointed when she saw the rather average-looking man in suit and tie sitting behind a completely overloaded desk. He got up when they entered, buttoned his jacket, and came forward to greet them.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Terlinden.” Bodenstein had woken up from his daze. “Please excuse us for bothering you so late in the day, but we’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

  “Good afternoon,” said Claudius Terlinden with a smile. “My secretary gave me your message. I was planning to call you early tomorrow morning.”

  He was somewhere in his mid- to late fifties, and his thick dark hair was graying at the temples. Seen close up he looked anything but average, Pia ascertained. Claudius Terlinden was not a handsome man: his nose was too big, his chin too angular, his lips a bit too full for a man, and yet he radiated a presence that fascinated her.

  “Good Lord, your hands are freezing!” he said with concern when he offered his warm dry hand, and put his other hand on hers briefly. Pia gave a start; it felt like he’d given her an electric shock. A fleeting expression of astonishment flitted across Terlinden’s face.

  “Shall I get you some coffee or hot chocolate so you can thaw out a bit?”

  “No, no, we’re fine,” said Pia, disconcerted by the intensity of his gaze, which had made her blush. They looked at each other a bit longer than necessary. What had just happened here? Was it a simple case of static electricity explainable by physics or something altogether different?

  Before she or Bodenstein could ask their first question, Terlinden asked about Amelie.

  “I’m extremely worried,” he said gravely. “Amelie is the daughter of my legal advisor. I know her well.”

  Pia dimly recalled that her plan had been to go after him hard and insinuate that he was hot for the girl. But this plan had suddenly been quashed.

  “Unfortunately we have no new information,” said Bodenstein. Then he got straight to the point. “We’ve been told that you visited Tobias Sartorius several times in prison. What was your reason for doing so? And why did you pay off his parents’ debts?”

  Pia shoved her hands in her vest pockets and tried to remember what she’d been intending to ask Terlinden so urgently. But her mind was suddenly as blank as a freshly formatted computer hard drive.

  “Everyone in the village treated Hartmut and Rita like lepers after that terrible tragedy,” Claudius Terlinden replied. “I don’t believe in blaming a whole family for the crimes of one member. Whatever their son may have done, there was nothing they could have done to prevent it.”

  “But Tobias suspected you of having had something to do with the disappearance of both girls. That claim must have caused you a lot of trouble.”

  Terlinden nodded. He stuck his hands in his pants pockets and tilted his head. It didn’t seem to adversely affect his self-confidence that Bodenstein was a head taller than he was, forcing him to look up at the detective.

  “I didn’t hold that against Tobias. He was under tremendous pressure and simply wanted to defend himself by all available means. And it was true, as a matter of fact, that Laura had twice gotten me into extremely compromising situations. As the daughter of our housekeeper she was in the house often, and she imagined that she was in love with me.”

  “What kind of situations?” Bodenstein asked.

  “One time she climbed into my bed while I was in the bath,” replied Terlinden in an unemotional voice. “The second time she undressed in front of me in the living room. My wife was away, and Laura knew it. She told me straight out that she wanted to sleep with me.”

  For some incomprehensible reason his words annoyed Pia. She avoided looking at him and instead looked at the furnishings in his office. The huge desk of massive wood with imposing carvings on the sides rested on four gigantic lion’s paws. Presumably it was very old and valuable, but Pia had seldom seen anything so ugly. Next to the desk stood an antique globe, and on the walls hung dark expressionistic paintings in simple dark frames, similar to those she had spied over Mrs. Terlinden’s shoulder in their home.

  “So what happened?” Bodenstein inquired.

  “When I declined, she broke into tears and ran off. Just at that moment my son came in.”

  Pia cleared her throat. She had herself under control again.

  “Y
ou often gave Amelie Fröhlich a ride in your car,” she said. “She mentions it in her diary. She had the impression that you were deliberately waiting for her.”

  “I didn’t wait for her,” Claudius Terlinden said with a smile, “but I did give her a ride a few times if I happened to see her on the road to the bus stop or walking up the hill from the village.”

