by Nele Neuhaus
At these words, fear raced through Bodenstein, and he felt panic rise inside him. Rosalie had gone to the mall an hour and a half ago to shop for a few last-minute items before she left for New York.
“I’ll come as soon as I can find somebody to watch the kid,” he said brusquely, and got up. “Keep me posted.”
Then he tapped in Rosalie’s number with trembling fingers. The call went through, but she didn’t pick up. He tried to think clearly. On a day like today, thousands of people would go to the mall. Why would anything happen to her, of all people? But didn’t everyone think and hope the same thing when a tragedy struck? Somebody was injured or killed, and all those spared by fate were glad that they weren’t affected.
Oliver phoned Inka, who picked up at once.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to work,” he said. “Could I bring Sophia over to the clinic?”
“I’m still with a patient,” she said after a tiny pause. “But bring her to the clinic. Mrs. Wagner can watch her until I get back.”
“I don’t know what time I’ll be able to pick her up.” Bodenstein turned off the stove. “There were shots fired at the Main-Taunus Center, and I’m worried about Rosalie. She was heading for the mall, and now I can’t reach her.”
“I’m sure all hell has broken loose over there,” Inka said. “She wouldn’t be able to hear her cell. Don’t worry. And it doesn’t matter if it’s late.”
That was one thing he appreciated about Inka. Just like him, she calmly tackled every problem that came up, without hesitation. She was completely different from Cosima, who always had to weigh how difficult, complicated, and unpleasant something might be when he made a suggestion.
“What about the soup?” Sophia piped up. She had a calculating expression on her face that Oliver did not like at all.
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “It’s too late. I have to go. Hurry and get your things, I’m taking you to Inka’s.”
“But I—”
“End of discussion,” he cut her off. “Put on your shoes and jacket. Right now.”
Sophia looked at him in bewilderment.
“But I’m hungry!”
“I’m sorry.” He picked up his own scarf and coat and held out her down jacket. “Come on.”
“No.” The girl crossed her arms stubbornly and sat down on the floor. Bodenstein felt his nerves jangling.
“Sophia, that’s enough,” he said sternly. “I have to go to work, and I don’t have time to discuss this with you. If you aren’t dressed in three minutes and on the way to my car, I’m going to be very angry.”
“And then what?” she asked in Cosima’s exact tone of voice.
“No Christmas presents. No watching movies. I’m not kidding.”
“You’re so mean!” Sophia yelled, and tears sprayed from her eyes. “I hate you!”
The Main-Taunus Center was in chaos. Not everyone had heard the shots fired in the upper floor of the mall, but the rumor of an attack, of people dead and wounded, spread like wildfire. Terrified people were jamming into the already-packed stores to seek shelter. Others were trying to flee from the mall and were prevented from doing so by the teams of police who had completely locked it down shortly after the emergency call came in.
Pia and Kathrin were wearing their bulletproof Kevlar vests as they accompanied the hundreds of riot police moving along the completely deserted walkways. No one knew exactly where the shooter had been positioned, or whether he was still there or had managed to escape long before. It was better to stay under cover. The floor was strewn with shopping bags and articles of clothing that people had dropped as they fled or that had been torn from their grasp in the general panic. Several SWAT commandos from Frankfurt were combing through the entire shopping center, looking for the shooter and his victims. Everyone thought they were hot on the sniper’s heels, but for Pia, something felt phony. It didn’t make sense that the shooter would strike in a crowded shopping center. Someone like that would plan in advance how he could make his escape. There was a high risk that he would be seen as he fired his gun and then got held up by the anticipated mass panic. On the other hand, the crowd provided protection, because he could simply mix in with everyone else. But he’d have to carry his weapon with him.
The Christmas music was turned off, and the silence was eerie, the only sound coming from the helicopter that was circling high above the buildings. Behind the display windows of the shops, people were packed in like terrified fish in overcrowded aquariums.
