Grave Intent

by Alexander Hartung

  “How’s the crime scene?” Jan asked.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “No one knows how the murderer got inside,” Chandu said. “There are no signs of a break-in, and the surveillance car had an eye on the front door the whole time. He likely had a key to the back door.”

  “Where from? Moritz Quast and I counted all the keys last night. None were missing.”

  “That’s a cheap lock. The key’s easy to copy. Making an impression would work.”

  “Damn it,” Jan said. It was starting to get to him, how screwed up this was. “So he knew the murderer?”

  “That or he was able to come up with some other way. But days ago. As a handyman or gardener, maybe.”

  “Clues?”

  “They found fingerprints and DNA everywhere. The evaluation is still ongoing, but we could very well strike out, just like with the first murder.”

  “Where was Quast murdered?”

  “That’s our next problem,” said Chandu. “There’s no evidence that he was killed in the house.”

  “What?”

  “The crime-scene guys couldn’t believe it themselves, so they went through the place twice. No murder weapon. No blood. A few dried semen stains on the living-room sofa. Since Moritz Quast subscribed to a porn channel, they probably came from him.”

  “So he was still alive when Fabian and David went in?”

  “Seems so. What are those two saying?”

  “Fabian didn’t see anything. David took a hit on the head, he’s no help. I’ll just have to wait till he’s recovered.”

  “Maybe Quast was tied up?”

  “Zoe says he wasn’t.”

  “Drugs? Narcotic to knock him out?”

  “They’re still running tests. We’ll have to wait it out till this evening.”

  “Maybe the killer was holding a gun to Quast’s head?”

  “While taking out Fabian and David at the same time? Hard to imagine.” Jan shook his head. “We’re overlooking something.”

  “Just have to wait till the tests are done. Can I do something for you, meantime?”

  “Go home and get some sleep. I’ll question the neighbors and take a look around the neighborhood. Tell the others that we’re meeting again this evening. We got a lot to talk about.”

  “Sleep sounds good.”

  “Thanks for the help.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Once his friend was gone, Jan leaned against the fence and took a good look at the house. The murderer had not come from the front. There was no rear exit leading from the premises out to any road. So he had come through the neighbors’ yards. The fences were low, and there were no guard dogs in the neighborhood. The crime-scene investigators had examined only Moritz Quast’s property.

  It was time to expand the search radius.

  The murderer must have come with a vehicle. The cemetery in Stahnsdorf was too far for strolling over to. He had checked the street in front of Moritz Quast’s house. Every car there belonged to a neighbor. It was unlikely that the murderer had parked his vehicle there; Fabian and David would’ve noticed. So he had gotten out on a neighboring street.

  To the left of Quast’s house there were ten more houses until the next cross street. Single-family homes with yards not much bigger than the smallest scale caged-in play court. Enough for a barbecue, a flower bed, and a garden shed. Maybe a patio. They all had that same off-white rear facade with its evenly spaced upstairs windows. Idyllic and boring.

  To the right of Quast’s property, Jan made out only three homes. The properties ended at a green area with bushes and trees, likely a type of noise buffer separating the next street over. The shorter the way, the better, he figured. Jan jumped over the fence to the neighbor’s backyard and took a look around.

  The guy living here obviously loved to barbecue. The yard consisted mainly of a patio with a gas grill two yards wide. Next to it stood a table with a stone top and a little outdoor fridge. The grill was covered with clear plastic, and the windows looking out on the patio were shuttered. The owner was probably on vacation.

  Jan looked out over the next house’s yard. Half of the property consisted of lawn. A garden of precisely placed vegetables on the farthest side was an eco-geek’s dream. Jan recognized tomatoes, zucchini, and lettuce next to other greens he didn’t know. In the middle of the garden rows, an older man with a hose was watering the bushes separating his property from that of his neighbor’s on the other side. The man was working so hard not to look in Jan’s direction he was surely going to cramp up. Watering was clearly just an excuse that let him follow the crime-scene investigation going on two houses over. Good thing, too. A neighbor nosy at just the right time could provide that decisive clue.

