Grave Intent (18 page)

“Who made the entry?”

“The cemetery manager—and early today, at one forty-one a.m., at that.”

“Was he here?”

“No.”

“So the murderer hacked his account.”

“I wouldn’t call it hacking. The manager can’t remember passwords very well. He writes them down on a notepad in his desk drawer.”

Jan groaned. “Doesn’t get any easier than that.”

“No one should ever write down their passwords, sure, but who’d be interested in messing around with a burial date?”

“So the murderer was here? Right under our eyes?”

Max pointed to a window of the administration building. A section of the glass was cut out.

“How could he get in here, though? All the cemetery entrances were supposed to be staked out.”

“Which they were. He climbed over the wall somewhere, then cut out this side window here. The windows aren’t barred on this side.”

“He slipped right by our teams.”

“You can’t blame them. The cemetery is nearly thirty-seven acres. We would’ve needed the whole Berlin police department.”

“So he knew that we were staking out the place?”

“We can safely assume that.”

“But how did he bring the corpse in? He could hardly have just tossed it over the wall.”

“We’re still working on that one,” Max said. “Honestly? I have no idea how, unless our killer is King Kong.”

“Jan!” Bergman was coming down the path. His voice matched Zoe’s earlier description.

“I’ll, uh, just be on my way . . .” Max patted Jan on the shoulder for encouragement and disappeared inside the administration building.

Jan took a deep breath and prepared himself for the thrashing of a lifetime.

Jan couldn’t have imagined that things could get any worse for the Berlin Police Department since the police chief’s last public statement. But he quickly learned just how bad things could get. Some of his fellow officers were trying to keep the media from storming police headquarters while others directed traffic, which had come to a standstill. The reporters’ loud, urgent demands drowned out clicking of the cameras, and the cops’ instructions were lost amid the chaos. Only the angry honking of the frustrated drivers pierced the din.

Jan detoured around the throng of reporters and tried to enter the building from the back. But it was no better there. Sighing, he threw himself into battle. He propelled himself through the tightly packed mob, trying not to trip over a cable or get struck by a camera. He was jostled and jolted, pushed to the sides, and grabbed by the shoulders. No one wanted to let him through—but he worked his way in to the crowd, which pressed forward toward the barricade like a horde of starving dissidents, as if police headquarters were the only place in Berlin they could find bread.

Five minutes and plenty of insults later, Jan reached the barricade. The uniformed officers behind the metal fencing helped him climb over.

He sat down on the stairs. His heart was racing and his T-shirt was soaked through with sweat. He was just about ready to order tear gas and water cannons himself.

“How did they find out so fast?” he asked a cop.

“There had to be an anonymous tip, minutes after the body was found.”

Jan shook his head. The media would make investigating even tougher. Every person with a smartphone was going to follow along in the hope of shooting a photo they could sell to a tabloid.

“This is insane.”

“The insanity’s still to come,” another cop said while pushing back an eager photographer who was trying to climb over the barricade. “Bergman ordered all our vacations canceled and shifts extended.”

“My God. How many is that?”

“Over two hundred. Not counting the surrounding suburbs.”

A reporter interrupted them. “Is this how the police update us? You’re subverting freedom of the press. We have a right to more information.”

Jan’s training had prepared him for such situations. He had to remain calm, either not respond to the man or simply ignore him. No violence. Don’t provoke.

But this was not a day for diplomacy.

He stood, showed the reporter both middle fingers, and underlined the gesture with a broad sneer. Bergman would freak out when he heard about it, but Jan’s personnel file was beyond redemption anyway. Besides, it just felt good.

Chandu’s apartment was an oasis of bliss. Instead of an uncomfortable camping stool, Jan sat on a soft sofa. His friend had prepared in his wok a light meal of stir-fried veggies with rice, its spicy curry leaving a pleasant aftertaste. There were no angry reporters in sight and no Bergman on a tirade.

Jan fought a yawn. He had been reading reports all day, reviewing crime-scene photos, and weighing evidence, yet the stack on his desk was not getting smaller. Without Patrick’s help, he would have chucked it all. His colleague’s troop of interns, trainees, and freshmen, accompanied by experienced investigators, took a lot of the work off of Jan. And yet he had left headquarters that evening feeling like he’d accomplished nothing at all. Once again. Another wasted day. Knowing that a crazed murderer was running around out there, one who had already fooled them thrice—it didn’t exactly help him sleep. Add that to his regular nightmares, and he wasn’t going to be able to hold up much longer. Maybe he should finally acknowledge that he wasn’t the same old Jan anymore and just hand the case over to Patrick.

“What’s the deal with Max?” Zoe’s words ripped him from his thoughts. She was fishing a shitake mushroom out of the rice with her chopsticks.

“He called me an hour ago, saying something about a visitor and having to take care of some things,” Jan explained. “He’s coming after dinner.”

“A visitor?” Zoe said. “Who would enter that apartment willingly?”

“He’s not the only nerd on this earth.”

“That’s a scary thought.”

“Well, I like him.” Chandu brought more fresh rice from the kitchen. “He’s still young and has a few quirks, sure, but without his help, I never would’ve gotten my surround sound installed right.”

“A few quirks can be good,” Zoe remarked.

Chandu winked at her. “He’s not the only one.”

Zoe showed him a broad smile. She was gobbling up rice when someone knocked on the door.

