I Am Your Judge: A Novel (47 page)

“Shit!” The steering wheel was torn from her hands in the collision, and her temple whacked against the side window. For a second, she felt weightless. Then the car flipped onto its side on the wet asphalt, spun around like a top, and kept sliding over the embankment. There it plowed a furrow into the underbrush of the woods. The sound of ripping metal vibrated through her bones, wood splintered under the weight of the car, until the vehicle finally came to rest. Now it was pitch dark and utterly still, except for the soft clicking of the engine cooling down. Karoline hung dazed from the seat belt, feeling something warm dripping down her face. Then she blacked out.

*   *   *

Riegelhoff’s house, a charming little single-family dwelling, was located on Waldfriedstrasse, right next to the city woods. A police car was parked on the sidewalk in front. Police officers from Frankfurt were already on-site.

“It’s outrageous to keep us here!” complained the attorney, a robust man in his midfifties with gray hair and a reddened, knobbly nose. He was wearing a tux with a bow tie under a cashmere coat; his wife had on a floor-length gown with a fur-trimmed cape over her shoulders. “We have a dinner invitation and we need to leave.”

Bodenstein quickly stepped forward to reply.

“If you’d called me back, you could have saved us all this trouble, and we would be celebrating somewhere, too,” he replied coolly, omitting any form of greeting. “More important, maybe we would have known whom the sniper was going to shoot tonight and could protect him.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, but—,” Riegelhoff began.

Bodenstein cut him off. “We’ll explain it to you,” he said. “And if we don’t get any useful information from you, then you can spend the night in a cell, I can promise you that.”

Riegelhoff’s eyes were shooting daggers at Bodenstein, but he seemed to understand the seriousness of the situation and relented.

“Ten minutes, darling,” he said to his wife, who merely shrugged. Then he nodded to Bodenstein and Pia. “Please come with me.”

He took off his coat, tossed it over the banister, and led them into his study. Pia briefly explained what they’d learned from the sniper and the assumption that he was taking revenge on people whom he believed had caused the death of Kirsten Stadler or condoned what happened.

“How can I help you?” asked Riegelhoff, probably still hoping to get the matter over with rapidly and be off to his party.

“Ten years ago, you represented the UCF in a lawsuit filed by Dirk Stadler,” Bodenstein now took over. “So you know the people involved in the Kirsten Stadler case; you know their names. The sniper has announced that tonight he will shoot a fifth victim. And it will very probably be someone who was not involved.”

“Perhaps you yourself are on his list,” Pia added. “So your wife could be shot. Or your children.”

“A bad joke.” Riegelhoff gave a thin-lipped smile.

“It’s no joke,” Bodenstein replied, dead serious. “He shot the mother of a woman who had refused to help Kirsten Stadler’s children when they found her lying unconscious in a field. And the wife of an ambulance driver because on that day he still had residual alcohol in his bloodstream and drove the ambulance into a ditch. Further victims were the wife of Professor Rudolf and the son of Friedrich Gehrke, who had received a heart transplant from Mrs. Stadler. You knew Mr. Gehrke, and on Saturday, you attempted to return his call.”

Riegelhoff turned pale. His fingers fiddled nervously with one of his cuff links.

“What do you mean, I
knew
him?” he asked uneasily.

“The day before yesterday, he took his own life,” said Pia.

“Oh . . I … I didn’t know that.” Riegelhoff seemed concerned, but Pia did not miss the tiny flicker in his eyes. Was that relief? How odd.

“What could Fritz Gehrke have wanted from you? Why did he burn documents before he killed himself?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Riegelhoff answered. “He only left his name and phone number on the answering machine and asked me to call him back. I was rather amazed, because I hadn’t heard from him in eight years.”

“Then it was probably about the case from back then,” Bodenstein suspected. “What did Gehrke have to do with it?”

Riegelhoff hesitated. In front of the house there was a loud bang, and the lawyer flinched. He tried to cover up his nervousness with an offhand remark.

“Your horror story is making me jumpy,” he said with an uneasy laugh.

That was enough for Pia. She had no more time for tactics and evasive maneuvers.

