I Am Your Judge: A Novel (34 page)

Karoline took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. It took a moment before the door opened. She hardly recognized the man she hadn’t seen in so long and remembered as full of energy. Only a sad shadow remained of that Friedrich Gehrke, who was once an important business leader in Germany and a member of dozens of boards of directors. This man was stooped and ashen-faced, with watery eyes.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Who are you?”

“I’m Karoline Albrecht, the daughter of Professor Dieter Rudolf,” she said. “Perhaps you remember me.”

The old man scrutinized her, and then an expression of recognition flitted across his lined face.

“Of course. Little Karoline.” Gehrke smiled briefly and held out a thin, age-spotted hand. “It’s been a long time.”

He opened the front door a little wider and gestured for her to come in.

“Well over twenty years,” said Karoline.

“Come in and take off your coat,” he said kindly. She removed her coat and hung it on one of the coat hooks, then followed him down the hall into a small living room.

“This isn’t exactly a courtesy call,” she said after sitting down on an uncomfortable armchair. “My mother was murdered. By the same person who killed your son.”

“I know.” Gehrke sat down, too, leaning his cane against the arm of his chair. “I know. I’m so sorry. She was a wonderful woman.”

Karoline swallowed hard.

“I … I don’t understand any of this,” she managed to say. “And I want to find out why my mother had to die.”

“Unfortunately, there are often no explanations,” replied Gehrke. “Sometimes we just have to accept things the way they are, as hard as that may be. Believe me, I’m also suffering terribly. Max was the only person I still cared about. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Karoline looked at the old man in amazement. Didn’t he read the papers? Hadn’t the police told him anything about the background of the murders? Or was Gehrke possibly a bit demented?

“But that’s not true,” she contradicted him. “This killer isn’t shooting people at random. The police think that the murders are connected to the death of a woman named Kirsten Stadler ten years ago. My father told me that back then she came into UCF with an acute cerebral hemorrhage and became an organ donor after she was declared brain-dead. After every murder, the killer has sent the police an obituary in which he has offered an explanation. He accused my father of having killed out of greed and vanity. That’s why Mama had to die.”

Fritz Gehrke stared at her in stunned silence.

“Please, Mr. Gehrke, tell me what happened ten years ago, if you know,” Karoline pleaded. “My father claims that it was all purely routine, but I can’t believe it.”

She looked on in shock as tears filled the old man’s eyes. Gehrke was clearly struggling to keep his composure and to find the right words.

“Was there also an … obituary for Maximilian?” the old man said hoarsely. There was a look of alarm in his eyes.

“Yes.” Karoline hesitated a moment, but then opened her purse and took out the copy of the article and held it out to him. Gehrke hesitated before taking the piece of paper and reading the article.

M
AXIMILIAN
G
EHRKE HAD TO DIE BECAUSE HIS FATHER IMPLICATED HIMSELF BY APPROVING OF SOMEONE’S DEATH AND BY BRIBERY.

The color drained from his face and he uttered a tormented sound. His hand began shaking badly.

“May I keep this?” he whispered.

Karoline nodded uneasily.

Gehrke took a moment to regain his composure.

“Maximilian received the heart of this Ms. Stadler,” he said huskily, and Karoline couldn’t believe her ears. How could her father keep quiet about this detail? “It was hard for him to cope with the fact that someone had to die so that he could stay alive. I … I was just so happy that he could be healed.”

“Yes, but … why was he then shot?” This piece of news thoroughly confused her.

“We did things that we thought were acceptable. All of us,” said Gehrke in a brittle voice. “And now we have to pay for them.”

“My mother had to pay for something she knew nothing about,” Karoline contradicted him. “Just like your son. I’m sure you can understand, Mr. Gehrke, that I’d like to believe my father had nothing to do with my mother’s murder. But if he did, then … then … I’ll never be able to forgive him.”

Her voice failed her, and for a moment, she pressed her lips together and shook her head.

Gehrke grabbed his cane and laboriously stood up. He went to the window and looked out into the foggy twilight.

“I think it’s better that you go now,” he said softly.

