“No more worries, young man. KinderHaus is a lovely place with other children your age, and a nice warm bed of your own. Frau Heffler is expecting you. She’s very nice and bakes the best cookies...” Mahler had a good heart. Her mothering instincts were strong.
She buckled the boy into his seat and waved at Elsa and Hugo as she drove away. Just another day in the Schupo.
Chapter Four
JOSEPH HEINZ WAS SOUND asleep when his mobile rang. He cursed, kicking his covers from his feet as he reached over for the offending object on his nightstand. “Zu sprechen?” His voice conveyed his irritation.
“Heinz, it’s Faust.” Herman Faust worked in the Landeskriminalamt (LKA) and had been both a friend and colleague of Heinz’s for the past twenty years. “I’m sorry to wake you, but a case has come up –actually three cases, with the most recent one tonight.”
Joseph sat up on the edge of his bed rubbing his face. “What has this got to do with me, Herman?” Heinz’s tone became less grouchy, and more professional.
“There are disturbing similarities in them, and it’s your area of expertise. Missing girls. Two still unaccounted for, and the third one found dead tonight.” Faust rattled off the information.
“Are they in my borough?” Anger laced Joseph’s question as the memory of an old cold case reared its ugly head.
“No, not yours, but no one else has your personal level of knowledge on these types of cases, either. You’re the go-to detective in Berlin for missing and abducted females, Heinz. Like it or not.” Faust waited. He knew it would not be easy to convince his friend to come out in the middle of the night to view a dead girl.
Joseph placed a hand over his eyes and leaned onto his knees. He’d done his best to avoid missing and murdered female cases in the past couple of years, sticking instead with stolen property and fraud. No one went missing or got hurt in those situations and his peace of mind was not disturbed. He sighed. He knew he couldn’t avoid it forever. “What do you need?”
Faust heard the resignation in his friend’s voice, and he was sorry for being the cause of it. “I need you to come down to the coroner’s office. Time is definitely not on our side, and the sooner we can gather some helpful information that will lead us to the abductor, the better. You know how it works, Joseph. We must act quickly. I’ll tell you what we have so far when you get here, and then let’s see what the medic can pull from the body.”
“Scheisse,” he grimaced. “I’ll be there shortly.” Heinz hung up and stood looking around his bedroom. It was dark save for the moonlight coming through a crack in the curtains. It was nights like this that he felt most alone; awakened when the world was sleeping and called out to investigate a crime. People generally felt safe locked away in their homes, tucked into bed, but the minute one must leave that warmth and security, and go out into the night, they immediately felt exposed to whatever lay hidden in the shadows beyond their front doors. Joseph knew all about those shadows. They took innocent people, mostly women and children, and never gave them back. If, by chance they did release them, the shadows gave them back broken or dead. He hated the damn shadows. Now he was being called out again. It had been a long time, and he dreaded stepping beyond his threshold.
He thought of calling Mahler, but unless he knew for sure he needed her, he decided she was safer undisturbed and tucked away in her bed. The thought of her still sleeping peacefully made him smile. At least he could protect one person. He’d make sure to share all the information in the morning. Maybe he would bring coffee and donuts. He knew her usual calm demeanor and extraordinary listening skills would help him sort through all the evidence. When the whole world was falling apart, Birgitta remained unfazed. It was what he liked most about her. Their partnership in the Kripo had been a godsend for him. She’d been assigned when he was falling apart nearly five years ago. At first, he gave her a hard time, not wanting to be around anyone, intent on self-destruction. But she would not budge. He would push, and she would stand stalwart. He would huff and puff, and Mahler would look the other way and simply bend in the breeze like a willow branch, never breaking. Eventually, the storm raging inside of him died down. Between his partner’s patience and sticking to cases that didn’t involve murder or missing children, he’d found a place of peace. The tide turned when he successfully helped rescue Elsa’s brother. That kind of ending, a happy one, was rare, and it seemed a good idea to quit while he was ahead. His superior understood, although he hated losing one of his best missing persons detectives. He’d worked lighter cases, kept close to Elsa and Anno, and spent his days in blissful tedium. He was okay with that, but now, Faust was pulling him back in. He promised himself it would only be as a consultant. As he went out the front door, Heinz made a mental note to pick up a couple of crullers. They were Mahler’s favorites.