  “Good morning.” Jan showed his badge from his stance on the empty patio. “My name is Detective Tommen. Berlin Police. Could I ask you a few questions?”

  The man turned off the water, came over to the fence, and shook Jan’s hand. “Anton Möller. Nice to meet you.”

  His eyes lit up. He looked really excited to be questioned.

  “You know what happened here last night?”

  “Someone killed Moritz Quast.” Anton Möller ran a thumb across his neck, rolled his eyes, and made a sound like someone slashing his throat open.

  Jan refrained from remarking on the man’s bizarre sense of humor.

  “You knew Herr Quast?” he asked.

  “Only from Florian’s barbecues.”

  “Florian?”

  “Florian Uland. The one with the huge grill. You’re standing on his property.”

  “He’s not home?”

  “Florian has been on vacation for a week now. Trip through the US. Won’t be back till next month.”

  “What was your impression of Moritz Quast?”

  “Didn’t fit the neighborhood. Mostly families with kids live around here. He was the young bachelor type—used to get worked up about the noise of the kids playing. He drove a flashy car. Often came home late, probably from some bar crawl. I didn’t much care for him.”

  “I see.” Jan noted something down.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Anton hastened to add. “I may not have liked him, but I didn’t want to kill him.”

  Jan showed him a wide smile. “He get visits from people who seemed suspicious to you?”

  “Suspicious in what way?”

  “Other people who didn’t fit a neighborhood like this. Late-night meetings with sketchy figures. Heated arguments.”

  “Most of his visitors were coworkers from the car dealership.”

  “You know any of them?”

  “Barely. For the World Cup, Moritz set up a projector in front of his house and showed every Germany game on his garage door. He invited all the neighbors over and a few coworkers. It was constant pandemonium. His driveway was filled with empty beer bottles for days. Being the good neighbor that I am, I did head over and help drain his beer supply.”

  “Was Moritz Quast the careless type?”

  “Careless?”

  “Left the door open when he popped out for bread? Gave keys to guys working on the house? That kind of thing.”

  “He left his windows open when he left for work.”

  “Open?”

  “Well, not all the way. But cracked.” Anton shook his head. “One time I told him how easily an intruder could pry open the window and climb into the house. He just laughed. Fresh air was more important to him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The delivery people.”

  “Delivery people?”

  “Moritz wrote notes for delivery people, saying that his packages shouldn’t be delivered to the neighbors but rather left at the back door. He got deliveries a couple of times a week. People were constantly coming and going.”

  Jan shook his head. If that was true, it would have been a piece of cake for the murderer to get inside.

 
; “Let’s go back to last night. Were you at home?”

  “Yes. I went to bed after Heute Journal, the nightly news. My wife was already asleep.”

  “What time was this?”

  “After ten.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual?”

  “I didn’t, sorry. I’m a deep sleeper.” Anton stepped closer. “I heard that Moritz is the second victim,” he whispered, as if anyone were listening. “Is there a serial killer in Berlin?”

  “I’m not allowed to say anything about that.”

  Anton was clearly put off by Jan’s defensive stance. He pursed his lips like a child who’d just had his toy shovel taken from him.

  Jan put his notepad away. “Could I come over and inspect your yard? We might find traces of the murderer there.”

  A smile appeared on Anton’s lips. “You really think so?”

  The prospect that a murderer might have traversed his yard seemed to spark a macabre fascination in him. He turned and eyed the yard as if the blood-smeared murder weapon itself might be lying there.

  Jan hopped over the waist-high fence. He checked out the lawn but saw no sign of footprints.

  “This here’s a sports turf, got the Poa supina seed,” Anton explained like a pro landscaper. “They use it for soccer fields. Sturdy and indestructible. Pops right back up again.”

