“He can shove that tab where the sun don’t shine. Bring me another pilsner.” With a groan, Karl-Heinz shoved off from the wall and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t know if it’ll lead to an arrest or not. We live right across the street from Doc. And we’re home more or less all day, my wife and me.”
He paused to let his information sink in, increasing the suspense. Bodenstein waited patiently. From long experience, he knew that people like Karl-Heinz had an uncontrollable urge to tell all, so he wouldn’t hesitate for long. And that turned out to be true.
“Recently, say two, three weeks ago,” he went on, “Doc had another visitor. And I don’t mean somebody who needed advice. No, she was a real young thing. Blond. Pretty. Half-naked. My wife thought she couldn’t be more than fifteen. And you know what?”
Brief pause.
“She just walked right into the trailer. We never saw her come out. And a couple days later, they fished the girl out of the Main. I swear to you, it was the same kid. A hundred percent…”
* * *
The wipers flicked frantically across the windshield, trying to stanch the flood pouring from the skies. Meike drove along at walking speed as she looked for a parking place on the street where Leonie Verges lived. On impulse, she’d jumped in the car and driven off, so it was only on the way from Frankfurt to Liederbach that she had a chance to think about what she wanted to ask the therapist. Her anger at the woman grew with each passing minute. Why had Verges lied to her and Wolfgang, claiming that she knew nothing? She was clearly in cahoots with this child molester and had gotten Hanna mixed up in something.
The parking places in front of the bakery were taken. Meike cursed and turned left at the end of the street to drive around the block again. She didn’t want to run through the rain and show up looking like a wet cat. She noticed a big black car parked in front of the barn wall on what was probably Leonie’s property. A Frankfurt plate. It was the monster vehicle that belonged to the tattooed biker from Langensebold. What was it doing here? A few yards farther on, Meike found a spot that her Mini fit into perfectly. By then, the rain had let up a bit. She walked along the street and stopped between two parked cars, scoping out the situation from a safe distance. Leonie Verges’s property stretched the whole length of the block, and there was a door in the wall of the barn through which she could probably enter the courtyard.
Meike shivered and pulled her hood up over her head. After the heat of the day, the rain felt cold. What should she do now? Look and see if the door was unlocked? No, she wasn’t suicidal. Maybe it’d be best to take a couple of photos of the black Hummer for evidence, because she was pretty sure that this biker gang had something to do with the attack on Hanna. As she was thinking it over, the green wooden door was shoved open. Two men came out and ran with their heads down to the vehicle as if the devil were after them. Meike ducked. An engine roared to life, headlights flared, and the giant black vehicle rolled past her. She waited a moment, then hurried to the door, which was still standing ajar. It might be impolite to enter through the back door so late at night, but Verges would probably refuse to let her in if she tried the front entrance. Meike went through the barn, which seemed to serve as a storehouse for bags of mulch and pots of all types. The front door of the house stood wide open; the floodlight on the outside wall was on, illuminating the courtyard, which was full of plants and flowers.
“Hello?” Meike called. She stood in the open doorway. “Hello?”
She cautiously took a step inside. Whew, it was hot. There was a light on in a room at the end of the narrow hall; it was shining through a crack under the door, sending a bright line across the reddish tiles.
“Hello? Ms. Verges?”
Meike broke out in a sweat and shoved back the hood from her head. Where was that stupid cow? Maybe she was on the toilet. Meike walked down the hall and knocked on the door of the room with a sign that said
COUNSELING
. This was where her mother had come. Of course she’d never told Meike that she was in therapy. Typical. Hanna always did her utmost to preserve her perfect façade; it was an obsession for her.
Curious, Meike pushed the door open. A wave of hot, dry air hit her, along with the smell of urine. Her brain took a couple of seconds to register what her eyes were seeing. On the floor in the middle of the room lay Leonie Verges. Someone had bound her to a chair that had tipped over.
“Oh shit,” Meike murmured, and went closer. The woman was gagged with duct tape, her eyes were wide open, but she didn’t blink. A thick bluebottle fly crawled across her face and disappeared into one nostril. Meike fought an urge to vomit and put her hand to her mouth. Only then did she realize that Leonie Verges was dead.
