Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(30)

Pia had stumbled across this discrepancy in the chronology. The court had assumed that Tobias removed the bodies of the two girls in the trunk of his car. But what could he have done in a mere three-quarters of an hour? Pia took a swig of coffee and rested her chin in her hand, deep in thought. Her colleagues had been very thorough, interviewing almost every inhabitant of Altenhain in the course of their investigation. And yet she had a vague feeling that something had been overlooked.

The door opened and her colleague Hasse appeared in the doorway. His face was a ghastly white; only his nose glowed red and inflamed from constantly blowing it.

“So,” said Pia. “Are you feeling better?”

In reply Hasse sneezed twice in rapid succession, then inhaled with a sniffle and shrugged his shoulders.

“Jeez, Andreas, go home.” Pia shook her head. “Climb into bed and get well. There’s nothing happening here anyway.”

“How far have you gotten with that stuff?” He nodded suspiciously toward the files stacked on the floor next to Pia’s desk. “Did you find anything?”

Again she wondered about his interest, but he was probably just afraid she was going to ask him for help.

“Depends on your point of view,” she said. “At first glance everything seems to have been very carefully checked. But something doesn’t quite jibe. Who led the investigation back then?”

“Detective Chief Superintendent Brecht from K-11 in Frankfurt,” said Hasse. “But if you wanted to talk to him, you’re a year too late. He died last winter. I went to the funeral.”

“Oh.”

“A year after he retired. That’s the way the government likes it. You slave away until you’re sixty-five, then step right into the coffin.”

Pia ignored the bitterness in his voice. Hasse was in no danger of working himself to death.

* * *



After dropping off Dr. Kirchhoff at the S-Bahn station by the stadium, Bodenstein took the frontage road headed for the interchange at Frankfurter Kreuz. Today Laura Wagner’s parents would finally learn the fate of their daughter. Maybe it would give them some solace to bury the mortal remains of the girl and say a final farewell after eleven years of not knowing what happened to her. Bodenstein was so lost in thought that it took him a few seconds before he recognized the license plate of the dark BMW X5 directly in front of him. What was Cosima doing here in Frankfurt? Hadn’t she just this morning complained to him that she would probably have to spend the rest of the week at the TV station in Mainz because she wasn’t making any progress with editing the rough footage? Bodenstein punched in her cell number. Despite the poor visibility because of the drizzle and road spray, he could see the woman driver in the car ahead of him put a cell phone to her ear. He smiled as he heard her familiar voice. Look in your rearview mirror, was what he had actually intended to say, but a sudden idea stopped him. His sister’s words flashed through his mind. He would put Cosima to the test and let her prove to him that his suspicions were unjustified.

“What are you doing right now?” he asked instead. Her reply left him speechless.

“I’m still in Mainz. Nothing is working out today,” she said in a tone of voice that normally wouldn’t have made him doubt her statement. The lie gave him such a shock that he began to shake. His hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, he took his foot off the gas, dropping back and letting another car pass him. She was lying! She just kept on lying! As she put on her blinker and turned right onto the A5, she told him that she’d rearranged the whole storyboard and hadn’t been able to finish up the editing on time.

“We only had access to the cutting room until twelve,” she said. The blood was rushing in his ears. The realization that Cosima, his Cosima, was telling him a bald-faced lie, ice cold and insolently, was more than Bodenstein could stand. He would have preferred to yell at her, shouting Please, please, don’t lie to me. I’m driving right behind you! But he couldn’t say a thing. He just muttered a few words and then ended the call. As if in a trance he drove the rest of the way to headquarters. At the police parking lot he turned off the engine and remained sitting in his car. The rain was drumming on the roof of the BMW and running down the windows. His world was falling apart. Why the hell was Cosima lying to him? The only explanation was that she had done something she didn’t want him to know about. And he didn’t want to know what it might be. This sort of thing happened to other people, but not to him! It took him fifteen minutes before he was able to get out of the car and walk over to the building.

* * *



In the steady drizzle Tobias loaded up the trailer of the tractor to haul everything to the containers that had been positioned next to the drained cesspool. Wood, bulky refuse, and trash. The guy from the waste disposal company had told him several times that it would be expensive if he didn’t sort everything properly. The scrap dealer had come to the farm to pick up the scrap metal around noon. The dollar signs had flashed in his eyes when he saw what a goldmine lay before him. With two helpers he had loaded it all up, starting with the rusty chains that the cows used to be tethered with, to the big items from the stables and barn. The dealer had counted out 450 euros to Tobias, promising to come back the following week to pick up whatever was left. Tobias was aware that his every movement was being watched by his neighbor Paschke with the Argus eyes. The old man was hiding behind the curtain, but now and then he would peek out through a crack. Tobias paid no attention to him. When his father returned from work at four thirty, there was nothing left of the heaps of junk in the lower courtyard.