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“He’s changed jackets,” she shouted at Burkhart.

  Suddenly, toward the west entrance to the convention hall, they heard a gunshot and screaming.

  CHAPTER 74

  A SECURITY GUARD had confronted the assassin at point-blank range and been shot in the chest, his gun discharging as he fell.

  Beyond the guard, outside the entrance, and running toward Brüsseler Strasse, a man in a blue windbreaker and black cap dodged through the crowd. Burkhart took off in a full sprint with Mattie gasping to keep up behind him.

  By the time Mattie and Burkhart reached the entrance, the killer had dragged a man from a Maserati, pistol-whipped him, and climbed in. The sports car squealed away as they ran out onto the sidewalk. Rain was starting to fall again.

  As he ran, Burkhart flashed his badge at a man standing shocked beside a red BMW coupe. “Call Frankfurt Kripo,” he shouted at the man, snatching the keys from his hand.

  “Hey!” the man shouted. “That’s not mine! You can’t—”

  “Report this vehicle taken by Private Berlin and the Maserati stolen by an assassin,” Burkhart commanded as he jumped in the driver’s seat. “He killed two.”

  Mattie was in the BMW’s passenger seat, strapping herself in. “He’s got a head start.”

  “And he’s got more horsepower,” Burkhart said, slamming the sports car in gear and popping the clutch. “But he can’t drive like I can.”

  They went screeching after the Maserati, which had downshifted and drifted through a hard U-turn, heading due east toward Osloer Strasse. The killer went right past them. He looked out the window directly at them.

  Bald. Dark glasses. A moustache. Hard to tell his age.

  The killer had already taken a right on Osloer Strasse by the time they’d made the U-turn. They sped after him through a series of right-hand turns that led them around the perimeter of the fairgrounds and through a red light out onto Route 44, heading west. The Maserati was four hundred yards ahead of them when it took the ramp onto Autobahn 648.

  Due to Burkhart’s remarkable driving skills, the killer could not widen the gap between them all the way to the interchange with the Autobahn 5. The Maserati headed north.

  “Call Kripo,” Burkhart told Mattie. “Tell them to put a chopper in the air and give them his position.”

  But right then the skies opened up—a deluge came in sheets and a gale overwhelmed the windshield wipers. Burkhart did not slow. Instead, he seemed to drive by braille on the three-lane high-speed route, weaving in and out of cars as if the skies were clear.

  It scared the hell out of Mattie, who could not bring herself to take her eyes off the blurry road.

  “Call them!” Burkhart snapped.

  Mattie shouted, “Slow down and I will!”

  “I slow down, we lose him!” Burkhart yelled back.

  “We can’t even see where he is!”

  “I can see the brake lights where he’s cutting people off!”

  Mattie held on for dear life as Burkhart got them closer and closer. She heard herself tell Niklas that she would not die trying to find Chris’s killer.

  For a second, north of Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse, Mattie thought Burkhart would eventually reel in the Maserati.

  But then the killer did something absolutely crazy. The rain let up enough for her to see the Maserati speeding up as it passed the exit for the village of Bad Homburg. The car flew over an underpass with Burkhart still gaining ground. Then the killer must have hit his emergency brake just shy of the on-ramp for vehicles leaving Autobahn 661 for the northbound A5. On the slick pavement, the Maserati drifted and turned 160 degrees, and then it roared down the entryway to the autobahn.

  Mattie’s eyes widened and she gasped as they shot past the lane. “He’s going the wrong way!”

  CHAPTER 75

  FRIENDS, FELLOW BERLINERS, accelerating straight into traffic feeding off the 661 is the best move I think I’ve ever made.

  It’s remarkable how easy it is to get vehicles to turn out of your way when you’re hurtling right at them, fully prepared to die.

  A Lancia swerves right off my front fender, catches the guardrail, and does a cartwheel. The driver’s face was so terrified I start laughing. This has to be the most fun I’ve had in years.

