I Am Your Judge: A Novel (16 page)

Pia crossed the street behind her colleague and saw the narrow footpath with steps next to the house with the yew hedge. It led up the hill to the street above. Kröger climbed from the steps over the low chain-link fence and pushed himself through the hedge.

“Come on,” he urged her. “But stay right behind me. This time, he left footprints. We found them in the snow.”

Pia followed him and saw that the hedge wasn’t so massive as it had seemed at first glance. From here, you couldn’t really see the house farther up the slope, because a huge rhododendron blocked the view.

“Here.” Kröger pointed to a spot on the ground. “This is where he stood and waited. He cut a hole in the hedge. There are twigs scattered everywhere.

Pia stepped up next to him and had an unimpeded view of Gehrke’s house.

“Naturally, we’ll have to do a ballistics analysis of the bullet,” Kröger said, “but I’m one hundred percent sure that the shot was fired from here. Then the shooter went back the same way, up the steps, and he was gone. Maybe he had a car parked up on Nachtigallenweg or farther up in the development. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough snow, and we lost the trail. From there, he could have turned onto the B 8 and been long gone.”

They climbed the steps, and Pia looked all around.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “This is the perfect escape route.”

Her cell phone hummed in her jacket pocket and she pulled it out. The number on the display was suppressed, but she took the call anyway.

“Hähnel, Kelkheim police station.” A man’s voice, young and quivering with excitement. “A letter was just delivered here for you.”

“For us?” Pia touched Kröger’s arm and motioned for him to stay where he was.

“Yes, it’s addressed to ‘Homicide Division Hofheim.’”

“And who dropped off the letter?”

“An elderly lady with a dog,” the officer from Kelkheim told her. “Some man up at the cloister handed it to her.”

“Did you get her name and address?”

“Of course!” He sounded almost offended.

“Okay. We’ll come by right away.” Pia cut off the call.

“What’s up?” Kröger was giving her a curious look.

“That was an officer from the Kelkheim police station,” Pia replied grimly. “A woman delivered a letter addressed to us. If it’s really from the sniper, he’s getting really bold.”

*   *   *

MAXIMILIAN GEHRKE HAD TO DIE BECAUSE HIS FATHER IMPLICATED HIMSELF BY APPROVING OF SOMEONE’S DEATH AND BY BRIBERY.
Pia pinned the printout of the obituary on the wallboard and wrote the name of the victim above it, with date and time of death. Little by little, a few colleagues wandered in whom the detective on duty had called, gathering in the conference room of K-11. Pia and Bodenstein had visited the woman who had delivered the letter to the police station, but she hadn’t been much help as a witness. The man, who had given her quite a fright, had looked like a jogger. She couldn’t see much of his face because he was wearing a cap and sunglasses, with a scarf wrapped around his neck and pulled up to his nose. He hadn’t said a word.

“We know three things with some certainty,” Pia said. “Our sniper has struck for a third time, he knows the area, and he kills out of revenge.”

“But we don’t have the faintest idea what he’s taking revenge for,” Kai added.

“Although he does list quite concrete reasons in the obituaries,” Bodenstein said, thinking out loud. “Does he think he’s some kind of Robin Hood?”

“No,” said Kim just as Dr. Nicola Engel entered the room. “Then he would seek publicity, but he’s not doing that. It’s something personal.”

“Interesting,” said Engel, looking Kim over. “And who might you be, if I may ask?”

Kim and Pia stood up simultaneously.

“My name is Dr. Kim Freitag,” Pia’s sister introduced herself, extending her hand to Nicola Engel, who hesitantly shook hands. “I’m Ms. Kirchhoff’s sister, visiting for Christmas.”

“I see. It’s unusual for family members of our colleagues to be involved in homicide investigations.” The chief of Regional Criminal Investigations gave Pia a reproachful look. “Or are we going to have mother, brother, and grandparents sitting here next because they’re feeling bored at home?”

Her caustic tone of voice did not bode well, and Pia, who had thought she was bringing her chief some much-needed professional expertise, lost heart.

“I … uh … I,” she stuttered.

“Your name sounds familiar,” said Dr. Engel, ignoring Pia’s embarrassed stammering. She tilted her head and scrutinized Kim.

