Emma couldn’t understand why Florian had never told her about his twin sister. What else had he kept from her? What would her life be like from now on? She had saved some money, and her father had bequeathed a condo in Frankfurt to her; the rental income from the condo would keep her afloat for a while. In the middle of the night, Emma had even written an e-mail to her previous boss and cautiously asked whether there might be a job for her in the office. She surfed the Net till dawn, visiting forums in which women reported how their children had been abused. She read horror stories about loving husbands and fathers who had turned out to be child molesters. In all these accounts she tried to find parallels to her own life and to Florian. Men who abused children had often had traumatic childhoods themselves or been the objects of abuse; the disposition to pedophilia was also often genetically determined, she read somewhere.
At six-thirty Emma closed her laptop. Only in the last few hours had she become fully aware of the consequences tied to any suspicions that Florian might have abused Louisa. The fact that she considered it a real possibility was tantamount to declaring her marriage a failure. She would never trust him again, never have a peaceful moment when he was alone with a child. It was all so repulsive, so sick! And there was nobody she could talk to about it. Not really. The therapist and the woman from the child-protection agency had listened and given her advice about how she should react, but Emma wanted to talk to somebody who knew Florian, who could reassure her and tell her that this was all utter nonsense. She couldn’t go to her in-laws. It would be wrong to confront the old folks with such a topic, especially only a few days before Josef’s big birthday party.
Then she thought of Corinna. Florian’s adopted sister was always honest with her and had become a friend. Emma appreciated her advice and opinion. Maybe she could tell her something about the mysterious twin sister. Having made up her mind, Emma typed a text message and asked Corinna for fifteen minutes of her time.
Less than a minute later, she had a reply.
You’re up early! Come to our house at one o’clock. Lunch and conversation. Okay? Love, C,
she had written.
Okay, thanks,
Emma texted back. She heaved a sigh of relief. She wasn’t happy about having to question other people about her own husband, but because of his dishonesty, he’d given her no choice.
* * *
“Please close the window. I’m cold,” said Kathrin Fachinger in annoyance as Christian Kröger opened the window wide in the conference room. The thunderstorm last night had brought lower temperatures, and pleasantly cool air streamed in, driving out the stuffy heat.
“It’s seventy degrees,” said Kröger. “And it’s stifling in here.”
“Maybe, but I’m sitting right in the draft. I’ll have a stiff neck tonight.”
“Then sit someplace else.”
“I always sit here.”
“Ten minutes of fresh air isn’t going to kill you. I was on my feet all night and need some oxygen,” said Kröger.
“Stop acting like you’re the only one who works here,” Kathrin snapped, jumping up to close the window, but Christian wouldn’t budge.
“Stop squabbling, you two. The window stays open. Now pull yourselves together,” Bodenstein warned. “Move somewhere else for ten minutes, Kathrin.”
She snorted, packed her bag, and moved. Pia was just drinking her third coffee of the morning and still fighting off one yawn attack after another. She gazed around the table, seeing nothing but exhausted faces and red-rimmed eyes. The new case had brought a whole pile of additional work. They’d already been working almost three weeks, with no weekends off, and they seldom got home on time, so it was beginning to take a toll on all of them—especially since they’d had no tangible results to advance the cases any further. They were fumbling around in the fog, and Pia wasn’t the only one who was slowly but surely losing patience. Once again, it had been a very short night. She’d gotten home at ten to three and then needed an hour to calm down before she could get to sleep.
After Kai had reported on the key details regarding the body, it was Kröger’s turn. The fingerprints they had found on the door frame and the chair belonged to Bernd Prinzler. The specialists from the State Criminal Police headquarters had tried in vain to find out where the camera in the therapy room had been transmitting and for how long. They also hadn’t yet succeeded in cracking Leonie Verges’s laptop; without a password, it was as good as useless. The horrific messages on the answering machine had come from a phone with an unlisted number, so that hadn’t produced any leads, either.
Kröger and his team had discovered cabinets full of patient files in the house, but it would take a very long time to check all of them. Anyway, it was doubtful that the perp would be included in the therapist’s files. According to the Web site of the Center for Psychotraumatology, Leonie Verges had no male patients; she had treated women exclusively.