  Better yet, I glance in the rearview mirror and see the red BMW that’s been after me has failed to make the radical move that I did. Do the unexpected, my friends. It always pays off.

  At the far end of the on-ramp, I downshift, throw the car through a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, and hit the gas.

  The road to Bad Homburg is miraculously clear ahead. I keep looking in my rearview mirror as I pass through the town, but I still don’t see the red BMW. They missed the turn. The next exit was five miles away. They’re not coming anytime soon.

  Still, I know that the Maserati is a car that’s easy to recognize, one that I will have to lose as soon as possible.

  Ten minutes later, I pull the car deep into a wooded lane inside the Hochtaunus Nature Park northwest of Bad Homburg. Do you know it?

  It doesn’t matter.

  Just know that I have no time to lose. There will be police swarming the area soon and I have some distance to cover.

  I park the car in the darkest spot I can find, wipe down the steering wheel and the door, and get out, heading due northeast into the sopping-wet forest.

  As I walk, I tear off the skullcap, the nose prosthesis, and the moustache. I find a stream and use mud and cold water to strip the makeup from my face. I ditch the blue windbreaker and continue on in the rain, my mind a whirl.

  I keep seeing the look on the driver’s face before he flipped.

  I can’t help it, my friends.

  I stop out there alone in the woods, throw up my fists, punch them at the weeping sky, and start to laugh.

  Soon, I’m hysterical and I’ve fallen to my knees.

  I’ve done it. Two more to go and I’ve done it. No one will ever know who I am or what I’ve done.

  Some may suspect.

  Others may offer conjecture.

  But as I get to my feet, and continue to make my way northeast toward the train station in the hamlet of Friedrichsdorf, I’m more certain than ever before that the person I was will never be linked to the person I have become.

  CHAPTER 76

  “WHERE DID YOU last see him!” Burkhart shouted as they roared north toward the next exit.

  Mattie was craned around in her seat, still shocked by the move.

  “Engel?” Burkhart demanded.

  Mattie blinked and pointed. “He went off the road back there.”

  “Bad Homburg,” Burkhart said.

  But by the time they covered the fifteen miles and reached the sleepy little village of smooth-walled gray houses, they knew they had little chance of catching the Maserati. It could have gone in any one of several directions.

  Burkhart smashed his fist on the wheel.

  Mattie felt the same way. They’d been so close, but they hadn’t saved Artur Jaeger or the security guard, nor had they prevented the injuries resulting from the crashes. The killer had beaten them once again, and she was beginning to fear he might be unstoppable.

  “We should go back,” Burkhart said, “and find the police and give our statement.”

  Mattie almost agreed, but then something clicked in the back of her mind.

  “No, wait,” she said, digging for her cell phone. “Pull over.”

  She dialed Dr. Gabriel’s number and got the aging hippie right away. Without pretext she asked, “Where is Ilse Frei from? The missing woman?”

  “Bad Homburg,” he replied.

  “You have the address?”

  He told her to wait a moment and then came back with it. “What’s happening? Where are you?”

  “Bad Homburg,” she said and hung up. She looked at Burkhart. “Ilse Frei lives less than a mile from here. The killer knew this place. That’s why he ran here.”

  Burkhart put the car in gear.

/>   Six minutes later they drove past a modest duplex on the outskirts of town at the edge of farm country. The rain had slowed to a drizzle and in the distance they could hear sirens wailing.

  Burkhart parked the red BMW in the alley so as not to attract police attention. They went to the back door and knocked.

  A few moments passed and they were about to knock again when a pleasant-looking blond woman in her early thirties appeared in the window and eyed them suspiciously before opening the door on a security chain.

  “Yes?”

  Mattie held up her badge. “We’re with Private Berlin. We—”

  The woman’s hand went to her throat and she cried, “Did Chris send you? Has he found Ilse?”

  CHAPTER 77

  “DEAD?” TINA HANOVER said twenty minutes later in a soft, sad voice. “And Ilse, too?”

  They were sitting at a small table in a spartanly equipped kitchen, drinking coffee she’d made for them.

