I Am Your Judge: A Novel (56 page)

“I was at Nicola’s,” said Kim.

“That’s what I was afraid of. And?”

“And nothing. We just had a good time talking.”

“About what?”

“About everything.”

“Come on, now. This is like pulling teeth. Is she into you?”

“I think she likes me,” said Kim, who actually blushed a little. “But she has no experience with women.”

“Or with men lately?” Pia teased her.

“Successful women like her have a hard time finding a man who doesn’t view her as a competitor. I know that from personal experience,” said Kim, defending the object of her desire.

“Well, I must be lucky that I’m not so successful,” said Pia.

“You and Christoph are equals,” said Kim. “But most men can’t tolerate their partner working more and maybe even making more money than they do. That’s why my last relationship ended. And not just because he couldn’t stand it that I had to deal with the worst criminals day in and day out. That was only an excuse. For two long years, it hadn’t bothered him at all. By the way, did you know that Nicola was once engaged to Bodenstein? They were going to get married, but then Cosima came between them.”

“Yes, I know.” Pia turned down Elisabethenstrasse when the light turned green. “But honestly, I’m interested in my boss’s love life only as it pertains to you. Because I’m afraid she’s going to show up with you at our family celebrations.”

“At what family celebrations?” Kim had to laugh. “But we’ll go out to dinner together once this case is solved.”

“Well, that’s going to be a while,” replied Pia. “Mark Thomsen isn’t the sniper.”

“I agree with you on that,” said Kim. “All the evidence against him can be viewed differently.”

“I just wonder why he locked us in the cellar and then disappeared.” Pia put on the blinker and turned into the parking garage at Untertor in downtown Hofheim.

“But he told you why. He knew you suspected him, and he wanted to keep from landing in a cell before he took care of something and had spoken with Burmeister,” said Kim. “If he really had something to hide, he wouldn’t have called the police to tell them where you were.”

Pia nodded. Bodenstein had been so carried away with the idea that Thomsen was the sniper that he’d paid no attention to this mitigating detail.

“As Oliver correctly said, Thomsen is a frustrated ex-cop who got a bad break in life,” Kim went on. “I believe him when he says he has no wish to spend the rest of his life behind bars. He’s definitely not stupid.”

“But why did he clear out his house and throw Helen Stadler’s notebook in the trash? If he has nothing to hide, why would he do that? Is he covering for somebody? Maybe the real sniper?” Pia stared at her sister as though Kim’s expression might give her the answers to her questions.

“Just think about it, my dear sister,” Kim said. “What does Thomsen care about more than anything?”

Pia drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and stared at the ugly façade of the Buch department store.

“This HRMO thing,” she said after a moment.

“Precisely. The HRMO people’s biggest complaint is with the inhuman way the relatives of organ donors are treated in some hospitals. They want to denounce these practices, which means they need publicity,” replied Kim. “The situation seems to have been particularly bad at the UCF.”

“Right,” said Pia with a nod. “Bettina Kaspar-Hesse described Burmeister as a vulture. They more or less forced her to deceive the Winklers so they could get at Kirsten Stadler’s organs. And it was definitely not an isolated case.”

“I think that was Thomsen’s primary concern. Not Kirsten or Helen Stadler. I’m pretty sure that he and Helen were on the track of something else, something that Furtwängler, Gehrke, and the lawyer were mixed up in. You need to talk to Furtwängler again. Ask him straight out what he was up to with Rudolf and why he had to leave the UCF back then. I believe that’s the key to the mystery.”

Pia’s stomach rumbled loudly in the silence.

“But first I need a whole bunch of calories,” she said. “Come on, let’s get some fodder for the pack.”

*   *   *

Her father had been arrested because the police suspected him of killing a woman who was married and had two children. He hadn’t stabbed, shot, or strangled her; no, he just let her die, although he could have saved her life. Why had he done that? He was a doctor, a good doctor, a man who lived for his profession. How had he been able to reconcile something like that with his conscience?
Out of greed and vanity.
That’s what the Judge had written after shooting her mother, as retaliation for what her father had done to the woman. Was it the first time he’d done something like that? Did he want to be celebrated as a healer by those whose lives he had saved with a transplanted organ? Or was it just the first time he’d been caught snuffing out one human life prematurely in order to save another? How could a person presume to make such a decision? The dead had no lobbyists. The relatives seldom doubted what doctors in the hospital said, especially when confronted with an eminent surgeon such as Professor Dieter Paul Rudolf, who assured them in his calm, understanding manner that there was no more hope.

