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“Haven’t ordered yet, but I’m thinking the saffron lobster bisque to start, then the oxtail in burgundy sauce, and a lemon tart with meringue for dessert.”
“You’re liking this whole expense-account thing.”
“I am.” She laughed. “One of the best perks of this job. How was your day?”
I told her in general terms about the visit from Thomas Tull’s editor and her contentions about the author and his previous three books.
“You’re going to read them all?” Bree said. “They’re doorstops, aren’t they?”
“Close,” I replied.
“Anything jump out at you yet?”
I looked at the cover ofElectric. “Maybe. He sells it as pure nonfiction, but some of the details and the way he describes the murders seem fictionalized to me, or at least speculative.”
“How so?”
“At times, he kind of zooms in and puts you right there in the scene as the crime unfolds. But of course, that can’t be an exact replication.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Bree said. “He’s probably extrapolating from the available evidence, and that’s always a somewhat subjective call.”
“I’m going to take a look at the other books before I snooze. Got to be up early for Jannie’s race.”
“She excited?”
“Actually, she’s calm, cool,” I said. “Nana, Ali, and I will be nervous wrecks. And Damon’s coming!”
“Oh, a family reunion without me.”
“I’m FaceTiming you the race.”
“Not the same, but it will have to do.”
“I’ll call you when they’re heading to the blocks,” I promised. “Around eleven a.m.”
“Oh, here comes my waiter. Love you.”
“Love you too,” I said. I hung up and glanced at the wall clock before picking up Tull’s second book.
CHAPTER 22
CERTAIN ASPECTS OFNoon in BerlinechoedElectric.
Early on, for example, the killer left little or no evidence at the scenes. And the police bungled the initial investigations before Tull entered the picture, retraced their steps, and found previously unknown clues or hidden aspects of the victims’ lives that opened up a new avenue for the probe and gained him insider status.
Noon in Berlin,however, was written in a completely different tone than the first book. And the story was an unexpected tale of eroticism and savagery that shocked me again and again in the hundred pages I read that night.
Tull wrote that he’d learned of the story while he was on tour for the German-language debut ofElectric.
The Berlin victims had all died as couples—illicit lovers, in fact, some straight and some gay, all of whom had had theirtrysts at noon in various hotels and pieds-à-terre around the German capital.
The first couple was discovered in a one-bedroom apartment in southeast Berlin not far from Treptower Park. Edgar Bruner was found naked, gagged, and tied to the four posts of the bed. His Russian mistress, Katya Dubosholva, was collapsed on top of him and also naked. Each had been shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart from a gun normally used by veterinarians, wild-game biologists, and the like to subdue dangerous animals. Tull wrote that “each dart at that crime scene contained enough tranquilizer to take down a bull elephant.”
Apparently, within a second of being shot, the mistress had fallen on top of her lover, pinning him, before she died of a heart attack. Then her lover was shot. At close range.
The second couple in the series, both suburban women, were married to men and had children. They were killed in an apartment in west Berlin, not far from Tiergarten and the zoo, shot with the same kind of tranquilizer dart as the first couple as they lay beneath the sheets.
Tull was allowed to observe the investigation in part because of the success ofElectric. He learned that the Berlin police had focused heavily on CCTV cameras, trying to spot the killer on the way to and from each apartment. When that proved fruitless, the lead investigator, Inspector Ava Firsching, began to focus on the tranquilizer and its origin.
