I Am Your Judge: A Novel (36 page)

“Where was Mr. Stadler on December nineteenth between eight and ten in the morning?” Bodenstein asked. “On December twentieth around seven in the evening? And on Christmas Day at eight
A.M
.? And yesterday around noon?”

“I … I don’t know,” Ms. Wenning stammered. “On the nineteenth and twentieth of December, he was probably in his office. And on Christmas, he was already gone when I woke up. He didn’t come back until afternoon.”

She hesitated.

“He didn’t tell me where he’d been. And I didn’t ask. Yesterday, he also planned to go into the office. They’re in the middle of compiling their annual figures, and his bookkeeper called.”

“He wasn’t at the office. They told us he was working from home.”

Lis Wenning looked helplessly from Pia to Bodenstein.

“Ms. Wenning, has Mr. Stadler been behaving differently over the past few weeks?” Bodenstein spoke in a quiet, insistent voice. “Have you noticed any change in him?”

She struggled for a moment with her loyalty, but then she nodded.

“He has changed,” she said honestly. “Quite a bit. Ever since Helen’s death. Her suicide affected him tremendously. He and Helen were always very close. Sometimes I was even a little jealous.”

She forced a joyless smile that vanished from her face at once.

“How has he changed? What seems different about him?” Pia asked

“He stopped laughing,” said Lis Wenning. “He retreated into himself and seemed far away, lost in his own thoughts. And he started devoting an excessive amount of time to sports. Erik … is addicted to danger and thrills. I don’t go with him anymore when he does these crazy things, I can’t stand it.”

Lis Wenning fell silent. She pressed her lips together and looked upset.

“Lately he seems worried all the time,” she whispered, looking down. “I’ve had the feeling he might be hiding something from me. He was always late and he hid his cell phone from me.”

“Can you guess what could have been occupying his attention so much?” Bodenstein asked.

“I … I … thought … he might have another woman.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “A couple of times I asked him about it, but … but he refused to talk about it. He really isn’t like that and … only recently he told me that … that he loves me.”

That was really all she knew. If she could have given him an alibi, she would have. She might even have tried to lie for him, but she didn’t.

“Does Mr. Stadler own a gun?”

“Yes, several. He keeps them in a cabinet at his office.”

“I wonder if you’d be kind enough to turn them over to one of our colleagues today,” Bodenstein concluded the conversation. “We will check the weapons and hope that Mr. Stadler will talk to us on Monday. He’ll have to remain in custody until then.”

Lis Wenning nodded and got up.

Bodenstein and Pia accompanied her back to the lawyer, who was waiting impatiently to see his client. But first Bodenstein wanted to speak with Mr. Stadler again. He asked Cem to drive Ms. Wenning back to Sulzbach and confiscate the weapons.

Erik Stadler was sitting with his eyes closed on the narrow cot in his cell, his head tilted back against the wall.

“Mr. Stadler,” Bodenstein began while Pia stood by the door. “Why don’t you tell us the truth? Why would you risk being charged with murder if you’re innocent? Are you trying to protect somebody?”

No answer.

“Today we’re going to remand you to the investigating prison for people awaiting trial. You might be there for quite a while, depending on the circumstances.”

Erik Stadler opened his eyes, and for a few seconds, Pia hoped that he would start talking and tell them the truth. But she was disappointed.

“Do whatever you like,” Stadler replied. “I’m not saying another word without my attorney.”

*   *   *

As Bodenstein and Pia turned into the cul-de-sac to Dirk Stadler’s house, they almost ran into a woman who came dashing around the corner, her head down. In the glow of the streetlight Pia recognized, to her surprise, Erik Stadler’s bookkeeper.

“Ms. Fellmann?”

The woman turned around in fright and then stopped. Her eyes were swollen and her face wet with tears.

“I … was just at Mr. Stadler’s to give him the keys to the office after I tried all day long to reach Erik,” she explained. “Yesterday was my last day at work, but he promised me that today we’d have a glass of champagne together. I finished up the year-end bookkeeping—all by myself because my boss left me in the lurch. He didn’t even call.” She broke into tears.

“How long have you worked for Mr. Stadler?” Pia asked.

