handwriting. Communicating would be a problem, so he’d, ask me to do it for him. And I would. Not a letter, but a call. At least once a month, probably more.”
Remmer, awake now, sat up. “Telephone company records.”
Little more than an hour later, a fax came in from FBI Special Agent Fred Hanley in Los Angeles.
Page after page of telephone calls initiated from Salettl’s private line at the Palo Colorado Hospital in Carmel, California. Seven hundred and thirty-six calls in all. Hanley had circled in red the more than fifteen separate numbers around the world made to Erwin Scholl, most of the rest .were either local, or to Austria or Zurich. Interspersed among them, however, were twenty-five calls made to country code 49—Germany. The city code was 30— Berlin.
McVey put down the pages and turned to Osborn. “You’re on a roll, Doctor.” He glanced at Remmer. “It’s your town, what do we do?”
“Same as L.A. We look her up.”
7:45 A.M.
“This Karolin Henniger,” McVey said, as Remmer pulled the Mercedes up in front of the expensive antique gallery on Kantstrasse. “I don’t think we can assume she’s a direct connection to Lybarger. She could be a relative of
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” McVey opened the door and got out. The plan was his and McVey let him run with it. He was an American doctor trying to locate a Dr. Salettl for a colleague in California. Remmer was a German friend, along to translate if Karolin Henniger, did not speak English. Whatever she said, they’d take it from there.
McVey and Noble watched from the Mercedes as they went into the building. Across the street, backup BKA detectives kept surveillance from a light green BMW.
Earlier, as Remmer had-run down Karolin Henniger’s name and address, McVey had called an old friend in Los Angeles, Cardinal Charles O’Connel. Scholl, McVey knew, was Catholic and a major fund-raiser for both the New York and Los Angeles archdioceses and therefore would know O’Connel well. This was the one area where Scholl was like any other Catholic. If a cardinal made a personal request, it was granted, graciously and without question. McVey was in Berlin, he’d told O’Connel, and asked if the cardinal could arrange a late-afternoon meeting between himself and Scholl, who was also in Berlin. It was important. O’Connel did not ask why, only said he would do what he could and get back.
“It’s important to understand,” Remmer said, as he and Osborn climbed up the narrow stairs to the apartments on the gallery’s top floor, “this woman has committed no crime and is under no obligation to answer questions. If she doesn’t want to talk, she doesn’t have to.”
“Fine.” Legal restrictions were something Osborn didn’t want to think about. They were running out of time; getting some kind of a step up on Scholl was all that mattered.
Apartments 1 and 2 were immediately right and left at the top of the stairs. Apartment 3, at the end of a short hallway, was Karolin Henniger’s.
Osborn reached the door first. Glancing at Remmer, he knocked. For a moment there was silence, then they heard footsteps, the dead bolt was thrown and the door opened to the chain lock. An attractive woman in a business suit looked out at them. She had short salt-and-pepper hair and was probably in her mid forties.
“Karolin Henniger?” Osborn asked politely.
She looked at Osborn, then past him to Remmer.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes.” She glanced at Remmer again. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Osborn. I’m a doctor from the United States. We’re trying to locate someone you might know— a Doctor Helmuth Salettl.”
Suddenly the woman went white. “I know no one by that name,” she said. “No one, I’m sorry.
Stepping back, she shut the door. They heard the dead bolt fall and she shouted someone’s name.
Osborn pounded on the door. “Please, we need your help!”
From inside, they heard her talking, her voice trailing away. Then came the distant thud of a door slam.
“She’s going out the back.” Osborn turned for the stairs.
Remmer put out a hand, restraining him. “Doctor, I warned you. She’s within her rights, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Maybe
McVey and Noble were in an exchange about the likelihood that “Salettl himself might be the surgeon responsible for the headless bodies when Osborn came out the front door on the run.
“Come on!” he yelled, then cut a corner and disappeared down an alley.
Osborn was going at full speed when he saw them. Karolin Henniger had unlocked the door to a beige Volkswagen van and was hurrying a young boy inside.
“Wait!” he yelled. “Wait! Please!”
Osborn reached the car just as she fired the engine.
“Please, I have to talk to you!” he begged. There was a screech of tires and the car accelerated forward. “Don’t!” Osborn was running alongside. “I won’t harm you—”
It was too late. Osborn saw McVey and Noble jump back as the car reached the end of the alley. Then it fish-tailed onto the street and was gone.
“We took a chance, it didn’t work. Sometimes it doesn’t,” McVey said, minutes later, as they got into the Mercedes and Remmer drove off.
Osborn looked at Remmer in the mirror; he was angry. “You saw her face when I mentioned Salettl. She knows, dammit. About Salettl and, I bet, Lybarger.”
“Maybe she does, Doctor,” McVey said quietly. “But she’s not Albert Merriman, and you can’t try to kill her to find out.
104
SUNLIGHT SUDDENLY streamed in through porthole windows as the sixteen-seat corporate jet broke the cloud deck and banked northeast for the ninety-minute flight to Berlin.
Joanna sat back and for a moment closed her eyes at the release. Switzerland, as beautiful as it was, was behind her. By this time tomorrow she would be at Tegel Airport in Berlin waiting for her flight to Los Angeles.
Across from her, Elton Lybarger dozed peacefully. If he had any concern about the events to take place later in the day, none showed. Dr. Salettl, looking pale and tired, sat in a swivel chair facing him, making notes in black leather notebook in his lap. Occasionally he glanced up to converse in German with Uta Baur, who had flown in from a showing in Milan to accompany them to Berlin. In the seats directly behind her, Lybarger’s nephews, Eric and Edward, played a silent and dramatically rapid game of chess.
Salettl’s presence troubled Joanna as it always did and she purposefully let her thoughts go to “Kelso,” the name she had given the black Saint Bernard puppy Von Holden had given her. Kelso had been fed and walked and kissed goodbye. Tomorrow he would be sent on a direct flight from Zurich to Los Angeles, where he would be held for the few hours before Joanna arrived to meet him. Then they would fly to Albuquerque. A three-hour drive after that, and they would be home in Taos.
Joanna’s first thoughts immediately after she’d seen the video had been to get a lawyer and sue them. But then she’d thought—to what end? A lawsuit would only hurt Mr. Lybarger and could even have serious physical repercussions, especially if it dragged on. And she wouldn’t do that because she cared a great deal for him and besides, he’d been as innocent as she. And later as horrified. All she’d wanted to do was leave Switzerland as quickly as possible and pretend it had never happened. Then Von Holden had come with the puppy and with his deep apology and finally he’d presented her with a check for an enormous amount of money. The company had apologized, so had Von Holden. What else could she really expect?
