Free I Am Your Judge: A Novel by Nele Neuhaus

Her face was rigid, her eyes glassy, and her expression vacant, either from a sedative or the effects of the shock she had suffered.
    “Karoline!” Professor Rudolf squeezed past Pia. “Why won’t anyone answer the phone?”
    “Mama is dead,” the woman said tonelessly. “Someone shot her … through the kitchen window.”
    *   *   *
    “How did he react?” Bodenstein wanted to know twenty minutes later. He apologized for the delay by explaining that he’d first had to drop off his little daughter at home.
    “He totally collapsed.” Pia was still shaken by the intensity with which the professor had reacted to the horrible news.
    “Did he see his wife’s body?”
    “We couldn’t prevent it.” Pia shivered in the cold. “He shoved right past us and went in the kitchen. It took four men to tear him away from her body. At least his daughter was able to stop him from locking himself in his office and doing harm to himself out of sheer despair.”
    They were standing in the street by the evidence team’s VW van as the snow began to come down even harder. The corpse had been taken away, and the crime-scene cleaners had shown up and were working in the kitchen. The ambulances and the medical examiner drove off. A few curious neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk underneath a streetlamp, watching as the daughter left the house and got in the Porsche with the Frankfurt plates. On the advice of the psychologist, she had not permitted Pia to speak with thirteen-year-old Greta, who had witnessed her grandmother’s murder. Pia had accepted that. It seemed unlikely the girl could have seen much, or at least nothing that would be helpful.
    “She’s leaving her father here alone,” Pia remarked. “That’s odd.”
    “Maybe he wants to be alone,” Bodenstein said. “Every individual reacts differently to a catastrophe like this. Besides, isn’t it better for the girl not to stay in that house any longer? By the way, where is she?”
    “Her father picked her up earlier. The parents are separated, and he lives in Bad Soden,” Pia told him. “I’ve sent some colleagues out to talk with all the neighbors; maybe somebody saw something.”
    “Very good.” Bodenstein rubbed his hands and stuck them in his coat pockets.
    Kröger came over to them.
    “We found the spot where the shooter fired from,” he said. “Do you want to take a look?”
    “Of course.” Bodenstein and Pia followed him around in back of the house. The woods began just beyond the property. In one corner stood a transformer shed, and on top was a tent illuminated by floodlights.
    “He was up there,” Kröger explained. “Fortunately, we were able to put up the tent before the snow started, in case there was any evidence to secure. And as a matter of fact, we found impressions of a reclining body in the moss growing on the roof. He used a bipod this time as well.”
    “Can we get up there and look?” Bodenstein asked.
    “Yeah, sure. We’ve already finished with it.” Kröger nodded and pointed to the ladder that was leaning against the wall of the transformer shed. Pia climbed up after her boss. They squatted next to each other and looked over at the house. In the summertime, the hornbeam hedge would block the view, but now they could see through it into the big window of the house.
    “Without a doubt, it’s an ideal spot, but not easy to find,” Bodenstein commented. “He must have cased the whole area very carefully.”
    “The line of sight was about sixty meters,” Kröger said to the two detectives standing next to him. “Afterwards, he could have escaped in two ways: either taking the path between the backyards and along the edge of the woods to the parking lot for the training center of the Federal Institute of Labor; or he could have gone down here past the barrier to the Hotel Heidekrug. The hotel closed last Sunday and won’t open again until the end of January, so no one would have noticed his car. And from there,