I Am Your Judge: A Novel (2 page)

He harbored a deep dislike for Henning Kirchhoff, and the feeling was mutual. The two often were as touchy as vying prima donnas, though it never affected the thoroughness of their work. That was the only reason everyone else put up with their childish wrangling as they questioned each other’s competence. Their verbal battles at various crime scenes had long been legendary.

After Professor Thomas Kronlage retired the previous summer, Henning became director of the Institute of Forensic Medicine. The university had wanted to consider outside applicants, but Henning’s qualifications in the field of forensic anthropology were so valuable that it had given him the director’s post so it wouldn’t lose him.

“What’s the new guy’s name?” Pia asked.

“I forget,” muttered Kröger. “Sorry.”

The man in the white overalls who was squatting next to the corpse slipped back his hood and stood up. Not that young, Pia saw, but his shaved head and thick mustache made it difficult to guess his age. A bald head did make a man look older than he really was.

“Dr. Frederick Lemmer.” The medical examiner took off his right glove and held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Same here,” Pia replied, shaking his hand. “I’m Pia Kirchhoff from K-11 in Hofheim.”

The site where a dead body has been discovered was no place for polite conversation, so Pia let the brief introduction suffice. She prepared herself for the sight that awaited her and stepped closer to the body. The knitted pink cap and the white hair of the victim formed surreal splotches of color against the gray asphalt, brown mud, and a blackish pool of blood.

“
Schindler’s List,
” Pia muttered.

“Pardon me?” Dr. Lemmer inquired somewhat testily.

“The movie with Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley,” Pia said.

The ME grasped at once what she was referring to and smiled. “You’re right. It does look a bit like that. The film was in black-and-white, and only the girl’s coat was red.”

“I’m a visual person. For me, the first impression of a crime scene is always important,” Pia explained. She put on latex gloves and squatted down. Lemmer did the same. In her many years at K-11, Pia had learned to preserve an internal distance. That was the only way to bear looking at gruesomely mutilated and disfigured corpses.

“The bullet penetrated the left temple.” Dr. Lemmer pointed to the clean entry wound on the victim’s head. “When it exited, it blew off almost the whole right side of the skull. Typical of a large-caliber semi-jacketed round. In my opinion, the murder weapon was a rifle, and the shot was fired from a long distance.”

“And since in this area, it could hardly be a hunting accident, I would assume it was a well-aimed shot,” said Kröger, who was standing behind them.

Pia nodded and studied what was left of the victim’s face. Why would a woman between sixty and seventy years old be shot on a public thoroughfare? Was she a victim of opportunity, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Some of Kröger’s people, in their white overalls, were using metal detectors to comb through the thicket and adjoining pasture, searching for the projectile. Others were taking photographs or recording measurements with an electronic device in order to track the direction from which the shot had been fired.

“Do we know who she is?” Pia got up and looked at Kröger.

“No, she had nothing with her but a house key. No wallet, no cell phone,” he said. “Do you want to talk to the witness? He’s sitting in the ambulance.”

“Yes, in a minute.” Pia looked around and frowned. Empty fields and pastures. In the distance, the TV tower and the skyline of Frankfurt glittered in the pale winter sunshine that had fought its way through the thick cloud cover. About forty meters away, tall trees lined a stream. Through the bare branches, she saw a playground and beyond it the first houses of the Niederhöchstadt district of Eschborn. Paved roads with streetlights ran through the fields. A parklike recreational area, ideal for riding bikes, jogging, speed-walking, and—

“Where’s the dog?” Pia asked suddenly.

“What dog?” Kröger and Dr. Lemmer asked in surprise.

“This is a dog leash.” Pia bent down and pointed to a worn, dark brown leather leash, which was wrapped around the woman’s shoulders and torso. “She was out here walking her dog. And since we found no car key on her, she must live nearby.”

*   *   *

“I’m so glad that I’ve got three weeks’ vacation.” Karoline Albrecht gave a contented sigh and stretched out her legs. She was sitting at the dining room table in her parents’ house with a cup of her favorite tea in front of her—rooibos vanilla—and she could feel the stress of the past weeks and months gradually sloughing off her and making way for a much-needed rest. “Greta and I will get cozy at home, or else we’ll just sit around here with you and eat cookies.”