  Mattie’s mind flashed on the woman’s corpse beside Chris’s. “I can’t say for sure. Her remains have not been tested, but there was a woman’s body with his.”

  Ilse Frei’s roommate’s shoulders slumped. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she shook her head slowly. “Poor Ilse. She was right to be afraid. I told Chris she was afraid and to be careful. I guess I…”

  She bit at her knuckles and turned away from them.

  “Why was Ilse afraid?” Burkhart asked. “And why did Chris come to you?”

  Tina Hanover made a puffing noise and wiped her tears with her sleeve. “He came because Ilse’s crazy sister, Ilona, asked him to. He said they were all friends from childhood.”

  Mattie put it together in an instant. Ilona Frei had to be the mystery woman who’d visited Chris a week before his disappearance.

  “Start at the beginning,” Burkhart insisted.

  Over the course of a half hour, Tina Hanover explained that Ilse Frei came home from work about two weeks ago as upset as she’d ever seen her. But Ilse had refused to tell her roommate what had gotten her so worked up.

  Stranger still, Ilse had gone straight to her room and called her sister in Berlin, which was very unusual. According to Tina Hanover, Ilona Frei was the bane of Ilse’s existence. Ilona was a methadone addict who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She’d been in and out of institutions and was forever hounding her sister for money.

  “How did you know Ilse called Ilona?” Burkhart asked.

  Tina Hanover blushed and squirmed in her chair. “I…uh…” She turned defensive. “I listened at her door. She was so upset, I couldn’t help it.”

  “What did she tell her sister?” Mattie asked.

  Ilse Frei’s roommate fidgeted again before replying, “I didn’t catch all of it because the doors are pretty thick. But I caught the gist of it. She’d recognized someone from their past. She called him Falk and seemed terrified. I mean absolutely terrified of him.”

  “Falk?” Burkhart said. “Are you sure?”

  Tina Hanover nodded and Mattie looked at Burkhart, puzzled.

  He said, “The man who ran the slaughterhouse was named Falk.”

  “But he couldn’t…” Mattie said, and then she remembered. “He had a son.”

  “He had a son,” Burkhart said, nodding.

  For the first time since she’d gotten word of Chris’s disappearance, Mattie believed they were homing in on the killer. “Did you tell Chris all this?”

  Tina Hanover nodded. “He seemed to know who Falk was.”

  “What did he say?” Mattie pressed.

  “Say? Nothing. But you could see it in his body language. He knew him.”

  There was a moment of silence in the room before Burkhart said, “So where did Chris go from here? Ilse’s law firm?”

  “The law firm?” Tina Hanover said, surprised. “No.”

  “But you said she recognized Falk at work,” Mattie said, confused. “Was Falk a client at the firm? Someone she saw at the courthouse?”

  “No, no,” she protested, her face flushing. “Ilse…she…”

  She got defensive again. “Ilse stopped working at the law firm eighteen months ago when she found out she could make more money in half the time working at the Paradise FKK club north of town. She was a licensed, professional sex worker.”

  CHAPTER 78

  THE PARADISE FKK club was situated amid agricultural fields on ten manicured acres north of Bad Homburg. Trees and a white wall surrounded the compound. Despite the dismal weather there were fifteen or twenty high-end cars parked in the lot and taxis were traveling to and fro.

  Mattie and Burkhart walked on a cement path past gardens appointed with pale Grecian statues of naked men and women in erotic poses. They came to a white building with columns that supported a portico over a grand entryway.

  “A little over the top, don’t you think?” Mattie cracked uncomfortably as two men leaving the building walked by, staring at her.

  “I told you to stay in the car,” Burkhart replied.

  Mattie’s cell phone rang and she answered it.

  “You stole a car?” Katharina Doruk shouted in her ear.

  Mattie cringed and held the cell at arm’s length a second before replying, “We were chasing Chris’s killer. He was getting away.”