“There are a lot of injured people who need help,” the shopping center manager said to Pia. “Can’t we at least let the ambulances through?”
The slim, tall man in his fifties was hurrying along next to Pia. She could see that he’d been through hell in the past hour. He’d had to watch helplessly as his own security team, who had been thoroughly trained for just such a worst-case scenario, got trampled by the crowds. In the passageways to the parking garage, there were scores of injuries as hundreds of people fearing for their lives had tried to squeeze through the doors. In the parking garage and outside in the huge parking lots, cars had slammed into each other. Some people had used the chaos to loot merchandise from the stores. When the security team tried to intervene, fights erupted, resulting in even more injuries. It was supposed to have been the best day of the year for the shopping center, but it had turned into the worst day ever.
“We have broken bones, lacerations, and crush injuries,” the head of the mall told Pia. “Kids were trampled, and one woman had a heart attack. They desperately need medical attention!”
“I’m well aware of that. But there’s probably a guy still running around somewhere with a gun.” Pia stopped and scrutinized the pale but determined face of the man. What should she do now? Get help for the injured and risk that somebody might be killed elsewhere? Or give the sniper the chance to get away?
You cover up this uncertainty, of which you are probably unaware, with an aggressive attitude. Andreas Neff’s words were echoing in her head. Damn it!
Stay calm, Pia silently admonished herself. Bodenstein wasn’t here, and she was the highest-ranking police officer on-site. She had to set priorities and make a decision. Right now.
“Kathrin,” said Pia, turning to her colleague. “Please tell them to let in the medics and ambulances.”
“Okay.” Kathrin nodded and grabbed her walkie-talkie.
“Thank you,” said the shopping center manager with relief. He turned on his heel and hurried off.
Pia’s walkie-talkie crackled.
“Suspect apprehended!” came the voice of the SWAT commander loud and clear, and a wave of relief flooded through Pia’s body. “In the second floor of the parking garage by the bus station. We’ve also secured the weapon.”
“We’re on our way,” she replied, and dashed off.
The splintering of glass, a thud, and then a bloodcurdling scream made her jump, sending an icy shiver down her spine.
Greta, she instantly thought. She dropped the ballpoint pen she’d been using to write the shopping list, leaped up from the dining room table, and ran into the kitchen. There stood Greta, and for a second, she was relieved because nothing had happened to her daughter. But then she saw the blood on Greta’s face and on the new sweater that she’d slipped on. Her heart seemed to miss a couple of beats. Greta had stopped screaming, but she was staring wide-eyed at the floor, and Karoline followed her gaze. What she saw shattered her world. On the worn-out black and cream-colored floor tiles lay Mama, and a pool of blood had formed around her head. Blood, everywhere blood, with bright skull fragments and yellowish brain matter mixed in. The blood spread over the tiles and had sprayed over the white cupboards. She knelt down and touched Mama’s hand. Her skin was so warm. Maybe she had simply fainted and hit her head on the counter.
“Mama,” she whispered. “Mama, wake up!”
She touched her on the shoulder and shook her lightly. Mama’s head tipped to the side, but instead of her face, there was
only a bloody mass.
Karoline Albrecht shot upright in her bed. Her heart was racing so fast that it hurt. She was drenched in sweat and freezing at the same time.
Mama was dead.
It was no nightmare.
She let herself sink down onto the mattress again, closing her eyes and hoping she could fall asleep in order to delay confronting a reality that she didn’t feel adult enough to face. If she could only get rid of these images! In the dream, she had seen everything so distinctly, every hideous detail, and she had relived her horror and her fear. On that evening, she had grabbed Greta, who was sobbing hysterically, and pulled her out of the kitchen. Everything that happened after that, she remembered only in fragments. At some point, Carsten had been there and also the police, and then Papa arrived. . . . To see him like that, wailing in despair, was almost as terrible as the sight of Mama’s missing face. Karoline sighed in torment. How was she going to carry on? How would anyone act after seeing her own mother shot down? What would other people expect of her? All her life she had dealt with problems by using logic and making rational decisions. She had always focused on finding solutions, but this time, it wasn’t working. Her heart was clenched tight. Don’t cry, she told herself. She could not give in to grief, or she would fall apart.