“Since the very beginning,” Franka Fellmann sobbed. “Since October 2009. At first only part-time, but business was really good, and then Erik needed a full-time bookkeeper.”

She rummaged in her purse, took out a pack of tissues, and blew her nose loudly. “Mainly I was responsible for getting the clients to pay on time. These computer geniuses don’t like to deal with such mundane matters.”

She gave a bitter laugh, then sobbed again.

“Erik was always a great boss, and I had a lot of fun building the company up with him, but now … it’s no longer working. I have a son who needs me, and I’ve had to take care of everything at the office for the past couple of months. Ever since the boss’s sister died.”

“Did you know his sister?” Bodenstein asked.

A tiny expression of disapproval flitted across her face.

“Yes, of course. It’s a very casual office. We had a lot of parties, and Helen was often invited.”

“What sort of person was she?”

Franka Fellmann thought about it for a moment and then started crying again.

“I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead,” she told them. “But Helen was an odd duck. Everybody treated her with velvet gloves. A slap in the face probably would have helped her more, instead of all the tiptoeing around. If you ask me, Helen destroyed her family with her obsession about her mother.”

Bodenstein and Pia exchanged a quick glance but took care not to interrupt Fellmann’s outpouring of words.

“As soon as a celebration or a barbecue really got going, she would mention her mother and bum everybody out. She always had to be the center of attention. It was a totally pathological thing with her, this craving for attention. Sometimes I got the feeling that she enjoyed this role and the way she could manipulate everyone around her. Once I told her she ought to get into therapy, and she lit into me like a fury. After that, she never spoke to me again. She would look right through me as if I were made of glass.”

“What sort of work did Helen do? Did she work in her brother’s company, too?” Pia wanted to know.

“She might have wanted to, but she had absolutely zero skills,” replied Fellmann. “For a while, the boss had her answering the phone, but she couldn’t even do that right. She showed up whenever she felt like it, made personal phone calls, and was totally unreliable. Eventually, I said it was either her or me. Of course, that meant that she and Jens-Uwe didn’t want anything to do with me, but afterwards, the company ran smoothly again, and that was the most important thing to me.”

Fellmann had been jealous of Helen Stadler; she had even hated her. But when Helen died, things did not improve for Franka. Her boss’s sister had reached from beyond the grave to destroy everything that had meant anything to Ms. Fellmann.

“So what did she do after that?”

“I think she signed up at the university. To study sociology and psychology, or something like that. But she never graduated.”

“Where did she live?”

“Here, with her father.” Fellmann cocked her head toward the house. “She didn’t want to move out, although Jens-Uwe has a pretty big apartment.”

“So you know her boyfriend, Jens-Uwe Hartig?”

“Yeah, sure. A funny guy.” She dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “With a high-level need to take care of somebody. He only had eyes for Helen. He was always hanging around her, mothering her and doing favors for her, just like the boss and his father. But what I found strange was how those two were always talking about the past. Like two people in an old folks’ home. They seemed to live only in the past. Instead of getting Helen back on track, Jens-Uwe may have reinforced her craziness instead.”

“They were planning to get married, weren’t they?”

“Yes. In early October. In church and at the registration office in Kiedrich. That’s where Jens-Uwe is from. I had the invitations printed, that’s how I know. I think secretly Erik, his girlfriend, and his father were all happy, because then they would finally be rid of the responsibility for messed-up Helen.”

She sobbed again.

“I have a feeling that I’m letting Erik and the others down, but I just can’t keep on like this. For weeks, he’s rarely been at the office, doesn’t tell me where he is, doesn’t answer his cell. The job got to be too much for me. And now he doesn’t even show up on my last day, even though yesterday he swore he would.”

“Was he at the office yesterday?” Pia asked.

“No. I haven’t seen him since before Christmas,” Fellmann replied.

“Did he tell you where he was? Was he abroad, by any chance?”

“No idea. He didn’t tell me a thing.”

The cell phone in her pocket rang. She took it out and looked at it.

“My son,” she said apologetically, wiping away the tears. “I have to pick him up at a friend’s place.”

“Just one more question,” Pia said. “Do you happen to know whether Jens-Uwe Hartig is a marksman?”

“A marksman?” Fellmann looked puzzled for a moment. “No, sorry, I have no idea.”

