Snow White Must Die (25 page)

“Stop for a moment at the store,” Pia said to Oliver as they drove back down the main street. “It can’t hurt to ask around one more time.”

It turned out that they had come at a good time with regard to making inquiries. On this Monday morning Margot Richter’s small store was obviously the central meeting place for the female inhabitants of Altenhain. This time the ladies proved much more communicative than they were at their last visit.

“And this is exactly how it all started back then,” said Inge Dombrowski the hairdresser, and the other women present nodded in agreement. “I don’t want to imply anything, but Willi Paschke told me he saw Amelie over at the Sartorius place.”

“I also saw her go into their house recently,” another woman piped up, adding that she lived kitty-corner from Hartmut’s house and had an excellent view.

“She’s also bosom buddies with our village idiot,” a fat woman commented from the produce counter.

“Yes, that’s right,” three or four other women eagerly confirmed.

“With whom?” Pia inquired.

“With that Thies Terlinden,” the hairdresser explained. “He’s a few cards short of a deck, and prowls around at night through the village and the woods. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done something to that girl.”

The other women nodded in agreement. In Altenhain there were always plenty of suspicions to go around. Neither Oliver nor Pia said anything to that, but simply let the women talk. They were clearly enjoying whetting their knives and sharing their lust for scandal. They seem to have forgotten the police were present.

“The Terlindens should have locked that son up in a home long ago,” one woman insisted. “But in this town nobody dares say a word to the old man.”

“Right, because then they’d have to worry about losing their job.”

“The last person who said something against the Terlindens was Albert Schneeberger. Then his daughter disappeared, and soon he was gone too.”

“It’s strange how Terlinden helped out Sartorius. Maybe the two boys did have something to do with it.”

“That Lars sure left Altenhain in a hurry afterwards.”

“And now I hear Terlinden has even offered the murderer a job. Unbelievable! Instead of making sure he gets lost.”

For a moment silence descended over the store; everyone seemed to be pondering the possible meaning of these words. Then they all started jabbering at once. Pia decided to play dumb.

“Excuse me!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard. “Just who is this Terlinden you keep talking about?”

Abruptly the women realized that they weren’t alone. One after the other hurried to leave the store under some pretext, most of them with empty baskets. Margot Richter remained behind at her cash register. Until now she had kept out of the discussion. As befitted a good shop owner, she kept her ears open but preserved her neutrality.

“That’s not the result we had in mind,” said Pia apologetically, but the shop owner was unperturbed.

“They’ll be back soon enough,” she said. “Claudius Terlinden is the owner of the Terlinden company up there in the industrial park. The family and the company have been here in Altenhain for more than a hundred years. And without them not much would happen here at all.”

“How do you mean?”

“The Terlindens are very generous. They support the associations, the church, the elementary school, the district library. With them it’s a family tradition. And half the village works at the plant. The one son, Thies, that Christa called ‘the village idiot,’ is a very peaceful guy. He wouldn’t harm a fly. I can’t imagine he could have done anything to hurt the girl.”

“By the way—do you know Amelie Fröhlich?”

“Yes, of course.” She gave a slightly disapproving smile. “You can’t miss her, the way she dresses! Besides, she works with my daughter at the Black Horse.”

Pia nodded and jotted down a note. Once again her boss was leaving her totally in the lurch, standing next to her absentmindedly and not saying a word.

“So what do you think could have happened to the girl?”

Margot Richter hesitated a moment, but her eyes twitched to the right, and Pia knew immediately who she suspected, because from her spot behind the cash register she had a clear view of the Golden Rooster. The gossip about Terlinden’s son was only a smoke screen. In reality everyone in town suspected Tobias Sartorius, who had done something like this before, after all.

“I have no idea what could have happened,” Margot Richter said evasively. “Maybe she’ll turn up.”

*   *   *

“Tobias Sartorius is in great danger of being lynched,” Pia said, seriously troubled, when they got back to K-11. “Last Friday night he was attacked and beaten up in his barn, and his father is still getting anonymous threatening letters, not to mention the graffiti smeared on the wall of his house.”