* * *
Karl-Heinz Rösner’s wife confirmed what her husband had told him. It wasn’t the first time that Kilian Rothemund had had visits from young girls. That was a clear violation of his probation, because the court had prohibited him from going anywhere near underage girls. It was perfectly clear to Bodenstein why the Rösners hadn’t said anything to the police at once, so he didn’t bother to reproach them. Here nobody cared about anyone else, because everyone was too preoccupied with their own misery. The people in the trailer park had all given up on life, and they weren’t the least bit interested in what happened in the world or in their own neighborhood. After Bodenstein had taken another look inside Rothemund’s trailer, he paid for his beer at the café and walked slowly back to his car. The thought of what Kilian Rothemund might have done to the girl in his trailer was almost unbearable for Bodenstein. Practically in full view of the public, he had brazenly indulged in his disgusting desires, undeterred because of his utterly indifferent neighbors. What promises had he offered to lure the girl inside? Involuntarily, Bodenstein thought of Sophia and how trusting she was. You could tell a child a thousand times not to take anything from strangers. But what if it wasn’t a stranger? What if it was a relative or a good friend of the family who made advances with perverse intentions? Then there was no possibility of protecting the child. There was also no use in trying to shield a child too much from the realities of life, because inevitably the day would arrive when she would have to deal with things on her own. The longer Bodenstein thought about this, the less absurd it seemed that the story about the blond girl might actually be about the dead Mermaid pulled out of the Main. At the trailer park, there was a swimming pool, basically a hole in the ground painted blue, but it did have a functioning chlorine treatment unit.
The thunderstorm was over, the asphalt was steaming, and there was a smell of damp soil. Bodenstein had just reached his car when his phone rang. He had a bad feeling when he saw Pia’s name on the display at this time of day.
“We’ve got a body in Liederbach,” she told him. “I’m already on my way over there, and I’ll try to reach Henning.”
She gave him the address and he promised to drive straight there. With a sigh, he got in behind the wheel. Tomorrow morning, he was going to send Kröger over to the trailer park to take a water sample from the swimming pool for comparison with the chemical analysis of water from the Mermaid’s lungs.
Twenty minutes later, he turned onto the street and saw the flashing blue light. Right in front of him was the silver Mercedes station wagon belonging to Dr. Henning Kirchhoff. The evidence team’s blue VW van stood next to the wide-open gate to the property. Pia had already mobilized the whole team required whenever a dead body was found. Bodenstein got out and ducked under the crime-scene tape. A few onlookers stood on the sidewalk. Pia was talking to a couple and taking notes. When she spied him, she stopped and walked over to him.
“The dead woman is Leonie Verges, a psychotherapist,” she reported. “She’s lived here for over ten years but had very little contact with her neighbors. That’s the owner of the bakery over there. In the past few days, he’s made several interesting observations.”
Henning Kirchhoff came across the street with overalls draped over his arm and a metal case in his left hand.
“Hi there,” Pia greeted her ex-husband. “I see you’ve got new glasses again.”
Henning Kirchhoff gave her a surly smile.
“Nana Mouskouri wanted hers back,” he countered. “Where do I have to go?”
“Over there through the courtyard.”
“Is that mental amoeba from your Boy Scout department there, too?”
“If you mean Christian, yes. He’s already inside the house.”
“Why doesn’t that guy ever take a vacation?” Henning muttered as he left. “I could really use a break today.”
“The baker wrote down the license plate numbers of two cars because he saw them several times.” Pia consulted her notebook. She was talking faster than usual, a sign that she’d discovered something. “F-X 562. A black Hummer. That car belongs to Bernd Prinzler! The other car was a dark station wagon with local plates. I’ll get the owner search started.”
As usual, Pia was already a few steps ahead of Bodenstein, whose thoughts were still circling around the visit Kilian Rothemund had had from the underage girl. He had to make a real effort to follow the connections Pia had discovered.
“What happened here anyway?” he asked, interrupting Pia’s report on their way over to the house.
“The woman was bound to a chair and gagged,” Pia replied. “The neighbors thought she was away because there was a sign hanging on her door. That’s why nobody missed her.”
