To Catch a Killer Page 6

  Suddenly she took a step toward Bodenstein and hugged him. It was the first time in years that she’d touched him, but it felt strangely familiar. She still wore the same perfume.

  “I miss you,” she whispered, giving him a kiss on the cheek. The next instant, she grabbed the handle of the baggage cart, blew Sophia a kiss, and took off. Amazed, Bodenstein watched her go until the glass doors of the departure hall closed behind her and she disappeared in the crowd.

  When Pia arrived at the designated address with the help of the GPS, she had a feeling that it was going to be a long evening, because the whole cavalry had turned out in the quiet cul-de-sac at the edge of the fields: several patrol cars, the medical examiner, ambulances, forensic team, and a crisis intervention team. Blue lights flashed mutely in the night. Pia left her car behind a dark-colored Porsche with Frankfurt plates and walked through the light snowfall to the blue VW van with the side door open.

  “Hello,” she greeted her colleagues, who were already pulling on overalls and unloading the equipment they needed for their crime-scene work.

  “Hi, Pia.” Christian Kröger jumped out of the van.

  “So what do we have?” she asked.

  “A woman was shot,” said Kröger. “Her granddaughter was standing right next to her. Her daughter is also in the house. They’re both being treated for shock and emotional trauma.”

  That didn’t sound good. Not good at all.

  “Who is the dead woman?”

  “Margarethe Rudolf, sixty-four. I think her husband is a doctor.” Kröger pulled up his hood. “The ME just got here. Two of my team are still inside, but I need to examine the outside before the snow or any curious neighbors mess up the place.”

  He grabbed two metal cases.

  “Why outside?” Pia asked. “I thought it happened indoors.”

  “The woman was standing in the kitchen,” Kröger said. “But the perp shot through the window from outside. Head shot with a large caliber. If you ask me, it looks a lot like our perp has struck a second time. Sorry, but I’ve got to hurry.”

  Pia nodded and took a deep breath. So it wasn’t a domestic dispute after all. Although that would have been bad enough, the alternative might be even worse. She gazed through the whirling snowflakes at the old house. What could be waiting for her inside? Why the hell had she answered her cell phone? Right now she could have been lying comfortably on her couch and watching a movie, but instead, her damned sense of duty had brought her here. At last, she gave herself a kick in the butt, crossed the street, and followed the paved path to the front door, which was ajar.

  “Where do I go?” she asked one of the uniforms who was standing in the foyer.

  “Straight ahead and then take a right. In the kitchen,” he replied. “The victim’s daughter and granddaughter are in the house. The deceased’s husband, Professor Dieter Rudolf, isn’t here yet, and as far as I know, he hasn’t been informed. I say this only so that you’ll be prepared.”

  “Thank you,” Pia said. This was completely different from doing crime-scene work at some anonymous place. Here, they were in the presence of family members who were in shock. She was glad that a crisis intervention team had arrived, along with a psychologist and a pastor.

  “Hello,” she said as she entered the kitchen.

  “Hello, Ms. Kirchhoff,” Frederick Lemmer said, looking up and nodding to her. “She’s been dead for about an hour,” said the ME. “A single shot that struck the right side of her head. She must have been turning her head left at that instant. The bullet exited at about the same height and went through a cupboard door. In my opinion, the same caliber as the one yesterday.”

  The woman lay on her back. She was wearing a blue-and-white striped apron over a brown sweater and a thin knitted cardigan. Her facial features were almost beyond recognition, so destructive had been the effect of the bullet. There was blood and brain matter all over the cupboards and all the way up to the ceiling. Pia had learned in her day-to-day experience as a homicide investigator, as well as in numerous police courses and seminars, to keep her head functioning in situations like this and to close her heart, but the sight of the bag of flour in the victim’s left hand made her swallow hard. Her eyes took in the rest of the room. On the counter below the window stood sugar and butter, eggs, crumbled chocolate, and shredded coconut, along with a bowl, a mixer, and metal cookie cutters—Christmas trees, animals, stars.