  His voice was calm and composed and gave no indication that he had a guilty conscience.

  “You arranged the waitress job for her at the Black Horse. Why?”

  “Amelie wanted to earn some money, and the proprietor of the Black Horse was looking for a waitress.” He shrugged. “I know everybody here in the village, and if I can help I do it gladly.”

  Pia scrutinized the man. His searching gaze met hers, and she stood firm. She asked questions and he answered. At the same time something completely different was going on between them, but what was it? What was this strange magnestism that this man exerted over her? Was it his brown eyes? His pleasant, sonorous voice? The aura of calm self-confidence that surrounded him? No wonder he had impressed a young girl like Amelie, if he was able to cast his spell on a grown woman.

  “When was the last time you saw Amelie?” Bodenstein asked.

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Then do you know where you were on Saturday night? We are particularly interested in the hours between ten p.m. and two a.m.”

  Claudius Terlinden took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms. Across the back of his left hand was a nasty scratch that looked fresh.

  “That evening I went to dinner with my wife in Frankfurt,” he said, after thinking a moment. “Because Christine had a bad headache, I dropped her off at the house first, then I drove over here and put her jewelry in the safe.”

  “When did you get back from Frankfurt?”

  “About ten thirty.”

  “So you drove past the Black Horse twice,” Pia noted.

  “Yes.” Terlinden looked at her with the concentration of a contestant on a quiz show when the host asks the decisive final question; he had answered Bodenstein’s questions almost nonchalantly. This attention was starting to irritate Pia, and now Oliver also seemed aware of it.

  “And you didn’t notice anything unusual?” he asked. “Did you see anyone on the street? Someone out for a late-night walk, perhaps?”

  “No, I didn’t notice anything,” Claudius Terlinden answered. “But I drive by there several times a day and don’t pay much attention to my surroundings.”

  “Where did you get the scratch on your hand?” asked Pia.

  Terlinden’s face darkened. He was no longer smiling. “I had an argument with my son.”

  Thies—of course! Pia had almost forgotten what had led her here in the first place. Even Oliver seemed not to have thought about it again, but he smoothly adapted to the change in topic.

  “Right,” he said. “Your wife just told us that your son Thies suffered some sort of attack last night.”

  Claudius Terlinden hesitated briefly, then nodded.

  “What sort of attack was it? Is he an epileptic?”

  “No. Thies is autistic. He lives in his own world and feels threatened by any change in his normal surroundings. He reacts with autoaggressive behavior.” Terlinden sighed. “I’m afraid that Amelie’s disappearance was the catalyst for his attack.”

  “In the village there’s a rumor that Thies might have had something to do with her disappearance,” said Pia.

  “That’s nonsense,” Terlinden contradicted her without any rancor. He sounded almost indifferent, as though this sort of talk was all too familiar to him. “Thies likes the girl a lot. But some people in the village think he belongs in an institution. Naturally they won’t say that to my face, but I know it.”

  “We’d really like to talk to him.”

  “At the moment I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Terlinden shook his head regretfully. “We had to take him to the psychiatric ward.”

  “What will happen to him there?” Pia instantly conjured up ghastly images in her head of people in chains being maltreated with electroshock.

  “They’ll try to calm him down.”

  “How long will it take before we can talk to him?”

  Claudius Terlinden shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t had such a violent attack in years. I’m afraid that this event may have really set him back in his development. That would be a disaster. For us and for him.”

  He promised to inform Kirchhoff and Bodenstein as soon as the doctors gave the green light so they could have a talk with Thies. As Terlinden accompanied them to the elevator and held out his hand in parting, he smiled again.

  “Very pleased to meet you,” he said. This time his touch didn’t give Pia an electric shock, yet she felt strangely dazed as the elevator door finally closed behind them. On the ride down she tried to overcome her confusion.

  “Well, he really seemed to go for you,” Oliver noted. “And you for him too.” There was gentle mockery in his voice.

  “Very funny,” Pia retorted, zipping up her jacket to her chin. “I was just trying to scope him out.”

  “And? What was the outcome?”

