Desert Fire (3 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Desert Fire
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PAIN COURSED THROUGH Sarah's body like molten lead. Her eyes fluttered open. She lay on her back on the kitchen floor. Her legs were spread and the killer knelt over her, hitting her with his fists: her breasts, her belly, her pubis.
He clamped his fingers around her throat, slowly tightening his grip and cutting off her air.
She felt as if her head would explode; this could not be happening to her.
She flailed her arms feebly to ward him off. He smiled, as if glad that she was fighting him.
Something was in her left hand. Something small and hard. It cut her palm. Something metal. Something of the killer's. She grasped it with her last strength.
The killer said something, but there was roaring in her ears. The teakettle was whistling above her on the stove, and the lights grew dim.
She was falling into a black bottomless pit, into nothingness, and finally she eased into a painless peace.
IT WAS A few minutes after midnight. The sky was still overcast but the rain had finally stopped. The temperature had plunged and a thick, icy fog covered the river valley, harking back to the Romanesque days of dark river fortresses.
A well-built man, good-looking in a thick, Germanic way, stood on the balcony of his Oberkassel apartment looking out across the slumbering city of Bonn. Heedless of the cold, he wore only trousers and a light pullover as he smoked a cigarette. His thoughts flitted across ten dozen childhood memories, few of them pleasant.
Only of his father, now dying in a sanatorium near Bern, were his memories fond. Now it was nearly over for the old man, and he found himself wishing that the waiting would be over, the end would come, the pain would end. And he felt guilty for it.
Look to the future, our only salvation, his father was fond of saying, forced into such a dreamer's philosophy
as the only logical alternative to the insanity of the forties.
But the future was here. The Germanies had reunited. And Roemer did not feel saved.
The telephone in the apartment rang and Gretchen answered it. She came to the balcony door.
“Walther?”
“I'm not in,” he said softly.
Behind him, he could smell her fresh lilac scent.
“It is the Chief District Prosecutor. He says it is very important he speak with you. Walther?”
Roemer would forever remember that exact moment, for it was the watershed of his life.
“WE WERE TOLD to wait, so we've waited,” Bonn Criminal Police Lieutenant Rolf Manning said. “But no one has told us what interest the Bureau has in this case. Can you tell me?”
It was chilly in the third-floor corridor. Police had been coming and going for several hours, the downstairs door left open most of the time, the apartment building's heating system stingy against the cold weather. Roemer looked down the stairwell. Bonn Kriminalpolizei Laboratory men were dusting the banister for fingerprints. Somewhere in the building a television or radio was playing, even so late. And from within the apartment came the muted hum of cop talk.
Manning was much shorter than Roemer. An ever-present Marlboro dangled from the corner of his mouth, making him look like a cop in an old American detective film. There was an angry glint in his wide Westphalian eyes. Although Roemer had never worked with him, he knew of Manning's reputation as tough, territorial and
steady, with a long list of accomplishments under his belt. Manning had not been picked for elevation to the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, because presumably he lacked imagination … whatever that was.
Blood was tracked on several of the steps leading down from the third floor. The footprints had been outlined in white chalk and covered with clear plastic.
“As far as you and your people are concerned,” Roemer said, turning to him, “I was never here.”
“I was told as much, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, does it?” Manning said.
Don't make waves, Roemer had been told. Just get in, see what there is to see and get the hell out. Orders from on high. He'd taken them all his life.
Ordnung.
It meant everything, actually, if there was to be a stable society. But order with compassion.
Gretchen did not understand why it had to be him. “Because we make our own choices,” he had told her. “Because all of us are either a part of the solution or a part of the problem.” His father's philosophy he had taken to heart a long time ago. But Gretchen, like his ex-wife, had tried to narrow that sense of a wider responsibility in him. They had both mistaken his empathy for people for a weakness, for a pliancy. Both had tried to mold him into something they imagined he could or should be; neither would accept him for what he actually was. Gretchen had used the same argument tonight that his wife might have used in an effort to persuade him to pass on the assignment.
“Let someone else take it,” she cried. “Why you? Why always you?”
