Desert Fire

by David Hagberg

  “As far as you and your people are concerned,” Roemer said, turning to him, “I was never here.”

  “I was told as much, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, does it?” Manning said.

  Don’t make waves, Roemer had been told. Just get in, see what there is to see and get the hell out. Orders from on high. He’d taken them all his life. Ordnung. It meant everything, actually, if there was to be a stable society. But order with compassion.

  Gretchen did not understand why it had to be him. “Because we make our own choices,” he had told her. “Because all of us are either a part of the solution or a part of the problem.” His father’s philosophy he had taken to heart a long time ago. But Gretchen, like his ex-wife, had tried to narrow that sense of a wider responsibility in him. They had both mistaken his empathy for people for a weakness, for a pliancy. Both had tried to mold him into something they imagined he could or should be; neither would accept him for what he actually was. Gretchen had used the same argument tonight that his wife might have used in an effort to persuade him to pass on the assignment.

  “Let someone else take it,” she cried. “Why you? Why always you?”

  He had made his way in without recognition by the newshawks gathered outside. Manning had briefed him. An anonymous telephone tip had been received at 22:53 hours, and a radio unit had been immediately dispatched. The body was discovered and Manning was called. After a very brief look, he called the Kriminalpolizei van with its complement of detail people, as well as the coroner.

  Then the lightning strike had come, according to Manning: Hold everything until the BKA arrives. Don’t touch a fucking thing until the Bundes people get a peek. And Manning had begun to wonder just what sort of a case he had on his hands.

  “I’d like to look inside now,” Roemer said.

  “Can you tell me what you’re looking for?” Manning asked hopefully. “Perhaps we can help.”

  “I just want to look.”

  The uniformed Landpolizei were all downstairs. Inside were only the plainclothes specialists: the coroner, a police photographer, two fingerprint men, a forensics laboratory expert with bottle-thick glasses perched on the end of his nose, four detail men who had been taking the place apart until the call had come to hold up, and Manning’s young sergeant, who seemed bored. The living room was filled with cigarette smoke. Conversations died when they saw Roemer.

  “Look lively now,” Manning said. “We are going to do a quick run-through for the nice man, and then he’ll get the hell out of here and let us do our jobs.”

  There were a few appreciative chuckles.

  “No forced entry, we’re sure of that much,” Manning said. “She either left the latch open, or she let her murderer in. Recognized him, perhaps.”

  “What’s your preference?” Roemer asked softly.

  “She let him in, I’d say. Lady downstairs in Two-B seems to think that our girl always kept her door locked. Lady said our Fräulein was secretive from the beginning, though she had her men friends.”

  “Any sense of the number?”

  “Two in particular. One medium height, on the husky side, dark, sad-looking, she said. And the other tall, thin, like he’d been marooned on a desert island and just returned to civilization.”

  “How long had this been going on?”

  “Since fall for the thin one, a bit before Christmas for the other.”

  Roemer inspected the door. There was a deadbolt and a slip chain in addition to the tumbler lock. The deadbolt looked new. She had been security-conscious.

  They hadn’t told him much on the telephone. They said they wanted him unburdened by preconceived notions other than the possibility that the murder could have a political significance, possibly even an international meaning.

  “Nice apartment, arranged for her by her employers, we’re told,” Manning continued. “She was an American. We have her passport.”

  “Nothing touched in the living room?”

  “It started in the living room. We found blood and bits of teeth on the rug. But it was finished in the kitchen. She was probably raped. Dr. Sternig says as much.” Manning lowered his voice. “Possibly after she was dead. Fucking pervert.”

  Several bloody footprints on the living room carpet had been outlined in chalk and covered with clear plastic like those on the corridor stairs.

  “If she let him in, they definitely knew each other well,” Manning said. “Invited him in for tea.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She was wearing nothing more than a bathrobe. You don’t let strangers in dressed like that. And the teakettle had been on. At least we think it was at the time of death.”