With an effort, she sat up. Her limbs hurt and her whole body felt heavy as lead. The nightmare images sloshed around in her head like water that came seeping in through tiny cracks and couldn’t be stopped before it tore down walls and filled up everything to destroy it all. Her world no longer had any colors, and her life from now on would consist of a before and an after.
Karoline braced herself and got up from the edge of the bed to drag herself into the bathroom. For two days, she’d worn the same clothes, hadn’t had a shower, and had eaten almost nothing. She had phoned Carsten a few times and also talked to Greta. She had worried about her father, who had spoken hardly a word, trapped in the same hell of bewilderment and horror as she was. Last night, she had driven home because she needed clean clothes, and then she fell on her bed and dropped right off to sleep. The phone rang while she was in the shower. She didn’t care who it was; she would call back later. Sometime. Right now she had to be strong. For Greta, and especially for Papa. He needed her more than ever before.
Pia was sitting at her desk, typing the final words of her report into the Com-Pre system on her computer. Then she saved the file. They’d been so close to catching the sniper, but then all their effort and anticipation had changed to disappointment. Three young men had just wanted to play a practical joke with the blank gun that belonged to one of their fathers. A nasty joke, as it turned out, with far-reaching consequences. Bodenstein, relieved that nothing had happened to his daughter Rosalie, had taken the three chastened wrongdoers to task and explained the seriousness of their situation. The police action was going to cost their parents a couple of thousand euros, and they might also have to pay compensation claims for damages. Thirty-four people were injured in the mass panic, some of them seriously, and the woman who had suffered a heart attack was in critical condition. Pia got up and went to the break room, where she found Bodenstein and Nicola Engel.
“They didn’t think about the repercussions at all,” Bodenstein said, shaking his head as he poured himself a cup of coffee. “They just thought it would be great fun to fire shots in the mall. Incomprehensible!”
“It doesn’t surprise me.” Engel sipped at her coffee. “Many young people these days have absolutely no concept of right and wrong. They sit at their computers and shoot people down, as blithely as we used to eliminate players from the game in Parcheesi.”
“Their parents are going to hit the roof,” Pia muttered. “Especially the father who forgot to lock up his gun cabinet properly. Sometimes I can’t believe that people haven’t learned a thing from the school shootings that killed sixteen in both Winnenden and Erfurt.”
“Nobody wants to think that their kid would do anything like that,” said Bodenstein.
“All right.” Dr. Nicola Engel rinsed out her cup and put it in the rack next to the sink to dry. “At any rate, this whole incident turned out pretty well. Good work, Ms. Kirchhoff.”
“I’ve already written up the report,” Pia hastened to say in order to avert the inevitable question from her superior.
Engel looked at her and then nodded. “I took that for granted,” was all she said. Then she turned to Bodenstein: “Can you spare a few minutes? I have something I want to discuss with you.”
“Of course.” Bodenstein followed her out of the break room.
Pia crossed the hall and went into the office she shared with Kai Ostermann. She was annoyed to see Andreas Neff sitting at her desk.
“What did I tell you?” He had his feet propped on the edge of the desk and was grinning, pleased with himself. “I was sure that the incident today couldn’t be the sniper. He’s not going to strike again before Christmas.”
“I’d like to sit at my desk, if you don’t mind.” Pia waved her hand to shoo him away. “There’s a desk free in Ms. Fachinger’s office at the moment.”
“There’s one in here, too.” Neff pointed to the former desk of Frank Behnke, which Ostermann, as the main person in charge of case and evidence documentation, had been using as an extra space for sorting reports and case exhibits. “So I’ll take this one, if that’s all right.”
“If I were you, I’d keep my hands off that desk and everything on it,” Pia advised him.
Her phone rang.