Ostermann had already confiscated Amelie’s laptop and diary, which to his dismay was written in a secret code that he couldn’t decipher. Kathrin Fachinger and Frank Behnke had met with Bodenstein and Kirchhoff at the same time and had nothing really helpful to report. Amelie had no close girlfriends. She kept to herself and on the school bus talked only with the two girls in her class who also lived in Altenhain. The two girls did say that Amelie had been showing a lot of interest in Tobias Sartorius and the horrible events of eleven years ago. She kept asking questions about it. And yes, she had probably even talked to
that guy
more than once.

Ostermann came into the conference room with a fax in his hand. “We got the call list from Amelie’s cell phone,” he announced. “The last call was on Sunday evening at 10:11. She called a landline number in Altenhain, and I already checked it out.”

“Sartorius?” Bodenstein guessed.

“Right. The call lasted only seven seconds, and apparently no words were spoken. Earlier she had dialed this number twelve times and hung up immediately. After 10:11 p.m. her cell phone was turned off, so her movements can’t be tracked, because the phone’s signal was captured by the only cell tower in Altenhain, which has a radius of about five kilometers.”

“But incoming calls were captured, weren’t they?” Bodenstein asked, and Ostermann shook his head.

“What did you get from the computer?”

“I haven’t cracked the password yet.” Ostermann frowned. “But I looked through the diary, at least the parts that I could decipher. Tobias Sartorius, someone named ‘Thies,’ and ‘Claudius’ were mentioned often.”

“In what context?”

“She seemed to be interested in Sartorius and this Claudius. I don’t know yet what sort of interest she had.”

“Good work.” Bodenstein looked at the other team members, and his old decisiveness had returned. “At present the girl has been missing for less than forty hours. I want the whole program: at least two hundred people to do a ground search, dogs, and a chopper with an infrared camera. Behnke, you organize a special team; I want every available officer to canvass every resident in the village. Fachinger, check out the bus connections and taxi companies. The time period in question is between ten p.m. Saturday till two a.m. Sunday morning. Any questions?”

“We should talk to this Thies and his father,” said Kirchhoff. “And to Tobias Sartorius.”

“Right. The two of us will do that right away.” Bodenstein looked around the room. “Oh yes, Ostermann. Press, radio, TV, and the usual entry in the missing persons list. We’ll meet here again at six p.m.”

*   *   *

An hour later Altenhain was swarming with police. A canine unit with specially trained “man-trackers” was on the way; these dogs could pick up and follow a scent up to four weeks old. One hundred riot police were systematically combing the meadows and edges of the woods surrounding the village, mapped out in quadrants. A helicopter with an infrared camera flew low over the treetops, and the criminal police officers from the “Amelie” special team rang the doorbell at every house and apartment in Altenhain. Everyone involved was motivated and full of hope that the girl would be found quickly and unharmed. Each of them was also aware that the pressure to produce rapid results was enormous. Oliver’s phone rang off the hook. He had turned over the driving to Pia and was concentrating on coordinating the entire effort. Roadblocks on the street in front of the Fröhlichs’ house were set up to keep away the press and curious neighbors. The canine units would begin their search at the last place Amelie had been seen, the Black Horse. Yes, a friend was allowed to visit the Fröhlichs, and the pastor too. Yes, the surveillance footage from the police camera at the entrance to the village would be checked. No, civilians were not allowed to help in the search. Just as they pulled up to the Golden Rooster, Dr. Engel called and wanted to know the state of things.

“As soon as there is something to report, you’ll be the first to know, of course,” said Bodenstein curtly, ending the call.

Hartmut Sartorius opened the front door but peeked out with the safety chain on.

“We’d like to speak with your son, Mr. Sartorius,” said Bodenstein. “Please let us in.”

“Do you suspect him every time some girl comes home too late?” The words sounded gruff, almost aggressive.

“You’ve already heard?”

“Yes, of course. Word gets around quickly here.”

“Tobias is not a suspect.” Bodenstein remained quite calm because he could see how nervous Sartorius was. “But Amelie did call your home number thirteen times the night she disappeared.”

