I Am Your Judge: A Novel (63 page)

Suddenly he thought about Karoline Albrecht. He hoped she was safe from Stadler. Good thing that Pia had sent a pair of officers to guard her. He didn’t know why, but he felt somehow attracted to this brave, strong woman with the unusual green eyes.

“They have to be heading somewhere,” Pia said more to herself than to him. “It’s cold, and they can’t spend the night in the car. And we’re watching all their hideouts.”

“Maybe they know of some that we don’t.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here.” She stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. “All we can do is wait for Stadler to surface somewhere or fall into our net at a roadblock.”

“You’re right about that.” Bodenstein swallowed his disappointment and stood up. “Let’s go.”

*   *   *

The roadblocks had been lifted, and traffic was flowing normally again. Pia, who was driving, was just about to turn from Königsteiner Strasse onto the autobahn heading for Wiesbaden when Bodenstein’s cell rang. It was connected to the hands-free unit in the car.

“Target has just turned into the development,” said the SAU leader with whom Bodenstein had arranged to use their cells instead of the police radio. “Sitting alone in the car, a dark-colored Volvo, license plate MTK-JH 112.”

Pia reacted like lightning: she flipped off the blinker, stepped on the gas, and continued straight ahead past the Main-Taunus Shopping Center. She was familiar enough with the area to know the fastest route.

“He’s alone, driving Hartig’s car,” Bodenstein said. “That may mean that he’s already killed Hartig.”

She sat behind the wheel, her face pale, and didn’t argue with him.

Bodenstein informed Ostermann and then fell silent, equally exhausted and tense. The emotional roller coaster, alternating between hope and disappointment, had taken its toll, and he could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. This job is not healthy, he thought. Good thing he had another option. He was so sick of chasing criminals. He was fed up with blood and death and despair—fed up with being lied to and treated like he was stupid. But what bothered him most was the fact that he had relied on Neff, a stranger who wasn’t even part of his team.

“Target is still sitting in the car,” said the SAU leader from the speakers. “The engine is turned off. Maybe he suspects something, but he won’t get away from us now. We’ve blocked off every street, and the sharpshooters are in position.”

“Is he really sitting alone in the car?” Bodenstein asked as Pia drove their police car at 110 miles an hour up the highway despite the thickening fog.

“Positive. Do we move in?”

“No, not yet,” Bodenstein replied. “Let him get out and step onto the property. As soon as he makes a move toward the house, grab him. And remember, we need him alive.”

Pia slowed down, took the curve to the left, and turned right at the intersection in Hornau onto the Gagernring. Visibility was no more than fifteen meters.

“Turn off here,” said Bodenstein, pointing to the left. “We’ll take this shortcut. It’ll save us ten minutes.”

“Target is still in the car,” reported the SAU leader. “You can hardly see your hand in front of your face, it’s so foggy.”

“Then move in as soon as it’s possible,” Bodenstein ordered, hoping that they wouldn’t encounter a bus on the narrow road and have to back up.

*   *   *

He got out, locked the car, and went over to the rusty garden gate. The hinges squeaked when he opened it. He was tired. Bone tired. Countless nights without sleep had him longing for a hot shower and a bed. No phone, no people, no words. No need to keep thinking. He walked up the flagstone path to the veranda and bent down to pick up the key from under the doormat. Suddenly it was bright as day. His heart skipped a couple of beats from the shock. He turned around. For a few seconds, he was totally blinded and closed his eyes.

“Hands above your head!” someone yelled, and he obeyed. “Get down on the ground! On the ground now!”

Suddenly everything around him came to life. Men emerged from the fog, dressed in black and masked. Voices, footsteps. They grabbed him by the arms, pulled him to his feet, and frisked him. Then he was shoved back to the ground, his arms brutally yanked behind his back and his wrists cuffed. His heart was racing and he broke out in a cold sweat. Although he had expected a situation like this, it was still terrifying to experience it for real. But he would make it through. He had to. At least until the early morning.

*   *   *

The news that the action was successful reached Bodenstein and Pia as they were driving through Fischbach.

“No resistance,” the SAU leader told them. “Target was unarmed.”