Karoline picked up her purse. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to—”

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” the old man interrupted her, and raised his hand. “I’m very grateful. Now at least I’m no longer tormented by wondering why my son had to die in such a manner.”

She looked at him and understood what he meant. As bitter as the truth might be, she, too, had been relieved when Faber showed her the obituary. But there was a difference between her and Fritz Gehrke, and she fervently hoped that it wouldn’t make the old man fall apart: The killer’s accusation was directed at him, just as it was at Renate Rohleder and at her father. Gehrke must know whether there was any truth to the claims made by the killer or whether the murders were only the crazy actions of a psychopath.

*   *   *

Spending a night in a solitary cell in police custody does something to a person who isn’t used to being locked up and alone. The isolation and the feeling of impotence when the cell door shuts with a metallic clank are things that seldom pass without leaving a mark. Even Erik Stadler was nervous; he hadn’t slept well.

Pia often conducted interviews in her office in order to create an atmosphere as relaxed and conversational as possible, so that the suspect might eventually confide in her. At the academy and in seminars, she had learned all types of interview techniques, and she knew which methods to use to get the suspect to talk, because it was important for the suspect to talk. Suspects often lied, but the more they talked, the more they got tangled up in their lies, especially under stress. Yet she decided not to have Erik Stadler brought to her office. Instead, he was taken to one of the windowless interrogation rooms. The tiny space had only a table with a recorder, three chairs, two cameras on the ceiling, and a one-way mirror, through which witnesses could observe the questioning from the next room without being seen.

“Why are you holding me here?” Erik Stadler wanted to know after Pia had turned on the recorder and given the prescribed statements for the transcript.

“You know why,” she replied. “Have you finally remembered what you were doing at the time of the crimes?”

“I told you that yesterday. I was out jogging.” Stadler was making a big effort, but he was too nervous to sit still. He was under a lot of stress. Was that a sign of his guilt? “I didn’t shoot anybody! For me, this whole thing was over long ago. Life must go on, and I want to live. As a free man.”

“Who doesn’t?” Pia countered. “Sometimes people do things without considering the consequences, and suddenly they’re stuck and can’t go back.”

“I—didn’t—shoot—anybody!” Stadler repeated with emphasis. “I was out jogging. I jog a lot. I do sports because I want to stay fit.”

“Where did you go jogging? Did anyone see you, did you speak to anyone?”

“No, I already told you that,” the man said. “I always run alone. Most people can’t keep up with me.”

“How was your relationship with your sister?”

“My sister?”

“Yes.” Pia nodded. “Your sister, Helen, who committed suicide in September.”

“Helen and I always got along well,” Stadler replied. “Our mother’s death was a terrible blow to her psyche, and she convinced herself that she was to blame. In the past few years, we weren’t as close as before. I had my company and Helen her studies and her boyfriend. I had the impression that she was coping all right.”

“Why did she kill herself?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she was more troubled inside than she appeared.”

“Do you know your sister’s fiancé well?”

“What do you mean by ‘well’?” Stadler said with a shrug. “I know him. He was always with Helen in the last years, hardly ever left her side. Wherever she went, he went, too.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yeah. He’s all right. He took care of my sister, mothered her. She needed that. Before, that was my father’s role. Then Jens-Uwe took over.”

Pia’s cell phone vibrated. She glanced at the display. Henning had e-mailed her the autopsy report on Helen Stadler.

“Okay,” she said, and got up. “I’m going to send in a colleague, and you can show him your jogging route on the map. We’ll talk again later.”

She nodded to Nicola Engel, who hadn’t said a word, and both went to the door. Pia knocked to be let out.

“Just a moment!” Stadler jumped up. “When are you going to let me go?”

“When I’m convinced that you’re not the person who shot four people to death in the last ten days,” replied Pia as she left the room.

*   *   *

It wasn’t the first autopsy report of an apparent suicide that Pia had read, but she still didn’t understand the selfishness of suicides. She felt a deep sympathy for the engine driver and the members of the volunteer fire department who had been forced to gather up scattered body parts. Helen Stadler had been inconsiderate enough to jump off a bridge over an open stretch of track and right into the path of a commuter train. Her petite, 115-pound body was ripped apart, though her torso and arms remained relatively intact.