The door closed, the safety chain was unhooked, and Sartorius let them in. He straightened his shoulders and was obviously preparing himself for this visit by the authorities. His son, though, looked terrible. He sat slumped on the sofa in the living room; his face was disfigured by bruises and he nodded weakly to Bodenstein and Kirchhoff when they came in.

“Where were you on Saturday night between ten p.m. and early Sunday morning?” Bodenstein wanted to know.

“Come on now!” Sartorius exclaimed. “My son was home all evening. On Friday night he was attacked in the barn and beaten half to death!”

Bodenstein didn’t let himself be thrown off track. “On Saturday night at 10:11 p.m. Amelie called your number. The call was picked up, but it was so short that probably no words were exchanged. Before that she had already tried to call twelve times.”

“We have an answering machine that switches on immediately,” said Sartorius. “Because of all the anonymous and abusive calls we get.”

Pia looked at Tobias. He was staring into space and seemed not to be following the conversation at all. Surely he had some idea about what was brewing in the village.

“Why would Amelie have tried to call you?” she asked him directly. He shrugged.

“Mr. Sartorius,” she said insistently, “a girl from the neighborhood who had contact with you is missing. Whether you like it or not, people are going to link you to her disappearance. We just want to help you.”

“Oh right,” retorted Hartmut Sartorius bitterly. “That’s exactly what your colleagues said back then. We just want to help you, boy. All you have to do is tell us what you did with the girls! And then nobody believed my son. Now go. Tobias was here at home all Saturday night.”

“That’s enough, Papa,” Tobias finally said. He grimaced as he laboriously got to his feet. “I know you mean well.”

He looked at Kirchhoff. His eyes were red.

“I ran into Amelie on Saturday around noon. Up the hill by the woods. She wanted to tell me something urgently. Apparently she found out something about the old case. But then Nadia came by and Amelie left. That’s why she probably tried to call me later. I don’t have a cell phone, so she would have tried the house.”

Kirchhoff recalled her meeting with Nadia von Bredow last Saturday, and the silver Cayenne. It could be true.

“What did she tell you?” Bodenstein wanted to know.

“Unfortunately not very much,” Tobias replied. “She said there was someone who saw everything that happened. She mentioned Thies and some paintings. And Lauterbach was in them too.”

“Who?”

“Gregor Lauterbach.”

“The cultural minister?”

“Yes, precisely. He lives right behind Amelie’s father’s house. He used to be Laura and Stefanie’s teacher.”

“And yours too, wasn’t he?” Pia remembered the transcript she had read, the one that then disappeared from the folder.

“Yes,” Tobias confirmed with a nod. “He was my German teacher when I was a senior.”

“What did Amelie find out about him?”

“No idea. As I said, Nadia showed up, and Amelie wouldn’t say any more. All she said was that she’d tell me everything later.”

“What did you do after Amelie left?”

“Nadia and I talked for a while, then we drove here and sat in the kitchen for about half an hour. Until she had to leave to catch the plane to Hamburg.” Tobias grimaced and ran his hand through his uncombed hair. “Then I went to see a friend. We ended up drinking with some other friends. Quite a bit.”

He looked up. His expression was blank. “Unfortunately I can’t remember when or how I got home. I have a twenty-four-hour blank spot in my memory.”

Hartmut Sartorius shook his head in despair. He looked like he wanted to burst into tears. The buzz of Bodenstein’s cell, which he’d set on vibrate, sounded loud in the sudden silence. He took the call, listened, and said thanks. His eyes sought Kirchhoff’s.

“What time did your son come home, Mr. Sartorius?” he asked, turning to Tobias’s father. Sartorius hesitated.

“Tell him the truth, Papa.” Tobias’s voice sounded tired.

“About one thirty Sunday morning,” his father said at last. “Dr. Lauterbach, our doctor, drove him home. She found him as she was coming back from a late emergency call.”

“Where?”

“At the bus stop in front of the church.”

“Did you drive anywhere yesterday?” Bodenstein asked Tobias.

“No, I walked.”

“What are the names of your friends that you spent Saturday night with?” Pia pulled out her ballpoint and wrote down the names that Tobias mentioned.

“We’ll be talking to them,” Bodenstein said somberly. “But I have to ask you to remain available.”

*   *   *