I Am Your Judge: A Novel (32 page)

“Don’t you read the newspapers?” Kai asked with a mocking undertone. “Right now, there’s a juicy scandal in the news because cheating has been going on at the clinics, and patients who really shouldn’t have been allowed to get a new liver got one anyway.”

“I know.” Pia had to yawn. “We’re going to have to ask an expert exactly what the procedure is. I’m just afraid they’re all going to stonewall us if we ask them that sort of question.”

“Then ask your ex,” Kai suggested, yawning, too. “Maybe he knows. Well, I think I’m hanging up work for tonight. Tomorrow is another day.”

They said good night, but Pia was still too wound up despite her fatigue to think about going to bed. She surfed the Net till far past midnight and learned things that made her understand why so many people preferred not to fill out an organ donor card.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

In the night, the snow had stopped, and the temperature had climbed a few degrees. Bodenstein drove through the dim early morning light along the winding road from Ruppertshain to Fischbach. Late last night, Ostermann had sent him the address of Jens-Uwe Hartig in Kelkheim-Münster. Hartig’s house was on the way to the station in Hofheim, so he decided to drop in and visit the fiancé of the late Helen Stadler before he talked to the man’s brother.

Cosima had come to get Sophia last night, but Inka didn’t stay the night with him. She was going to have to get up several times during the night to check on a horse that had been operated on for colic, so it was more practical for her to stay at home. At first, he thought of proposing that he go to her house—maybe she had secretly even counted on it—but after such a strenuous day, he felt like being alone and not doing any more talking. Down the hill in Kelkheim there was thick fog, and it was a couple of degrees colder than in Ruppertshain because of an inversion layer, which was common after a few winter days with no wind.

Bodenstein found the address without using the GPS. He got out and rang Hartig’s doorbell, but there was no answer. Just as he was about to return to his car, the front door of the apartment building opened and a woman with a baby stroller and a dog on a leash came toward him.

“Let me help you,” he said. He held the door open for her until she had maneuvered the dog and stroller outside. Then he showed her his ID and asked for Jens-Uwe Hartig.

“He just drove off a minute ago,” said the woman. “No doubt headed for the cemetery. Since it happened, he goes there every morning before work.”

“Since what happened?” Bodenstein asked.

“Well, since his girlfriend killed herself. Two weeks before the wedding. It’s really been hard on him.”

The dog was jumping around impatiently, getting the leash tangled up in a wheel of the stroller.

“Did you know his girlfriend?” Bodenstein bent down to untangle the leash.

“Thanks.” The woman smiled. “Yes, I did know Helen. She stayed with him now and then.”

“But she didn’t live here permanently?”

“No. After the wedding, they were going to move to Hofheim. He has a house there. But now he doesn’t want to live there without her.”

“I see. Do you happen to know which cemetery Helen is buried in?”

“At the Main Cemetery.” The woman took a step toward him and lowered her voice. “Her father lives in Liederbach, but Jens-Uwe wanted her to be buried in Kelkheim. So that he can ‘take care’ of her. Sounds a little freaky, don’t you think?”

Bodenstein thought so, too. He thanked the informative neighbor and headed off to the Main Cemetery.

*   *   *

“What was it like ten years ago?” Pia wanted to know. “Were the procedures as strictly administered back then as they are today?”

She and Kim were sitting across from Henning at his desk in the Institute for Forensic Medicine. They had been listening to him explain how an organ transplant was conducted and what prerequisites an organ recipient had to meet. He also described the regulations, which were under strict oversight by the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation, in particular after the scandals in recent years, which had drastically reduced the willingness of the German public to become organ donors.

“Yes, even then, the regulations were very strict,” said Henning. “Maybe not quite so much as they are today, but we learn from each instance of inappropriate behavior and error, and then new regulations are adopted.”

“Would it be possible for someone to buy himself or a relative preferential treatment?” Pia asked.

“What are you getting at?” Henning took off his glasses, polished them, and looked at Pia with a frown.

“We’re wondering why the sniper shot Maximilian Gehrke,” Pia replied. “He was the recipient of Kirsten Stadler’s heart. His father is rich. Maybe he pulled some strings with the doctors at the UCF.”