Pia had just finished reading the report on the screen when Bodenstein stuck his head in the door.

“Hello, boss. What did the fiancé say?” Pia asked.

“Plenty,” said Bodenstein. “I think we’ve made a big step forward. Please call everyone together and then come to my office.”

“I’ll go get Engel.” Pia jumped up from her chair, and Kai grabbed his phone to call Cem and Kathrin. A few minutes later, they were all jammed into Bodenstein’s office, listening to the account of his conversation with Jens-Uwe Hartig.

“He was a doctor, but he had to hang up his profession after he reported his boss and his colleagues to the Federal Association of Physicians. He said that they had repeatedly violated the regulations within the framework of organ explantation.”

“What?” Pia was astounded. “Hartig was a transplant surgeon?” Isn’t that a strange coincidence?”

“No, not at all,” Bodenstein replied. “He got involved with HRMO, the support group, because he was unhappy with the unethical way many doctors treat organ donors. That was where the Winklers and Helen Stadler first met him.”

“What clinic did he work for?” Pia asked.

“A heart center in Dortmund,” replied Bodenstein. “Kai, please check this out ASAP. And find out where he studied.”

“Right away.” Kai nodded and jotted down a note. “If, as we suspect, Kirsten Stadler died in the hospital after her family was pressured to donate her organs, then we have the motive for all the murders. We only need to find out the names of everyone who was involved. I assume that it was not the entire staff; a handful of people at most.”

“Did you ask Hartig for names?” Nicola Engel asked.

“Of course,” said Bodenstein with a nod. “Evidently, after ten years, he can no longer remember any except for Rudolf and Hausmann, but we already knew about them.”

“Then let’s ask Erik Stadler,” Pia suggested.

There was a knock at the door, and an officer from the watch room came in.

“The mail was delivered,” she said, holding out an envelope that had already been opened. “And this came with it.”

“Thank you. Put it on the table.” Bodenstein put on his reading glasses and a pair of latex gloves and pulled the letter out of the envelope. It was an obituary with a simple cross like the previous three.

There was tense silence around the table.

“‘In memoriam Hürmet Schwarzer,’” Bodenstein read aloud. “‘Hürmet Schwarzer had to die because her husband implicated himself by driving drunk and negligently hitting two individuals, which led to the condoned death of two people.’”

“He obviously knows that we’re responsible for the investigation, so he’s speaking to us directly,” Cem remarked.

“Why two people?” asked Kim.

“Good question.” Bodenstein laid the letter on the table. “I assume that he’s referring to Kirsten Stadler and her daughter, Helen. So we have to ask the question, to whom did they mean so much that he would kill for them?”

“The father and the brother,” said Pia.

“And Hartig,” Bodenstein added. “In his office, there’s a big photo of her, and every morning before work, he visits the cemetery.”

“We ought to confront Erik Stadler with the obituaries,” Pia suggested.

“Let’s do that now,” Bodenstein agreed, and got up. Pia went to her office, printed out the autopsy report, and stuck it in the case file.

“What sort of impression did you get of Hartig?” she asked Bodenstein on the way downstairs. “What sort of guy is he?”

“A sensitive man. A sort of Good Samaritan.” Bodenstein held open the glass door to the stairway for her. “He was in love with Helen in an almost obsessive way. Her death has really thrown him for a loop.”

“So much that he would shoot people?”

Bodenstein thought about that for a moment.

“He seems to be a man who consistently finishes whatever he starts. And even though I called him a Good Samaritan, I think he’s a fighter and not the type to suffer in silence. He’ll put up a fight for anyone or anything close to his heart.”

“He knows all the connections at the clinic and I’m sure every name as well,” Pia said. “We need to consider him as a potential suspect, which means we have to ask him about his alibis for the crucial times when the murders were committed.”

“And we have to learn more about Helen,” said Bodenstein. “Where did she live? Where are all her personal possessions?”

“Let’s ask her brother.” Pia nodded to the officer who was waiting near the door of the interrogation room and now let them in.

*   *   *