To Catch a Killer Page 5

  “We should inform the public and ask for help,” Pia said, and Ostermann nodded in agreement. “We’re probably not going to find any more facts relevant to the crime than what we already have.”

  Inwardly, Bodenstein argued against it, because he was afraid of the immense amount of time it would take to handle the usual phone calls from idiots and all the phony leads that would have to be checked out. He really couldn’t afford wasting any time, given the extreme shortage of investigators at his disposal, but there seemed to be no alternative. Pia was right—at the moment, they weren’t expecting to turn up any more facts. Still, there was a slim chance that someone may have seen something that had seemed unimportant at first.

  “Okay,” Bodenstein said at last. “We’ll go to the press. And hope for the best.”

  The spot was ideal. The fir branches hung low over the flat roof covered with moss, and the road was a dead end. By six in the evening, it was pitch dark. On the right side of the road were only meadows, and her house was the last one, right at the edge of the little wood located between the outskirts of the village and the old state road to Königstein. She had turned on the light in the kitchen ten minutes before and then gone upstairs. The old house had huge, old-fashioned lattice windows and no roll-down shutters, only wooden folding shutters, which seemed to be only for decoration; they probably hadn’t been closed in years. From his perspective, the house looked a lot like a doll house. He could see into every window and follow exactly what she was doing. He knew her daily schedule, which hardly ever changed except in the most minor ways. In no more than ten minutes, she would go back to the kitchen and start fixing dinner for herself and her husband.

  The temperature had dropped by a few degrees since yesterday. The snowstorm predicted for late evening would be a long time coming. The cold didn’t bother him. He was dressed for it. He glanced at his wristwatch. The digital display jumped to 18:22. At that moment, she entered the kitchen. Through his Kahles ZF69 rifle scope, he could see her as if she were standing right in front of him. She bent down, then turned around and took something out of a cupboard. Her lips moved. Maybe she was listening to music and singing along, as many people do when they’re alone. His index finger was on the trigger. He was breathing deeply in and out, concentrating intently on his target. Then, as she turned in his direction, he squeezed the trigger. In the same second that the bullet crashed through the windowpane and burst her head wide open, he flicked his eyes reflexively to the right and saw a second person in the kitchen. Good God—she wasn’t alone! A shrill scream pierced the air.

  “Shit!” he muttered. Adrenaline was pumping through his body, his heart hammering. He hadn’t counted on anyone else being in the house. The woman hadn’t been singing; she was talking to someone! Swiftly, he disassembled the rifle and stowed it in the bag. Then he put the used casing that had been ejected in his jacket pocket and crawled to the edge of the roof. Under cover of the tree branches, he slipped down from the roof of the transformer substation and vanished soundlessly in the dark.

  The whole project in the kitchen turned into a gigantic mess. Like a spurting fountain, the hot liquid sprayed her face, hands, and arms.

  “Damn!”

  She looked down at herself and saw that she was covered with orange spots. The pumpkin and carrot juice would be almost impossible to get out of the light gray cashmere of her favorite sweater. Pia swore a blue streak because she’d forgotten to put on an apron before she stuck the immersion blender in the pot and turned it on. The juice had also spattered the Ceran cooking surface on her convection stove top, the floor, and half the kitchen. Normally she wasn’t such a klutz in the kitchen, but she was feeling out of it, and this was the first time she was making pumpkin soup with ginger and coconut milk. The recipe had sounded good and promised to be child’s play, but the pumpkin had almost done her in when she was unable to cut it up as easily as described in the recipe. After she had sawed on the gourd in vain with a meat knife and almost sliced her finger, she marched outside with the obstreperous sphere and without further ado set it on the chopping block next to the shed and quickly split it apart with an axe. She finished dicing up the pumpkin in the kitchen.

  “I’ll be a laughingstock if I can’t even make a simple pumpkin soup,” Pia muttered, turning off the blender. Stupidly enough, the recipe page was so covered with orange liquid that she could no longer decipher how much coconut milk to put in the soup.

