Snow White Must Die (48 page)

Pia nodded. The mummy of Stefanie Schneeberger exhibited three skull fractures. But that wasn’t enough to prove Nadia’s innocence, because she could also have been an accessory.

“Then he ran off as if he’d been stung by a scorpion. Wearing a green T-shirt, by the way. He’d taken off his cool denim shirt when they were fucking. I found the key ring. And when I came out of the barn Thies was kneeling on the ground beside Stefanie. I told him, ‘Take good care of your dear Snow White,’ and then I left. I tossed the tire iron into Lauterbach’s garbage can. That’s exactly what happened. Swear to God.”

“So you knew that Tobias didn’t kill either Laura or Stefanie,” Pia said. “How could you let him go to prison if you loved him so much?”

Nadia von Bredow didn’t answer right away. She sat stock still, her fingers fidgeting with one of the photocopies.

“At that time I was totally pissed at him,” she said softly at last. “For years I’d had to listen to him telling me what he’d said to this girl or that one, how much in love he was or wasn’t anymore. He asked for my advice on the best way to get his chicks into bed or how to dump them. I was his
best friend,
ha!”

She gave a bitter laugh.

“As a girl I was uninteresting. I was someone he took for granted. Then he started dating Laura, and she didn’t want me to come along when they went to the movies or the swimming pool or to parties. I was the third wheel, and Tobi never even noticed!”

Nadia von Bredow pressed her lips together and her eyes were swimming in tears. Suddenly she was once again the hurt, jealous girl, the stopgap, who as the confidante of the coolest guy in town had no prospect of winning him for herself. Despite all the success she’d had since then, those disappointments had left scars on her soul that she would carry for the rest of her life.

“And all of a sudden that stupid Stefanie came to town.” Her voice was toneless, but her fingers, which had ripped one of the photos to tiny shreds, showed what was going on inside her. “She forced her way into our clique and snapped up Tobi. Everything was suddenly different. And then she also turned Lauterbach’s head and got the Snow White role that he had promised to me. There was no talking to Tobi anymore. He didn’t want to hear anything from anybody, because for him there was only Stefanie, Stefanie, Stefanie!”

Nadia’s face was distorted with hatred and she shook her head.

“None of us could have foreseen that the police would be so stupid and that Tobi would really have to do time. I thought a couple of weeks in juvie would have served him right. By the time I realized that he was really going to trial it was far too late to say anything. We had all lied and kept silent for too long. But I never left him in the lurch. I wrote him regularly and I waited for him. I wanted to make up for everything he’d been through. I wanted to do everything for him. And keep him from going back to Altenhain, but he was so stubborn!”

“You didn’t
want
to keep him from going back,” Bodenstein noted, “you
had
to keep him from going back. Because it was possible that he’d seen through your role in this sad drama. And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. So you played the role of the faithful friend.”

Nadia von Bredow smiled frostily and said nothing.

“But Tobias went back to his father’s house,” Bodenstein went on. “You couldn’t stop him. And then Amelie Fröhlich showed up, who bears a fateful resemblance to Stefanie Schneeberger.”

“That stupid little bitch stuck her nose into things that are none of her fucking business.” Nadia ground her teeth angrily. “Tobi and I could have started a new life anywhere in the world. I have enough money. Someplace where Altenhain was only a bad memory.”

“And you would have never told him the truth.” Pia shook her head. “What a crazy basis for a relationship.”

Nadia didn’t even deign to look at her.

“You saw Amelie as a threat,” Bodenstein said. “So you wrote the anonymous letters and e-mails to Lauterbach. Because you could count on him to do something to protect himself.”

Nadia von Bredow shrugged.

“By doing that you set terrible events in motion.”

“I wanted to prevent Tobias from being hurt again,” she said. “He has suffered enough, and I—”

“Bullshit!” Bodenstein interrupted her. He came over to the table and sat down facing her so that she’d have to look at him. “You wanted to stop him from finding out what you had done in 1997—or to put it more precisely: what you didn’t do! You were the only one who could have spared him the conviction and kept him out of prison, but you didn’t. Because of injured pride and childish jealousy. You watched as his family was humiliated and destroyed, you stole ten years of your great love’s life out of pure selfishness, only so that one day he would belong to you completely. That has got to be the lowest motive I’ve come across in a long time.”

