Amelie had decided that research into the girls’ murders in Altenhain clearly took priority over school, so after third period she told the teacher she was sick. Now she was sitting at her desk at home in front of her laptop, entering the name of her neighbor’s son in Google. She got literally hundreds of hits. With increasing fascination she read the press accounts of events in the summer of 1997 and the course of the trial, at which Tobias Sartorius had been sentenced to ten years in prison. The prosecution’s case had been completely based on circumstantial evidence because the girls’ bodies were never found. That fact had been considered particularly damning, and Tobias’s silence had had a deleterious effect on the severity of the sentence.
Amelie looked at the photos, which showed a dark-haired youth with still unfinished facial features, giving a hint of the man he would someday become. Today Tobias Sartorius must be pretty good-looking. In the photos he was wearing handcuffs, but he didn’t cover his face under a jacket or behind a file folder. He looked straight into the cameras. They had called him an “ice-cold killer,” arrogant, emotionless, and cruel.
The parents of the murdered girls are appearing as joint plaintiffs in the trial of Tobias S., the son of an innkeeper from the small village in the lower Taunus region. However, the desperate pleas of the mothers, Andrea W. and Beate S., left the A student unmoved. When asked what he had done with the bodies of the two girls, S. remained silent. In a psychological report his intelligence was certified as being above average. Tactics or arrogance? Even when Judge S. made the offer to change the charge of first-degree murder in the death of Stefanie S. to manslaughter, the young man remained steadfastly silent. The utter lack of empathy astounded even experienced legal observers. The district attorney’s office has no doubt of his guilt, since there were no gaps in the chain of circumstantial evidence and the reconstruction of the sequence of events. It is true that S. earlier attempted to prove his innocence through numerous slanderous statements regarding other alleged memory lapses, but the court was not swayed. Tobias S. received the pronouncement of sentence with no external show of emotion, and the court refused to consider an appeal.
Amelie scanned other similar reports of the trial until she at last found an article that dealt with the preceding events. Laura Wagner and Stefanie Schneeberger had disappeared without a trace on the night of September 6, 1997. The annual fair was going on in Altenhain, and the whole village was in attendance. Tobias Sartorius quickly became the prime suspect in the investigation because neighbors had seen the two girls enter his parents’ house that evening but never come out. Tobias and his former girlfriend Laura Wagner had carried on a serious and violent argument at the front door. They had both consumed a large quantity of alcohol at the fair. A little later Stefanie Schneeberger, Tobias’s current girlfriend, had arrived. He stated later that she had broken up with him that evening, and in despair he had drunk almost a whole bottle of vodka in his room. The next day, police dogs had discovered traces of blood on the Sartorius property; the trunk of Tobias’s car had been found to be stained with blood; and blood and skin scrapings that were traceable to the two girls were found on his clothing and in his house. Witnesses said they had seen Tobias driving his car later that night as he headed down the main street. Finally, Stefanie Schneeberger’s backpack had been stowed in his room, and he had put Laura Wagner’s necklace in the milk room under a washbasin.
A love triangle was presumed to have triggered the events: Tobias had left Laura for Stefanie, then Stefanie had broken up with him. All of which resulted in the bloody deeds. The overconsumption of alcohol could have acted as a catalyst on Tobias. Up to the last day of the trial he had denied having anything to do with the girls’ disappearance, but the court had refused to accept his alleged memory lapses, nor had any witnesses turned up to give him an alibi. On the contrary. His friends had stated to the court that Tobias was a hothead with a violent temper, used to having girls worship him. It was possible that out of frustration he had overreacted to being dumped by Stefanie. He was left without a hope in the world.
That only served to further ignite Amelie’s curiosity, since she hated nothing more than injustice, after being so often the victim of unfair accusations. She could understand how Tobias must have felt if his protestations of innocence were actually true. She was going to conduct more inquiries into the matter—although she didn’t know exactly how. First she had to get to know Tobias Sartorius.
