I Am Your Judge: A Novel (41 page)

In the meantime, Ostermann was busy researching Jens-Uwe Hartig.

Inquiries with the army and the police had produced a few new names, none of which had any connection to Kirsten Stadler—except for Mark Thomsen.

Nothing had been found in Fritz Gehrke’s house that was of any interest. The old man had cleaned things out thoroughly before his suicide. He left no suicide note, but did refer to his will, which he had changed two days after his son’s death to make the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation his sole heir.

“It’s an irony of fate that he, as a doctor of medicine and director of a pharmaceutical firm, was unable to help his own son,” remarked Neff, who had casually taken a seat next to Kim at the desk. “So his millions were of no use to him.”

“But he did manage to help him,” Kim contradicted Neff. “He succeeded in getting a new heart for his son.”

Pia looked at her sister. A fleeting thought ran through her head.

“Where did Gehrke study medicine?” she asked.

“In Cologne,” replied Neff.

“Tell me, Kai, have you already checked all the numbers from Gehrke’s phone?”

“Yes. Fortunately, he didn’t like to use a cell phone. He preferred the landline, which made checking them easier.” Kai pulled out the list and shoved it over to Pia.

“The last call before his death was, in fact, to Professor Dieter Rudolf,” she said. “And before that, he called a Dr. Hans Furtwängler in Cologne. Who’s that?”

Kai typed the name into his computer. While he searched, Pia went on.

“The call this morning with the Frankfurt area code was placed from the landline of a Peter Riegelhoff.”

“That name sounds familiar,” said Bodenstein.

“An attorney,” said Ostermann. “I already checked it.”

“Yes, that’s it,” said Bodenstein. “The guy from the
Taunus Echo,
who buttonholed me after the press conference at the Stadthalle, mentioned him. Riegelhoff was the attorney for the UCF who worked out the deal with the Stadler family. What does he have to do with Fritz Gehrke?”

“That’s what we have to find out,” said Pia, leaning over the printout of the phone calls. “Gehrke spoke to Dr. Hans Furtwängler for fourteen minutes, then he dialed the landline of a Dr. Simon Burmeister in Bad Homburg, and that call lasted only twelve seconds.”

“Answering machine,” Kai guessed. “Okay, I found Furtwängler. Born 1934, professor emeritus, previously internist and oncologist, specialty hematology.”

“And Dr. Simon Burmeister,” announced Neff, who had been Googling at the same time, “is the head of transplant surgery at UCF.”

What had Fritz Gehrke wanted from those four men? What did he have to do with them? He was on a first-name basis with the lawyer, so they must have had some sort of trust relationship, because a man like Gehrke would not switch to a first name basis with younger men very quickly.

“Are there any similarities?” Pia asked. “Were they perhaps all in Rotary or Lions or some other organization?”

“Simon Burmeister was also at UCF as early as 2002,” said Kim, who was looking at the UCF Web site. “Burmeister is probably Professor Rudolf’s successor. According to his CV, he’s been at UCF since 1999.”

“So he could be a future target of the sniper.” Bodenstein grabbed his phone. “Please give me his number, Pia.”

Pia read it off to him, but Bodenstein only got Burmeister’s voice mail. He left an urgent message for him to call back, and then dialed the number of the attorney, Riegelhoff. He was able to reach only his wife, who didn’t seem miffed at the late call on a Saturday night. Her husband was at the office, she said, and gave Bodenstein both his landline and cell numbers. Riegelhoff didn’t answer, so Bodenstein left a message on the office answering machine and in the mailbox of his cell.

It was just after ten in the evening when Dr. Nicola Engel entered the conference room and announced that the judge responsible for authorizing the wiretap on the Winklers had approved the warrant, as well as search warrants for the residences of Erik Stadler and Jens-Uwe Hartig.

“Very good.” Bodenstein was satisfied. He stood up and looked around at the team. “Stadler is no rush, but Hartig will be getting a visit from us at five o’clock tomorrow morning. First at his residence, then in his shop. That’s all for today. It was a strenuous day for all of us, and tomorrow we’ll be at it early.”

