Meike frowned. Patient? Was her mother on the trail of some medical scandal? Dr. Kilian Rothemund … Kilian. K!
Was the handwritten note with the address of the biker gang from him?
Meike switched from the e-mail account to the Web and entered “Leonie Verges” in Google. On sites for Pointoo, Yasni, 123people, and jameda, she instantly found an explanation: Leonie Verges was a psychotherapist and had her practice in Liederbach. She didn’t have her own Web site, but Meike found her photo on the site for the Center for Psychotraumatology, along with her address and a short CV. Now Meike also remembered where she’d heard that name: Yesterday, when the cops were in the house, they had phoned the therapist and asked about Hanna.
So at least that mystery was solved. Meike searched for “Dr. Kilian Rothemund.” In a few seconds, the search engine listed 5,812 hits. She eagerly clicked the first link and began to read.
“Oh shit,” she muttered as she realized who—or rather, what—Dr. Kilian Rothemund was. “That’s disgusting.”
* * *
“The rape undoubtedly took place in the garage of her house,” Bodenstein began as he opened K-11’s morning meeting. “The object that Hanna Herzmann was abused with was an extension of a wooden parasol stand, and we have just received news from the lab that the blood on the wood is the same blood type as Hanna Herzmann’s. In addition, there were traces of vomit, which correspond to the forensic findings.”
He had hardly slept last night. He and Kröger had stayed at the house until after three, photographing and securing blood traces, shoe prints, and fingerprints in the garage. Then he drove home, hoping to get at least a couple of hours’ sleep, but in vain. The chronology of the sequence of events was confusing and contradicted the first theory that they had proposed yesterday.
“The perp may have waited in the garage for Hanna,” Pia said. “That points to Vinzenz Kornbichler. He must certainly know how to gain access to the house, even if he no longer has a key.”
“I thought the same thing at first,” Bodenstein said with a nod. “But he was at a bistro called the S-Bar in Bad Soden until about ten to one, which our colleagues checked out yesterday. Then he spent another half hour outside on the street talking with two acquaintances. No, he’s definitely ruled out. But I’m wondering why Hanna Herzmann took so long to drive home.”
She had left the party in Oberursel around midnight, and her car was seen at ten after one by her neighbor when she drove into the garage. Using Google Maps, Kai Ostermann had calculated the route from the industrial area An den Drei Hasen in Oberursel, where the TV studios were located, to Rotkehlchenweg in Hofheim-Langenhain: 31.4 kilometers, driving time twenty-six minutes. Even if she drove slowly because of the thunderstorm, it wouldn’t have taken a whole hour to cover that distance.
“There can be a zillion reasons for that,” Pia remarked. “She could have stopped at another gas station. Maybe she even took a whole different route.”
“I sent colleagues to all the gas stations between the two points.” Kai looked up from his laptop. “If she took the A661, the A5, and the A66 to the Krifteler Triangle, there are only two gas stations on the autobahn: the Taunusblick rest stop and the Aral station before the turnoff to Bad Soden. If she drove through the Taunus, there were no gas stations at all that would have been open.”
“Meike Herzmann said that Jan Niemöller was waiting in the parking lot for her mother and spoke with her,” Bodenstein said. He’d been sitting up half the night racking his brains to figure out a possible sequence of events. “Yet he claimed that he last saw her around eleven. He was lying about that. I sent someone to pick him up at his house and bring him here.”
“So the perp could have been lurking in the garage for Hanna, or else he got into her car somewhere on the way to her house,” Pia said, thinking out loud. “Then he stuffed her into the trunk and drove to Weilbach. Why there? And how did he get away?”
“Maybe he had an accomplice,” Cem Altunay suggested. “Or he ordered a taxi at the rest stop.”
“No way,” Ostermann countered. “There are surveillance cameras at the rest stop.”
“What about that stalker Kornbichler mentioned? Anything new on that?” Pia asked.
“Yeah, our colleagues also checked that out yesterday.” Bodenstein permitted himself a sarcastic smile. “It would have been so simple, but the man was killed in an accident last year, so it couldn’t have been him.”
The door of the conference room flew open. Christian Kröger stormed in and slapped a photo on the table.
