Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(96)

“Felix, J?rg, and Michael. My friends. They were drunk. Laura had been teasing them all evening. The situation got out of control. Then Laura ran off, straight into Lars’s arms. She stumbled, fell, and was dead.” He spoke with no emotion, almost indifferently.

“How do you know this?”

“They were just here and told me.”

“Eleven years too late,” said Pia.

Tobias heaved a sigh. “They loaded Laura’s body into the trunk of my car and threw it in the tank at the old airfield. Lars ran away. I never saw him again. My best friend. And then today this letter came…”

His blue eyes focused on Pia. Only now did she realize that against all odds her hunch about this man’s innocence had actually been right.

“What about Stefanie?” Bodenstein asked. “And where is Amelie?”

Tobias took a deep breath and shook his head.

“I don’t know. Honestly. I have absolutely no idea.”

Someone came into the cow stable behind them, and the two detectives turned around. It was Hartmut Sartorius. He was deathly pale and could only contain his agitation with the utmost effort.

“Lars is dead, Dad,” said Tobias in a low voice. Hartmut Sartorius squatted down in front of his son and embraced him awkwardly. Tobias closed his eyes and leaned on his father. Pia found the sight very moving. Would the suffering these two had endured ever end? The ringtone of Bodenstein’s cell phone broke the silence. He took the call and went outside to the barnyard.

“Are you going … to arrest Tobias now?” Hartmut Sartorius asked in an uncertain voice, looking up at Pia.

“We have a few questions for him,” she replied regretfully. “Unfortunately there is still the suspicion that Tobias had something to do with the disappearance of Amelie Fr?hlich. And as long as that’s not cleared up…”

“Pia!” Bodenstein yelled from the barnyard. She turned and went out to join him. In the meantime the backup they’d ordered had arrived. Two officers got out of their car and walked toward them.

“That was Ostermann,” Bodenstein told her, punching a number into his phone. “He deciphered the secret writing in Amelie’s diary. In her last entry she writes that Thies showed her the mummy of Snow White in the cellar below his studio … Yes?… Bodenstein here … Kr?ger, I need you and your team to go out to the Terlinden estate in Altenhain. Where the fire was today. Yes, right away!”

He looked at Pia and she understood what was going on in his head.

“You mean Amelie might be there?”

He nodded, then rubbed his chin pensively and frowned.

“Call Behnke and tell him to get a couple of guys and bring the three men Tobias mentioned down to the station,” he instructed Pia. “Send a patrol car to pick up Lauterbach, one to his private residence and another to his office in Wiesbaden. I want to talk to him today. We also have to talk to Claudius Terlinden; he doesn’t yet know about his son’s suicide. And in case we actually do find the hidden cellar, we need a medical examiner.”

“You suspended Behnke from service,” Pia reminded him. “But Kathrin could do it. And what about Tobias?”

“I’ll tell our colleagues to take him to Hofheim. He’ll just have to wait for us there.”

Pia nodded and grabbed her phone to relay the instructions. She dictated to Kathrin the names of Felix Pietsch, Michael Dombrowski, and J?rg Richter, then she went back inside the cowshed. She watched as Tobias got to his feet and then leaned heavily on his father.

“My colleagues are going to take you to Hofheim,” she told Tobias. “They’re waiting in the yard for you.”

Tobias Sartorius nodded.

“Pia!” Bodenstein yelled impatiently from outside. “Come on!”

“So we’ll see you later.” Pia nodded to the two men and left.

* * *



A patrol car was parked in front of the Lauterbachs’ house when Bodenstein and Pia drove past. A few yards farther on they drove through the open gate into the Terlinden estate, climbed out, and walked across the lawn to the smoldering ruins of the orangerie. The blackened stone walls were still standing, but the roof had partially fallen in.

“We have to get in there right away,” Bodenstein told one of the firemen who had stayed behind to watch the fire site.

“Can’t be done.” The fireman shook his head. “The walls could come down at any minute, and the roof is unstable. Nobody’s going in there.”

“Yes, we are,” Bodenstein insisted. “We’ve received information that there’s a cellar underneath. And the girl who disappeared may be locked in down there.”

That changed the situation completely. The fireman conferred with his colleagues and made a phone call. Bodenstein, also on the phone, walked back and forth and around the burned-out building. It was impossible for him to stand still. This damned waiting! The evidence techs arrived and a little later a fire department car pulled in, along with a dark blue vehicle from the Technical Rescue Organization. Pia learned from the patrol officers that the Lauterbachs weren’t at home. She got the number of the head secretariat at the Cultural Ministry in Wiesbaden and was told that the cultural minister had been out sick for three days and had not come to the office. So, where was he? She leaned on the fender, lit a cigarette, and waited for Bodenstein to take a break from his telephone marathon for a few seconds. In the meantime the people from the fire department and rescue crew had begun to search through what remained of the roof and walls of the orangerie. Using heavy equipment they carefully cleared away the smoking debris and set up floodlights because it was already getting dark.