“I’m the acting medical director of the Ochsenzoll forensic psychiatric clinic in Hamburg. I appear as an expert witness all over Germany in behalf of the courts and the state attorneys’ offices.” Kim magically produced a business card from the inside pocket of her field jacket. “Most recently, in the case of the autobahn killer from Karlsruhe. I’m called in mostly in cases of serial killings, rapes, and sexual assault.”

“In early December, you gave a lecture at a conference in Vienna about psychobiological characteristics of violent offenders, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. At the Forensic Psychiatric Congress at the Palace of Justice.” Kim smiled. “When my sister told me a little about your current case yesterday, I remembered a similar case that I worked on in the States.”

“Don’t tell me it was the John Allen Muhammad case!” shouted Kai Ostermann without looking up from his laptop.

“That’s right,” Kim replied in astonishment. “Why?”

“Because our highly regarded colleague Neff from state headquarters has been jabbering away about it for days,” Ostermann said. “To hear him talk, you’d think he solved the case all by himself when he was with the FBI.”

“Oh, really?” Kim seemed a bit surprised. “I spent two years at Quantico, but I can’t recall a German officer being involved in the investigation.”

“No surprise,” Nicola Engel interrupted the discussion. “Let’s get back to business here, and afterwards, I’d like to speak with you, Ms. Freitag.”

“All right,” Kim said with a smile.

“Ms. Kirchhoff, please give me a rundown of the current case,” said the commissioner, sitting down on Pia’s chair.

Pia rattled off the facts they had so far as she sketched on the whiteboard the situation at the crime scene and the perp’s probable escape route.

“As for ammunition, it was again a large-caliber semi-jacketed round, and once again, the shooter used a suppressor,” she ended her report. “This time, he left behind his first clue: footprints from his shoes, and he was seen by the woman he handed the letter to. Regrettably, the witness’s description is quite vague.”

“I found the victim’s father on Wikipedia,” Ostermann said. “Friedrich Gehrke, born 1931 in Cologne. Studied medicine, married Marianne Seitz 1953, doctorate 1955, joined his father-in-law’s firm in 1958. And so on and so forth … Wife deceased, company incorporated … blah blah blah … 1982 remarried. In 1998, company sold to U.S. investor. A good number of honors and awards, including the Federal Cross of Merit First Class.”

“That ‘blah blah blah’ might interest me,” Bodenstein interrupted him. “What sort of company was it?”

“Originally a factory that produced stomach tablets,” Ostermann read from his screen. “Seitz and Sons. But since the next Seitz had no sons, it was changed to Seitz and Son-in-Law. And Gehrke was a diligent partner, expanding the small company into a pharmaceutical corporation named Santex, which specialized in generic drugs. He sold the business in 1998 for two billion dollars to an American corporation. So he is not a poor man.”

“There’s something else worth considering,” Kim put in. “The sniper shot the first two victims in the head, but Maximilian Gehrke was killed with a shot to the heart. His father told us that Maximilian had heart disease.”

Bodenstein looked up.

“Until he got a donor heart a few years ago,” he said.

“Maybe the perp knew about that and wanted to destroy the transplanted heart on purpose,” Kim surmised. “As a symbol of his omnipotence.”

For a moment, nobody said a word.

“That might be the connection between the victims.” Bodenstein jumped up and went to the whiteboard. His eyes were shining with excitement. “Our first real clue.”

He tapped on the name
MARGARETHE RUDOLF
.

“Her husband is a transplant surgeon, and our last victim received a heart transplant. It can’t be a coincidence.”

Ostermann’s fingers were clacking on the keyboard.

“Professor Dieter Paul Rudolf, born 1950 in Marburg,” he read aloud, and then whistled. “The guy is an eminent authority. He worked with Christiaan Barnard in Capetown, then at the University Hospital in Zürich and at the University Hospital in Hamburg-Eppendorf. He invented several new procedures and has a reputation as one of the best heart transplant specialists in Germany. In 1994, he became head surgeon at the Frankfurt Trauma Clinic. In 2004, he moved to a private clinic in Bad Homburg, and apparently, that’s where he still works today. He’s written a zillion books and collected a pile of awards.”

“How many hospitals in this area do heart transplants?” Bodenstein wondered out loud. “We ought to talk to Professor Rudolf. Maybe he remembers a patient named Maximilian Gehrke.”

