Nemesis: Innocence Sold (9 page)

With a loud snap, the lock popped open. Mark lifted the lid, and Daniel directed the flashlight’s beam into the box. It seemed as if Daniel wanted to reach inside, but Mark held him back. “Stop, Doc. There’s nothing you can do anymore.”

Nothing was left of Daniel’s casual attitude; he seemed petrified when he turned his head away with a choking sound.

Sven swallowed hard; he was supporting himself with one hand on the van and had forgotten his partner for the moment.

Sandra got a look at the contents of the box at the same moment as Dirk. When Mark let the lid fall, the sight of the mussed blond hair and brown eyes, wide open and fixed in death, had already burned itself deep into her memory. She stumbled forward. She probably would have fallen if she hadn’t been drawn into a close embrace.

“It’s my fault. I should have prevented this. That’s little Eric. I’ve forgotten his last name,” she whispered, her entire body shaking.

“Nothing’s your fault. Only the sickos who’ve done this are to blame. Easy now, Sandra.”

She hardly recognized the raw voice. She had thought Daniel was at her side, but she had been wrong. It was actually Dirk who held her, and for a time she felt he was holding on to her as much for his own benefit as hers. “I only knew the boy was missing and suffered from asthma. If I had known the description of Tim also fit him, I would have immediately . . . I don’t know. It sounded as if he had run away. But something . . .”

“We’ll talk about it properly, Sandra. Later.” Dirk looked around, and a quick exchange of glances with his colleagues satisfied him. “Sven’s already informing our colleagues in Lübeck and the coroner. He and Stephan will stay here. We’ll drive back. It’d be best if Mark and Daniel’s involvement is off the record. You can wait until tomorrow and make your statement in peace. For today you’ve gone through enough.”

Although Dirk continued to seem extremely tense, she recognized his concern. “I’m all right. It was just . . .” She couldn’t find the right words.

“A shock?” Dirk suggested. His crooked grin faltered before it was really even there. “The sight almost knocked me down, too. No one’s left cold when something like this happens to a child, certainly not when—” He broke off and cleared his throat, and Sandra knew he was thinking of Tim and the attempted kidnapping. “We’ll get the people responsible. No matter how long it takes or what it costs. They’ll pay for this.” His firm grip loosened. “What’s the story with the three guys you caught? Could they have something to do with this?”

Daniel came over with a bottle of water and handed it to Sandra. “I don’t think so. It’s not their caliber. Ask them. They’ll talk; I’m sure of that.”

The paleness of Daniel’s face consoled Sandra; it was easy to see how much he had been affected by the discovery of the dead child. “Asthma, you said?” he asked.

“Yes, it said in the missing-persons notice that he used an inhaler. His clothing and place of disappearance were specified. A beach promenade on Fehmarn. Otherwise only a description of his jeans and T-shirt and his age. Someone seems to have dropped the ball.”

“An odd omission,” said Daniel, thinking aloud.

Sandra nodded, although she didn’t care for the insinuation that the omission could have been intentional. “And why did they kill Eric? Up to now the children have only disappeared. I thought . . . My theory . . . I mean, one can’t make any money from a dead child.”

Daniel clenched his hand into a fist. “I assume they used chloroform there, too, and that could have been fatal for the kid if his respiratory system wasn’t functioning normally. There was red discoloration around his mouth and nose that could have been from the caustic solution.”

Dirk nodded. “Tim had spots like that, too. All right, I’ll go over there and make a friendly inquiry as to whether your friends knew about the child.” His face lost its masklike control; instead, undisguised rage shimmered through. Each of his steps betrayed the anger boiling in him. The burly guy might not have been the most intelligent man, but his instincts were good. With difficulty, he struggled up from his sitting position and tried to retreat. With a leap Dirk reached him, grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him close. “Who pressed the cloth onto the child’s face so he suffocated? Was it you?”

Although he made three attempts, the guy didn’t succeed in producing a coherent sentence. His eyes wide, he tried to shake his head but was prevented from doing so by Dirk’s tight grip.