THE MORGUE WAS QUIET except for the annoying hum of fluorescent lights overhead. The dingy green walls and chipped white tile flooring smelled of antiseptic and formaldehyde. Faust greeted Heinz at the coroner’s desk and introduced him to Doctor Menghala—a short man with brown hair that receded at the temples leaving a stark point at the center of his forehead. His wire-rimmed glasses were so thick, Joseph wondered how he saw the bodies he was cutting into. Good thing they’re already dead, he thought. He shook the man’s hand noting a strength his stature belied.
Heinz looked at his friend. Faust stood by casually sipping a cup of coffee from a vending machine. His faded blond hair was liberally mixed with gray, and his jowls had begun to sag a bit. He looked rumpled in his tweed jacket and dark slacks, but his posture was all cop. “The doc already performed the autopsy a couple of hours ago. Tell him what you’ve got so far.” He turned the floor over to Menghala.
“Well,” he said as he led them all over to the stainless-steel table, “there are abrasions around both wrists and both ankles. She’d been tied with rope. I retrieved a couple of fibers on her skin for analysis, but that will take a few more hours. The cause of death was asphyxiation, but the murderer would have you think she drowned.” The doctor slipped on a pair of rubber gloves and lifted the sheet off the body revealing an open torso with several organs removed including the lungs, which lay in a large metal pan.
Heinz’s lip curled in distaste. He never understood how anyone could be so coldly clinical about a human body. To him, this was someone’s daughter. To the coroner, it was a specimen. To Faust, it was a mystery that needed solving quickly.
“Why do you say that?” Heinz looked over at the doctor who was lifting the lungs displaying them.
“There was no water in them despite the fact that the body was found submerged in the river. Had she died from drowning her lungs would be filled with river water. They were not.”
“Then how was the asphyxiation accomplished?” Faust watched as Heinz began asking the questions he hoped would lead to a suspect.
“Her airway was cut off. Since there are no strangulation marks on her neck, and no river water in her lungs, the point of cut off would have to be the nose and mouth. I’ve found no fibers on her face indicating the use of a cloth or pillow, so I surmise he simply used his hand to cover the airways.”
“He?” Heinz interjected. “What makes you sure the suspect is a he?”
The doctor continued. “The size of the hand that could cover her airways and still leave a free hand to hold her down would have to be male. Also, she was raped.”
Heinz blinked. This kind of information was why he hated these cases so much. Steeling himself, he waited for the doctor to finish.
“Semen was collected from the vagina. There was also vaginal tearing. The girl was a virgin. Shocking, I know. But we’ve since identified her from her fingerprints, and she matches up with the third missing young lady, Anna Popovich, age seventeen. Tomorrow would have been her eighteenth birthday.”
Faust spoke. “Her parents are Russian immigrants. They’ve been here in Germany for the last four years. Middle class. Her father works for a solar panel co
mpany on the line. Her mother teaches Sunday school at a local Orthodox church. No ties to Russian mafia. We already checked. The thing is, all three missing females are Russian. They also all pretty much look alike. All are blonde and blue-eyed. All disappeared in the last three weeks, but only this one has shown up dead. No other bodies reported found. Now, I know that doesn’t mean they’re alive. The suspect could have buried them somewhere and we’ve yet to find them, but it could also mean he still has them. If he does, we have a chance. It’s a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got.”
Joseph looked at the girl’s face. She would have been just getting out of Gymnasium and going on to some career or other. Her whole life was ahead of her. “A virgin, you said?”
“Yes. Her hymen was ripped, but not completely. Part of it was still intact, as if the assailant was either clumsy or maybe interrupted. And it could only have been one man, because more than one would have ripped it completely away, and I might not have had enough evidence to verify her chaste status.”