“You’re most welcome.” Her mother smiled at her over the rims of her reading glasses. “But didn’t you two want to fly off to somewhere in the sun?”

“Oh, Mama, I think I’ve flown more than Carsten this year—and he’s a pilot!” Karoline grinned and sipped her tea. But her cheerfulness was all an act.

For eight years, she’d been an executive partner at an international management consulting firm, responsible for the restructuring and internationalization of companies; and two years ago, she’d been promoted to head of management consulting. Ever since then, she had spent most of her time in hotels, airplanes, and the VIP lounges at airports. She was one of the very few women to hold such a high position, and the obscene amount of money that she earned seemed almost immoral. Her daughter, Greta, was in boarding school, her marriage had ended long ago, and all her friendships had fizzled out over time for lack of attention. Her job had always been her highest priority; even when she passed her university entrance exam with a grade-point average of 4.0, she had wanted to be the best. She had completed her degrees in business administration at elite universities in both Germany and the USA, graduating with honors. And afterwards, her career had proceeded at a meteoric pace.

But for the past couple of months, she had felt empty and exhausted, and with the fatigue came doubts about the meaning of her work. Was what she did really so important? More important than spending time with her daughter and occasionally enjoying life a little? She was forty-three and had never really lived. For twenty years, she had rushed from one deadline to the next, living out of suitcases and surrounded by people who meant nothing to her and vice versa. Greta felt comfortable with Carsten’s new family; she enjoyed having siblings, a dog, and a stepmother who was actually closer to her than her own birth mother. Karoline was on the verge of losing her daughter, and it was her own fault, because she had made herself dispensable in her daughter’s life.

“But you do enjoy your job, don’t you?”

Her mother’s voice tore Karoline Albrecht out of her reverie.

“I’m no longer so sure about that,” she replied, setting her cup on the table. “That’s why I’m taking a leave of absence next year. I’d like to spend more time with Greta. And I’m thinking about selling the house.”

“Really?” Margarethe Rudolf raised her eyebrows but didn’t seem particularly surprised. “Why is that?”

“It’s much too big,” said Karoline. “I’m looking for something a bit smaller and cozier for Greta and me. Something like this.”

She had chosen to leave the house as it was when she bought it: stylish, luxurious, and energy-efficient, 4,300 square feet of living space with exposed concrete floors and every conceivable comfort. But it had never felt really homey, and she secretly yearned for her parents’ comfortable old house where she grew up—with its creaky wooden stairs, high ceilings, battered checkerboard floor tiles in the kitchen, bay windows, and the outmoded bathrooms.

“We should drink a toast to your new life,” her mother suggested. “What do you think?”

“Sure, I’m on vacation, after all.” Karoline smiled. “Have you got a bottle in the fridge?”

“Of course. Champagne,” her mother said with a wink.

A little later, they were sitting across from each other, clinking their glasses in a toast to Christmas and to Karoline’s decision to make some fundamental changes in her life.

“You know, Mama,” she said, “I’ve been so driven, wanting desperately to live up to the perfect image that everyone had of me: disciplined, reasonable, organized down to the last detail. But it was stressing me out because I wasn’t doing all that out of genuine interest, but only because everyone expected it of me.”

“You’ve set yourself free now,” her mother concluded.

“Yes. Yes, I have.” Karoline took both her mother’s hands. “At last I can breathe again and sleep soundly. I feel like I’ve been living underwater for years but suddenly surfaced and realized how beautiful the world is. Work and money aren’t everything in life.”

“No, sweetheart, you’re right about that.” Margarethe Rudolf smiled, but her expression was sad. “Unfortunately, your father has never come to that realization. Maybe someday he will, after he retires.”

Karoline doubted it.

“You know what, Mama? We’re going shopping,” she said firmly. “And we’re going to cook together on Christmas Eve, the way we used to.”

Touched, her mother smiled and nodded.

“Yes, let’s do that. And why don’t you bring Greta over tomorrow evening, and we’ll bake cookies. Then you two will have something to munch on when you’re here for Christmas.”

