Private Berlin Read online

Just understand that there is no one at that camp today. At least that’s how it appears at first glance. Then again, why would there be? It’s pouring out and cold and there’s dense fog building out on the water around the island.

  I park near the dock. No sooner do I shut off the engine than my young genius friend appears on the porch of the boathouse.

  He’s bearded, midtwenties, and his soaking-wet hair hangs on his fogged glasses. He takes them off and tries to dry them on a wet sweatshirt that features the emblem of the Berlin Technical University.

  I take a gym bag from the passenger seat of my van and climb out, leaving the engine running.

  “How did you get here?” I ask, climbing up onto the porch, out of the rain.

  “Bus and walked, like you said. I got fucking soaked.”

  “Ever heard of a raincoat?” I ask.

  “Wasn’t raining when I started,” he says, irritated. “You have the money?”

  I hold up the bag. “Twenty-five thousand euros, as agreed.”

  “Let me see,” my friend says, reaching for the bag.

  I keep it just out of his reach. “Not before I see what I’m buying.”

  He looks pissed off, but he goes to a hiker’s pack against the boathouse wall. He retrieves a disk and hands it to me, saying, “All of Schneider’s work files.”

  “Did you look at them?” I ask in a super relaxed manner.

  “That would be against my ethics,” he replies.

  But his body language says otherwise.

  Once he hands me the disk, I play along and give him the bag of money.

  He opens it and checks several packets of fifty-euro notes.

  “Nice doing business with you,” he says, zipping the bag up.

  “Yes,” I say, pocketing the disk and finding the handle end of a flat-head screwdriver. “Need a lift to the bus stop?”

  “That would be great,” he says, turning back toward his knapsack.

  I take two quick steps behind him, grab his hair, and drive the sharpened blade of the screwdriver up under the nape of his skull.

  CHAPTER 8

  MY YOUNG GENIUS friend never has the chance to scream.

  But as the blade finds the soft spot where spinal column becomes brain, his entire body goes electric and herky-jerky.

  When at last he drops my money and sags against me, I’m panting, spent and rubber-legged, as if I’ve just had the most explosive sex imaginable.

  What a thrill! What an amazing, amazing thrill!

  Even after all these years that rush never gets old.

  I stand there for several moments in the aftermath of a great death, calm, drained, sated, and yet hyperaware of everything around me: the rain, the clouds, the forest, and the whistling of ducks out there in the fog.

  With his body in my hands, with the sense of his life force still vibrating in me, it’s like I’m here and not, hovering on the edge of the afterlife, you know?

  At last I roll him over on his belly and draw out the screwdriver. I get out a tube of superglue and use it to seal the entry wound at the back of his neck. No more blood. It’s done in seconds.

  I chuckle as I drag my young genius friend toward my van, thinking how strange it is that there are people out there in the world, people far deeper and more philosophical than me, who spend their lives wondering if a tree falling in woods like this makes a crashing sound if there’s no one around to hear it.

  What a stupid goddamn thing to spend your life thinking about.

  Don’t they know they would be better off pondering whether a man like me can exist when he’s never been truly seen?

  CHAPTER 9

  HAUPTKOMMISSAR HANS DIETRICH was a living legend inside Berlin Kripo, an investigator with low-key, unorthodox tactics that nevertheless resulted in the highest solve rate of any detective in the department’s eight divisions.

  The high commissar was a tall crane of a man, early fifties, quiet, moody, and extremely private, rarely fraternizing with other cops. He was even said to resent the fact that he had to work with a second detective on homicide cases.

  Mattie had heard about Dietrich during her many years with Berlin Kripo, of course, but she’d never had the chance to work with him directly.

  Still, an hour after their initial call to Kripo she was more than relieved when she saw him walking toward her beneath a black umbrella in a gray suit, his somber face revealing nothing.

  If anyone could find out what had happened to Chris, it was this man.

