The Checkpoint, Berlin Detective Series Box Set

by Michele E. Gwynn

  Over the next two hours, Oppel spilled his guts. His lawyer arrived, and after complaining loudly about his client’s rights, was allowed to come into the room. By then, it was too late. The BND knew everything, and Oppel cut a deal for a reduced sentence for helping with capturing a killer. His lawyer tried advising against it, but in the end, with the evidence before him, and his client singing like a bird, knew it was the best deal they’d get.

  Kelner and his men now had control over the ships coming into port. They immediately issued arrest warrants for the dock master, and several officials involved ranging from the ministry to the mayor of Hamburg. By the next morning, news stations were breaking across Deutschland with the salacious scandal of human trafficking, drugs, and murder, all tied to the offices of the minister. Ritt Obermeyer would awaken to find his career in the toilet, even though he was found to not be directly involved himself. His association with Bierkit Wiedner and the man accused of trying to kill him was enough to drop him ten points in the polls, pushing the Socialist Democratic Party ahead, and projecting a landslide victory in next week’s federal elections for the Bundestag.

  Mahler returned home that afternoon, weary to the bone, but glad that one case was now all but closed. While the BND took over, she could return to her normal duties, and devote her time to her wedding. To her surprise, her answering machine was blinking indicating she’d received a call on her home phone. The convoluted message left for her by Joseph had her chuckling in relief. She’d been angry for days, all the while, her love had been recuperating from a fight, which caused him to break his phone.

  “I told him not to drink with Swedes!” Happy for the first time in a week, she allowed herself a moment to relax on the couch. Before she realized it, she’d fallen asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  TRUE TO HER WORD, HACKTWICE sent over a package containing four passports. They even appeared worn, all except for Nikola’s which looked newer, but had two country stamps in it. One showing she arrived in Germany from Russia one month after her speculated birthday, and another showing her recent travel from Germany to Sweden. This would get the child through customs in Berlin where Heinz would then rent a car and take her to Potsdam to meet her grandparents.

  The flight was arranged for later that morning. Little lead time was given, but they had no luggage so not much was needed. At Arlanda airport, Elsa used some of the travel money to purchase Nikola a few outfits, new shoes, hair ribbons, and a bright purple backpack to put them in. She added in some other essentials, and at the last minute, bought a small snow globe showing the tall, golden minarets of St. Petersburg, Russia. It would be a reminder for her one day of where she came from. She allowed the toddler to carry on her own bag, worn proudly over her pink coat.

  On board, Elsa made sure to have the little girl sit next to Heinz since she would be spending the remainder of her time with him. The look on her face showed how difficult it was for her to let go. She’d already begun to form an attachment to the sweet smiles Nikola showered on her.

  “It’s for the best,” Faust said, patting Elsa’s hand. “And you’re sitting right behind her, just in case she needs you.”

  “I know.” Elsa bit her lip. “Everything will work out, and Joseph is wonderful with children.”

  “Strangely enough, yes. Not bad for an old grouch, is he?” Faust chuckled. “He was rather good with Therese too. She loved him.”

  She was surprised by his easy sharing of what must be a painful memory. “Well, he had Ingrid. It wasn’t like he was inexperienced.”

  “Therese was before Ingrid. Before he married Eva. They’d only just met then. I think, though, that Eva knew Joseph would be a good father when she saw him with our little one. Helga always said that’s what convinced Eva to say yes. Apparently. those two hens had discussed Heinz’s merits as a husband. I guess that was the tipping point.”

  Elsa laughed. “I can just imagine that. Well, part of it. I’ve never met Eva. Joseph has said very little about her. What little I know has come more from Birgitta, and I don’t think she knows the full score either.”

  “She knows the office gossip. Birgitta came after Joseph’s breakdown. He’d been divorced for some time by then, and only just getting his life back together. At least, he’d stopped drinking by then. He was still a cross bear to be around.” He paused and smiled. “You know, she was a calming influence on him from day one. I remember he tried a few times to complain about her to me. He didn’t want a partner, especially not a female. He said, ‘Herman, she’s too quiet! And you should see how small she is. I’ll be spending all my time trying to save her from danger and will probably end up dead!’ Now that I look back, I think it’s safe to say she was the one who saved him...from himself.”

