reason would Vogler have had to kill Franziska
Leyhausen?
The air in the little room was sticky and Lina had to suppress a
yawn. Max cleared his throat, nodded, and said, “Good, Herr Vogler.
I think that was it for now. We’ll talk again tomorrow.” By then they’d have initial results of the house search and, with some luck, news from forensics.
“So I can go home now?” Daniel Vogler was getting up.
227
Maria C. Poets
“Unfortunately not,” Max said. “You’ll have to spend the night
here.” He sounded as if he really were sorry. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
Daniel Vogler looked nonplussed for the first time.
“So what’s your impression?” Hanno asked soon afterward. He was
slouching in his desk chair, hands crossed behind his head, and behind him dramatic black clouds darted across the evening sky, as if the scene had been sped up.
Lina grimaced. “A creepy type. But so far we have no evidence he
had anything to do with the murders. There’s just the suspicious coincidence that he knew both Philip Birkner and Franziska Leyhausen.”
“And Julia Munz,” Max added.
“But why would he kill Leyhausen?” Hanno asked.
“Maybe she knew that he’d killed his former classmate and former
employer?” Lina suggested. “Maybe she saw him Thursday night? Or
maybe he told her more than he’d planned.”
Hanno rocked back and forth in his chair and frowned. “You
talked to the friend of Frau Leyhausen, this Barbara So-and-so, didn’t you?” he asked Lina. “Why don’t you speak with her again? Maybe
Leyhausen told her who else she’d talked with about Thursday night.”
He checked his watch. “Nine o’clock. Where’s Alex?”
It turned out that Alex had driven straight home from Vogler’s
apartment. When Hanno called his cell phone, he was just having
dinner with his family. He reported, mouth half-full, that the search turned up nothing important—at least nothing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. There was no blood-crusted steel pipe, no muddy size 44
shoes—even though that actually was Vogler’s size.
When Hanno put down the receiver, he mumbled something
about willful subordinates and stared gloomily at Max and Lina.
228
Dead Woods
Lina grinned. “What are you mad at me for? I always do what you
tell me to do.”
229
Chapter 16
Max stood in front of the skyscraper in Bundesstrasse and looked up at its dirty-beige facade. Several institutes of the University of Hamburg were housed in this building, among them the department of mathematics, where Daniel Vogler was employed. Shaking his head, he
turned away from this ugliness from the 1970s and entered the foyer. It took quite some time before he found what he was looking for on the
large display board. Finally, he stood in front of a door on the fourth floor behind which the department office was supposedly located.
Unfortunately the door was locked. Sighing, Max looked around
the wide, windowless hallway. Information about meetings, working
teams, and room utilization was posted on a blackboard. A framed
display listed all the people working in the department. Daniel Vogler was not on the list.
Max was still standing in the hall, not sure what to do, when he
heard the clicking of high heels behind him. He turned around and
saw a woman of about fifty in a simple gray suit coming toward him.
She carried a large, black leather case in one hand and a key ring in the other. She paused briefly when she saw Max, then nodded and stopped
at the door at which he had just knocked.
Dead Woods
“Are you looking for something? Can I help you?” she asked.
Max smiled and introduced himself. “I’m looking for someone
who knows Daniel Vogler. All I know is that he works as a mathemati-
cian and computer scientist at the university.” Motioning to the display case, he added, “But he isn’t listed here.”
The woman raised an eyebrow, “I know Daniel,” she said. Then she
smiled. “It’s actually not that confusing around here. Come in.”
She opened the door to the office and put her bag on a chair in
front of the desk.
“Why is Major Crimes interested in Daniel Vogler? Someone
asked for him yesterday already. I hope nothing happened to him.”
“We’re investigating a murder and he’s an important witness.”
“Oh,” the woman said, and raised an eyebrow again. She removed
the pitcher from the coffee maker and added water from the sink fau-
cet. “What is it you want to know?”
“Herr Vogler stated that he’s employed here but often logs in from
home. Is that true?”
The woman inserted a filter and added coffee. “Yes. Daniel has a
half position, one that is just temporary, for two years.” She looked at Max. “That’s why you didn’t find him on the list outside.” She turned on the machine. “Daniel is quite a loner, even for