Grave Intent (10 page)

She stopped recording and was reaching for a scalpel when her phone rang. She went over to the storage table and then groaned when she saw the screen. Jan always knew just the wrong time to call. Since her gloves were smeared with blood, she turned on speaker mode by tapping with her scalpel. “Not done yet,” she said, and went back over to the corpse. “I have both hands down inside his organs.”

“I don’t want to take up a lot of your time. I just need the most important stuff. How Moritz Quast was murdered, if it was the same perpetrator.”

Jan sounded like he was calling from a car.

“His head got smashed in after midnight. I haven’t analyzed the wound yet, but I’m guessing it’s a hammer. Could be the same murder weapon used on the first victim.” With a flick of her hand, Zoe sliced off a piece of the liver and held it up with tweezers. “But there is one other little thing.”

“What?”

“His tongue was cut out.” She placed the sample in the petri dish.

“Why?”

“What am I, some shaman who can ask the dead?” She frowned. “You should probably go question the lead detective. Name of Tommen or something like that.”

“Postmortem again?”

“Yep. We only noticed it here in autopsy on account of no blood in his mouth.”

“Self-defense wounds?”

“Nothing I can see.” She took a glass lid and covered the sample. She’d wipe her bloody fingerprints off the glass later.

“Signs of being tied up?”

“Nope.”

“Was he killed while sleeping?”

“Possibly. The perp might have surprised him—that or drugged or poisoned him. Even if there are no signs of a poisoning, I’ll run the whole gamut.”

“Signs of being dragged?”

“No.”

“So the murderer packed up Moritz Quast like he did before and got him to the cemetery. Are there pressure marks?”

“Huh?”

“If Moritz Quast was carried in, say, a crate or box, there might be pressure marks proving that.”

“You watch too much TV,” Zoe said. “That’s how it works on bad crime shows. Reality is different.”

“How about any residue from packing materials?”

“I can tell you more about that once we’ve analyzed the clothing under a microscope. That will take a couple days.” Zoe leaned back over the corpse. “A little more brain and the stomach contents, then I’ll get started on my jigsaw puzzle,” she said.

“Puzzle?”

“You do not want to know.”

“Oh,” Jan said. He always did upset easily. “Till next time,” he said and hung up.

Zoe pushed the big magnifying glass into position over the head and, using her scalpel, excised a portion of brain. The back of the head was smashed something awful. It would take hours for her to piece it all back together and make an impression of it. But then she’d know if a hammer had been used as the murder weapon again. Humming happily, she placed the sample in the petri dish and grabbed a large container for the stomach contents.

Moritz Quast’s house had been cordoned off. A few photographers and rubberneckers stood behind the police tape. The media had gotten wind that the cemetery was where the body had been found. There was little for them to see here at the house.

Chandu was holding a cup of coffee, waiting for Jan at the backyard gate.

“How’s the crime scene?” Jan asked.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“No one knows how the murderer got inside,” Chandu said. “There are no signs of a break-in, and the surveillance car had an eye on the front door the whole time. He likely had a key to the back door.”

“Where from? Moritz Quast and I counted all the keys last night. None were missing.”

“That’s a cheap lock. The key’s easy to copy. Making an impression would work.”

“Damn it,” Jan said. It was starting to get to him, how screwed up this was. “So he knew the murderer?”

“That or he was able to come up with some other way. But days ago. As a handyman or gardener, maybe.”

“Clues?”

“They found fingerprints and DNA everywhere. The evaluation is still ongoing, but we could very well strike out, just like with the first murder.”

“Where was Quast murdered?”

“That’s our next problem,” said Chandu. “There’s no evidence that he was killed in the house.”

“What?”

“The crime-scene guys couldn’t believe it themselves, so they went through the place twice. No murder weapon. No blood. A few dried semen stains on the living-room sofa. Since Moritz Quast subscribed to a porn channel, they probably came from him.”

“So he was still alive when Fabian and David went in?”

“Seems so. What are those two saying?”

“Fabian didn’t see anything. David took a hit on the head, he’s no help. I’ll just have to wait till he’s recovered.”

“Maybe Quast was tied up?”

“Zoe says he wasn’t.”

“Drugs? Narcotic to knock him out?”

“They’re still running tests. We’ll have to wait it out till this evening.”

“Maybe the killer was holding a gun to Quast’s head?”

“While taking out Fabian and David at the same time? Hard to imagine.” Jan shook his head. “We’re overlooking something.”

“Just have to wait till the tests are done. Can I do something for you, meantime?”

“Go home and get some sleep. I’ll question the neighbors and take a look around the neighborhood. Tell the others that we’re meeting again this evening. We got a lot to talk about.”

“Sleep sounds good.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Once his friend was gone, Jan leaned against the fence and took a good look at the house. The murderer had not come from the front. There was no rear exit leading from the premises out to any road. So he had come through the neighbors’ yards. The fences were low, and there were no guard dogs in the neighborhood. The crime-scene investigators had examined only Moritz Quast’s property.

It was time to expand the search radius.

The murderer must have come with a vehicle. The cemetery in Stahnsdorf was too far for strolling over to. He had checked the street in front of Moritz Quast’s house. Every car there belonged to a neighbor. It was unlikely that the murderer had parked his vehicle there; Fabian and David would’ve noticed. So he had gotten out on a neighboring street.