  A grin blossomed on Elsa’s lips. She glanced between the two seats in front of her. Joseph was drawing pictures on a napkin and telling Nikola a story in his broken Russian. The little girl was leaning on him, laughing. Whether it was at his story, the pictures or his terrible accent, she wasn’t sure, but the father she knew him to be was on full display.

  As if sensing eyes on him, Heinz looked back, catching Elsa watching. “No peeksies!” He shoved a pillow over the opening. Elsa could hear him and the little girl giggling together.

  MAHLER AWOKE THE NEXT morning refreshed. Showered and dressed for business, she headed down to the station house, and was immediately called into her captain’s office. He was standing by the window, staring out at the cold, gray sky. He gestured for her to close the door.

  “Good morning to you too.” She sat, crossing her legs.

  “I have news,” he began. His face remained serious. “Three hours ago, two of our patrol officers received a tip on Karl Gephart’s whereabouts.”

  “Have they found him?”

  “They did. He was holed up in a cheap motel on the east end of town.”

  “That’s great news. When do we get to question him?”

  He turned to look at her. “We don’t.”

  “What? Why not? Surely the BND doesn’t need him. It was Oppel who was connected to their case.” She sat forward, outraged.

  “We don’t get to question him because he is dead.” Disappointment was clear in Levitz’s eyes.

  “Dead?” Mahler’s eyebrow rose.

  “He hung himself in the shower, or it appears that way.”

  “Suicide? Was there a note at least?” She blinked in disbelief.

  “No note. But we found a laptop in the room. It was registered to Elite Worldwide, Oppel’s business umbrella. Once we knew that, we had to turn it over to Kelner, dammit. I have no idea if it was in his possession by permission or stolen, but I’m guessing stolen, and probably the computer used to send the death threats to Obermeyer.” Frustration marred his words.

  “Damn, Dieter! He could’ve at least let us run a forensic analysis on it first.” Mahler blew out a breath. “What else?”

  “The desk clerk said he’d checked in the night before last around three in the morning. That puts him there at least five hours after the time Oppel says he heard the man arguing inside Wiedner’s room.” He walked to his desk and sat down. An open file lay in front of him. He turned it around to show Mahler. “And it means he checked into that room four hours after the coroner’s official time of death for Wiedner. Want to know the interesting part?”

  “Of course.” She eyed the file, listening.

  “Gephart made two calls from his room, both to the same number, around twenty minutes apart.”

  “And? Who did he call?” Mahler waited.

  Levitz held her gaze. “Bierkit Wiedner’s cell phone.”

  “What? Why would he call her if he killed her?”

  “Exactly my thought,” Levitz stated. “I reviewed the hotel’s security tapes again. Gephart never stepped foot inside the Omni. If he did, he managed to escape every security camera from the front door to the room. He left only one message out of the two calls. He asked her to call him, and he
sounded upset. Levitz chewed his lip, appearing disgruntled. “I’m not going to say you may have been right...”

  Mahler narrowed her gaze, her expression revealing her frustration. It was one she was used to, not being taken seriously by male superiors, even when she was right. She said it for him. “But it appears I was right. Oppel lied.” She let that sink in and moved on. “So, you got the autopsy results,” she stated, sitting forward to read the paperwork. “When?”

  Levitz was glad for the shift away from his own error in judgement. “About forty-five minutes ago. Preliminary results show a cardiac episode induced by an overdose of drugs. We still have to wait on toxicology. That’ll be another week, but in the meantime, we know that an overdose killed her. What we don’t know is if it was self-inflicted on purpose, by accident, or if someone else caused her to O.D.”

  She flipped a page. “Did the coroner offer any speculation into the type of drug or drugs?”

  “He says opioids.”

  “As in heroin?” Mahler looked at her captain. “Inhaled or injected?”