“Speak of the devil.” Chandu opened the door. The big man had seen a lot of strange things in his time, but he was not prepared for what he saw now. His mouth hung open as Max strode into the apartment.

His normally wild hair was cut short and laced with streaks. He wore dark sneakers, slightly faded jeans, and a salmon-colored button-down with the sleeves rolled up. His digital watch had been replaced by a silver one with a dark face. His latest attempt to grow a beard had fallen victim to a razor. Chandu even caught a whiff of aftershave.

Max was all gussied up, his grumpy face the only thing not matching. He passed Chandu without saying hi and sat down in an armchair.

It was deadly still in the room. Chandu stayed over at the door, looking like he’d just gazed into the eyes of Medusa. Jan stared at the beer in his hand, unsure what to do. Only Zoe broke the silence—by dropping the rice bowl, which clattered onto the floor.

Jan spoke first. “Uh . . .”

“What . . .” Chandu added. His stare faded. He closed the door and sat down next to Zoe without letting Max out of his sight.

The medical examiner eyed the young man from top to bottom. Then she leaned back and began laughing. Chandu couldn’t control himself a moment longer, so he buried his face in a sofa pillow. Zoe’s laughter echoed through the living room; meanwhile, Chandu looked as if he were chomping at the pillow.

“Assholes,” Max said, which only made Zoe laugh louder. She leaned into Chandu and slugged his shoulder as tears ran down her cheeks.

Her laughter was contagious. Jan was clearly having trouble controlling himself. He bit at his lip, balled his fists, and stared at the floor.

Zoe attempted to say something, but every time she looked Max’s way, a new attack overcame her. Chandu’s pillow would not survive the evening.

Max, his face pinched, stood and set the projector on the table and started up his laptop. He folded his arms across his chest and took his seat like a surly kid who wouldn’t eat his vegetables.

Ten minutes later, Chandu had removed the pillow from his mouth and Zoe had stopped slugging the big man’s shoulder. Jan wiped tears of laughter from his own face and became the first one capable of speaking again.

“Sorry,” Jan said in an attempt to appease Max. “It was not nice of us to laugh. But your . . . transformation, it caught us by surprise.”

“Oh? I didn’t notice,” Max snapped.

“Easy, my friend,” Chandu said. “Just tell us what happened.”

Zoe’s laughing had ebbed to a giggle.

“My sister’s in Berlin again,” Max said.

“O-kaaay,” Chandu replied, drawing out the vowels. “I might need one or two hints here.”

Max abandoned his stubborn stance and grabbed a beer off the table. Things must have been pretty bad. He hated beer.

“Mira studies fashion at the University of the Arts. She also works for two designers and travels around the world most of the time. Whenever she visits me, she always has to play the older sibling and patronize me. She’s worse than my mom. I had to air out the apartment, get rid of all the pizza cartons, and take back all the empty bottles.”

Max took a gulp of beer and made a disgusted face. “I was standing at those goddamn return machines for a good hour.”

Their conversation was interrupted by another of Zoe’s giggling fits, which Max returned with a poisonous look.

“She schlepped me to a hair stylist who gave me this silly haircut. Then it was off to some trendy men’s boutique and then a shoe store, till we eventually were in some vegan restaurant eating spaghetti made of zucchini.” Max took another slug of beer. “That’s why I look like this.”

“You made a change for the better,” Chandu said. “Your sister’s visit paid off.”

“You think so, huh? She even went through my underwear and got rid of my favorites. Some of them were downright antiques.”

“TMI,” Zoe said, taking out her cigarette case. She was almost herself again.

Jan changed the subject. “Back to our serial killer. Do we know how he snuck Robin Cordes’s corpse into the cemetery?”

“Your colleagues found the answer.” Max projected a photo of the cemetery administration building. “The murderer climbed over a tough-to-see stretch of the wall, worked his way through the bushes up to the admin building, and removed the glass with a cutter.”

“How did he get in there?” Zoe asked. “I thought the cemetery was under full surveillance.”

Max pressed a key on his laptop, bringing up an aerial photo. Most of the image consisted of trees.

“That the cemetery?” Chandu asked. “Looks more like a forest park with a big lake.”

“That’s why they call it Charlottenburg
Forest
Cemetery, which is exactly the problem,” Max explained. “Not even the whole Berlin Police combined could keep watch over every inch of thirty-seven acres.”

“Weren’t they watching over the admin building?” Chandu asked.

“The front entrance, they were. There was no reason for much more. We were only looking at the building as just another way from which to enter the cemetery itself.

“The murderer got easy access to the computer system because the cemetery manager wrote down his password. And even if he hadn’t, their system is ancient and
1234
isn’t exactly a secure password.” Max sighed, as if enduring such idiocy was almost too much for him. “During the night he typed in a burial assignment for Robin Cordes, so that the cemetery employees would look at their work queue in the morning and add it to the rest.”

“It didn’t occur to anyone that the name was Robin Cordes and that the site entered was the grave everyone was watching?” Zoe asked.

“Unfortunately not.” Jan scratched at his head in embarrassment. “We had the grave blocked off and didn’t let the cemetery workers near it. Plus we kept the name under wraps for fear that one of them might go blabbing it. Only a few were let in on it. The crews who usually do the burials weren’t included.”

“I wouldn’t have done it any differently,” Chandu said. “But how did he get the body itself into the cemetery if all the entrances were being watched?”