“Very good. We’ll be there in five minutes.” Bodenstein leaned back in relief and briefly closed his eyes. He waited until his heart rate calmed down a bit, then tapped in Ostermann’s number.”

“They’ve got him,” he said. “He didn’t put up any resistance.”

“Finally we can sleep again.” Pia gave a wan smile. “Thank God.”

They turned into the community of weekend cabins and left the car on Eibenweg. They walked through the thick fog to the end of the cul-de-sac, which was brightly lit with floodlights. The black SAU vehicles and several patrol cars blocked the street. Black-clad figures were running around, as well as several uniformed officers. Hartig’s Volvo was parked close to the hedge surrounding the property. Bodenstein and Pia stepped through the gate and went up the path. Stadler lay on the ground in front of the steps to the porch, his hands bound behind his back.

Bodenstein, who in the past several days had often imagined how he would feel when he stood facing the sniper, was surprised that he simply felt nothing. Relief at most, but neither anger nor hate. That would probably come later, during the endless interrogations that awaited them. Now he was just glad the nightmare was over.

“Let him get up,” he said.

Two SAU men pulled the man to his feet. He was blinking in the harsh light. Bodenstein heard Pia next to him inhale sharply. He stared at the man standing in front of him and recognized him, but his mind refused for a fraction of a second to accept what he saw. Before him stood not Dirk Stadler, but Jens-Uwe Hartig.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Four in the morning.

Since his arrest, Jens-Uwe Hartig hadn’t said one word. Pale and mute he had sat on the plastic chair in the interrogation room, persistently avoiding any eye contact and staring with bloodshot eyes at the tabletop before him. He hadn’t reacted to requests or threats, and finally Bodenstein had cut off the interrogation shortly after midnight. In the trunk of the Volvo, the rifle had been secured, a Steyr SSG 69 with a telescopic sight, noise suppressor, and infrared proximity sensor, along with the appropriate ammunition. No all-clear had been sent to Janning, Hausmann, and their daughters, because Stadler was still on the loose. Even without his sniper rifle, he was still dangerous.

Almost no one had gone home. Bodenstein was asleep in his desk chair, Kim lay wrapped in a blanket on the carpet in Pia’s office. Pia had phoned Christoph and now sat at her desk; the small TV on a shelf of document binders was turned on but with the sound off. Kai sat across from her, his feet up on his desk and his chin on his chest, snoring quietly. It was dark in the office except for the bluish flicker from the TV and the light coming in under the door from the corridor.

Pia couldn’t sleep. Although she was dead tired and her eyes were burning, her mind was wide awake and wouldn’t let her rest. She aimlessly scrolled through the channels. On N-TV, they were showing repeated views of the police cordons and the gymnasium in Unterliederbach, along with archive photos of Simon Burmeister. Reporters in the foggy darkness were talking into microphones; without sound, their exaggerated mimicry looked ridiculous.

They had assumed that Stadler would kill Hartig—was it now the other way around? In the end, was Dirk Stadler not the sniper after all?

She would probably never understand what motivated people to deceive, abuse, and kill other people and still believe they could get away with it.

With a yawn, she kept flipping through the channels. She wanted a cigarette but was too lazy to get up and go downstairs so she could go outside to smoke. A commercial channel was running an old horror potboiler with zombies in a cemetery. She was just about to zap onward when a thought flashed through her mind. Abruptly she sat up. She jumped up and went to Bodenstein’s office and shook him by the shoulder. He woke with a start.

“What’s going on?” he whispered groggily.

“I think Dirk Stadler is at the cemetery,” Pia said softly.

Bodenstein yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Which cemetery?” he asked in confusion.

“At his daughter’s grave,” Pia said excitedly. “He fulfilled his mission—otherwise, he wouldn’t have left the rifle in the trunk. Come on, let’s go see!”

It took Bodenstein a moment to gather his wits. Then he nodded.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said at last. “It’s worth a try.”