  “She was just getting ready to bake Christmas cookies,” Pia said in a hoarse voice. Rage flared up inside her. How ice-cold would a person have to be to do something like this so close to Christmas and in the presence of a child?

  Somewhere in the house, a phone rang, but no one picked it up.

  “Are you guys finished?” Pia asked her colleagues from the evidence team.

  “We’re done with the body,” said one of the officers.

  “You, too, Dr. Lemmer?”

  “Yes.” The ME closed his bag and stood up.

  “Then I’d like the body to be transported immediately,” Pia ordered. “And get a crime-scene cleaner in here right away. Things are already bad enough for the family.”

  “Will do,” one of the officers said with a nod. “I’ll tell the morgue guy outside.”

  Pia stayed behind in the kitchen alone. She examined the shattered pane in one of the rectangular wooden lattices of the window, through which the cold wind was blowing. Death had occurred in a fraction of a second, and Margarethe Rudolf had felt nothing—no fear of death, no pain. From one moment to the next, her life was over. But her granddaughter had witnessed the whole thing.

  Pia glanced at the clock. Eight thirty. Where was Bodenstein?

  She had to talk to the girl and her mother, although she would have preferred to be spared the task. But there was no sense in putting it off any longer.

  Pia heard loud voices outside. She went into the hall and saw a slim, white-haired man in a dark coat who was trying in vain to get past two officers. “Let me through at once! This is my house!” the man cried in outrage. “What’s going on here?”

  Pia went over to him, and the two officers stepped aside.

  “Dr. Rudolf?”

  “Yes. And who are you? What happened? Where’s my wife?”

  The men from the morgue carried in the zinc coffin to remove the body and then paused respectfully.

  “I’m Chief Detective Inspector Pia Kirchhoff,” Pia said. “Could we please speak privately—?”

  “First I want to know what’s going on here,” the professor interrupted her. Fear flickered in his eyes behind the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses. “My daughter’s car is outside. Where is she?”

  In the doorway of the living room, a woman with blond hair appeared. Pia judged her to be in her early to midforties. Her face was rigid, her eyes glassy, and her expression vacant, either from a sedative or the effects of the shock she had suffered.

  “Karoline!” Professor Rudolf squeezed past Pia. “Why won’t anyone answer the phone?”

  “Mama is dead,” the woman said tonelessly. “Someone shot her . . . through the kitchen window.”

  “How did he react?” Bodenstein wanted to know twenty minutes later. He apologized for the delay by explaining that he’d first had to drop off his little daughter at home.

  “He totally collapsed.” Pia was still shaken by the intensity with which the professor had reacted to the horrible news.

  “Did he see his wife’s body?”

  “We couldn’t prevent it.” Pia shivered in the cold. “He shoved right past us and went in the kitchen. It took four men to tear him away from her body. At least his daughter was able to stop him from locking himself in his office and doing harm to himself out of sheer despair.”

  They were standing in the street by the evidence team’s VW van as the snow began to come down even harder. The corpse had been taken away, and the crime-scene cleaners had shown up and were working in the kitchen. The ambulances and the medical examiner drove off. A f
ew curious neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk underneath a streetlamp, watching as the daughter left the house and got in the Porsche with the Frankfurt plates. On the advice of the psychologist, she had not permitted Pia to speak with thirteen-year-old Greta, who had witnessed her grandmother’s murder. Pia had accepted that. It seemed unlikely the girl could have seen much, or at least nothing that would be helpful.

  “She’s leaving her father here alone,” Pia remarked. “That’s odd.”

  “Maybe he wants to be alone,” Bodenstein said. “Every individual reacts differently to a catastrophe like this. Besides, isn’t it better for the girl not to stay in that house any longer? By the way, where is she?”

  “Her father picked her up earlier. The parents are separated, and he lives in Bad Soden,” Pia told him. “I’ve sent some colleagues out to talk with all the neighbors; maybe somebody saw something.”

