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“It’s Mattie Engel,” she said. “There’s been another murder.”
There was a long silence before Dietrich said, “Who? Where?”
“A childhood friend of Chris’s,” she said. “Greta Amsel. They lived in an orphanage together near Halle.”
Another long silence. “And she’s dead?”
“We just found her in her apartment. We haven’t touched a thing. I think we saw the killer. He was posing as a plumber. He was leaving as we arrived.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“No,” she admitted.
Dietrich’s third silence was the longest. She thought she heard him drinking something. “Call Inspector Weigel,” he said at last. “Have her bring in a forensics team and three Kripo detectives to canvass the building. I’ll see to this all tomorrow around noon.”
Mattie hesitated, incredulous. “Tomorrow? With all due respect, Hauptkommissar, I think you should come here right now and listen to what we’ve found. Another of Chris’s childhood friends is missing.”
The high commissar breathed heavily in response, almost laboring.
Then he said, “Frau Engel, I must confess to you that it would be unprofessional of me to be at a crime scene in my current state. I am to bury my father in the morning, and I am drunk and well on the way to being drunker. You’ll have to call Weigel. I’ve left her in charge for the night. She’ll be helped by the rest of the Kripo homicide team.”
The phone clicked dead.
CHAPTER 65
MY FRIENDS, I can’t help it. Two hours after the fact and I’m still shaking like a calf about to become veal. The smell of flesh burning and bacon still poisons my nose. The grease burn on my right cheek throbs.
And thoughts crowd my head.
I was in Greta’s apartment barely twelve minutes.
I left the fans running.
It should have been days until her body was discovered.
But then I saw Mattie Engel and the big bald guy. And ever since then my mind’s been throttled with questions: How could they have found Greta? I took all the files from the archives. What do they know? What did Christoph tell them before he came after me?
For the first time in nearly twenty-five years, I feel almost overwhelmed by the thought that my mask, my invisibility, might be weakening.
Then I shake it off. They’ll find nothing that will link to the Invisible Man.
But I am, above all, a realist. I can clearly see now that I have limited time in which to fully erase my past. Three other children are still unaccounted for.
Just three and I’ll be free.
Like it or not, my friends, tomorrow is shaping up to be a busy, busy day.
CHAPTER 66
IT WAS NEARLY eleven by the time Burkhart turned onto Mattie’s street.
They’d been at the Amsel crime scene for hours, watching Inspector Weigel and the team of Kripo investigators and crime scene specialists document the body and the apartment.
Weigel had seemed overwhelmed to be in charge of an investigation, even if it was only for one night, but she’d listened attentively and took copious notes when they gave their statement.
Mattie had held nothing back. She told Weigel about the files stolen from the archives, Hariat Ledwig’s assertion that something terrible had happened to Chris and his friends, and the missing-persons report on Ilse Frei.
Weigel had duly noted all of it before saying, “So you’re saying that there’s no connection between the deceased and Hermann Krüger?”
