“The car wasn’t locked, and the key was in the ignition. And then they found her.”
In passing, Bodenstein looked into the open trunk of the black Porsche Panamera and saw big dark spots, presumably blood. Two EMTs were busy in the ambulance.
“The woman was seriously injured,” one of them replied to Bodenstein’s question. “And completely dehydrated. One or two more hours in the closed trunk in this heat and she wouldn’t have survived. We’re just trying to get her ready for transport. Her circulation is totally fucked.”
Bodenstein wasn’t bothered by this rather unprofessional expression. EMTs were front-line fighters, and the crew of a rescue helicopter was bound to see things that were much more gruesome than a normal person could stand. He glanced at the face of the woman, which was disfigured by bruises and lacerations.
“She was beaten up and raped,” the EMT said soberly. “And very brutally.”
“My colleague said she was naked,” said Bodenstein.
“Naked, hands and feet bound with cable, and gagged with a rag,” said the EMT. “What a bunch of bastards.”
“Boss?”
Bodenstein turned around.
“I spoke to the two guys who found the woman,” Pia said in a low voice, stepping into the shade of the ambulance. “They told me that the parking lot behind the rest stop is known in certain circles as a meeting place for people who want to have anonymous sex.”
“You mean she could have met somebody there and wound up with the wrong guy?” Bodenstein’s eyes swept across the field to the rest stop. There were so many sick and perverted people running around in this world that sometimes he could hardly bear to think about it.
“It’s possible,” Pia said with a nod. “Our colleagues have checked the license plate. The vehicle is registered to a firm in Frankfurt. Herzmann Productions on Hedderichstrasse. There were no papers or purse in the vehicle. But the name Herzmann sounds familiar.”
She frowned as she tried to remember.
Suddenly, the name popped into Bodenstein’s head. He wasn’t a big TV watcher, but maybe he’d read something recently, or maybe it was simply because the alliteration made the name easy to recall.
“Hanna Herzmann,” he said. “The TV host.”
* * *
A bed, a table, a chair, a cabinet of light-colored veneered wood. A small window, barred of course. In the corner, a toilet without a lid, a washbasin, above it a metal mirror. The smell of disinfectant. Eighty-five square feet that would be his whole world for the next three and a half years.
The heavy door closed with a thud behind him. He was alone. It was so quiet that he could hear his pulse beating in his ears, and the desperate need overcame him to grab his cell phone and call somebody, anybody, just to hear a human voice. But he no longer had a cell phone. Or a computer. Or his own clothes. As of today, he was a man who took orders, a prisoner, completely and utterly at the mercy of the moods and regulations of indifferent guards. He could no longer do what he wanted. The law had taken away his privilege to decide how to spend his time.
I’ll never be able to stand it, he thought.
Ever since the day the Criminal Police showed up with a search warrant, tossed his house and office, and confiscated his computer, he’d been in a state of shock. He remembered Britta’s disbelief, the disgust in her eyes when she set his luggage at the door and said she never wanted to see him again. The next day, the temporary injunction was issued that forbade him from seeing his children. Friends, his colleagues, his partner—they had all abandoned him. And finally the police had arrested him. Flight risk and suppression of evidence. Bail denied.
The weeks that lay behind him, the pretrial custody, the trial itself—it had all seemed utterly unreal to him, a labyrinthine nightmare from which he would eventually awake. When the female judge read the verdict, he realized they were really going to send him to prison for three years. His children, who were more precious to him than anything, would be twelve and ten years old the next time he saw them, but he had still believed he was strong enough to endure all of it. He had kept his composure when they led him in handcuffs from the courtroom through the storm of flashing cameras belonging to the sensation-greedy mob of reporters. He had spent so many years of his life among them, the right side of the law.
Even the medical exam and the humiliating procedures that stripped away the rights of every new arrival in the joint had failed to provoke any visible agitation from him. When he put on the worn institutional clothing that many other men had worn before him and the guard indifferently stuffed his clothes in a sack and took his wristwatch and briefcase, his mind had still refused to accept the irrevocable nature of his situation.