“It could be that a husband or ex-partner hated her so much that he wanted to kill her,” Kathrin suggested.
“We found Prinzler’s prints on the door frame and chair,” said Pia. “But how did he get into the house?”
“Maybe she let him in, and then he took a key with him after he tied her to the chair and installed the camera,” Cem suggested.
“So why did he go back?” Pia was thinking out loud as she looked at the whiteboard where she’d written the name Leonie Verges. Arrows pointed to Hanna and Meike Herzmann, to Prinzler and Rothemund. She had a strong feeling that there was a connection between the attack on Hanna Herzmann and the murder of Leonie Verges; possibly they were even the work of the same perp. Last night, it hadn’t occurred to her, but this morning when she woke up, she’d asked herself who had actually called the police and ambulance. It had not been Meike Herzmann. So she’d asked to see the police log about the call to the emergency dispatch number. A man had called at 10:12
P.M.
without giving his name. “In Liederbach, Alt Niederhofheim Twenty-two, there’s a dead body in the house. The gate and front door are open,” he’d told the dispatcher.
“Prinzler’s car was seen several times by the neighbors,” Pia said. “Was he casing the house, or did he actually know Leonie Verges?”
“If I wanted to case a place, I sure wouldn’t drive around in such a conspicuous vehicle,” said Kai. “By the way, the infrared radio camera is a mass-produced item. There isn’t much hope of tracking down where it was purchased.”
Bodenstein, who’d been listening without comment, cleared his throat.
“What I’d really like to know is what Kilian Rothemund had to do with Leonie Verges,” he said. “He was with Prinzler at Hanna Herzmann’s house. I think we have to concentrate our attention on him. He raped Hanna Herzmann, he’s been convicted of child abuse before, he lives in a trailer at a run-down trailer park with no social ties, and he’d had multiple visits from underage girls. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something to do with our Mermaid, too.”
“What’s his motive?” Pia asked. “He gets off on little kids but rapes a grown woman. And then he makes her therapist die in agony. Why?”
“Because he’s sick,” said Kathrin. “Maybe Hanna or Leonie found out that he’d violated his parole. Or they found out that he killed a girl, so he wanted to stop them from going to the police.”
For a moment, nobody said a word; they were all thinking about this theory.
“And Prinzler could be covering for him or even helping him,” Kai added. “He owes Rothemund from the old days.”
“But why would they both know Leonie?” Bodenstein asked, puzzled.
Good question. No answer.
“If it’s the way Kathrin suspects,” Pia put in, “then Hanna Herzmann is in great danger. After all, she isn’t dead and might remember something.”
“You’re right,” Bodenstein said with a nod. “We have to protect her, starting now.”
The phone on the table rang. Meike Herzmann was waiting downstairs. Last night, she’d been in shock and could hardly manage to say anything coherent, but she’d promised to come to the station today. Kathrin went down to get her from the watch room.
“We’ll take up this matter later,” Bodenstein decided. “Pia and I will talk to the young woman. Kai, you take care of setting up protection for Hanna Herzmann. Cem, at eleven o’clock you and Kathrin will go to the autopsy of Leonie Verges.”
They all nodded, and Cem and Kai got up and left the room.
“Now I’m anxious to see if she’s finally going to tell us what she knows.” Pia got up, closed the window, and let down the blinds so that the room wouldn’t heat up again.
A few minutes later, Meike Herzmann was sitting at the conference table, pale and visibly exhausted.
“I visited my mother last night,” she began in a low voice. “She’s still in pretty bad shape, and she can’t remember anything. But … I … I know it was stupid of me not to come to you earlier. I … I didn’t realize how bad the situation was.…”
Her voice trembled and she stopped talking. She opened her backpack and took out two pieces of paper.
“This is the printout of an e-mail from Kilian Rothemund that I found on my mother’s computer,” she said, shoving the first paper across the table. “And this … is the note that he put in my mother’s mail slot.”
Pia looked at the page, which had obviously been torn out of a notebook, and read the few sentences.
Waited until 1:30
, she read.
