Michaela had always had her head in the clouds and was untruthful and aggressive, but Florian had idolized his twin sister, who was only ten minutes younger than he was. So it was all the more painful for him to lose his only ally within the family to Nicky. Their parents always forgave Nicky and Michaela everything, whereas he was rebuked and punished. At the age of ten, the two had started smoking, and at eleven, Michaela was the first to run away from home. At thirteen, she was smoking joints; at fourteen, shooting up heroin. And then she was gone, first to juvenile prison, then to the locked psychiatric ward. Nicky, on the other hand, had turned into an exemplary pupil and had passed the university entrance exam at the top of his class. He never talked about Michaela anymore, but instead had developed a close friendship with Corinna, Florian’s favorite sister after Michaela.
His memories of his twin sister were anything but happy, and now that they knew the story behind her disappearance, Emma could understand why he’d never mentioned Michaela.
They heard loud voices outside in the hallway. Someone said the name Michaela Prinzler, and Florian and Emma tried to listen. Then a man came into the waiting room. He was so big that he almost filled the whole doorway; his arms were covered in tattoos, and he looked scary.
“Are you Michaela’s brother?” he asked Florian in a strangely hoarse voice.
“Yes, I am,” said Florian. “Who are you?”
“I’m her husband. Bernd Prinzler.”
Emma stared at the tattooed giant, speechless.
Prinzler took a seat on one of the plastic chairs across from them and rubbed his face with both hands. Then he leaned his elbow on his knee and gave Florian a penetrating look.
“What happened?” he asked.
Florian cleared his throat and began telling this stranger the whole story.
“I thought my sister died many years ago. That’s what my parents told me,” he said, concluding his account.
“Exactly what we wanted them to believe,” replied Prinzler. “We faked Michaela’s funeral so that she wouldn’t be hounded by these monsters anymore.”
“What monsters?” Florian asked.
“Her old man and his pedophile pals. It’s a Mafia. Once they get their hooks into someone, they’ll never let the person out of their sight. They know about every move the girls make. And they’re better organized than any secret service.”
“What … what does this mean?” Florian asked.
Emma would have preferred not to hear it, but Bernd Prinzler told them with brutal frankness about the hierarchy and the means used to operate the child-molesting ring. The disgusting details were unbearable.
Emma shuddered. Was this gruesome nightmare ever going to end? Would Louisa someday be able to forget what had been done to her? Emma wondered why she hadn’t noticed anything sooner. Were there any signs that she should have seen? She tried to remember how her father-in-law had behaved toward Louisa, tried to find some proof that would show her that he hadn’t molested her daughter. He’d never been anything but friendly toward her.
A doctor in blue scrubs came into the waiting room. Prinzler and Florian jumped up.
“How is my wife?” Prinzler asked.
“How is my sister?” asked Florian at the same time.
The doctor looked from one man to the other.
“She came through the operation fine, and her condition is stable,” he replied, almost dislocating his neck as he peered up at Prinzler. “We’ve taken her to the ICU for observation, but we were able to remove the bullet and repair the damage to her intestines.”
Suddenly, a searing pain shot through Emma’s abdomen. She gasped for air, and at the same moment her water broke, soaking her panties.
“Florian,” she said quietly. “I think the baby’s coming.”
* * *
“What happened to you?” asked Pia, appalled, when Kilian Rothemund turned around to face her. She thought about the photos they’d used during the search. His handsome face was now badly swollen; the left half was one big purple bruise all the way to his eye. His nose seemed to be broken, and his right arm looked like it had been caught in a meat grinder. Kilian Rothemund belonged in a hospital.
“When I tried to board the train yesterday in Amsterdam, they were waiting for me,” he replied.
“Who was?” Pia sat down across from him at the interview table in Bodenstein’s office. Bodenstein gave Rothemund a signal to hold his answer for a moment. He turned on the tape recorder, placed it on the table, and gave a few details about the case.
“It wasn’t the Dutch police who caught me,” said Rothemund with a grimace as the tape ran. “And it wasn’t the police who tortured me last night and shoved me out of a moving car this morning. It was the thugs from the pedophile Mafia; evidently, I’d become a threat to them. They forced me to watch a video of Hanna Herzmann being raped, and they threatened me by saying the same would happen to my daughter if I didn’t tell them where I’d sent the information that I got from two insiders.”