  The living room was well furnished, but there were no personal touches anywhere. No photographs. No paintings, other than a poorly done print of a Bavarian mountain scene. An ashtray on the table was filled with smoldering cigarette butts. Last month’s issue of Stern magazine lay next to it.

  “Care to see the body now?” Manning asked. “We’d like to get on with it.”

  “The ashtray. Was it clean or dirty?”

  Manning glanced at the coffee table, clearly embarrassed.

  “It was clean, sir,” Jacobs, his sergeant, volunteered.

  “Was it dusted?” Roemer asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the young man replied, puffing up a little. “We didn’t let anyone in until that was finished. Standard operating procedure in our office, sir.”

  “That’ll be enough, Sergeant,” Manning said crossly. He didn’t like the federals cross-examining his people, but he didn’t like disrespect, either.

  “The killer wasn’t already in the apartment when she arrived?”

  “Not unless he was well hidden,” Manning said. “She came home, laid her wet raincoat over the rack in the bathroom. Took off her shoes and her blouse, which she laid over the tub. Took a towel, and while she was drying herself, walked into the bedroom. She got undressed—her clothing is lying on the bedroom floor—put on a robe and went into the kitchen, where she had a drink of cognac, and put on the teakettle.”

  “Then the murderer came calling?”

  “It’s the way we see it at the moment.”

  Roemer went to the bedroom door and looked at the wet clothing on the floor. A small bed, a dressing table in one corner, and along the opposite wall a substantial-looking Schrank. The big wardrobe had been moved out from the wall. There was a lingering odor of perfume.

  Manning came up behind Roemer. “We moved the Schrank.”

  “Why?”

  “It had been moved before. We saw the marks on the carpet. But whatever may have been behind it is gone.”

  “If there was anything,” Roemer said absently. He stepped into the room. The small wastepaper basket beside the dressing table was empty. The skirt on the floor was wet; so were the bra and panties.

  “Has your office been investigating this girl?” Manning asked.

  “No.”

  Manning stood aside as Roemer came out and went next into the bathroom. A soaked raincoat hung on a drying rack, and a white blouse lay over the tub. A pair of low black pumps lay by the toilet. No bath towel on the bar.

  “The towel is in the kitchen,” Manning volunteered.

  The bathroom, like the living room and bedroom, seemed devoid of personal touches, as if this place had been used as a hotel, not a real home.

  Why had the Chief District Prosecutor asked him here?

  “I’ll see the body now,” he said.

  Manning, relieved, stepped back. “This way.”

  Roemer moved down the hallway to the kitchen. The devastated body of a young woman, possibly in her late twenties or early thirties, dark hair, large breasts, lay flat on its back, legs spread, between the refrigerator and a small dining table. There was a lot of blood around her head. Her face had been crushed. Her bathrobe was open. There were large, dark bruises around her breasts, and angry white welts and blisters covered her belly and thighs.


  “Her name was Sharazad Razmarah,” Manning said from behind. “She was thirty-two. Lived here since October. Apparently she was an engineer at the Kraftwerk Union research facility.”

  “You said she was an American?”

  “American passport. Gave her place of birth as Tehran, Iran.”

  A teakettle lay on the floor next to the body and there was a lot of water on the floor.

  “We didn’t disturb anything,” Manning said.

  Her left arm was bent back at an odd angle, apparently broken. Her right arm was outstretched, the fingers of her hand spread apart as if they too were broken.

  Along with the metallic odor of a lot of blood, there was something else that Roemer could not define. A natural odor, not a pleasant one.

  He stepped around the table to look more closely at her right hand. There seemed to be a bruise in her palm. Her left arm had been badly burned, flesh peeled away. Her jaw was broken. Most of her front teeth had been shattered.

  Roemer closed his eyes. He could not help imagining her last moments of life, how it must have been.

  “Dr. Sternig,” Manning called.