  “Terrific.”

  Anton nodded proudly, missing the sarcasm in Jan’s voice. First that patio, now this supergrass. Jan was hoping the last property would offer up something, anything. He crossed Anton’s yard and came to a dark wood fence.

  “Simon Illgen lives there with his wife and three kids,” Anton said.

  The Illgen yard was a hodgepodge of toys and furniture. The swings hung crooked, hazardously so. The outdoor table and chairs looked like they had been pulled out of a Dumpster, and the little barbecue was a pockmarked heap of rust with only three legs. The patchy, weed-covered lawn looked no better, but it might provide him with a clue.

  “Is anyone home?” Jan asked Anton.

  “The kids are in school at this hour, Simon’s working, and his wife’s hanging out with her yoga teacher.” Anton winked at Jan suggestively.

  Jan hopped the fence. He landed on a yellow plastic thing that must have once been a rubber ducky. It didn’t even release a final peep of despair. “What chaos,” he muttered.

  He moved along the fence and came to a spot free of grass. There he found what he was looking for. Footprints. He knelt down, rolled a rubber ball to the side, and took a good look at the prints.

  One could have come from military or hiking boots. The other appeared to be sizes bigger and was from a bare foot.

  “Did you find something?” Anton asked from over the fence.

  “I did,” Jan said, taking his cell phone out and calling the crime-scene techs. “Riddle solved.”

  Ten minutes later, the Illgen family’s backyard was besieged by crime-scene techs. Next door, Anton had pulled up a lawn chair and observed the techs deploying, his eyes twinkling as if expecting them to find a corpse any minute now. Leaning on the fence, Jan watched them make an impression of the footprints. One of the techs came over to him, holding up a baggie with a pebble in it.

  “Found these in the barefoot print. The pebble bored into skin, made a little wound. Enough blood to check DNA.”

  “Compare that sample with Moritz Quast’s DNA. It has to be a match.”

  The man nodded. “If I had to deduce height and weight from the footprint? It could fit Moritz Quast.”

  “And the perpetrator?”

  “Judging by the foot length, I’m guessing he’s about five feet eight. The depth points to a slim man. Both men planted their whole feet, so they weren’t running. Otherwise the steps would be farther apart, and the impressions up front would be deeper than from the heel.”

  “Thanks.”

  Anton came over to the fence. Jan put on his friendly face. He would have to ask the man a few more questions after all.

  “Find something there?”

  “The murderer might have left behind a footprint.”

  “So he ran through my yard?” Anton gasped with excitement as if he’d just learned that aliens had used his flower bed as a landing pad.

  “Possibly,” Jan said, wanting this nosy neighbor to stay that way. “From this we can deduce that the murderer parked his vehicle on the side street. Did you notice anything there after ten, when you went to bed?”

  “No, unfortunately,” Anton lamented. “For noise protection, the city planted bushes and birch trees between the street and the Illgens’ property. It’s all sprouted up like weeds in the last few years. I wouldn’t even have seen a truck parked there. Not even from my balcony.”

  Jan noted something down. The only thing left to do was the grinding slog of questioning all the neighbors in the area. He put his pad and pen away. “Thanks a ton for your help.” He shook Anton’s hand and turned to follow the path the murderer took, when Anton grabbed him by the arm.

  “You don’t have a card?” he said.

  “Don’t have what?”

  “You know, one of those business cards with your number on it, in case a person finds out anything more. Maybe the murderer will return to the scene.”

  Jan reached into his jacket and handed him a card. Anton stared at the piece of cardstock as if it had been consecrated by the pope.

  “Thanks, Herr Tommen. You’ll be hearing from me.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jan muttered under his breath. He followed the marked tracks through the yard, out to the street. He could only hope the murderer had left behind a few more clues.

