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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?