  Levitz pointed to a diagram on the page. “Doctor Menghala reports a fresh injection site located on her left arm just above the wrist. Whether or not it was murder is inconclusive at this time.”

  Mahler cringed. She was no fan of needles and could never understand how anyone could shoot up drugs. “But opioids,” she muttered, thinking.

  “I know. Oppel is still connected somehow, and now that he’s made a deal with the BND, we won’t be able to touch him. I don’t give a shit that he denies killing her. I think you were right, he did it. He was involved in bringing drugs in as well as prostitutes to supply his businesses. We’ve shut them all down. More than half the employees were there against their will.” He tapped the desk hard with his index finger. “But we have closed thirteen missing persons cases because of it.”

  “That many?” She looked up. “That’s good. Still, something seems off.”

  “He’s a good liar.”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s something I can’t put my finger on just yet.” She considered why Oppel would create such an elaborate lie. The man was already caught on so many criminal violations, what’s one more? He’d made a point of implicating Karl, but why?

  “Now you sound like Heinz. It’s never the obvious answer for him either.” Levitz sighed, frustrated.

  “And he’s usually right, as you well know.” She sat back, considering. “What about the money trail?”

  “We’re not privileged to what Kelner finds from here on out. They have the authorization to find and freeze all of Oppel’s bank accounts. They’re not going to share that with the likes of me and you.”

  “No, I suppose not. But we have jurisdiction over Gephart’s and Wiedner’s. We can, at the very least, check to see if they even had bank accounts.”

  “Not likely since both were indentured by Oppel. You can’t open a bank account without a passport or papers.”

  “Legally.”

  “What?” Levitz eyed Mahler.

  “But what if they opened one illegally? It’s not too difficult to get a fake I.D. card.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “See what you can find, but don’t waste too much time on it. It’s most likely a dead end. The real information is in what Kelner and Trommler uncover in Oppel’s possessions.”

  “And Obermeyer’s. Remember, he paid to play at the house in Reinickendorf. He may have also spent lavishly on his two favorite sex toys.”

  Levitz smiled. “And we have Obermeyer, by his own request. Look into it. Get back to me if you find anything.”

  Mahler stood. “Aye, Captain.” She offered a mock salute and headed to her desk to do some digging.

  An hour later, she had some answers, she just wasn’t quite sure what to make of them. Karl Gephart had a savings account at a small bank not far from the ministry offices. This wasn’t unusual in itself, but the amount revealed by the bank manager at Mahler’s official request was fifty-two thousand euros. Prior to three days ago, there had only been two thousand accrued over a period of three years. The deposit of fifty thousand came in one lump sum by wire from a numbered Swiss bank account the morning after Obermeyer had been shot. There was no way to discover the owner of the Swiss account. Numbered accounts were protected to the highest level of privacy, and usually belonged to criminals and corporations. One and the same in Mahler’s opinion. If Oppel had such an account, she wouldn’t be able to get the clearance required to look into it. Still, perhaps she could speak with Lukas, ask if an amount of fifty thousand had recently been paid out of any of Oppel’s accounts.

  Putting that aside for the moment, she pulled up the website for the Berliner Zeitung. Over the next half hour, she looked at articles and pictures of Obermeyer from the park opening to his paramours. There were quite a few of him with Marilyn, but none with Karl. He apparently never took the man out in public, probably to protect his own heterosexual image. Marilyn smiled in some but lacked expression in the most recent ones. In one, she was lifting a champagne flute, grinning. It was New Year’s Eve 2015. In another, she sipped a cocktail while Obermeyer rubbed elbows with elected officials. In others, she was eating dinner at lavish events, sitting next to the minister. Something sparked in Birgitta’s memory. She scrolled back through them all, looking hard. Her brows furrowed as she concentrated.

  “Oh my God!” She stood, and quickly made her way to Levitz’s office, throwing open his door without knocking. “It was definitely murder!”

  He jerked, taken by surprise. Looking up, he stared. “What was murder?”

  “Marilyn. She was murdered.” She sat down across from him.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because, Captain, she was left-handed.” Mahler reached across his desk, grabbing his keyboard, and accessing her files. She pointed at the screen. “Look.” She scrolled through all the pictures.