  “I think he was sincere.”

  “Really? I think just the opposite.”

  “Why? He answered all our questions without hesitating, even the unpleasant ones. For example, he didn’t have to tell us that Laura had twice put him in an embarrassing position.”

  “That’s exactly what I think is his trick,” Oliver countered. “Isn’t it a peculiar coincidence that Terlinden’s son was removed from the line of fire at the very moment the girl disappeared?”

  The elevator stopped at the ground floor and the doors opened.

  “We haven’t made any progress at all,” said Pia, feeling suddenly discouraged. “Nobody wants to admit they saw Amelie.”

  “Or maybe it’s just that no one wants to tell us,” said Oliver. They crossed the lobby, nodded to the young man behind the reception counter, and stepped outside into the icy blast. Pia pressed the remote on her car key and the doors of the BMW unlocked.

  “We have to talk to Mrs. Terlinden one more time.” Oliver stopped by the passenger door and looked at Pia over the roof.

  “So you suspect Thies and his father.”

  “Possibly. Maybe Thies did something to the girl and his father wants to cover it up, so he puts his son in the psych ward.”

  They got in, and Pia started the engine and drove out from under the protective roof. Snow covered the windshield at once, and thanks to fine sensors the wipers started moving.

  “I want to know which doctor treated Thies,” Bodenstein said pensively. “And whether the Terlindens really did go out to eat in Frankfurt on Saturday night.”

  Pia just nodded. The encounter with Claudius Terlinden had left her with an ambiguous feeling. Normally she didn’t let herself be blinded so quickly by anyone, but the man had made a deep impression on her, and she wanted to figure out why.

  * * *

  Only the guard station was still manned when Pia entered police headquarters at nine thirty. By the time they’d reached Kelkheim the snow had turned to rain again, and despite his head wound Bodenstein had insisted on driving home by himself. Pia would have also preferred to call it a day. Christoph was no doubt already waiting for her, but she couldn’t get the meeting with Claudius Terlinden out of her mind. Besides, Christoph understood that she had to work late occasionally.

  She walked through the empty corridors and stairwells to her office, switched on the light, and sat down at her desk. Christine Terlinden had given them the name of the doctor who’d been treating Thies for years. It was no surprise that it was Dr. Daniela Lauterbach; she was a longtime neighbor of the Terlindens and could be on the spot quickly in a crisis situation.

  Pia typed in her password. Ever since she left Claudius Terlinden’s office she’d been going over and over the conversation in her mind, trying to recall every word, every se
ntence, all the subtle signals. Why was Oliver so convinced that Terlinden was mixed up in Amelie’s disappearance, while she wasn’t at all? Had the attraction that he’d exerted on her clouded her objectivity?

  She entered Terlinden’s name in a search engine and got thousands of hits. In the next half hour she learned a good deal about his company and his family, as well as about Claudius Terlinden’s manifold social and philanthropic commitments. He was actively involved with dozens of foundations and supervisory boards and various associations and organizations. He had also funded scholarships for gifted young people from disadvantaged families. Terlinden did a lot for young people. Why? Officially he stated that as a person who had been particularly favored by fate he wanted to give something back to society. Definitely a noble sentiment, and one could find fault with that. But could there be something else behind it?

  He claimed he had rejected Laura Wagner twice, when she had made explicit advances. Was that true? Pia clicked on the photos the search engine had found of him and studied the man who had aroused such strong feelings in her. Did his wife know that her husband was into young girls, and that’s why he dressed so youthfully? Had he done something to Amelie because she resisted his advances? Pia chewed on her lower lip. She simply didn’t want to believe it. Finally she logged off the Internet and entered his name in POLAS, the police computer search system. Nothing. He had no criminal record, had never been in trouble with the law. Suddenly her eyes fell on a link inserted at the lower right corner. She straightened up. On Sunday, November 16, 2008, at 1:15 A.M. someone had reported Claudius Terlinden to the police. Pia pulled up the file on her screen. Her heart began to pound as she read it.

  “Well, what do you know,” she murmured.

  Wednesday, November 19, 2008