“Dr. Riegelhoff, this matter is deadly serious,” she said emphatically. “We’re trying to protect the individuals who might be the next victims on the sniper’s list. You could help us. Give us the names of doctors and responsible administrators who worked at the UCF in 2002. We don’t care what they had to do with the case, but tonight someone is going to die, and
you
might be able to prevent it. Do you understand? Would you want to be responsible for someone’s death?”

Riegelhoff thought a moment, then decided to make an effort.

“I have the documents in the archive at my office,” he said. “We could drive over there.”

“Okay, let’s go,” said Bodenstein with a decisive nod. “Your wife should come with us. We can’t guarantee that the sniper doesn’t have you or your family in his sights.”

*   *   *

It was dark. And cold. A dull, throbbing pain in her body, but much worse was the terrible pressure in her head. She didn’t know what was going on. Where was she? What had happened? Why was there such a stench of gasoline? A light was blinding her, and she shut her eyes again.

“Hello? Hello!” A strange voice. Brightness. “Hello! Can you hear me? The ambulance is on the way.”

Ambulance?

“Hello! Stay awake!” Somebody was roughly patting her cheek.

This must be a dream.

“Go away,” she murmured, in a daze.

“She’s coming to,” said a man’s voice.

Karoline heard a siren, then another one. She opened her eyes with difficulty. Blue lights were flashing. It was bright as day. But it was evening. New Year’s Eve! She wanted to call Greta and wish her a Happy New Year. Greta. Mama.

A metallic crash right next to her ear, cold air.

“I’m cold,” she said.

“We’re almost done,” replied the man’s voice. “We’re getting you out. Does anything hurt?”

“My head. And my arm. What happened?” Karoline blinked into the bright light, recognized a police uniform.

“You had an accident.” The officer was young, no more than midtwenties. “Can’t you remember?”

“Yeah. There was … an animal on the road. I … I had to brake,” Karoline whispered. Other men arrived. Orange jackets, dark blue overalls. EMTs. Firemen.

They got her out of the seat belt, which had protected her from worse injuries, and lifted her carefully from the wreck of the Porsche on a litter.

“I can walk by myself,” she protested weakly.

“Sure, sure,” was all they said. They put a neck brace on her, and Karoline caught a glimpse of the area before they loaded her into the ambulance. The road was blocked. Police. Fire department. A bright-yellow tow truck arrived just then. It was bright inside the ambulance, they strapped her in and started an IV drip to prevent shock. The doctor asked for her name and address, today’s date, and the day of the week. He seemed satisfied when she gave the right answers without hesitation.

Why had she seen the animal so late? Why was she driving so fast? Then she remembered. She’d been looking for the inspector’s business card. But why?

“I need my purse and my cell phone,” she told the younger of the EMTs, who seemed more approachable than his older colleague. “They must be in my car.”

“I’ll take a look and see if I can find them,” he promised her, and vanished from sight. A few minutes later, he returned, and she was relieved to see him holding up her brown Bottega Veneta purse.

“I found the cell phone and put it inside,” he said, settling on the jump seat next to her. The doors slammed shut and the ambulance began to move.

“Thank you. And the wallet and key ring?”

The young man felt in her purse and nodded. “Both there,” he confirmed, and she closed her eyes. “Now we’re going to the hospital in Bad Homburg. Is there someone you want us to call?”

“No, thank you.” Karoline tried to smile. “I’ll do it later myself.”

She surrendered to the shaking of the vehicle, listened to the siren, and tried to figure out in her mind the route they were taking. Luckily, she didn’t seem to be badly injured. And now it didn’t matter that she’d forgotten to go shopping.