  The coroner appeared in the doorway. He wore a three-piece suit, the tie snugged up tight, a watch fob and chain in his vest. His lips were pursed, his eyes narrow.

  “I’ll have an autopsy report to your office this afternoon, providing I can have the body in the near future,” he said.

  “What can you tell me now?” Roemer asked.

  “For now I’m placing the time of death between twenty-one hundred and twenty-two hundred hours. Cause of death, massive cerebral hemorrhage.”

  “There’s more damage here. How do you see it?” There was a copper taste in Roemer’s mouth, and his stomach was knotted.

  “She was in the living room. Probably opened the door. The killer struck her in the face. I’m assuming he used his fist. It was a strong enough blow to shatter her lower mandible, breaking seven teeth and knocking her back against the couch.”

  “She didn’t cry out,” Manning said. “No one heard a thing.”

  Roemer held himself from looking at the body.

  “She was probably unconscious, or semiconscious at that point, because there are no defensive wounds other than the impression on her right palm.”

  “She may have grabbed something from her killer,” Manning said. “A button, a tie clasp, a cuff link. After she was already dead, the killer realized she had something in her hand and pried it loose, breaking three of her fingers in the process.”

  “We may be able to lift an image from her palm,” the coroner said.

  Roemer was suddenly cold. He always reacted like this. It was another of the reasons his wife, and now Gretchen, complained to him that he should get out of the Bureau.

  “I can only guess at the order beyond that point,” Dr. Sternig said. “He hit her many times, possibly even tortured her. We know that he dragged or carried her here into the kitchen, where he continued beating her. The tea water was hot. At some point he poured it over her. He kicked her too, in the back, the side, in the breasts. You can see the large hematoma. And then he stomped on her face, at least three times, crushing her forehead, causing her death.”

  “And he raped her,” Roemer said after a long hesitation.

  “Either just before or just after her death. I can’t be absolutely certain until after the autopsy. But I’m seeing what I presume to be ejaculate on her inner thighs.”

  Roemer stared at Sarah’s body.

  “He was in a hurry,” Manning said. “He killed her and it excited him. He couldn’t wait to fuck her.”

  “A boyfriend?” Roemer asked. There was a buzzing in his head.

  “Perhaps.” Manning was agitated. “If you could just tell me why you’re here, we wouldn’t be operating in the dark. Verdammt, we could catch the dirty bastard who did this.”

  “Did she have a car?”

  Manning sighed. “Apparently. She had a valid driving license, and we found a copy of the registration for a 1986 Opel. But we haven’t found the car yet. There is an outside chance that she was driven home. One of the people below thought they heard a car pull up and the victim come in alone.”

  Roemer shook his head. “I’ve seen enough for now. If you would be so kind as to send along your reports as soon as possible …”

  “Yes, sir,” Manning said, and he and the coroner stepped aside as Roemer left the way he had come: quietly and anonymously.

  9

  ROEMER HAD BEEN to the Chief District Prosecutor’s Königswinter home before, but this time there was no butler. Ernst Schaller himself opened the door, took Roemer’s coat, hung it on a hook and showed him to the study in the back, uncharacteristically apologizing right off.

  “Sorry we had to call you out so late. But then murder never is very convenient, is it?” Schaller sat him in a wingback chair by the blazing fire, and poured him a stiff cognac. “Such a terrible thing, death, especially in one so young, so vital and alive, don’t you agree?”

  Roemer nodded absently. He was weary, and the young woman’s smashed face wouldn’t leave his mind. There were three locks on her door, all of them open. The murderer had been angry, yet there had been no other signs of a struggle in the apartment.

  “Just one other thing to attend to, then we can get started,” Schaller said. “If you’ll just excuse me.”

  He left, and Roemer sat back, snifter in hand. The room was large and smelled of burning wood and pipe tobacco. There was one wall full of books, floor to ceiling, which surprised Roemer. He had never thought of the Chief Prosecutor as a learned man. Perhaps they were for show.