  Outside, a car drove up, and a minute later the front door opened. The dogs greeted Christoph with happy barks.

  “Wife at the stove,” he called cheerfully as he came into the kitchen. “That’s the way to start a vacation!”

  Pia turned around and smiled. After more than four years, her heart still skipped a beat whenever she saw Christoph.

  “I planned to have dinner ready long ago, and surprise you with a delicious soup. The recipe said it was easy and would take only twenty minutes. But it all started going wrong when I had to use brute force to break up the pumpkin into small bits.”

  Christoph’s eyes surveyed the kitchen, which Pia had transformed into a battlefield. He tried not to grin, but then he couldn’t help laughing. Ignoring the pumpkin-carrot splatters, he took her in his arms and kissed her.

  “Yum,” he said, licking his lips. “Tastes good!”

  “It’s only missing the coconut milk. And the coriander.”

  “You know what?” Christoph took the blender from her hand. “Let me finish this while you clean up and set the table.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that, beloved husband.” Pia smiled, gave him a kiss, and got ready to clear away the chaos she’d created with her cooking experiment.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were sitting at the table, and the soup actually did taste fantastic. Pia talked nonstop about all sorts of trivia, which was out of character for her, but she was trying to avoid having Christoph ask whether she’d been at work today. She was torn between her desire to spend three weeks with her husband and the awful feeling that she was letting down her boss and colleagues. The dilemma was tormenting her, because normally she was not a person who put off making unpleasant decisions. At first, Christoph went along with her evasive maneuver, but finally he brought up the awkward subject.

  “Have you decided yet whether you’re flying with me or staying here?” he asked casually as they were clearing off the table.

  “Of course I’m going with you,” she replied. “My bags are all packed.”

  “Did you and your colleagues catch the murderer?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” Pia shook her head. “There are no clues, no witnesses, no obvious motive. Maybe the woman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there’s no connection between the victim and the perp.”

  “You mean, she was shot at random?”

  “It’s possible. That sort of thing is rare, but it does happen.”

  “So now what?”

  Pia began to fill the dishwasher.

  “The boss wants to take the case public in the hope that somebody somewhere might have seen something. So there’s absolutely no reason for me to stay home,” she said, keeping her voice cheerful, though she felt the exact opposite. “It won’t really matter whether I’m here to help them or not.”

  “I just came from Wiesbaden,” Dr. Nicola Engel announced as she sat down on one of the visitors’ chairs in front of Bodenstein’s desk. “At the office of the State Criminal Police, I happened to run into the head of Operational Case Analysis. He said it might be possible to send over one of his people, as reinforcement and to lend us another perspective.”

  “I see.” Bodenstein took off his reading glasses and looked at his boss expectantly. Nicola never “happened” to run into anyone, and her use of the phrase “might be possible” was only a rhetorical trick to make him feel that she had asked his opinion. In reality, she had undoubtedly already arranged everything without consulting him.

  “Andreas Neff is an experienced case a
nalyst,” she went on. “He was in the States for a while and learned the latest profiling methods.”

  “I see,” Bodenstein said again. The idea of working with a stranger on this case didn’t exactly please him, but since Pia was leaving on vacation tomorrow and Fachinger was still out sick, he desperately needed some backup.

  “What do you mean by ‘I see’?” Nicola Engel asked. “I thought you’d be happy to have some help.”

  Bodenstein gazed pensively at his boss, who years earlier had once been his fiancée. A lot had happened since the incidents in the summertime two years ago, which had resulted in her arrest and suspension from the force because of serious accusations made by their longtime colleague Frank Behnke. Behnke claimed that Dr. Engel had ordered him to liquidate an undercover investigator during a raid fifteen years earlier, to stop him from spilling the beans about the connections between some high-ranking personalities and a pedophile ring. The arrest of the leader of the criminal police had created quite a stir, and naturally, the press had jumped all over it.

