I Am Your Judge: A Novel (49 page)

He turned around and was looking right at him.

Can he see me, here in the construction site, behind the cement sacks?

The phone stopped ringing.

He didn’t look to the left or right anymore.

He put his finger on the trigger.

He had the man’s face right in front of him, could see every pore.

“Ralf!” called the wife, her voice shrill. “Ralf! Come inside!”

He breathed deeply in and out.

He crooked his finger and squeezed the trigger.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The news reached Bodenstein just as he was turning off the A 5 at Griesheim. He had to brake hard so he wouldn’t drift out of the exit lane into the road work.

“You were right, boss.” Kai Ostermann sounded depressed. “Ms. Kaspar-Hesse was the next target. He shot her husband. Officers from Darmstadt arrived eleven minutes after they got the call, but unfortunately, it was the wrong address. The Hesses moved a month ago. Now they live at Tauberstrasse 18. They phoned over there, but it was too late.”

“Shit!” Bodenstein yelled louder than Pia had ever heard him, and banged on the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Dammit, dammit, dammit!”

“Although the whole area was sealed off immediately, he seems to have made his escape,” Kai went on. “Where are you now?”

“We’ll be there in five minutes,” said Pia as she changed the target address in the GPS.

The tension of the past few hours turned into deep disappointment. All their efforts, all their hopes, had been in vain. Once again, the sniper had a head start on them.

“What about a helicopter?” Bodenstein shouted.

“It’s New Year’s Day, boss,” Kai reminded him. “Because of the fireworks, there’s a ban on low-flying aircraft.”

“Okay, we’ll try again later,” he replied, having regained his composure. “If you get hold of Kröger, please send him out to Griesheim, so we don’t offend our colleagues.”

“Will do,” said Kai. “Oh, yeah, in spite of everything: Happy New Year to both of you.”

“Thanks, Kai. And thanks for your help,” Pia said, suddenly tired.

As Bodenstein turned at the entrance to Griesheim off the North Ring, the first rockets rose into the night sky and exploded in wonderful cascades of colored lights. As they drove around between the A 67 and the city, the fireworks really let loose. Beyond the sharp curve that the road made at this spot they reached the first roadblock. Bodenstein rolled down his window, showed the officers his ID, and was allowed through.

At the traffic circle, he took the third exit to Elbestrasse, from which several cul-de-sacs branched off to the edge of the woods. Tauberstrasse was the fourth in a newly developed area, with scattered houses standing between vacant lots. It was easy to see in which house the tragedy had occurred. They were confronted with the scene they knew so well after every crime or discovery of a dead body: the ME van, ambulances, and police vehicles with mutely flashing blue lights. Bodenstein left the car by the last roadblock, and they walked the final stretch along the newly paved road. The cold air smelled of black powder. A hearse rolled past them, and up ahead, the first of the onlookers were gathering.

There was absolutely no doubt that this murder could be chalked up to the Taunus Sniper. Darmstadt’s Chief Inspector Helmut Möller, who normally had nothing to do with homicides and just happened to be on call, was elated to be able to turn the case over to Bodenstein. He brought them up to speed about the situation and agreed to let Bodenstein bring in his own evidence team.

“Appalling,” he kept saying. “Simply appalling. I’ve never seen anything like it. Right in front of his kids and his wife, shot to death.”

Pia’s cell phone rang. Christoph! She stepped aside and took the call.

“Happy New Year, my dear!” he shouted, in a great mood. “Has your cell network broken down again?”

“Christoph!” said Pia. “Happy New Year to you, too. I’m still at work. There’s just been another sniper murder. Can I call you back later?”

“Oh God, you poor thing,” Christoph said, full of sympathy. “I’d hoped you’d be sitting with Kim at home, drinking champagne. Sure, call me later. I’m thinking of you.”

“Me, too. I miss you.”

Pia heaved a deep sigh, silently girding herself for everything that would happen in the next few hours, and followed her boss into the house. Once again, they encountered incomprehensible horror, pain, profound despair, screams, and tears. She could hardly bear it. Bodenstein was as deeply affected as she was. Deep furrows had appeared on his face over the past few days. Nobody should be burdened past their breaking point. That was why psychological support was made available for first responders and police officers. The mental anguish of family members rubbed off on even the toughest and most experienced among them.