  “Very good.” Bodenstein rubbed his hands and stuck them in his coat pockets.

  Kröger came over to them.

  “We found the spot where the shooter fired from,” he said. “Do you want to take a look?”

  “Of course.” Bodenstein and Pia followed him around in back of the house. The woods began just beyond the property. In one corner stood a transformer shed, and on top was a tent illuminated by floodlights.

  “He was up there,” Kröger explained. “Fortunately, we were able to put up the tent before the snow started, in case there was any evidence to secure. And as a matter of fact, we found impressions of a reclining body in the moss growing on the roof. He used a bipod this time as well.”

  “Can we get up there and look?” Bodenstein asked.

  “Yeah, sure. We’ve already finished with it.” Kröger nodded and pointed to the ladder that was leaning against the wall of the transformer shed. Pia climbed up after her boss. They squatted next to each other and looked over at the house. In the summertime, the hornbeam hedge would block the view, but now they could see through it into the big window of the house.

  “Without a doubt, it’s an ideal spot, but not easy to find,” Bodenstein commented. “He must have cased the whole area very carefully.”

  “The line of sight was about sixty meters,” Kröger said to the two detectives standing next to him. “Afterwards, he could have escaped in two ways: either taking the path between the backyards and along the edge of the woods to the parking lot for the training center of the Federal Institute of Labor; or he could have gone down here past the barrier to the Hotel Heidekrug. The hotel closed last Sunday and won’t open again until the end of January, so no one would have noticed his car. And from there, it’s only a few seconds’ drive to the road to Königstein, which leads up the hill to Highway B 455. An absolutely perfect escape route. Only someone out for a walk could possibly have seen him.”

  “How sure are you that it’s the same shooter as yesterday?” Bodenstein asked.

  “Pretty sure. The bullet that we pulled out of the kitchen cupboard was the same caliber, at any rate. And we couldn’t find a spent cartridge here either, just like yesterday. He must have taken it with him so he wouldn’t leave any evidence behind.”

  They walked slowly back to the cars.

  “It sounds like the murder was carefully planned,” Pia said.

  “You’re right,” Bodenstein agreed, deep in thought. “The woman was definitely not shot at random. Let’s go back inside and try to talk to the professor. We can interview the granddaughter tomorrow.”

  Friday, December 21, 2012

  Not much was going on in the parking lot of the Seerose Industrial Park. Except for the supermarket, the discount ware house, and the bakery, the businesses wouldn’t open for another hour, and the office workers from the nearby office complexes mainly came over during their lunch hour and after work. This early in the morning, the customers were mostly pensioners or people on their way to work in Frankfurt, stopping to pick up breakfast or a cup of coffee. He waited patiently in line at the sales counter of the bakery, and even let someone go first because he wanted to be waited on by the nice young Turkish woman who worked the early shift every morning. Unlike her surly coworkers, she always seemed in a good mood. Right now, she was bantering with the two men in orange jackets who had left their garbage truck parked across several parking spaces. Who knew why they had done that?

  “Good morning!” She gave him a smile that was as charming as it was insincere. “One loaf of the usual? Farmer’s bread, sliced?”

  As a good saleswoman, she knew the preferences of her steady customers.

  “Good morning,” he replied. “Yes, that’s it. And also a pretzel stick with plenty of salt, please.”

  The loaf of bread would turn old and hard, like all the bread he’d bought from her in the past few weeks. He didn’t come here for the bread, but she couldn’t know that.

  “Certainly,” she said. A lock of dark hair had come loose from her tight ponytail to curl over her forehead. Her face was attractive, with full lips and very white teeth. A lovely young woman. A bit too much makeup for his taste, and she didn’t really need it. But above all, she was a woman with regular habits and an extremely regular schedule, which made things easy for him.

  “Do you have time off after Christmas?” he asked casually as she slid the pretzel stick into a paper bag.