Henning put his glasses back on and thought about it.

“A patient on the Eurotransplant list can, of course, be registered as an especially urgent case,” he said at last. “Although only high-urgency patients are considered anyway. If the histological and immunological conditions are a match and the patient happens to be nearby when there is a donor heart, then it might be possible.”

“Do you know of any cases when that has happened?” Kim asked.

“Not in the case of heart transplants. But these days, there’s a lot of media coverage of donor livers,” Henning replied. “For a heart, the body size and weight cannot deviate more than fifteen percent. And naturally, the blood type must match. It’s impossible to do a transplant across blood-type boundaries. In the past, attempts were made in the USA and in Switzerland. In 1997, there was a successful transplant in Bern, but in 2004, a female patient died because the doctors apparently had confused the blood types of the donor heart and the recipient.”

“What do you mean, confused?” Kim asked in astonishment.

“If a donor heart has the universal type O, then it will match with all other blood types,” Henning explained in his best professorial tone. “Conversely, however, a donor heart of blood types A, B, or AB will not match with a recipient of blood type O. It’s also unusual for anyone to pay to get an organ.”

Pia was disappointed, because she had believed she’d found the sniper’s motive with regard to Maximilian Gehrke’s father.

“Reasonably unusual, but not impossible,” Henning went on. “In Germany, hundreds of people are waiting for a donor organ, but the willingness to donate is rather small compared to all the other European countries. That means that many patients have to spend months on a waiting list and in the meantime have to be treated with drugs. At the hospitals, the doctors who do the procedures are very familiar with these patients and their medical histories. If a potential donor is delivered to this clinic, the information is sent to Eurotransplant, which then sends back the names of several potential waiting high-urgency patients. But if the clinic says they have a possible recipient right there on-site, then that patient might receive preferential treatment. A heart must be transplanted within four hours of removal from the body of the donor; otherwise, it will no longer function.”

“How do you know all this?” Kim wondered.

“Just like you, I often serve as an expert witness for the state attorney’s office and clinics.” Henning smiled. “If you like, I can try to find out more about this particular case.”

“That would be great.” Pia finished her coffee, looked at the clock, and got up. “The UCF has stonewalled us completely. As if they have something to hide.”

“And they may well have,” said Henning with a nod. “Something must have happened and they want to keep it quiet.”

“Kirsten Stadler’s family sued the UCF back then, but the lawsuit ended in an out-of-court settlement and payment of damages,” Pia told him.

“Punitive investigations against doctors who are alleged to have acted negligently are often settled out of the public eye, and the lawsuits are dismissed,” Henning said, also standing up. “But I do have to come to the defense of my fellow physicians. It’s actually surprising that more things don’t go wrong in hospitals, because the doctors and other personnel work under incredible pressure. It’s common knowledge that after ten or twelve hours, no one is in any shape to concentrate anymore. And a surgeon and anesthetist can’t afford to make mistakes by not being able to concentrate. An auto painter can always paint over a bad spot, but the surgeon doesn’t get a second chance. The pressure is intense, and the responsibility huge.”

They had reached the hallway when Pia thought of something else.

“Could you take a look and see whether an autopsy was performed here last September on a Helen Stadler who committed suicide?” she asked her ex-husband, who seemed especially kindly disposed today. “She threw herself in front of a commuter train on September sixteenth, 2012, in Kelsterbach.”

“Sure.” Henning nodded. “I’ll let you know.”

*   *   *

In the parking lot of the Kelkheim Main Cemetery, there was only one car at this early hour, a dark Volvo with a company name painted on the side:
GOLDSMITH HARTIG IN HOFHEIM
. Bodenstein parked next to it, climbed out, and walked through the foggy dimness up the steps to the entrance gate. The last time he’d been here was a couple of years ago, on a radiantly beautiful summer day, when the murdered teacher Hans-Ulrich Pauly was buried. Before the chapel of remembrance, he turned left and followed the main path. He liked the peace and quiet of cemeteries. Wherever he went with his family on vacation, he would make a point of visiting churches and taking long walks through the cemeteries. He liked to read the inscriptions on gravestones, wondering who these people were who had found their last resting place there. Old cemeteries in particular suited his slightly melancholy nature, and even Cosima’s mocking criticism had never broken him of this habit.