*   *   *

The gray morning had turned into a gray day with no wind. Bodenstein had gotten the keys to an unmarked car from the motor pool. Deep in thought, he strolled across the courtyard, toward the garages. He located the car and got in behind the wheel to wait for Pia and her sister, who were still in Nicola Engel’s office.

Ever since his talk with Cosima’s mother the night before, Bodenstein was feeling a bit off balance. He was honored and flattered by Gabriela’s trust in him, but it also filled him with concern. In the Bodenstein household, there had never been a lot of money. Except for the estate with the castle between Schneidhain and Fischbach, the Bodensteins possessed hardly anything of material value. He didn’t have the faintest idea about the banking world or running a business, but it was something he was going to have to learn, even if he didn’t agree to Gabriela’s plan. After all, she had put him in her will as preliminary heir for his children, which meant the responsibility for their fortune lay on his shoulders.

Her attorneys, banking people, and foundation staff, all of whom had been working for her for years, would notice in no time that he was completely clueless, and might even try to skim off money and defraud him. And there was no way he could predict Cosima’s reaction to her mother’s plans. He’d often thought that she wasn’t that interested in money, but it was easy to act indifferent if you were as wealthy as the Rothkirchs. When her father died, Cosima had received a large sum of money from a trust fund, and with it, she financed her film projects, her trips abroad, and her whole life.

His police salary, on the other hand, was laughable. True, he never could have afforded the house in one of the better residential areas of Kelkheim, which they had built twenty years ago, or the expensive private schools for the children. It wouldn’t be easy for most men to be married to a woman who could afford anything she wanted, but it was not something that bothered Bodenstein, thanks to his strict upbringing to live modestly. Now everything was going to change. He wouldn’t have to work as a police inspector anymore. But what would he do if he gave up his profession, which for him was far more than simply a job?

At any rate, he had decided last night before driving back to Bad Homburg that he wasn’t going to mention it to anyone at first, not even to Inka. Especially not to her. She wasn’t thrilled about him phoning Cosima or meeting his ex-wife whenever he picked up Sophia. It didn’t matter how often he reassured Inka that his marriage to Cosima was over and done with. She didn’t seem to believe it. If he took Gabriela’s offer, he would be tied to the family of his ex-wife more closely than ever.

“Here we are.” Pia yanked open the passenger door and got in, startling Bodenstein out of his musings. “The phones are ringing off the hook, and Kai was cursing. Somehow the press has already gotten wind of the murder.”

“I don’t think that’s so bad.” Bodenstein started the engine. “With a little luck, somebody may turn up who saw something.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Okay, Dr. Freitag? What did the big chief say?”

“She considers me competent enough to serve in a support role,” Kim said with a smile. “Though she made it perfectly clear to me that I’m here only as a temporary guest. No salary and no responsibility for anything until the Ministry of the Interior Ministry agrees that I may be taken on as an external adviser for the case. But that’s okay with me. I have plenty of vacation time saved up and nothing better to do right now.”

“Well, then, congratulations and welcome to the team,” Bodenstein said. “Nicola Engel isn’t easy to convince.”

He liked Kim. She was just as astute as her sister and not afraid to assert herself. She also had a good sense of humor.

“She’s a pro, I’m a pro,” Kim said. “And special cases demand special measures.”

“Hear, hear!” said Bodenstein, driving out of the courtyard onto the unusually deserted street.

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Bodenstein, Pia, and Kim were facing Professor Rudolf’s daughter. She was dressed all in black, and she looked as though she hadn’t had any rest since Thursday evening. Her skin was pale and blotchy, her eyes swollen and red.

“Hello, Mrs. Albrecht.” Bodenstein extended his hand. “How are you doing? And how is your daughter?”

“She hasn’t spoken a single word. To anyone,” replied the woman. “My ex-husband and his family left this morning to visit his parents by Lake Starnberg. They took Greta along.”

“That was a good decision,” said Bodenstein. “Maybe you could use a change of scene as well?”

“No, I can’t leave my father alone right now.” Karoline Albrecht pulled her knitted cardigan tighter and crossed her arms. “Besides, I have to arrange for Mama’s funeral.”

Bodenstein had seldom seen such profound despair as he now saw in her green eyes. He was not prepared for such immense pain and grief. Normally, he managed to preserve a professional distance to the victim and his or her relatives; it was something he’d learned to do in the many years he’d spent on the job. But he felt moved by this woman, who stood before him with a straight back and stony expression, mobilizing all her reserves to be strong for others.