A blinding floodlight that was mounted up under the roofbeam and was motion-activated bathed the body of Ralf Hesse in glaring light. The man lay on the terrace in front of a white wall, and the sight was truly horrifying. Blood, brains, and bone fragments had sprayed onto the wall. The shot had struck him from the front, right in the face, and the bullet had ripped off half his head.

Pia looked around. She saw the rockets in the empty wine bottles that were stuck into the dirt of the garden that was not yet planted, a broken beer bottle on the terra-cotta tiles. Beyond the neighboring vacant lot stood the partial frame of a duplex.

“He must have fired from the house under construction over there,” she surmised. Bodenstein didn’t react. He stood there in silence, his hands in his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched, his lips pressed together in a narrow line, as he stared at the dead man at his feet.

“What drives a person to execute five people in this way?” he asked. “Murder and manslaughter in the heat of the moment, I can understand to a certain extent, but this … This sort of well-planned and executed killing is something done only by terrorists who are blinded by ideology.”

He raised his head. His gaze flickered.

“I’ve always managed to maintain a certain objective distance. But this time, I can’t do it anymore. This time I’m taking what this bastard does personally. He’s mocking us with these e-mails. God help him when we get our hands on him!”

Pia touched his arm. She knew what was going on inside him, and she shared his furious sense of helplessness.

“Let’s go talk to his wife,” she said, remembering with horror that day in July two years ago. She would never forget the all-encompassing fear when she found the dogs dead in the driveway and Christoph bleeding on the kitchen floor. And then she’d learned that Christoph’s granddaughter Lilly had been kidnapped. For her, there had been a happy ending, at least as far as Christoph and Lilly were concerned, but Bettina Kaspar-Hesse would never be able to hold her husband in her arms or fall asleep and wake up next to him again.

“Yes.” Bodenstein nodded resolutely. “Let’s get this over with.”

They entered the house through the open terrace door. The television was still on, showing people happily celebrating the new year in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Bodenstein took the remote from the table and switched it off. The dining room table had not yet been cleared; in the kitchen, dirty dishes were stacked up, and the dishwasher stood open. On a tray stood four champagne glasses and an open bottle.

A dark-haired man in his midforties spoke to one of the officers and then entered the house.

“I’m Darius Scheffler,” he said, introducing himself. “My wife and I were celebrating with Ralf and Bettina. I’ve just been helping to take the children over to the neighbors’ house.”

Although he, too, was clearly in shock, he answered all the questions that Bodenstein and Pia asked. Scheffler had set up the fireworks together with Ralf Hesse; then he went into the house to help the two women with the champagne.

“The phone rang,” he recalled. “Bettina wondered who could be calling, and Ralf shouted that it was no doubt her parents. She picked it up, listened for a moment, then turned pale and yelled, “Ralf! Ralf! Come inside!” and then . . then … I … I turned around and saw how Ralf’s head … simply … disappeared. He fell against the wall and … the blood … the blood shot up like a fountain.”

He fell silent, took a few quavering breaths, then regained his composure.

“Did anyone else see what happened?” Pia asked.

“Yes, we all did,” said Darius Scheffler. “When Bettina screamed, we turned around to look at Ralf.”

“The children, too?”

“No, not them. They’d already put on their jackets, and I managed to catch them both in time and keep them from running outside. They didn’t see anything.”

“Where is your wife?” Pia asked.

“Upstairs, with Tina. I took the kids to the neighbors across the street so that they wouldn’t have to see all this.”

“That was good.” Pia smiled briefly. “Thanks for telling us your account. Please give your personal information to one of the officers. We’ll be in touch with you later.”

They went upstairs. The doctor who had been summoned came over to them and explained in a low voice that the victim’s wife was in a bad way, but she had refused any treatment.

“Her friend will stay with her,” said the doctor. “And her parents are on their way over.”

“May we ask her a couple of questions?” Pia inquired.

“If you must.” The doctor was not enthusiastic about the idea, and Pia felt worse than if she’d had to tell someone a loved one had died.