  Along two other walls was a large collection of photographs showing a younger Schaller with the American president Kennedy, with Reinhard Gehlen (the founder of the postwar German Secret Service), with Willy Brandt, Konrad Adenauer and other German and international leaders.

  It was past four in the morning, and though tired, Roemer was wide awake. A young woman’s murderer lurked somewhere (presumably still in the city), and the Chief District Prosecutor had something to say about it. Roemer felt as if he were watching a stage play; he desperately wanted to know the ending so that he could go home without having to endure the middle. Every case he’d ever been assigned to, he took personally. His ex-wife would say he couldn’t take on the entire world’s problems. But he couldn’t be stopped from trying, one at a time.

  The carpet seemed old and obviously expensive. It probably cost more than everything Roemer owned. But then Schaller was a political animal, while Roemer was not. Schaller had the right connections, knew the right people, traveled in the right circles, while Roemer was nothing more than a cop with a penchant for irritating people, especially ex-wives, lovers and supervisors.

  The cognac was very good, very German. Probably Asbach-Uralt. Roemer sipped it, then sat back and closed his eyes.

  Sharazad Razmarah was an Iranian-born American, according to her U.S. passport. What had brought her to Germany? The job? A friend? A lover? A lark? A murder investigation was like meeting a new person. There were the first impressions that gradually resolved themselves into real opinions as time went on, until in the very end the nasty bits finally presented themselves in a sad commentary on what one person could do to another.

  The house was very still at this hour of the morning. Roemer supposed Schaller’s wife and the house staff were all asleep, as good people should be. Yet he could hear a murmur of distant conversation. He glanced over at the massive leather-topped desk, where one of the buttons of the executive telephone was lit. Who was Schaller speaking to, and what was he saying that could not be said here?

  The murderer had been careful to pry some object out of a dead girl’s hand, and yet careless enough to step in her blood and track it through the apartment and down the stairs. Carelessness, or arrogance, Roemer wondered. And where was her car?

  Schaller appeared in the doorway. He was shorter than Roemer, but with the same huskiness to
his frame, and similar, but older, meatiness to his face; large nose, firm lips above which perched a Prussian mustache. He was dressed in gray trousers and an open white shirt, over which he wore a gaudy brocaded smoking jacket. He reeked of pipe tobacco and cognac.

  “Was it terrible, Roemer?” He leaned against his desk. “Was she terribly mangled?”

  Her jaw was broken, Roemer thought. Her face was smashed. Her breasts bruised, her body scalded. And she had been raped afterward. Schaller got to the cases after they had been investigated. He never had to root about in the gruesome mess.

  Schaller, eyes bright, stared at Roemer as if waiting for a bit of gossip. But he was frightened too, Roemer could see in the rigid set of his shoulders.

  “It’ll be just a few minutes now, and then we can get started,” Schaller said.

  “A few minutes for what, Chief Prosecutor?”

  “Someone else is coming along. Shed some light on the mystery. Give you some much-needed information to go on. You’ll need it, believe me. Delicate.”

  Roemer sat forward. “Can you tell me why she was murdered, sir?”

  Schaller looked aghast. “Good God, no! What must you be thinking?”

  “You called me out in the middle of the night. You said that this murder could have political ramifications. Yet the City Criminal Police Division knows nothing of this.”

  “I’m just the go-between, believe me, Roemer. I was advised of the poor girl’s murder and was asked if I could provide an investigator—the very best in all of Germany for the job.”

  “Lieutenant Manning has already begun …”

  “The Kriminalpolizei have their own case. This is another matter.” Schaller reddened.

  “It is the same murder.”

  The telephone rang and Schaller hopped away from the desk and picked it up before it could ring again. “Yes?”

  Roemer watched the Chief Prosecutor, who turned away.

  “He’s here now, sir,” Schaller said.

  Roemer wondered who the Chief Prosecutor called “sir” in such an obsequious manner; whoever Sharazad Razmarah was or why she had been killed, she had to be very important.