*   *   *

They drove in silence through the darkness and the thick fog, which reflected the headlights and swallowed up everything else. The windshield wipers swept the rainwater back and forth. Fifteen minutes later, they reached the Kelkheim main cemetery, and Pia pulled into the first parking space. Bodenstein took a flashlight out of the trunk. They entered the cemetery, walking slowly along the rows of graves. The thin beam of the flashlight felt its quivering way along the ground. Pia noticed a draft, and something brushed her hair. She ducked, her heart pounding hard.

“What was that?”

“Only an owl,” said Bodenstein, who was walking in front. “Careful, the branches are hanging pretty low here.”

Unexpectedly, the bare branches of a weeping willow came out of the fog and slapped Pia in the face. When she looked up, Bodenstein had vanished in the fog. All around, she saw only darkness and sinister-looking bushes. Her heart beat faster.

“Where are you?” she called out, annoyed because her voice sounded so anxious. Footsteps crunched on the frozen sand.

“Here.” Bodenstein gave her a concerned look. “Everything okay?”

She wanted to say,
Yes, of course,
but that would have been a lie. She was freezing and touched her service weapon in the holster on her belt. Bodenstein held out his arm to her, and she gratefully took it.

“We’re almost there,” he said, turning onto a narrower path. “It’s right up ahead.”

He held the flashlight higher. Pia’s mouth turned dry as dust; she gripped his arm tighter, then let him go and drew her pistol. On the slab, reclining against the gravestone, lay a motionless figure.

“Mr. Stadler?” Bodenstein shone the flashlight beam on the man’s face. Dirk Stadler lay on his back, barefoot and dressed only in a T-shirt and jeans. His eyes were closed, and a layer of ice had formed on his eyelashes and eyebrows.

Pia put away her pistol.

Bodenstein squatted down and put two fingers on the man’s carotid.

“Too late,” he said, looking up at her. “Once again, too late.”

Dirk Stadler was dead.

*   *   *

Dawn was breaking. The blackness of night was turning a lightening gray. Bodenstein and Pia were standing on the path, silently watching as the men from the mortuary placed Stadler’s body in a coffin and took him away. They had naturally called the ME, but he merely confirmed what Bodenstein had already determined. Stadler was dead; he froze to death between one and two in the morning. He had folded his jacket and pullover into a neat pillow and had drunk a whole bottle of schnapps. Drunken people freeze faster, which he had obviously known. Dirk Stadler had planned his death perfectly. Hartig had let himself be arrested, buying Stadler the time he needed.

The undertaker came over to Bodenstein and handed him a folded envelope.

“This was in the inside pocket of his jacket,” he said. “Your name is on it.”

“Thank you,” Bodenstein said with a nod and scrutinized the envelope addressed to him before he tore it open and took out the letter.

My dear Mr. Bodenstein,
it read in neat handwriting,

When you read these lines, I hope I’ll already be dead. What I have done is inexcusable, but not inexplicable. The decision to kill innocent people in order to cause their loved ones the same pain that my daughter, Helen, and I have suffered was not an easy one, but it was carefully considered. The person responsible for this tragedy is Professor Dieter P. Rudolf, whose contempt for humanity in his striving for fame and honor led him to walk over dead bodies. Including the body of my devoted and beloved wife, who fell into the hands of this monster with no conscience. No less guilty is Dr. Simon Burmeister, who regarded the patients entrusted to him not as human beings, but as means to an end. My daughter, who had tracked down the unethical actions of these two men, paid with her life because of her wish to know the truth and resolve this matter.

But in the end, I have failed from a moral perspective just like those I punished. They played God, and I did, too. I incriminated myself and must now appeal to the highest authority in the faint hope of finding forgiveness. I alone planned and carried out all the killings. No one but me committed any crimes or violated any laws.

It was never my intention to be in the public eye. I regret having imposed such high costs on this country, which took me in with open arms and was always good to me. My original intention was to surrender to justice, but I have decided instead to quit this life voluntarily. In my will, I have stipulated that my estate shall devolve to the state, in order to cover at least some of the costs precipitated by my actions. I die in the hope that justice will call all those to account who have incriminated themselves.

Yours sincerely,

Dirk Stadler

January 2, 2013

Bodenstein shook his head and handed the letter to Pia. Then he stuck his hands in his coat pockets and, head bowed, walked back through the fog to the car.