He turned around and stared at the scratched cell door. A door with no handle or lock, one that he would never open himself. At that instant, it became bitterly clear that this was now his reality, and he would never awake from this nightmare. His knees went weak; his stomach rebelled. He was suddenly overcome by a naked, panicky fear. Of being alone and helpless. Of the other prisoners. As a convicted child molester, he ranked at the very bottom of the prison hierarchy, and for his own safety they had put him in solitary.
He had lost all control of his life and couldn’t do a thing about it. His independent life belonged to the past, his marriage was in ruins, and his reputation had been irrevocably destroyed. Everything that had formed his personality and his life, his whole identity, had vanished along with his suit, shirt, and shoes, now consigned to a green clothes sack.
Starting today, he was nothing but a number. For 1,080 endless days.
The shrill ring of a bell tore him out of a deep sleep. His heart was pounding, he was soaked with sweat, and it took him a few seconds to understand that he’d been dreaming. This dream, which had not haunted him in ages, was so oppressively real that he could hear the squeaking of the rubber soles on the gray linoleum and smell the unmistakable prison stench of piss, male sweat, food, and disinfectant.
With a groan, he got up and went to the table to look for his cell phone, whose ringtone had woken him. It was hot and sticky in the trailer. He’d wanted to take only a short nap, but then he’d fallen sound asleep. His eyes burned and his back ached. He’d stayed up until dawn reading through stacks of notebooks and newspaper articles, listening to cassette tapes, poring over reports of conversations, minutes of meetings, and diary entries, taking notes the whole time. It was anything but easy to filter out the most important facts and put them into context.
He found the cell phone under a pile of paper. Only a couple of calls, but to his surprise not the one he was waiting for so anxiously. With the click of a mouse, he awakened the laptop from standby mode, entered his password, and scanned his in-box. Disappointment flowed through his body like an insidious poison. What was going on? Had he done something wrong?
He stood up and went to the dresser, where he hesitated a moment before pulling out the drawer. Among the T-shirts he found the photo and took it out. The dark eyes. The blond hair. The sweet smile. He really ought to get rid of the photo, but he just didn’t have the heart to do it. His longing for her hurt like a knife wound. And there was absolutely nothing that could ease the pain.
* * *
You have reached your destination,
announced the voice of the GPS navigation program.
Your destination is on the left.
Meike stopped the car and looked around helplessly.
“Where?” she murmured, taking off her sunglasses. She was in the middle of a forest. After the glaring sunshine, she could see nothing but trees and underbrush, a thick, dark green, here and there dappled with golden patches of sun. Then she noticed a gravel road and a tin mailbox like the ones in American movies. Refusing to be deterred, Meike put on the blinker, turned, and jolted along the winding forest road. The tense feeling grew. Who was BP? And who was K? What awaited her at the end of the forest road? She passed the last rows of trees. Bright light nearly blinded her. Around a curve, a veritable fortress unexpectedly appeared. A metal gate with surveillance cameras, an opaque fence crowned with a razor-wire barrier. Signs warned the uninvited visitor of the danger of guard dogs, high voltage, and land mines.
What the hell was all this? A paramilitary off-limits area in the middle of Main-Kinzig county? What kind of story was her mother chasing? Meike shifted into reverse and backed down the gravel road the way she had come until she reached a fork in the road. The other track looked like it was seldom used, but it led in the direction she wanted to go. When she was far enough off the main highway that nobody could see her conspicuous red car, she got out the binoculars from the glove box, closed the sunroof, and continued on foot. After about fifty yards, the track ended. Meike kept to the right and soon reached the edge of the woods. The metal gate was quite a ways off, but here she was out of sight of the cameras that were located above the gate. A short distance farther on, Meike spied a raised blind on the edge of a Christmas-tree farm. Luckily, she was wearing jeans and running shoes, because the stinging nettles and thistles were over three feet tall. The blind looked like it hadn’t been used in a long time; the wooden rungs of the ladder were covered with moss. Meike felt her way cautiously up the ladder, trying out the stability of the wooden seat at the top before she sat down on it. She had a perfect view from up here.
