I Am Your Judge: A Novel (22 page)

“I don’t know.” Renate blew her nose. Then she told Karoline the story of what had happened on the morning of September 16, 2002. “I still can’t grasp that
I
am supposed to be guilty of my mother’s death. What have I ever done that’s so bad? I couldn’t have known what was going on with Kirsten. Who would ever imagine that a young, healthy woman all of a sudden would be brain-dead? What was I supposed to do, anyway?”

For a moment, Renate just sat there, staring into space and crumpling the tissue between her fingers. Karoline understood how much courage it must have cost the woman to tell her about this. The self-recriminations must have been eating her alive.

“Am I understanding correctly?” Karoline asked. “This so-called Judge killed your mother because you didn’t help out back then?”

Renate nodded unhappily and shrugged.

“It’s so inconceivable. Why didn’t he shoot me? My mother was so … such a good person. She … she was so generous and so ready to help, and she would always listen to anyone’s problems.”

Grief overwhelmed her, and she started sobbing again.

“It was so long ago,” Renate whimpered. “I had stopped thinking about it, until … until Helen showed up in my shop, together with a man.”

“Helen?”

“Kirsten’s daughter. She asked me why I didn’t help her mother that day, and only then did it all come back to me.”

“When was that? What did she want from you?”

“It was a few months ago. Sometime during the summer. Helen asked me whether I was at all aware of what I’d done back then, and whether I had any regrets. The man didn’t say a word the whole time, only looked at me in a funny way. It really scared me.”

What is Renate getting at?
Karoline wondered.

“The police asked me about him, but at the time, I was so confused that I couldn’t remember anything else. But then I had an idea.” She reached for a newspaper lying on the table and held it out to show Karoline. “I happened to see this ad the day before yesterday, and then it dawned on me.”

She tapped on a classified ad.

“This sign was on the car that they were driving. It was parked right outside my shop window.”

The “sign” was the company logo of a goldsmith in Hofheim.

“Do you understand, Karoline?” Renate whispered urgently. A fearful look had come into her eyes. “I think he might be the Judge.”

Karoline stared at her as her brain desperately tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Obituaries. Kirsten Stadler. Failure to render assistance.
Brain-dead
. She felt like a tightrope walker balancing above a black abyss without a net, clinging to the last remnants of a child’s primal sense of trust.

“Renate, can you remember what hospital Kirsten was taken to and what happened to her there?” Her vocal cords ached with tension, her palms were sweaty, and her heart was pounding as she dreaded what she might hear.

“I … I don’t know, I have to think about it.” Renate rubbed her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “It was a hospital in Frankfurt—the UCF, I think. They couldn’t do any more for her, her brain had gone too long without oxygen.…”

Thoughts were racing thick and fast through Karoline’s head; she no longer heard what Renate was saying. Somehow she managed to take her leave, and she found herself back outside in the fresh air. With unsteady steps, she walked along the dark street to her car.

She got in, put her hands on the steering wheel, and took a few deep breaths. Everything in her was fighting against the suspicion that her father might have had something to do with the Kirsten Stadler case. She really didn’t want to know. Mama was dead, and nothing would bring her back to life.

*   *   *

“We couldn’t have turned out more differently.” Kim had made herself comfortable on the love seat. “Here I am, living in a loft in the middle of Hamburg, and you’re on a farm.”

“It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted.” Pia grinned and toasted her sister with a glass of white wine. “I lived long enough in the city and had enough of wasting my time searching for a parking spot or having to park in an underground garage.”

“But you don’t have any neighbors,” Kim replied. “If anything happens to you here, nobody would know.”

“Normally, Christoph is there, and my nearest neighbor is five hundred meters away,” Pia said. “At any rate, I feel safer here than in a city, where there’s no longer any social network at all. Do you know how often we find dead bodies who have lain in their apartments for weeks and nobody misses them? What good does it do you if you live in a building with ten or twenty people and none of them takes any interest in you? Out here, people all look out for each other.”

“I don’t know if I could live in such a secluded place.” Kim took a sip of wine.