“Are you hard of hearing, or are you trying to piss me off?” she said to Neff. He made a show of taking down his feet, then got up with maddening slowness and sauntered across the room. Pia picked up the receiver and dropped into her chair.
“I have a colleague from Niederhöchstadt on the phone,” Kathrin croaked. “He wants to talk to the boss or to you.”
“Patch him through,” replied Pia.
In the meantime, Neff had begun looking through the stacks of documents that had been carefully sorted on Behnke’s former desk. Kai was going to flip out when he saw that someone had messed up the order of his papers.
“Rothaus here, Eschborn police station,” the officer said. Pia knew him well. “Today we got an anonymous letter in the mail that might be of interest to your team. It’s an obituary for Ingeborg Rohleder.”
Pia jumped as if she’d had an electric shock.
“An obituary?” she said to make sure.
“Yep, black border, a cross, but the text is weird,” said Police Superintendent Rothaus. “It reads: ‘In memoriam Ingeborg Rohleder. Ingeborg Rohleder had to die because her daughter implicated herself in the denial of assistance and acted as an accessory to negligent manslaughter.’ It’s signed ‘The Judge.’ ”
Pia noticed that she’d been holding her breath out of sheer tension, and now she exhaled. This was a highly interesting development. The names of the sniper’s two victims had not been made public, and why would anybody from the Rohleders’ circle of acquaintances want to write something like this? It clearly indicated that there was a purpose behind the perpetrator’s actions. It might even offer an explanation of the motive.
Pia thanked her colleague and promised to be at the police station within half an hour.
“Any news?” Neff asked curiously.
Pia ignored his question, jumped up, and went off to look for Bodenstein. She found him outside Nicola Engel’s office, about to leave.
“I’m going to rescue Inka for a change,” he said. “You can call me if—”
“We have to drive over to Niederhöchstadt,” Pia interrupted him excitedly. “Our colleagues received an anonymous letter in the mail with an obituary for Ingeborg Rohleder. It clearly reveals that the perp knew the name of at least one of his victims and—”
She quit talking because Neff was coming down the hall.
“Don’t stop because of me,” he challenged her with a smile.
“I’m not saying anything as long as y
ou’re sneaking around, eavesdropping,” Pia replied hostilely. The smile vanished from the case analyst’s face, though only briefly. Andreas Neff undoubtedly had a thick skin.
“You can’t shut him out,” said Bodenstein after Neff had left. “Engel wants us to work with him; she’s made that very clear to me.”
“But he’s an idiot,” Pia said stubbornly. “And he gets on my nerves with his stupid babbling.”
Bodenstein sighed and fished his cell out of his pocket.
“We’re going to Niederhöchstadt,” he said as he tapped in a number and raised the phone to his ear. “And we’re taking Neff and Kröger with us.”
“Do we have to? Take Neff, I mean?” Pia asked, not at all pleased.
“No discussion,” Bodenstein told her. “Try to get along with him. Please.”
Nothing in life is carved in stone, he thought. Sometimes you just had to be flexible. Even the best-laid plans could be upset if there were elements of uncertainty that could not be calculated. He’d considered another course of action, but who knew when the bakery salesgirl would be back from vacation?
He bit into his cheese sandwich and again leaned over the table to look at the blueprints of a building and some photos. When he was at the bakery yesterday morning, he noticed that the building under construction, which he’d planned to shoot from, had been covered with exterior drywall over the course of a day. That was extremely irritating, because now he had to go searching for another location fast. Purely by chance, he’d found the perfect spot, and now he was looking on Google Maps to check the escape route that he’d already cased the day before.
The TV news program was broadcasting a new report about the shots fired that morning in the Main-Taunus Center mall, and the chaos that had resulted. He grabbed the remote and turned up the sound.
“According to police, it was not the sniper who had recently shot two women in Eschborn and Oberursel, but three young men who were firing blanks from a pistol. . . .”
He shook his head and switched off the TV.
