Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Outside temperature, 37°F. No wind. No rain in the forecast. Perfect conditions.
8:21 A.M.
He saw her coming. Her pink cap shone like a beacon in the early slate-gray light of the winter day. She was alone, as she was every morning. Only the dog trotting next to her, a dark, lithe shadow among the leafless bushes. Her route was always the same. She walked down Lahnstrasse, past the playground, then crossed the wooden footbridge over the Westerbach, turned right, and followed the paved path along the stream until it branched off to the left toward the school, which was the farthest point on her morning walk. From there she headed back via Dörnweg, which cut straight through the fields, then turned left after about a kilometer and crossed the wooden bridge to her house.
The dog did his business on the grass in the playground near the swings, and she conscientiously scooped up the poop and tossed the bag into the trash bin on the corner.
She walked past him not twenty meters away but didn’t notice him. From his hiding place, he watched her cross the bridge, its wood glistening with dew, and vanish beyond the trees. He had prepared himself to wait about half an hour, and was lying comfortably on his stomach under the dark green rain poncho. If necessary, he could lie there for hours. Patience was one of his strong points. The stream, only a thin rivulet in the summer, rushed and gurgled past his feet. Two crows hopped around him curiously, stared at him, and then lost interest. The cold was seeping through his thermal pants. A dove cooed in the bare branches of the oak tree above him. A young woman jogged past on the other side of the stream, light on her feet, perhaps exhilarated by the music she was listening to in her earbuds. In the distance, he heard the rattle of a local train and the melodious triad of a school bell.
Among the somber gray, brown, and black colors of winter, he discerned a flash of pink. She was coming. His heart rate quickened as he looked through the telescopic sight. He calmed his breathing and slowly moved the fingers of his right hand. She turned onto the path that curved toward the bridge. Her dog was trotting about a meter behind her.
His finger was on the trigger. He scanned the area to his left and right, but there was no one in sight. Except her. She followed the bend in the path and presented the left side of her face to him, exactly as he had planned.
He would lose a bit of the rifle’s precision by using a suppressor, but at a distance of less than eighty meters, that was no problem. The sound of the gunshot would have attracted too much unwanted attention. He breathed in and out, totally relaxed and focused. His field of vision contracted, settling on the target. He smoothly squeezed the trigger. The recoil that he’d anticipated jolted his collarbone. Only a fraction of a second later, the Remington Core-Lokt .30-06 round burst her skull. She sank silently to the ground. Bull’s-eye.
The ejected cartridge lay steaming on the damp ground. He picked it up and stuck it into his jacket pocket. His knees were a little stiff after the time he’d spent lying on the ground in the cold. With a few movements, he stripped down the rifle and stowed it in his sports bag. He folded up the poncho and stuffed it in the bag as well. After he had checked that no one was around, he left the bushes, walked across the playground, and headed off toward the Wiesenbad pool, where he had parked his car. It was 9:13 A.M. when he drove out of the parking lot and turned left onto the highway.
At the same time …
Chief Detective Inspector Pia Kirchhoff was on vacation. As of Thursday of the previous week, through January 15, 2013. Four whole weeks! Her last really long vacation was almost four years ago. In 2009, she and Christoph had gone to South Africa, and since then, they’d only had time for brief trips, but now they were flying almost to the other side of the globe, to Ecuador, and from there by ship to the Galápagos Islands. Christoph had often been hired as a guide by the organizer of the exclusive cruises, and Pia would be going along for the first time—as his wife.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and dreamily looked at the narrow gold ring on her finger. The official at the registration office was a bit miffed when Christoph put the ring on her left hand, but she had explained that the left side was closest to the heart, after all, so they had decided to wear their wedding rings on their left hands. That was only half the truth, because there were also other quite pragmatic reasons for this decision. For one thing, in her first marriage to Henning, she had worn her wedding ring on her right hand, as is customary in Germany. She wasn’t excessively superstitious, but she didn’t want to be reminded of her divorce or tempt fate unnecessarily. And second—and this was the main reason for her decision—it was extremely painful if someone gave her a firm handshake and almost crushed her finger with the ring.
She and Christoph had secretly and quietly been married on Friday at the registration office in Höchst, which was located in the garden pavilion of the Bolongaro Palace. Without inviting friends, family, or witnesses and without telling a soul. They weren’t going to announce their marriage until after they returned from South America, and then they’d throw a big party next summer at Birkenhof.
Pia tore herself away from gazing at the ring and went back to trying to stuff the piles of clothes on the bed into two suitcases as efficiently as possible. They wouldn’t need thick sweaters and jackets. Instead, they were taking summer clothes. T-shirts, shorts, bathing suits. She was also delighted to be escaping wintertime and all the Christmas festivities, which had never much appealed to her. Instead, she would lie in the sun on the deck of a cruise ship, reading a book or simply loafing for once. Of course, Christoph would have a lot to do, but he’d have free time, too, and the nights would be their own. Maybe they’d send postcards to their parents and her sister and brother—yes, especially to him and his arrogant wife—and tell them that they’d gotten married. Pia could still hear the disapproving comment of her sister-in-law, Sylvia, when she learned of her divorce from Henning. A woman over thirty has a better chance of being struck by lightning than of finding another man,Sylvia had pessimistically prophesied. Pia had in fact been struck by lightning one sunny morning in June six years before, in the elephant paddock of the Opel Zoo. And that was when she and Dr. Christoph Sander, the director of the zoo, had met for the first time and instantly fallen in love. For the past four years, they’d been living together at Birkenhof in Unterliederbach, and quite soon had concluded that they wanted to do so until they died.
The cell phone on the kitchen table rang. Pia ran downstairs to the kitchen and looked at the display before she took the call. “I’m on vacation,” she said. “Actually, I’m about to head out the door.”
“‘Actually’ is an extraordinarily vague word,” replied Oliver von Bodenstein, her boss, who occasionally had the nerve-racking habit of being too literal and nitpicky. “I’m very sorry to bother you, but I have a problem.”
“Uh-oh.”
“We have a body, and it’s close to your neighborhood,” Bodenstein went on. “I’m in the middle of an urgent matter. Cem is out of town, and Kathrin is out sick. Could you possibly run over there and take care of the formalities for me? Kröger and his people are already on the way. I’ll be there to take over as soon as I’m done here.”
Pia quickly went over her to-do list in her mind. She was on schedule and had made all the arrangements necessary for a three-week absence. She could finish packing in half an hour. She knew Bodenstein wouldn’t ask her unless he really needed her help. She could put in a couple of hours without going into panic mode.
“Okay,” she said. “Where do I have to go?”
“Thank you, Pia, I really appreciate it.” She could hear the relief in his voice. “It’s in Niederhöchstadt. The best way is to turn off the highway toward Steinbach. After about eight hundred meters, there’s a road across the field on your right. Turn there. Our colleagues are already on the scene.”
“Got it. See you later.” Pia ended the call, pulled off her wedding ring, and put it in a kitchen drawer.
Copyright © 2014 by Nele Neuhaus
English translation © 2015 by Steven T. Murray