The small house was full of people in white overalls, and it was unbearably hot.
“The heat was turned up all the way,” somebody said. “She must have been lying here for some time.”
Bodenstein and Pia stepped into the room. There was a flash as Kröger photographed the corpse and the crime scene.
“Good God, it’s like an oven in here,” Pia groaned.
“Exactly one hundred degrees,” said Kröger. “It was probably even hotter, but the door was open when we arrived. You could open the windows, by the way.”
“No, you can’t,” said Henning, kneeling next to the corpse. “Not until I’ve measured the body temperature. But Chief Detective Inspector Kröger probably wouldn’t know about body temperature.”
Kröger ignored Henning’s jabs and kept on stoically taking photos.
“How did she die?” Bodenstein asked.
“Most likely very painfully,” replied Henning without looking up. “I assume she died of dehydration, as evidenced by her dry, scaly skin and the sunken temples. Hmm. Her eyeballs have turned yellow. That could indicate kidney failure. In individuals who die of thirst, or to be more accurate, of dehydration, the blood thickens due to lack of fluid, and the vital organs then become undersupplied. Finally, death occurs because of multiple organ failure. Usually the kidneys give out first.”
Pia and Bodenstein watched as Henning first used pincers to cut through the cables binding the wrists and ankles of the body and then the plastic clothesline with which she was tied to the chair.
“She must have struggled for a long time.” He pointed to the skin abrasions and subcutaneous bleeding on her wrists and ankles. Carefully, he removed the duct tape that had been wrapped around her head. Clumps of hair stuck to the tape.
“Also an indication of dehydration, when the hair pulls out so easily,” Kröger commented.
“Smart-ass,” Henning grumbled.
“Arrogant know-it-all,” countered Kröger.
“I know who killed her,” said a voice from the doorway. Bodenstein and Pia turned, In front of them stood a pale specter in a completely soaked black hoodie.
“What are you doing here?” Pia blurted out.
“I wanted to talk to Ms. Verges.” Meike Herzmann looked like one of those figures from
manga
comics with the pointy face and the huge, heavily made-up eyes. “I … I was here before, but that time … that time she claimed she didn’t know what my mother was working on. That was a lie. I found out that she also knew Kilian Rothemund.”
“Oh, really? And when did you intend to tell us that?” Pia would have liked to smack her.
“So who killed Ms. Verges?” Bodenstein interjected before Pia could fly off the handle.
“A biker with lots of tattoos,” whispered Meike, staring as if hypnotized at the corpse of Leonie Verges. “He and another man came running out of the yard and jumped in their car just as I got here.”
“Bernd Prinzler?” Bodenstein moved to block her view.
Meike Herzmann nodded mutely. Her prickly personality had vanished. Now she was just a little pile of misery filled with guilt.
“By the way, did you notice the minicamera on the heater near the door?” Kröger said suddenly. Bodenstein and Pia turned their heads. Sure enough. Perched on the heating unit that hung on the wall next to the door was a tiny camera, barely as large as a child’s fist.
“What’s that doing there?”
“Somebody filmed her while she was dying,” Kröger said. “What absolute evil!”
Bodenstein ushered Meike into the kitchen. Pia went over to the desk and pressed the
PLAY
button on the answering machine. Seven new messages. Three times, the caller had hung up right after the announcement, but then a voice issued from the tape.
Are you thirsty, Leonie?
asked the caller.
You will get even thirstier. Did you know that dying of thirst is probably the most painful death there is? No? Hmm … The rule of thumb is: Three to four days without water and you’re dead.
Pia and Christian Kröger exchanged a look.
“That’s disgusting,” said Pia. “Whenever I think I’ve seen everything, something comes along that tops all the previous horrors. Somebody actually watched as she died.”
“Or filmed her death,” Kröger added. “It’s called a snuff movie when someone is actually killed. I’m sure there are plenty of sick idiots who would shell out big money to see this.”
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Emma couldn’t come to rest. She missed her little daughter, but at the same time she was afraid of what would happen when Louisa came back home. She’d never felt the responsibility for her child as a burden before, but now she did. It was a burden that she would have to bear all alone. It was her task to protect Louisa and the still-unborn baby.