“Did you tell them?” Bodenstein asked.
“No.” Rothemund cautiously rubbed his unshaven chin. “I still had enough presence of mind to prevent them from getting their hands on that material. Because I knew that Hanna was in the hospital, I claimed that I’d sent the package of tape recordings to her.”
“That was clever of you,” Pia said. “There was actually somebody waiting for the mail at Hanna Herzmann’s house. Unfortunately, her daughter, Meike, was also in the house when it arrived.”
“Good God!” Rothemund was startled.
“But Meike managed to overpower the man and lock him in the basement. He’s here at the station now.”
Kilian Rothemund breathed a sigh of relief.
“Who was it? Helmut Grasser?” he asked.
“Exactly. How do you know him?”
“He’s Finkbeiner’s man who does the dirty work. He was once one of the Sonnenkinder kids himself. And he’s mentally ill.”
“Where’s your daughter now? Is she safe?” Pia asked.
“Yes. My ex-wife called her. She just got home when the police arrived to take me in.” Rothemund nodded. “I was able to talk to her briefly, and she promised not to leave the house for now.”
“We’re providing police protection for her,” said Pia.
Bodenstein cleared his throat.
“Now let’s take things in order,” he said. “We’ve already learned quite a bit from Bernd Prinzler about the life story of his wife. Today she showed up at the birthday party for Josef Finkbeiner. There she shot two men to death and critically wounded her father.”
“Good Lord!” Rothemund gasped. This news had a dramatic effect on him, and he struggled to maintain his composure. “Who did she kill?”
“Dr. Hartmut Matern and Dr. Richard Mehring, former chief justice of the federal constitutional court.”
“Those two are in the inner circle of the pedophile ring,” Kilian Rothemund stated. “They pull the strings, together with three other men, and have done so for over forty years. Until now, they’ve been committing their crimes unchecked. I have a long list of names and also plenty of proof that this list is accurate. Michaela Prinzler recounted her long years as a victim in minute detail, and she also wrote it all down. In recent weeks, Ms. Herzmann and I were able to gather a lot of evidence and statements from former victims and perpetrators to substantiate Michaela’s story. I’ve spent the past few years extremely involved with this topic, as you can imagine.”
No matter how damaged his face was, his extraordinary bright blue eyes possessed an alert intensity that made it hard for Pia to look at him. She had to force herself not to look away.
“Nine years ago, when Bernd Prinzler came to me and asked me to help his wife, I was fascinated by the topic,” Rothemund went on after a brief pause. “I had completely underestimated the determination and dangerous intent of these men. They destroyed me. I lost everything: my family, my reputation, my job. I went to prison and was convicted of child molestation and possession of child pornography. Photos and videos were found on my computer. It was all a skillfully set trap and I fell into it blindly.”
“How could that happen?” Pia asked.
“I was a blue-eyed boy in the true sense of the word.” He smiled a little, but the smile vanished a moment later. “I trusted the wrong people and I felt too safe. They put knockout drops in my drink. Twenty-four hours later, I woke up in my car after a total blackout. While I was unconscious, they put me in a bed with naked children and took pictures. This is the usual way they keep difficult people in check. I know of two employees of the Youth Welfare Department who had the same thing happen to them. Also a teacher who wanted to report his suspicions that a pupil was being abused, and at least three others. Nobody has a chance, because these men have connections in government ministries, business, politics, and even the police. They provide cover for one another, and not only in Germany. It’s an international operation, and there’s a lot of money at stake.”
He pensively studied his injured right hand, turning it back and forth.