* * *
Twenty past five. He had to hang out here on the train platform for another half hour before the other guys showed up; maybe they would take him along to the youth center for rehearsals. Nico Bender had made a point of skipping soccer practice so he wouldn’t miss the S-Bahn from Schwalbach at five to six. Although he was crazy about playing soccer, the guys and their band were much more important. They used to be friends, but since his parents had forced him to go to school in K?nigstein instead of Schwalbach, he didn’t really belong anymore. He was way cooler than Mark or Kevin, because he could play really good drums. Nico sighed and looked at the bearded man in the baseball cap who had been standing motionless at the other end of the platform for half an hour. In spite of the rain the man hadn’t come to join him in the covered waiting area. He didn’t seem to care if he got wet.
The S-Bahn from Frankfurt arrived. Eight cars on the commuter train. Would he be able to see the guys from where he stood? If they were in the first car, he might miss them. The doors slid open and people got out, putting up umbrellas and running with their heads down to the pedestrian bridge or past him to the underpass. His pals weren’t on the train. Nico stood up and walked slowly along the platform. Then he saw the man in the baseball cap again. He followed a woman in the direction of the bridge and spoke to her. She stopped but then seemed to be frightened, because she dropped her shopping bag and ran off. The man sprinted after her and grabbed her by the arm. She flailed at him with her other arm. Nico stood there as if mesmerized. It was like something out of a movie! The platform was empty again, the doors of the train slid shut, and the S-Bahn pulled out of the station. Then he saw the man and woman up on the pedestrian bridge. It looked like they were going to fight. All of a sudden the woman disappeared. Nico heard brakes squeal, then a thud, followed by the crash of metal and a splintering sound. The endless row of bright headlights on the other side of the tracks came to a stop. Stunned, Nico realized that he had just witnessed a crime. The man had pushed the woman over the railing of the bridge and onto the heavily trafficked Limesspange expressway! And now he was running right at Nico, head down, the woman’s purse in his hand. Nico’s heart was in his throat; he was terrified. If the guy knew that he’d been watching him, he wasn’t going to mess around. In panic Nico took off. Like a rabbit he raced into the underpass, running as fast as he could until he reached his bicycle, which he had left on the Bad Soden side of the tracks. He didn’t care about the guys in the band now, or the youth center. He jumped onto his bike and stomped on the pedals, puffing, panting as the man came up the stairs to the street and yelled something after him. Nico risked a glance over his shoulder and saw with relief that the guy wasn’t following him. Then he raced at top speed along the forested area of the Eichwald until he was safe at home.
* * *
The intersection at the Sulzbach North S-Bahn station was a picture of devastation. There had been a seven-car collision, and firemen were trying to extricate people from the twisted mass of metal using acetylene torches and heavy equipment and strewing sand in the pools of spilled gasoline. Several ambulances were lined up to take care of the injured. Despite the cold and the rain, rubberneckers had gathered behind the police cordon, watching the horrendous spectacle with ghoulish fascination. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff made their way through the uniforms over to Chief Detective Superintendent Hendrik Koch from the Eschborn district, who was one of the first on the scene of the accident.
“I’ve seen a lot of accidents in my day, but this is one of the worst.” Horror was written all over the face of the experienced police officer. He explained the situation to Bodenstein and Kirchhoff. A woman had fallen from the pedestrian bridge at 5:26 P.M., landing on the windshield of a BMW coming from the direction of Schwalbach. Without braking, the driver pulled sharply to the left and sped into the opposite lanes head-on. Multiple collisions on both sides of the highway had resulted. One driver, who had stopped at the red light in Sulzbach, said he had seen someone push the woman over the railing onto the road below.
“What happened to the woman?” Kirchhoff asked.
“She’s alive,” replied Superintendent Koch and added, “for the time being. The EMT is working on her over there in one of the ambulances.”
“We got a report of one death.”