  Three hours later, Jan wearily sat down on a bench next to a bus stop. He had questioned all the neighbors, but no one had seen a thing. No suspicious car, no unusual characters, no Moritz Quast running around barefoot. Adding to his bad luck, the light on the side street had gone out, right where the murderer’s vehicle had likely been parked. He pointed that out to the crime-scene techs, certain that they would find the power cut or some other sabotage. And, of course, no fingerprints.

  They were dealing with a master planner. Insane, to be sure, but well organized and not easily unnerved. Psychopaths like this were the toughest to catch.

  Jan’s phone rang, interrupting his brooding.

  “Herr Tommen, Johannes Arnold here. I’m one of the managers at Stahnsdorf Cemetery. I was asked to call you.” The man’s voice sounded anxious. He had probably never dealt with the police before.

  “Thanks for your call,” Jan began, keeping it casual. He normally preferred to have conversations like this face-to-face. A person’s body language said much more than his words.

  “I’m a little confused here, because one of your fellow officers already questioned me about the case.”

  “In especially volatile cases we do two rounds of questioning, to play it safe,” Jan lied. He had no desire to wait for the report, and he wanted to get the lay of the land himself.

  Jan wedged his cell phone against his shoulder and pulled out his notepad. “It’s just general stuff. Did you or a coworker see anything suspicious? This would be during the time from midnight till two in the morning.”

  “I called the staff together this morning to get you the answers. The last man left the cemetery yesterday at seven fourteen in the evening. The first employee today arrived at three minutes after six a.m. No one noticed anything during his shift, and we can’t say for sure what time the grave was dug. The grounds cover nearly five hundred acres, so it’s impossible to monitor every grave site.”

  “Do you have an idea how the grave was dug? Could the murderer have used some of the cemetery equipment?”

  “We use an excavator. It sits locked away in an equipment hangar. It wasn’t used during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  “And your shovels and axes?”

  “Those are kept in a shed that’s locked up at night. The lock looks untouched, and as far as I
can tell, none of the tools were taken or used.”

  Jan noted down that the murderer brought his own tools. On the one hand, a man like this wouldn’t leave something like that to chance; on the other hand, it could look conspicuous to be seen heading into a cemetery with axe and shovel.

  “What kind of clothing do you and your staff wear?”

  “Typical gardening gear. Either green overalls in a cotton-polyester blend, with a short jacket in winter, or gray work trousers without suspenders. Some of us swear by safety shoes; for others they’re too clunky.”

  “You wear any insignia on your clothing?”

  “Insignia?”

  “Emblems, patches, stickers. Something that identifies you as Stahnsdorf Cemetery staff?”

  “Not much. Our work clothes wear out sooner than I have the resources to replace them. The other thing is, some of the cemetery care has been awarded to outside firms.”

  “So a man in simple work clothes without patches wouldn’t look conspicuous?”

  “Perhaps to me or a few of my coworkers. Certainly not to a visitor.”

  Jan sighed. Now he was certain that the murderer had brought his own tools. But questioning Wednesday-night visitors to the cemetery wouldn’t tell him much. No one would give a second thought to a man wearing work clothes.

  “We see,” Jan said, “that the grave was only dug out about a foot and half deep . . .”

  “That’s still quite a lot. Normally, the deceased are interred at least six and a half feet down. But that can’t be done in one night with axe and shovel.”

  “Why didn’t anyone notice that a grave was being dug at that hour?”

  “No one goes to the cemetery at night, apart from a few whacked-out freaks. You won’t find a quieter place in all of Berlin.”

  “Had a grave plot been assigned there?”

  “No. No graves were supposed to be dug there, actually.”

  “Did Moritz Quast acquire some other burial spot?”

  “Herr Quast paid the fees for his parents’ grave site. We’ve had no other contact with him.”

  Jan rapped on his pad with his pen. This was starting to drive him nuts. Either the murderer was a genius at improvising, or these homicides had been planned precisely and well in advance. Just like with Bernhard Valburg, the cemetery wasn’t going to offer any revelations.