Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(64)

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

* * *



The leader of the search party had reported finding Amelie’s backpack. It was lying in some bushes between the parking lot of the Black Horse and the church—not far from the bus stop where Dr. Lauterbach had picked up Tobias Sartorius on Saturday night.

“It was the same thing eleven years ago,” said Pia pensively as she drove the few yards over to where the backpack was found. “Tobias had been drinking and blacked out. The prosecutors and the court didn’t believe him.”

“Do you believe him?” asked Oliver. Pia thought about it. Tobias Sartorius acted like he was telling the truth. He liked the neighbor girl. But hadn’t he also liked the two girls he murdered ten years ago? Back then jealousy was involved, and wounded vanity. As far as Amelie was concerned, that wasn’t the case. Had the girl actually found out something that was directly connected to the old crime, or had Tobias Sartorius made that up?

“I can’t judge findings in the old case,” she replied. “But today, I don’t think Tobias was lying to us. He really doesn’t remember.”

Oliver refrained from commenting. He had learned to appreciate his colleague’s intuition over the years, since it had often put them on the right track. His gut feelings, on the other hand, had more often led them hopelessly astray. But he didn’t believe that Tobias Sartorius was innocent—either of the two homicides, or the events of today.

The backpack contained Amelie’s wallet, her iPod, makeup kit, and all sorts of junk, but no cell phone. One thing was for sure: She hadn’t run away from home. Something must have happened to her. The sniffer dogs had lost the scent at the parking lot and were now waiting impatiently with their handler for the next deployment, which for them was an exciting game. Pia, who had the layout of the village clear in her mind thanks to the map she’d drawn, spoke with the officers who were gradually assembling at the parking lot. The door-to-door questioning had turned up nothing helpful.

“The dog found some traces at the edge of the woods, everywhere on the street where the girl lives, at the neighbors’ house, and at their garden house,” the search leader reported.

“Which neighbors?”

“The Terlindens,” said the officer. “The woman told us that Amelie came often to visit her son. So it may be a cold trail.” He seemed disappointed. Nothing was as discouraging as a search with no result.

* * *



Kai Ostermann succeeded in cracking the password to Amelie’s computer. He took a look at the browsing history of the Web sites Amelie had visited lately. Contrary to his expectations she was seldom active in popular social sites like Facebook and MySpace. She did have user profiles all over the place, but she didn’t update them and didn’t have very many contacts. But she had done extensive research on the old murder cases from 1997 and the sentencing of Tobias Sartorius. In addition, she was interested in the residents of Altenhain and had entered names in various search engines. She seemed to have a particularly strong interest in the Terlinden family. Ostermann was disappointed. He had hoped to come across some chat partner or some other suspicious Internet acquaintance, something that would have led to a concrete lead.

The meeting called on short notice by Bodenstein, at which twenty-five people squeezed into the conference room of K-11, turned out to yield very little. The search had been halted at nightfall without result. Thanks to the infrared camera in the chopper they had discovered a pair of lovers in a car in a hidden woodland parking spot, and a deer in a death struggle that had escaped a hunter after a bad shot, but no sign of Amelie. They had spoken with the driver of the 803 bus from Bad Soden to K?nigstein, who had made a stop by the church in Altenhain, as well as with his colleague, who had passed by going the other way a short time later. Neither of the two men had noticed a dark-haired girl. None of the taxi companies in the area had had a lone girl as a fare in that time period. One of the colleagues from K 23 had located a man who’d been walking his dog late Saturday night and saw a man sitting on the bench at the bus stop, sometime around twelve thirty.

“We ought to search the Sartorius house and property,” Behnke suggested.

“What for? There’s no reason to do that,” Kirchhoff countered at once, although she knew that wasn’t completely true. Unfortunately, things didn’t look good for Tobias Sartorius. His friends had confirmed that he showed up at the garage around seven o’clock. J?rg Richter had called him late that afternoon to invite him over. Tobias had a few drinks, but not enough to make him black out. Around ten he had left the garage, quite suddenly. At first they thought he just went outside to take a leak, but he never came back.

“A seventeen-year-old girl has disappeared, and she’s been proven to have had contact with a man convicted of killing two girls,” Behnke sputtered. “I have a daughter that age, so I can understand what must be going through the parents’ minds!”

“Do you think somebody has to have kids to understand what her parents must be feeling?” Pia snapped back. “And as long as you’re proposing searches, why don’t you have Terlinden’s house searched too? The dogs found tons of traces there.”

“That’s true, actually,” Bodenstein put in, before things between the two wound up in an argument in front of the whole team. “But Amelie’s stepmother said that the girl often spent time at the neighbors’ house. So it’s questionable whether the traces we found have any relevance to the case.”