  Levitz watched them roll by. “There was no way she could have shot herself up in the wrist of the hand she would normally use.”

  “Exactly. It would’ve been too difficult. People always use the hand they favor.” Mahler tapped the keyboard again, pulling up scanned documents. “See? This is her official employment application for Denouve’s. Look at her signature.”

  “It slants to the right. Yes, left-handed.”

  “I also found that Gephart had a bank account. He received quite a large deposit the morning Marilyn was found dead.” She went on to explain about the Swiss account.

  “So someone paid him off. But for what? To kill her or to kill Obermeyer?”

  “That, Captain, is the question.”

  AT TEGAL, FAUST, ELSA, and Heinz went their separate ways. “This should get you through until Friday. Let me know how it goes. If they decide they don’t want Nikola, I’ll come get her.” Faust handed over a wad of cash to Heinz.

  “Thank you, Herman.” He pocketed the money.

  “Good luck, Joseph.” Elsa hugged him, and then she squatted down to eye level with the little girl. “And good luck to you, too, sweetheart.” She gathered Nikola to her for a hug.

  “Ich liebe dich,” Nikola said as she threw her arms around Elsa’s neck.

  “I taught her that.” Heinz grinned.

  “She’s a smart girl,” Faust said, fondly ruffling the child’s curls. “Despite everything she’s been through, she’s going to be all right.”

  “One way or the other.” He waved at them. “See you at the end of the week.” Heinz led the child away to the rent-a-car counter as Faust and Elsa walked outside to hail a taxi.

  The drive to Potsdam was uneventful. Heinz secured an Audi sedan, navigating the autobahn with ease. When they reached the city, he located the nearest police station. With the help of local law enforcement, he found the current address of Anton and Marie Schubert.

  As he drove there, he thought about what to say. He hadn’t seen them in years. The last time they’d all been in the same room together, Marie blamed him for not br
inging her daughter back home. Even though they both knew in their hearts that this was not his fault, and he’d certainly given all trying, it still hurt. The words, once spoken, could not be taken back, and the damage they caused could not be fixed. Years of friendship had shattered in that moment. Anton, once his dear friend, had to choose a side, and that side, rightfully, was with his wife. With regret, he gathered Marie, and left the Heinz household. Afterwards, his own marriage fell to pieces as first his daughter, Ingrid, blamed him for not finding her friend, and his wife, Eva, grew tired of an angry, exhausted, and increasingly drunk husband crawling into their bed each night. The tension between the three of them continued to stretch thin until finally, it snapped.

  The old feelings were still there, under the surface of scars. He knew he could never return Marlessa to them, but he hoped that bringing Nikola home would fill that hole in their hearts.

  Heinz looked at her. She was strapped into a car seat, playing with her stuffed rabbit. “I’m not a praying man, Nikola, but I’m praying hard now that this all works out. You deserve it. So do your grandparents. They’re very nice people, really. I promise.”

  She smiled, unaware.

  “Can you say Oma?”

  “Oma!” She mimicked.

  “Very good! How about Opa?” He slowed, turning right off the roundabout.

  “Opa!”

  Heinz chuckled. “That’s very good, dearest. Remember that. It will help.”

  “Ich liebe dich!” She shouted, laughing, not understanding what she was saying.

  “I love you, too, Nikola.” Under his breath, he whispered, “And I sure hope you love her as well, Anton and Marie.”

  “You’ve arrived at your destination,” The Audi’s GPS stated.

  Heinz parked in front of the house on Ahornstrasse. It was a typical German cottage style with a deep, steepled roof. The yard was fenced in by boxed hedges, which were bare of leaves and covered with snow. The tan siding was trimmed with a dark brown. The windows were slightly fogged over, and smoke escaped the chimney. He imagined that Marie was probably baking something inside. She loved to bake; cookies, cakes, pies, streusels, it didn’t matter. It was the key reason Anton’s waistline fought a battle every day, making him run a few miles each morning to keep the sweets from gaining ground.