“Perhaps I should mention that my son’s the same age and looks very similar. A few days ago, some men tried to kidnap him using this very vehicle. Now just guess what my mood’s like and what I would love to do to you.” Dirk’s voice had gotten quieter with each word, and it was difficult for Sandra to understand him. She shrank from the coldness in Dirk’s behavior and feared that he was willing to kill for an answer.

She took a step in his direction but was held back by Daniel. “Let him be. He knows what he’s doing and has himself under control.”

“Are you sure? He seems like a total stranger.”

“Only because you haven’t seen him in action yet. Furthermore, Sven, my boss, and your boss wouldn’t be so relaxed if that wasn’t the case. They know each other so well that they understand each other without having said anything. Trust him or them or us. Whatever. Don’t interfere.”

When Dirk released the bull, he stumbled backward and landed on his rear end. He looked up at Dirk in obvious panic. Dirk bent down and dragged the heavy man up as though he weighed nothing.

“I knew nothing of that. Word of honor, man. We were just supposed to scare the woman—that’s all.”

“Where did you get the vehicle?”

“From Kalle.”

“You can describe him to me later. When?”

“Sometime between five thirty and six. I listened to the traffic report in my Opel but heard the following news report in the van. A real pile of shit—the radio only got NDR1. No other stations.”

“Sandra? When was the report posted?” Dirk asked without turning away from the bull.

“The missing-persons report was posted at three thirty, but the boy disappeared at around one thirty. Driving time from Hamburg to Fehmarn . . . no idea.”

“Lübeck,” the bull interjected, suddenly willing to help. “We got the vehicle in Lübeck-Genin. And you can get from Lübeck to Fehmarn in a little over an hour if the bridge isn’t closed. I used to go there a lot with my children. Kalle called my cell phone around four. We can check exactly when that was.”

Dirk followed up again. “Sandra?”

Before she could answer, Daniel took over: “It adds up. Then about half an hour after the failed kidnapping, this Kalle looked for and found some idiots who would take on the dirty work for him. If the hut had been blown up, all clues would have been destroyed, and the case would have been closed.”

“Failed kidnapping? I think you two have some explaining to do.” Dirk didn’t wait for an answer. “Sven, what do you think?” he said, turning to his partner.

“Daniel’s theory sounds good. I think this guy’s telling the truth. He’ll tell the rest to our colleagues in Lübeck.” Sven nodded toward the forest, where flashing blue lights could again be seen flickering through the trees. “It would be better for you to take off now, before someone wants your personal details. But please inform Tannhäuser—I don’t feel like spending the whole night here discussing jurisdiction.”

“I’ll do that.”

Before Dirk had reached his Audi, Stephan held him back. “When you speak to Tannhäuser, say hello from me and tell him he should make arrangements for Sandra to officially start working for me tomorrow.”

For once Sandra could live with being spoken about as if she were not present. Despite the repulsive circumstances, a smile spread across her face and grew wider when Stephan winked at her.

“Welcome to the team, Sandra. A successful and pretty unusual beginning. I’ll see you at Dirk’s place—we’ll take care of the paperwork tomorrow. I would actually say you should take care of yourself, but something tells me you’ve already found the perfect caretaker.” The insinuation earned him a playful punch from Daniel that Stephan fended off effortlessly. “It’s good you’re back, Doc. Mark was getting . . . Well, let’s leave it.”

“You mean it would be safer for me if I took the job in Coronado, after all?”

“Probably. In any event it would be safer for you to get in quickly. Mark looks like his patience is at an end.”

“It is,” Mark confirmed, leaning against the passenger door of Dirk’s Audi.

CHAPTER 9

Sandra’s hope that Dirk’s family would already be asleep at ten o’clock at night evaporated when she saw the vehicles parked in the driveway.

Dirk raised an eyebrow in amazement. “Did I miss a family party? They could have at least left a spot for me.” Finally he parked his Audi so he was blocking a BMW.

“Sven’s going to love you for that,” Mark said.

“The walk will do him good, or he can take my ride.” Dirk looked at Sandra when she stopped next to the Audi and made no move to follow them to the door. “What is it?”