  But Dr. Nicola Engel had not allowed these accusations to stick. She finally revealed to Bodenstein what she until then had resolutely kept secret. In 1997, he was also working in Frankfurt K-11, but he had only peripheral knowledge of the events. Nicola now told him that in reality it wasn’t Frank Behnke, but she herself who had been the victim of a plot that extended into the highest political levels. When she became a danger to the people pulling the strings, they had threatened her and then had her transferred to Würzburg in Bavaria. Knowing that the statute of limitations never expired for murder, Nicola Engel had decided to put the case on the back burner until some later time when she would be able to expose what really happened.

  Her testimony before an investigative commission had provoked dramatic results. The former acting chief of police and a retired judge from the State Supreme Court both committed suicide. Other individuals involved had been arrested and had confessed, so that after fourteen years, the murders of Erik Lessing and two members of the Frankfurt Road Kings were finally resolved. After this, Engel had been reinstated and returned to her position, while Frank Behnke was sentenced to life in prison for the triple murder.

  After Engel returned to the Regional Criminal Unit in Hofheim, which Bodenstein had headed temporarily during her absence, she had a long conversation with Pia and Bodenstein to thank them specifically for their actions. With this burden finally lifted from her soul after fifteen long years, a great change was apparent in Engel. Working with her was entirely different, more collegial and, at times, even convivial.

  “I’d be happier if I had my whole team working on this,” Bodenstein now replied, shutting down his computer. “But perhaps a case analyst would be a good idea. We’re fishing in murky waters, and we’re no further along than we were yesterday.”

  Engel stood up, and Bodenstein followed suit.

  “I’m giving you carte blanche,” she assured him. “If you need more people, just tell me, and I’ll take care of it.”

  His cell phone rang.

  “All right.” He nodded to his boss. She left the office and he took the call.

  “Papa!” Rosalie shouted in his ear. “Mama just dumped the dwarf on me, and she wasn’t supposed to do that till tomorrow!”

  “I’m not a dwarf,” Sophia protested in the background, and Bodenstein had to smile.

  “Calm down,” Rosalie said to her little sister; then she turned back to her father. “Mama has to leave today for Berlin, because her schedule got changed somehow. But what am I supposed to do now? I have so many things to get done, and I can’t leave Sophia alone. What am I going to—?”

  “I’ll be home in half an hour,” Bodenstein interrupted his elder daughter. “Then you can take off.”

  He took his coat from the closet, grabbed his briefcase, and turned off the light in his office. As he walked, he punched up his contact list on his cell and tapped in the number of his ex-wife. Once again, this was so typical of Cosima. She was always so wrapped up in her own plans and impulsive ideas, so she had never paid much attention to what anyone else needed to do—her husband and her children came second.

  Pia put away her buzzing cell phone when she saw that the caller had blocked the number. At seven thirty in the evening, it could only be somebody she didn’t know, or the police dispatcher. In twenty-four hours, she would be sitting on the plane to Ecuador, and she didn’t want the decision that she had finally made to be jeopardized by anything.

  “Don’t you want to take that call?” Christoph asked.

  “No.”

  She had already given the horses their evening hay, and now she wanted to curl up on the comfortable sofa and watch a DVD with Christoph while they finished off at least one bottle of wine. “Did you choose a movie?”

  “How about In Bruges?” Christoph suggested. “We haven’t watched that in a long time.”

  “Please, nothing with guns and dead bodies,” said Pia.

  “Well, that eliminates almost everything we have in our video collection,” he said with a grin. He was dead set against letting Pia talk him into watching Steel Magnolias or The Devil Wears Prada. Before he found some soccer game on the Sky Channel or a deadly boring documentary on Arte, Pia agreed to watch a James Bond movie. They were always entertaining, and it would take her mind off other things.

  Her cell buzzed again.

  “Go ahead and take it,” Christoph said. “It seems to be important.”

  Pia sighed, grabbed the phone, and said hello.

