I Am Your Judge: A Novel (61 page)

Thomsen was silent for a long time; then he sighed and looked up.

“He never told Helen anything about it,” he said despondently. “It was me. And that’s how this whole ill-fated story first got started.”

Pia glanced quickly over at her boss.

“Up until that point, Helen was firmly convinced that she was the only one who could have prevented her mother’s death,” Thomsen went on. “For her, it was like a deliverance when she realized that it wasn’t her fault, but the doctors’. Maybe she would have let it go at that if Hartig and I hadn’t been there. Jens-Uwe fell in love with her, and she skillfully extracted every detail out of him, goaded on by her father, her grandfather, and me. For all of us, there was only one idea and one intention—revenge! Each of us had his own personal motive, but in the end, we all wanted the same thing: to bring the truth to light. We’re to blame that the dust won’t settle on the case.”

“And Hartig? What did he do?”

“He only gradually realized what would happen if Helen found out what part he had actually played in her mother’s story. To his credit, he regretted it bitterly. But he did do it.”

“He did do what?” Bodenstein asked.

“Kirsten Stadler’s heart was the first one he was allowed to remove and transplant,” said Thomsen. “It was his first organ transplantation in a promising career as a transplant surgeon. He did everything right, but at the time, he knew nothing about the circumstances.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he told me about it once. Many years ago, when he gave his first talk at HRMO. Before he’d met Helen in person. It was a perfect storm that eventually led to more people dying.”

“Who came up with the idea of killing the relatives of the people involved?” Pia wanted to know. “What did you have to do with that?”

Again, Thomsen thought for a moment before he replied.

“I wanted to bring to light the truth about Rudolf’s human experiments,” he said. “So Hartig seemed the right choice as informant. He and I might have been able to manage it on our own. In two cases, we had names and evidence, after all, and there were witnesses who would have testified. But then Helen got involved, and her family, and the whole thing turned highly emotional. In the case of her mother, there hadn’t been any evidence or a credible witness, but now she had one.”

“Hartig.”

“Exactly. And he couldn’t slow her down. I couldn’t either. I tried, but she did whatever she liked. Hartig’s tool of choice was psychopharmaceuticals, while mine was limited support of her plans. I thought I had everything under control, but I was wrong.”

“Helen’s father was in the National People’s Army of East Germany,” Bodenstein remarked.

“What?” Thomsen gave him an astonished look.

“We suspect that Dirk Stadler is the sniper,” Bodenstein said. “Do you think he would be capable of something like that?”

Thomsen frowned, pondering.

“I never would have thought of Dirk in that connection, but now that you mention it … He suffered a lot after his wife died. His whole life ended. Maybe that’s why he held on so tight to Helen. He didn’t want to let her go, because he was afraid to be alone.”

Thomsen’s comment contradicted what Stadler had told them.

“Wasn’t it the other way around? That Helen clung to her father?” Pia asked.

“She was too weak to tell him that she wanted to live her own life.” He sighed. “For half her life, she’d hoped that his personality would change, or that he’d find another woman. That he’d be able to return to a normal life once the past was cleared up and the guilty were punished. But Dirk seemed satisfied with the way things were. He pictured the two of them together forever. He had shut himself off from the outside world and lived only in the past. That’s also why he hated me so much. He was afraid I might take her away from him.”

“I should think Hartig would have been an even bigger threat,” Bodenstein said.

“No. Dirk had the upper hand because of Hartig’s guilt complex. Hartig and Helen kept allowing him to manipulate them and subject them to emotional blackmail.”

“So did Stadler know that Hartig was once part of Rudolf’s team?”

“Yes, of course. Hartig must have told him when he convinced him, together with Winkler, to join the suit against the UCF. Everyone knew except Helen.”

All at once, they saw everything they knew about Dirk Stadler in a completely different light. They had paid so little attention to him that they hadn’t noticed the dark, damaged side of his character.

“Why did the Winklers break off contact with their son-in-law?” Pia asked.