*   *   *

“Why did you tell us such a tall tale last time?” Pia asked Dirk Stadler as they stood facing him a little later. He had taken the decorations off the Christmas tree and moved it to the terrace. He was busy vacuuming when they arrived.

“What tall tale?” Stadler gave them a baffled look. He limped over to a stool, sat down, and massaged his leg.

“About the day your wife died. It didn’t happen the way you told us.”

“Of course it did. Why would I make up a story about that?”

“Because someone paid you to keep your mouth shut,” said Pia. “So that you would give up and keep quiet and not tell anybody that your wife was still conscious when your son administered CPR and brought her back to life. How much did they pay you?”

That was a risky interpretation of what Erik Stadler had told them, but Pia dared take the gamble, anticipating a vehement denial. But Stadler merely sighed.

“Fifty thousand euros. But what you’re saying is nonsense. Erik couldn’t do anything to save Kirsten. She was unconscious and no longer responsive.”

“How would you know? You weren’t there.”

“Erik told me himself,” Stadler claimed.

“So truth and justice were worth fifty thousand euros to you?”

“I don’t think you understand,” Stadler said with a shrug. “Nobody did anything wrong. But my father-in-law wouldn’t agree to say that he was the one who had given permission to remove her organs. He was the one who wanted to file a complaint, but I was convinced that doing so would be fruitless. The opposing side had his signature on the consent form, so I was sure to lose in a trial. They offered me money if I would retract my complaint, and I accepted. Put yourself in my place. I had simply run out of energy. A pointless lawsuit against a hospital, which might drag on for years and probably bankrupt me. And it wouldn’t have brought Kirsten back. I would have to look for a new job so I could take care of my children, especially Helen, who at the time was only fifteen. I agreed to the settlement and took the money. That way I could at least provide some starting capital for their lives.”

“What was the basis for your suit?” asked Bodenstein. “How did you find out that the procedures weren’t properly followed?”

“I gave you the documents,” replied Stadler.

“I’d prefer to hear the details from you,” Bodenstein persisted.

“I didn’t want to sue.” Stadler cautiously stretched out his leg with a grimace. “For the sake of my children, I wanted to push the whole topic aside. I wanted to grieve with them for their mother, and try to accept her death. But my father-in-law gave me no peace. He was obsessed, coming up with all sorts of abstruse conspiracy theories. And what Jens-Uwe told him was naturally grist for his mill.”

“Just a moment,” Bodenstein interrupted him. “Mr. Hartig told us that he met Helen for the first time four years ago. So how could he have already told your father-in-law anything back then?”

Stadler looked up, bewildered.

“It could be that he didn’t meet Helen until later. But he’d known my in-laws longer, through the support group that they discovered shortly after Kirsten’s death. He told them that he’d already learned that some examinations were not being done within the prescribed time frame, and that OR protocols were sometimes missing or falsified on purpose by the doctors. He was very persuasive, and finally I let them talk me into filing the lawsuit. After that, the topic dominated our family—for years. The wounds would never heal. No one but me noticed how much Helen was suffering because of all this. She was a teenage girl, extremely sensitive and vulnerable, but also radical in her views, the way young people often are at that age. She was firmly convinced that her mother had been deliberately allowed to die so the doctors could transplant her organs.”

“And was that the truth of the situation?” Bodenstein inquired.

Dirk Stadler slumped forward and uttered a sigh.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that there is no deception or twisting of the truth. My wife suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while jogging and died. Helen couldn’t have changed that fact, even if she’d been standing right next to Kirsten. Maybe my wife could have vegetated for another few days or weeks in the ICU, kept alive by machines, but she was never going to wake up. Her brain was dead. The EEG showed a flatline. Helen didn’t want to hear that. She was desperate, unable to escape the idea that she was somehow to blame. In the past ten years, Helen tried to kill herself six times. Sometimes she would disappear for several days. I didn’t know where she was, and each time the phone rang, I was afraid they’d found her body. But she always showed up again, saying only that she’d been at a friend’s house. Then a few years ago, she fell in love with Jens-Uwe. Everything seemed to be going better. Helen calmed down and began to take an interest in other things. Her suicide struck us like a bolt from the blue. She had finally regained her footing in life, and she was looking forward to her wedding.…”