“You don’t understand!” Nadia von Bredow countered with sudden bitterness. “You have no idea what it’s like to be constantly rejected!”

“And now he has rejected you again, right?” Bodenstein watched her face sharply, registered the play of emotions ranging from hatred to self-pity to furious spite. “He feels deeply indebted to you, but that’s not enough. He loves you as little today as he did then. And you can’t keep hoping that someone will get rid of your competition for you.”

Nadia von Bredow stared at him, full of hate. For a moment it was dead quiet in the interview room.

“What have you done to Tobias Sartorius?” asked Bodenstein.

“He got what he deserved,” she replied. “If I can’t have him, nobody else will either.”

*   *   *

“She’s a total nut case,” said Pia, stunned, as Nadia von Bredow was taken away by several officers. She had thrown a fit and started screaming when she realized that they weren’t going to let her go. Bodenstein had justified the arrest warrant with flight risk, since Nadia von Bredow did own houses and apartments abroad.

“She’s a psychopath,” he said now. “No doubt about it. When she realized that Tobias Sartorius still didn’t love her despite everything she’d done for him, then she killed him.”

“You think he’s dead?”

“I’m afraid he is.” Bodenstein got up from his chair as Gregor Lauterbach was escorted in by an officer. His lawyer appeared seconds later.

“I want to speak with my client,” Dr. Anders demanded.

“You can do that later,” said Bodenstein, assessing Lauterbach, who was looking miserable as he sat hunched on the plastic chair. “So, Mr. Lauterbach. Now let’s talk turkey. Nadia von Bredow has just seriously incriminated you. On the evening of September 6, 1997, in front of the barn on the Sartorius farm you killed Stefanie Schneeberger with a tire iron, because you were afraid that she was going to tell your wife about your affair. Stefanie had threatened to do just that. What do you say about that?”

“He has nothing to say,” his lawyer replied in place of Lauterbach.

“You suspected Thies Terlinden of being an eyewitness to what you’d done and put pressure on him to keep quiet.”

Pia’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the display, got up, and moved away a few yards from the table. It was Henning. He had analyzed the medications that Dr. Lauterbach had been prescribing for Thies for years.

“I spoke with a colleague from psychiatric cardiology,” said Henning. “He is very familiar with autism and was shocked when I faxed him the prescriptions. These drugs are absolutely counterproductive for the treatment of a patient with Asperger’s.”

“In what way?” Pia asked, plugging her other ear with her finger because her boss had raised his voice and was firing all his cannons at Lauterbach. His lawyer kept shouting, “No comment!” as if he were already in the middle of a press conference in front of the courthouse.

“Combining a benzodiazepine with other centrally active pharmaceuticals such as neuroleptics and sedatives will amplify their effects reciprocally. These neuroleptics on the prescription are actually used for acute psychotic disorders with delusions and hallucinations; the sedatives are used for calming; and benzodiazepines are used for relief of anxiety. But the latter have another effect that could be interesting for you: they work as an amnesic. That means that the patient has no memory while the drug is in his system. Any physicians who have prescribed these medications to an autistic patient over a lengthy period should have their license revoked, at the very least. Such action is tantamount to causing grievous bodily harm.”

“Can your colleague write a report for us?”

“Yes, certainly.”

Pia’s heart began to pound from excitement when she grasped what all this meant. Dr. Lauterbach had stuffed Thies full of consciousness-altering drugs for over eleven years in order to keep him under control. His parents might have believed that the prescribed medications would benefit their son. Why Daniela Lauterbach did this was perfectly obvious; she wanted to protect her husband. But suddenly Amelie showed up, and Thies stopped taking his medications.

Bodenstein opened the door; Lauterbach had hidden his face in his hands and was sobbing like a child, while Dr. Anders packed his briefcase. An officer came in and led the weeping Gregor Lauterbach away.

“He confessed.” Bodenstein seemed extremely pleased. “He murdered Stefanie Schneeberger. Whether it was in the heat of the moment or with premeditation really isn’t important. Tobias is innocent in any event.”