They turned off their computers and closed their laptops. Pia stretched and yawned. She noticed Kim looking at the commissioner, and she also saw Neff’s gaze following Kim’s. Their colleague from state police headquarters seemed to be trying to cozy up to her sister, even bringing her coffee and treats like chocolate croissants. The more Kim gave him the cold shoulder, the greater were his efforts to win her favor. Neff may have thought he was unobserved, but she could read his face like a book. And what Pia read there filled her with disquiet. Neff was a conceited asshole, and she distrusted the change in him. What was he up to?

*   *   *

Karoline Albrecht massaged the back of her neck, which was stiff from sitting too long at the computer. She was searching for information on Dr. Hans Furtwängler, whom she had visited in Cologne today, but she couldn’t find anything conspicuous. Furtwängler seemed not to have accomplished anything especially remarkable or reprehensible in the forty years he was active as a physician. He had been head of oncology and hematology at a large hospital in Cologne; later, when he reached retirement age, he went into private practice. He had introduced a few new therapeutic methods that were standard nowadays for the treatment of leukemia. Besides the Federal Cross of Merit, he had received numerous other honors; he was a member of various physicians’ associations, the Lions Club, and a couple of professional groups. No scandals, no legal proceedings. Nothing. Then she had repeated the procedure with Dr. Arthur Janning, once her father’s best friend, but the search yielded nothing more of interest. Janning, head of Intensive Care Medicine at UCF, was just as above suspicion as Furtwängler.

In vain she had looked for something in the CVs of the two men that could have explained the veiled intimations that Furtwängler and Janning had made. Her conversation with Furtwängler, an agile octogenarian with a fresh Caribbean suntan, had proceeded quite informally after he had first expressed his condolences with the appropriate sorrow. Karoline had claimed that she just happened to be in Cologne and had recalled her visits to his lovely garden from her childhood, but as soon as she mentioned the name Kirsten Stadler, the man’s jovial demeanor abruptly vanished. she ran into a wall of silence, and the conversation soon came to a standstill.

Karoline glanced at the clock on the stove. Almost midnight.

Disheartened and disappointed by the lack of progress she’d made, she wanted to give up and crawl into bed, but then an idea came to her. Greta had been longing for her thirteenth birthday more than any other, because then she’d finally be old enough to register on Facebook. Since then, she seemed to spend half her life on social networks, uploading photos, posting daily trivialities, and defining her degree of popularity by the number of “Likes” she received. Karoline had already seen Greta sulk for a whole weekend because she’d been “unfriended” by someone on Facebook, which was tantamount to not being invited to a birthday party in the old days. Greta had declared that she almost wouldn’t exist in the world if she weren’t on Facebook.

So Karoline had set up a user account for herself and learned the basic concepts. To her amazement, she had received friend requests from all sorts of acquaintances and former schoolmates. She poured herself another glass of white wine and logged on to Facebook. Via the search box, she instantly found Helen Stadler. She was astonished to see that the account was still active; apparently, no one had thought to shut it down. She could hardly believe her good fortune, and clicked on Helen Stadler’s friend list, which at fifty-four persons was quite manageable. Since she hadn’t been friended by her, she could see only a few photos and postings, but she jotted down the names of those who had commented on Helen’s postings or “Liked” them. One name popped up more often than others: Vivien Stern. Karoline went to her page and wrote her a brief note. She doubted whether the young woman would answer, but there was always a chance.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Today was the last day of the old year, a special day. For many people, it was the perfect moment to look back on the old year and to take stock. What was good, and what was bad? What would I want to change? Where would I like to be at this time next year? As far as he was concerned, everything was clear. Nobody would ever understand why he had to do all this, so he would either be sitting in prison or roasting in hell. It pretty much boiled down to the same thing.