She adjusted the focus of her binoculars and found herself looking at a building. In front of the open gates, there were at least twenty motorcycles, heavy machines with flashing chrome, mostly Harley-Davidsons, but also two or three Royal Enfields. Next to them, separated by a chain-link fence, was a junkyard in which piles of motorcycle and auto parts, tires, and oil drums were stored. In the shade of a huge chestnut tree next to the building stood tables and benches. A swing barbecue grill was smoking, but not a soul was in sight. On the other side of the big courtyard, the guard dogs advertised on the warning signs were dozing in the sun inside caged dog runs.
Except for the distant drone of a prop plane, it was completely quiet. Honeybees and bumblebees buzzed in the surrounding thickets, and deep in the forest a cuckoo called.
From her elevated vantage point, Meike inspected the rest of the gigantic fenced area. Between tall trees stood a residence, surrounded by a well-tended garden with carefully trimmed bushes, blooming flower beds, and emerald green lawns. A little way from the terrace, the blue water of a swimming pool glittered, and farther back in the yard was a children’s playground with swings, sandboxes, jungle gyms, and a slide. A peaceful paradise among razor-wire fences, big motorcycles, and aggressive attack dogs. Very strange. What was this place?
Meike took a few photos with her iPhone; then she activated the GPS locator in Google Maps. She zoomed in on the satellite image, but, to her dismay, it seemed to be a few years old, because neither the fence nor the junkyard was visible. Previously, the property must have been a simple farm, before some obscure organization had entrenched itself here. The whole thing reeked of criminal energy. Drugs? Stolen cars and motorcycles? Human trafficking? Maybe something political?
Meike grabbed the binoculars again and looked at the house.
Suddenly, she jumped in shock. Behind one of the windows on the ground floor stood a man. In one hand he held binoculars and in the other a cell phone that he had pressed to his ear. And the man was looking right at her! Shit, they’d discovered her.
She climbed hastily down the ladder. A rung cracked and broke, and Meike lost her balance and fell backward into the stinging nettles. Cursing, she got to her feet, and not a second too soon, because from the woods a big black car with tinted windows was heading toward her, followed by four motorcycles. But the procession didn’t drive into the courtyard. Instead, it kept coming straight on the overgrown dirt road, directly toward the blind. Meike didn’t hesitate for even a second. She fought her way through the nettles, thorny bushes, and undergrowth into the forest. Fear had always been a foreign concept to her. In Berlin, she had lived in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city, and she knew how to defend herself if she was attacked. But this was different. She was in the middle of nowhere and hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
The car and the motorcycles stopped, and car doors opened. Voices. Meike ventured a look back, saw bandannas, gold chains, black leather, beards, tattoos. Was the fortress the headquarters of a motorcycle gang? A dog barked but then fell silent. She heard crackling sounds in the underbrush. They were sending one of those attack dogs after her! Meike ran as fast as she could, hoping she could make it to her car before the animal caught up with her. She didn’t doubt for a second that on this gigantic property there were a thousand ways to make uninvited guests disappear without a trace. Images of cesspools, vats of acid, and concrete blocks flashed through her mind. The gang would probably break up her Mini in no time and hide it in their junkyard or run it through the compactor with her body in the trunk. Then she caught sight of something red among the trees. Meike felt as if her heart might jump out of her chest at any moment. She had a stitch in her side and could hardly get any air, and yet she managed to pull out the car keys and press the remote door lock. At that instant, the dog appeared in her path. The black muscle-bound creature came rushing toward her with its teeth bared. She saw snow-white teeth in a wide-open dark red maw and heard loud panting.
“Down!” yelled a man’s voice, and Meike obeyed without thinking. In the next second, a deafening gunshot thundered. The dog, which had already launched itself forward, seemed to pause in midair. Then its body crashed with a thud against the fender of the red Mini.
* * *
“I saw Hanna last night at the after-show party.” The director of Herzmann Productions was a tall, lanky man in his late forties. He had a shaved head and sported a goatee, even though he was getting a bit old for that. He peered at Pia with bloodshot little rabbit eyes through the thick lenses of black horn-rimmed glasses. No doubt he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.