“Secluded?” Pia laughed. “Not a hundred meters from here is the most heavily trafficked autobahn in all of Germany.”

“You know what I mean,” said Kim. “I’m surprised that this solitude doesn’t bother you after what you went through.”

“That happened in an apartment with neighbors on both sides,” Pia reminded her. “And it didn’t do me any good.”

After work, the sisters had gone shopping and tended to the horses. Then Pia had cooked dinner: lamb cutlets with garlic, olive oil, and fresh herbs, with a polenta with Parmesan cheese and baby carrots sautéed in butter. They had enjoyed the delicious meal with a bottle of Gavi di Gavi and later opened another bottle.

“Do you cook like this every night?” Kim wanted to know.

“Yep,” said Pia. “Actually, Christoph does most of the cooking. He’s a divine chef. I was always the type who shoved a frozen pizza in the oven and gobbled gyros, bratwurst, or burgers all day. But now I can cook a lot of things pretty well. Except pumpkin soup.”

“
Pretty
well? It was great.”

“Thanks.” Pia smiled and poured herself more wine. A fire was crackling in the fireplace and spreading a pleasant warmth. After the complete remodel of the small house three years ago, the quality of life at Birkenhof had improved dramatically: triple-glazed windows, the addition of a second story with the new roof that was properly insulated, a modern central heating system instead of the old baseboard heaters that never really worked yet used an incredible amount of electricity. Upstairs, there was now a big bedroom with a balcony, a wonderful bathroom, and another room that she and Christoph used as a walk-in closet. The old bedroom downstairs had become a guest room with its own bathroom.

“I’m eager to get to know Christoph,” said Kim. I’m so happy that I’m here.”

“Me, too.” Pia looked at her younger sister. They used to be inseparable and had done everything together. But Pia had developed a strong yearning for freedom, and right after high school, she had left her parents’ house, which had seemed increasingly joyless and somber. She moved in with a girlfriend, started to study law, and always had some sort of job on the side so she could be independent from her parents. Kim, the baby of the family, had found it more comfortable to live with her parents for a longer time. She had been more softhearted than Pia, but also full of determination. When none of the siblings could be persuaded to do an apprenticeship at Hoechst AG, their parents had finally accepted having a bank teller and two female college students in the family. But while Lars and Kim had consistently followed their chosen paths, Pia had abandoned her studies and joined the police force. This proved to be a humiliating decision for her parents, who had already been boasting about their daughter the attorney at the bowling club and church choir. When she subsequently married Henning Kirchhoff—a man who cut up corpses for a living—Pia no longer figured in her parents’ conversations. The same thing later happened to Kim. The younger daughter, who dealt only with hard-core criminals and psychopaths, was also quietly erased from the family history. Unlike Pia, who had burned all her bridges with a light heart, Kim was profoundly hurt by the blatant disapproval of her parents. She moved to Hamburg and for the past ten years had communicated only with impersonal Christmas cards.

“What drove you to visit our parents this year?” Pia wanted to know.

“I’m not really sure,” said Kim with a shrug. “I feel like my time in Hamburg is over. After eleven years, my job no longer seems challenging, especially since I can’t count on becoming a medical director someday. But I have plenty of other job offers, even one here in Frankfurt.”

“Really?” Pia was astonished. “It would be super if you came back and lived in this area again.”

“Yeah, the thought appeals to me, too,” Kim admitted as she twirled the stem of her wineglass. “More than moving to Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, or Vienna. Frankfurt is in the middle, which I like. You can get anywhere quickly.”

“Is there any man in your life?” Pia asked.

“No,” said Kim. “Not for quite a while now. I feel great this way. What about you and Christoph? How long have you been together?”

“For six years now.” Pia smiled.

“I didn’t know that. So I guess it’s serious, then.”

“I think so,” Pia said with a smile. “We got married ten days ago.”

“What?!” Kim stared at her sister wide-eyed. “And you tell me this sort of in passing?”

“Nobody knows yet, not even his daughters. Christoph and I wanted to do it just for us. Next summer, we’re going to throw a big party here at Birkenhof.”

“Wow, that is so cool!” Kim was grinning. “Now I’m even more curious about him.”