To the left of Quast’s house there were ten more houses until the next cross street. Single-family homes with yards not much bigger than the smallest scale caged-in play court. Enough for a barbecue, a flower bed, and a garden shed. Maybe a patio. They all had that same off-white rear facade with its evenly spaced upstairs windows. Idyllic and boring.

To the right of Quast’s property, Jan made out only three homes. The properties ended at a green area with bushes and trees, likely a type of noise buffer separating the next street over. The shorter the way, the better, he figured. Jan jumped over the fence to the neighbor’s backyard and took a look around.

The guy living here obviously loved to barbecue. The yard consisted mainly of a patio with a gas grill two yards wide. Next to it stood a table with a stone top and a little outdoor fridge. The grill was covered with clear plastic, and the windows looking out on the patio were shuttered. The owner was probably on vacation.

Jan looked out over the next house’s yard. Half of the property consisted of lawn. A garden of precisely placed vegetables on the farthest side was an eco-geek’s dream. Jan recognized tomatoes, zucchini, and lettuce next to other greens he didn’t know. In the middle of the garden rows, an older man with a hose was watering the bushes separating his property from that of his neighbor’s on the other side. The man was working so hard not to look in Jan’s direction he was surely going to cramp up. Watering was clearly just an excuse that let him follow the crime-scene investigation going on two houses over. Good thing, too. A neighbor nosy at just the right time could provide that decisive clue.

“Good morning.” Jan showed his badge from his stance on the empty patio. “My name is Detective Tommen. Berlin Police. Could I ask you a few questions?”

The man turned off the water, came over to the fence, and shook Jan’s hand. “Anton Möller. Nice to meet you.”

His eyes lit up. He looked really excited to be questioned.

“You know what happened here last night?”

“Someone killed Moritz Quast.” Anton Möller ran a thumb across his neck, rolled his eyes, and made a sound like someone slashing his throat open.

Jan refrained from remarking on the man’s bizarre sense of humor.

“You knew Herr Quast?” he asked.

“Only from Florian’s barbecues.”

“Florian?”

“Florian Uland. The one with the huge grill. You’re standing on his property.”

“He’s not home?”

“Florian has been on vacation for a week now. Trip through the US. Won’t be back till next month.”

“What was your impression of Moritz Quast?”

“Didn’t fit the neighborhood. Mostly families with kids live around here. He was the young bachelor type—used to get worked up about the noise of the kids playing. He drove a flashy car. Often came home late, probably from some bar crawl. I didn’t much care for him.”

“I see.” Jan noted something down.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Anton hastened to add. “I may not have liked him, but I didn’t want to kill him.”

Jan showed him a wide smile. “He get visits from people who seemed suspicious to you?”

“Suspicious in what way?”

“Other people who didn’t fit a neighborhood like this. Late-night meetings with sketchy figures. Heated arguments.”

“Most of his visitors were coworkers from the car dealership.”

“You know any of them?”

“Barely. For the World Cup, Moritz set up a projector in front of his house and showed every Germany game on his garage door. He invited all the neighbors over and a few coworkers. It was constant pandemonium. His driveway was filled with empty beer bottles for days. Being the good neighbor that I am, I did head over and help drain his beer supply.”

“Was Moritz Quast the careless type?”

“Careless?”

“Left the door open when he popped out for bread? Gave keys to guys working on the house? That kind of thing.”

“He left his windows open when he left for work.”

“Open?”

“Well, not all the way. But cracked.” Anton shook his head. “One time I told him how easily an intruder could pry open the window and climb into the house. He just laughed. Fresh air was more important to him.”

“Anything else?”

“The delivery people.”

“Delivery people?”

“Moritz wrote notes for delivery people, saying that his packages shouldn’t be delivered to the neighbors but rather left at the back door. He got deliveries a couple of times a week. People were constantly coming and going.”

Jan shook his head. If that was true, it would have been a piece of cake for the murderer to get inside.

“Let’s go back to last night. Were you at home?”

“Yes. I went to bed after
Heute Journal
, the nightly news. My wife was already asleep.”

“What time was this?”

“After ten.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“I didn’t, sorry. I’m a deep sleeper.” Anton stepped closer. “I heard that Moritz is the second victim,” he whispered, as if anyone were listening. “Is there a serial killer in Berlin?”

“I’m not allowed to say anything about that.”

Anton was clearly put off by Jan’s defensive stance. He pursed his lips like a child who’d just had his toy shovel taken from him.

Jan put his notepad away. “Could I come over and inspect your yard? We might find traces of the murderer there.”

A smile appeared on Anton’s lips. “You really think so?”

The prospect that a murderer might have traversed his yard seemed to spark a macabre fascination in him. He turned and eyed the yard as if the blood-smeared murder weapon itself might be lying there.

Jan hopped over the waist-high fence. He checked out the lawn but saw no sign of footprints.

“This here’s a sports turf, got the
Poa supina
seed,” Anton explained like a pro landscaper. “They use it for soccer fields. Sturdy and indestructible. Pops right back up again.”

“Terrific.”