  Mattie and Burkhart moved around the uniformed officer now guarding the front of the slaughterhouse and went to meet Dietrich. They showed him their Private badges and identified themselves.

  “I know who you are, Frau Engel,” Dietrich said, his eyes flickering toward the abattoir. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  Mattie felt Burkhart looking at her, puzzled. Her cheeks started to burn.

  A blue Kripo bus appeared, splashing toward the slaughterhouse.

  Mattie knew what that meant. Every time a body is found in Berlin, Kripo sends out one of these specially equipped buses. They contain all the equipment and supplies needed to fully document a murder scene.

  Seeing the bus, Mattie became angry. “With all due respect, High Commissar, we don’t know that this is a homicide yet. Someone could have taken Chris, discovered the chip, then cut it out of him so we couldn’t find him.”

  Dietrich blinked, took his attention off the slaughterhouse, and replied in a chilly tone, “That’s what I am here to find—”

  “High Commissar!” came a woman’s shrill voice.

  Dietrich grimaced and looked over his shoulder at the stout little woman in her midtwenties marching earnestly up the driveway toward them. He sighed heavily. “Inspector Sandra Weigel. My trainee.”

  Inspector Weigel beamed at Mattie and Burkhart as they introduced themselves before turning to Dietrich. “What shall I do, High Commissar?” Weigel asked.

  “Stay out of my way and listen,” Dietrich growled at her. Then he looked back at Mattie and Burkhart. “Now, take me inside, show me where you found the chip, and tell me everything I need to know.”

  CHAPTER 10

  AS THEY DONNED blue surgical booties and latex gloves under an awning that had been set up outside the slaughterhouse, Mattie and Burkhart brought Dietrich up to speed on Chris Schneider’s cases and activities during the prior two weeks, finishing with the decision to activate the GPS chip and its discovery in the main hall of the slaughterhouse two hours before.

  Inspector Weigel took copious notes. Dietrich took none. He just stood there, listening intently, expressionless. He asked only one question. “No footprints?”

  Burkhart shook his head. “None, but the dust in there is rippled. Like someone used one of those blowers that gardeners use to erase all tracks.”

  Mattie frowned. Burkhart had not mentioned that before.

  Dietrich gave Burkhart a glance of reappraisal, and then went inside the slaughterhouse. The hallway was lit now with klieg lights. The high commissar walked toward the main slaughterhouse slowly, methodically, his eyes going everywhere, saying nothing.

  Mattie said, “The room where we found the chip—it’s big. Private could bring in its forensics team to help. We have state and federal certification.”

  Dietrich shook his head and continued on with his inspection as if the idea were completely out of the question.

  A team of criminalists was setting up lights and gathering samples at the east end of the main slaughterhouse where the chip had been found.

  Dietrich examined the dead rat and then looked up at Burkhart. “Remind me not to anger you, Herr Burkhart.”

  Burkhart shrugged. “Just a lot of practice.”

  “You have the chip?” Dietrich asked.

  Mattie dug in her pants pocket and came up with a plastic evidence sleeve with the chip and the flesh inside.

  Dietrich took it from her and studied it closely.

  “High Commissar?” o
ne of the evidence specialists called. He was crouched over a bolt protruding from the floor beneath the rusty overhead track. “I’ve got something here.”

  Dietrich stiffened and hesitated before looking at Mattie and Burkhart. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to leave now.”

  “What?” Mattie said. “Why?”

  “This is a crime scene. I can’t have any more contamination.”

  “Contamination?” Mattie said. “We did everything by the book in here. We backed out the second we found the chip, and we waited for Kripo.”

  “So you did,” Dietrich replied calmly. “It does not change things. You’ll have to leave. You should know, Frau Engel. It’s department policy.”

  Mattie shook her head, unable to contain her anger. “High Commissar, until six weeks ago, Chris was my fiancé. I have every right to be here.”

  Dietrich softened but still shook his head. “I’m sorry for you,” he replied quietly. “But you have no right to be here. So leave, or I’ll have you taken out.”