“You’ll get to meet him soon. I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s a wonderful guy.” And on the other side of the globe. The second that she thought about Christoph, she was overcome by longing for him, even though she’d mostly been able to suppress that feeling during the day.

The sisters fell silent for a while. A log crackled in the fireplace with a shower of sparks. One of the dogs lay dreaming in his basket. His paws and snout twitched, and he barked and whimpered in his dream.

“I like your boss,” Kim said abruptly.

“What? Bodenstein?” Pia asked in amazement.

“No.” Kim smiled. “Not Bodenstein. I mean Nicola. Nicola Engel.”

“Wh-what?” Pia sat up straight, her eyes wide. “You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am.” Kim studied the wineglass in her hand. “She has something that appeals to me.”

“Engel eats raw meat in the morning, along with a handful of nails, and if necessary, she also has one of us for breakfast,” Pia said, dazed by her little sister’s surprising admission. “She’s hard as steel and never gives an inch. What could you possibly want with
her
?”

“No idea.” Kim shrugged. “Somehow she impressed me. And that hasn’t happened to me in a very long time.”

Friday, December 28, 2012

It was the stillness that woke him. All night, the storm had raged around the house, howling in the chimney and rattling the shades, but now it was completely still. He reached out his arm and felt for the alarm clock on the nightstand. Ten to six. A good time to begin the day. A day that would make headlines far beyond the local area. Since the first shot he’d fired, he’d been topic number one in the newspapers, and on all the television and radio broadcasts. That was not going to change. He would see to that. But he wasn’t pleased that he was being described as a mad killer who was slaughtering people at random. That wasn’t true, as the public would eventually learn. His idea with the obituaries was good, but the police didn’t seem to want to publicize this information. So he’d found the name of a dedicated journalist, and in recent days, he had already reported several times on the murders, and he sent him copies of the obituaries.

He tossed back the covers, went to the bathroom, and took a piss. Then he took a good long shower, as hot as he could stand. This might be his last shower, just as it might have been his last night in this house. Every day, he had to count on the possibility of being caught. Every day might be his last as a free man. Because he was aware of this, he was fully enjoying even the smallest everyday things. The comfortable bed with the inner-spring mattress, the warm down comforter and the damask bed linens. The sinfully expensive shower gel, the soft towel, the underwear that smelled of fabric softener. He shaved very carefully, using lots of shaving cream. In prison, he would no longer have this luxury. And it might all end this evening. Or maybe not for three days or even two weeks. The uncertainty was exciting, a rush that he hadn’t felt in a long time. And yet, that was only a residual effect from what he intended to do. There was no other option, because these people couldn’t be reached any other way. They had no awareness of injustice, no guilty conscience, and seemed able to get through anything. None of them had any regrets. Not one. He was going to teach them to feel regret.

He dressed calmly, checking his appearance in the mirror.

If they caught him today, he was prepared and had made all the necessary arrangements. He would deny nothing. He wouldn’t need a lawyer either, because he would confess at once and without hesitation. That was part of his plan. Seven twenty-three
A.M
. Less than six hours until he would crook his finger and pull the trigger. He slipped on his jacket and got going, in order to buy a loaf of bread and a pretzel stick from her one last time.

*   *   *

Even Bodenstein had noticed that the wind had subsided. He stood on the balcony with a cup of coffee in his hand as he anxiously looked at the limp flags in the garden of his neighbor to the left.

Wind force zero.

Ideal conditions for the sniper.

Bodenstein shifted his gaze to peer into the distance. To his left glowed the red signal light on top of the TV tower, and next to it glittered the bank towers of downtown Frankfurt. In the middle lay Höchst with its industrial park, and over on the right was the airport. In between lived about 250,000 people, any of whom could be the next victim. All the police officers in the region were on heightened alert. Vacations had been canceled and reinforcements from other federal states were being requested, but it was utterly impossible to guard the entire Rhein-Main Region. The dramatically increased police presence and the public’s elevated awareness might help to cut off the sniper’s escape route after the next murder, but it was unlikely that the police could prevent another death. Bodenstein took a gulp of coffee.