Karoline Albrecht sat as if frozen at the dining room table in her parents’ house. She didn’t know what to do. Her father, whom she had admired all her life and whom she had loved almost desperately, was a murderer. Selfish and without a conscience, he had abused her trust and lied to her. Instead of admitting what he had done, he tried to cover it up. That’s how he’d spent the past several days, instead of grieving for his wife and arranging for her funeral. How despicable. He had lied and schemed, using any means available and acting without scruples. Why had he done all that? For money? For fame and praise?

Karoline closed the binder in which she had discovered the correspondence between the development board of Santex and her father. She got up, aching all over. But even worse was the pain in her soul. There was nobody she could talk to about all this. She longed for someone to pour out her heart to, someone who would understand how terribly lonely she was. Her mother, the only anchor she’d had in life, was gone. She had no close female friends, and no boyfriend or lover she could call. She had a house in which she did not feel at home, a job that meant only money and professional success, and the responsibility for a traumatized daughter.

The best thing would be to call a cab to take her home, and simply go back to bed. Or she could take Mama’s car. Karoline stiffly pulled on her coat; she had neglected to put on the awkward cervical collar this morning after her shower. In the top drawer of the sideboard, she found the key to the BMW. She left the house and activated the remote on the key ring. The garage door opened with its familiar clatter. An acrid burnt smell struck her nostrils but quickly dispersed. Where did the stench come from? Had a marten caused an electrical fire under the hood of one of the cars? For a moment, she hesitated, then walked over toward her mother’s BMW, stumbling over something soft.

“Shit!” she exclaimed. She almost fell on her face, which wouldn’t have helped with her concussion. She bent down and saw a blue trash bag leaning against the rear tire of her father’s black Maserati. Karoline picked up the bag to move it aside, and grimaced. This was where the smell was coming from. She curiously opened the sack and found to her surprise some of her father’s clothes. A dark gray cashmere pullover, a shirt, a pair of gray slacks, a pair of shoes. She stared at the clothes in bewilderment. Why had her father stuffed them into a trash bag?

Like lightning, the words of the inspector flashed through her head:
In Gehrke’s house, a large number of documents were burned in the fireplace.
Karoline leaned against the trunk of the car because her knees were about to buckle.
It’s important for us to find out what he talked about with Gehrke the night before he died.

There was a click, and the light in the garage went out. Karoline stood quite still, thinking. The pieces of the puzzle, which had previously been whirling around in her head, suddenly came together.

*   *   *

It was not easy to find an open Wi-Fi anywhere. Even in
döner
shops, Turkish cafés, and cheap hotels, they had started protecting their Internet connections with passwords. Today he didn’t have time to drive to one of the two places in downtown Frankfurt where he could simply log on from the sidewalk, but now it no longer mattered. He went into a café
and was surprised to see that he was almost the only patron. That wasn’t good, but it was too late to turn and walk out. The waitress was already heading his way. He hung his jacket over the back of a chair, ordered coffee and a piece of Frankfurt crown cake, and asked for the password.

“Simple,” she said and winked, “It’s 123456.”

“I might be able to remember that,” he said with a smile. “Thanks.”

At the table across from him sat an elderly couple. Were they staring at him, or was he just imagining things? He shouldn’t underestimate how suspicious people had become. With a little bad luck, the police could catch him, just as the goal was nearly within reach. Good thing he’d left red herrings all over the place. If the police had found the garage, they would also find the bottle with Thomsen’s prints on it. He sent off the e
-
mail even before the coffee and cake arrived. His heart was pounding. The old couple glanced over at him again and whispered to each other. Jeez, he was seeing ghosts everywhere. He had to get out of here. He didn’t care what they thought of him. He put a banknote next to the plate, not even touching the cake or the coffee, grabbed his jacket, and left.