“I knew that the whole time,” Pia said. “We still don’t know where Amelie and Thies are, but it’s clear to me who was trying to get rid of both of them. We were on the wrong track the whole time.”

*   *   *

It was cold, cold, cold. The icy wind howled and raged, the snowflakes stung his face like tiny needles. He could no longer see a thing, everything around him was white, and his eyes were watering so badly that he was almost blind. He could no longer feel his feet, nose, ears, or fingertips. He staggered through the snowstorm from one reflective road marker to the next to keep from losing his orientation entirely. He had no more sense of time and just as little hope that a snowplow might come by. Why did he keep walking at all? Where did he want to go? He could hardly pull his feet out of the snow, they were frozen to clumps of ice in the thin gym shoes. It took a superhuman effort to fight his way step by step through this white hell. He fell again and landed on all fours in the snow. Tears ran down his face and turned to ice. Tobias fell forward and just lay there. Every fiber of his body was in pain; his left forearm which she had struck with the iron poker was completely numb. She had attacked him like a madwoman, hitting and kicking him, spitting on him in an apoplectic, hate-filled frenzy. Then she ran out of the cabin and simply drove away, leaving him behind in the middle of nowhere in the Swiss Alps. For hours he had lain naked on the floor, unable to move, as if in shock. At the same time he had hoped and feared that she would come back and get him. But that didn’t happen.

What had actually happened? They had spent a wonderful day in the snow under a steel-blue sky, had cooked and eaten a meal together and then made passionate love. Out of the blue Nadia had suddenly blown her top. But why? She was his friend, his best, closest, oldest friend, who had never abandoned him. Suddenly the memory shot through him like a bolt of blinding lightning. “Amelie,” he mumbled with stiffened lips. He had mentioned Amelie’s name because he was worried about her, and that was what made Nadia blow up. Tobias pressed his fists to his temples and forced himself to think. Gradually his foggy brain came up with the connections that he had been unwilling to acknowledge until now. Nadia had long been in love with him, but he had never realized it. How painful it must have been for her to listen to him recounting his numerous infatuations in minute detail. She had never let it show as she gave him tips and advice the way a good pal does. Tobias lifted his head in a daze. The storm had died down. He resisted the temptation to remain lying in the snow and hauled himself up to a standing position, his knees stiff. He rubbed his eyes. Impossible! Down there in the valley he could make out lights! He forced himself onward. Nadia had been jealous of his girlfriends, especially Laura and Stefanie. And when she had casually asked him at the edge of the forest whether he liked Amelie, he had guilelessly answered “yes.” But how could he have known that Nadia, the famous actress, would be jealous of a seventeen-year-old girl? Had Nadia done something to Amelie? Good God! The thought got him moving faster, sending him down toward the valley. Nadia had a head start of a night and a day. If anything happened to Amelie, then he would be to blame, because he had told Nadia about Thies’s paintings and that Amelie wanted to help him. He stopped and opened his mouth in a wild, angry wail that echoed off the mountains. He screamed until his vocal cords hurt and his voice gave out.

*   *   *

Dr. Daniela Lauterbach seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. At her office they thought she was at the physicians’ conference in Munich, but inquiries showed that she had never arrived there. Her cell phone was turned off and her car could not be found. It was so frustrating. At the psychiatric hospital they considered it possible that Dr. Lauterbach had picked up Thies. She was one of the doctors on call, and no one would have paid any attention if she entered a ward. But on that Saturday night she had not been on call for emergencies. She had faked the call so she could leave and then waited outside the Black Horse. Amelie knew her and had probably voluntarily gotten into her car. To throw suspicion onto Tobias, Dr. Lauterbach had shoved Amelie’s cell phone into his pants pocket when she drove him home later. It was a perfect setup, and other coincidences helped her out as well. The probability of finding Amelie Fröhlich or Thies Terlinden alive was tending toward zero.

That evening at ten o’clock Bodenstein and Kirchhoff were sitting in the conference room watching the
Hessen Journal
news on TV, which had announced that the police were looking for Dr. Daniela Lauterbach and that Nadia von Bredow had been arrested. Reporters and two television teams were still hanging around outside the police station, greedy for news of Nadia von Bredow.