“What?”
“Katja has to die. Today.”
Boris stared.
“Don’t you understand? Someone tried to kill her,” Gage said, stepping closer. “It’s the same person who tried to kill me, and who killed Karl Vogel’s associate in the south of France.”
“What are you talking about?”
For ten minutes, Gage explained. When he finished, he crumpled his cup and eyed the attorney.
“I suppose we could try,” Boris muttered, clearly bewildered.
Gage grasped Boris’ arm with the force of a hydraulic clamp. “This is no time for trying, Boris. This a time for succeeding. Someone tried to kill Katja, and that someone needs to believe she died last night. It can’t be window dressing like this hospital stay. According to every agency involved, Katja Vogel needs to have died last night.”
“We’ll be breaking the law.”
“We’re dealing with a killer. We’ll worry about the law later.”
“If we even manage such a ruse, then what?”
“Ina goes away…far away, for her own safety. And I leave.”
Boris asked why.
“Because I want the killer to relax, that’s why.”
“You can’t know for sure that Katja’s accident was deliberate.”
“We’ll come back to that. For now, how do we get the authorities to believe Katja is dead?”
“We can’t.”
“We can, and we will. But how?”
Boris looked away and massaged his forehead. “Well…first, of course, we need a body. Then, we need someone to confirm that the body is indeed Katja.”
“A body?”
“Yes. You can’t have a dead person without a body, unless the circumstances are extremely unique which, in this case, they aren’t.”
“Fine. You’ve got the full backing of the Vogel estate and a concierge medical service at your disposal, Boris. Make it happen. Get us a body before the cops find that Mercedes.”
Boris was dumbfounded.
“C’mon Boris. You can do it.”
“Suppose I can. Then what?”
“Ina will identify her sister, and you, the family attorney, will be present the entire time to speed the process along. That done, Ina, the sole survivor of the immediate Vogel clan, will announce she lost her sister in a tragic automobile accident. The killer will begin to relax. They’ll learn that I’ve departed Germany and everything will settle down. At that point, the killer will be fully relieved of worry. Then…”
“Then what?”
Gage grinned a humorless smirk. “Then comes the fun part.”
“What’s the fun part?”
“Remember what Claudia requested I do when I find the killer?”
After a considerable pause, Boris reiterated his concern over this course of action.
“Fine. Just go back to your life, Boris. I’ll do what I can alone.”
“No, I want to help,” Boris moaned. “We just have to be careful.”
“Show me the way.”
The two men went to work.
* * *
Boris Oppenheimer, “careful” attorney at law, broke so many laws that day he couldn’t begin to innumerate them. He drove to Frankfurt and personally met with the CEO of the concierge healthcare company, telling her part of the story. But instead of a killer on the loose, he claimed Katja had been run off the road by one of several possible family business rivals. The faked death would be used to smoke out the culprit.
“In the end, this will make us look incompetent,” the CEO protested. “Imagine the press when she turns up alive. Such a negative PR event could ruin us.”
“It’s okay,” Boris replied, smoothing things over. “At that point, the family will take full responsibility and absolve you of any bad press. There will probably be some minor criminal charges that, once again, the family will absorb.” Boris handed the CEO a flash drive with a statement he’d hurriedly typed in the lobby.
The CEO opened it on her computer, reading with her glasses on the tip of her nose. She looked at Boris afterward.
“You will release that statement, but not until everything comes to light,” Boris said in his silkiest voice. “If I had to guess, it will only increase your value with Germany’s rich and famous. Imagine a concierge medical service that goes to such extreme lengths for its valued clients.”
The CEO reread the statement, one plucked eyebrow ticking upward. “And to perform this…service…we will be paid what?”
Boris made the offer. It was quite handsome.
When the CEO countered with a number well into seven digits, Boris knew he had her. They haggled for just a moment, for good measure.
Six hours later, the body of a 40 year-old woman was dressed and respectfully placed into Katja’s Mercedes. Sadly, the dead woman had died of a drug overdose two nights before and had been scheduled for cremation this morning. The concierge medical service’s ambulance, operated by two trusted paramedics, took the call—made by Boris, of course—and pronounced the driver dead at the scene.
The polizei arrived soon after and photographed the scene, starting at the roadway and descending to the car. Boris conveniently arrived just as the polizei reached the car and began to harass them with a number of fancy legal terms. Because of “Katja’s” positioning, and Boris’ insistence her face not be photographed, no photographs of the victim’s face were taken. Only her tangle of dark hair as she was slumped over the steering wheel, the limp airbag dangling beneath her.
Once the camera was put away, the paramedics secured the body and hoisted it to the ambulance. They departed with no lights.
The polizei protested the rapid departure, claiming that they were supposed to take fingerprints before the body was taken away. Boris smoothly informed them that they could get their fingerprints when the ambulance arrived at the University Hospital in Frankfurt.
But the ambulance went directly to a crematory, where Ina was waiting with Gage.
Ina did her part and identified the corpse was indeed her sister Katja. The director of the crematory, licensed by the government, witnessed the positive identification. He’d stood behind Ina, unable to see that her eyes were
