I Am Your Judge: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

in America will present you with all sorts of opportunities.”
    He turned his head and rested his cheek on top of Rosalie’s head.
    “Whenever things get stormy in your life and you need a calm harbor, there will always be a place for you here,” he said softly.
    “Thank you, Papa,” Rosalie murmured, and then yawned. “I’m feeling better already. I think I’ll go back to bed for a while.”
    She sat up, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went back inside.
    Children turn into grown-ups, Bodenstein thought with a hint of wistfulness. Time went by so fast! Lorenz and Rosalie had long ago left their childhood behind, and Sophia had already turned six a couple of weeks back. In eighteen years, when she would be as old as Rosalie was today, he would be almost seventy. Would he be able to look back on his life with satisfaction? He was offered Nicola Engel’s job a year and a half ago, after he’d taken over temporarily during her suspension, but he had declined. Too much administrative paperwork, too much politics. He wanted to work as an investigator, not a desk jockey. Only later did he realize that with this decision he had taken from Pia any chance of climbing the professional ladder of the Regional Criminal Unit. Having been Chief Detective Inspector for two years, she had all the necessary qualifications to be an excellent leader of K-11. But as long as he held the post, she would have to be satisfied with being merely part of his team. In the long run, he didn’t know whether that would be enough for her. What if one day she decided to transfer somewhere else so she could take a step up the career ladder? Bodenstein downed the last of his coffee, which had by now turned cold. His thoughts returned to the homicide case that he had to solve. He would find out in the next few days what it would be like to work without Pia.
    *   *   *
    Like her boss, Pia Kirchhoff got almost no sleep that night, and for similar reasons. She just couldn’t get yesterday’s murder out of her head. Some of her colleagues claimed that they could dismiss all thought of work from their minds as soon as they drove home, but she seldom succeeded in doing so. At some point, she got up, got dressed, and tiptoed downstairs. The two dogs yawned and crept out of their baskets, which were in the living room, and followed her outside in the cold, more out of duty than with any real enthusiasm. Pia checked on the two horses standing sleeping in their stalls and sat down on the bench in front of the stable.
    According to the initial reports, Ingeborg Rohleder was a nice elderly lady who had worked her whole life in the family-owned flower shop and had been generally well liked in her hometown. Neither the neighbors who had been questioned nor the shocked employees at the flower shop could imagine why anyone would want to put a bullet into Ingeborg Rohleder’s head. Was it a case of mistaken identity, or had the woman been a random victim of the shooter? This idea was far more alarming than any other. In about 70 percent of all murder cases in Germany, there was some connection between the perpetrator and the victim, and often the perp was from the victim’s close circle of acquaintances. Usually it was a strong emotion such as jealousy or rage that played a part, or the fear of being caught for committing another crime. A pure, unspecified desire to kill that resulted in the murder of a random victim was very rare. And such cases were extremely difficult to solve. If there was no connection between perp and victim, the police had to rely on happenstance in the form of an eyewitness, a genetic fingerprint, or some other detail. Recently, Pia had attended a seminar in which one topic had been the development of violent criminality involving firearms. Even she had been astounded by how few killings in Germany—only 14 percent—were actually committed with a firearm.
    Pia shivered. There wasn’t much traffic on the nearby autobahn on the