“Can’t we take care of this tomorrow at headquarters?” Sandra was annoyed at how insecure her voice sounded.

Amazingly, it was Mark who smiled at her. “Some of us have other jobs, and we need to coordinate our actions quickly, before it becomes official. There was a question you were burning to ask earlier, right? Go ahead and ask. I’m used to your distrust.”

Despite Mark’s sympathetic manner, which appeared to reflect his genuine feelings, Sandra instinctively stood up straighter. “No, no distrust. Really—I’ve learned my lesson, and I wouldn’t suspect you of that. But how did you know what was in the box? That had to do with the call you got just before then, didn’t it?”

“I didn’t know what was in the box, but I feared what could be. The caller was Jake, my assistant. He examined your destroyed notebook and recovered the data from the hard drive. One of the last Web pages you had visited was the police report regarding the boy who had disappeared. The page had since been updated, and because the description fit Tim as well, Jake had an idea of what might have happened. Unfortunately, he was right.” The American’s gaze became cold, and Sandra sensed he was thinking of the dead boy. “Are you coming now? Before you coordinate your further activities with Tannhäuser tomorrow, we should reach an agreement, because pursuing these bastards is not one of our assignments, at least officially.”

“Destroyed notebook? What else? What does my apartment look like?”

“Other than the notebook, a broken door, and a pretty big mess in the hall, not too bad.”

“How reassuring.” Taking a deep breath, Sandra took a step toward the front door of the house. She would make herself look completely ridiculous if she revealed to the men that she would rather fill out her tax return than meet Dirk’s wife. She remembered well how Alex Groß had taken her apart when she had tried to arrest Mark. She could do without repeating that experience.

Inside the house she looked around. Adjacent to the entrance area there was a dining nook, beyond which there was a large living room. A wooden staircase led to the upper floor. The furnishings, which were bright and friendly, appealed to her; it wasn’t particularly neat—there were baby things lying around, and a child seat had been left on a chair—but nevertheless cozy.

“Just throw your jackets on the floor. The cloakroom’s full,” Dirk said, looking at the colorful chaos of jackets, children’s clothes, and shoes.

“Is that a complaint?” a woman asked, coming out of the kitchen with a baby on her arm. Through the open door Sandra could see that the kitchen was as chaotic as her own. She immediately felt more at ease and examined the woman, who had unusual, exotic features surrounded by a black mane of hair.

Sandra’s gaze was returned with great curiosity; then the woman noticed Daniel, and her eyes widened. “Doc? What are you doing here? It’s good to see you’re back. Now you can finally tell Mark that you’d never be crazy enough to leave the team and my brother will be approachable again.”

Grinning, Mark embraced the woman with the child. “Behave yourself, little sister, or I’ll change my tune.”

Taking a second look, Sandra noticed a similarity between the siblings; nevertheless, her confusion increased, and she asked herself why Mark’s sister was in Dirk’s house and acted as if she were at home here.

“Sandra? As you’ve heard, this is Shara, Mark’s sister and also the mother of my great love.” Making incomprehensible babbling sounds, the baby was already stretching her hands out to Daniel, who willingly took her on his arm. “This little one is called Hope. And I could swear she just said my name.”

“Sure. In the future I’ll also call you Dada,” Dirk joked. “Take over the introductions, and show Sandra where the study is. I’ll be back in a bit.”

Dirk went upstairs.

“Ignoramus. She’s my first child, after all.”

His child? Sandra felt herself losing control over her expression; she only managed to smile when she heard Shara’s bright laughter. “Be glad Stephan didn’t hear that; this extremely proud fellow is only her godfather.”

“Sandra Meinke. I’m—”

Daniel interrupted her. “My girl . . . friend as of today and working for Stephan as of tomorrow. Your husband’s still taking care of the formal stuff with Sven and will be here later.” He scrunched his nose. “Something smells funny here. I’d love to take care of it, but unfortunately duty calls.” With a grimace, he handed the child to Shara.

Sandra followed up in disbelief. “Your girlfriend?”

“Sure. Your word.”