Cosima. What could have happened? Why had she broken off the long-planned trip so suddenly? Did it have something to do with a man, a disappointment? Although they’d been divorced a long time now, he was not completely indifferent to his ex-wife’s feelings, and he felt anger at whoever might have hurt her. As he slowly walked along the rows of graves through the fog, among the bare winter trees with rain dripping from their branches, he thought about how strange and unpredictable the human psyche was. No one had ever hurt and disappointed him so deeply as the mother of his three children, and yet here he was, feeling sympathy for her.

In the gray light of morning, Bodenstein became aware of a movement up ahead to his left. In a row of apparently new graves, some of which still had no gravestones but only a temporary wooden cross, he saw a man standing with bowed head and hands clasped. Bodenstein stopped at a respectful distance, but the man seemed to sense his presence. He looked up, turned around, and came slowly toward him.

“Jens-Uwe Hartig?” Bodenstein addressed him.

The man nodded. He was in his late thirties or early forties and looked dazed. Red eyes, unshaven, his dark hair disheveled. Bodenstein introduced himself.

“I visit her every morning,” Hartig said. His voice sounded hoarse. “We were going to get married. The invitations had been sent out. Everything was ready, even the menu for the wedding dinner. The honeymoon was booked. Three weeks in California, that was Helen’s big dream. But in the end, they killed her.”

“Who killed your fiancée?”

Hartig stopped and rubbed his hand over his eyes.

“Her demons,” he replied softly. “Her demons were stronger than my love. They hunted her down, and that’s something I have to live with. But my life no longer has any meaning without Helen.”

*   *   *

“Joachim Winkler was previously a chemist; he worked for forty years for the former Hoechst AG.” Kai Ostermann had done careful research. “Later he was with one of the subsidiaries of the group. He never ran afoul of the law, but he’s a registered gun owner and owns several hunting rifles.”

“We’ve seen them,” said Pia. “But they haven’t been used in years. How can we find out whether he really has Parkinson’s?”

“I can take care of that,” Andreas Neff offered.

After her verbal exchange with Neff before the press conference last night, Pia hadn’t expected him to show up, but he was right on time and seemed to have had a change of heart. For the first time, he wasn’t wearing a suit. Like the rest of them, he had on jeans and a sweater. Gone were his tie and his arrogant attitude, and he even apologized for his behavior.

“Okay.” Pia wasn’t an unforgiving person, and she was ready to give Neff a second chance. He was an experienced policeman, and in this situation, she needed every team member she could get.

She began the meeting without waiting for Bodenstein, because he had texted her to say that his conversation with Jens-Uwe Hartig might last awhile. Cem reported on the visit to the Winklers; Pia and Kim then related what they had learned from Henning.

“What blood type was Kirsten Stadler?” Pia asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember off the top off my head,” replied Kai, looking embarrassed.

“Give me the file,” said Kim. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Kai shoved over the file that Dirk Stadler had given Bodenstein.

“I’ve tried to reach this Professor Hausmann,” he said. “He’s still the medical director of UCF. He’s out of town over the holidays, supposedly someplace far away, and he can’t be reached by cell or e-mail. The clinic administrative staff at UCF is still not cooperating. So far, we haven’t received the staff list from 2002.”

“Then we’ll have to work on some other angle. I propose that we form two groups, focusing on two different approaches.” Pia looked over at Nicola Engel standing in the doorway listening, but the chief nodded for her to keep talking. “One covering the search for the sniper and the other the search for potential future victims.”

“Why don’t we put them all under surveillance?” asked Cem. “The Winklers, Dirk Stadler, his son? We’re fairly certain that the perp has to come from Kirsten Stadler’s family circle.”

“That’s not feasible, just from a personnel and cost perspective,” Dr. Engel said from the doorway. “Besides, our suspicions aren’t solid enough. No judge in the world would approve that type of surveillance.”