He had made his way in without recognition by the newshawks gathered outside. Manning had briefed him. An anonymous telephone tip had been received at 22:53 hours, and a radio unit had been immediately dispatched. The body was discovered and Manning was called. After a very brief look, he called the Kriminalpolizei
van with its complement of detail people, as well as the coroner.
Then the lightning strike had come, according to Manning: Hold everything until the BKA arrives. Don't touch a fucking thing until the Bundes people get a peek. And Manning had begun to wonder just what sort of a case he had on his hands.
“I'd like to look inside now,” Roemer said.
“Can you tell me what you're looking for?” Manning asked hopefully. “Perhaps we can help.”
“I just want to look.”
The uniformed Landpolizei were all downstairs. Inside were only the plainclothes specialists: the coroner, a police photographer, two fingerprint men, a forensics laboratory expert with bottle-thick glasses perched on the end of his nose, four detail men who had been taking the place apart until the call had come to hold up, and Manning's young sergeant, who seemed bored. The living room was filled with cigarette smoke. Conversations died when they saw Roemer.
“Look lively now,” Manning said. “We are going to do a quick run-through for the nice man, and then he'll get the hell out of here and let us do our jobs.”
There were a few appreciative chuckles.
“No forced entry, we're sure of that much,” Manning said. “She either left the latch open, or she let her murderer in. Recognized him, perhaps.”
“What's your preference?” Roemer asked softly.
“She let him in, I'd say. Lady downstairs in Two-B seems to think that our girl always kept her door locked. Lady said our
Fräulein
was secretive from the beginning, though she had her men friends.”
“Any sense of the number?”
“Two in particular. One medium height, on the husky side, dark, sad-looking, she said. And the other tall, thin, like he'd been marooned on a desert island and just returned to civilization.”
“How long had this been going on?”
“Since fall for the thin one, a bit before Christmas for the other.”
Roemer inspected the door. There was a deadbolt and a slip chain in addition to the tumbler lock. The deadbolt looked new. She had been security-conscious.
They hadn't told him much on the telephone. They said they wanted him unburdened by preconceived notions other than the possibility that the murder could have a political significance, possibly even an international meaning.
“Nice apartment, arranged for her by her employers, we're told,” Manning continued. “She was an American. We have her passport.”
“Nothing touched in the living room?”
“It started in the living room. We found blood and bits of teeth on the rug. But it was finished in the kitchen. She was probably raped. Dr. Sternig says as much.” Manning lowered his voice. “Possibly after she was dead. Fucking pervert.”
Several bloody footprints on the living room carpet had been outlined in chalk and covered with clear plastic like those on the corridor stairs.
“If she let him in, they definitely knew each other well,” Manning said. “Invited him in for tea.”
“How do you know that?”
“She was wearing nothing more than a bathrobe. You don't let strangers in dressed like that. And the teakettle had been on. At least we think it was at the time of death.”
The living room was well furnished, but there were no personal touches anywhere. No photographs. No paintings, other than a poorly done print of a Bavarian mountain scene. An ashtray on the table was filled with smoldering cigarette butts. Last month's issue of
Stern
magazine lay next to it.
“Care to see the body now?” Manning asked. “We'd like to get on with it.”
“The ashtray. Was it clean or dirty?”
Manning glanced at the coffee table, clearly embarrassed.
“It was clean, sir,” Jacobs, his sergeant, volunteered.
“Was it dusted?” Roemer asked.
“Yes, sir,” the young man replied, puffing up a little. “We didn't let anyone in until that was finished. Standard operating procedure in our office, sir.”
“That'll be enough, Sergeant,” Manning said crossly. He didn't like the federals cross-examining his people, but he didn't like disrespect, either.
“The killer wasn't already in the apartment when she arrived?”
“Not unless he was well hidden,” Manning said. “She came home, laid her wet raincoat over the rack in the bathroom. Took off her shoes and her blouse, which she laid over the tub. Took a towel, and while she was drying herself, walked into the bedroom. She got undressed—her clothing is lying on the bedroom floor—put on a robe and went into the kitchen, where she had a drink of cognac, and put on the teakettle.”
“Then the murderer came calling?”
“It's the way we see it at the moment.”
Roemer went to the bedroom door and looked at the wet clothing on the floor. A small bed, a dressing table in one corner, and along the opposite wall a substantial-looking
Schrank.