“You said you collected semen, too. You’ll be able to tell for sure if there was more than one attacker. Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll match up to someone in the database. Still, if he was unable to complete the rape—"
Menghala jumped in. “Some of the semen, well, most of it was spilled outside of her womb. It was on her legs, and the outside of the vagina. Really, that’s why I surmised clumsy. It’s like he didn’t know what he was doing.”
“If that’s the case, he may not have meant to kill her. A girl who’s a virgin will fight an attacker for all she’s worth. Well, any woman being raped will, but he may have been trying to keep her quiet. Is there anything under her fingernails?” Heinz was working through all the possibilities in his mind. A young lady fighting off a man intent on raping her would kick, scratch, scream, and more. Her screams would prompt him to try and silence her. Putting that together with how the body was found submerged showed shame. It was as if the suspect didn’t want anyone to know what he’d done. He made the attempt to hide his crime instead of leaving her out in the open or even leaving her alive. It wasn’t just a rape.
“What are the circumstances of all three abductions? How were they taken? When? From where? I need a timeline, Herman. And doctor, you need to call me with the results of those tests as soon as you get them.”
Faust could see the old Joseph at work. This was the man who went after child abductors and murderers like a pit bull. He had no mercy. Once he got the scent, he could hunt anyone down. “I’ll give you copies of the files. All the interviews and information are there along with pictures of the missing and pertinent details. If we’ve missed anything, I’d be surprised, but that’s why we brought you in. Because it’s not adding up.”
“I’ll be sure to call you, Kommissar.” Doctor Menghala covered the body with the sheet. “And yes, there was trace evidence under the nail beds, and a couple of missing fingernails. She fought hard. It’s all being analyzed.”
With the body once again covered, Heinz’s heart rate began to calm. All he could think about was Marlessa Schubert. She was fifteen, and his daughter’s best friend. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed. She and Ingrid did everything together, except on Marlessa’s last day. The girl left school with an unknown boy. No one seemed to know who he was since he didn’t attend school with them. The three teens who’d seen her take off with him said he was older, probably about nineteen. They walked away from the school together and were never seen again. The Schuberts were family friends, and knowing Joseph was a detective, they turned to him for help. He nearly killed himself trying to chase down leads, but they led nowhere. Marlessa disappeared into thin air. They never found her or the mystery boy with whom she left campus. One lead still haunted him. A woman who worked on the docks in Hamburg swore she saw a young girl fitting Marlessa’s description being carried onto a ship by a sailor. But all inquiries about the ship itself turned up zip. There was no log for a ship of the description given by the witness on the harbor master’s docket.
Failing to bring their daughter home, Marie Schubert raged at him, blaming him. As she pointed out, Heinz still had his daughter. Anton Schubert knew it wasn’t Joseph’s fault, knew he’d done everything he could, but he couldn’t face him anymore. His wife’s bitterness was too much to endure, so they moved back to Potsdam. Joseph was always secretly grateful that just that one time, Ingrid did not go with her friend. Still, his inability to solve the case, and blame being laid at his door by the parents, and even his own daughter who was so distraught she tried once to commit suicide, drove Joseph to drink. Those were the darkest of days. He stayed at work until all hours trying to find any lead. He wouldn’t give up the case even though he’d been taken off it in the end. His neglect of his wife and his daughter eventually ended in divorce. Eva couldn’t take it anymore. She’d tried to help him, but he pushed her away, and his drunken rages became too much. She had a daughter to think of, and so she left him and concentrated on Ingrid.
Both were doing very well today. Eva remarried just last year, and Ingrid was finishing up a master’s degree in chemistry. Joseph, himself, was finally in a good place, and now old wounds were reopened with one phone call in the middle of the night. He’d go over the files with a fine-tooth comb first thing in the morning. He nodded to the doctor and turned to Faust who was already on his mobile ordering his staff to make copies for Kommissar Heinz.
