Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(43)

Amelie sat at her desk surfing the Web when the doorbell rang. She closed her laptop and jumped up. It was a quarter to eleven. Damn. Had the old lady forgotten her front door key? In her stocking feet she rushed downstairs before the bell rang again and woke the kids up after she’d coaxed them into bed an hour ago. She cast a glance at the little monitor that was connected to cameras on both sides of the front door. The fuzzy black-and-white picture showed a man with blond hair. Amelie tore open the front door and was surprised to see Thies standing there. In all the time she’d known him, he’d never once come to her front door, and he certainly had never rung the bell. Her surprise turned to concern when she saw the condition her friend was in. She had never seen Thies so upset. His hands were fluttering here and there, his eyes were flickering, and he was twitching all over.

“What’s the matter?” Amelie asked softly. “Did something happen?”

Instead of answering, Thies held out a roll of paper that was carefully tied with a wide ribbon. Amelie’s feet were turning into blocks of ice on the cold steps, but she was truly worried about her friend.

“Wouldn’t you like to come inside?”

Thies shook his head vigorously and kept glancing around, as if afraid that he’d been followed.

“You can’t show these pictures to anybody,” he said suddenly in his slightly hoarse-sounding voice. “You have to hide them.”

“Got it,” she said. “I will.”

The headlights of a car crept up the street through the fog and caught them for a moment as the car turned into the Lauterbachs’ driveway. The garage was located only five yards below the stairs Amelie was standing on—alone now, as she suddenly realized. Thies seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth. Daniela Lauterbach turned off the engine and climbed out.

“Hello, Amelie!” came her friendly greeting.

“Hello, Dr. Lauterbach,” Amelie replied.

“Why are you standing there on the porch? Did you lock yourself out?”

“I just got home from work,” Amelie said quickly, without quite knowing why she lied to her neighbor.

“All right then. Say hello to your parents. Good night.” Dr. Lauterbach waved and opened the door of the two-car garage with the remote. She went inside and the garage door came down behind her.

“Thies?” Amelie hissed. “Where are you?”

She jumped when he came out from behind the big yew tree next to the front door.

“What’s all this about?” she whispered. “Why—?”

The words stuck in her throat when she saw Thies’s face. In his eyes she saw naked fear—what was he afraid of? Deeply worried, she reached out her hand and touched his arm to calm him. He flinched.

“You have to take good care of those pictures.” The words came out in a stammer, and his eyes were shining feverishly. “Nobody can see those pictures. Not even you! You have to promise me!”

“Okay, okay, I promise. But what—”

Before she could finish her question, Thies had vanished into the foggy night. Amelie stared after him, shaking her head. She couldn’t make any sense out of her friend’s behavior. But that was no surprise—Thies wasn’t like anyone else.

* * *



Cosima lay sound asleep on the couch in the living room; the dog had curled up behind her knees and didn’t raise his head but just lazily wagged the tip of his tail when Bodenstein came in and stopped to take in the peaceful scene. Cosima was snoring quietly, her reading glasses had slipped down her nose, and the book she’d been reading lay on her chest. Normally he would have gone over to wake her with a kiss, cautiously, so as not to frighten her. But the invisible wall that suddenly stood between them held him back. To his astonishment, the usual feeling of tenderness that he felt whenever he saw his wife was now missing. It was high time they had an open confrontation, before the mistrust poisoned their marriage. What he really ought to do right now was grab her by the shoulder and shake her and then demand to know why she’d lied to him. But he was stopped by his cowardly craving for harmony and the fear of learning a truth that he wouldn’t be able to bear. He turned away and went into the kitchen. The dog, driven by greedy hope, jumped off the couch to follow him, which woke up Cosima. She appeared in the kitchen with a sleepy look on her face, as he took a yogurt out of the fridge.

“Hello,” he said.

“I guess I fell asleep,” she replied. He ate the yogurt, watching her discreetly. All at once he saw the wrinkles in her face that he’d never noticed before, the skin starting to sag at her throat, and the puffiness under her tired eyes. She looked like a woman of forty-five. Had the soft-focus lens of his affection disappeared along with his trust?

“Why did you call me at the office and not on my cell?” she asked casually as she searched in the fridge for something.

“I don’t remember,” he lied, carefully scraping out the last of the yogurt from the container. “I must have hit the wrong speed-dial number. It wasn’t important.”

“Well, I was just down at the Main-Taunus Center shopping for a few things.” Cosima closed the refrigerator door and yawned. “Kira took care of little Sophie for me. It’s always a little faster if I don’t have to take her along.”

“Hmm, of course.” He set the empty yogurt container down for the dog to lick. For a moment he pondered whether he ought to ask her what she bought, because he didn’t believe a word she’d said. And suddenly it was clear to him that he never would again.