  “Unfortunately, no.” A woebegone look flitted across her face, but then her usual smile returned. “But in the new year, we’ll be going on vacation. Then you’ll have to get along without me for three weeks.”

  In two sentences, she had shortened her life by at least three days. Originally, he had intended to let her have Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but her vacation plans now forced him to revise his timetable. But he still had some leeway in the schedule.

  “That’ll certainly be a big challenge for me.” He put a ten-euro bill on the counter and smiled, well aware that she wouldn’t pick up on the ambiguity of his words.

  “Well, until then, you’ll be seeing me a few more times.” With a coquettish giggle, she handed him the paper bag with the bread and the pretzel, still warm, and gave him his change.

  “See you tomorrow!” She gave him a flirtatious wink as he left, before turning to beguile the next customer with her laugh. Her friendliness was not directed at him personally. But even if it had been, it wouldn’t have done any good.

  Pia Kirchhoff stepped out of the shower and reached for her towel. Christoph had left the house a quarter of an hour before. He had taken his suitcase and assured her that she didn’t have to worry about him. Antonia and her friend Lukas would drive him to the airport in the late afternoon and bring his car back to Birkenhof sometime later.

  “Of course, I understand about work,” he’d told her the night before. “In your place, I would have made the same decision.”

  He had long since realized that he’d be flying to Ecuador alone. Just as Henning had said. In principle, and Pia had to admit this, all three of them thought the same way. They were all 100 percent committed to their jobs.

  Back when she was still married to Henning, Pia had often felt annoyed that his work was more important to him than his private life. Henning hadn’t wanted her to get a job, but she’d spent weeks, alone and bored, in their apartment in Sachsenhausen. In the evening and on weekends, she’d gone to one of the dissection rooms at the Institute of Forensic Medicine just so she could see her husband. The last straw that had prompted their separation, in March now eight years ago, had been a cable tramway accident in Austria; specifically the fact that Henning had neglected to say good-bye to her when he left. She had moved out of the apartment—and he hadn’t even noticed until two weeks later. Subsequently, she had made the two best decisions in her life: to buy Birkenhof and to return to her old job with the criminal police. She wanted to be free, and she had promised herself never to put her own desires in second place again.

  Then she’d met Christoph and fallen head over heels in love, first with his chocolate brown eyes and then w
ith his incredible personality, although in his own way, he was just as crazy as Henning. But the biggest difference was that now she, too, had a profession that she felt passionate about. She seldom saw her job as a constraint, and often enough, there were periods when she left work precisely on time and could devote herself to her animals and the farm. Yet occasionally situations like this would come up, of course, and Christoph never complained when she had to work almost around the clock. Nor would it ever occur to Pia to grumble when the zoo needed him on-site, as had often been the case in recent months while the new elephant house was being built.

  Pia stared at her face in the mirror and let out a big sigh.

  She had known that Christoph would understand and not be disappointed or angry, and although she was relieved, she was sad about his reaction. For the first time, they were supposed to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve as a married couple—but now she would sit around at Birkenhof while Christoph spent the holidays with strangers thousands of kilometers away.

  Just a little while ago, as he gave her one last hug before leaving to finish up some work at the zoo, she’d felt as if her heart were about to be ripped out of her chest. At that moment, she had doubted her decision. Could two dead people whom she didn’t even know be more important to her than the man she loved above all else? What if something happened to Christoph on the trip? What if the plane crashed or the ship sank and she would never see him again? How would she be able to stand that? She already missed him so much that the pain was physical. Ever since they met, they had never once been apart longer than a day.

  Pia got dressed and drew her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. So far, Bodenstein knew nothing of her decision to cancel her vacation. None of her colleagues expected that she would sacrifice her time off to assist in a homicide investigation, and apart from her boss, none of them would ever consider doing the same. She could still phone Christoph and tell him that she would fly with him after all. She turned off the bathroom light and went downstairs. Her cell phone was on the kitchen table. All she had to do was pick it up and press the speed dial to reach Christoph.