“Typical man. Any excuse to get out of changing a diaper.”

Sandra would have loved to have continued her discussion with Daniel, but not in the presence of his superior and his superior’s sister. “We’re going to talk about this later, Lieutenant,” she said quietly, earning herself a look of approval from Shara.

“That’s right. Don’t put up with anything, or they’ll become unbearable.” Shara reached for a shoulder bag. “We’ll see each other often, then.” With the child on her arm and the bag in her hand, she hurried up the stairs and disappeared into one of the rooms.

“Up there are the bathroom, children’s room, guest room, bedroom, and Alex’s study,” Daniel told her. “Behind you is the kitchen. If you want something to eat or drink, just help yourself. Up there is the living room, and behind the door back there on the left is Dirk’s study, which has already become something like a field office of the LKA.”

A voice that had been quiet up to this point became louder as another woman, who seemed vaguely familiar to Sandra, came toward her with a cell phone pressed against her ear. “Here, Mark, you convince your daughter that it’s not acceptable that . . . well, just listen to this. Hello, Daniel. It’s good you’re here. Mark’s mood was getting unbearable.”

“I’m going to shoot the next person who says that,” Mark said, not very convincingly, and took the phone. “You know each other already,” he said to his wife, and Sandra suddenly remembered her encounter with Laura Kranz, the wife of a bank manager who had carried out financial transactions for Al-Qaida.

“Men,” Laura said. “I remember your face, but I can’t recall your name.”

Sandra smiled and held out a hand to her. “Sandra Meinke. But Laura Kranz is probably not right any longer, or . . . ?”

“No, Rawlins, but Laura’s fine for Doc’s girlfriend,” she said with a wink, revealing that she had overheard the previous conversation despite having been on the phone.

Sandra’s cheeks reddened and turned redder yet when Daniel put an arm around her waist. “By the way, what are you all doing here? Dirk was already worrying that he had missed a family party.”

“For once that’s not the case. Alex is upstairs with the boys, and now that Dirk’s here, too, it will be a while before we see the rascals. Tim’s rhythm is completely messed up from the chloroform, and Nicki’s still blaming himself. With that in mind, we’ve just adjusted the times for visits and sleeping, and Shara still wanted to take a quick look at him. After all, we didn’t know you were still going to show up.”

“Shara’s a pediatrician,” Daniel told Sandra. “So how’s he doing?”

“Well. He’s not experiencing any exaggerated fear or panic. He’s really handling it well; he just has this completely messed-up rhythm. We hope it gets evened out tomorrow and the boys can go back to school and day care.” Laura smiled and raised her voice. “That goes for you in particular, Nicki. You still need to practice sneaking up unnoticed. Come down.”

“Oh, Mama,” he said from the stairs. Then he ran down and smiled mischievously at Mark, who had finished his phone call. “Did you get that bastard? And did you tell Rami she could stay overnight at her friend’s place?”

Grinning, Mark picked up his son and cast a quick glance at his wife. “The date’s been moved to the weekend. And now for you. You’re not to listen in on me anymore—otherwise you’ll get tickled silly. What are you doing here?”

The boy was laughing so hard it took a while before he could answer. “Reading pirate stories to Tim. Because he wasn’t tired enough yet. Too tired to play, but he couldn’t sleep.”

“Good for you. We’ll see what Sven says—maybe the two of you will have to take a look at the van we found.”

“So we’re important witnesses?” The boy’s eyes shone with enthusiasm.

“Of course. But now it’s about time you grabbed your mother and headed home, Nicki.”

“Mark!” Laura managed to put a threat into the word that couldn’t be misunderstood.

Mark and Nicki looked at each other in mock innocence; then Mark gave in. “And watch your language. Your mother doesn’t want to hear ‘bastard’ coming out of your mouth.”

“But you do?”

After getting a grim look from his wife, Mark said, “No, of course not.”

Mark whispered something into the boy’s ear that caused him to laugh and his mother to sigh. “Of course those two are going to stick together,” she said.

Daniel pointed in the direction of the living room. “Come on, let’s finish up with this. You’re not exactly in top form.”