“When the girl was found dead in the river a few weeks ago, Michaela finally wanted to talk. Bernd called me up and I immediately agreed to work with them. I had nothing more to lose, but there was a small chance I might be able to redeem myself if we could prove everything in public. Through Michaela’s therapist, Leonie, we were put in contact with Hanna Herzmann. She was excited about the possibility of getting such an explosive topic for her show. And although we warned her, she obviously underestimated the danger of these men. Just as I did. She told her old childhood friend Wolfgang Matern about it. He’s the CEO of Herzmann Productions.” Rothemund sighed. “Hanna didn’t have the slightest idea that Wolfgang Matern’s father, Hartmut, was involved in the abuse. Naturally, I knew that he owned the TV station, so I purposely didn’t include his name on the list. I didn’t want to put Hanna into a conflict-of-interest situation. Besides, at first I wasn’t sure whether she could be trusted. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that she was such close friends with Wolfgang Matern and would tell him all the details.”
“You mean that Wolfgang Matern attacked Hanna Herzmann?” Pia asked him.
“No, certainly not in person. I think that Helmut Grasser was the one who assaulted her. And who killed Leonie. You can’t intimidate women with compromising photos or videos. These criminals use different tactics with women than with men.”
Pia remembered the car with the local license plates that Leonie Verges’s neighbor had seen several times in the vicinity of her house. It was registered to the Sonnenkinder Association.
“This Sonnenkinder group,” Bodenstein said, “does it really do anything for mothers and children, or is it purely a front organization?”
“Oh, no, they do quite a lot,” replied Kilian Rothemund. “It’s actually an excellent program. They support the education of young mothers and provide scholarships for children and teenagers. But there are also children who officially don’t exist. Young mothers disappear right after they give birth and leave their babies behind because they think the children will be in good hands. Finkbeiner also likes to bring in orphans from the Far East and Eastern Europe. They aren’t reported here; they simply don’t exist, and no one misses them. They are fodder for the pedophiles. Michaela knew all about it, and she called them the ‘lost kids.’ It’s simply incomprehensible what is done to them. When the kids get too old and are no longer attractive to the pedophiles, they’re passed on to pimps or simply disposed of.”
Pia thought of the artist’s renderings that they’d had done with the help of the witness from Höchst. She excused herself, went to her office, and returned with the printouts.
“Do you know these two?” she asked Rothemund.
A fleeting glance was enough.
“The man is Helmut Grasser,” he said. “And the woman is Corinna Wiesner, also an adopted child of the Finkbeiners, just like her husband, Ralf Wiesner, the director of Finkbeiner Holding Company. He and Corinna are probably the most loyal soldiers in Finkbeiner’s underground army. Officially, she is administrative director of the Sonnenkinder Association, but in reality she’s the leader of the ‘secret police’ of the ring. She knows about everything, and she’s ice-cold and absolutely ruthless.”
* * *
Helmut Grasser talked for fifteen minutes, his words spilling out like a waterfall. Thankful at last to have such an attentive audience, he told them about a sad, loveless childhood in various foster families, and a mentally ill mother who had rejected him as the unwanted product of a rape. She was only sixteen when he was born. The Youth Welfare authorities had eventually contacted the Finkbeiners, and there he had experienced for the first time in his life something like affection and care, and yet he would always remain a second-class child. Because his mother was alive, the Finkbeiners had not adopted him or taken him as a foster child. He had grown up in the orphanage at the Sonnenkinder Association, and he’d done everything he could to win acceptance because he so wanted to belong to the family. But the Finkbeiner children, who were younger than he was, had looked down on him. They shamelessly exploited his efforts to gain their favor and constantly made fun of him.
Grasser was not married. He lived with his mother in one of the houses on the Finkbeiner estate in Falkenstein, right next door to the people he’d worshiped for thirty years. And they had never stopped exploiting his devotion for their own purposes.
“Okay,” Bodenstein finally interjected. “What about Hanna Herzmann and Leonie Verges?”
“I was supposed to scare the Herzmann woman so that she’d stop sniffing around,” Grasser admitted. “The whole thing got a bit out of hand.”
“‘A bit out of hand’?” Bodenstein said, raising his voice. “You bestially tortured a woman and almost killed her! And then you left her in the car trunk, and with that you became an accomplice to attempted murder!”
“I only did what they asked me to do,” he said defensively, and in his deep brown eyes lurked a trace of self-pity. According to his logic, he didn’t view himself as a perpetrator, but a victim. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Everyone always has a choice,” Bodenstein shot back. “Who demanded that you do such a thing?”