Wanted to see you again. My cell battery is dead! Here’s the address. BP knows about it. Call me. K.
She turned the note over and read the address. Then she scanned the printout of the e-mail.
Hanna, why don’t you answer? Did something happen? Did I say or do something that made you mad? Please call me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk to Leonie anymore. She won’t call me back, either, but on Monday I’m going to A anyway and meet with the people with whom B got in contact. They’re finally ready to talk to me. I’m thinking of you! Don’t forget me. K.
Her anger turned to fury as she looked at the young woman who now sat there meek and subdued, as if someone had caught her with a cheat sheet during an exam at school. What a stupid little bitch.
“Do you know what you’ve done by withholding this information from us?” she said, controlling herself with difficulty as she shoved the note over to her boss. “We’ve been looking for Prinzler and Rothemund for days. Leonie Verges might still be alive if you hadn’t been so uncooperative.”
Meike bit her lip and lowered her head in shame.
“Is there anything else that you’ve kept from us?” Bodenstein asked. Pia could hear from the sharp undertone in his voice how incensed he was, too. But unlike her, he still had an iron grip on his emotions.
“No,” Meike whispered. Her eyes were pleading, her expression despairing. “I … I … You don’t understand.…”
“No, I certainly do not,” Bodenstein replied frostily.
“You don’t know my mother.” Suddenly, the tears came. “She gets really mad if anyone messes with her research. That’s why I went to this address. I … I thought I’d find out something and be able to tell you.…”
“You did
what
?” Pia couldn’t believe her ears.
“It’s an old sort of farm with a junkyard and a tall fence around it.” Meike sobbed. “I climbed up on a lookout tower just to see what was inside. But these bikers saw me and sent an attack dog after me. I … I was lucky that a ranger or something … shot the dog, and I got away.”
Pia was seldom speechless, but she was now.
“You have withheld important information,” said Bodenstein. “And it may have caused a death. What about your mother’s computer that you got the e-mail from? Where is it?”
“At home,” Meike said after a pause.
“Good. Then we’ll go there now and get it.” Bodenstein slapped his palm on the table and stood up. “Your actions will have consequences for you, Ms. Herzmann, I can promise you that.”
* * *
Next to Corinna, Emma always felt inadequate and somehow pathetic. Right now, she was sitting at the big table in the dining room, soaked with sweat and shapeless, like a whale on dry land. Corinna was cooking in the open-plan high-tech stainless-steel kitchen for her four sons, who came home at all different times from school. Corinna had been on her feet since six in the morning; she had spent several hours at the office, while also taking care of her family and the housekeeping. Emma already felt overtaxed with only one child. In the past, she had been in charge of the most demanding aspects of her job, including planning, organizing, and improvising, all handled under the most difficult and primitive conditions. At nineteen, she moved out of her parents’ house and had always managed her own life by herself without problem. What had changed? When had she stopped trusting herself? She used to be responsible for making sure that tons of food supplies and medical equipment safely reached the most remote corners of the world, while today even a trip to the supermarket presented a challenge.
The kitchen smelled like tomatoes and basil, garlic and sautéed meat, and Emma’s stomach growled with hunger. As Corinna emptied the dishwasher, she talked about the final preparations for the big party on Friday.
“I’ll be done in a sec,” Corinna said with a smile. “You can spare a few minutes, can’t you?”
I have all day, Emma thought, but she didn’t say it out loud, merely nodding. In silence, she listened to the little everyday anecdotes that Corinna recounted about her husband and sons, and suddenly she felt so envious. How she would have liked to have a home and a husband who spontaneously brought home sushi for dinner, who watered the garden and did all sorts of things with his sons, and who every evening shared a glass of wine with his wife as they discussed the events of that day. How did her life look in comparison? Her only home was a furnished apartment that belonged to her in-laws, and she had a husband who hardly ever told her anything and who had simply abandoned her shortly before the birth of their second child. She didn’t even want to think about her terrible suspicions about what he might have done to Louisa. The feeling had begun to grow that she’d lost Florian forever, and in the past few days this feeling had changed to certainty. What had happened could no longer be undone.