I Am Your Judge: A Novel by Nele Neuhaus Read Free Book Online

start of an investigation, when they were still fumbling about in the dark, it was important to explore all avenues. That’s why he hadn’t contradicted Pia when she’d mentioned earlier in the car that, unlike him, she didn’t believe in random killings. The crime statistics were on her side. Murders committed simply from a desire to kill without any real motive were extremely rare.
    “Ms. Rohleder, our questions are in no way intended to disparage your mother’s memory,” Bodenstein now intervened to reassure her. “Our sole purpose is to find the person who killed her. In our search for a motive, it’s common practice to begin by carefully examining the victim’s circle of friends and relatives.”
    “But there can’t be any conceivable reason for killing her,” Renate Rohleder insisted. “You’re wasting your time if you’re trying to find the motive in my mother’s life.”
    Pia wanted to ask something else, but Bodenstein signaled with a quick shake of his head that he found further questioning to be pointless.
    “Thank you, Ms. Rohleder,” he said. “Should you think of something that might help us, please don’t hesitate to call.”
    “Of course.” Renate Rohleder blew her nose again, using the already soaking wet handkerchief. Bodenstein stuck his hands in his jacket pockets for safety’s sake, in case the woman offered to shake hands with him when they left. But she was completely focused on the sympathy messages coming into her phone almost every second.
    They left the kitchen and walked down the hall to the front door. Bodenstein turned up the collar of his coat. They had left the car in the lot back at the Eschborn police station on the main street.
    “ Niederhöchstadt, not Eschborn!” Pia snorted. “Good God, when was the local government reform? Fifty years ago?”
    “Nineteen seventy-one,” Bodenstein said with a smile. “People are just proud of their old villages and want to hold on to their own identity.”
    “What crap.” Pia shook her head. “All these hick towns would have gone broke long ago if they’d remained autonomous.”
    At the street corner, a few elderly people had paused to stare at them with undisguised curiosity. Bodenstein greeted them with a nod.
    “At least now they have new fodder for the village gossip mill,” Pia said caustically. “Maybe Ingeborg Rohleder was shot because she told someone she was going to live in Eschborn.”
    “Why are you so sensitive about that?” Bodenstein cast a sidelong glance at his colleague. “Or were you hoping that Renate Rohleder would mention a name and we could immediately arrest somebody?”
    They reached the police parking lot, and he beeped to unlock the doors of their unmarked car.
    “Of course not.” Pia stopped. Then she smiled wryly, shrugged, and opened the passenger door. “Well, maybe. I’d feel better about leaving on vacation if the case were solved.”
    *   *   *
    At precisely 11:30, they entered Dissection Room II in the basement of the Institute of Forensic Medicine on Kennedyallee. The corpse of Ingeborg Rohleder lay washed and naked on the metal table. Professor Henning Kirchhoff and Dr. Frederick Lemmer had already begun with the external postmortem examination.
    “Pia?” Henning cried in astonishment. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on vacation.”
    “I am,” she said. “But almost everyone is out sick at K-11, so I jumped in just for today.”
    “I see.” Henning pulled down his mask, raised his eyebrows, and grinned. A bit mockingly, Pia thought.
    “We’re on a flight tomorrow evening at seven forty-five,” she reassured him. “The bags are already packed.”
    “That doesn’t mean a thing,” said Henning. “I bet you a hundred euros that you don’t go.”
    “You’ve already lost that bet,” Pia retorted. “And while all of you will be freezing your butts off here, I’ll be relaxing in the sun and thinking of you.”
    “Not going to happen.