“Joachim and Lydia disapproved of the way Dirk lived with his daughter. They thought it unhealthy. Helen slept in the same bed with him, they watched television holding hands, and they did everything together. She was undoubtedly utterly fixated on her father, and he prevented her from leaving the nest. Viewed from outside, Dirk always acted like he wanted to protect her, but in reality, just the opposite was true. Helen’s death finally pulled the rug out from under Dirk’s feet. He thought she had killed herself because she could no longer live with the guilt surrounding her mother’s death.”

Everything Thomsen said sounded plausible and also happened to confirm Karoline Albrecht’s suspicions. The picture was finally complete. Still, Bodenstein was furious.

“Why are you only telling us this now, Thomsen?” he brusquely admonished the man, whom he had almost come to like. “Why didn’t you lay all your cards on the table right away? You would have saved yourself and us a lot of trouble,—and maybe even prevented the killing of Ralf Hesse and the maiming of Dr. Burmeister!”

A mocking glint appeared in Thomsen’s eyes.

“Save Burmeister? That’s the last thing I’d want to do,” he replied coldly. “And considering the way I was treated by the police force, the way they kicked me in the ass, I had no reason to help you in any way.”

“So why then this sudden change of heart?”

“I don’t want any of these bastards to get out of this unscathed,” Thomsen admitted. “They should get the punishment they deserve.”

*   *   *

Professor Dieter Paul Rudolf was sitting at the table in the interrogation room like a bored guest at a coffee klatsch, his hands in his pants pockets and his legs crossed. He had watched the video without batting an eye, totally unimpressed by the gruesome fate of his former colleague.

“When can I get out of here?” he asked after responding to all their questions with stubborn silence.

“The way it looks, never,” replied Pia. “The state attorney’s office is preparing an indictment for at least three counts of homicide against you. Your days of playing golf and doing heart surgery are over, as well as your dream of the Nobel Prize.”

Rudolf looked at her for the first time.

“What is all this nonsense?” He took his hands out of his pockets and sat up straight. “Do you have any idea whom you’re talking to?”

“Certainly.” Pia glared back at him. “We’ve learned a great deal about you recently. You lied when you claimed you could make no sense of the sniper’s e-mail, and that you’d never had a problem with a patient’s relatives. We also know that you and your former chief physician, Burmeister, precipitated Kirsten Stadler’s death so you could transplant her heart into Fritz Gehrke’s son. We know your motives. We know that Gehrke threatened to withdraw his funding because your ambitious research had failed to produce results. We know that you used the medication, which was still in the animal-testing stage, on human beings, and that those patients died.”

Rudolf’s pale cheeks flushed with anger.

“Your vanity would not tolerate the failure,” Pia continued to provoke him. “You were carried away by the idea of being the first surgeon in the world to succeed in transplanting hearts across the blood-type barrier. You had your eye on the Nobel Prize: fame and honor and a huge sum of money. You were utterly ruthless. You regarded Kirsten Stadler, with her O blood type, as a gift from heaven. The woman was of no more importance to you back then than your old friend Burmeister is now, or the death of your wife—”

“Shut up!” Rudolf growled in fury. His hands were beginning to tremble.

“For you, the organ donors were merely raw material, your patients only means to an end, and you treated your subordinates like shit.” Pia didn’t take her eyes off him, alert to the slightest reaction from her opponent. “But then all your grandiose plans were brought down by an unimportant young doctor who could no longer stand your contempt for humanity and your arrogant megalomania. Jens-Uwe Hartig reported you to hospital management and the Federal Association of Physicians. And because of that, you had to resign from the Frankfurt University Clinic.”

“I helped thousands of people!” Rudolf protested. “I made pioneering discoveries in the field of organ transplantation, and you … you bigoted little cop, you’re dragging it all into the dirt! All of you are completely clueless! I have the vision and the courage to implement new ideas. Men like me have always made advancements for mankind. Without us, people would still be huddling in caves. Sacrifices are inevitable.”

“Men like you damage the entire medical profession!” Pia countered sharply. “You have killed innocent victims. You will go down in the history of transplantation medicine as a ruthless, greedy criminal. People will be horrified and will throw your books in the recycling bin.”

Her words struck his conceited soul like a blow of the sword. Pia could see the effect on Rudolf’s face. He was intelligent enough to realize that she was right.