*   *   *

“But if it isn’t Thomsen, then who is it?” asked Kathrin Fachinger after Pia had explained to her colleagues point by point why she doubted that Mark Thomsen was the sniper. They were sitting at some laminate tables covered with coffee stains. They’d shoved the tables together in the special commission center. The team members were morose, bleary-eyed, and hopelessly exhausted after being hit by one defeat after another for over two weeks. The energy of the first few days had long since vanished, along with their fighting spirit and firm conviction that they would soon catch the perp. Bodenstein took a soft pretzel from the tray containing Pia’s purchases from the bakery as he looked at the weary faces of his team. After his conversation with Mark Thomsen, he’d been filled with a mixture of despondency and angry defiance. He felt oddly disoriented, and his sense of time was off due to lack of sleep and no fixed daily schedule. Both were terrible conditions for doing systematic work. The situation was taking a toll on everyone; they had all become thin-skinned. Even Kai Ostermann, normally steady as a rock in the surf, was reacting with swift irritation.

“So we’re left with Hartig,” said Kai as he ate. “He’s my favorite anyway.”

“What about Winkler?” Cem suggested dubiously.

“Neither one,” said Pia, shaking her head and glancing at Bodenstein. “It’s somebody else. He fell through the cracks for us before, but he still has the strongest motive.”

Where did this woman get her energy? She couldn’t have gotten much more sleep than he had, but she looked alert and sharp, remembering small details that he had forgotten.

“There’s so little evidence pointing to him,” Kai said, because he knew whom Pia was talking about.

“Whom do you mean?” Nicola Engel asked Pia. She was the only one eating her cheese sandwich in a civilized manner from a plate.

“Dirk Stadler.” Pia wiped her hands on a paper napkin and crumpled it up. “Even though Thomsen appeared to be the perfect perp, my gut tells me that he’s not the sniper. He’s too … perfect. It’d be too easy, and easy solutions always make me suspicious.”

Bodenstein had to admit that Pia’s argument was valid.

“My impression is that somebody has been deliberately planting clues that pointed to Thomsen. The rented garage, for instance. All it takes is an e-mail and a stranger putting a couple of euros in someone’s hand, who couldn’t care less about any of it, and bingo—you’ve got a rental contract.”

“But how do you explain Thomsen’s prints on the water bottle that was found in the garage?” Kröger asked skeptically.

“For Stadler and Hartig, it wouldn’t be much of a problem to get hold of some object with his prints on it,” Pia countered. “They all know one another and have met before because of Helen. Who knows how old that bottle is?”

“Dirk Stadler is severely handicapped and can hardly walk,” Neff remarked. “Besides, he has alibis for the times the crimes were committed. He was working.”

“Have you checked that out?” asked Pia, raising her eyebrows.

“Yes. Well, not directly.” Embarrassed, Neff avoided her gaze.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean—‘not directly’?” Bodenstein’s voice was cold, but his eyes were blazing. He had ruled out Dirk Stadler as the possible perp because he was firmly convinced that the man had airtight alibis for the times of the shootings. “You did the research on the guy, and when I asked you if you’d double-checked all the info, you told me ‘of course’!”

“I Googled his name.” Neff blushed to the roots of his hair. “And it said online that he works for the City of Frankfurt in the building commission. It even gave the phone number.”

“So did you call them?” Bodenstein’s anger, which had been slowly flowing through his veins, converged in his stomach like a fiery ball.

“N-no.” Neff was squirming in his chair.

“The Internet retains every piece of information, no matter how old.” Kai couldn’t resist the gibe. “It could be a very old page from the cache.”

Without waiting any longer, Pia picked up the phone on the table and asked the operator to connect her with the building commission of the City of Frankfurt.

It was deathly quiet in the room while they waited for someone to answer.

“Eckel, Frankfurt Building Commission,” a woman’s voice said on the speakerphone.

“Pia Kirchhoff, Hofheim Criminal Police,” she replied without taking her eyes off Neff. “I’d like to speak with Dirk Stadler.”