“Please wait here,” she told the doctor. “We may need you in a moment.”

Bettina Kaspar-Hesse was sitting slumped on the bed in her bedroom upstairs, not crying, her whole body rigid, as if paralyzed. Her friend sat beside her with her arm around Bettina.

“Mrs. Kaspar-Hesse, I’m very sorry, but we do have to ask you a few questions,” Pia began after she introduced herself and Bodenstein. “Is that all right?”

Stupid question. Of course it wasn’t all right. But it was Pia’s duty to ask questions, even when she didn’t think it was wise.

“We have reason to believe that your husband was a victim of the sniper who has already shot four other individuals to death,” Pia went on, even though the woman showed no reaction. “For this reason, we have to know whether you or your husband ever had anything to do with the emergency room at the Frankfurt University Hospital. Either in the past or recently.”

Bettina Kaspar-Hesse slowly raised her head. She stared at Pia uncomprehendingly; then she nodded weakly.

“I used to work there,” she said softly. “Until my first pregnancy. Why do you ask?”

“In what capacity did you work there?” Pia ignored her question.

“I was the transplantation coordinator,” said Bettina Kaspar-Hesse. “For seven months, and then I got pregnant.”

“Do you remember a patient named Kirsten Stadler? She was brought in on September sixteenth, 2002 with a cerebral hemorrhage, then died and became an organ donor.”

Bettina Kaspar-Hesse nodded.

“Yes, I remember her well, because the day before I learned that I was pregnant.” The corner of her mouth twitched with a smile, but it vanished at once. “What’s the point of these questions? Why do you want to know? What does it have to do with what just happened?”

Her voice failed.

“Do you recall the names of any colleagues or doctors who were involved in the Kirsten Stadler case?” Bodenstein now asked.

“I … I don’t know.… It was so long ago.” Bettina Kaspar-Hesse kneaded her fingers. “My boss was Professor Rudolf. Back then, Dr. Janning was still there from the intensive care unit and Dr. Burmeister. He was the head of transplantation surgery back then, and he was really crazy, like a vulture. He used to chew me out if the patient’s relatives didn’t want to sign the consent agreement. So I would put a form down in front of them and say it was only the hospital admission form.”

Pia and Bodenstein exchanged a brief look.

“The doctors were pressuring me to persuade the patient’s parents to release her for organ donation. To use any means necessary, because time was tight and they had a patient who urgently needed a new heart. So I did it. That was my job, after all. And on that particular day, I was feeling so upbeat and I wanted to do a good job. Later, the husband filed a lawsuit against the hospital, but I don’t remember how it all turned out, because by that time I was already on maternity leave.…”

She fell silent and looked from Bodenstein to Pia, wide-eyed. Suddenly she seemed to comprehend.

“No,” she whispered in horror. “No! It can’t be true. Please, tell me, that didn’t have anything to do with my husband … my husband being…”

For a couple of seconds, she sat there stock-still, her gaze going glassy. Then she opened her mouth and uttered an inarticulate scream. She tore herself loose from her friend, fell to her knees, and pounded her fists on the floor, shrieking and shrieking until her voice hardly sounded human anymore. The doctor came running in and shot Pia a dirty look.

“Enough of this questioning,” he hissed reproachfully, as though Pia were doing it out of sheer enjoyment. She turned on her heel without a word and walked out. The suspicion that she might be to blame for her husband’s death would haunt Bettina Kaspar-Hesse to her dying day.

*   *   *

On the way home, he thought about whether he should burn the shoes in the fireplace or stuff them in a trash can somewhere. He had certainly left tracks in the mortar dust at the construction site. But it wasn’t worth the effort. They were going to catch him anyway, and then he would confess to everything; they could save themselves the trouble of doing a lab analysis of his shoes. Every radio station was talking about the fifth victim of the Taunus Sniper.

It worried him a bit how fast the police had been on the scene, as if they had known where he would strike next. They must have figured out the connections, and that could jeopardize his plan.

He turned into the neighborhood, the car bumping through frozen potholes that made the shock absorbers groan. All the houses were dark. On New Year’s Eve, not a soul was around; they all preferred to celebrate at home, where there were neighbors they could wish Happy New Year.