Most people would be celebrating the new year, and not alone. They would eat, drink, act as though it were a special night, but it was a night like any other. In other cultures, December 31 was an utterly normal day. He no longer had any interest in celebrating, with the firecrackers, the bottle rockets, and all that New Year’s Eve hysteria. Not anymore. In the old days, it had been different. Back then, he had drunk champagne with his colleagues and later celebrated at home with his family. They always had raclette or fondue, to go with the wine. But that was long ago. Today he was alone. And tonight he was going to kill someone. There were plenty of people who looked forward to the new year but would not live to experience it. On New Year’s Eve, there were more accidents than usual, and old people died as always. But one person would die who was not yet on the list. Or was he? Was this person already fated by birth to be killed on December 31, 2012, by a semi-jacketed .308 Winchester round fired from a Steyr SSG 69 rifle? Or was his death merely a result of the various decisions that he’d made in his life, leading him to that moment tonight when he would perish?

He felt no sympathy. No one had ever had any sympathy for him. He, too, had had to accept what happened and learn from it in order to keep living. He, too, had been left behind, unable to change a thing. Fate struck out of the blue, mercilessly and without warning. And then you sat there and had to deal with it. For the rest of your miserable life.

*   *   *

Pia had not slept well. Something kept churning inside her head, and it was driving her crazy because she simply couldn’t grasp what it was. At a quarter to four in the morning, she got up and dressed, then went down to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. Last night, she had Skyped with Christoph but very wisely neglected to mention the incident with Thomsen and the cocked pistol pressed to her temple. He was already worried about her, afraid that she wasn’t eating right or getting enough sleep, so she didn’t want to cause him even more concern. She missed him with every fiber of her being. In the daytime, she managed to forget how much she missed him because she was so busy working on the case. But at night, she lay awake in bed and longed for his familiar presence, for the smell of his skin and the sound of his breathing in the dark. She’d never realized before how much she’d gotten used to him being close, and how much it hurt when he was away.

Fortunately, it was only temporary. How would it feel to lose someone you loved through death, gone from one second to the next? How would it be to get the news that your partner or daughter, mother or son had died, without having the chance to say good-bye? Pia thought about Dirk Stadler, who’d had to cope with two such traumas, first when he’d lost his wife and then his daughter. And about Jens-Uwe Hartig, who’d had to bury his fiancée shortly before their wedding. And Mark Thomsen, who had lost his son and then his wife and finally his job.

Pia recalled the horror that Renate Rohleder and Professor Rudolf felt when they realized their mistakes had caused the dearest people in their lives to be killed. The sniper had robbed Fritz Gehrke, that old, sick man, of the most important person he still had in his life. And Patrick Schwarzer, who in his view had made a minor error, was then punished for it ten years later.

A fate worse than death
—the saying contained a real kernel of truth. The loss alone was enough to tear open wounds that would never heal, but knowing that you were to blame for the death was a truly devilish punishment. Was that why Gehrke had killed himself?

Just as Pia was making herself two slices of toast with salted butter and Nutella, Kim showed up.

“Good morning,” she murmured, shuffling over to the coffeemaker. “How do you manage to be so disgustingly awake?”

“Good morning.” Pia grinned. “It’s the early-bird gene. I’m the lark and you’re more of an owl. Would you like some breakfast before we get going?”

She slapped the warm pieces of toast together and bit into them.

“I can’t stomach anything this early in the morning.” Kim shook her head in disgust and sipped her coffee.

“Mark Thomsen doesn’t have a real motive,” said Pia with her mouth full. “Unless there’s something connecting him to the Stadlers that we don’t know about.”

“I’ve been wondering about that, too,” replied Kim. “Stadler got a payoff from the UCF back then. What if he hired somebody?”

“A contract killer, you mean?”

“Yeah, exactly. A pro.”

“I thought about that, too,” Pia admitted. “You’ve been convinced the whole time that the perp is a pro. Dirk Stadler has the same motives as his in-laws and his son. And anyone who has the right connections can find somebody to do the dirty work. Lithuanians, Russians, Kosovo Albanians—they’ll do that sort of stuff for cheap.”

“We don’t have to go that far.” Kim was gradually waking up. “What about this? Maybe Thomsen was paid by the Stadlers to carry out their revenge.”

Pia thought it over as she ate her toast. Was Mark Thomsen a man who would kill for hire? What good would blood money do him if he was caught and had to spend his life behind bars? No, a guy like him acted out of conviction or not at all. He wasn’t the type to let himself be harnessed to someone else’s cart.