“They’ll be delivered to your house first thing in the morning.” Faust looked at his watch. “Oh, well, in three hours.” He shrugged.
Heinz glared at his friend. “I’ll do all I can, Herman, but I won’t let it swallow me up like before. I’m not willing to lose myself again. It cost too much the last time.”
Faust gave a small nod. He appreciated his friend for willingly stepping into the dark void that all detectives dread, abduction and murder cases. “It’s all I can ask, Joseph. If I don’t make every effort, then why am I here?”
They left the morgue, both feeling like a massive weight was lifted from their shoulders the minute they were outside and breathing in the fresh, rain-soaked air.
“See you soon.” Faust headed down the steps and to his car. Heinz watched him drive off and wondered if he should even bother trying to get back to sleep this night. He headed home knowing that in three hours, a uniformed officer would arrive at his door with a stack of paperwork that would suck out his soul.
Chapter Five
“SHE’S INSIDE,” JAN Mahler told Detective Heinz as he passed him coming out the front door of the flat where he lived with his mother, Heinz’s partner, Detective Birgitta Mahler.”
The Kommissar tossed a bag to Jan who’d grown tall over his last year in high school. “Enjoy.” Mahler’s son, like Elsa’s brother, Anno, was attending his first year of college. He was studying medicine and hoped to become a specialist in orthopedics. He wanted to treat athletes, a lofty goal. Jan looked inside the bag and smiled.
“You always remember!” He stuffed an apple streusel into his mouth, and then waved as he ran down the street to catch the tube to school.
Heinz juggled his stack of files with the remaining paper bag containing two éclairs and two crullers, all while holding two hot cups of coffee in one of those flimsy cardboard drink carriers. He pushed open the door which Jan hadn’t closed completely and walked inside Mahler’s home. He set his load down on the kitchen table, and pulled one of the coffees out, black with two sugars, and carried it back toward her room. Finding it to be the only one of the two bedrooms with the door closed, he approached. Figuring she might still be asleep at this very early hour, he thought it only kind to have coffee in hand when waking her.
He reached out and opened her bedroom door. He was greeted not by Mahler still tucked away in bed but walking out of her bathroom wet...and naked.
“Joseph!” She screamed his name and ran back into the bathroom.
Shocked and unsure what to say, Heinz immediately backed out of her room spewing apologies. “So
rry! So sorry, Mahler. I’ll just, uh, I’ll be out here.” He beat a hasty retreat.
Out in the living room, Heinz set her coffee down and placed his hands on the table. Naked! He felt embarrassed for them both. Never had he seen Mahler in anything less than professional dress. This morning would have been the first time he’d ever even seen her in pajamas, but their relationship lately had relaxed so much that he hadn’t really thought about the impropriety of waking her. It just felt natural. Now he felt like an ass. He’d blundered. But a wisp of a memory of her wet and naked flashed through his mind. Birgitta...Heat suffused his cheeks, and he had to take several deep breaths. He didn’t understand his reaction, the way his mind kept replaying the scene, but part of him really wanted to run out of the house.
“What the hell, Heinz?” Mahler, dressed in her usual pantsuit, stood in the living room tucking a pin into her now twisted up hair.
“I’m so sorry, Mahler. I wasn’t thinking. I have no excuse.” Joseph could barely look her in the eye.
Birgitta noted the red flush on his cheeks. His usually direct stare bounced everywhere but at her as if she still stood there naked. His hands didn’t seem to know if they should be on his hips, at his sides, or in his jacket pockets. He shifted from foot to foot. He looked for all the world like a boy caught with his first pornographic magazine.
He’s nervous! The thought hit her and although she was still mad that he’d walked into her bedroom, part of her was very pleased he did. She decided on a calm approach.
“Is that coffee for me?” She walked to the table and picked it up. Black with two sugars, just as she liked it.
“Yes, of course.” He took two steps and picked up the bag containing the donuts. “I’ve brought you some crullers, too.” He pulled them out, and grabbed a napkin from the bag, placing them on it and handing them over.
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