From the list of calls, it seemed readily apparent that Whitaker had been looking into the death of Frieda’s husband the previous month. Besides calls to Kara and her sister, Whitaker had called the Berlin medical examiner’s office, the morgue, a Berlin newspaper, and the local police precinct near Wissler’s apartment.
Nothing in Graf’s notes indicated what she had found in any of those calls.
“We didn’t look into them further than confirming they couldn’t give any information on her whereabouts,” Graf said when Taylor asked him about it.
“Why not? Maybe she found something about Mr. Wissler’s death that could lead us to her.”
“We are very familiar with the investigation into his death. Before engaging your Agent Whitaker to look into his death, Frau Wissler used every bit of leverage she had to try and get the case reopened. I’ve talked to the detective who handled the initial case, and there is nothing there. Heir Wissler was very old and died of a heart attack. There was nothing for Agent Whitaker to find.”
“Unless there’s information missing, his death is the only thing that stands out. From your information on Wissler, I can’t see any reason she’d have been murdered. It’s the only thing notable to have happened to her recently, at least according to your notes.”
“Which is one of the reasons we want to talk to Agent Whitaker.”
Taylor let it drop since Graf had not said it out loud, he knew Graf thought Whitaker had killed Wissler. Everything in the notes he had been handed had suggested it. Graf was enough of a politician that he had not come out and say it, not even in the case file; being aware that once a US Federal Agent was accused of murder, it would bring the US State Department into play. Taylor could read between the lines enough to see where the investigation was leading.
After the third read-through, Taylor put the case file away. While it did give some new pieces of information, it was too focused on Whitaker to tell Taylor what he needed to know. For that, he would have to wait until he got to the crime scene and got a chance to poke around.
Chapter 3
Berlin, Germany
Taylor managed to get a few hours’ sleep on the flight. It wasn't really enough, but it allowed him to beg off when Graf suggested Taylor check into his hotel and get a few hours’ sleep before they started. While Taylor was tired, he was not going to put off the search for Whitaker. He had gotten enough practice going without sleep in the service. He was confident he would make it through, now.
Seeing his urgency, Graf suggested they skip going by the station, and instead head straight to the crime scene. Traffic was fairly light as it was still early, in Berlin.
The apartment building was a style Taylor had seen a lot over the years in Germany. Buildings rebuilt after the war quickly, and then flourished with Gothic embellishments to try and bring back the sense of ‘old Europe.’ From the cars parked and the high-end retail shops scattered among the residential buildings, it was clear this was a more affluent part of the city. From what he had been able to find on the internet about the Wisslers, this should not be surprising. The family was from old money dating back to the eighteen hundreds. True this was an outlying branch of the family, but still close enough that it stood to reason they had money.
The doorman waved Graf through as he entered the lavishly decorated lobby. Considering how much Graf would have been in and out of the building during the initial investigation, probably even questioning the doorman at some point, that was not so surprising.
The Wisslers’ penthouse condo was easy to identify as they stepped off the elevator since the door still had yellow tape stretched across it. Graf reached into his pocket and pulled out a key, opening the door. The apartment was very nice on the inside, at least to Taylor’s untrained eye, with what he would guess was expensive furniture. The place was also a mess. Clutter was stacked up on the table in the entrance hallway, and Taylor could see stacks of things on the floor in the room in front of him. The apartment was not hoarder bad, but if the Wissler’s had been given ten more years, it would have gotten there.
A series of sticky notes lined the wall next to the front door. Taylor could not tell what they said since they were all in German, and he made a mental note to ask Graf about it. Taylor followed the detective through the front entryway into what would have been a living room or large sitting room at one time.
Bookshelves stuffed with old books lined the walls, and the floors. A large overstuffed chair sat in the middle of the room, facing a fireplace with a small end table next to it, holding a lamp and a few books. Taylor knew this was where the old lady’s body was found from the reports he read on the plane, but the bloodstain across one side would have made that pretty obvious on its own.
The floor around the chair was covered in loose papers and scattered books. A couple of intact stacks of papers and books suggested to Taylor that the mess was once collected in organized stacks, although the sheer volume would still have made the room feel cluttered. Someone had been looking for something and had torn through every piece of documentation they could find in their search, not giving a damn about the havoc they caused.
“Her neighbor found her in this chair, several knife wounds to the chest. Our medical examiner said she would have probably died