  Mattie was gathering herself to protest one more time when she felt Burkhart’s massive hand on her shoulder. “We should go now, Mattie. Give Kripo some space. We’ve got other things to take care of.”

  Mattie’s shoulders sagged and she felt like crying, but she nodded.

  “Good,” Dietrich said. “And if you’ll be so kind as to come to my office tomorrow morning at nine I will tell you what we’ve found.”

  “We will too,” Burkhart offered. “Private wants to help.”

  “I’d prefer you don’t launch a shadow investigation,” Dietrich said.

  Mattie hardened. “As long as Chris is missing, we’ll keep searching.”

  Dietrich shrugged. “Fair enough. Negotiated cooperation then.”

  “Deal,” Burkhart said and led Mattie away.

  The high commissar followed them to the south entry to the slaughterhouse, and watched them walk down the driveway in the pelting rain.

  Inspector Weigel came up beside him. “Excuse me, sir, but I thought you told me before they came that we wouldn’t be cooperating with Private in any way.”

  Dietrich did not look at his young trainee. “What’s that old saying, Weigel? Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?”

  “Private’s investigators are enemies?” Weigel asked.

  “There’s a man missing, their man, Weigel,” Dietrich said. “We certainly can’t treat them as friends.”

  CHAPTER 11

  I TAKE A left turn onto the lane that runs past the old slaughterhouse and see the police barrier immediately. A uniformed police officer is letting two people leave, a tall man, imposing and bald, and a blond woman wearing a navy-blue rain slicker with the hood up.

  They walk toward me and a BMW parked on the shoulder.

  For a second I can’t breathe. Dots dance before my eyes. I feel like they’re a pack of snarling dogs suddenly biting at my ankles.

  What have they found?

  My young genius is wrapped in a blue tarp behind me on the van floor, but I’m not thinking of him. I’m being strangled by that question.

  What have they found?

  Then old training kicks in. I get ahold of myself and quickly lower the sun visor. The passenger windows of my van are slightly tinted. All the man and the woman will see is a silhouette of me as I pass them and the police barrier.

  I take my first breath, then another, and by the fifth I have to fight not to hyperventilate. But I get the van turned into an alley that runs between the two old apartment buildings up the hill from the slaughterhouse.

  In seconds I’m out on a main drag, heading back toward the neighborhood of Mehrow. My stomach churns. The first chance I get, I pull over, park, and put my head on the steering wheel.

  What have they found? And who was that big bald guy with the woman?

  The air around me suddenly seems negatively charged, and that sets off true panic in me. Sweat boils on my forehead and trickles down my spine.

  I force myself to go through everything that occurred inside the slaughterhouse three days ago. Everything.

  What could be left? Blood stains on the bolt, perhaps. Or spinal fluid? Maybe some bone fragments, I decide at last.

  But they won’t know whose blood or bone it is, now will they? Unless dear Chris left behind DNA samples. But those tests take days. Weeks. Right?

  There’s nothing else. I’ve seen to it all. I’m sure of it.

  Unless Chris told someone where he was going?

  No. It was personal. He came for me alone.

  Given the lack of other evidence, I tell myself the police will soon let it go. A blood stain in an old slaughterhouse? They’ll think someone tripped and gouged their leg or something. Right?

  I almost convince myself before doubt takes a stroll through my mind.

  What if they were to keep looking?

  This possibility agitates me so much I twist around to look into the rear of the van at the shape of the corpse in the tarp.

  Every cell in my body wants to drive by the slaughterhouse to get another look, try to get a sense of the scope of the police action, but I know I can’t. Smart cops look for that kind of thing.

  In the end, I tell myself to return home, or better to call and meet the woman who thinks I love her.

  Put a sense of normality in my visible life, rebuild the mask once more.

  I’ll come by tomorrow in a different vehicle.

  If the police are gone, then I’ll dispose of the young genius’s body in the normal way and things will go on as they always have.