“We got a hit in the AFIS database,” he announced. “Fingerprints that we found both on the inside and outside of the car, as well as in the kitchen and on a glass in the house, belong to one Kilian Rothemund.”
“Why is he in our system?” asked Dr. Nicola Engel, who hadn’t spoken until now. She leaned over and reached for the photo to examine it more closely.
“Child molestation and possession of pornographic photos and videos,” replied Christian Kröger, dropping into the empty chair between Cem and Pia. “He did three years for that.”
Bodenstein frowned. Kilian Rothemund—he’d heard that name before.
“Up until his conviction in October 2001, he was a lawyer in Frankfurt,” said Kai Ostermann, whose memory was computerlike. “First business law, then criminal law. The firm of Bergner Hessler Czerwenka. In those days, they represented the Frankfurt Road Kings.”
“Yeah, I remember,” said Bodenstein. “That was a pretty messy trial.”
“And it would explain why he would abuse Hanna Herzmann with a piece of wood,” said Kathrin Fachinger. “But what would a pedophile want with a grown woman?”
For a moment, there was silence around the table. Could this suspect be their perp?
“Could I take a look at the photo?” Bodenstein asked. Nicola Engel shoved it over to him. A rather good-looking man in his mid-forties with blue eyes and a serious expression. A man who at first sight did not look like he had sick sexual tendencies. A memory stirred in Bodenstein’s subconscious, urgently demanding attention. What had the photo triggered in his mind?
The telephone on the table rang, and Ostermann picked it up.
Bodenstein passed the photo on to his colleagues as he tried to marshal his thoughts.
“He’s got eyes like Paul Newman,” Pia remarked in passing, and she was right. All of a sudden, the puzzle pieces fell into place, and Bodenstein remembered.
His eyes were the most noticeable. I’ve never seen such incredibly blue eyes
. That’s what the neighbor, Katharina Maisel, had told him yesterday on the phone. Excitement seized him—it was the feeling he got whenever a confusion of hunches and disjointed facts suddenly revealed a red thread, a logical structure, a viable clue.
“I think we’re on the right track,” Bodenstein said, without noticing that he’d interrupted Ostermann in mid-sentence. “On Thursday evening around ten o’clock, Hanna Herzmann’s neighbor observed a man who arrived on a motor scooter and put something in Ms. Herzmann’s mail slot.”
He shoved back his chair and looked around the room.
“The way she described the man, it could very well have been Kilian Rothemund.”
* * *
The night had been pure hell. For the first time since Louisa was born, Emma was separated from her daughter for longer than twelve hours. She paced restlessly, did the ironing, and even cleaned out the kitchen cabinets. At last, she lay down on Louisa’s bed in total exhaustion. Her brain had conjured up a steady stream of images. Florian with another woman, the way he kissed her and made love to her. That was bad enough, but even worse was the thought that Louisa might like this woman. In her mind, Emma could see Florian, the other woman, and Louisa doing puzzles and playing Memory, watching the Disney Channel and
Ice Age,
having a boisterous pillow fight, going for walks and eating ice cream, the three of them laughing and having fun while she sat alone and abandoned in her in-laws’ house, torn by worry and jealousy. Emma had picked up the phone a dozen times to call Florian, but she didn’t do it. What would she say? How’s Louisa? Is she sleeping well? What has she been eating? Are you with another woman? Ridiculous. Impossible.
Emma had begun to count the hours until Sunday afternoon. How was she going to endure this pain, this tormenting loneliness, every other weekend?
Sobbing, she buried her face in Louisa’s pillow, beating on the stuffed animals in helpless rage. Florian could simply start a new life, while she would soon be completely occupied by a newborn. And doubtless he would seize the opportunity to bind Louisa even closer to him. Eventually, her exhaustion was stronger than her worry, and she dozed off on the child’s bed.
At seven o’clock, Emma woke up, muscles stiff from lying in such an uncomfortable position because the bed was much too short and something had dug into the back of her neck. She shook out the pillow and underneath found the kitchen shears that she’d been looking for recently. Why were there shears in Louisa’s bed?
Emma took them into the kitchen and resolved to ask Louisa about it when she returned on Sunday. Taking a shower gave her little relief, but at least she no longer felt sticky and sweaty.