*   *   *

There was nothing better than careful planning. The shell of the building was a perfect site for an ambush, with an ideal escape route; he had meticulously checked it out twice. He had parked his car at the HEM gas station, right next to the traffic circle, and from there, it was only a couple of minutes to the A 5 autobahn. If things got dicey, he could also drive across the fields to Weiterstadt or through the industrial zone to Büttelborn and over to the A 67. All around were only meadows and fallow land, except for the three newly constructed houses. He had found a comfortable position, and instead of the dipod, he was using two sacks of mortar, which also provided something to hide behind. It was only quarter past nine. Plenty of time. As he lay there, he screwed the Kahles scope onto the rifle and looked through it. Wonderful optics. He looked into the brightly lit house, saw the man standing in the open kitchen with a different woman. They were talking and laughing. In front of the house stood a car with license plates from Gross-Gerau; that’s why he’d assumed that they invited guests tonight. But it didn’t matter. The children were sitting in the living room in front of the TV, one on the floor, the other sprawled on the black leather couch. Cute kids. A boy and a girl. He saw the homeowner upstairs now with another man. He was no doubt proudly showing off his new house. They had just moved in a couple of weeks ago. Luckily. If they’d been in their old apartment in a multifamily dwelling, he would have had much greater problems finding a suitable shooting position. Of course, he could have dealt with the man somewhere else—in his car, on his way to work, in the parking lot—but he wanted to do it exactly like this. Right before their eyes. Before the eyes of his children. They should see the way their father died, they should feel as helpless, shocked, and desperate as Helen had. And they must never forget the sight for the rest of their lives.

*   *   *

It was a little past nine by the time they reached the lawyer’s office on the west side of the Frankfurt North End. They got out of the car. The patrol officers from the other car went inside with them. It took Riegelhoff a few moments to find his card key and run it through the card reader at the glass front entrance, his hands were shaking so hard. He gave a start at each fireworks blast. Bodenstein and Pia exchanged a meaningful glance.

The renowned law firm of HR&F Partners, in which Riegelhoff was one of the senior partners, was located on the top four floors of a modern office building on Eschersheimer Landstrasse. The archive took up half of one floor. Riegelhoff was clearly not familiar with the filing system, because it took him all of forty-five minutes to find the twenty-three document binders pertaining to Stadler’s suit against the UCF.

In his office, a sort of penthouse with a glass roof that was surrounded by a terrace, Riegelhoff set to work. Meanwhile, his wife showed the two inspectors where to find the restrooms and the coffee kitchen. Then she sat down behind her husband’s desk.

“Please go outside if you want to smoke,” said the lawyer without looking up when he heard the click of a lighter.

“Oh,” said his wife, and stood up. The taffeta of her gown rustled as she shoved open one of the floor-to-ceiling French doors, and an icy gust of wind swirled inside. Pia saw Mrs. Riegelhoff pacing back and forth outside the windows, smoking and talking on the phone. She was a good-looking woman who couldn’t have cared less what her husband was working on. Her only concern was the party that they seemed about to miss.

“Why did Mr. Stadler have only one binder of documents for the whole case?” Bodenstein asked.

“His attorney probably had a few more,” replied Riegelhoff, “but as a matter of fact, the plaintiff side did not receive all the documents. There were certain internal protocols that the Stadlers never saw.”

“Why not?” Pia was amazed.

“Because something actually did go wrong,” Riegelhoff admitted. “There was faulty behavior on the part of the physicians. That’s why the hospital was so interested in reaching an out-of-court settlement with the plaintiff. A trial would have led to a scandal, which would have resulted in a massive loss of confidence and great financial losses for the UCF.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that earlier?” Bodenstein angrily raised his eyebrows. Everyone he talked to during this investigation seemed to dole out information one scrap at a time.

“Because the UCF is our client, and one of the most important,” said Riegelhoff. “I may get in a lot of hot water for showing you the files, but I refuse to take the blame for anyone’s death.”

Had he suddenly discovered his conscience, or was he simply accepting the inevitable, now that he found himself between a rock and a hard place?

“How much money did the Stadlers receive in the out-of-court settlement?” Pia wanted to know.

“Fifty thousand euros,” said the lawyer. “But as far as I know, the Stadler family got even more money from Mr. Gehrke.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bodenstein and Pia in tandem.

“I have no direct knowledge of their agreement. But they were satisfied with the sum we offered and withdrew their suit,” said Riegelhoff as he paged through another binder. “The rest was no longer of any importance to me.”

The ringing of Bodenstein’s cell phone cut through the silence. He handed the pages to Pia and took the call.

“Bodenstein,” he snapped.

“This … this is Karoline Albrecht,” a woman’s voice said, to his surprise. “I’m the daughter of … of Professor Rudolf. Please excuse me for calling so late.”