“The driver of the BMW suffered a fatal heart attack. Probably from fright. Attempts to resuscitate him failed.” Koch nodded toward the middle of the intersection. A body lay next to the completely demolished BMW. A pair of shoes stuck out from under a rain-spattered blanket. Over by the police cordon there was a sudden commotion. Two policemen were restraining a gray-haired woman who was trying to force her way inside the blocked-off area. Koch’s radio crackled and a voice squawked.
“That’s probably the wife of the BMW driver,” he said to the detectives in a tense voice. “Excuse me.”
He said something into his radio and set off across the battlefield. Pia didn’t envy him the task before him. Informing loved ones of someone’s death was one of the hardest parts of their job, and neither psychological training nor years of experience made it any easier.
“Don’t worry about the woman,” Bodenstein said. “I’ll go talk to the witness.”
Pia nodded and went over to the ambulance where the seriously injured were being treated. The rear door opened and the EMT stepped out. Pia recognized him from previous accident scenes.
“Ah, Ms. Kirchhoff,” he greeted her. “We’ve stabilized her and will be taking her to the hospital in Bad Soden. Several broken bones, facial lacerations, and probably some internal injuries. You can’t talk to her.”
“Was she able to tell you who she is?”
“She had a car key in her—” The medic stopped and took a step back as the ambulance began to move off, the siren making all conversation impossible. Pia spoke with him a bit more, then thanked him and went over to her colleague. In the jacket pocket of the injured woman they had found only the car key, nothing else. The woman, who was about fifty, had not been carrying a purse. A search of the bridge and train platform turned up only a bag of groceries. In the meantime Bodenstein had spoken to the driver who witnessed the woman’s fall from the bridge. He swore up and down that somebody had pushed the woman—a man, he was sure of that despite the darkness and the rain.
Bodenstein and Kirchhoff went up the stairs to the bridge.
“This is where she fell from.” Pia looked at the spot marked on the bridge. “How high is it, do you think?”
“Hmm,” Bodenstein said, looking over the railing, which came up to about his hip. “Fifteen or twenty feet, I’d say. I can hardly believe she survived the fall. The car she hit was going pretty fast.”
From up there the view was almost surreal: the wrecked cars, the blue and orange flashing lights, the rescue crew wearing reflective vests. Rain was blowing obliquely through the light cast by the floodlights. What must have gone through that woman’s mind as she lost her balance and knew that nothing could save her? Or did it happen so fast that she had no time to think at all?
“She had a guardian angel,” Pia said with a shudder. “I hope he doesn’t leave her in the lurch now.”
She turned and headed over to the train platform, followed by Bodenstein. Who was this woman? Where was she coming from and where was she headed? One moment she was sitting in the train, unsuspecting, and a few minutes later she was lying with shattered bones in an ambulance. That’s how fast it could happen. One false step, one wrong move with the wrong person—and nothing would ever be the same. What had the man wanted from her? Was he a robber? It almost looked that way; Bodenstein found it odd that she hadn’t been carrying a purse.
“Every woman carries a purse,” he said to Pia. “She had just gone shopping, so she needed money, a wallet or something.”
“Do you really think that the man was trying to rob her on a crowded train platform at five thirty in the afternoon?” Pia scanned up and down the tracks.
“Maybe it was a crime of opportunity. In this weather everyone would want to get home fast. Maybe he followed her on the S-Bahn because he saw her taking money out of an ATM.”
“Hmm.” Pia pointed to the camera monitoring the platform. “Let’s take a look at the surveillance video. With a little luck the lens may have been wide-angle enough for us to see the bridge.”
Bodenstein nodded pensively. Would two families have to deal with bad news tonight just because some stranger tried to snatch a woman’s purse? Not that it would have changed anything about the tragic occurrence, yet to Bodenstein it seemed appalling that death and mutilation should result from such a random and ridiculous act. Two officers emerged from the underpass. They had found a red Honda Civic in the parking lot next to the rail embankment, and the key from the woman’s pocket fit. When they ran the plates they discovered that the owner lived in Neuenhain. Her name was Rita Cramer.
* * *