Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(55)

“Come stay with me, Tobi. Please.”

“No!” he snapped. “Don’t you get it? That’s exactly what they wanted to achieve, those *s!”

“Yesterday all they did was beat you up. What if they come back and they’re serious this time?”

“Kill me, you mean?” Tobias looked at Nadia. Her lower lip was trembling slightly, her big green eyes were swimming in tears. Nadia didn’t deserve to be yelled at. She was the only one who had stood by him all this time. She would have even visited him in prison, but he hadn’t wanted her to. Suddenly his fury subsided and he felt only guilt.

“Please forgive me,” he said softly, reaching out his arms. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. Come here.”

She leaned against him, snuggling her face against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“Maybe you’re right,” he whispered into her hair. “We can’t turn back time.”

She raised her head and looked at him. There was deep anxiety in her eyes. “I’m afraid for you, Tobi.” Her voice quavered a little. “I don’t want to lose you again, now that I finally have you back.”

Tobias grimaced. He closed his eyes and put his cheek on hers. If he only knew whether things could ever work out for them. He didn’t want to be disappointed, not again. He’d rather live the rest of his life alone.

* * *



Manfred Wagner looked like a heap of misery as he sat at the table in the interview room. With an effort he raised his head when Kirchhoff and Bodenstein came in. He stared at them with the red-rimmed, watery eyes of an alcoholic.

“You have been charged with multiple felony counts,” Bodenstein began sternly after he had turned on the tape recorder and stated the requisite formalities for the transcript. “Grievous bodily harm, dangerous disruption of traffic, and—depending on what the district attorney decides—negligent manslaughter or even homicide.”

Manfred Wagner turned another shade paler. His gaze shifted to Kirchhoff and back to Bodenstein. He swallowed.

“But … but … Rita is still alive,” he stammered.

“That’s true,” said Bodenstein. “But the man whose windshield she fell onto suffered a heart attack at the scene of the accident. Not to mention the property damage to the other vehicles that were involved in the pileup. This matter will have serious consequences for you, and it doesn’t help that you didn’t turn yourself in to the police.”

“I was meaning to,” Wagner protested in a whiny voice. “But … but they all advised me not to.”

“Who do you mean by ‘they’?” Kirchhoff asked. Any sympathy she’d had for this man was gone. He had suffered a terrible loss, but that didn’t justify his assault on Tobias’s mother.

Wagner shrugged but didn’t look at her.

“All of them,” he repeated, as vague as Hartmut Sartorius had been a few hours earlier, when Kirchhoff asked him who was behind the anonymous threatening letters and the attack on his son.

“I see. Do you always do what ‘all of them’ say?” It came out sharper than she intended, but had an effect.

“You have no idea!” Wagner flared up. “My Laura was someone really special. She could have amounted to something. And she was so beautiful. Sometimes I could hardly believe that she was really my daughter. And then she had to die. Just tossed aside like a piece of garbage. We were a happy family. We’d just built a house out in the new industrial park, and my cabinet shop was doing well. There was a good sense of community in the village, everyone was friends with everyone else. And then … Laura and her girlfriend disappeared. Tobias murdered them, that ice-cold bastard! I begged him to tell me why he killed them and what he did with her body. But he never said a word.”

He doubled up and sobbed without restraint. Bodenstein wanted to turn off the tape recorder, but Kirchhoff stopped him. Was Wagner really crying out of sorrow for his lost daughter or because he was feeling sorry for himself?

“Cut out the playacting,” she said.

Wagner’s head flew up and he stared at her as dumbfounded as if she’d kicked him in the ass. “I lost my child,” he began in a quivering voice.

“I know that,” Kirchhoff cut him off. “And for that you have my complete sympathy. But you still have two children and a wife who need you. Didn’t you think at all about what it would mean for your family if you did something to hurt Rita Cramer?”

Wagner fell silent, but suddenly his face contorted with fury.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through for the past eleven years!” he cried.

“But I do know what your wife has been through,” Kirchhoff replied coolly. “She has not only lost a child, but also a husband, who goes out every night drinking out of sheer self-pity, leaving her in the lurch. Your wife is fighting to survive. What are you doing?”

Wagner’s eyes began to flash in anger. Kirchhoff had obviously hit a sore spot.

“What the hell business is that of yours?”

“Who advised you not to turn yourself in to the police?”

“My friends.”

“Probably the same friends who stand idly by as you get tanked up at the Black Horse every night and take your life in your hands. Am I right?”