“A doctor who feels so little empathy for his patients would do better as a carpenter,” she continued relentlessly. “The results wouldn’t be so bad when an experiment fails.”

“I’m not a failure!” Rudolf snarled. A vein throbbed in his temple and beads of sweat had formed on his brow.

“Yes, you are,” said Pia. The pity in her voice brought the professor to white heat. “In every respect, both professionally and personally. You’ll be an embittered old man by the time you get out of prison.”

Dieter Rudolf’s face was twitching uncontrollably, and he rubbed his palms on his thighs.

“Who pushed Helen Stadler in front of the train?” Pia asked unexpectedly. “Was that how you were trying to cover up your failure?”

The professor stared at her, full of hate.

“I wish I had done it!” he croaked. “I wish I’d killed that little slut who wanted to destroy my life’s work, but regrettably, it wasn’t me.”

Spit sprayed from his lips, and his knuckles turned white.

“Who was it?” Pia asked, unmoved. “Tell us. If you cooperate, it could go a lot easier for you.”

“You can kiss my ass!” the professor exploded. “I want to call my lawyer right now.”

Pia and Bodenstein stood up.

“You’d better look for an expert in criminal law,” Bodenstein advised him. “You’re going to have to answer in court for several counts of homicide.”

“You haven’t got a thing on me!” Rudolf yelled, now beside himself with rage. “Not a damn thing!”

“Oh, yes, we do,” Bodenstein said with a cool smile. “You were seen on Saturday night leaving Fritz Gehrke’s house after you knocked him out with chloroform and killed him with an overdose of insulin.”

“How can you accuse me of something like that?” The professor wasn’t easily cowed. “Fritz was my friend.”

“Friendships can be broken if one friend lies to the other,” replied Bodenstein. “In your house, we found clothes that reeked of smoke. In your car, there were document binders that belonged to Mr. Gehrke, and a bottle of chloroform. And in your safe, we found a cell phone that you used to make a lot of calls in recent days. Your daughter was very cooperative.”

Rudolf turned pale as a corpse.

“She planted that evidence because she hates my guts,” he claimed. “I want a lawyer. Right now.”

*   *   *

“What a disgusting character,” Pia said with a shudder after they’d left the interrogation room. “He doesn’t give a damn about Burmeister.”

“A megalomaniac who has lost all touch with reality,” replied Bodenstein. “Narcissistic and blinded by ambition.”

“If he hadn’t lied to us, we would have gotten wise to Stadler much sooner. That made me so mad, I just had to provoke him.”

They walked down the hall to the conference room.

“Whom are Riegelhoff and Furtwängler afraid of? All this happened ten years ago.” Pia stopped next to the fire door by the stairwell.

“I can understand the anxiety Furtwängler must feel, or the director of the UCF,” Bodenstein said. “A scandal like this could ruin the reputation of a clinic or hospital, especially when people find out it was covered up.”

“Then the lawyer must feel the same,” Pia said with a nod. “He was actively involved in the cover-up and must be afraid that he’ll be disbarred or even end up being indicted. Bribes and hush money may have changed hands. Who knows?”

Bodenstein opened the glass doors, and a moment later, they entered the conference room. Several colleagues were startled out of their lethargy, while others kept dozing. Dirty dishes, empty glasses, and bottles covered the side tables along with pizza boxes. The room was stuffy and it was as quiet as a church. Seeing his exhausted team, Bodenstein fervently hoped that the investigation would soon be over and they would have a chance to rest.

At one table, the state attorney in charge, Nicola Engel, Kim, and Kai Ostermann were talking quietly.

Bodenstein and Pia sat down and reported on their conversations with Thomsen and Rudolf.

“Stadler will kill Hartig as soon as they’re done with Burmeister,” Bodenstein concluded. “And then this whole scandal may remain unresolved, because the others will keep their mouths shut in order not to incriminate themselves.”

“But why would Stadler do that?” inquired Engel skeptically. “The way it looks right now, Hartig is an accomplice.”

“Stadler doesn’t view himself as a murderer. He sees himself as a champion of a just cause,” Bodenstein replied. “He used Helen’s research to take revenge on those who caused him and his daughter harm. He followed his plan rigorously, without leaving any evidence behind. But then something changed.”