  “You’re not the police!” Katharina shouted. “You don’t have the right to commandeer vehicles! Frankfurt Kripo is going ape-shit. You’re wanted for questioning and—”

  Mattie turned off her phone. “I’ll deal with her later.”

  “When she’s calmer,” Burkhart agreed.

  They went through wooden doors carved with explicit scenes from the Kama Sutra into a surprisingly utilitarian and small lobby. Loud disco music played somewhere beyond the room.

  Two older women sat behind a counter at one end of the lobby. Stacks of Turkish towels and robes were piled on shelves behind them. They eyed Burkhart and then Mattie and then each other.

  One smiled knowingly.

  The other shrugged and said, “Sixty-five-euro admission fee. You get use of the facilities, dinner, and coffee and soft drinks. The girls are extra. Fifty euros for half an hour of straight loving. Fifty euros to climax orally. One hundred euros for thirty minutes of anal eroticism.”

  She said this all while smirking at Mattie, who refused to react even when the woman said to her, “You want them to go down on you, honey? Negotiate.”

  CHAPTER 79

  MATTIE PULLED OUT her badge.

  The lady behind the counter stiffened. “This is a legal establishment.”

  “We’re not police,” Burkhart growled. “We’re investigators with Private Berlin.”

  Mattie added: “We’re looking into the disappearance of one of your workers, Ilse Frei, and the murder of a man we believe came here looking for her last Tuesday.”

  “I don’t know—” she began.

  “I remember him,” the other old woman said. “He paid his way in, talked with several of the girls, and left in a hurry.”

  “You know who he spoke with?”

  “No. But go inside and find Michelle. Michelle knows all.”

  Burkhart and Mattie moved toward the door into the brothel.

  “No. Rules are rules,” the lady behind the counter said, holding out a robe to Mattie and a towel to Burkhart. “If you want to take a walk through Paradise, you pay and you change out of your street clothes.”

  Mattie thought to protest, but Burkhart said, “You take Visa?”

  “Of course,” the woman said and cackled.

  A few moments later they walked through a door into a T-shaped hallway with signs for men’s and women’s locker rooms.

  Mattie soon found herself in an empty and surprisingly clean locker facility that easily rivaled the one where she worked out. She hesitated but then took off her jeans and blouse and hung them with her holster and gun in the locker.

  She put on the robe, which was entirely too large for her, and she had to cinch it tight about her waist. S
he found a pair of sanitized rubber sandals and headed toward a staircase at the other end of the locker room that featured an arrow and the word Spa.

  At the top of the stairs, Mattie emerged into a large room with pools and Jacuzzis and exotic flowers growing everywhere. There were beautiful naked women walking around and floating in the pools.

  A dozen men dressed only in towels around their waists mingled about, appraising the women. Burkhart was one of them. He stood near a bank of orchids, behind it actually. The towel they’d given him was barely enough to cover his massive physique, and he was holding on to both ends of it for dear life.

  Mattie couldn’t help it. She started laughing. “Don’t slip,” she said.

  “You coulda stayed in the car, made this much easier,” Burkhart shot back.

  “And miss the expression on your face?”

  A tall blond woman with large natural breasts strolled up to them. She put her ruby fingernails on Burkhart’s chest, looked at Mattie, and said in a Hungarian accent, “Is the rest of him as big?”

  Mattie fought off a smile. “I wouldn’t know.”

  The blonde’s eyes sparkled. “First date and you agree to come to Paradise? You must be sexy, girl. So, you want to party with Michelle?”

  CHAPTER 80

  MY FRIENDS, FELLOW Berliners, cruising at one hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, I should make it home to my city of scars just in time for a late-afternoon appointment I cannot afford to miss.

  I yawn. It took me more than an hour and a half to reach the train station and ride back to the auto show. But the Mercedes was right where I left it, far from the police sure to be jamming hall number one.

  I’ve been driving ever since, and I confess I’m tired.

  I should pull over and sleep, my friends.

  But there is so much left to do before I can even think of resting.

  So I reach in the glove compartment and get out a bottle of amphetamines. I take two, think about it, and then down another.