I Am Your Judge: A Novel by Nele Neuhaus

and daughter of the woman who was killed yesterday. And Renate Rohleder. Their bewilderment and horror. Pia also thought about the young girl who had seen her grandmother’s head blown off. Damn.
    *   *   *
    All the seats were taken in the waiting room behind the guardhouse on the ground floor of the Regional Criminal Unit. Previously, Chief Commissioner Nierhoff, Nicola Engel’s predecessor in the post, had preferred to use this space for his numerous press conferences because it was the biggest room in the building. This morning, the “Sniper” Special Commission was convening for the first time, and the room was already fully equipped with tables, a telephone, the inevitable whiteboard, PCs, printers, and a fax machine. Twenty-five officers were jammed into the space, sitting and standing. They’d been brought in from various investigative units to join the special commission, which also included Dr. Nicola Engel, the head of the regular police in the building; case analyst Andreas Neff from the State Criminal Division; and Bodenstein and Ostermann as the last contingent from K-11.
    After a very brief statement to the press was issued, which Bodenstein had done last night, the newspapers and online news services were already writing sensationalist headlines such as: SECOND SNIPER MURDER! IS AN INSANE KILLER ON THE LOOSE? And the public was understandably nervous. To the annoyance of police colleagues manning the switchboard, people were already calling the general emergency number for information, so the first order of business was to set up an emergency phone number especially for this case. Since Ostermann was hardly saying a word, Bodenstein took over describing the situation to his assembled colleagues.
    “On Wednesday morning at around eight forty-five in the Niederhöchstadt district, seventy-four-year-old Ingeborg Rohleder was shot dead,” he began. “So far, we have no indications of a motive for the crime. The shooter used a rifle and Winchester .308 ammunition. That’s a very common caliber, so it’s impossible to ascertain where, when, and from whom this ammunition was purchased. At first, we assumed that Mrs. Rohleder was merely a target of opportunity, but last night at around six thirty, a second homicide was perpetrated in Oberursel in a very similar way—”
    There was a knock on the door, and someone came in. The others began whispering to one another.
    “Hey, Pia,” Matuschek from Fraud called out. “What are you doing here?”
    “Couldn’t get along without us, eh?” another said.
    There was loud laughter.
    “I thought you’re supposed to be on vacation,” said a third.
    Pia set her backpack on the table.
    “How about if we all agree,” she said frostily, looking around the room, “that for the time being, a certain word beginning with the letter V will not be part of our vocabulary.”
    Everyone nodded. Bodenstein, who once again had hardly slept a wink all night, felt a deep sense of relief when he realized that Pia had decided not to go on her trip.
    “Seems pretty stupid to me,” someone muttered. “Coming to work instead of flying off on vacation? It would never occur to me to do that.”
    “That’s precisely why you have the job you do, Officer Probst,” Pia retorted. “And you’ll keep the same rank until you retire.”
    Bodenstein’s gaze met Nicola Engel’s, and he noticed a brief smile flit across her face.
    “Sorry for interrupting, boss, please continue.” Pia nodded to Bodenstein and took a seat on the chair that Ostermann had requisitioned with a snap of his fingers from another colleague.
    “Thank you,” he said, and turned back to the group. He gave a brief rundown of events surrounding the two murders and summed up the facts they knew so far.
    “Both victims were women of retirement age. As far as the family backgrounds of the victims go, so far, there do not seem to be any parallels or points of contact,” he concluded. “The husband of