  But if they’re still there, I’ll have no choice but to erase the slaughterhouse and all its dirty little secrets forever.

  CHAPTER 12

  “I SHOULD BE in there,” Mattie complained as Burkhart clicked open the doors of the BMW. The white panel van passing by barely registered in her brain.

  Burkhart shook his head and climbed in.

  Mattie got in angrily beside him. “I should.”

  “No. Dietrich’s right. They need impartial people in there.”

  “You’re saying I’m not impartial?” Mattie demanded.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Burkhart said, starting the car. “You couldn’t be. If you were impartial in this situation, I’d wonder about you as a human.”

  Mattie did not know what to say. Burkhart turned on the windshield wipers, which slapped away the wet leaves.

  Mattie threw up her hands. “I’ve got to do something. I can’t just—”

  “We’re going to Chris’s apartment.”

  Berlin is a huge city geographically, almost 341 square miles. And Chris Schneider lived far from Ahrensfelde, west of Tiergarten Park and the zoo.

  It took them forty minutes to get there in the late-afternoon traffic. Mattie had gone quiet again, looking out at the cityscape as they crossed back from the old east into the west.

  Mattie had lived in Berlin her entire life. She was a Berliner through and through. She loved the city, its architecture, people, art, laid-back attitude, and entrepreneurial spirit.

  But now, in light of the mystery surrounding Chris’s disappearance, Berlin seemed suddenly to her to be an alien place inhabited by creatures who might cut a tracking chip out of a man’s back and feed it to rats.

  They passed the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial, the roofless grand entry hall and wounded spire of a church that somehow survived a bombing raid in 1943. The scorched ruins sat on a grand plaza beside an ultramodern belfry.

  The ruins were among Chris’s favorite places in the city. He liked to sit and contemplate the spire, which looked like it had been cleaved in two by the bomb. One side collapsed and fell. The other still stood, jagged against the sky.

  “Left on Goethe, yes?” Burkhart asked, shaking Mattie from her thoughts.

  She startled, looked around, and then said, “Correct.”

  Chris lived in a second-floor apartment on Gutenbergstrasse in the Charlottenburg district o
f the city. It was a slightly frumpy address for a man of Schneider’s age, but he’d loved the place because it gave him close access to the zoo and to Tiergarten Park, where he liked to run.

  Mattie had not been to Chris’s place in more than six weeks. Her last visit weighed heavily on her mind as they used her key to open the door to the building. There was a courtyard with grass and raised garden beds. The one below Chris’s apartment had been freshly tilled. There were bags of tulip bulbs sitting near a hoe and shovel. A BMW motorcycle was parked on the grass.

  Mattie frowned. She knew the superintendent of the building, a cantankerous man named Krauss. She’d never known him to allow motorcycles in his courtyard, or bikes for that matter.

  She put that aside and led Burkhart up an interior staircase to a second-floor landing. She hesitated. At some level, she felt like this place was forbidden to her now, no matter what might have happened to Chris.

  “That key doesn’t work on this door?” Burkhart asked. “Or are you worried Dietrich is going to have a shit fit if he finds out we’ve been in here?”

  “Screw Dietrich,” Mattie said and rammed the key into the lock.

  She turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE LEATHER COUCH and chairs had been overturned, the upholstery slashed, the stuffing torn out. Books littered the floor. The closets had been opened, their contents strewn all about.

  Mattie smelled trash rotting and heard a cat mewing.

  “Socrates?” she called, walking inside. “Here kitty.”

  “This is a crime scene now,” Burkhart said. “We can’t go in.”

  “It’s a tossed apartment,” she shot back. “Let’s figure out what they took.”

  Mattie stopped and donned the same latex gloves she’d worn at the slaughterhouse. The cat had stopped crying.

  Burkhart grimaced, but then followed her lead.

  She walked gingerly through the debris, including shattered glass from picture frames. Several of the pictures showed Chris and Mattie, arms around each other, smiling as if they were the happiest couple on earth.