*   *   *

Half an hour later, Oliver von Bodenstein showed up at the scene where the body had been discovered.

“Thanks for covering for me,” he said to Pia. “I can take over now.”

“Oh, I don’t have anything to do today,” she said. “If you want, I can stay awhile.”

“I won’t turn down an offer like that.”

He grinned, and it occurred to Pia how much her boss had changed in the past two years. After the breakup of his marriage, he had often been distracted and unable to concentrate, but now he had regained his former sense of authority and his keen perception; he had also begun to treat himself with greater forbearance. In the past, Pia had been the one who liked to follow her hunches and energetically push things forward, while he did things correctly and by the book, putting the brakes on her. Now it sometimes seemed that they had switched roles.

Only someone who has suffered an existential loss and survived is capable of maturing and making fundamental changes.
Pia had read this sentence somewhere, and it certainly seemed valid—not only for her boss, but for herself as well. In a relationship, you could fool yourself for a long time, close your eyes to reality, and act as though everything was fine. But inevitably, the day would come when the illusion would burst like a soap bubble and you would be faced with a choice: to go or to stay, to merely
survive
or to truly live again.

“Have you already talked to the witness?” Bodenstein asked.

“Yes,” said Pia, pulling on her hood. The wind was icy. “He was riding his bike along Dörnweg. That’s the name of the road that connects the sections of the town. He came from Eschborn and was heading in the direction of Niederhöchstadt. He was about the same distance away as the electrical tower over there when he saw the woman collapse. He thought she’d had a heart attack or something, so he rode over to her. He did not hear a gunshot.”

“Do we know anything about the victim’s identity yet?”

“No. But I think she must live in the area, because she had a dog with her and had no car keys.”

They stepped aside to make room for the hearse.

“We also found the bullet,” Pia went on. “It was fairly deformed, but it’s definitely from a rifle. Dr. Lemmer says it’s a semi-jacketed round. Hunters use this type of ammunition, as well as the police, because of its superior stopping power. In the military, they’re banned in accordance with the Hague Convention on Land Warfare.”

“Dr. Lemmer told you all this?” Bodenstein asked with a slightly mocking undertone. “Who is he, anyway?”

“No. Believe it or not, I happen to know something about this type of gun,” Pia replied sharply. “Dr. Frederick Lemmer is the new medical examiner.”

They heard a whistle. Pia and Bodenstein turned around and saw Kröger down by the stream, waving both hands in the air.

“Christian has found something,” Pia said. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

A moment later, they crossed a wooden bridge and stepped onto the lower part of a playground. Swings, seesaws, multicolored jungle gyms, a zipline, sandboxes, and a pond to play in were scattered over the spacious area higher up the Westerbach stream.

“Over here!” Kröger shouted, excited as always whenever he made a discovery. “He must have been lying in these bushes. The grass is still flattened, and there … over there … do you see it? The impression left from a bipod. Fading a bit, but still recognizable.”

Pia had to admit that she didn’t see anything but wet clumps of grass, old leaves, and damp soil.

“You mean the perp lay here in wait for her?” Bodenstein asked.

“Yes. Precisely,” said Kröger with a vigorous nod. “Whether he had this particular woman in his sights or just wanted to shoot somebody at random, I can’t tell you, of course. But I do know one thing: The guy is not some amateur, firing blindly out here. He deliberately set out to ambush his victim, using a noise suppressor and a nasty type of ammunition—”

“Semi-jacketed round,” Bodenstein muttered, and winked at Pia.

“Right. So you already know,” said Kröger, annoyed at being interrupted. “Anyway, I think this is where he waited, probably wearing some sort of ghillie suit.”

“A gilly—what?” Bodenstein asked.

“Jeez, Oliver, you’re acting a bit slow on the uptake,” Kröger said impatiently. “A ghillie suit is a camouflage outfit that hunters or snipers use to conceal the shape of the human body. It allows the shooter to blend in with his surroundings. Never mind. What’s important is that somebody lay here with a rifle that he rested on a two-legged stand to steady his aim. The rest is up to you to figure out. Anyway, try your best not to bother my team. Just let us work in peace.”