The big wardrobe had been moved out from the wall. There was a lingering odor of perfume.
Manning came up behind Roemer. “We moved the
Schrank.
”
“Why?”
“It had been moved before. We saw the marks on the carpet. But whatever may have been behind it is gone.”
“If there was anything,” Roemer said absently. He stepped into the room. The small wastepaper basket beside the dressing table was empty. The skirt on the floor was wet; so were the bra and panties.
“Has your office been investigating this girl?” Manning asked.
“No.”
Manning stood aside as Roemer came out and went next into the bathroom. A soaked raincoat hung on a drying rack, and a white blouse lay over the tub. A pair of low black pumps lay by the toilet. No bath towel on the bar.
“The towel is in the kitchen,” Manning volunteered.
The bathroom, like the living room and bedroom, seemed devoid of personal touches, as if this place had been used as a hotel, not a real home.
Why had the Chief District Prosecutor asked him here?
“I'll see the body now,” he said.
Manning, relieved, stepped back. “This way.”
Roemer moved down the hallway to the kitchen. The devastated body of a young woman, possibly in her late twenties or early thirties, dark hair, large breasts, lay flat on its back, legs spread, between the refrigerator and a small dining table. There was a lot of blood around her head. Her face had been crushed. Her bathrobe was open. There were large, dark bruises around her breasts, and angry white welts and blisters covered her belly and thighs.
“Her name was Sharazad Razmarah,” Manning said from behind. “She was thirty-two. Lived here since October. Apparently she was an engineer at the Kraftwerk Union research facility.”
“You said she was an American?”
“American passport. Gave her place of birth as Tehran, Iran.”
A teakettle lay on the floor next to the body and there was a lot of water on the floor.
“We didn't disturb anything,” Manning said.
Her left arm was bent back at an odd angle, apparently broken. Her right arm was outstretched, the fingers of her hand spread apart as if they too were broken.
Along with the metallic odor of a lot of blood, there was something else that Roemer could not define. A natural odor, not a pleasant one.
He stepped around the table to look more closely at her right hand. There seemed to be a bruise in her palm. Her left arm had been badly burned, flesh peeled away. Her jaw was broken. Most of her front teeth had been shattered.
Roemer closed his eyes. He could not help imagining her last moments of life, how it must have been.
“Dr. Sternig,” Manning called.
The coroner appeared in the doorway. He wore a three-piece suit, the tie snugged up tight, a watch fob and chain in his vest. His lips were pursed, his eyes narrow.
“I'll have an autopsy report to your office this afternoon, providing I can have the body in the near future,” he said.
“What can you tell me now?” Roemer asked.
“For now I'm placing the time of death between twenty-one hundred and twenty-two hundred hours. Cause of death, massive cerebral hemorrhage.”
“There's more damage here. How do you see it?” There was a copper taste in Roemer's mouth, and his stomach was knotted.
“She was in the living room. Probably opened the door. The killer struck her in the face. I'm assuming he used his fist. It was a strong enough blow to shatter her lower mandible, breaking seven teeth and knocking her back against the couch.”
“She didn't cry out,” Manning said. “No one heard a thing.”
Roemer held himself from looking at the body.
“She was probably unconscious, or semiconscious at that point, because there are no defensive wounds other than the impression on her right palm.”
“She may have grabbed something from her killer,” Manning said. “A button, a tie clasp, a cuff link. After
she was already dead, the killer realized she had something in her hand and pried it loose, breaking three of her fingers in the process.”
“We may be able to lift an image from her palm,” the coroner said.
Roemer was suddenly cold. He always reacted like this. It was another of the reasons his wife, and now Gretchen, complained to him that he should get out of the Bureau.
“I can only guess at the order beyond that point,” Dr. Sternig said. “He hit her many times, possibly even tortured her. We know that he dragged or carried her here into the kitchen, where he continued beating her. The tea water was hot. At some point he poured it over her. He kicked her too, in the back, the side, in the breasts. You can see the large hematoma. And then he stomped on her face, at least three times, crushing her forehead, causing her death.”
“And he raped her,” Roemer said after a long hesitation.

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