  “Ms. Kirchhoff, please forgive me for bothering you,” said the officer on duty. “I know you’re on vacation, but I can’t reach anyone else from K-11. We have another body. In Oberursel this time.”

  “Shit,” Pia muttered. “What about Bodenstein?”

  “He’s not answering his phone. But I’ll try him again.”

  “Where do I have to go?” She met Christoph’s gaze and shrugged to signal her regret.

  “The address is An der Heide 12 in Oberursel,” said the officer. “I’ve already notified the evidence team.”

  “Got it. Thanks.”

  “And thank you.” He had the decency not to wish her a good evening, because obviously she wasn’t going to have one.

  “What’s up?” Christoph asked.

  “If only I hadn’t taken that call.” Pia got up. “There’s another body, in Oberursel. I’m really sorry. I hope the boss shows up soon so I can make a quick exit.”

  Bodenstein was ecstatic that he had to play only a minor role in his ex-wife’s chaotic life. It had taken him years to admit that he didn’t find it “exciting” but rather terribly exhausting to adapt to her constantly changing plans. Cosima had no qualms about rescheduling appointments that had been made weeks before, if something more interesting suddenly popped into her head. And she expected her family and friends simply to accept the way she impulsively changed her mind. “Flexibility” and “spontaneity,” two words that she promoted as positive traits, were in Bodenstein’s eyes nothing more than proof of her inability to organize her life.

  “I wanted to take a taxi, but they couldn’t send one for an hour!” Cosima said as Bodenstein loaded her luggage into the trunk of her SUV in the parking garage of the Zauberberg building in Ruppertshain. “It’s totally outrageous.”

  “If you’d ordered the cab yesterday, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a problem,” was all he said as he closed the trunk. “Have you got everything?”

  “Oh dear, where’s my purse? Did I have it with me or not?” She opened the trunk again. Bodenstein got in behind the wheel and turned to Sophia, who was in her car seat.

  “Are you all strapped in?” he asked.

  “Sure. Even a baby could do it,” replied his younger daughter.

  “Ah, here it is!” Cosima shouted, slamming the trunk closed, then jumping into the passenger seat. “God, I’m frazzled.”

  Bodenstein refrained from commenting. He started the engine and drove off. So
me things would never change.

  Cosima babbled on during the whole trip, through Fischbach and Kelkheim, down the B 8, and didn’t shut up until they turned at the Main-Taunus Center and got on the A 66 to Wiesbaden. Bodenstein glanced to the right and saw in the dark the lights of Birkenhof, where Pia lived with her partner. Maybe the profiler that Nicola had forced on him would really help solve the case quickly. But he felt rather lost without Pia, Cem, and Kathrin. During his career with the criminal police, there had been very few cases that went unsolved. He had the unpleasant feeling that the murder of Ingeborg Rohleder might one day end up as a cold case in a box in the archives. Seldom had the evidence been so scanty as it was in this investigation.

  “Are we there yet, Papa?” Sophia asked from the backseat.

  “Almost,” he said, signaling to turn right. A few minutes later, they could see the lights of the Frankfurt Airport. He had driven Cosima out here countless times when she was going off on a trip. He could find the way in his sleep. As usual at this time of the evening, all hell had broken loose at the airport, but Bodenstein got lucky and nabbed a ten-minute spot in front of the departure hall. He got out, found a baggage cart, and loaded suitcases and bags on it while Cosima said good-bye to Sophia.

  Then they were standing face-to-face.

  “Kind of like the old days, don’t you think?” Cosima smiled, a little embarrassed. “Merry Christmas, Oliver. And thanks for everything.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Bodenstein. “And Merry Christmas to you, too. Give us a call on Christmas Eve, everybody’s coming over to my house.”

  “Ah, I wish I could be there,” Cosima said with a sigh, surprising him. She didn’t seem very happy. The feverish euphoria that had always gripped her when taking off on a trip to work on a long-planned film project was missing.