Corinna had set up a meeting for nine o’clock at her office to discuss the birthday festivities on July 2. By this time, everybody must know that Florian has moved out, she thought. Emma feared their sympathy even more than prying questions, but she decided to go anyway. Maybe it would distract her from her worry for a while. She powdered her shiny face and put on mascara, which smudged instantly. With a cotton swab, she removed the black flecks above her eyes. The pedal-operated trash can in the bathroom was overflowing. She bent down with a sigh, pulled the container out of the holder, and carried it to the kitchen to empty it into the big garbage receptacle. Suddenly, she gave a start. What was that? Under crumpled Kleenex and cotton swabs lay a lump of light brown fabric. When she pulled it out, a green glass eye rolled across the floor.
Emma recognized the fabric scraps at once as the hand puppet that was one of Louisa’s favorite toys: a light brown wolf with a red fabric tongue and white canine teeth made of felt. She smoothed out the scraps on the kitchen table and shuddered, imagining her five-year-old daughter wielding the big kitchen shears. When had she done that? And more important, why? Louisa loved Wolfi more than all her other stuffed animals and hand puppets, and she had a huge number of them. Wolfi had the place of honor next to her pillow, and she often carried him around in the daytime, too. For a long time, she’d refused to go to sleep at night until Emma had put on a little show with Wolfi. Emma tried to remember when she’d last seen the puppet, but she had no luck. She sat down on a kitchen chair, rested her chin on her hand, and gazed at the scraps from the hand puppet. Something didn’t mesh with Louisa’s personality. Was her changed behavior in recent weeks really only a difficult phase? Did the child feel somehow neglected because her parents were too involved with themselves? Was this act of destruction a childish attempt to draw attention? If so, wouldn’t she have left the scraps lying on the floor of her room, instead of hiding them somewhere nobody would find them? It was strange. And worrisome. Continuing to gloss over what was going on was no longer any use. She had to get to the bottom of what was wrong with Louisa—as soon as possible.
* * *
Leonie Verges filled one watering can after another with fresh tap water. Normally, she did this in the evening so that the water would be room temperature and somewhat stagnant by morning, because that was what the roses and hydrangeas liked best. But yesterday, she’d forgotten. When she had purchased the property on Niederhofheimer Strasse twelve years ago, it had been rather run-down, with the courtyard and barn full of old junk and trash. It had taken months to dispose of everything, build trellises, and lay out flower beds, but now the old estate had been turned into the paradise she’d imagined. Climbing roses grew along the wall in luxuriant profusion, and the pavilion in the rear of the grounds had almost disappeared under the light pink blossoms of her favorite rose, New Dawn, which had a fragrance similar to apples.
On the round garden table with the mosaic top, which she’d rescued from the junk pile and refurbished, a radio played cheerful music. Leonie hummed along with the melody as she watered the hydrangeas flourishing in the semishade in tubs and wicker baskets. Despite all her professionalism, it was often difficult to blot out the human pain with which she was confronted daily. The courtyard garden provided an excellent retreat from her work. When she was trimming rosebushes, fertilizing, repotting, and watering, she could let her thoughts roam as she relaxed and gathered new strength. After she’d watered the plants, she began snipping off the withered blooms of the geraniums.
“Ms. Verges?”
Leonie spun around in shock.
“Excuse me,” said a man she’d never seen before, “we didn’t mean to startle you. But you were so engrossed in your work that you must not have heard the doorbell.”
“I can’t hear the doorbell out here,” replied Leonie, staring at her visitor suspiciously. The man was in his mid-forties, wearing a green polo shirt and jeans, and his lack of muscle tone indicated that he spent most of his time sitting at a desk. He was neither particularly attractive nor strikingly ugly, but he had a friendly, average face with an alert gaze. The woman was considerably younger. She was very thin, and her angular face seemed to consist mainly of heavily made-up eyes and bright red lips. They didn’t look like Jehovah’s Witnesses, who usually sent out a man and a woman together. Leonie was in no mood for visitors, and she was annoyed that she’d forgotten to close the big main gate.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, tossing the withered geranium leaves and petals into a bucket. Often customers of the bakery across the street wandered into her garden because they thought her property was a plant nursery.
“I’m Meike Herzmann,” replied the young woman, “Hanna Herzmann’s daughter. This is Dr. Wolfgang Matern, the program director of the TV station where my mother works, and a good friend.”