Rather than argue, Sandra pondered Mark’s transformation. He had behaved like an experienced investigator, and now his performance as a warmhearted father and husband who had more or less adopted the family of a convicted criminal was causing her impression of him as a cold and unfeeling soldier to waver. How did it all fit together? It was becoming clear that there was more behind the events of the last several months than the official files revealed, but she would look into that later. Someone from this conspiratorial community of men would give her the answers—she would make sure of it.

With a half smile, she pointed to the closed door of the study. “And what awaits me in there? Is this place just some giant guesthouse?”

Daniel hesitated to open the door. “Only my second boss hasn’t arrived yet. By the way, Jake’s married to Mark’s other sister. There’s your answer: friends, family, and team members. When it matters, we’re there for each other. Without this solidarity you’d fall apart in our job.”

Surprised by the open admission, Sandra thought of her own difficulties keeping her work from getting too personal. She understood only too well what Daniel was trying to say. She thought of the photograph on Stephan’s desk and the way Sven and Mark had tried to spare Dirk the sight of the dead boy. “I know what you mean,” she said with a hint of envy.

“That’s what I thought,” he said and opened the door.

Her gaze swept over the man with the light brown hair at the desk but stopped when she saw what was on the computer screen. “Hey, those are my e-mails. What are you doing? Get your hands off my property. It’s none of your business.”

Calmly, the man withstood her rage. “Jake Fielding, Daniel’s assistant team leader, currently in the process of saving your e-mails from the last two years but by no means reading them. In the first place I don’t have time, and in the second place they don’t interest me. I must admit, however, that I’ve noticed who your brother’s employer is. And before you start talking to me about data protection laws, consider that we had no idea what had happened to you and Daniel.”

Daniel groaned. “Hey, Sandra, would you mind terribly not immediately taking on each of my bosses? And who does your brother work for?”

Jake raised a hand to stop her from answering. “Wait for the others. I don’t need to hear endless repetition. Tell me instead what you’re doing here. You can imagine Stephan was pretty surprised to find your things at Sandra’s place.”

“Stephan and Sven are coming later; Dirk’s upstairs; Mark should be here any minute. I cleared everything up in Coronado, my sister’s at a medical convention, and I had no desire to hang around there by myself. You know how it is: I have plenty of acquaintances down there, but I had no desire to constantly avoid their questions. The rumor mill’s active enough as it is.”

“And how long have you known each other?”

“Since this afternoon.”

“Nice way to spend your vacation, Lieutenant.”

“I’d say so, too—and how good it is that I still have some days left.”

A smile softened Jake’s rather severe features. “Message received, Doc. This will be interesting.”

“It will,” said Daniel.

Before Sandra could follow up about what the exchange meant, Mark and Dirk appeared. Mark dropped into a comfortable-looking armchair, while Dirk, after looking grimly at the chair at his desk, which had been occupied by Jake, chose the other armchair. “That leaves the couch for our turtledoves,” Jake said and grinned. “Should we finally get started? I don’t think it makes any sense to wait for Stephan and Sven.”

Dirk didn’t wait for anyone to agree but nodded at Sandra. “Go ahead, you have the floor. And before things get any more complicated, please start by explaining the role your brother played.”

“He has nothing to do with this. He works for the BKA as a systems analyst. He doesn’t carry a gun; he’s a real computer freak and explained to me how I can hide my IP address.”

Jake raised an eyebrow. “He did a good job with that, but why didn’t the program start automatically when you went online? That would have been safer.”

“Then you already know that I forgot to start it manually one time? One time and it causes all this? I can’t believe it. But it’s not Martin’s fault. He thinks I wanted the tool so I could download a few songs once in a while. Otherwise he’d never have helped me; he would have told me to go to the responsible units.”

“Why are you doing all this on your own?”

Although Mark had asked the question calmly and with no hint of accusation, Sandra jumped up. “Because no one listened to me, that’s why. The responsible units considered it a nutty idea. Of course, no proof, only a theory. But instead of having it checked out, I’ve had to listen to smug remarks about my job.”